which were a pure white cloth and a Biblenothing more. No toy was ever laid on that, no childish finger was allowed to touch it. It was Elizabeth Vandereck's shrine, where every morning she read those words addressed to the widow and the fatherless, and where every morning she found and kissed these words

66

August

Joshua Vandereck drowned

at sea."

Its date showed it to have been entered two

Her very

years ago; and by this time peace and happiness were in her eyes as she turned away. step, so light and firm, seemed to express a determination to enjoy heartily the blessings for which she rendered thanks.

The meal was soon prepared: the brown bread and butter, the fragrant coffee, the little highseated chairs placed on each side her own. Then there was to go into the sandy little garden to cut and disentangle from the fishing-nets a fresh, crisp lettuce. A few flowers, too, were gathered

by Elizabeth's plump fingers, and shaken free of the sand and sea-spray, to be placed in a certain mug, from which no lips had been allowed to drink since Joshua Vandereck took his last draught from it, and which bore his favourite

toast

"To the wind that blows,

And the ship that goes,

And the lass that loves a sailor."

She goes now to call her little ones to breakfast. Sea, sands, and shingle are all glittering by this time in the sun's full light. Elizabeth

Vandereck shades her eyes to look, and is about to call the little twins by name, but something causes the sound to change on her lips to an exclamation of surprise. She misses the double track of little footprints on the sands. They reach to a small cluster of black slimy rocks, but no farther beyond there the sands are smooth and spotless as the last tide left them.

There is a dangerous pool amongst those rocks,

deep enough to drown the children, who have been forbidden to go near.

Away rushes Elizabeth Vandereck, with her arm across her brow as a shade from the glaring sun, and with all sorts of fears, wild and vague, at her heart.

She reaches the rocks without hearing the familiar little voices, and alarm makes her footstep slow and wavering.

She glances fearfully among the black slimy forms. There is the pool, but no children beside

it.

She goes round behind the rocks to that part which has hitherto been concealed from her, and suddenly she starts back; her hands are clasped in astonishment and horror.

This is what Elizabeth Vandereck sees on the fair sands of Eastweir in the early summer morning: A form stretched out stiffly as in death; a woman's form, in a white thin dress stained with the night dew and dust. One cheek seems

glued to the sand; the eyelash lies black and motionless; while the mouth is closed and averted with the piteous air of a sick child turning from some bitter-tasting draught. The rich mass of dark-brown hair rests still in the hood of the blue cloak which the wind has blown back from her thinly-clad shoulders and arms.

But it is not the lifeless and beautiful form alone that so moves Elizabeth Vandereck; nor is it that her own babes sit each on one side of it, with eyes wide and pitiful, and mouths drawn at the corners. It is the employment in which they are engaged that causes her such horror.

In the dimpled hands of each is an oyster-. shell, and with it the little ones are scraping up sand and throwing it upon the prostrate woman.

She knows their thought. They once buried a dead sea-bird in the sands; they think to do the same kind office for the poor human waif they have stumbled upon in their play.

For a minute the mother gazed, spell-bound by a scene so strange, so full of horror to her, and yet so tenderly beautiful. Then she sprang forward, snatched one of the children in her arms, and drew away the other.

She bore them to a higher part of the beach, then waved her hand, and called to two or three forms in blue shirts and tarpaulin hats, beginning to roll lazily down toward the weir.

She waved her hand, and gave a hearty sailor's hail. All the fishermen going down to the weir stopped and looked along the beach, shading their eyes with their hands from the vivid morning light; then, answering the young widow's cry, began to run towards her, leaving deep tracks in the unsullied sand behind them.

The wives at the village, seeing them all crowding round one spot on the beach, thought one of their husbands had come home from sea with a haul of fish; but as there was no boat close in on the dancing, glittering water, this was soon proved