his coat and hat, and, with all the precaution
of a thief, unlocked the front door and stole out into the storm.

PART II.

THE GRAVE.

PART II.

THE GRAVE.

In the morning the storm was still fierce. Clouds streamed across a sky
that bent lower and lower towards the aspiring sea blanched with foam.
There was little light, and the Rectory parlour looked grim and wintry
when Sir Graham and Uniacke met there at breakfast time. The clergyman
was pale and seemed strangely discomforted and at first unable to be
natural. He greeted his guest with a forcible, and yet flickering, note
of cheerfulness, abrupt and unsympathetic, as he sat down behind the
steaming coffee-pot. The painter scarcely responded. He was still
attentive to the storm. He ate very little.

"You slept?" asked Uniacke presently.

"Only for a short time towards dawn. I sat at my window most of the
night."

"At your window?" Uniacke said uneasily.

"Yes. Somebody--a man--I suppose it must have been the Skipper--came out
from the shadow of this house soon after I went to my bedroom, and stole
to that grave by the churchyard wall."

"Really," said Uniacke. "Did he stay there?"

"For some time, bending down. It seemed to me as if he were at some
work, some task--or perhaps he was only praying in his mad way, poor
fellow!"

"Praying--yes, yes, very likely. A little more coffee?"

"No, thank you. The odd thing was that after a while he ceased and
returned to this house. One might have thought it was his home."

"You could not see if it was the Skipper?"

"No, the figure was too vague in the faint stormy light. But it must
have been he. Who else would be out at such a time in such a night?"

"He never heeds the weather," said Uniacke.

His pale face had suddenly flushed scarlet, and he felt a pricking as of
needles in his body. It seemed to him that he was transparent like a
thing of glass, and that his guest must be able to see not merely the
trouble of his soul, but the fact that was its cause. And the painter
did now begin to observe his host's unusual agitation.

"And you--your night?" he asked.

"I did not sleep at all," said Uniacke quickly, telling the truth with a
childish sense of relief, "I was excited."

"Excited!" said Sir Graham.

"The unwonted exercise of conversation. You forget that I am generally a
lonely man," said the clergyman, once more drawn into the sin of
subterfuge, and scorching in it almost like a