yet he slept, and, being persuaded that its
course was heavenward, ran out, seeking it. And he forgets what then he
did, save that he climbed the broken cliff behind the house, crying,
"Wait, oh, wait!" and that he came, at last, to the summit of the
Watchman, where there was a tumult of wind and rain.

"Mama!" he screamed, lifting his hands in appeal to the wide, black
sky. "You forgot t' kiss me good-bye! Oh, come back!"

He flung himself prone on the naked rock, for the soul of his mother did
not come, though patiently he had watched for the glory of its returning
flight.

"She've forgot me!" he moaned. "Oh, she've forgot me!"

* * * * *

When, trembling and bedraggled, I came again to the room where my
mother's body lay, my sister was kneeling by the bed, and my father was
in converse with a stranger, who was not like the men of our coast. "Not
necessarily mortal," this man was saying. "An operation--just a simple
operation--easily performed with what you have at hand--would have saved
the woman."

"Saved her, Doctor?" said my father passionately. "Is you sayin'
_that_?"

"I have said so. It would have saved her. Had we been wrecked five days
ago she would have been alive."

A torrent of rain beat on the house.

"Alive?" my father muttered, staring at the floor. "She would have been
alive!"

The stranger looked upon my father in pity. "I'm sorry for you, my man,"
he said.

"'Tis strange," my father muttered, still staring at the floor. "'Tis
strange--how things--comes about. Five days--just five...."

He muttered on.

"Yes," the stranger broke in, stirring nervously. "Had I come but five
days ago."

A sudden rising of the gale--the breaking of its fury--filled the room
with a dreadful confusion.

"Indeed--I'm--sorry--very sorry," the stranger stammered; his lips were
drawn; in his eyes was the flare of some tragedy of feeling.

My father did not move--but continued vacantly to stare at the floor.

"Really--you know--I am!"

"Is you?" then my father asked, looking up. "Is you sorry for me an'
Davy an' the lass?" The stranger dared not meet my father's eyes. "An'
you could have saved her," my father went on. "_You_ could have saved
her! She didn't have t' go. She died--for want o' you! God Almighty," he
cried, raising his clenched hand, "this man come too late God
Almighty--does you hear me, God Almighty?--the man you sent come too
late! An' you," he flashed, tur