thought God did not care for her. She had tried to make herself pray, even by going to her mother’s grave, but she felt no spark of that hidden fire which is the only acceptable prayer. There was a Christ cut out of ivory, nailed to a large ebony cross, in her room. It had been taken from the grave of an old abbot in Aspatria Church, and had been in her mother’s family three hundred years. It was a Christ that had been in the grave and had come back to earth. Her mother’s eyes had closed forever while fixed upon it, and to Aspatria it had always been an object of supreme reverence and love. She was shocked to find herself unmoved by its white pathos. Even at her best 76 hours she could only stand with clasped hands and streaming eyes before it, and with sad imploration cry,—

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“I cannot pray! I cannot pray! Forgive me, Christ!”

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CHAPTER III. ONLY BROTHER WILL.

 ONLY BROTHER WILL.

It was a dull raw day in late autumn, especially dull and raw near the sea, where there was an evil-looking sky to the eastward. Ulfar Fenwick stood at a window in Castle Fenwick which commanded the black, white-frilled surges. He was watching anxiously the point at which the pale gray wall of fog was thickest, a wall of inconceivable height, resting on the sea, reaching to the clouds, when suddenly there emerged from it a beautifully built schooner-yacht. 78 She cut her way through the mysterious barrier as if she had been a knife, and came forward with short, stubborn plunges.

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All over the North Sea there are desolate places full of the cries of parting souls, but nowhere more desolate spaces than around Fenwick Castle; and as the winter was approaching, Ulfar was anxious to escape its loneliness. His yacht had been taking in supplies; she was making for the pier at the foot of Fenwick Cliff, and he was dressed for the voyage and about to start upon it. He was going to the Mediterranean, to Civita Vecchia, and his purpose was the filial one of bringing home the remains of the late baronet. He had promised faithfully to see them laid with those of his fore-elders on the windy Northumberland coast; and he felt that 

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