stood still. On the
floor the great lamp lay broken, the chimney shattered into splinters.
He stared at it in a frightened, almost superstitious way. The great
lamp broken! Did it mean that--no, no, it could not mean that! It was
the wind that had blown it there in bursting in the door. See, there
was no disorder anywhere! He ran into Gaston's room. Nothing!
Nothing anywhere to indicate that anything had happened--and yet,
apparently, the house was empty--and that was enough! Out? They had
gone out somewhere, even in the storm, on some homely errand, to pay a
visit perhaps? Impossible! With the lamp for the first time in
fourteen years unlighted, and broken now upon the floor? It was
impossible! While Gaston Bernier lived the light would burn!

He climbed the stairs and stood on the threshold of the little attic
room, the flickering candle playing timorously with the darker shadows
where the roof in its sharp angle spread into an inverted V. It was
the first time he had ever looked into that room. It was
Marie-Louise's room. It was all white, scrupulously white, from the
bare floor to the patched quilt on the little bed. There was a
freshness, a sweetness about it that seemed to personify Marie-Louise,
to fill the room with her--and it swept him now with a sudden numbing
agony, and his face, wet with the rain that dripped from the hair
straggling over his forehead, showed grey and set as it glistened
curiously in the yellow, sputtering candle light.

And then, half mad with anxiety, the sure, intuitive knowledge of
disaster upon him, he rushed downstairs again; and, hurriedly
exchanging his candle for a lantern, went out into the night.

A search around the house revealed no more than within. He ran then
down the path to the beach, to where, well up under the protection of
the low bluff and away from the reach of the highest tide, old Gaston
stored his boats and fishing gear. And there, as Jean flashed his
lantern around him, a low, strained cry, for the second time, came from
his lips. Three boats old Gaston owned--who should know better than
he, Jean Laparde, who fished with the other season after season!--but
of the three boats only two were there upon the beach.

As a man wounded then and dazed with his hurt, Jean stood there. They
had gone--out into that--Marie-Louise and old Gaston--and they had not
come back. It was not true--it was beyond belief! No; it was not
true--something only ha