CHAPTER I.

ON THE SANDS.

"THAT will do, Stephen, thank you. You may let us out here. A charming scene, is it not, Richard ?”

The speaker was a young lady of nineteen; looking, however, not older, but far wiser than her years. A thoughtful face by nature, and besides, one upon which some sorrow and much care for others had set their marks. The hazel eyes, large and tender, were confident, without being bold. The forehead, from which the heavy folds of bright brown hair were not drawn back, but overflowed it from under her summer hat at their own wild will, was broad and low. The form tall and slender, but shapely; the voice singularly clear and sweet, and whose tones were such as seemed to give assurance of the truth they utter. She was certainly speaking truth now when she said, "A charming scene.

The persons she addressed were seated with her in a cart, in the middle of one of those bays upon our north-western coast, from which the sea retires, with every tide, for many miles, and leaves it a level waste of sand, save for two riverchannels, besides several smaller streams, fordable in places, but always running swiftly. Some islands, oases in this desert, dotted here and there at no great distance, yet farther than they seemed, showed grandly with their walls of rock and crowns of foliage. The shores of the bay itself, miles away at the nearest point, were of a beauty singularly varied, considering their extent. To southward a range of round, green hills sloped down to a white fringe of coast, on which a tolerably large town could be distinctly viewed, with, behind it, a castle on a hill, which marked the site of a much larger town. Upon the spurs of these hills were almost everywhere to be seen a cluster of grey dwellings, and from the valleys thin blue smoke; the district, although somewhat un-come-at-able, was so fair that many came to dwell there, especially in the summer; but yet it was not densely peopled. Eastward, these signs of habitation were more rare, and the hills began to rise in grandeur, till, in the north-east, they culminated to mountains, a knot of which towered in the extreme distance at the head of the bay. Small coves and inlets indented the northern

shore, which was, moreover, thickly wooded; a white village or two, from one of which the cart had just arrived, glimmered through the trees; and to the west a far-stretching promontory, with one beetling cliff, concluded the fair scene-that is, so far as the land reached. Upon the south was the sea, separated from them by no bar or bound of any sort, and roaring in the distance, as though for prey. It was this which formed the most striking feature in the picture, and indeed, to a stranger to the position—as was one of the three individuals we are concerned with-it was almost terrible.

"Well, Agnes," observed Richard Crawford to his cousin, to whom he looked junior by at least twelve months, but was really her senior by that much; "this is truly grand. I could never have imagined what a spectacle 'Over Sands' afforded, if I had not thus seen it with my own eyes. It is certainly the very place for a sketch. Now, jump, and I will catch you."

The young man had leaped lightly from the back of the cart upon the brown, firm sand, and now held out both his arms, that his cousin might alight in safety.

"Thank you, Richard, I am used to help myself out of this sort of difficulty," replied she, smiling; "am I not, Stephen?"

"Yes, miss," returned the driver, respectfully, but in broad north-country accents; "this is not the first time you have been in my cart, nor yet the second. She's as active as any deer in his lordship's park out yonder, that I'll answer for, Mr. Richard. Lor bless you! you don't know Miss Agnes; but then, how should you, you that has been in foreign parts so long!"

Richard Crawford had, it was true enough, been for many years in a far-distant climate, and one which had turned his handsome features to the hue of those of a bronze statue; but he grew of a more dusky red than even the eastern suns had made him, when his cousin, touching one of his extended arms with her finger-tips only, lightly leaped upon the sand. She took no notice of his evident annoyance, but exclaimed gayly, "Now, Stephen, the chair and the campstool; then go your ways, and good-luck to your craam. I dare say Mr. Richard here does not know what a 'craam' is; so great is the ignorance that prevails in the tropics. See here, cousin." She drew out from the cart a sort of