"I don't know, you know," said Toddie, "if I tan 'plete the stoly, but I tan feenis' it. The Dood God rosed a dleat stolm, and poor Johnnie was dliven on shore, and touldn't get back again to see his mammy."
"That's it, Toddie," said Eean.
And with that up jumped Frank.
"It is getting near gloaming," he said. "I'm sorry I must go; but, Toddie, I must do as my mother told me."
"Of tourse oo must, or plaps oo be deaded too, like the poor Johnnie whale."
Half an hour afterwards Frank Fielding had said adieu to his kindly though humble fisher friends, and was rattling along through the moonlit woods towards his home at Benshee.
CHAPTER VII.
"FIVE YEARS AGO THIS VERY NIGHT."
The bay of Methlin was a very beautiful one, wildly so in fact, although that black beetling wall of rocks that went darkly stretching seaward had at times a weird and uncanny look about it, especially when half buried in mist, with the mournful boom of the seas under it, and far away, coming landwards from the grey gloom, the plaintive but eerie cry of sea-birds.
In summer days, when the sun shone clearly over the water, it was cheerful indeed to stroll along that cliff top. Whichever way one looked there was something to cheer the sight—the far-off ships on the ocean horizon, or a little island here and there that appeared to float in the drowsy haze; the deep, deep green waves below the rocks, rising and swelling as they rushed inland, as if measuring their height against the slippery blackness, the glorious hills themselves, changing ever in beauty of shade as cloud-shadows raced across their majestic brows; and the wee white-housed village itself asleep in a wildery of trees.