A Maid of the Silver Sea

north side of the cliff overlooking Port G

ig, unkempt and dirty, was nosing towards the rough wooden landing-stage clamped to the op

were all at the bottom of the

nd then with a twinkle in his ey

e wretched mines came-no dust, no noise, no bustle, no dirty men, no silly women, no nothing as it is now. Just Sark as it used to be. And n

the gulf the great pumping-engine clac

bad to-day, Nan

dy except mother and you," she added quickly. "Get-get-get! Why we hardly used to know wha

ly, at the sound of steps and voices

uttered

he girl, and they both shrank

e frost, had come rolling down the slope till they settled afresh on new foundations, forming holes and crannies and little angular chambers where the splintered shoulders met. In time, the soil silted down and covered

s of her big half-brother, Tom Hamon. Tom was six when she was born-fourteen accordingly when she was at the teasabl

and her mother's intrusion into the family, and

d not indeed permit him any distinct reasoning on the matter, but the feeling was there-a dull resentment which found its onl

not therefore on t

th century and half in the eighteenth. She had seen all the wild doings of the privateering and free-trading days, and reca

d and silent old lady, but her tongue co

tting-room, with the door wide open, so that she could see all that went on in the house and outside it; and in the sombre depths of her great b

re than twenty years, she was reputed as rich in material matters as she undoubtedly was in common-sense and w

ung Tom, his son; a rough, not ill-natured man, until the money-getting fever seized him, s

a vastly increased currency of money, and the sudden introduction of new ideas and standards of life and living into a community which had h

m advantageous. He got excellent prices for his farm produce, and when his horses and ca

nd he could scrimp and save he bought shares in the mines and believed in them absolutely. And he went o

he could get hold of the larger the ultimate return would be. And so he stinted himself and his family, and mort

e home from sea he left the farming to him, and took to the mining h

sual phlegm, of fiery outbursts which overbore all argument and opposition. His wife died when his boy Tom was three, and after two years of lonely discomfort he

ife, and she went into Tom Hamon's house of La Closer

irst, little Tom set

cked her brain for reasons, and could

his rudeness and insolence,

is father out of pity for his forlorn estate, had equally given way to him, and only realised, t

r thrashed instead of humouring him, he put it all down to the new-comer's account, a

in course of time, developed into little Nance. It is not impossible that the remembrance of that black week tended to colour his after-

m, as the result of some wickedness which had sorely upset his stepmother, and the door was, mo

fer his own opinion on the matter, he found the keen dark eyes gazing out at him from under the shadowy penthouse of the great black sun-bonnet, with so in

e, and as an exhibition of nonchalance a

nly looke

left, and above it a pair of frightened green eyes, transmitting t

sufficient interval, he ventured a peep at her and found her eyes still fixed on him, he howled, "Take it off! Take it of

nie's room, and for years he never spoke to her. When he passed her open door, or

shape or form, Tom natu

s own sake as well as hers. But his father

te of Nancy's protests-which Tom regarded as simply the natural outcrop of her ill-will towards hi

re came a day when Tom upset the usual course of proceedings by snatching the stick out of his

for a while. So he sent him off in a trading-ship, in the somewhat forlorn hope that a knowledge of the w

rom his voyaging knowing a good many things that he had not known when he started-a little En