, and commanding an extent
of view towards the north. His face supported by his hands, he
looked down upon the blue rippling ocean, flashing here and there,
into the sunlight in long, glittering lines. The boat was still in
the distance, making her swift silent way with long regular bounds
to the tender that lay in the offing.

Hepburn felt insecure, as in a nightmare dream, so long as the boat
did not reach her immediate destination. His contracted eyes could
see four minute figures rowing with ceaseless motion, and a fifth
sate at the helm. But he knew there was a sixth, unseen, lying,
bound and helpless, at the bottom of the boat; and his fancy kept
expecting this man to start up and break his bonds, and overcome all
the others, and return to the shore free and triumphant.

It was by no fault of Hepburn's that the boat sped well away; that
she was now alongside the tender, dancing on the waves; now emptied
of her crew; now hoisted up to her place. No fault of his! and yet
it took him some time before he could reason himself into the belief
that his mad, feverish wishes not an hour before--his wild prayer to
be rid of his rival, as he himself had scrambled onward over the
rocks alongside of Kinraid's path on the sands--had not compelled
the event.

'Anyhow,' thought he, as he rose up, 'my prayer is granted. God be
thanked!'

Once more he looked out towards the ship. She had spread her
beautiful great sails, and was standing out to sea in the glittering
path of the descending sun.

He saw that he had been delayed on his road, and had lingered long.
He shook his stiffened limbs, shouldered his knapsack, and prepared
to walk on to Hartlepool as swiftly as he could.

CHAPTER XIX

AN IMPORTANT MISSION

Philip was too late for the coach he had hoped to go by, but there
was another that left at night, and which reached Newcastle in the
forenoon, so that, by the loss of a night's sleep, he might overtake
his lost time. But, restless and miserable, he could not stop in
Hartlepool longer than to get some hasty food at the inn from which
the coach started. He acquainted himself with the names of the towns
through which it would pass, and the inns at which it would stop,
and left word that the coachman was to be on the look-out for him
and pick him up at some one of these places.

He was thoroughly worn out before this happened--too much tired to
gain any sleep in the coach. When he reached Newcastle, he went