fficulty in the way of
a reference to Peter Burtenshaw at the new docks at Southampton. Then
she felt a qualm of added sickness at heart as she all but thought,
"How that will amuse Sally when I come to tell it to her!"

The old Scotchman had to keep an appointment--connected with birth,
not death. "I've geen my pledge to the wench's husband," he said, and
went his way. Rosalind saw him stopped as he walked through the groups
that were lingering silently for a chance of good news; and guessed
that he had none to give, by the way his questioners fell back
disappointed. She was conscious that the world was beginning to reel
and swim about her; was half asking herself what could it all
mean--the waiting crowds of fisher-folk speaking in undertones among
themselves; the pitying eyes fixed on her and withdrawn as they met
her own; the fixed pallor and tense speech of the man who held her
hand, then left her to return again to an awful task that had, surely,
something to do with her Sally, there in that cramped tarred-wood
structure close down upon the beach. What did his words mean: "I must
go back; it is best for you to keep away"? Oh, yes; now she knew, and
it was all true. She saw how right he was, but she read in his eyes
the reason why he was so strong to face the terror that she knew was
_there_--in _there_! It was that he knew so well that death would be
open to him if defeat was to be the end of the battle he was fighting.
But there should be no panic. Not an inch of ground should be
uncontested.

Back again in the little cottage with Gerry, but some one had helped
her back. Surely, though, his voice had become his own again as he
said: "We are no use, Rosey darling. We are best here. Conrad knows
what he's about." And there was a rally of real hope, or a bold bid
for it, when his old self spoke in his words: "Why does that solemn
old fool of a Scotch doctor want to put such a bad face on the matter?
Patience, sweetheart, patience!"

For them there was nothing else. They could hinder, but they could not
help, outside there. Nothing for it now but to count the minutes as
they passed, to feel the cruelty of that inexorable clock in the
stillness; for the minutes passed too quickly. How could it be else,
when each one of them might have heralded a hope and did not; when
each bequeathed its little legacy of despair? But was there need
that each new clock-tick as it came should say, as the last had said:
"Another seco