CHAPTER III.
AN AIMLESS LIFE—PEACE AT LAST.
"The darkness seemed to lift at last, and I gradually became sensible. Everything around me was hazy for a time—a kind of a gauze curtain seemed to hang 'twixt me and as pretty a rustic picture as I ever yet had seen.
"I was not lying at the cliff foot, I was in a soft, warm bed, all hung round with snow-white curtains. It was so near the gloaming hour that I could see the firelight dancing on the plain deal furniture, and on the pictures of ships and boats that hung on the whitewashed wall. There was a stuffed sea-gull in a case, and the model of a fishing-boat also under glass, and on a little table a big ha' Bible and other devotional books, surmounted by a vase of freshly-culled wild flowers. Then I turned my aching eyes towards the little window, prettily festooned with curtains of dimity, and on the sill of which pot-flowers were growing, the red radiance of sunset lighting up and strangely altering the green of their leaves. But my eyes fell on a picture of a different sort at the same time: a young girl seated by the window sewing, her head bent towards the white seam, her dark hair half hiding a face that to me was as lovely as an angel's.
"Some movement on my part caused her to glance towards the bed, and seeing me awake she put down her work and came towards me.
"'Where am I?' I asked faintly.
"She put her fingers on my lips.
"'You are where ye maun lie,' she said, smiling, though I'm sure there were tears in her eyes; 'where ye maun lie till well, but ye must not speak.'
"Poor, simple lassie! I knew then as I knew after that she was doing her best to talk in English, though far dearer to me was the expressive language of Burns the poet.
"She now put something to my lips in a spoon. I drank, and slumbered again.
"When once more conscious, there stood the village doctor, and an old, white-haired, pleasant-faced dame in a fisher's cap.