en together, Beth slipped her dirty little
hand into his, and looked up at him: "Papa," she said solemnly, "when
you want to be with somebody always, more than with anybody else; and
want to look at him, and want to talk to him, and you find you can
tell him lots of things you couldn't tell anybody else if you tried,
you know; what does it mean?"

"It means you love him very much."

"Then I love you, papa, very much," she said, nestling her head
against his arm. "And it does make me feel so nice inside. But it
makes me miserable too," she added, sighing.

"How so?"

"When you have a headache, you know. I used only to be afraid you'd be
angry if I made a noise. But now I'm always thinking how much it hurts
you. I wake up often and often at night, and you are in my mind, and I
try and see you say, 'It's better,' or 'It's quite well.'"

"And what then, Beth?" her father asked, in a queer voice.

"Then I don't cry any more, you know."

She looked up at her father as she spoke, and saw that his eyes were
full of tears.

CHAPTER X

That was almost the last of those happy autumn days. Winter fell upon
the country suddenly with nipping cold. The mountains, always sombre,
lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that
seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in
torment, and the voice of its rage and pain filled Castletownrock
without ceasing. Torrents of rain tore up the roads, and rendered them
almost impassable. There was stolid endurance and suffering written on
every face out of doors, while within the people cowered over their
peat fires, a prey to hunger, cold, and depression. Draughts made
merry through the large rooms and passages in Captain Caldwell's
house; the wind howled in the chimneys, rattled at the windows, and
whistled at the keyholes, especially at night, when Beth would hide
her head under the bed-clothes to keep out the racket, or, in another
mood, lie and listen to it, and imagine herself out in the storm, till
her nerves were strung to a state of ecstatic tension, and her mind
fairly revelled in the sense of danger. When her father was at home in
the evening, she would sit still beside the fire in the sitting-room,
listening in breathless awe, and excitement wholly pleasurable, to the
gale raging without; but if Captain Caldwell had not returned, as
frequently happened now that the days were short, and the roads so
bad, well knowing the risks he ran,