A Loose End | Page 3

arms, is Paul."
They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground
on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight;
and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual
death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and
day with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung
themselves in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many
voices of the winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that
exposed spot, while the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air,
like the cries of wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed
as if it might be the world's end.

The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room
was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place
and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which
Marie had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table,
two chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only
light was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always
standing open; the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being
formed in fact out of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had
been piled up as a protection to the cottage on the windward side; and
three dogs and two hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.
It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in
close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed,
especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before,
she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more
motherly than filial.

CHAPTER II.
Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the 'village,'
as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads was
called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the
evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground
with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened
on the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the
front with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo,
Mother, we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me
on. Lame André, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have
me for a time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he
guesses I can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could
too, a pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"
"And high time it is too that André had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs.
Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her father
don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a lad as

could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her
body."
"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but
nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he
said--"
"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to
say to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her
favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to be
alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a
locked up her purse first, I do."
"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard André say he
didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave
him, sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He
ain't a man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel
with him."
"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with
the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we
was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre was
sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way," and
the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her
eyes as she looked down the road.
Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the
lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage,
and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which
the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down.
The keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard,