'I am not fortune-telling, dear, foolish boy.'
Then Antony suddenly remembered his cousin Gustus.
'That man,' said Crona, 'will work you and yours evil. Beware of him.'
The fire was making Blake drowsy perhaps. He could see Tod Lowrie curled up in a corner into which Wallace had quietly rolled him, as he always did; pussy nodding in the binkie; and, not far off, Joe himself with his head buried underneath his ragged wing. Then he knew nothing more until daylight. But he went back home to camp with a new hope in his heart that nothing could entirely extinguish, and told poor Mary all his adventure.
. . . . . . .
Perhaps at the very time that Antony awoke in Crona's cottage, Lotty also awoke, but under sadly different circumstances. The wind was still roaring across the sea, but the boat was almost empty of water, and, crouched up as she had been, she was fairly dry and warm. But she noted now that one of the lashings of the sail she had fixed around the oars and mast was coming undone. She got hold of the painter and commenced, against the scud of the sea, to round in the slack of it, thus working the little boat at great risk up to her floating moorings.
It took her a whole hour to make things taut and trim and safe. But they were so at last, and now the child discovered that she was very hungry. So she opened the bag and looked over the stores, as she termed the food. Quite as wise and provident was Lotty as any skipper who had been to sea all his life. She found that the food would last for a whole day, and the milk longer. Then there would be the nuts—Chops's nuts.
'Poor Chops!' she sighed. 'Why, the stupid boy loves me so much that he will be half-dead with grief.'
She had a meagre breakfast and a little sup of milk, but felt very cold after eating, and her legs were cramped. But Lotty did not dare to stand up, the wind was so high. She simply stretched her numbed limbs, and this relieved her a little.
The whole of that day, whenever the boat was on the crest of a high wave, she kept looking out. But nothing saw she until the red sun was nearly setting and turning the spray into frothy blood; then, oh joy! a steamer bearing right down towards her. Oh joy! and oh hope! but oh grief and collapse when it passed on its way and never saw the Jenny Wren!