Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/164

160 went to another—perhaps his native land. The peasantry and the fishermen, from awe as well as respect to his fortitude and misfortunes, permitted his cottage to remain untouched; and the seamen, as they sailed by, looked with something of a superstitious regard on the residence of Miles Colvine. Many years afterwards, on a summer morning, a peasant went to the sea, to examine his nets and lines. The sun had just risen, and was slanting his first beams over the green hills behind—a few long and narrow lines of dewy light fell across the Solway, and the mountains on the Scottish side were brightened from their summits midway down. He saw a man seated by the door of the mariner's cottage, dressed in a garb resembling that of a pilgrim, and leaning over a staff. He went closer, and addressed him—no answer was returned. The stranger was cold and dead—his hands were clasped together on the head of his staff, and his eyes were wide open, and looking seaward. Some old men came, and said, "A woeful man was Miles Colvine, the Mariner," and interred him among their ancestors in the parish churchyard.