ou? Not yourself?"

Uniacke was surprised by this remark. It did not fit in precisely with
his conception of his guest's mind, so far as he had formed one.

"Such an idea never occurred to me," he said. "Do you believe that such
an absolute certainty could be put into a man's mind then, without a
reason, a scrap of evidence, a hint to eye, or ear?"

"I don't know. I--I want to know."

"That someone's dead?"

"That someone is not dead. How loud the sea is getting!"

"It always sounds much like that at night in winter."

"Does the winter not seem very long to you up here quite alone?"

"Oh, yes."

"And monotonous?"

"Often. But we have times of keen excitement, of violent, even of
exhausting activity. I have had to rush from the pulpit up to my
shoulders in the sea."

"A wreck?"

"Yes, there have been many. There was the schooner 'Flying Fish.' She
broke up when I was holding service one December morning. Only the
skipper was saved alive. And he--"

"What of him?"

"He went what the people here call 'silly' from the shock--not directly.
It came on him gradually. He would not leave the island. He would never
trust the sea again."

"So he's here still?"

"Yes."

Just then the two plaintive bells of the church began to ring on the
wind.

"There he is!" Uniacke said.

"Where?"

"He's our bell-ringer. It's the only thing he takes any pleasure in,
ringing the bells for church and at nightfall. I let him do it, poor
fellow. He's got a queer idea into his brain that his drowned mates will
hear the bells some night and make the land, guided by the sound. When
the darkness falls he always rings for a full hour."

"How strange! How terrible!"

They sat by the fire listening to the pathetic chime of the two bells,
whose voices were almost hidden in the loud sea voices that enveloped
the little island with their cries. Presently the painter shifted in his
armchair.

"There is something--I--there is something very eerie to me in the sound
of those two bells now I know why they are ringing, and who is ringing
them," he said, with a slight irritation. "Don't you find they affect
your nerves at all?"

"No. I like to hear them. They tell me that one poor creature is happy.
The Skipper--all we Island folk call him so--believes he will bring his
mates safe to shore some day. And each time he sets those bells going he
thinks the happy hour is perhaps close at hand."

"Poor fellow! And he is summoning the dr