one
of Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,
exterminating feud among the clans; a fish, the like of it unknown in all
our waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferry-boat, until
no man dared to make the crossing.

'He will be waiting for the right man,' said Rorie.

Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house of
Aros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fenced
with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in the
kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from the
window; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was swinging
from the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of linen and
silver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain old kitchen
that I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the stools, and the
closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and the
clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the three-
cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor;
with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the three
patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment--poor man's
patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, and
Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room,
like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that country-side, it was so
neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruous
additions, filled me with indignation and a kind of anger. In view of
the errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was baseless and unjust;
but it burned high, at the first moment, in my heart.

'Mary, girl,' said I, 'this is the place I had learned to call my home,
and I do not know it.'

'It is my home by nature, not by the learning,' she replied; 'the place I
was born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither like these
changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I would
have liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the sea,
and the Merry Men were dancing on them now.'

Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she shared
with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was even
graver than of custom.

'Ay,' said I, 'I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet when
my father died, I took his goods without remorse.'

'Your f