odies of two drowned men, according to the custom of the coast.
Instinctively he crossed himself, with a brief prayer for the souls of
those two, cut off from life in that evil place, where no help had
reached but the heavy knell, pitiful.

Greatly desiring the silence of the bells, if he were to escape with
life, the boy turned his eyes aloft, inclining to bespeak it. A lively
suspicion of hunger impelled decision; and up the cliff he went, his
abashed vigour fain of any new output. An uncertain path promised fairly
till half way, where a recent lapse turned him aside on to untried slopes
and ledges: a perilous ascent to any not bold and sure and practised. The
spice of danger kindled the boy's blood; he won to the top with some loss
of breath, but his head was high, and his heart was high, and ultimate
failure envisaged him no longer.

He stood among graves.

CHAPTER II

The lonely community had laid its bones to rest in a barren acre. No
flower could bloom there ever, only close, dun turf grew. Below, the
broken, unquiet sea dirged ceaselessly. The spot was in perfect keeping
with the sovereign peace of the grave; that blank, unadorned environment
of nature had the very beauty that can touch human sense with the concord
of death. The young fisher stood motionless, as if his presence were
outrage to the spirit of the silent dwellers below, so eager was he for
life, so brim with passion and play and hearty thirst for strong years of
sunshine and rain. 'Yet how so,' said his heart, 'for I too shall come to
die?'

Softly and soberly he took his way past the ranks of low mounds, and
considered his approach to the House Monitory, whose living dwellers
might be less tolerant of his trespass. For he realised that he had come
within their outer precincts unallowed. On the one hand lay a low wall
to indicate reserve; on the other he approached the base of the
bell-tower itself, and the flanks of the House Monitory. He looked up at
the walls, fully expecting to be spied and brought to rebuke; but all was
blank and quiet as among the dead outside. The tower rose sheer into the
air; for the rest, a tier of the cliff had been fashioned for habitation
by the help of masonry and some shaping and hollowing of the crude rock.
The window lights were high and rare. Except from the tower, hardly could
a glimpse below the sky-line be offered to any within.

He came upon a door, low and narrow as the entrance of a tomb. It lo