as quiet outside--too quiet,
to ears accustomed to the wind which forever sings across the islands,
even on summer days, mingling its whispers and soft murmurings with the
hum of the distant tide-races. But while they wondered, Mr. Rogers's
figure grew vague and amorphous in a cloud of fog that drifted past him
into the passage. The light in his lantern had turned to a weak flame
of yellow, and seemed on the point of dying out.

"Ahoy, there! Is that Mr. Rogers?" called a thin voice out of the
night.

"Ahoy! Mr. Rogers, it is. What's wrong?"

"Thank God I've found you!" The voice sounded suddenly quite close at
hand, and a man blundered against the doorstep.

"Eh?"--the others saw Mr. Rogers give back in astonishment--"The Lord
Proprietor?"

"Safe and sound, too, by Heaven's mercy," said the Lord Proprietor,
plucking off his peaked cap and shaking the water from it. He carried a
lantern, and his jacket and loose trousers of yellow oilskin shone with
the wet like a suit of mail. "All the way from Inniscaw I've come, in
the gig. Peter Hicks and old Abe pulled me, and the Lord knows where we
made land or what has become of them. Man, there's a vessel ashore--a
liner, they say! Didn't you hear the gun a minute since?"

"Yes, yes; but where is she?"

"That's more than I know. Somewhere among the Off Islands; on the
Terrier, maybe, or the Hell-meadows. All I can tell you is that old Abe
brought the news to the Priory, almost three hours ago: his son-in-law,
young Ashbran, had seen her in a lift of the fog--a powerful steamship
with two funnels and a broad white band upon each. She hadn't struck
when he saw her; but she was nosing into an infernal mess of rocks, and
the light closing down fast. I didn't see Ashbran himself; Abe believed
he had put across to warn your men. But as the old man couldn't swear
to it I told him to get out the gig and fetch Peter Hicks, and so we
started."

"I'm wondering why those men of mine haven't brought me warning.
Ashbran can't have reached them."

"He started late, belike, and lost his way in the fog; or it's even
possible--though you won't believe it--that your men started to find
you and have lost themselves. My good sir, you never knew such a fog!"

"Yet I left word with the chief boatman," mused Mr. Rogers. "He knows
perfectly well where I am."

"Does he?" said the Lord Proprietor. "Then it's more than I do. What
house is this?"

"Why, Fossell's. Good Lord! didn't you know