The roar
of the sea as it dashed up the face of the cliff seemed to soothe her,
and she would smile and turn her ear to catch the sound of its breaking
on the beach below.
And yet, seven years before, "Daft Bess" had been the brightest and
prettiest girl in Trewithen, and the admiration of every lad in the
country round! And Big Ben Martyn, who had a boat of his own, had been
the pride of every girl! But he only cared for Bess and she for him. All
their lives they had been together and loved,--and a simple, truthful
love can only produce its own affinity, though in its travail it pass
through pain and suffering, and, maybe, the laying down of life!
Ben Martyn was twenty-five, and his own master, when he asked Bess, who
had just turned twenty, to be his wife.
"The cottage be waitin', Bess, my gurrl!" he whispered as they sat on
the cliff in the summer night; she knitting as usual, and he watching
the needles dart in and out. They were very silent in their love, these
two, who had been lovers ever since they could paddle.
"'Tis so lawnly betimes!" he pleaded.
And Bess set his longing heart at rest.
"So soon as vather can spare I, Ben," she said; and she laid her
knitting on the rock beside them, and drew his sea-tanned face close
down beside her own. "Ee dawn't seek fer I more'n I seek fer ee, deary!"
and kissed him.
Thus they plighted their troth.
[Sidenote: One Dark Night]
Then came the winter and the hard work.
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