'Charlie,' she said, 'what's right for me, neednae be right for
you. There's sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger;
take your things upon your back and go your ways to better places
and to better folk, and if you were ever minded to come back,
though it were twenty years syne, you would find me aye waiting.'

'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'I asked you to be my wife, and you said as
good as yes. That's done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I
shall answer to my God.'

As I said the words, the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then
seemed to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was
the first squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we
started and looked about us, we found that a gloom, like the
approach of evening, had settled round the house.

'God pity all poor folks at sea!' she said. 'We'll see no more of
my father till the morrow's morning.'

And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the
rising gusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle. All
last winter he had been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the
Roost ran high, or, as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were
dancing, he would lie out for hours together on the Head, if it
were at night, or on the top of Aros by day, watching the tumult of
the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a sail. After February the
tenth, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast ashore at Sandag, he
had been at first unnaturally gay, and his excitement had never
fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from dark to darker. He
neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two would speak