Two Sailor Lads by Gordon Stables

"The darkness seemed to lift at last, and I gradually became sensible. Everything around me was hazy for a time -- a kind of a gauze curtain seemed to hang 'twixt me and as pretty a rustic picture as I ever yet had seen.

"I was not lying at the cliff foot, I was in a soft, warm bed, all hung round with snow-white curtains. It was so near the gloaming hour that I could see the firelight dancing on the plain deal furniture, and on the pictures of ships and boats that hung on the whitewashed wall. There was a stuffed sea-gull in a case, and the model of a fishing-boat also under glass, and on a little table a big ha' Bible and other devotional books, surmounted by a vase of freshly-culled wild flowers. Then I turned my aching eyes towards the little window, prettily festooned with curtains of dimity, and on the sill of which pot-flowers were growing, the red radiance of sunset lighting up and strangely altering the green of their leaves. But my eyes fell on a picture of a different sort at the same time: a young girl seated by the window sewing, her head bent towards the white seam, her dark hair half hiding a face that to me was as lovely as an angel's.