"THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA"

By Gilbert Parker




I

"YORK FACTORY, HUDSON'S BAY,
"23rd September, 1747.

"MY DEAR COUSIN FANNY,--It was a year last April Fool's Day, I left you
on the sands there at Mablethorpe, no more than a stone's throw from the
Book-in-Hand Inn, swearing that you should never see me or hear from me
again. You remember how we saw the coast-guards flash their lights here
and there, as they searched the sands for me? how one came bundling down
the bank, calling, 'Who goes there?' You remember that when I said, 'A
friend,' he stumbled, and his light fell to the sands and went out, and
in the darkness you and I stole away: you to your home, with a
whispering, 'God-bless-you, Cousin Dick,' over your shoulder, and I with
a bit of a laugh that, maybe, cut to the heart, and that split in a sob
in my own throat--though you didn't hear that.

"'Twas a bad night's work that, Cousin Fanny, and maybe I wish it undone,
and maybe I don't; but a devil gets into the heart of a man when he has
to fly from the lass he loves, while the friends of his youth go hunting
him with muskets, and he has to steal out of the backdoor of his own
country and shelter himself, like a cold sparrow, up in the eaves of the
world.