; and the gossips nodded
approvingly at a sentiment which fitted in with their own views of life.

'Nothin' o' the sort!' struck in a dissentient voice, which belonged to
Goody Dempster herself. 'There's none too good to live, seein' as life
is a great gift that can only come from the Lord Himself. He gives,
and He takes away, that's how we've got to look at things. And, please
God, He will see fit to raise up Miss Theedory among us again, hale and
sound. She's one as could be ill spared.'

'Amen!' assented more than one voice among the listeners, in ready
response.

But there was one heart that felt heavier than all others--too heavy to
hold a ray of hope--and that belonged to Alick Carnegy. When he
returned home from his stolen holiday, and found what had happened
during his absence, the remorse of the boy was uncontrollable. He
could not but feel it to be true, what others did not scruple to tell
him bluntly, for plain-speaking was a distinguishing feature of the
fishing village, that had he and Ned Dempster been at home, they could
have reached his sisters in far less time than Geoff, younger and
weaker of muscle, and Binks, long past his heyday of strength and
stiffened with rheumatism, had done.

With cold shivers of dread, he heard how Theo, though delivered from
one perilous strait, lay in jeopardy of her life in the new peril of
fever.

She would die, he was convinced, and voices seemed to be incessantly
crying in his ears: 'It will be your fault, all your fault! You fought
to have your own way, in spite of her pleadings, and now she will die
because you were not here to help her in such sore peril. She was
deserted, so she will die, our Theo!'

Alick, a boy of strong feelings, became maddened by despair, and
exaggerated the calamity. As time went on--and brain fever rarely
hurries itself--Theo grew no better, but rather weaker, and Alick
secretly called himself her murderer. He was distraught.

'Oh, Ned, if we had been at home, you and I, we could have reached them
in half the time Geoff and old Binks took! We could have rescued them
before "The Theodora" began to settle down!' he blurted out when he
found Ned sobbing helplessly in a corner of the tea-house, The latter,
though not possessed of Alick's torturing powers of imagination, was
overcome with remorse for his own share in the transaction.

Oh, Muster Alick, it ain't "we" it's me, only me, as is to blame!' he
hoarsely said, in a voi