he maid Barbara's disappearance,
and, after stating that the mystery had now been finally cleared up, had
gone on to relate the following particulars:--A few days previously
there had lain at the point of death in the infirmary at Berwick an aged
fisherman, who had long been known in the seaport town for his solitary
habits and morose and violent ways. As death drew near, it became
evident that his mind was sorely troubled, and to one of the nurses or
doctors who had sought to comfort him he had been led to make the
acknowledgment that a guilty secret weighed upon his soul, making him
fearful to confront his Maker. He then told how, as a young man, he had
passionately loved a pretty servant-girl employed at Clyffe House.
Misled by those smiles and that graciousness of manner which in the
guileless amiability of her nature the girl lavished upon all alike, he
had for a moment imagined himself her favoured suitor. How bitter, then,
was the blow, and how rude the awakening when he learned that a younger
brother of his own, a mere boy, was preferred before himself! Nor was it
only unrequited love that grieved him. No, he believed, or managed to
persuade himself, that an unfair advantage had been taken of him, by
which he had been made the lovers' dupe. A silent man, he took no one
into his confidence, but abode his time until the eve of the
wedding-day. On that day he had accidentally intercepted a note from the
girl Barbara, addressed to his brother, in which she had agreed to meet
her bridegroom of the morrow in the cove below Clyffe House one hour
before midnight, to spend a final hour together before the momentous
crisis in their lives. Instantly it had occurred to the elder brother to
use the knowledge gained from the note in order to make one last
desperate appeal on his own account to the sweet girl he loved so
madly. Accordingly he kept back the missive, and, to make assurance
doubly sure, mixed a soporific drug with his brother's drink when the
latter came in from fishing. Then, whilst the youngster slumbered
heavily, he himself embarked in a cockle-boat and, unobserved, rowed
quietly round the headland, into Clyffe cove, where he ran his boat into
a safe creek he knew of, and jumped ashore. Poor Barbara had come down
to the water's edge to meet the boat, and great was her consternation on
finding herself confronted by the wrong brother.

Then an impassioned scene was enacted, in which the seaman used every
means o