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CHRISTINE




  By AMELIA E. BARR

    Christine
    Joan
    Profit and Loss
    Three Score and Ten
    The Measure of a Man
    The Winning of Lucia
    Playing with Fire
    All the Days of My Life


  D. APPLETON & COMPANY
  Publishers    New York


[Illustration: When she came to the top of the cliff, she turned and
gazed again at the sea. Page 6]




  CHRISTINE

  A FIFE FISHER GIRL

  BY
  AMELIA E. BARR

  AUTHOR OF "JOAN", "PROFIT AND LOSS", "THE MEASURE OF A MAN",
  "ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE", ETC.


  FRONTISPIECE BY STOCKTON MULFORD


  "_The sea is His, and He made it_"


  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  NEW YORK    LONDON
  1917

  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

  Printed in the United States of America




  I Inscribe This Book To

  Rutger Bleecker Jewett

  Because He is my Friend, And
  Expresses All That Jewel of a
  Monosyllable Requires And
  Because, Though a Landsman,
  He Loves the Sea And
  In His Dreams, He is a Sailor.

  Amelia E. Barr.
  _January 7th, 1917._




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
       I. Fishers of Culraine                                        1
      II. Christine and the Domine                                  23
     III. Angus Ballister                                           38
      IV. The Fisherman's Fair                                      61
       V. Christine and Angus                                       86
      VI. A Child, Two Lovers, and a Wedding                       115
     VII. Neil and a Little Child                                  152
    VIII. An Unexpected Marriage                                   183
      IX. A Happy Bit of Writing                                   212
       X. Roberta Interferes                                       247
      XI. Christine Mistress of Ruleson Cottage                    280
     XII. Neil's Return Home                                       306
    XIII. The Right Mate and the Right Time                        339
     XIV. After Many Years                                         362




CHAPTER I

FISHERS OF CULRAINE

  The hollow oak our palace is
    Our heritage the sea.

  Howe'er it be it seems to me
    'Tis only noble to be good.
  Kind hearts are more than coronets
    And simple faith than Norman blood.


Friends, who have wandered with me through England, and Scotland, and
old New York, come now to Fife, and I will tell you the story of
Christina Ruleson, who lived in the little fishing village of
Culraine, seventy years ago. You will not find Culraine on the map,
though it is one of that chain of wonderful little towns and villages
which crown, as with a diadem, the forefront and the sea-front of the
ancient kingdom of Fife. Most of these towns have some song or story,
with which they glorify themselves, but Culraine--hidden in the clefts
of her sea-girt rocks--was _in_ the world, but not _of_ the world.
Her people lived between the sea and the sky, between their hard lives
on the sea, and their glorious hopes of a land where there would be
"no more sea."

Seventy years ago every man in Culraine was a fisherman, a mighty,
modest, blue-eyed Goliath, with a serious, inscrutable face; naturally
a silent man, and instinctively a very courteous one. He was exactly
like his great-grandfathers, he had the same fishing ground, the same
phenomena of tides and winds, the same boat of rude construction, and
the same implements for its management. His modes of thought were just
as stationary. It took the majesty of the Free Kirk Movement, and its
host of self-sacrificing clergy, to rouse again that passion of
religious faith, which made him the most thorough and determined of
the followers of John Knox.

The women of these fishermen were in many respects totally unlike the
men. They had a character of their own, and they occupied a far more
prominent position in the village