obvious a topic.

To tell the truth, Avery was not especially fond of yachting, and the careening of the Dream under the pleasant westerly did not arouse in him that enthusiasm which, somehow, he had expected to experience on this trip. When the water ran over the rail, he changed his seat to windward. When it rushed over, he held on to something. Tom Romer chaffed him amiably.

"Why, this is only a fair sailing day!" he cried. "Wait till it breezes up."

"Oh, I shall enjoy it if it comes," replied the lawyer. In fact, he was enjoying nothing. His thoughts surged like the water through which the yacht was driving. Their depth was enveloped and disguised in foam. When Romer said proudly, "She's making twelve knots!" his guest reflected, "I 'm so much farther away from her."

The same personal pronoun answered for the sportsman and the husband. Before the Dream was off Plymouth, the little cruise had assumed the proportions of an Atlantic voyage to the landsman's imagination.

By noon he remembered that in his hurry to get off he had made no definite provision with Jean about telegrams from, but only for messages to her. All that was arranged in the note, but he had torn up the note. With that leisurely appreciation of unpleasant facts which is so natural to the sanguine, and so incomprehensible by the anxious temperament, it occurred to him in the course of the afternoon that his wife had seemed much less well than usual when he bade her good-by; in fact, that he had never seen her look precisely as she did that morning. He began to acknowledge distinctly to himself that he wished he knew how she was.

He grew definitely uneasy as the early autumn twilight dulled the color of the water and the horizon of the distant shore. They were well on the Shoals now, for the breeze was stiff, and the yacht ran at a spanking pace. The wind was not going down with the sun, but rose strongly. The landsman began to be a little seasick, which somehow added to his moral discomfort.

"How can I get a telegram off?" he asked abruptly, much in the tone in which he would have called for a district messenger in the court-house.

"Oh, I might tap a cable for you, I suppose," returned his host, with twitching mustache. "Look here," added Romer. "What is it—mal de mer? or nostalgia? Do you want to be put ashore?"

"Not at all," replied Avery, with the pugnacity which men are accustomed to mistake for high ethical obligations to their own sex. "I only want to get a message to my wife. You see, I promised her."

"We 'll run into Wood's Hole in the morning, by all means," said Romer cordially. "It's a great place for ducks, anyhow, off there."

"Oh—ducks?" repeated Avery stupidly. He had forgotten that they came to kill ducks.

"We 're goin' to have a breeze o' wind," observed one of the crew, who was lowering the jib-topsail.

"I'd like to take the dispatch myself, when we get there, if I may," the seasick lawyer hazarded, somewhat timidly. But next morning, when the Dream dropped anchor off Wood's Hole, and the tender was lowered, he was flat in his berth. He could not take the dispatch, and a detail of two from the crew bounced off with it, pounding over the choppy sea. The frail and fashionable tender looked like one of the little Florida shells that are sold by the quart; there was now a considerable sea; the yacht herself was pretty wet. Romer was in excellent spirits.

"We might get a duck or two before breakfast, if it isn't too rough," he suggested. "Sorry you 're laid up."

"Oh—ducks?" repeated Avery again. He wished he could have a chance to forget that he had left his wife too ill to lift her head, and had come wallowing out here to kill ducks.

"I can't remember that a duck ever did me any harm," he said savagely, aloud.

He heard the occasional report of guns over his head with a sense of personal injury. Nobody hit any ducks, and he was glad of it. The Dream cruised about, he did not know where. He had ceased to feel any interest in her movements. He did not even ask where they had anchored for the night. The wind rose steadily throughout the day. As the force of the blow increased, his physical miseries ascended and his moral consciousness declined. His anxiety for his wife blurred away in a befuddled sense of his own condition.

"I don't believe she's any worse off than I am," he thought. This reflection gave him some comfort. He slept again that night the shattered sleep of the seasick and unhappy, and woke with a cry.

A port-hole of gray dawn darkened by green waters was in the stateroom, which seemed to be standing on its experienced and seaworthy head. The yacht was keeling and pitching weakly. Tom Romer stood beside the berth, looking at his guest; he did not smile. It was an uncommon thing to see Tom Romer without a smile. The yachtsman wore oilskins and a sou'wester, and dripped with salt water like a Grand Banker.

"God! Romer, what's the matter?" Avery got to his feet at once. He forgot that he was seasick. His bodily distresses fled before the swift, strong lash of fright.

"The fact is," replied Romer slowly, "we 've struck a confounded gale—a November gale," he added. "It's turned easterly. She 's been dragging her anchor since two. Now"—

"Now what?" demanded Avery sharply. He staggered into his clothes without waiting for an answer.

"Well—we 've snapped our road."

"Road?" The landsman struggled to recall his limited stock of nautical phrases. "That's the rope you tie your anchor to? Oh! What are you going to do?" he asked, with unnatural humility. The fatal helplessness of ignorance overwhelmed him. If he ever lived to get back, he would turn the tables, and conduct Romer through a complicated lawsuit.

"Run into the Sound if I can," returned Romer. "It won't do to get caught on some of these shoals round here."

"Of course not," replied Avery, who did not know a shoal from a siren. "Say, Romer, what's the amount of danger? Out with it!"

"Oh, she's good for it," said the yachtsman lightly. Then his voice and manner changed. His insouciant black eyes peered suddenly at his guest as if from a small, keen, marine lens.

"Say, old fellow," he said slowly, "I hope there was n't any sort of a quarrel,—you know,—any domestic unpleasantness, before you came on this trip? I wish to blank I 'd left you ashore."

"Quarrel? A demon could n't quarrel with my wife!" exploded Avery.

"That was my impression," returned his host. "Beg pardon, Avery. You see—to be honest, I can't say exactly how we 're coming out of this. There are several things which might happen. I thought"—the sportsman stammered, and stopped.

"If you should pull through and I should n't," said Avery, lifting a gray face,—"I 'm not a swimmer, and you are,—tell her I 'd give my immortal soul if I had n't left her. Tell her—I—God! Romer, she was very sick! She did n't want me to go."

"I 've always thought," said the bachelor, "that if I had a wife—a woman like that"— His face hardened perceptibly, dripping under his sou'wester. "You fellows don't know what you 've got," he added abruptly. He scrambled up the companionway without looking back. Avery followed him abjectly.

At this moment the yacht groaned, grated, and keeled suddenly. Water poured over the rail. The deck rang with cries. Avery got up, and held on to something. It proved to be the main-sheet. It ran through his fingers like a saw, and escaped. Confusedly he heard the mate crying:—

"We 've struck, sir! She 's stove in!"

"Well," replied the owner coolly, "get the boats over, then."

He did not look at his guest. Avery looked at the water. It seemed to leap up after him, hike a beast amused with a ghastly play. Oddly, he recalled at that moment coming in one day—it was after she knew what ailed her—and finding Jean with a book face down on her lap. He picked it up and read, "The vision of sudden death." He had laughed at her, and