n?"

"Well, it does seem rather odd. But why else did you come? Were you
fishing? Men will risk a great deal for fishing, I know, I have seen
that in Norway."

"Why do you pretend not to understand, Miss Fregelius? You must know
perfectly well that I came to look for you."

"Indeed," she answered candidly, "I knew nothing of the sort. How did
you find out that I was still on the ship, or that the ship was still
above water? And even if you knew both, why should you risk your life
just on the faint chance of rescuing a girl whom you never saw?"

"I can't quite tell you; but your father in his delirium muttered some
words which made me suspect the truth, and a sailor who could speak
a little bad French said that the Trondhjem was lost upon some rocks.
Well, these are the only rocks about here; and as the whole story was
too vague to carry to the lifeboat people I thought that I would come to
look. So you see it is perfectly simple."

"So simple, Mr. Monk, that I do not understand it in the least. You must
have known the risks, for you asked no one to share them--the risks that
are so near and real;" and, shivering visibly, she looked at the grey
combers seething past them, and the wind-torn horizon beyond. "Yet,
you--you who have ties, faced all this on the chance of saving a
stranger."

"Please, please," broke in Morris. "At any rate, you see, it was a happy
inspiration."

"Yes, for me, perhaps--but for you! Oh, if it should end in your being
taken away from the world before your time, from the world and the lady
who--what then?"

Morris winced; then he said: "God's will be done. But although we may be
in danger, we are not dead yet; not by a long way."

"She would hate me whose evil fortune it was to draw you to death, and
in life or out of it I should never forgive myself--never! never!" and
she covered her eyes with her cold, wet hand and sighed.

"Why should you grieve over what you cannot help?" asked Morris gently.

"I cannot quite explain to you," she answered; "but the thought of it
seems so sad."

CHAPTER X

DAWN AND THE LAND

A day, a whole day, spent upon that sullen, sunless waste of water,
with the great waves bearing them onwards in one eternal, monotonous
procession, till at length they grew dizzy with looking at them, and
the ceaseless gale piping in their ears. Long ago they had lost sight of
land; even the tall church towers built by our ancestors as beacons
on this stormy coast h