illing go as far as many women would a half-crown. In the
summer they generally went down for a couple of months to Leigh, for her
to see her friends, for him to gather a fresh stock of new subjects.

He died suddenly from the effects of a chill, and when his affairs were
wound up Bessy found herself mistress of the five hundred pounds for
which he had insured his life, and the furniture of the cottage. It was
natural that she should return to Leigh. She had no friends elsewhere;
and she knew that money went much further there than in most other
places. Two hundred pounds were spent in purchasing the cottage in which
she now lived, and another two hundred in buying a bawley. At Leigh, as
at most other fishing places, the men work on shares--the boat takes a
share, and each of the men a share--the owner of a boat supplying nets
as well as the boat itself. The bawley, therefore, brought Mrs. Robson
in a sum equal to that earned by a fisherman, with deductions, however,
for damages to nets and spars.

In good seasons the receipts sufficed to keep her and her boy and girl
comfortably; in bad seasons they had to live very closely, and she was
obliged in specially bad times to dip a little into her reserve of a
hundred pounds. Upon the other hand, there was occasionally a windfall
when the smack rendered assistance to a vessel on the sands, or helped
to get up anchors or discharge cargoes.

At the time of her husband's death Jack was ten years old and Lily
eight. For two years the former attended the school on the hill, and
then went as a boy on board a bawley belonging to one of his uncles.

The lad's own predilections were entirely for the sea; his happiest
times had been spent at Leigh, and his father's work had kept the
longing alive at other times. He would have preferred going to sea in
one of the ships of which there was always such a line passing up and
down the river, but he was too young for that when he first began his
work on board the bawley; and as the time went on, and he became
accustomed to the life of a fisherman, his longings for a wider
experience gradually faded away, for it is seldom indeed that a Leigh
boy goes to sea--the Leigh men being as a race devoted to their homes,
and regarding with grave disapproval any who strike out from the regular
groove.

"We did well this morning, mother," Jack said as he came downstairs in a
clean guernsey and pilot trousers. "We had a fine haul off the lower
Blyth,