l me?" she gasped.

He swung up his lantern. Her eyes were wide with a kind of horror; and
yet she seemed to be laughing, or ready to laugh.

"Tell you?" he echoed.

"Oh, but it was unkind!"

"But--but, excuse me--what on earth----"

"Why, that you were entertaining ladies!"

"Ladies!"

She nodded, still round-eyed, reproachful. "Two of them--sitting on
your sofa! And, I think--I rather think--one of them is Miss Gabriel!"

CHAPTER VII

TRIBULATIONS OF MRS. POPE AND MISS GABRIEL

"We have only to keep straight on," said Miss Gabriel.

"Ye-es," said Mrs. Pope, less hardily. "I really think the gentlemen
might have waited for us."

"For aught they know," said Miss Gabriel, "it's a matter of life and
death. And we cannot be more than two hundred yards from our own
gates."

"In my opinion," persisted Mrs. Pope, who was apt to turn peevish when
frightened, "a man's first duty is to look after his own."

"Is it?" snapped Miss Gabriel, herself no coward. "Well, you must argue
that out with Mr. Pope, if you haven't made up your minds about it by
this time. For my part, I never wanted a man to look after me, I thank
the Lord."

"It would have been more gallant, and that you must allow." Mrs. Pope
stuck to her point (which is a capital thing to do in a fog), but only
to let it go abruptly a moment later. "Besides," she added, "my new cap
is no better than a pulp already. I can feel it. Sopping isn't the
word."

"Fiddlestick!" said Miss Gabriel. "You and your cap!" She, herself, was
not frightened, only a little nervous. "If you ask me, it's better you
were thinking of those poor souls out on the rocks yonder. Little
enough they'll be thinking, just now, of such things as caps!"

"Of course," hazarded Mrs. Pope, after they had groped their way
forward for twenty paces or so, "if you are quite certain where we
are----"

"We are among the Islands," said Miss Gabriel, tartly, feeling the
roadway with the edge of her shoe, for her sole had just encountered
turf; "and this is one. My dear Charlotte, if you could refrain from
bumping into me at the precise moment when I am standing on one
leg----"

"How can I help it, in this darkness?" whimpered Mrs. Pope.
"Besides"--with sudden spirit--"if you want to stand on one leg, I
shouldn't have thought this the time or the place."

"T'cht!" said Miss Gabriel, striding forward with gathering confidence;
but at the seventh stride or so a sharp exclamation esca