let's run,
who knows if I can burst open the door, if I won't see the devil. I
would wish it, for my part! There'd be a chance to tell him what one
thinks of him."

Her words wandered away into the night, for the girls, with cries of
horror, had fled as if evil spirits pursued them.

With a mocking laugh, Ellenor hurried on, then gradually she
slackened her pace. At last, she groped her way forward with
outstretched hands, for it was horribly dark. Presently she touched
the rough stone wall of some building and stopped and listened. Not
a sound but the wild roar of the waves below the cliffs and the
gradual lulling of the wind. She groped along the wall, till her
hands fell a little lower, to a different surface. It was a short
wooden door. She pushed against it, gently, but it did not yield.
She felt it across and up and down. There was no latch and she could
find no keyhole. Again she pushed, this time with all her strength.
Jerking suddenly, the door opened inwards, and Ellenor, leaning
against it, fell forward over the high threshold into pitch
darkness. She felt a blinding blow and a sickening pain, and then
she lost consciousness.

When she came to herself she was first aware of a heavily beamed
cobwebbed roof, of a dim lantern beside her, of the stifling
nearness of kegs and bales and boxes, and then of a very familiar
figure kneeling beside her on one knee.

The man's face that peered into hers was handsome in a heavy
undeveloped way. Eyes as grey as hers and as sombre scowled from
underneath dark brows and a dark thatch of hair. His sullen mouth,
set in a hard angry line, was the finest feature of a clean-shaven
face.

"You little fool!" he half whispered, "what on earth, or in hell,
has made you come meddling here, I'd like to know! I've nearly
killed you!"

With his coarse pocket handkerchief he mopped up the blood that was
flowing from a cut on her head.

"How did you nearly kill me?" she asked, "what harm have I done?"

"You've come sneaking in here, and in this darkness, and I hit you
when you banged open the door. It seems you were falling over the
doorstep. You're pretty pale, my girl, but I believe I know your
face. Aren't you from Les Casquets?"

"I'm Ellenor Cartier, yes. And you--you're Monsieur Le Mierre, from
Orvilliere."

He scowled and looked for a minute as if he meditated another
blow--then he swore roundly in the Norman-French that he and all the
islanders spoke.

"How the d