| Flora.
| will. It is no more Winny’s fault than yours.”

+

known better, for you 7 e been here before and
we haven't.”

Winny opened her eyes at this attack. “Iam
very sorry,” she began; but Escott said, “ Stuff,

Nobody asked you to come against your

“Thank you,” said Winny, looking up gratefully

| at him, but the tears were in her eyes, for she was

a good deal frightened, and it required all her
resolution not to show it. She remembered now
that she had heard that this headland was a
dangerous place in stormy weather, and the wind

seemed to be rising every minute. More water
seemed to be getting into the boat than was neces-
sary or at all pleasant, and the grey clouds had
overspread and darkened the sky, and a cold wind
blew freshly on them, and bespattered them more
than Flora liked with salt spray.

They were all, more or less, silent now. Winny
was too much alarmed for her usual nonsense, and
the next hour. seemed insufferably long. Out of
sight of the Red Cove, without a boat near them
on the sea to which they could signal, their situa-
tion seemed fairly unpleasant, but its climax was
not reached yet. A sudden lurch of the boat, as
Flora and Winny were changing places at the oar,
caused the former to quit her hold of the oar before
Winny had grasped it; it slid down into the water,
and the next minute was far out of reach.

“ You’ve done it now,” growled Escott.

“Tt was Winny’s fault,” said Flora, beginning to
ery. “I thought you had got it, Winny. If we
are all drowned it will be your fault.”

“Tt was yours altogether,” said her brother.
«What we are to do now, I don’t know; but you
shan’t jaw Winny.”

“JT am very sorry I was not quicker,” said
Winny, lifting up a sad little face with white
cheeks and lips. She said no more, but stooped
down and returned to her task of baling out the
water from the bottom of the boat with a tin bowl,
evidently left there for the purpose. Winny had
never known what peril was until now; neither
had she known what a passionate hold she had
upon life. So young; so bright, so happy, in all
the freshness of her sixteen years, with a bound-
less future reaching before her, in which she was
always to be so happy, or even happier, than she
had been hitherto. Winny was a good, loving girl,
with religious feelings, true and earnest as far as
they went, though undeveloped as yet; but all
considerations but the one longing to live seemed
to pass from her mind, as she looked up, and saw
the headland gradually nearing, and the line of
white surf on the cruel rocks at its foot, where the
waves were now beating in great breakers such
as would crush the life out of her slight little
frame in less time than it would take her to

THE PANELLED HOUSE. 79

finish her last prayer, if she were once at their
mercy.

The party on the beach at Red Cove weré just
beginning to wonder why the others did not come
back from their walk, when the old fisherman who
had lent them the boat came up and addressed the
Colonel.

“Be them young folks as have gone out in my
boat yourn?” ‘

' Then there was a description of them, and a cry
of dismay from Aunt Hermy.

“They ought to be back afore now. The sky
looks squally, and the wind’s a rising; and if they
get out agin March Head,” he pointed to the grey-
headland in the distance; “ there’s nasty currents
there as ’ll drive ’em out on the rocks, if they don’t
look out. Ireckon I'd best get one or two more and
go out arter them, ifyou’ll make it worth my while.”

Colonel Armyn was considerably alarmed, and
hurried to help to get out the boat himself. He
would have gone in it, but that the fisherman told
him there would be hardly room for him if they
had to take the three young adventurers into their
boat. So he had to remain to cheer up Nest and
her aunts; but it was easy to perceive that he was
extremely ill at ease himself, as he paced the shingly
beach, reiterating that it would be all right, and in
the same breath, “ How could they be so foolish!”

Winny had had time to remember Nest’s story
of the alder-poel and the terrors of the Mist King,
mixed up with the merriment of the morning, and
she thought how terribly Nest and Evan and her
aunts would miss her, as she baled out the water, and
listened to Flora crying, and Escott’s ill-at-ease reas-
surances. All the while they were drifting nearer
the rock, and her heart kept on saying, ‘* Won’t any
body come to save us! will nobody know how we
died ?” when Escott gave a shout, as he caught sight
of a boat coming to them over the waves.

“Tt’s all right, Winny!” he said, while his face
worked in 3, way which showed what the relief
was to him.

Winny could not help it, she burst into a flood
of tears. It was not heroic, but Winny was not a
heroine ; only a poor little frightened girl, who had
been bravely restraining any expression of her
fright for two hours.

“Don’t ery, my pretty, we'll be back in an hour,”
said the fisherman who lifted her out of the wet
boat, and wrapped her up in the rug which Aunt |
Hermy had sent for her. “Lucky for you, we |
warn’t half-an-hour later. She’d ha’ been all to
pieces on them nasty rocks.”

“Tl tell you what, Winny,” said Escott in a
low voice as he sat beside her, “That was an!
uncommon near shave for all of us. Perhaps you |
may hear I’ve turned over a new leaf after this,—
if the governor don’t jaw too much.”

eee