rate further into the spirit. Also I found it
harder to identify them--at least to believe steadfastly the
identifications that I made.

We hadn't heard a beginning of the sounds when we had listened from the
verandas. They had been muffled there, dim and hushed, but here they
seemed to speak just in your ear. Sea-birds called and shrieked, owls
uttered their mournful complaints, brush cracked and rustled as little,
eager-eyed furry things crept through. Once I started and the gun leaped
upward in my arms as some great sea-fish, likely a tarpon, leaped and
splashed just beyond the rock wall.

"What is it, Killdare?" Weldon called. His voice was sharp and urgent.

"Some fish jumped, that was all," I answered. And again the silence
dropped down.

The tide-waves burst with ever-increasing fury. The stars were ever
brighter, and their companies ever larger, in the deep, violet spaces of
the sky. The hours passed. The lights in the great colonial house behind
us winked out, one by one.

There was no consolation in glancing at my watch. It served to make the
time pass more slowly. The hour drew to midnight, after a hundred years
or so of waiting; the night had passed its apex and had begun its swift
descent to dawn. And all at once the thickets rustled and stirred behind
me.

No man can be blamed for whipping about, startled in the last, little
nerve, in such a moment as this. Some one was hastening down to the
shore of the lagoon--some one that walked lightly, yet with eagerness. I
could even hear the long, wet grass lashing against her ankles.

"Who is it?" I asked quietly.

"Edith," some one answered from the gloom.

Many important things in life are forgotten, and small ones kept; and my
memory will harbor always the sound of that girlish voice, so clear and
full in the darkness. Though she spoke softly her whole self was
reflected in the tone. It was sweet, tender, perhaps even a little
startled and fearful. In a moment she was at my side.

"What do you mean by coming here alone?" I demanded.

"The phone rang--in the upper corridor," she told me almost
breathlessly. "The negroes were afraid to answer it. I went--and it was
a telegram for you. I thought I'd better bring it--it was only two
hundred yards, and four men here. You're not angry, are you?"

No man could be angry at such a time; and she handed me a written copy
of the message she had received over the wire. I scratched a match, saw
her pretty, sob