e scene of his
crime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud, so that the coast re-echoed;
and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black to stop. But all was
vain, for it was written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chase
still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave, and skimmed
close past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared the
sand; and still my kinsman did not pause, but dashed straight into the
surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly
behind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing was now beyond the
hands of men, and these were the decrees of God that came to pass before
our eyes. There was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach they
were beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim; the black rose
once for a moment with a throttling cry; but the current had them, racing
seaward; and if ever they came up again, which God alone can tell, it
would be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost, where the
seabirds hover fishing.

WILL O' THE MILL.

CHAPTER I. THE PLAIN AND THE STARS.

The Mill here Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling
valley between pinewoods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill,
soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber,
and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey village lay
like a seam or a ray of vapour on a wooded hillside; and when the wind
was favourable, the sound of the church bells would drop down, thin and
silvery, to Will. Below, the valley grew ever steeper and steeper, and
at the same time widened out on either hand; and from an eminence beside
the mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond it over
a wide plain, where the river turned and shone, and moved on from city to
city on its voyage towards the sea. It chanced that over this valley
there lay a pass into a neighbouring kingdom; so that, quiet and rural as
it was, the road that ran along beside the river was a high thoroughfare
between two splendid and powerful societies. All through the summer,
travelling-carriages came crawling up, or went plunging briskly downwards
past the mill; and as it happened that the other side was very much
easier of ascent, the path was not much frequented, except by people
going in one direction; and of all the carriages that Will saw go by,
five-sixths were plunging briskly downwards and only one-sixth crawling