"Who am I, Hector ?" says Margaret, coming to him. "Oh! may I, may I say-your wife ?"

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My wife!" cries Hector, laying his hands on her shoulders and looking down into her upturned eyes. What! all three of you-lady, fishwife, mermaid, and all?" And he laughs again, that laugh which has so much more than mirth in it. "Well, I scarce know which I could do best without, since ye've all been at me together. So come, sweet-tongued lady; this for you!" and he takes her hand and kisses it as if it were a queen's. And little fishwife;" and he kisses her in hearty sailor fashion. But, O mermaid, with your shining eyes," he says, taking her face in both his hands, "don't you know that the sight of you is dead against a sailor's luck?" Then throw the mermaid overboard," say Margaret's smiling lips.

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"Nay, nay! I love her best of all-the guilesome thing! I'll take her and her mischief with the rest."

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But, Hector, Hector!" cries Margaret, with her arms about his neck, "call your three sweethearts by one dear name."

"Margaret!"

"It is sweet to hear you say it so; but not that name, Hector."

"Maggie?"

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No, no! Oh! never that!" she cries shudderingly. Was it not the name by which he had called her?

"My wife!" says Hector, folding her closer against his heart.

Margaret answers by drawing the dark face down to hers.

"Oh!

may

God forgive us all, and bless us!

My dear my dear!"

CHAPTER XIII.

SMOULDERING FIRE.

MARGARET, as she invited Hector to her little wedding breakfast, had said, "May we not forget all the bitterness that has passed our lips, and eat of this bread as the first that we have broken since our marriage?" And they asked a blessing on it, and did eat, even as she had said; and in the glow of their love and new hope, the bread was sweet to them.

And from that time they strove together with a plodding, gentle patience to overcome their difficulties; but their path was very rough.

She soon saw that some impenetrable cloud overhung Hector. He never spoke to her of it, but worked on with a kind of despairing patience that was inexpressibly saddening. No act or tone of violence ever jarred their relations. He

was to her kind, unselfish, but so undemonstrative as to make her often doubt his love. He would, often unknown to his wife, go fasting, that she might have enough to eat; and Margaret kept dry, cheerful eyes in his presence, but wept many tears unseen, and would sometimes, as she sat with her sewing or lay thinking in the night, stretch out her hands with silent, passionate words of prayer, as though she would ward off something that she saw coming nearer and still nearer, even while she could only guess in her secret soul at its nature, for she dared ask no question.

For two long years she watched it as it smouldered, and kept prayerful guard over it; but at last the dreaded touch, the awakening breath came; and it arose from its ashes.

The sun has gone down and left the horizon on fire, the sea cold and grey, the Wrexham hills gaunt and stark. The waves break upon the

beach with a hard rattling sound. The black, naked trees overhanging the cliffs seem to have been turned to iron while contorted with

agony.

The shops in the town are gay with Christmas stores, but it is too cold for passers-by to linger at them; and the windows are all misty, and the lights have wrapt themselves in little cloaks of fog till each looks like a silkworm cocoon.

It is very smoky in Rope Walk this afternoon, for every black little hovel has a large fire, and so poor a chimney that the smoke prefers making its exit at the window and door.

The fishermen, as if liking the smoke so much they must needs make more of it, are standing at their doors with their pipes, looking at the crimson blotch across the sea, the harbour, with its mastheads, still as death, far away to the right, and the troops of snow-clouds rolling up from the horizon on their left.

By-and-by a footstep is heard between the