corrected them, Sir."

"I am not caring to correct them, tonight. Words often help work, and
tired fishers, casting their heavy nets overboard, don't do that work
without a few words that help them. The words are not sinful, but they
might not say them if I was present."

"I know, Sir," answered Margot. "I hae a few o' such words always
handy. When I'm hurried and flurried, I canna help them gettin'
outside my lips--but there's nae ill in them--they just keep me going.
I wad gie up, wanting them."

"When soldiers, Margot, are sent on a forlorn hope of capturing a
strong fort, they go up to it cheering. When our men launch the big
life-boat, how do they do it, Christine?"

"Cheering, Sir!"

"To be sure, and when weary men cast the big, heavy nets, they find
words to help them. I know a lad who always gets his nets overboard
with shouting the name of the girl he loves. He has a name for her
that nobody but himself can know, or he just shouts 'Dearie,' and with
one great heave, the nets are overboard." And as he said these words
he glanced at Christine, and her heart throbbed, and her eyes beamed,
for she knew that the lad was Cluny.

"I was seeing our life-boat, as I came home," she said, "and I was
feeling as if the boat could feel, and if she hadna been sae big, I
would hae put my arms round about her. I hope that wasna any kind o'
idolatry, Sir?"

"No, no, Christine. It is a feeling of our humanity, that is wide as
the world. Whatever appears to struggle and suffer, appears to have
life. See how a boat bares her breast to the storm, and in spite of
winds and waves, wins her way home, not losing a life that has been
committed to her. And nothing on earth can look more broken-hearted
than a stranded boat, that has lost all her men. Once I spent a few
weeks among the Hovellers--that is, among the sailors who man the
life-boats stationed along Godwin Sands; and they used to call their
boats 'darlings' and 'beauties' and praise them for behaving well."

"Why did they call the men Hovellers?" asked Margot. "That word seems
to pull down a sailor. I don't like it. No, I don't."

"I have been told, Margot, that it is from the Danish word,
_overlever_, which means a deliverer."

"I kent it wasna a decent Scotch word," she answered, a little
triumphantly; "no, nor even from the English. Hoveller! You couldna
find an uglier word for a life-saver, and if folk canna be satisfied
wi' their ain natural tongue, and must h