of the wife who had
killed her child! A moment more, and Day had merely turned his back,
going on with his work. Caius did not blame him; he respected the man
the more for the feeling he displayed.

Vexed with himself, and not finding how to end the interview, Caius
waited a minute, and then turned suddenly from the fence, without
knowing why he turned until he saw that the constraining force was the
presence of Day's wife, who stood at the end of the barn, out of sight
of her husband, but looking eagerly at Caius. She made a sign to him to
come. No doubt she had heard what had been said.

Caius went to her, drawn by the eagerness of her bright black eyes. Her
large form was slightly clad in a cotton gown; her abundant black hair
was fastened rather loosely about her head. Her high-boned cheeks were
thinner than of old, and her face wore a more excited expression;
otherwise, there was little difference in her. She had been sent from
the asylum as cured. Caius gave her a civil "Good-day."

"She has come back to me!" said the woman.

"Who?"

"My baby as you've put up the stone to. I've allers wanted to tell you I
liked that stone; but she isn't dead--she has come back to me!"

Now, although the return of the drowned child had been an idea often in
his mind of late, that he had merely toyed with it as a beautiful fancy
was proved by the fact that no sooner did the mother express the same
thought than Caius recognised that she was mad.

"She has come back to me!" The poor mother spoke in tones of exquisite
happiness. "She is grown a big girl; she has curls on her head, and she
wears a marriage-ring. Who is she married to?"

Caius could not answer.

The mother looked at him with curious steadfastness.

"I thought perhaps she was married to you," she said.

Surely the woman had seen what he had seen in the sea; but, question her
as he would, Caius could gain nothing more from her--no hint of time or
place, or any fact that at all added to his enlightenment. She only grew
frightened at his questions, and begged him in moving terms not to tell
Day that she had spoken to him--not to tell the people in the village
that her daughter had come back, or they would put her again in the
asylum. Truly, this last appeared to Cains a not unlikely consequence,
but it was not his business to bring it about. It was not for him, who
shared her delusion, to condemn her.

After that, Caius knew that either he was mad or what he ha