e surf on the beaches along the Bay: and I was closing
the window again when, close at hand, a man's voice called to me to
open the front door. I went out to the hall, where a lamp stood, and
opened to him. The light showed me the young man Luke, on whom I had
not set eyes for these four-and-twenty years: nor, amazed and
perturbed as I was, did it occur to me as marvellous that he had not
aged a day. "There is a wreck," said he, "in the Porth below here;
and you, sir, are concerned in it. Will you fetch a lantern and come
with me?" He put this as a question, but in his tone was a command:
and when I brought the lantern he took it from me and led the way.
We struck across the Home Parc southward, thence across Gew Down and
the Leazes, and I knew that he was making for the track which leads
down to the sea by Prah Sands. At the entry of the track he took off
his coat and wrapped the lantern in it, though just there its light
would have been most useful, or so I thought. But he led the way
easily, and I followed with scarce a stumble. "We shall not need
it," he said; "for see, there they are!" pointing to a small light
that moved on the sands below us. "But who are they?" I asked.
He strode down ahead of me, making swiftly for the light, and coming
upon them in the noise of the gale we surprised a man and a woman,
who at first cowered before us and then would have cast down their
light and run. But my companion, unwrapping the lantern, held it
high and so that the light shone on their faces. They were John
Magor and his wife Grace.

'Then I, remembering what cry of shipwrecked souls had reached to my
library in the Vicarage, and well guessing what work these wretches
had been at, lifted my voice to accuse them. But the young man Luke
stepped between us, and said he to them gently, "Come, and I will
show what you seek." He went before us for maybe two hundred yards
to the northern end of the beach, they behind him quaking, and I
shepherding them in my righteous wrath. "Behold you," said he, and
again lifted the lantern over a rock dark with seaweed (and yet the
weed shone in the light)--"Behold you, what you have wrecked."

'On their backs along the flat of the rock lay two naked bodies, of a
youth and a maid, half-clasped one to another. He handed me the
lantern for a better look, and in the rays of it the two wretches
peered forward as if drawn against their will. I cannot well say if
they or I first per