Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly. «It would be unpleasant," he said, « to be joined by that young fellow, whom Mr Oldbuck had taken the freedom to introduce them to."> And his oldfashioned politeness had none of the ease of the present day, which permits you, if you have a mind, to cut the person you have associated with for a week, the instant you feel, or suppose yourself, in a situation which makes it disagreeable to own him. Sir Arthur only stipulated, that a little ragged boy, for the guerdon of one penny sterling, should run to meet his coachman, and turn his equipage back to Knockwinnock.

When this was arranged, and the emissary dismissed, the knight and his daughter left the highroad, and, following a wandering path among sandy hillocks, partly grown over with furze and the long grass called bent, soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out as they had computed, but this gave them no alarm: there were seldom ten days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a dry passage. But, nevertheless, at periods of spring-tide, or even when the ordinary flood was accelerated by high winds, this road was altogether covered by the sea; and tradition had recorded several fatal accidents which had happened upon such occasions. Still, such dangers were considered as remote and improbable; and rather served, with other legends, to amuse the hamlet fire-side, than to prevent any one from

going between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns by the sands.

As Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour paced along, enjoying the pleasant footing afforded by the cool moist hard sand, Miss Wardour could not help observing, that the last tide had risen considerably above the usual water-mark. Sir Arthur made the same observation, but without its occurring to either of them to be alarmed at the circumstance. The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds, through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting. Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.

With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps upon some more agitating topic, Miss Wardour advanced in silence

VOL. I.

5

by her father's side, whose recently offended dignity did not stoop to open any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they passed one projecting point or head-land of rock after another, and now found themselves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices by which that iron-bound coast is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs of rock, extending under water, and only evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock bay dreaded by pilots and ship-masters. The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered seafowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging toward their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening, The wind began next to arise, but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt at land. The mass of waters, now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper

furrows, forming waves that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling distant thunder.

Appalled by this sudden change of weather, Miss Wardour drew close to her father, and held his arm fast. <«< I wish,» at length she said, but almost in a whisper, as if ashamed to express her increasing apprehensions, « I wish we had kept the road we intended, or waited at Monkbarns for the carriage.»

Sir Arthur looked round, but did not see, or would not acknowledge, any signs of an immediate storm. They would reach, he said, Knockwinnock long before the tempest began. But the speed with which he walked, and with which Isabella could hardly keep pace, indicated a feeling that some exertion was necessary to accomplish his consolatory prediction.

They were now near the centre of a deep but narrow bay, or recess, formed by two projecting capes of high and inaccessible rock, which shot out into the sea like the horns of a crescent; and neither durst communicate the apprehension which each began to entertain, that, from the unusually rapid advance of the tide, they might be deprived of the power of proceeding by doubling the promontory which lay before them, or of retreating by the road which brought them thither.

As they thus pressed forward, longing doubtless to exchange the easy curving line, which the sinuosities of the bay compelled them to adopt,

for a straiter and more expeditious path, though less conformable to the line of beauty, Sir Arthurobserved a human figure on the beach advancing to meet them. «Thank God," he exclaimed,

we shall get round Halket-head! that fellow must have passed it; thus giving vent to the feeling of hope, though he had suppressed that of apprehension.

« Thank God indeed!» echoed his daughter half audibly, half internally, as expressing the gratitude which she really felt.

The figure which advanced to meet them made many signs, which the haze of the atmosphere, now disturbed by wind and by a drizzling rain, prevented them from seeing or comprehending distinctly. Some time before they met, Sir Arthur could recognize the old blue-gowned beggar, Edie Ochiltree. It is said that even the brute creation lay aside their animosities and antipathies when pressed by an instant and common danger. The beach under Halket-head, rapidly diminishing in extent by the encroachments of a spring-tide and a north-west wind, was in like manner a neutral field, where even a justice of peace and a strolling mendicant might meet upon terms of mutual forbearance.

« Turn back! turn back!» exclaimed the vagrant; « why did ye not turn when I waved to you?>>

<< We thought,» replied Sir Arthur in great agitation, «< we thought we could get round Halkethead. >>