t afraid
for Molly. She's such a child . . . and no mother to hold the reins."

"Doctor Dick, would you consider it impertinent if--if I laid my hands
on the reins--just now and then?"

He whirled round, his eyes shining with gratitude.

"Impertinent! I should be illimitably thankful! You can see how things
are--I am compelled to be out all my time, my wife hardly ever leaves
her own rooms, and Molly and the house affairs just get along as best
they can."

"Then," said Sara, smiling, "I shall put my finger in the pie. I've--I've
no one to look after now, since Uncle Patrick died," she added. "I
think, Doctor Dick, I've found my job."

"It's absurd!" he exclaimed, regarding her with unfeigned delight. "Here
you come along, prepared, no doubt, to be treated as a 'guest,' and the
first thing I do is to shovel half my troubles on to your shoulders.
It's absurd--disgraceful! . . . But it's amazingly good!" He held out
his hand, and as Sara's slim fingers slid into his big palm, he muttered
a trifle huskily: "God bless you for it, my dear!"

CHAPTER VII

TRESPASS

Sara stood on the great headland known as Monk's Cliff, watching with
delight the white-topped billows hurling themselves against its mighty
base, only to break in a baulked fury of thunder and upflung spray.

She had climbed the steep ascent thither on more than one day of storm
and bluster, reveling in the buffeting of the gale and in the pungent
tang of brine from the spray-drenched air. The cry of the wind,
shrieking along the face of the sea-bitten cliff, reminded her of
the scream of the hurricane as it tore through the pinewoods at
Barrow--shaking their giant tops hither and thither as easily as a
child's finger might shake a Canterbury bell.

Something wild and untamed within her responded to the savage movement
of the scene, and she stood for a long time watching the expanse
of restless, wind-tossed waters, before turning reluctantly in the
direction of home. If for nothing else than for this gift of glorious
sea and cliff, she felt she could be content to pitch her tent in
Monkshaven indefinitely.

Her way led past Far End, the solitary house perched on the sloping side
of the headland, and, as she approached, she became aware of a curious
change of character in the sound of the wind. She was sheltered now
from its fiercest onslaught, and it seemed to her that it rose and
fell, moaning in strange, broken cadences, almost like the singing