e ordinary swimming. He looked around and saw the one other
implement which had been necessary to complete the strange outfit; it,
too, was a thing of ordinary appearance and use: a long pole or poker,
with a handle at one end and a small flat bar at the other, a thing
used for arranging the fire in the deep brick ovens that were still in
use at the older farmsteads. It was about six feet long. The woman,
seeing his attention directed to it, took it eagerly and showed how it
might be used, drawing him with her to the aperture over the shore and
pointing out eagerly the landmarks by which she knew how far the shallow
water extended at certain times of the tide. Her topographical knowledge
of all the sea's bed within about a mile of the high-water mark was
extraordinarily minute, and Caius listened to the information she poured
upon him, only now beginning to realize that she expected him to wear
the dress, and take the iron pole, and slip from the old cellar into the
tide when it rose high enough, and from thence bring back the girl with
the soft curls and the golden ring. It was one of those moments in which
laughter and tears meet, but there was a glamour of such strange fantasy
over the scene that Caius felt, not so much its humour or its pathos, as
its fairy-like unreality, and that which gave him the sense of unreality
was that to his companion it was intensely real.

"You said you would go." Some perception of his hesitation must have
come to her; her words were strong with insistence and wistful with
reproach. "You said you would go and fetch her in to me before I die."

Then Caius put back the dress she held on the rusty peg where it had
hung for so long.

"I am a man," he said. "I can swim without life-preservers. I will go
and try to bring the girl back to you. But not now, not from here; it
will take me a week to go and come, for I know that she lives far away
in the middle of the deep gulf. Come back to the house and take care of
yourself, so that you may live until she comes. You may trust me. I will
certainly bring her to you if she's alive and if she can come."

With these promises and protestations he prevailed upon the poor woman
to return with him to her lonely home.

Caius had not got far on his road home, when he met Day coming from the
village. Caius was full of his determination to go for Josephine by the
next trip of the small steamer. His excuse was valid; he could paint the
interview from whi