alone; by you lay my little one, a small, white, naked shape crouched dead at your side. I woke in great fear for you; it would not pass, though the night was still; it grew rather, for it was a fear of worse than death for you. Yes, I prayed.'

Through his brain swept a vision, moonlighted, of the fair witch's haunt, and her nude shape dominant as she condemned him. The omniscience of God had been faint sustenance then compared with this feeble finite shadow of the same that shot thrilling through the spirit of the boy. So are we made.

Outside a heavy step sounded, and a voice hailed Christian. 'Here, boy, lend a hand.'

He swung out into the clear world. There Giles, empty-handed, made for the rear linhay, and faced round with a puckered brow.

'What the devil have you been up to?'

'Trying her paces,' said Christian.

'Who's to blame then—you or she?'

'Oh, not she!' said Christian hastily, jealous for the credit of his new possession.

'Well, well, that ever such a duffer should be bred up by me,' grumbled Giles. 'Out with it all, boy. How came it?'

Christian shut his mouth and shook his head.

'What's this? Don't play the fool. As it is, you've set the quay buzzing more than enough.'

'Who cares?'

'And you've broken Philip's head within two minutes of touching, I believe.'

''Twas done out of no ill-will,' protested Christian. 'A dozen swarmed over, for all the world as if she were just carrion for them to rummage like crabs. So I hitched one out again—the biggest by preference,—and he slipped as you called to speed me off here. If he took it ill, 'tis no great matter to square.'

'I would for this once he or any were big enough to break your head for you as well as you deserve,' said Giles savagely.

'We're of a mind there,' said Christian, meekly and soberly.

Giles perversely took this as a scoff, and fumed.

'Here has the wife been in a taking along of you; never saying a word, going about like a stiff statue, with a face to turn a body against his victuals; and I saying where was the sense? had you never before been gone over a four-and-twenty hours? And now to fix her, clean without a cause, you bring back a hole to have let in Judgment-day. Now will come moils to drive a man daft.

'And to round off, by what I hear down yonder, never a civil answer but a broken head is all you'll give. "Look you there now," says Philip, and I heard him, and he has a hand clapped to his crown, and he points at your other piece of work, and he says, says Philip: "Look you there now, he was never born to drown," and he laughs in his way. Well, I thought he was not far out, take it either way, when I see how you have brought the poor thing in mishandled. It passes me how you kept her afloat and brought her through. Let's hear.'

Though Giles might rate, there was never a rub. Years before the old man and the boy had come to a footing strangely fraternal, set there by a common despair of satisfying the strict code of Lois.

Again Christian shook his head. Giles reached up a kindly hand to his shoulder.

'What's amiss, boy? It's new for you to show a cross grain. A poor spirit it is that can't take blame that is due.'

Christian laughed, angry and sore.

'O Dad!' he said, 'I must blame myself most of all. Have your say. Give me a taste of the sort of stuff I may have to swallow. But ask nothing.'

Giles rubbed his grey locks in perplexity, and stared at the perverse boy.

'It can't be a venture—no,' he thought aloud. 'Nor none hinted that.

'Well, then; you've been and taken her between the Tortoises, and bungled in the narrows.'

Christian opened his mouth to shout derision at the charge, gasped, and kept silence.

'There's one pretty guess to go abroad. Here's another: You've gone for the Land's End, sheared within the Sinister buoys, and got right payment. That you can't let pass.'

'Why not that?' Christian said, hoping his countenance showed no guilt.

'Trouble will come if you don't turn that off.'

'Trouble! Let them prate at will.'

'Well,' complained Giles, 'I won't say I am past work, but I will own that for a while gone I had counted on the near days when I might lie by for a bit.'

'But, Dad, that's so, all agreed, so soon as I should have earned a boat of my own, you should have earned holiday for good.'

'Then, you fool, speak clear, and fend off word of the Sinister buoys, or not a soul but me will you get aboard for love or money.'

Eager pride wanted to speak. Giles would not let it.

'You think a mere breath would drive none so far. Ay, but you are not one of us, and that can't be forgot with your outlandish hair and eyes. Then your strength outdoes every man's; then you came by the sea, whence none know, speaking an unknown tongue; and then——' Giles paused.

The heart of the alien swelled and shrank. He said very low: 'So I have no friends!'

'Well,' Giles admitted, 'you would be better liked but for a way you have sometimes of holding your head and shutting your mouth.'

He mimicked till Christian went red.

'Do I so? Well,' he said, with a vexed laugh, 'here's a penance ready against conceit. The Tortoises! I indeed! and I must go humble and dumb.'

'Such tomfoolery!' cried Giles, exasperated. 'And why? why? There's something behind; you've let out as much. I don't ask—there, keep your mystery if you will; but set yourself right on one point—you will—for my sake you will.'

Christian looked at the old man, bent, shrunken, halt, and smiled out of bland confidence.

'The burden shall not light on you, Dad. And has no one told you what I have done single-handed? just for display of her excellent parts, worked the boat and the nets too, and hauled abreast of any. Not a boat that watched but cheered the pair of us.'