Page:True stories of girl heroines.djvu/399

Rh She begged them not to wake him; she called him her baby, her darling. When they laid him to rest in the churchyard, she would spend long days sitting beside the mound, gazing over the sea for the sails of the Black Prince.

But from that day forward the Black Prince was never seen or heard of again. Perhaps the crew, fearing to return to a place where they had done such evil work, changed its name and rig, and took up life elsewhere. Perhaps she foundered in a gale, or fell a prey to some enemy's ship. But no news of her ever reached Morwinstow again.

Somehow the story of Jessy's curse got abroad, and her reputation as a witch was made for ever; but she hardly knew it herself. From that day she never fully regained her faculties; and at last poor Jessy's life was ended through a fall down the cliffs from the heights above, near to the grave of the little boy, and from whence she had kept a ceaseless watch for the return of the Black Prince; terrified alike at the thought of its return with the dreaded Moffat, or of its destruction in response to her curse.

The children will look fearfully down this chasm, and whisper that Jessy leapt down it to expiate the curse; but whether or not this was so, will hardly now be known, for her mind was never the same from the dreadful day when she risked her life to save that of the boy, and saw him slain at her feet.