still, looking at Sir Graham, who was
half concealed by the fluttering curtains.

"He is just where I stood?" Uniacke asked.

"Yes."

"Then he is watching."

"By a grave?"

"Yes. Only one of his crew ever gained the land. He gained it--a corpse.
He is buried by that wall. I was reading the inscription upon his
tombstone, and wondering--"

"Wondering? Yes?"

"Where he is, how he is now, far away from the voice of the sea which
took his life, the wind which roared his requiem."

"Poor man! You were here when he was washed up on the beach?"

"Yes. I buried him. The Skipper--sane then, though in terrible
grief--was able to identify him, to follow the drowned body as chief
mourner, to choose the inscription for the stone."

"What was it?" asked Sir Graham, without curiosity, idly, almost
absently.

"'Lead, kindly light.' He would have that put. I think he had heard the
boy sing it, or whistle the tune of it, at sea one day."

"The boy? It was a boy then?"

"Yes."

The clergyman spoke with a certain hesitation, a sudden diffidence. He
looked at the painter, and an abrupt awkwardness, almost a
shamefacedness, crept into his manner, even showed itself in his
attitude. The painter did not seem to be aware of it. He was still
engrossed in his own sorrow, his own morbid reflections. He looked out
again in the night.

"Poor faithful watch-dog," he murmured.

Then he turned away from the window.

"The Skipper does not wait for that boy," he said. "He knows at least
that he can never come to him from the sea."

"Strangely--no. Indeed, he always looks for the boy first."

"First, do you say? Was it so to-night?"

Again Uniacke hesitated. He was on the verge of telling a lie, but
conscience intervened.

"Yes," he said.

"Didn't he speak of little Jack?" said Sir Graham slowly, and with a
sudden nervous spasm of the face.

"Yes, Sir Graham."

"That's curious."

"Why?"

"The same name--my wonder-child's name."

"And the name of a thousand children."

"Of course, of course. And--and, Uniacke, the other name, the other name
upon that tomb?"

"What other name?"

"Why--why the surname. What is that?"

The painter was standing close to the clergyman and staring straight
into his eyes. For a moment Uniacke made no reply. Then he answered
slowly:

"There is no other name."

"Why not?"

"Why--the--the Skipper would only have Jack put, that was all. Jack--he
was the boy on the schooner 'Flying Fi