Tell Mary the money is under the bed at the right-hand side next the wall, and ask my grandfather to take little Adam for me and keep him.”  A thought came into Hob’s Tommy’s mind.  He cried out, “Don’t let yourself go down.  Edge yourself round here to the stern, and you shall have this rope.”  The maimed man came slowly round, and took the rope as Tommy let go.  For a single minute the bruised giant rested his hands on the lunging stern of the little vessel.  He did not look up, and his face had no devotional aspect, but the two men who were saved remembered his words to the end of their lives.  He said, “O Lord Jesus, I am even with you now.  I am going to die.”  The stern of the boat flew up into the air as a short sea hit her, and Hob’s Tommy lost his grip.  He lay back quietly on the water, and the men said that he even smiled.  Presently the foam covered him over.

THE FAILURE.

To the southward of the Chibburn Stream a flat space, covered with rushes and grey grass, stretches away towards the Border.  On the seaward side it is walled in by low hills, whilst on the landward side a sudden rise of the ground forms another boundary which makes the waste resemble the bed of an ancient river.  It was a favourite place with me in the summer time, because the brackens grow here and there, and to one who wants perfect seclusion nothing can be more delightful than to creep under the green shade and listen, hour after hour, to the wind flying over.  I had wanted to spend the whole morning in this lazy way, so I put my Keats in my pocket and walked along the sand until the time came for me to climb the seaward barrier.  I often noticed a deserted cottage which stood at the northerly end of the great waste, and which was sometimes used in winter by the rabbit-catchers who had to remain by their traps all night.  Twice or thrice I had peeped through the open door and seen the blackened hearthstone, but I had never gone inside.  The remains of a turf wall surrounded the cottage, but the low garden that this wall enclosed was overrun with ragwort and nettles and hemlock.  My terrier was fond of investigating the garden, because among the thick undergrowth he invariably found either rabbits or water-rats, or a stoat.  On this bright morning I was much surprised to find the whole of the enclosure cleared.  Outside of the boundary was a great heap of ashes, from which clouds of dust drifted hither and thither.  A light smoke arose from the chimney, and as my dog and I approached, a heavy bark came from a mastiff that was chained inside the low wicket.  A sudden sense of companionship almost frightened me.  It seemed as though the brownie had come from his clump of rushes to set things in order.  A chair stood in the centre of a patch of grass that crowned a little hillock near the cottage, and while I waited and wondered a bowed figure stole forth and walked slowly towards the chair.  The man did not