ious
destiny it must be to have something to say that the whole world is
listening for, and to be able to say it in words that will live
forever! It must be the noblest human lot."

"Yet some of those men and women were neither good nor noble," said
Reeves gently, "and many of them were unhappy."

Helen dismissed the subject as abruptly as she always did when the
conversation touched too nearly on the sensitive edge of her soul
dreams.

"Do you know where I am taking you today?" she said.

"No--where?"

"To what the people here call the Kelpy's Cave. I hate to go there. I
believe there is something uncanny about it, but I think you will like
to see it. It is a dark little cave in the curve of a small cove, and
on each side the headlands of rock run far out. At low tide we can
walk right around, but when the tide comes in it fills the Kelpy's
Cave. If you were there and let the tide come past the points, you
would be drowned unless you could swim, for the rocks are so steep and
high it is impossible to climb them."

Reeves was interested.

"Was anyone ever caught by the tide?"

"Yes," returned Helen, with a shudder. "Once, long ago, before I was
born, a girl went around the shore to the cave and fell asleep
there--and the tide came in and she was drowned. She was young and
very pretty, and was to have been married the next week. I've been
afraid of the place ever since."

The treacherous cave proved to be a picturesque and innocent-looking
spot, with the beach of glittering sand before it and the high gloomy
walls of rock on either hand.

"I must come here some day and sketch it," said Reeves
enthusiastically, "and you must be the Kelpy, Helen, and sit in the
cave with your hair wrapped about you and seaweed clinging to it."

"Do you think a kelpy would look like that?" said the girl dreamily.
"I don't. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and
mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches for victims."

"Well, never mind your sea kelpies," Reeves said, fishing out his
Longfellow. "They are a tricky folk, if all tales be true, and it is
supposed to be a very rash thing to talk about them in their own
haunts. I want to read you 'The Building of the Ship.' You will like
it, I'm sure."

When the tide turned they went home.

"We haven't seen the kelpy, after all," said Reeves.

"I think I shall see him some day," said Helen gravely. "I think he is
waiting for me there in that gloomy ca