Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/526

 long struggle with the world.

Near the bed on which the mother lay, two little children—a boy and a girl—slept together in their cradle, and were smiling in their dreams. Their mother, when she felt that she was dying, had laid her cloak across their feet and wrapt them in her dress, to keep them warm when she herself was cold.

How sound they slept in their old, tottering cradle, with their calm breath and quiet little faces! It seemed as if nothing could awake these sleeping orphans. Outside the rain beat down in floods, and the sea gave forth a sound like an alarm bell. From the old creviced roof, through which blew the gale, a drop of water fell on the dead face, and ran down it like a tear.

had Jenny been about in the dead woman's house? What was she carrying off beneath her cloak? Why was her heart beating? Why did she hasten with such trembling steps to her own cabin, without daring to look back? What did she hide in her own bed, behind the curtain? What had she been stealing?

When she entered the cabin, the cliffs were growing white. She sank upon the chair beside the bed. She was very pale; it seemed as if she felt repentance. Her forehead fell upon the pillow, and at intervals, with broken words, she murmured to herself, while outside the cabin moaned the savage sea.

"My poor man! O Heavens, what will he say? He has already so much trouble. What have I done now? Five children on our hands already! Their father toils and toils, and yet, as if he had not care enough already, I must give him this care more. Is that he? No, nothing. I have done wrong—he would do quite right to beat me. Is that he? No! So much the better. The door moves as if someone were coming in; but no. To think that I should feel afraid to see him enter!"

Then she remained absorbed in thought, and shivering with the cold, unconscious of all outward sounds, of the black cormorants, which passed shrieking, and of the rage of wind and sea.

All at once the door flew open, a streak of the white light of morning entered, and the fisherman, dragging his dripping net, appeared upon the threshold, and cried, with a gay laugh, "Here comes the Navy."

"You!" cried Jenny; and she clasped her husband like a lover, and pressed her mouth against his rough jacket.

"Here I am, wife," he said, showing in the firelight the good-natured and contented face which Jenny loved so well.

"I have been unlucky," he continued.

"What kind of weather have you had?"

"Dreadful."