The woman started up and listened:  there was silence for a minute:  then the limping step was heard again:  again it ceased.  The woman went to the door and looked out.  Over the sandy, wind-swept common to the left the darkness brooded, the outlines of a broken bit of sea-wall, and of some giant boulders, said to be remains of a dolmen, emerging dimly therefrom like threatening phantoms; to the right moaned the long, grey sea, and in front was the waste of salt marshes and rocks, with the windlass of a ship once wrecked in the bay, projecting its huge outline among the uncertain shadows.  Not a living thing was visible.  She stood for several minutes peering out into the darkness and listening; no sound was to be heard but the lapping of the waves, and the sigh of the wind through the bent-grass on the common.

Suddenly Josef, the dog, started up in his corner, and barked.  He was a large mastiff, with a dangerous temper, who was chained up at night in the rough lean-to that was built against the side of the cabin.  He barked again furiously, dragging at his chain with all his might, and quivering in every nerve of his body.  The woman lighted a torch at the dying embers on the hearth, and unfastening the dog, waited to see what would happen.  He dashed forward furiously a few steps, then suddenly stopped, sniffed the air, made one or two uncertain darts hither and thither, and stood still, evidently puzzled.  She called to him to encourage him, but he dropped his tail and returned to his shed, where he curled himself up in a comfortable corner, like a dog that was not going to be troubled by womanish fancies.  The woman went round the cabin, and the pig-stye, and the patch of meagre gooseberry-bushes, throwing the uncertain torch-light on every dark hole or corner; but no one was to be seen.  She was none the less convinced that someone had approached the cottage, for the dog was not likely to have been deceived as well as herself; so she kept the light burning, called Josef to lie down at the foot of the bed, barred the door, and went to sleep.

The sun was high the next morning when the fisherman returned.  He stood in the stream of light in the open doorway, in his blue, knitted jersey and jack-boots; and with the beaming smile which overspread his whole countenance, and his big, powerful limbs, he might well have been taken for an impersonation of the sun shining in his strength.

It was as great a pleasure to him to greet his Louise now, as it had been in the days of their early courtship; for he had courted her twice, his sunny boyhood’s lovemaking having been overclouded by the advent of a stranger from the mainland, who, with his smooth tongue and new-fangled ways, had gained such an influence over Louise during a four months’ absence of Peter’s on a fishing cruise, that she forgot her first love, and wedded this new settler; who took her to the town a few miles inland, where he carried on a retail fishmonger’s business, knowing but