or the hut of Marianne. Before she knew it, she was well out on
the treacherous mud, slipping and sinking. She had no longer the
strength now to pull her tired feet out. Twice she sank in the slime
above her knees. She tried to go back but the mud had become ooze--she
was sinking--she screamed--she was gone and she knew it. Then she
slipped and fell on her face in a glaze of water from the incoming tide.
At this instant some one shouted back, but she did not hear.

It was Marianne.

It was she who had moored the boat with the lantern and was on her way
back to her hut when she heard a woman scream twice. She stopped as
suddenly as if she had been shot at, straining her eyes in the direction
the sound came from--she knew that there was no worse spot in the bay, a
semi-floating solution of mud veined with quicksand. She knew, too, how
far the incoming tide had reached, for she had just left it at her bare
heels by way of a winding narrow causeway with a hard shell bottom that
led to the marsh. She did not call for help, for she knew what lay
before her and there was not a second to lose. The next instant, she had
sprung out on the treacherous slime, running for a life in the
fast-deepening glaze of water.

"Lie down!" she shouted. Then her feet touched a solid spot caked with
shell and grass. Here she halted for an instant to listen--a choking
groan caught her ear.

"Lie down!" she shouted again and sprang forward. She knew the knack of
running on that treacherous slime.

She leapt to a patch of shell and listened again. The woman was choking
not ten yards ahead of her, almost within reach of a thin point of
matted grass running back of the marsh, and there she found her, and she
was still breathing. With her great strength she slid her to the point
of grass. It held them both. Then she lifted her bodily in her arms,
swung her on her back and ran splashing knee-deep in water to solid
ground.

"_Sacre bon Dieu!_" she sobbed as she staggered with her burden. "_C'est
ma belle petite!_"

* * * * *

For weeks Yvonne lay in the hut of the worst vagabond of Pont du Sable.
So did a mite of humanity with black eyes who cried and laughed when he
pleased. And Marianne fished for them both, alone and single-handed,
wrenching time and time again comforts from the sea, for she would
allow no one to go near them, not even such old friends as Monsieur le
Cure and myself--that old hag, with her cle