The Woman Thou Gavest Me

reached it, looked empty and chill. The
sacristan in the dim choir was arranging lilies and marguerites about
the high altar, and only one poor woman, with a little red and black
shawl over her head and shoulders, was kneeling in the side chapel where
Father Dan was saying Mass, with a sleepy little boy in clogs to serve
him.

The woman was quite young, almost as young as myself, but she was
already a widow, having lately lost her husband "at the herrings"
somewhere up by Stornoway, where he had gone down in a gale, leaving her
with one child, a year old, and another soon to come.

All this she told me the moment I knelt near her. The poor thing seemed
to think I ought to have remembered her, for she had been at school with
me in the village.

"I'm Bella Quark that was," she whispered. "I married Willie Shimmin of
the Lhen, you recollect. It's only a month this morning since he was
lost, but it seems like years and years. There isn't nothing in the
world like it."

She knew about my marriage, and said she wished me joy, though the world
was "so dark and lonely for some." Then she said something about her
"lil Willie." She had left him asleep in her cottage on the Curragh, and
he might awake and cry before she got back, so she hoped Father Dan
wouldn't keep her long.

I was so touched by the poor thing's trouble that I almost forgot my
own, and creeping up to her side I put my arm through hers as we knelt
together, and that was how the Father found us when he turned to put the
holy wafer on our tongues.

The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for when I
was returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my legs so
that I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a sort of
monotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the vague line
of the heavy sky.

I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me in
her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock of
yearlings, which had been sheltering und

Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine CH, KBE (May 14, 1853August 31, 1931), usually known as Hall Caine, was a British author. He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his contemporaries. Many of his novels were also made into films. His novels were primarily romantic in nature, involving the love triangle, but they did also address some of the more serious political and social issues of the day.

Harold MacGrath (September 4, 1871 - October 30, 1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Also known occasionally as Harold McGrath, he was born in Syracuse, New York. As a young man, he worked as a reporter and columnist on the Syracuse Herald newspaper until the late 1890s when he published his first novel, a romance titled Arms and the Woman. According to the New York Times, his next book, The Puppet Crown, was the No.7 bestselling book in the United States for all of 1901. From that point on, MacGrath never looked back, writing novels for the mass market about love, adventure, mystery, spies, and the like at an average rate of more than one a year. He would have three more of his books that were among the top ten bestselling books of the year. At the same time, he penned a number of short stories for major American magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, and Red Book magazine. Several of MacGraths novels were seriali

Mabel Collins (9 September 1851 - 31 March 1927) was a theosophist and author of over 46 books. She was born in St Peter Port, Guernsey.