--"

"Oh, we know all about 'em. They're all right when you know."

"I suppose so, but--" with a look at Nance, "I'll clear out."

"You're not coming?"

"Your sister wouldn't like it."

"Nance?" with a look of surprise. "She won't mind. Will you, Nance?"

Then it was her turn to hesitate, for bathing with Bernel was one thing,
and with Mr. Gard quite another.

"You'll show me another time, Bernel," said Gard, picking up his towel.
"I wouldn't like to spoil your fun now."

"But you wouldn't. Would he, Nance?"

"I don't mind--if you'll give me the cave."

"All the caves you want," said Bernel, scornful at such unusual
stickling on the part of his chum.

"Quite sure you don't mind?" asked Gard, doubtful still.

"If I have the cave. It's generally the one who gets there first, and
Bern goes quicker than I do."

"Of course. You're only a girl," laughed Bernel, as he raced on down the
slope.

And Nance laughed too at his brotherly depreciation, and Gard, who had
never regarded her as only a girl, and whose thoughts of her were very
absorbing and uplifting, happening to catch her eye, laughed also, and
so they went down towards the sea in pleasant enough humour and the
nearest approach to good-fellowship they had yet attained.

Nance disappeared round a corner, and the next he saw of her she was
swimming boldly out towards Breniere point, and in a moment he and
Bernel were after her.

"Don't go past the point," jerked Bernel.

"She's gone."

"She's a fish and knows her way," and just then they ploughed into what
at first looked to Gard like a perfectly smooth spot amid the troubled
waters, and then he was lifted from below and flung awry and out of his
stroke, and tossed and tumbled till he felt as helpless as a dead fish.
Then a fresh coil of the bubbling tide whirled him to one side and he
was out again in the safety of the dancing waves.

"You see?" cried Bernel. "That's what it's like," and shot into it
headlong.

And Gard, treading water quietly at a safe distance, saw how, every
here and there, great crowns of water came surging up from below, with
such lunging force that they rose in some cases almost a foot above the
neighbouring level of the sea, and he wondered how any swimmer could
make way through them. And yet Nance had cleft them like a seal, and he
could hardly make out her brown head bobbing among the distant waves.

"Is it safe for her?" he cried after Bernel, but the boy's only repl