rt
was...." But he hesitated, with a puzzled look, as Rosalind caught his
arm and hung to it, crying out: "Why do you tell _me_ this? For God's
sake, speak plain! I am stronger than you think."

His answer came slowly, in an abated voice, but clearly: "Because they
tauld me ye were the girl's mither."

In the short time that had passed since Rosalind's mind first admitted
an apprehension of evil the worst possibility it had conceived was
that Vereker or her husband was in danger. No misgiving about Sally
had entered it, except so far as a swift thought followed the fear
of mishap to one of them. "How shall Sally be told of this? When and
where will she know?"

Two of the women caught her as she fell, and carried her at the Scotch
doctor's bidding into a house adjoining, where Fenwick had been
carried in a half-insensible collapse that had followed his landing
from the cobble-boat in which he was sculled ashore.

* * * * *

"Tell me what has happened. Where is Dr. Vereker?" Rosalind asks the
question of any of the fisher-folk round her as soon as returning
consciousness brings speech. They look at each other, and the woman
the cottage seems to belong to says interrogatively, "The young
doctor-gentleman?" and then answers the last question. He is looking
to the young lady in at the Coffeehouse. But no one says what has
happened. Rosalind looks beseechingly round.

"Will you not tell me now? Oh, tell me--tell me the whole!"

"It's such a little we know ourselves, ma'am. But my husband will be
here directly. It was he brought the gentleman ashore...."

"Where is the gentleman?" Rosalind has caught up the speaker with
a decisive rally. Her natural strength is returning, prompted by
something akin to desperation.

"We have him in here, ma'am. But he's bad, too! Here's my husband.
Have ye the brandy, Tom?"

Rosalind struggles to her feet from the little settee they had laid
her on. Her head is swimming, and she is sick, but she says: "Let
me come!" She has gathered this much--that whatever has happened to
Sally, Vereker is there beside her, and the other doctor she knows
of. She can do nothing, and Gerry is close at hand. They let her
come, and the woman and her husband follow. The one or two others
go quietly out; there were too many for the tiny house.

That is Gerry, she can see, on the trestle-bedstead near the window
with the flowerpots in it. He seems only half conscious, and