A CHAPTER ON ANNUALS. 



pains ; it has long since mouldered from the face of the earth. A few stones, 

 half-buried among sand, are all that remain to indicate where the humble 

 dwelling of human hearts once sanctified the bosom of solitude ; yet were 

 its walls the mute witnesses of love as deep of agony as intense as ever 

 lived and burned within the soul beneath the roof of palaces. Nature is no 

 respecter of places. The passions, which obey her call, belong alike to all 

 her children ; the decay which follows her footsteps is the appointed lot of 

 all things wherein these children have a part here below. 



" At the period of which I spoke, the cottage stood at the very base of a 

 range of lofty and precipitous cliffs, which, retiring in a semicircle from the 

 shore at that particular spot, left a recess at their feet, whose only opening 

 was to the sea. This little nook, not more than half an acre in extent, was 

 during high water entirely separated from communication with the world 

 beyond it, as the sea flowed up to the base of the rocky walls which, girdling 

 it on either side, extended themselves along the coast. The only mode by 

 which it was as such times possible to obtain egress from it, was one acces- 

 sible only to the foot of a daring and fearless craigsman, that of scrambling 

 on hands and knees across the face of rocks, which, beetling over a sea so 

 high and tempestuous, looked as though they defied the pigmy efforts of man 

 to surmount their mighty rampart. Yet this feat, frightful as it would have 

 appeared to one unaccustomed to it, had more than once been accomplished 

 by the bold and sure-footed inhabitants of the coast, by means of strong 

 wooden poles, ropes to aid their descent, and a judicious method of availing 

 themselves of every projecting bush, or tuft of heather, to assist their toilsome 

 progress. At ebb-tide, a narrow strip of sand, turning the projecting head- 

 lands, afforded a path whereby to gain the wider extent of shore beyond them, 

 some three-quarters of a mile along which was situated a row of fishermen's 

 cottages, lying on the right hand, after leaving the solitary cabin above men- 

 tioned ; which stood aloof and secluded from all, yet wearing a character 

 very superior to that of the others. Its appearance, in fact, was nearer that 

 of the neat and carefully-kept abodes of the peasantry on a Lowland gentle- 

 man's estate, than the slovenly hut of a northern fisherman. Some pains 

 had been taken to form a little garden beside it, at the sheltering foot of the 

 cliff ; and these pains screened as it was from all high winds, even from 

 those blowing off the sea, at least in ordinary weather had been attended 

 with considerable success. . Every thing around the door was kept in extreme 

 order ; and the narrow strip of grass on which the sand had not encroached, 

 served as a little bleaching-green to the fisherman's young and lovely Lowland 

 wife, on which she was often to be seen spreading out her clothes, with her 

 baby laid upon the grass beside her, while awaiting the return of her husband 

 from his fishing ; at which time it was her usual custom to repair to the 

 beach, in order to assist him in carrying up his nets to the house. 



" Allan Mac Tavish, her husband, was a tall and handsome young High- 

 lander, who had, about two years previous to the time of which I write, 

 arrived in that part of the country to settle, with his newly-married wife. 

 He was a native of the coast, and had been bred a fisherman from childhood ; 

 but some time before his marriage he had left the country, to accompany his 

 foster-brother, a young Highland gentleman, to the bridge of Allan, a watering- 

 place in Stirlingshire, whither he had been ordered for his health. The young 

 laird's affection for his foster-brother was such that he could not endure to 

 be separated from him, and Allan left his fishing to go with him. The laird 

 returned no more ; he died in the Lowlands : but Allan Mac Tavish came 

 back, enriched by a small legacy from him, and accompanied by one of the 

 prettiest girls in all Stirlingshire as his wife. From that time they had con- 

 tinued to reside in the Cove of Craignavarroch, as the spot where their cottage 

 stood was named, to all appearance the happiest o&couples. They were 

 doatingly attached to each other ; and when, on returning from his fishing, 

 Allan Mac Tavish sat down beside his clean and cheerful hearth, with his 



