Gard walked cautiously behind him as he went across the crumbling white
pathway with the carelessness of custom, and, sailor as he had been, he
was not sorry when the other side was reached, and he could stand in the
security of the cutting and look back, and down into the gulf where the
white waves foamed and growled among the boulders three hundred feet
below.

"I've seen a many as did not care to cross that, first time they saw
it," said old Tom with a chuckle.

"Well, I'm not surprised at that. It's apt to make one's head spin."

"I brought captain of brig up here and he wouldn't put a foot on it. Not
for five hundred pounds, he said."

"It would have taken more than five hundred pounds to piece him together
if he'd tumbled down there."

"That's so."

A young moon, and a clear sky still rarely light and lofty in the amber
after-glow, gave them a safe passage back.

When they reached the house among the trees, Gard bethought him of his
belongings.

"And my things from the quay?" he suggested.

"G'zammin! That boy has forgotten all about them, I'll be bound. I'll
take the cart down myself."

"I'll go with you."

When they got back with the box and bag, which no one had touched since
they were dropped on to the platform four hours before, they found that
Nance and Bernel had got home and gone off to bed, having taken
advantage of being across in Sark to call on some of their friends
there.

Gard wondered how they would have fared if they had happened to be on
the Coupee when the white horse went thundering across.

He dreamed that night that he was cautiously treading an endless white
path that swung up and down in the darkness like a piece of ribbon in a
breeze. And a great white horse came plunging at him out of the
darkness, and just as he gave himself up for lost, a sweet firm face in
a black sun-bonnet appeared suddenly in front of him, and the white
horse squealed and leaped over them and disappeared, while the stones he
had displaced went rattling down into the depths below.

CHAPTER V

HOW NANCE SHONE THROUGH HER MODEST VEILING

As soon as the old captain's time was up, Gard took up his work in the
mines with energetic hopefulness.

His hopefulness was unbounded. His energy he tempered with all the tact
and discretion his knowledge of men, and his experience in handling
them, had taught him.

His father had been lost at sea the year after his son was born. His
mother, a good and