"What good can you do?
Here is Crump, and here am I. We'll find them both. This is no work for
a woman. You are wet, you may get hurt----"

"And you?" she retorted. Then, in a lower voice, "Don't stop me, Mr.
Pendarves; don't try to keep me from going. I can't stay quietly here,
and wait, and wait, and not know what's happened. I think I should go
mad. I _must_ go. You are wasting time; your grandfather--oh, can't you
understand?"

I understood only that she was frantic with anxiety, and might have
offered further remonstrance had it not been for the sudden defection of
Crump. He edged a little nearer, and gently jogged my elbow.

"I'm with ye, miss," he announced, with startling alacrity; and, as we
followed her out, he explained to me in a hoarse and perfectly audible
whisper behind one hand: "I'm always with 'em when they get that look
on, Mr. Nicol. Catch me adrift on a lee shore! I've learned a lot since
I signed with Sarah."

The breakfast-table had been laid, and the empty chairs stood around it
in their places, under the smiling supervision of the admiral's
portrait. In the kitchen, Mary had a bright fire going, her neat towels
hanging to dry. She opened the door, and the next instant this pretty
and comforting picture was shut behind us, and there we were crouching
in the rain under the eaves, with the wind bellowing overhead.

[Illustration: "IT LAY BEFORE US, A CONSIDERABLE HEAP OF GOLD AND SILVER
COINS, TARNISHED BUT RECOGNIZABLE"]

Mary stood on tiptoe again to scream: "I've been all over except in the
orchard--you can see the shore from there."

I took her hand within my arm, and we struggled forward. As we drew
nearer the cliff, the loud and awful noise of breakers in the Cat's
Mouth silenced the storm; yet the wind was no whit diminished. A man
could hardly have kept his feet, I think, along the cliff path. Before
we reached the corner where the ancient tree that had weathered so many
gales lay prostrate, uprooted at last, although we had as yet no view of
the immediate shore, we could see a white aureole of spray hang, vanish,
and return in a breath, yards in air above the Brown Cow. We fetched a
compass around the orchard, stumbling and staggering among stumps and
matted weeds and half-hidden logs without finding my grandfather, or any
trace of him; and Crump having dropped behind, we had lost sight of him
when that eery screech he adopted to make himself heard traveled to us
down the wind. He