ith an Island lass, just as likely as not a pair of
little brown fists would rattle about his amazed ears; the girls there
know how to defend their dignity.

But one spring there was a sensation little short of a scandal when it
became known that Mary Cassidy, the handsomest girl of the Island, was
keeping company with a Spanish sailor who had come into harbour on a
Glasgow barque. The stage of keeping company was not long. So violent
was the passion that flamed up between the two that there was no
gainsaying it. Mary was the one girl in a family of five tall
fishermen. Father and mother were dead--the father drowned in a wild
night while trying to make the treacherous mouth of the inadequate
harbour, the mother dead of her grief. Mary had known fathering and
mothering both from the brothers. She was the youngest of them all,
and their pride and glory.

She was tall and generously proportioned, with ropes of red gold hair
round her small head, and her face had the colour of the sea-shell. In
her large brown eyes, sleepily veiled by long lashes, smouldered a
hidden fire: her step was proud and fearless, and she was as strong as
a beautiful lithe young animal. The brothers brought her gay prints
and woollens and rows of beads when they came home with the fishing
fleet, and with these she adorned her beauty--a beauty so brilliant
that it glittered of itself.

There was no use opposing her once she had fallen in love with Jacopo.
He was a handsome, dark fellow, with insinuating manners, and a voice
like a blackbird. When the two were together there was no one else in
the world for them. He had flamed up with the fierceness of his
southern nature: she with the heat of a heart slow to love, and once
fired slow to go out.

When Jacopo had settled things with Father Tiernay and had gone on his
last trip before he should come to make Mary his wife, the girl walked
the Island like one transfigured. The light burned steadily in her
deep eyes, her cheeks flamed scarlet, her lips were red as coral. She
went about her household duties with her head in the air and her eyes
far away. The brothers when they came home of an evening sat silent
in a ring, for the grief was on them: but if the girl knew she did not
seem to know. Of the five brothers not one had thought of marrying.
What any one might do as soon as the golden thread that held them
together was snapped no one could say; but they were grizzled or
grizzling men, and had lo