m wonder where his willing and
obedient Denasia of former days had gone.

In all essential points this story was a false one. It was indeed true
that some person had sent to the Penelles cottage a London paper, in
which there was a large picture of Denasia and the admiral dancing the
famous hornpipe. But the manner of its reception was matter of
speculation only, and the speculative had founded their tale upon the
known hastiness of John and Joan's tempers, without taking into
consideration the presence of unknown influences.

As it happened, the pictured girl was received in the St. Penfer
post-office during a storm. John had been called in the grey dawn to
the life-boat, and Joan, in spite of wind and rain, went down to the
beach with him. With a prayer in her heart, she saw him buckle on his
buoyant armour and set his pale blue oar like lance athwart his rest,
and then make straight out into the breakers that dashed and surged
around. Joan saw the boat's swift forward leaping, its downward plunge
into the trough of the sea, its perilous uplifting, its perpendicular
rearing, its dread descent. And John felt its human reel and shudder,
its desperate striving and leaping and plunging, and its sad
submission when the waters half filled it and the quivering men clung
for very life under the deluge pouring over them.

So for three hours John was face to face with awful death, and Joan on
her knees praying for his safety, and John had but just got back to
his home, and the cry of thanksgiving for her old dear's return was
yet on Joan's lips, when the postman brought the fateful newspaper.
Fortunately they did not open it at once. Joan laid it carefully aside
and brought on their belated breakfast. And as they ate it they talked
of the lives that were lost and saved. Then John smoked his pipe, and
Joan tidied up her house and sat down beside him with her knitting in
her hands. Both their hearts were solemn and tender. John felt as if
his life was a new gift to him; Joan, as if her husband's love had
some miraculous sweetness never known before. They spoke seldom and
softly, finding in their responsive silence a language beyond words.

It was, then, in this gentle mood that John reached to the shelf above
his head and took down the paper. He opened it, and Denas in her
pretty dancing dress, with her bare arms lifted above her head, looked
her father full in the face. She was laughing; she was the incarnation
of merriment