one going at all. She is in a dreadful misfortune at this
hour; a case of kerosene having burst in the kitchen. A
little while ago it was the carpenter's horse that trod in a
nest of fourteen eggs, and made an omelette of our hopes.
The farmer's lot is not a happy one. And it looks like some
real uncompromising bad weather too. I wish Fanny's ear were
well. Think of parties in Monuments! think of me in
Skerryvore, and now of this. It don't look like a part of
the same universe to me. Work is quite laid aside; I have
worked myself right out.


CHRISTMAS EVE.


Yesterday, who could write? My wife near crazy with ear-
ache; the rain descending in white crystal rods and playing
hell's tattoo, like a TUTTI of battering rams, on our sheet-
iron roof; the wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb
mutter, or striking us full, so that all the huge trees in
the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and
brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed
like things stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the
jaws of the bay vanished in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I
locked up my papers in the iron box, in case it was a
hurricane, and the house might go. We went to bed with
mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard, where
you have only drowning ahead - whereas here you have a smash
of beams, a shower of sheet-iron, and a blind race in the
dark and through a whirlwind for the shelter of an unfinished