would be no need for lifeboats, and brave fellows would not have to risk their lives, and perhaps leave their wives and little children to starve, to assist people whose stupidity renders them almost unfit to be rescued.'

'Why, mother,' cried I, 'this is not how you are accustomed to talk about such things.'

'I am depressed,' she answered; 'my spirits have taken their colour from the day. A most melancholy heavy day, indeed! Hark, my dear! Is not that the sound of wind?'

She looked eagerly, straining her hearing.

'Yes,' said I, 'it is the wind come at last, mother,' catching, at the instant of her speaking, the hollow groaning, in the chimney, of a sudden gust of wind flying over the housetop. 'From which quarter does it blow? I must find out!'

I ran to the house-door, and as I opened it, the wind blew with the sweep of a sudden squall right out of the darkness upon the ocean. It filled the house, and such was the weight of it that I drove the door to with difficulty. It was but a quarter before six, but the shadow of the night had entered to deepen the shadow of the storm, and it was already as dark as midnight. I went to the window and parted the curtains to take a view of the bay, but the panes of glass were made a sort of mirror of by the black atmosphere without, and when I looked they gave me back my own countenance, darkly gleaming, and the reflection of objects in the room—the lamp with its green shade upon the table, the sparkle of the silver and the china of the tea-things, and my mother's figure beyond. Yet, by peering, I managed to distinguish the speck of yellow lustre that denoted the riding light of the Danish barque—the lantern, I mean, that is hung upon a ship's fore-stay when she lies at anchor; otherwise, it was like looking down into a well. Nothing, save the flash of the near foam tumbling upon the beach right abreast of the house, was to be seen.

'Which way does the wind come, Hugh?' called my mother.

'From the westward, with a touch of south in it, too, right dead inshore. It is as I have been expecting all day.'

That night of tempest began in gusts and squalls, with lulls between, which were not a little deceptive, since they made one think that the wind was gone for good, though while the belief was growing there would come another shrieking outrush and a low roaring in the chimney, and such a shrill and doleful whistling in the casements, which there 

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