TO-MORROW
Page: 9

ing, without the slightest sign of haste. Mean-
while the howls and roars of her name would go on,
making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall
on the other side of the road turn their heads to-
wards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the
front door, and a moment afterwards there would
fall a profound silence. Presently she would re-
appear, leading by the hand a man, gross and un-
wieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered,
surly face.

He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness
had overtaken years before in the full flush of busi-
ness. He behaved to his daughter as if she had
been responsible for its incurable character. He
had been heard to bellow at the top of his voice,
as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he had
made enough money to have ham and eggs for his
breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it,
in a fiendish tone as though he were cursing.

Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably im-
pressed by his tenant, that once he told Miss Bes-
sie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear."

She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of
socks for her father, who expected her to keep up
the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as
she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her
eyes on her needles.

"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide
for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly.
"Girls, of course, don't require so much--h'm--
h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."

"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.

Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of
turned-up earth, chuckled. With his maritime rig,
his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Nep-
tune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had ex-
changed the trident for the spade.

"And he must look upon you as already pro-
vided for, in a manner. That's the best of it with
the girls. The husbands . . ." He winked. Miss
Bessie, absorbed in her knitting, coloured faintly.

"Bessie! my hat!" old Carvil bellowed out sud-
denly. He had been sitting under the tree mute
and motionless, like an idol of some remarkably
monstrous superstition. He never opened his