Hens had been stolen often by the tinker gipsies who had been in the town on market-day; but to steal a whole cow, which could neither have its neck thrawn nor be hidden in an auld pock as a chuckie could, was a degree of audacity that she could only associate with the regular reivers, whose deeds she had been made acquainted with by old wives' gossip.

Stupefied by this apparent loss, and not knowing how to act, she re-entered the house. Adam was groaning and grumbling miserably. Jeanie made him a drink with some oatmeal, and he asked for milk. She was obliged to tell him at once that she believed Crummie had been taken away.

"Ta'en awa!" groaned Adam, looking as angrily at his daughter as if she had been an accomplice in the theft; "Ta'en awa! —how could ony body take her awa ?—she was na a wee thing to be jammed in a tinkler's pouch."

"Na, faither, but they hae jist gart her walk awa, and the storm was blawing sae loud that I heard nae disturbance." "The cow ta'en awa!" gasped the wounded man, writhing with pain: "it's no possible."

66

'May be sae, faither. I hope sae, and as soon as I hae made your breakfast I'll gang out and look again."

But although she looked again and again, it was without any better result. Adam groaned and grumbled; bewailing the ruin that was falling upon him in his old age with a savage bitterness. Mrs. Lindsay was in a state of dumb consternation for awhile; and when Jeanie managed to draw her into ́the kitchen on the big chair, she endeavoured to soothe her husband by telling him meekly it was the Lord's will.

Adam admitted that, but he only grumbled louder the more she tried to soothe him; and when Robin Gray arrived, he found Jeanie excited and troubled beyond measure.

He took the matter in hand at once. He consoled the guidwife with the help of a basket he had brought containing a lump of ham, a lot of eggs, and a bottle of real French brandy. He consoled Adam by telling him that he would find the cow or catch the thief.

"An' he'll be hanged," cried Adam, with a tone of satis

faction in spite of his pain: "an' serve him weel for robbin' a puir man like me."

Jeanie's excitement was certainly subdued, but her face was sad and weariful when she thanked Robin for all he had done.

"Whisht ye, lass," he said cheerfully. "Ye maunna speak o' that, and ye maunna be so downcast. Losh, it's roused your faither and done him a warld o' guid. He'll be out o' his bed in a day or twa. I'll gang down to Geordie Armstrong and set him after Crummie.'

Robin proceeded at once to the watchman, Geordie Armstrong, who was an old pensioner, and who represented in his own person the chief constable and entire force of the district, and was not a little proud of his position.

He took the matter up gravely, examined the premises with much precision, and then leisurely proceeded to seek the thief. But nobody was at all surprised that he discovered neither cow nor thief.

Adam was not able to leave his bed in a couple of days, as Robin had hopefully predicted; and the doctor said it would probably be months before he could use his arm again, and was doubtful if it would ever be quite right, seeing that such injuries are slow to heal in an old man.

Misfortune was falling fast and heavy upon the fisherman's house; and Jeanie shrunk from telling Robin the real state of affairs. Bad as he knew them to be, he did not know that she was killing the hens day by day to supply her parents with food, and that she was looking with terrible anxiety to a day that was close at hand, when she would have no means left of obtaining for them bare subsistence.

Only those who have felt what hunger is, who have experienced the bitter shame of utter poverty, can understand the agony the poor girl was suffering while she tended mother and father, striving to hide her own misery to lighten theirs.

CHAPTER VI.

FOES IN THE DARK.

"When lightning parts the thunder cloud
That blackens all the sea,

And tempests sough through sail and shroud,

E'en then I'll think on thee.”—Professor Wilson.

JAMES FALCON Set himself bravely to the work in hand. The prize he had to win was for Jeanie; and for her sake there was no labour too great, no difficulty so huge, that he would not master it. He had said that the thought of her would give him strength; and it had been no idle utterance of passion; for he accomplished the work of two men on board the brig.

He wanted money, and he set himself with a fierce earnestness to gain it. Not that the money had any share in his thoughts on its own account; he thought only of the bright home it was to provide for him and Jeanie.

Ivan Carrach, with his great protruding calf's eyes, watched his new hand with a stolid stare. He found that instead of having to put him through an apprenticeship, Falcon was not only as thoroughly acquainted with a sailor's duty as any of the men on board, but had also some knowledge of navigation, as was apparent before two days had elapsed.

Whether the skipper was pleased or the reverse by this discovery it was impossible to guess, for his sodden features in their bush of red hair were as expressionless as a cow's. He spoke little, but he drank much. That, however, seemed to have no effect upon him, except to make his eyes roll more. The drink, which would have made a man of ordinary constitution incapable of standing or speaking, seemed to drop to Carrach's feet, and render them heavier and steadier than usual.

Hutcheson, the mate, told Falcon that "the skipper was aye soberest when he was drunkest."

The truth of this paradox was illustrated in many ways; and whenever he had been drinking hardest, Carrach always

exhibited the greatest care for the brig, and insisted most upon every man doing his duty. At such times he would make a tour of inspection, and wherever he found anything wrong or anything undone, the men were rated with a volley of oaths.

"Yor're a set o' lazy Hielan brutes-pe-tam," was his usual peroration, apparently quite oblivious of his own nativity.

The hands on board numbered seven-the mate, Falcon, four other men, and a boy. Falcon observed that notwithstanding the skipper's eccentric ways, the men seemed to like him.

He observed too, and with some chagrin, that the men had taken a dislike to himself, for what reason he could not imagine. From the first hour that he had joined them he had been frank and friendly with them, as it was his nature to be with whoever he might be brought into contact. Yet they had not taken kindly to him from the first, and he soon became oppressed with the conviction that his comrades regarded him with suspicion and distrust, as if they fancied that he had come amongst them with no good intent.

On the fifth day out, and whilst a heavy fog was gathering around them, he reviewed his conduct, but he failed to discover anything in it which could promote ill-will amongst the men, unless they had taken a grudge against him for being so ready to take the place of the man who had refused to sail on the Friday.

That was the only ground upon which they could have founded their ill-humour, so far as he was able to make out. It seemed a poor ground for spite, seeing that even if the man had sailed, Falcon would still have been with them. That there was spite he could not doubt, for it was displayed in many ways. The men seemed to shrink from him. If they were talking together, and he approached, the conversation instantly ceased, and the men who had been laughing the moment before at some jest, moved away to their respective posts with sullen faces.

The mate, Hutcheson, was the only one who was at all

friendly with him, and even he was frequently dry and reserved in speaking to him. It was a puzzle, and trying to solve it Girzie Todd's singular warning recurred to him. But that only made the puzzle appear the more intricate. So he spoke to the mate.

"What's wrang wi' the lads, Hutcheson; they seem to look on me as a kind of merman, that had brought mischief aboard ?"

"Aye, do they?" answered Hutcheson, as he coiled a rope. "Weel, ye see you're different frae them. They feel as though ye werena just ane o' themsel's.'

"What for should they think that? I gie them nae cause."

"Aye, maybe no; but ye see they ken ye're a frien' o' the owner's, an' they maybe hae a notion that ye micht clash about ony ongoings that michtna be just according to rule."

"What! me?" cried Falcon, laughing. "Weel, if they only ken'd how little friendship there is atween the Laird and me, and in what way we parted, they would soon get rid of that notion."

"I'm glad to hear ye say't," answered Hutcheson, more freely than he had yet spoken; "for even the skipper himsel' was disposed to think ye were here to keep an e'e on a' thing, and himsel' in particular."

"Deil tak' him, did he think I would come here as a spy for ony man? I'll set that richt.”

Falcon was indignant at the idea of having been regarded as a spy, and he told the mate his reasons for going to sea, and how he had quarrelled with the Laird. He afterwards spoke to his comrades, and his explanation produced a better understanding between them than there had been since he had joined them.

He spoke to the skipper later in the day, not quite so frankly, perhaps, as he had done to the mate and the others, for Carrach had not made a favourable impression on him.

Ivan listened in his stolid way, rolling his eyes all the while, and when he had finished, said gruffly