orable night of wind and storm which had wrecked the good ship
_Penelope_ on her voyage home from Australia. She had reached Milford
safely a week before, after a prosperous voyage, and having landed some
of her passengers, was making her further way towards Liverpool, her
final destination. It was late autumn, and suddenly a storm arose
which drove her out of her course, until on the Cardiganshire coast she
had become a total wreck. In the darkness and storm, where the foaming
waves leapt up to the black sky, the wild wind had battered her, and
the cruel waves had torn her asunder, and engulphed her in their
relentless depths; and when all was over, a few bubbles on the face of
the water, a few planks tossed about by the waves, were all the signs
left of the _Penelope_. The cottagers on the rugged coast never forgot
that stormy night, when the roofs were uplifted from the houses, when
gates were wrenched from their hinges, when the shrieking wind had torn
the frightened sheep from their fold, and carried them over hedges and
hillocks. There had never been such a storm in the memory of the
oldest inhabitant, and when in the foam and the spray, Stiven "Storrom"
had raked out from the debris washed on to the shore a hencoop, on
which was bound a tiny baby, sodden and cold, but still alive, every
one of the small crowd gathered on the beach below Garthowen slopes,
considered he had added a fresh claim to his name--a name which he had
gained by his frequent raids upon the fierce storms, and the harvest
which he had gathered from their fury. That baby had found open arms
and tender hearts ready to succour it, and when Sara "'spridion" had
stretched imploring hands towards it, reminding the onlookers of her
recent bereavement, it was handed over to her fostering care. "Give it
to me," she said, "my heart is empty; it will not fill up the void, but
it will help me to bear it. There are other reasons," she added, "good
reasons." She had carried it home triumphantly, and little Morva had
never after missed a mother's love and tenderness. The seventeen years
that followed had glided happily over her head; in fact she was so
perfect an embodiment of health and happiness, that she sometimes
excited the envy of the somewhat sombre dwellers on those lonely
hillsides; and when in the golden sunset, she suddenly rose from the
gorse bloom to greet Will's sight, she had never appeared brighter or
more brimful of joy.

"Well, in