A Knight of the Nets

A KNIGHT OF THE NETS

BY

AMELIA E. BARR


1896




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER


I THE WORLD SHE LIVED IN.

II CHRISTINA AND ANDREW.

III THE AILING HEART.

IV THE LASH OF THE WHIP.

V THE LOST BRIDE.

VI WHERE IS MY MONEY?

VII THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

VIII A GREAT DELIVERANCE.

IX THE RIGHTING OF A WRONG.

X TAKE ME IN TO DIE.

XI DRIVEN TO HIS DUTY.

XII AMONG HER OWN PEOPLE.

XIII THE "LITTLE SOPHY".



_Grey sky, brown waters: as a bird that flies
My heart flits forth to these;
Back to the winter rose of Northern skies,
Back to the Northern seas_.




CHAPTER I

THE WORLD SHE LIVED IN


It would be easy to walk many a time through "Fife and all the lands
about it" and never once find the little fishing village of
Pittendurie. Indeed, it would be a singular thing if it was found,
unless some special business or direction led to it. For clearly it was
never intended that human beings should build homes where these
cottages cling together, between sea and sky,--a few here, and a few
there, hidden away in every bend of the rocks where a little ground
could be levelled, so that the tides in stormy weather break with
threat and fury on the very doorstones of the lowest cottages. Yet as
the lofty semicircle of hills bend inward, the sea follows; and there
is a fair harbour, where the fishing boats ride together while their
sails dry in the afternoon sun. Then the hamlet is very still; for the
men are sleeping off the weariness of their night work, while the
children play quietly among the tangle, and the women mend the nets or
bait the lines for the next fishing. A lonely little spot, shut in by
sea and land, and yet life is there in all its passionate variety--love
and hate, jealousy and avarice, youth, with its ideal sorrows and
infinite expectations, age, with its memories and regrets, and "sure
and certain hope."

The cottages also have their individualities. Although they are much of
the same size and pattern, an observing eye would have picked out the
Binnie cottage as distinctive and prepossessing. Its outside walls were
as white as lime could make them; its small windows brightened with
geraniums and a white muslin curtain; and the litter of ropes and nets
and drying fish which encumbered the majority of thatches, was
pleasantly absent. Standing on a little level, thirty feet above the
shingle, it faced the open sea, and was constantly filled with the
confused tones of its sighing surges, and penetrated by its pulsating,
tremendous vitality.

It had been the home of many generations of Binnies, and the very old,
and the very young, had usually shared its comforts together; but at
the time of my story, there remained of the family only the widow of
the last proprietor, her son Andrew, and her daughter Christina.
Christina was twenty years old, and still unmarried,--a strange thing
in Pittendurie, where early marriages are the rule. Some said she was
vain of her beauty and could find no lad whom she thought good enough;
others thought she was a selfish, cold-hearted girl, feared for the
cares and the labours of a fisherman's wife.

On this July afternoon, the girl had been some hours mending the pile
of nets at her feet; but at length they were in perfect order, and she
threw her arms upward and outward to relieve their weariness, and then
went to the open door. The tide was coming in, but the children were
still paddling in the salt pools and on the cold bladder rack, and she
stepped forward to the edge of the cliff, and threw them some wild
geranium and ragwort. Then she stood motionless in the bright sunlight,
looking down the shingle towards the pier and the little tavern, from
which came, in drowsy tones, the rough monotonous songs which seamen
delight to sing--songs, full of the complaining of the sea, interpreted
by the hoarse, melancholy voices of sea faring men.

Standing thus in the clear light, her great beauty was not to be
denied.