d reached
him. He still listened, with a growing distrust of the darkness. Another
moment, and there came a sound from the invisible shore. Far and faint
from the beach below, a long cry moaned through the silence. Then all
was still once more.

In sudden alarm, he stepped forward to descend to the beach, and to
call to her. Before he could cross the path, footsteps rapidly advancing
caught his ear. He waited an instant, and the figure of a man passed
quickly along the walk between him and the sea. It was too dark to
discern anything of the stranger's face; it was only possible to see
that he was a tall man--as tall as that officer in the merchant-service
whose name was Kirke.

The figure passed on northward, and was instantly lost to view. Captain
Wragge crossed the path, and, advancing a few steps down the beach,
stopped and listened again. The crash of footsteps on the shingle caught
his ear once more. Slowly, as the sound had left him, that sound now
came back. He called, to guide her to him. She came on till he could
just see her--a shadow ascending the shingly slope, and growing out of
the blackness of the night.

"You alarmed me," he whispered, nervously. "I was afraid something had
happened. I heard you cry out as if you were in pain."

"Did you?" she said, carelessly. "I _was_ in pain. It doesn't
matter--it's over now."

Her hand mechanically swung something to and fro as she answered him.
It was the little white silk bag which she had always kept hidden in
her bosom up to this time. One of the relics which it held--one of the
relics which she had not had the heart to part with before--was gone
from its keeping forever. Alone, on a strange shore, she had torn from
her the fondest of her virgin memories, the dearest of her virgin hopes.
Alone, on a strange shore, she had taken the lock of Frank's hair from
its once-treasured place, and had cast it away from her to the sea and
the night.

CHAPTER II.

THE tall man who had passed Captain Wragge in the dark proceeded rapidly
along the public walk, struck off across a little waste patch of ground,
and entered the open door of the Aldborough Hotel. The light in the
passage, falling full on his face as he passed it, proved the truth of
Captain Wragge's surmise, and showed the stranger to be Mr. Kirke, of
the merchant service.

Meeting the landlord in the passage, Mr. Kirke nodded to him with the
familiarity of an old customer. "Have you got the paper?"