ch other more, I think, if we had been brother and
sister--but it seems to me that, sometimes, it must be horrid when
a boy is told by his parents that he is to be betrothed to a girl
he has never seen. You see it isn't as if it were for a short time,
but for all one's life. It must be awful!"

"Awful!" Mary agreed, heartily; "but of course, it would have to be
done."

"Of course," John said--the possibility of a lad refusing to obey
his parents' commands not even occurring to him. "Still it doesn't
seem to me quite right that one should have no choice, in so
important a matter. Of course, when one's got a father and mother
like mine--who would be sure to think only of making me happy, and
not of the amount of dowry, or anything of that sort--it would be
all right; but with some parents, it would be dreadful."

For some time, not a word was spoken; both of them meditating over
the unpleasantness of being forced to marry someone they disliked.
Then, finding the subject too difficult for them, they began to
talk about other things; stopping, sometimes, to see the fishermen
haul up their nets, for there were a number of boats out on the
lake. They rowed down as far as Tiberias and, there, John ceased
rowing; and they sat chatting over the wealth and beauty of that
city, which John had often visited with his father, but which Mary
had never entered.

Then John turned the head of the boat up the lake and again began
to row but, scarcely had he dipped his oar into the water, when he
exclaimed:

"Look at that black cloud rising, at the other end of the lake! Why
did you not tell me, Mary?"

"How stupid of me," she exclaimed, "not to have kept my eyes open!"

He bent to his oars, and made the boat move through the water at a
very different rate to that at which she had before traveled.

"Most of the boats have gone," Mary said, presently, "and the rest
are all rowing to the shore; and the clouds are coming up very
fast," she added, looking round.

"We are going to have a storm," John said. "It will be upon us long
before we get back. I shall make for the shore, Mary. We must leave
the boat there, and take shelter for a while, and then walk home.
It will not be more than four miles to walk."

But though he spoke cheerfully, John knew enough of the sudden
storms that burst upon the Sea of Galilee to be aware that, long
before he could cross the mile and a half of water, which separated
them from the eastern shore, t