ve.

Eagerly, hopefully they talked of his arrival as they sat scanning the
ocean toward Katleean. The soft breeze died away. The sea took on the
smooth shimmer of undulating satin. From afternoon down to sunset the
day grew in beauty.

Time went by and the passing of each hour lessened somewhat the measure
of their blind faith and hope. Their talk became desultory. The blue
and silver of afternoon gave way to the blue and gold of approaching
evening. The tide came in and the amber sky took on the luminous tints
of rose and jade, cobalt and orange. The heaving, chameleon sea,
unruffled by a breath of wind, gave back the colors quivering,
burnished, opalescent, like the bowl of an abalone shell. They, on the
Lookout, felt themselves alone inside the tinted bubble of the world.
Ellen's day was waning in an enthralling splendor that rendered the
watchers speechless; it numbed them by its exquisite beauty so
incongruous with their own growing sense of hopelessness. Ellen's day
was waning, and yet there was no sign of Shane.

From the pole on the Lookout the home-made flag hung in pathetic
bleached tatters, like lifeless grey hair down the back of an old
woman. Beneath it, on driftwood left over from the signal fires, sat
the watchers. A faint breath from the dead ashes mingled with the
freshness of the evening air and added an indefinable touch of
loneliness. Little Loll, tired out from his long, vain watching,
curled up against Ellen's knee and went to sleep. Shags, dark and
witch-like against the glowing sky, flew in long, low lines toward the
cliffs. There was no sound except the eternal murmur of the surf.

The opal tints deepened, . . . then faded to a dull amethyst. Just
above the line of the sea the blood-red sun stood out against the haze
like an immense weirdly-luminous balloon. The women watched it
sinking, . . . sinking. It seemed pregnant with awesome, universal
mysteries--this dully-growing crimson ball of the sun whose descent
marked the close of the day.

"Oh, Jeanie, Jeanie!" Suddenly the low cry quivered on the hush of the
night. Ellen's brave spirit had succumbed at last to the awful,
beautiful, loneliness. She sank her head on her sister's shoulder and
clasping her arms about Jean, vainly tried to still the surge of grief
that shook her.

"Jeanie!" she sobbed. "He's dead. Shane--my husband--is dead! If--if
he were living--he would have come--to me--today!"

The tattered fla