I
will keep silence no longer!"
"I will--I am resolved! Oh! who will rid us of this monster?"
Outside, the gale rose higher--higher still. They heard it howling,
grinding branches together; they heard the roaring and the rushing of
the waters as the rising tide was driven over the shallow sands, like a
mountain reservoir at loose among the valleys below.
In the midst of the tempest there came a sudden lull. Wind and water
alike seemed hushed. And out of the lull, as if in answer to the
woman's question, there came a loud cry--the shriek of a man in deadly
peril.
The two women caught each other by the hand and rushed to the window.
They threw it open; the tempest began again; a fresh gust drove them
back; the waters roared: the wind howled; they heard the voice no more.
They closed the window and put up the shutters.
It was long past midnight when they dared to go to bed. One of them lay
awake the whole night long. In the roaring tempest she had seen an omen
of the wrath of Heaven about to fall once more upon her mistress.
She was wrong. The wrath of Heaven fell upon one far more guilty.
In the morning, with the ebbing tide, a dead body was found lashed to
the posts of one of the standing nets in the Solway.
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