ward the lake, disappeared in the
Indian celery.

There was a moment of breathless waiting; a loud report: and a
squattering and whirring as the flock flew away toward the hill. Then
Boreland, wet to the knees but grinning, appeared holding aloft three
birds. . . .

The tide had been coming in for some time, assaulting the shore with
ever nearing combers. As the party neared the bluff round which they
must pass, the wash of extra large breakers licked the base and in the
wake of each receding wave the wet sand mirrored the steep, rocky wall
above it. At such times it was necessary to wait until a wave had run
out before they could hurry to a place of safety farther on.

"I ain't no nature for this place a-tall," said Kayak Bill, when they
had safely dashed over the two hundred feet of this sort of going.
"There'd be hell a-poppin' if a fella'd get caught there in a high
tide."

"The cabin lies just beyond," Boreland announced.

The bluff sloped down to a tall bank topped with green, having a beach
below it.

Following the sands for a short distance, they turned into what had
once been a trail. The party halted looking upward to the place that
was to be their home.

A mere thread of a footpath, almost blotted out by tall grasses, led
gently up the slope for sixty yards to where, above a natural hedge of
celery blooms, a little cabin of weather-beaten drift-logs cuddled at
the foot of a steep, green hill. A porch jutted out in front,
spindling uprights supporting the slanting roof. To the right, farther
down and half hidden in the grass, lay the remains of a board shack
which had fallen in. There was a sound of trickling water in some
hidden place. The sun fell warmly in this sheltered nook, bringing out
the scent of green things; and over all was that melancholy stillness
which envelopes human dwellings long deserted.

The boom of breakers far out on the reefs was hushed to a soothing hum,
and faintly, from the reedy little lake farther down on the southward
slope came the quacking of wild ducks. To the north and south and west
lay the open sea, and as far as the eye could reach was no sight of
land.

Jean broke her wide-eyed silence with a whisper:

"It's under a spell, Ellen, sure as you live." . . . She continued
aloud: "Look at that quaint old latch on the door--made of a piece of
drift-wood. And see the-- Oh! _Shane_!" Incredulity and fear
shrilled in her voice--"Shane! Why, it's _moving