aster for a minute or so without remark. At last he said abruptly--

"Pleasant dreams to 'ee, sir: an' two knacks 'pon the floor ef I be
wanted. Good-night, sir." And with this he was gone.

Mr. Fogo stood for some moments listening to his footsteps as they
shuffled down the stairs. Then with a sigh he turned to his
writing-case, pulled a straw-bottomed chair before the rickety table,
and sat for a while, pen in hand, pondering.

Before he had finished, his candle was low in its socket, and the
floor around him littered with scraps of torn paper. He sealed the
envelope, blew out the candle, and stepped to the window.

"I wonder if she has changed," he said to himself.

Outside, the summer moon had risen above the hill facing him, and the
near half of the creek was ablaze with silver. The old schooner
still lay in shadow, but the water rushing from her hold kept a
perpetual music. Other sounds there were none but the soft rustling
of the swallows in the eaves overhead, the sucking of the tide
upon the beach below, and the whisper of night among the elms.
The air was heavy with the fragrance of climbing roses and all the
scents of the garden. In such an hour Nature is half sad and wholly
tender.

Mr. Fogo lit a pipe, and, watching its fumes as they curled out upon
the laden night, fell into a kingly melancholy. He dwelt on his
past, but without resentment; on Tamsin, but with less trouble of
heart. After all, what did it matter? Mr. Fogo, leaning forward on
the window-seat, came to a conclusion to which others have been led
before him--that life is a small thing. Oddly enough, this
discovery, though it belittled his fellowmen considerably, did not
belittle the thinker at all, or rather affected him with a very
sublime humility.

"When one thinks," said he, "that the moon will probably rise ten
million times over the hill yonder on such a night as this, it
strikes one that woman-hating is petty, not to say a trifle fatuous."

He puffed awhile in silence, and then went on--

"The strange part of it is, that the argument does not seem to affect
Tamsin as much as I should have fancied."

He paused for a moment, and added:

"Or to prove as conclusively as I should expect that I am a fool.
Possibly if I see Geraldine to-morrow, she will prove it more
satis--"

He broke off to clutch the lattice, and stare with rigid eyes across
the creek.

For the moon was by this time high enough to fling a ray upo