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the sea cliffs and threw themselves over the edge.
    Then hundreds of years went by.
    Long after the lava had cooled down, there were foreign ships anchoring in the bay below the cliffs, the same bay that came to be known as Shipwreck Bay. Farmers from the countryside traded with the sailors and sold them dried fish and meat, which they transported on horses, their heavy hooves gradually chiseling a path that wound across the lava field.
    About midway it passed the Gallows, two boulders that rose high up above the lava and leaned against each other.
    “They remind me of two friends bidding each other farewell for the last time,” Emily said, almost whispering. “They used to hang thieves and murderers there, you know. It should be a terrible place, but to me it isn’t.”
    Then she told him the old stories of poor young women who, century after century, had come here in the night to hide little bundles away in the maze of holes and caves in the lava field.
    “That’s the only thing that makes me sad about this place,” she said. “Knowing that so many little babies were brought out here to die because nobody could take care of them. And the poor unmarried women would have been punished with their lives if the truth had been known. How hard it must have been for them, how terribly hard and unjust.”
    At this point in the story she fell silent for a while, and Henry thought there was nothing more to tell. He poured the milk from the bucket into the container without thinking, washed Brandy’s udders, and continued milking in a steady rhythm. His mind was ablaze with images from her story. It was like watching a painting come alive.
    When Emily spoke again her voice was much brighter and happier, as if she had just needed a little moment to gather her thoughts.
    “But then a young farmer came from another part of the country and built the house on the knoll. He also built the garden wall and planted the trees in the yard. He built the barn and the cowshed and sheep sheds. He was a hardworking man, and he laughed when the old people in the countryside told him that the place was cursed.
    “He had a lovely wife and many children. Every summer he drove a tractor with a wagon to the faraway fields out east to mow them and then moved the hay back to the barn. It was hard work, but they were happy.
    “He had a boat,” Emily said, “and moved it from the smithy, all the way along the path through the lava, and put it to sea in Shipwreck Bay. There’s no easy way to haul a boat down that steep cliff face, but he managed it, and rowed his boat when the sea was calm and smooth, cast out nets, and filled the boat with fish. Then he pulled the boat back up to the edge so the surf wouldn’t crush it when the tide came in. The farmers in the area called him the Miracle Man, because they envied him. None of them had ever tried to row out from these shores, with their steep cliffs and the sea being so rough. But the young farmer was determined to use every means possible to keep his family happy and well fed.
    “But then tragedy struck in the most curious manner,” Emily said, and again her voice lowered a little.
    “One night in the middle of winter, in a freezing blizzard, the farmer woke up from bad dreams. He told his wife to heat up some food, because they would have visitors that night. Then he went out into the blizzard and followed the path until he reached the edge of the cliffs above Shipwreck Bay.
    “Out there he saw a huge trawler, a British trawler called
Young Hope,
stuck on a reef and being crushed to pieces by the roaring waves. Some of the crew were already in the water, fighting for their lives in the surf. But the farmer managed to shoot a line out to the ship. Then he climbed down the cliffs and got hold of the men, one by one, and pulled all twelve of them up onto the edge, to safety.
    “The blizzard was so thick and the men so weak that they couldn’t even walk to the house. So he carried them, one by