The Mystery of the Sea

escarpment of the bridge over the Water of Cruden. Opposite to me, across the road and standing under the only little clump of trees in th

ont carrying on his shoulder a little black box-a coffin. I shuddered as I thought, but a moment later I saw all three abreast just

great eyes were fixed keenly upon me, seeming to look me through and through. I felt that I grew qui

wered ambiguously: "Wait! Ye shall pe

ore; but she would not. She moved away with a grand stat

men with sad mien. On questioning them I found that a child had been drowned in the little harbour below. Just then a woman and a man, the

a sad home-comin'

The man took off his cap

at was drowned!" As he spoke I looked

woman with a look of

*

eternally shifting as the wind takes the fine sand and drifts it to and fro. All behind is green, from the meadows that mark the southern edge of the bay to the swelling uplands that stretch away and away far in the distance, till the blue mist of the mountains

ns every instant to annihilate the stake-nets which stretch out here and there along the shore. More than a few vessels have been lost on these wide stretching sands, and it was perhaps the ro

ken the earth to its centre. Here and there are great masses of either species of rock hurled upwards in every conceivable variety of form, sometimes fused or pressed together so that it is impossible to say exactly where gneiss ends or sienite begins; but broadly speaking here is an irregular line of separation. This line runs seawards to the east and its strength is shown in its outcrop. For half a mile or more the rocks rise through the sea singly or in broken masses ending in a dangerous cluster known as "The Skares" and which has had for centuries its full toll of wreck and disaster. Did the sea hold its dead where they fell, its floor aroun

s nestled in the sand-heap behind the fishers' houses. For the rest of the place as it was when first I saw it, a little lookout beside a tall flagstaff on the northern cliff, a few scattered

is a picturesque island of rock shelving steeply from the water on the northern side, as is the tendency of all the gneiss and granite in this part. But to east and north there are irregular bays or openings, so that the furthest points of the promontory stretch out like fingers. At the tips of these are reefs of sunken rock falling down to deep water and whose existence can only be suspected in bad weather when the rush of the current beneath sends up swirling eddies or curling masses of foam. These little bays are mostly curved and are

l these bays are here and there natural channels with straight edges as though cut o

spent my summer there, in a house of my own, but the want of any place in which to l

u at Whinnyfold and to build a house overlooking the Skares for myself. The details of t

ch I had to overcome my natural shyness. When I was about eight and twenty I found myself nominally a barrister, with no knowledge whatever of the practice of law and but little less of the theory, and with