and ears alert. He heard a dog bark
somewhere in front of him in the whitish-gray obscurity. Presently he
came to where the path kinked and sloped down among a jumble of rocks,
and at the same moment he caught the pungent, comforting smell of
wood-smoke on the fog. Then he knew that Chance Along--the roof which
sheltered Flora Lockhart--lay hidden and dripping beneath him. He was
about to commence a cautious descent of the path, when a clamor of
voices drifted up to him. He halted; and as the voices approached,
together with the shuffle of climbing feet and the creak and clatter of
shouldered boat-gear, he stepped aside. He saw the yellow blur of a
lantern and immediately took up a position behind a great boulder. Bulky
forms loomed into view at the top of the slope, broke from the
blanketing fog for a moment, one by one, and plunged into it again,
heading southward along the path. The big fellow in the lead carried
the lantern, and the man at his elbow was talking excitedly as they
passed within an oar's length of Darling.

"I's bin watchin' her these five hours back, skipper, a-tryin' to beat
out o' the drift o' wind an' tide widout one entire mast a-standin'," he
said. "She wasn't a half-mile off the rocks when I left the cove, an'
a-firin' of her gun desperate. If she bain't stuck tight now, skipper,
then me name bain't Tim Leary."

Mr. Darling stared and listened, as motionless as the boulder against
which he leaned. They issued from the fog and were engulfed again in its
clinging folds--twenty-five or thirty men and lads in all. Some carried
coils of rope, others oars and boat-hooks. Several of them hauled empty
sledges at their heels. The back of the last man vanished in the fog;
but Mr. Darling remained in the shelter of the rock until the faintest
whisper of their voices had died away before moving hand or foot.

"Organized wreckers," he muttered. "And that big pirate with the lantern
was the skipper--the brute who is keeping Flora in this place! By God--I
wonder just how much of a man, and how much of a beast he is! But now is
my time, while they're all off waiting for another wreck to come ashore
to them--damn them! The harbor must be about empty of able-bodied men
just now."

He descended the twisting path cautiously. The small cabins of the
fishermen presently loomed around him, here a gray gable, there a dull
window, there an unpainted door--and below him a roof or two pushing up
through the fog from a