s well to get out
a little now. Rosalind was glad of the sweet air off the sea, for the
night still hung about her. The tension of it was on her still, for
all that she counted herself so much the better, so much the safer,
for that interview with Gerry. But oh, what a thing to think that
now he knew _her_ as she had known him from the beginning! How much
they would have to tell each other, when once they were well in calm
water!... Why were those girls running, and why did that young man on
the beach below shout to some one who followed him, "It's over at the
pier"?

"Is anything the matter?" She asked the question of a very old man,
whom she knew well by sight, who was hurrying his best in the same
direction. But his best was but little, as speed, though it did credit
to his age; for old Simon was said to be in his hundredth year.
Rosalind walked easily beside him as he answered:

"I oondersta'and, missis, there's been a fall from the pier-head....
Oh yes, they've getten un out; ye may easy your mind o' that." But,
for all that, Rosalind wasn't sorry her party were up at the hotel.
She had believed them there long enough to have forgotten that she
had no reason for the belief to speak of.

"You've no idea who it is?"

"Some do say a lady and a gentleman." Rosalind felt still gladder of
her confidence that Sally and Gerry were out of the way. "'Ary one of
'em would be bound to drown but for the boats smart and handy--barring
belike a swimmer like your young lady! She's a rare one, to tell of!"

"I believe she is. She swam round the Cat Buoy in a worse sea than
this two days ago."

"And she would, too!" Then the old boy's voice changed as he went on,
garrulous: "But there be seas, missis, no man can swim in. My fower
boys, they were fine swimmers--all fower!"

"But were they?..." Rosalind did not like to say drowned; but old
Simon took it as spoken.

"All fower of 'em--fine lads all--put off to the wreck--wreck o' th'
brig Thyrsis, on th' Goodwins--and ne'er a one come back. And I had
the telling of it to their mother. And the youngest, he never was
found; and the others was stone dead ashore, nigh on to the Foreland.
There was none to help. Fifty-three year ago come this Michaelmas."

"Is their mother still living?" Rosalind asked, interested. Old Simon
had got to that stage in which the pain of the past is less than
the pleasure of talking it over. "Died, she did," said he, almost as
though he were unconce