d, especially on a dark night, when it might be passed by
without discovering that any one was within.

Eban Cowan stood for some time watching the distant horizon, and as the
evening drew on he observed through the gloom two or three fishing-boats
running under close-reefed sails for the harbour's mouth.

"One of those is the `Sea-Gull'; I must not be seen in the
neighbourhood, or I may be suspected," he muttered, taking his way
towards the lurking-place from which he intended to rush out and commit
the crime he meditated.

Satan, ever ready to encourage those who yield to his instigations,
persuaded him that he could do the deed without being discovered, and
again and again he thought of the happiness he should enjoy with the
pretty Nelly as his wife, as if the soul guilty of the blood of a
fellow-creature could ever enjoy happiness!

There he stood listening amid the roar of the fast-rising gale for the
step of his victim. Suddenly he thought--

"But suppose she hates me, I shall have done a deed and gained nothing.
She may suspect that I did it. Why did I madly go and see her this
evening? I had not intended to enter the cottage. Had the dame not
gone away I should not have thought of it. Still, neither she nor any
one else can swear that I am guilty. No eye will see me. The path is
slippery: it will be supposed that he fell into the water." Then at
that moment a voice seemed to whisper to him the words Michael had
uttered long before, "God sees and hears and knows everything we do or
say or think." It seemed to be that of Michael, "The darkness is no
darkness to Him; the day and night to Him are both alike."

"Oh, He sees me now; He knows what I am thinking of."

The strong, daring smuggler trembled.

"I cannot do it; miserable I may be, but I should be more miserable
still if I had it ever present to my mind that I had killed in cold
blood another man who never wished to offend me."

He rushed from his concealment and threw the weapon he had hitherto
clutched in his hand far away into the water.

He was hurrying homewards, when he heard shouts coming up from the
harbour's mouth. He caught the sounds; they were cries, for hands to
man a boat.

Constitutionally brave, he was ready at that moment for any desperate
service. He wanted something to drive away the fearful thoughts which
agitated his mind; he dreaded being left to himself; he must be actively
engaged or he should go mad, if he was