hearty enough to his ears.

Surely that rock answering so was the first Warder.

Spite of weariness and unsteadiness of head, he got on his feet, and passed from that difficult ledge of rock round to the front, where by steep grades the Isle showed some slight condescension to the sea. As he advanced he tried for ascent, unsatisfied still.

The five Warders stood in full parade; their rank hemmed him round; against his level the shadow of the Isle rested above their knees, between each and each a narrow vertical strip of sea and heaven struck blindingly sweet and blue. Sea-birds wheeled and clamoured, misliking this invasion of their precincts. To his conceit the tremendous noise of the breakers below sounded an unavailing protest against his escape.

He came upon a sight that displaced his immediate desire to scale the heights above: from the base below the tide had withdrawn, and there lay a stretch of boulders and quiet rock pools within a fringe of magnificent surf. Down he sped straightway to hold footing debatable with the jealous sea. Close against the line of surf, at a half-way point between the solid wall of the Isle and the broken wall of the Warders, he looked up at either height north and south. Equal towards the zenith they rose, here based upon sombre quiet, there upon fierce white tumult, that sent up splendid high columns, whose spray swept over the interspace of tumbling sea and touched the shine of the pools with frore grey. He sighed towards those unattainable Warders.

The air was charged with brine; its damp stayed on his skin, its salt on his lips. Thirsting, he went about with an eye for a water-spring, and made straight for a likely cleft. Darkest among the many scars of the rock it showed; deep it went, and wound deeper at his nearing. He entered the gape over boulders, and a way still there was wide before him; he took nine paces with gloom confronting, a tenth—aslant came a dazzling gleam of white. Amazed he faced to it, held stone-still an instant, sped on and out; he stood in full sunlight, and winked bewildered at the incredible open of fair sands before him.

The wonder dawned into comprehension. Though far eyes were deluded by a perfect semblance of solidity, the half of the Isle was hollow as a shell. Over against him rose the remaining moiety; high walls of rock swept round on either side, hindered from complete enclosure by the cleft of his entrance. He turned and looked back through the gorge, and again over the sunlit open; it was hard to believe he was out of dreamland, so Eden-bright and perfect was this contrast to the grand sombre chasm he had left. White and smooth, the sands extended up to the base of the dark rocks. There rich drapery of weed indicated the tide-mark; strips of captured water gleamed; great boulders lay strewn; coves and alcoves deeply indented the lines of the enclosing walls. To the boy's eyes it looked the fairest spot of earth the sea could ever find to visit. Its aspect of lovely austere virginity, candid, serene, strictly girt, touched very finely on the fibres of sense and soul.

He stepped out on firm blanch sand ribbed slightly by the reluctant ebb. Trails of exquisite weed, with their perfect display of every slender line and leaf betokened a gracious and gentle outgoing of the sea. In creamy pink, ivory, citron, and ranges of tender colour that evade the fact of a name, these delicate cullings lay strewn, and fragile shells of manifold beauty and design. There, among weed and shell, he spied a branch of coral, and habit and calling drew him to it instantly. He had never fetched up its like, for the colour was rare, and for its thickness and quality he wondered. Suddenly the coral drops from his hand; he utters an inarticulate cry and stands amazed. His eye has fallen on a mark in the sand; it is of a human footstep.

Blank disappointment at this sign of forestalling struck him first, but startled wonder followed hard, and took due prominence as he looked around on his solitude encompassed by steep black heights, and heard the muffled thunder outside that would not be shut off by them. He stooped to examine the naked footprint, and was staggered by the evidence it gave; for this impression, firm and light, had an outward trend, a size, a slightness, most like a woman's. It was set seaward towards the gorge. He looked right and left for footprints of return—none were there! A lone track he saw that led hardly further, growing faint and indistinct, for the feet had trodden there when the wash of the ebb was recent.

He turned, and following reversely at a run, came to the far wall, where every sign failed among pools and weedy boulders; circled with all speed, snatching a sight of every cove and cleft, and then sprang back through the gorge.

The gloom and the fierce tumult of that outside ravine smote with a shock upon masculine wits that now had conceived of the presence of a woman there. Compassion cried, Poor soul! poor soul! without reservation, and aloud he called hearty reassurance, full-lunged, high-pitched. Though but a feeble addition to the great noises there, the sea-birds grew restless: only the sea-birds, no other living thing moved in response.

He made sure of a soon discovery, but he leapt along from boulder to boulder, hunting into every shadow, and never a one developed a cave; but he called in vain. The sea limited him to a spare face of the Isle; when that was explicit, he was left to reckon with his senses, because they went so against reason.

The irreconcilable void sent him back to the first tangible proof, and again he stood beside the footprints pondering uneasily. Had he scared a woman unclothed, who now in the shame and fear of sex crouched perdue? But no, his search outside had been too thorough, and the firm, light, even pace was a contradiction.

Up and down he went in close search, but no other sign of human presence could he find, not a shred of clothing, not a fragment of food. That single line of naked footprints, crossing the level sands from inscrutable rock to obliterate sea, gave a positive indication circumstantially denied on every hand. The bewildered boy reckoned he would have been better satisfied to have lighted on some uncanny slot of finned heels and splay web-toes, imperfectly human; the shapely print excited a contrast image of delicate, stately, perfect womanhood, quite intolerable to intellect and emotion of manly composition.

The steeps all round denied the possibility of ascent by tender feminine feet; for they thwarted his stout endeavour to scale up to the main rock above, that from the high wall receded and ascended in not extreme grades to the topmost pitch, where the sun was hanging well on the ponent slope.

His strict investigation took him round each wide scallop of the enclosure, a course that was long to conclude by reason of exquisite distractions that beset every hollow of the way. For the clear rock pools he found in these reserves held splendours of the sea's living blossoms: glowing beds of anemones full blown, with purples of iris and orchis, clover red, rose red, sorrel red, hues of primrose and saffron, broad spread like great chrysanthemums' bosses. And above the wavy fringes, never quite motionless, dark wet buds hung waiting for the tide; and the crystal integrity mirroring these was stirred by flashes of silver-green light, the to-and-fro play of lovely minute rock-fish.

He had circled two-thirds and more when to his vigilant perceptions a hint came. Some ribbons of glossy weed hanging from shoulder height stirred a trifle overmuch in their shelter to the touch of wind. Instantly the wary boy thrust a hand through and encountered, not rock, but a void