ir, and she was busy replacing it with deft fingers.

"Margaret," he replied at last, "you said just now that I understood
very little about women. I think you are right. Perhaps if I
understood more I might know how to muffle the drum so that you
wouldn't hear it. I might have learned to pipe a tune that would make
you not want to hear it. . . . I don't know. . . . But I accept all
you say--although deep down in my heart I know you are wrong. There
will come a day when you, too, will know you are wrong. I shall come
back then. And till then, since I must"--he smiled in a whimsical, sad
way that somehow relaxed the tension--"I lend you to the children."

She returned his smile quite naturally, with relief in her eyes. "Dear
Trevor, yes . . . because they need me so. . . . Believe me, I am not
wrong: and we keep our friendship still, sweet and sane----" She broke
off suddenly and raised a slim forefinger, holding her head sideways to
listen, the way women and birds and children seem to hear better.
"Hark! Did you hear? How odd! Listen, Trevor!"

Torps brought himself back with an effort. "Hear what?"

"Listen!"

He listened.

"I can hear the waves along the shingle."

"No, no. . . . There--now!"

"Oh! . . . Yes, I can hear. . . . It sounds like a drum."

"Trevor, it _is_ a drum, somewhere out at sea! How odd when we were
just talking about drums--hush! Oh, do listen. . . ."

The sound, borne to them on the light wind, seemed to grow nearer; then
it waned till they could scarcely catch the beats. Anon it swelled
louder: the unmistakable "Dub! dub! rub-a-dub! dub! . . . Dub! dub!
dub!" of a far-off drum.

Margaret shook his sleeve. "Of course it's a drum. It can't be
anything else, can it?"

"It's Drake's Drum!" he replied, with mock solemnity. "There's a
legend in the West Country, you know----"

"I know!" She nodded, bright eyed with interest, and rose to a
kneeling position to gaze beneath her palms out towards the west. The
sun had set, and a thin grey haze slowly veiled the horizon. Already
the warm afterglow was dying out of the sky.

"He has 'quit the Port of Heaven,'" she quoted half-seriously, playing
with superstition as only women can, "and he's 'drumming up the
Channel'! They say it foretells war . . . that noise. . . ." Margaret
gave a little shiver and rose to her graceful height, extending both
her ringless hands to him. "It's getting chilly--come!"

Torps ro