ants; doing her will blindly, without pity or remorse.

In a little while John was tossing among the seaweed--into a bed of
which his body had descended--and what further dreams (if any) he
dreamed there beneath the waters, must remain untold till the Judgment
Day.

FOOTNOTES:

[L] Little bit.

[M] A cave.

THE MAN WHO MET HATE.

IT was drawing on towards midnight, and the world seemed very lonely.

There was a huge, round harvest moon in the sky, and the hills were
bathed in a kind of spectral splendour--a faint and filmy shimmer of
silver that left the outlines of objects blurred and elusive, though the
scene as a whole emerged clearly for the eye. The wind was sighing
drowsily across the moors, while high on the rugged cairns on the
hill-tops it was wuthering mournfully beneath the wan grey sky.

And 'Lijah, staring sleeplessly through his blindless bedroom-window,
felt a growing unrest in the very marrow of his bones.

He could see down below, in the little lonesome cove, the cottage where
Dorcas had now made her nest with that "darned gayte long-legged 'Miah"
for her husband, and in the sudden heat and bitterness of his wrath his
heart became like a live coal within him. "I'll have my revenge on un,
ef I haang for it!" growled he.

And then he remembered that up on yonder moors--whose ferns and granite
boulders he could see plainly in the moonlight--there was a "gashly owld
fogou,"[N] where, if a man went at midnight prepared to boldly summon
Hate and to "turn a stone"[O] in her honour, his hatred would be
accomplished for him "as sure as death."

"An' I'll go there, ef I die for it!" said he grimly to himself.

The village was asleep, and all its cottages were smokeless. There was
no one stirring anywhere in the cove. But far out in the moonlit bay he
could see the fishing-boats dotting the vast grey plain, and he knew
that in one of them 'Miah Laity was fishing, and was no doubt thinking
of Dorcas as he fished.

"I'll spoil 'es thinkin' for un 'fore long," said 'Lijah, "ayven ef I
have to sill me saul to do the job!"

And with that he slipped on his coat and boots--for he had been
standing at the window half undressed--and clapping on his cap as he
passed through the kitchen, strode heavily and gloomily out of the
house.

On the moor he had only the breeze for company, and its long, vague
wail, as it rustled across the ferns, merely deepened the moody
irritation in his mind. He felt as