Daily Kennebec Journal

[From the Cornhill Magazine.

KYLE GRIFFITHS.

A TALE OF THE WELSH COAST.

CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY.

Without a word Kyle loosed her wrist and rose up. Without a word he turned from her; only when he had gone ten steps he came back, and said, very hoarse and low:

"Faith Morgan, you have told me a lie, an' you know it. I can't say if it was for the first time, but I can say it shall be the last. I wondered" and his voice sank deeper still-"that you should shrink when I took you in my arms, a while ago. I wonder now you dare let me do it, wi' that man's face lying between my heart an' yours. Go to him an' you will; I want no wife on whom I can't depend in word an' deed."

He was gone, the next moment; and Faith sobbing bitterly with grief and anger, went home to find Philip Denbigh at the garden gate waiting for her.

He had been courting her for the last two months; and she--had coquetted with him. Flirting is not an amusement confined to the upper ten. I have heard of a young Patagonian squaw who was as finished an adept at it as any Belgravian beauty; and Faith, an only child and the prettiest girl in Amlwch, had been wonderfully fond of trying her fascinations on the "weaker" sex, till the arrival of a new first mate for her father's favorite vessel. He had commanded himself until he was admitted to a partnership in the firm of Denbigh & Co., his employers. Kyle Griffiths, big as a giant, true as the light of day, and masterful as he said to himself, had "cut out" all the rest in no time, and won Faith for his own undivided property.

She never even cared to look at any one else when he was by: and, I believe, loved him as entirely as was her nature, with most worshipful affection: but when Kyle was away at sea, and young Mr. Denbigh came to Amlwch--Mr. Denbigh, who was what she called a gentleman; some one who wore fine clothes, and had white hands, and a curly mustache--and when this hero testified an immediate and violent admiration for herself, how could she help being pleased? how could she help going back to the old habits?

She did not help, either. Mr. Denbigh made love: and flirted, all unconscious in her flattered vanity of what the neighbors were saying, until, just three days before Kyle's return, the suitor brought matters to a crisis by a declaration. They had a tiff about a photo of Faith, which Denbigh had stolen and put in his locket: and he had brought her a fine gold locket with one of himself in it, and begged her to accept it and take the donor into the bargain.

Followed a wakening for silly little Faith, and the confession, "But I am engaged!"

Followed anger (from the gentleman) and tears (from the lady).

Followed fresh solicitations, more ardent from the rebuff, and fresh "noes," more feeble from remorse and shame.

Followed tremendous scenes of masculine woe and anguish, and feminine contrition and soothing.

Finally, Denbigh left the house, determined to try again on his return from America: and Faith remained with the locket, which she had at last consented to keep and wear, as some small salve to the giver's wounded affections. She loved Kyle far, far better than his rival: but Philip Denbigh was so handsome and sweet-spoken, it would be down-right cruel to refuse him such a trifle as hanging the trinket round her neck for a day or two; and no one need ever know.

Nevertheless, some one did know--now: and the sweet-spoken gentleman got a savage snubbing on this afore-mentioned evening.

"Kyle will hear I refused him, and come back. He'll never leave me so. He must ask my pardon first," thought the weeping beauty, that night.

He did not ask pardon, however, nor come back. The Olinda sailed, three days later, and Faith's two lovers sailed in it. Kyle had a beautiful black retriever, which he had been used to leave behind to take care of his lassie love while he was gone. He took it with him, this time; and Faith nearly wept her lovely eyes out, that she had been too proud to own her own folly and seek a reconciliation before he went. Patience: it would be only six weeks, or at the most eight, and then he would be back, and she would be good--so good and meek. He must forgive her then.

Eight weeks had passed--eight weeks all but two days--when the sun went down in stormy grandeur, one cold evening, on the Irish sea. It had been blowing great guns all day, and for many nights before; and the waves had wrestled terribly with a crazy barque which, with creaking timbers and leaking ports, with strained and naked masts bending beneath the gale, till at every lurch they seemed like to bury themselves in the foam-crested waves tumbling mountain-high around them, had striven like a living thing to weather the cruel storm.

Where was she now? The huge breakers, crested still with foam, turbid and purple-stained, dashed themselves, moaning and roaring, against the gray and iron-bound cliffs of the Welsh coast, flinging up great fragments of timber, torn and twisted scraps of sail-cloth, and battered shapeless things, too awful in their piteous mutilation for any human name, against the pitiless rocks, only to suck them back again into the black and boiling gulf below. Above, great storm-rent clouds, black too, but fringed with fire, were gathering thickly over the threatening vault; and low on the horizon the sun, like a blood-red hand, pointed from between them to something black and broken, over which the sea was breaking in unresisted fury--the stern of a vessel with the bowsprit and foremast just visible among the foam and spray. Greatly as the wind had

[CONCLUDED ON FOURTH PAGE.]
lessened, that sail, looking red now before the angry sun, was all the captain of the pilot-cutter cared to show even now to its tender mercies. It had been a work of danger to get near the wreck at all, hanging as she did in a nest of rocks: and there was a look of relief on more than one hardy, sunburnt face, when the order was given to tack and 'bout ship again. Suddenly the captain caught up his spy-glass, which was lying beside him, and after a hasty glance through it, roared to the men to "hold all hard."

"There's summat living arter all," he said, pointing to a ridge of low, outlying rock, where some object was plainly discernible even by the naked eye. "There! just above the line o' high water. Can't none o' ye see?"

"A man down on all-fours!" cried one of the crew. "Look, he's moved a bit higher. Poor fellow! he must be a rare plucked un surely to ha' kep' life in him so long."

"Lower the boat," said the captain sharply. "Now my lads, ready all. Jim" (to an old pilot), "give us a coil o' that line. We mayn't be able to get over-near him; an' I say, one of you lubbers, chuck a bottle o' rum inter the stern-sheets—quick!"

They are brave, kindly men, those Welsh pilots; I have owed my life to them, and know; but I am afraid they thought their courage and kindness wasted when they found the object of it was—only a dog! They hauled him into the boat none the less, almost too much spent, poor fellow, to second their efforts; and then, while he was trying very feebly to lick the hands that had saved him; his beautiful eyes full of dog's gratitude, they saw he had a tin flask tied to his collar.

The captain opened it. "To Miss Faith Morgan, Amlwch," he said reading something within; and then, not being a person of refined delicacy, he took the paper out, and opened and read that. This was what it said:—