“We better take the corp ashore,” said Spink, suddenly.

“What for?  They may ask what was in the pockets,” objected Swankie.

“Let them ask,” rejoined the other, with a grin.

Swankie made no reply, but gave a stroke with his oar which sent the boat close up to the rocks.  They both re-landed in silence, and, lifting the dead body of the old man, laid it in the stern sheets of the boat.  Once more they pushed off.

Too much delay had been already made.  The surf was breaking over the ledges in all directions, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they succeeded in getting clear out into deep water.  A breeze which had sprung up from the east, tended to raise the sea a little, but when they finally got away from the dangerous reef, the breeze befriended them.  Hoisting the foresail, they quickly left the Bell Rock far behind them, and, in the course of a couple of hours, sailed into the harbour of Arbroath.

CHAPTER II

THE LOVERS AND THE PRESS-GANG

About a mile to the eastward of the ancient town of Arbroath the shore abruptly changes its character, from a flat beach to a range of, perhaps, the wildest and most picturesque cliffs on the east coast of Scotland.  Inland the country is rather flat, but elevated several hundred feet above the level of the sea, towards which it slopes gently until it reaches the shore, where it terminates in abrupt, perpendicular precipices, varying from a hundred to two hundred feet in height.  In many places the cliffs overhang the water, and all along the coast they have been perforated and torn up by the waves, so as to present singularly bold and picturesque outlines, with caverns, inlets, and sequestered “coves” of every form and size.

To the top of these cliffs, in the afternoon of the day on which our tale opens, a young girl wended her way,—­slowly, as if she had no other object in view than a stroll, and sadly, as if her mind were more engaged with the thoughts within than with the magnificent prospect of land and sea without.

The girl was

“Fair, fair, with golden hair,”

and apparently about twenty years of age.  She sought out a quiet nook among the rocks at the top of the cliffs, near to a circular chasm, with the name of which (at that time) we are not acquainted, but which was destined ere long to acquire a new name and celebrity from an incident which shall be related in another part of this story.

Curiously enough, just about the same hour, a young man was seen to wend his way to the same cliffs, and, from no reason whatever with which we happened to be acquainted, sought out the same nook!  We say “he was seen”, advisedly, for the maid with the golden hair saw him.  Any ordinary observer would have said that she had scarcely raised her eyes from the ground since sitting down on a piece of flower-studded turf near the edge of the cliff, and that she certainly