Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/326

 16, 1861.] as she looked up he beheld her face suddenly become of ashy whiteness. It was not, he felt on the instant, anything in his words that had worked this change—some terror was before her. He continued to gaze wonderingly at the change, and he said almost involuntarily—

“Bertha!”

“Who speaks so to a married woman?” said a stern voice, and as Ernest sprang to his feet he was suddenly pushed, hurled, flung,—what you will,—against the side of the cell, by a hand that seemed only bent on removing him from out of the way.

And the kneeling Bertha looked up piteously in the face of her husband.

March comes in, as it ought to do, “like a lion,” it is almost too much for timid people. In the night, the blasts rave round the house, shake the doors and shutters, puff the smoke down the chimney, bring any loose tile clattering down, and make us think over all the old trees that we should be sorry to see uprooted. Little Harry has stood all the evening near the door, to see the carpet alive, as he says, jumping and flapping as the wind gets under it; and now he sleeps through all the din which keeps his parents awake. His parents have known what it is to live by the seaside in the month of winds: and they are thankful to be out of hearing of ocean storms now. It is impossible to rest, or even to settle to any employment, when looking out for wrecks. It is a sorer fidget than I ever went through at any tragedy to see the handling of ships approaching the bar in stormy weather, or driven from their moorings. The escapes are so narrow! and the failures are so fatal! To see a schooner capsize, so that her sails lie flat on the water, and she is washed up towards the sands, going to pieces all the while; to see a barque