ning on the stranger, "could have saved
her? Oh, my dear lass! An' she would have been here the night? Here like
she used t' be? Here in her dear body? Here?" he cried, striking his
breast. "She would have lain here the night had you come afore? Oh, why
didn't you come?" he moaned. "You hold life an' death in your hands,
zur, t' give or withhold. Why didn't you come--t' give the gift o' life
t' she?"

The stranger shrank away. "Stop!" he cried, in agony. "How was I to
know?"

"Hush, father!" my sister pleaded.

In a flash of passion my father advanced upon the man. "How was you t'
know?" he burst out. "Where you been? What you been doin'? Does you hear
me?" he demanded, his voice rising with the noise of wind and rain.
"What you been doin'?"

"Stop it, man! You touch me to the quick! You don't know--you don't
know--"

"What you been doin'? We're dyin' here for want o' such as you. What you
been doin'?"

There was no answer. The stranger had covered his face with his hands.

"O God," my father cried, again appealing to Heaven, "judge this man!"

"Stop!"

It was a bitter cry--the agony sounding clear and poignant above the
manifold voices of the storm--but it won no heed.

"O God, judge this man!"

"Will no one stop him?" the stranger moaned. "For God's sake--stop
him--some one!"

"O God, judge this man!"

The stranger fled....

* * * * *

"Oh, my dear wife!" my father sobbed, at last, sinking into the great
armchair, wherein the mail-boat doctor had not sat. "Oh, my dear wife!"

"Father!" my dear sister whispered, flinging her soft arms about his
neck and pressing her cheek against his brow. "Dear father!"

And while the great gale raged, she sought to comfort my father and me,
but could not.

XI

The WOMEN at The GATE

By and by my sister put me in dry clothes, and bidding me be a good lad,
sat me in the best room below, where the maids had laid a fire. And
Skipper Tommy Lovejoy, finding me there disconsolate, took me to the
seaward hills to watch the break of day: for the rain had ceased, the
wind fallen away; and the gray light of dawn was in the eastern sky.

"I'm wantin' t' tell you, Davy," he said, in a confidential way, as we
trudged along, "about the gate o' heaven."

I took his hand.

"An' I _been_ wantin' t' tell you," he added, giving his nose a little
tweak, "for a long, long time."

"Is you?"

"Ay, lad; an' about the women at the gate