trusted to a handsome shape and a sylph-like air for young Barbara's
influence over the heart of man, but had bestowed a pair of large bright
blue eyes, swimming in liquid light, so full of love and gentleness and
joy, that all the sailors from Annanwater to far Saint Bees acknowledged
their power, and sang songs about the bonnie lass of Mark Macmoran. She
stood holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel in her hand, and seemed
not dissatisfied with the glances I bestowed on her from time to time,
and which I held more than requited by a single glance of those eyes
which retained so many capricious hearts in subjection.

The tide, though rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our
feet. The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock pines,
and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and swelling, on which sloops
and shallops came dancing, and displaying at every turn their extent of
white sail against the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the
mariner, who, seated motionless on his grey stone, kept his eye fixed on
the increasing waters with a look of seriousness and sorrow, in which I
saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere fisherman. Though he
looked on the coming tide, his eyes seemed to dwell particularly on the
black and decayed hulls of two vessels, which, half immersed in the
quicksand, still addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and
desolation. The tide wheeled and foamed around them, and, creeping inch
by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over the top, and a
long and hollow eddy showed the resistance which the liquid element
received.

The moment they were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his
hands together, and said: "Blessed be the tide that will break over and
bury ye for ever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers,
has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil