at any
rate. I want to rest, I want to work with my hands, to grow my muscles
again, to feel my strength, to believe that there is something effective
in the world I can do. I have had a shock, a disappointment,--call it
what you like."

The old man Nicholls nodded deliberately.

"Well," he pronounced, "it's a big change to make. I never thought of
help in the yard before. When there's been more than I could do, I've
just let it go. Come for a week on trial, Leonard Tavernake. If we are
of any use to one another, we shall soon know of it."

The girl, who had been looking out into the night, came back.

"You are making a mistake, Mr. Tavernake," she said. "You are too young
and strong to have finished your battle."

He looked at her steadily and sighed. It was only too obvious that hers
had been fought and lost.

"Perhaps," he replied softly, "you are right. Perhaps it is only the
rest I want. We shall see."

CHAPTER II. THE SIMPLE LIFE

So Tavernake became a boat-builder. Summer passed into winter and this
hamlet by the sea seemed, indeed, as though it might have been one of
the forgotten spots upon the earth. Save for that handful of cottages,
the two farmhouses a few hundred yards inland, and the deserted Hall
half-hidden in its grove of pine trees, there was no dwelling-place
nor any sign of human habitation for many miles. For eight hours a day
Tavernake worked, mostly out of doors, in the little yard which hung
over the beach. Sometimes he rested from his labors and looked seaward,
looked around him as though rejoicing in that unbroken solitude, the
emptiness of the gray ocean, the loneliness of the land behind. What
things there were which lay back in the cells of his memory, no person
there knew, for he spoke of his past to no one, not even to Ruth. He
was a good workman, and he lived the simple life of those others without
complaint or weariness. There was nothing in his manner to denote that
he had been used to anything else. The village had accepted him without
question. It was only Ruth who still, gravely but kindly enough,
disapproved of his presence.

One day she came and sat with him as he smoked his after-dinner pipe,
leaning against an overturned boat, with his eyes fixed upon that line
of gray breakers.

"You spend a good deal of your time thinking, Mr. Tavernake," she
remarked quietly.

"Too much," he admitted at once, "too much, Miss Nicholls. I should be
better employed planin