still right in
the midst of their averted hearts, and murmured something to Kester.
He could not hear the words uttered by that hoarse choked voice,
until he had stooped down and brought his ear to the level of her
mouth.

'We'd better wait for t' doctors to come out,' she said again. She
stood by the door, shivering all over, almost facing the people in
the road, but with her face turned a little to the right, so that
they thought she was looking at the pathway on the cliff-side, a
hundred yards or so distant, below which the hungry waves still
lashed themselves into high ascending spray; while nearer to the
cottage, where their force was broken by the bar at the entrance to
the river, they came softly lapping up the shelving shore.

Sylvia saw nothing of all this, though it was straight before her
eyes. She only saw a blurred mist; she heard no sound of waters,
though it filled the ears of those around. Instead she heard low
whispers pronouncing Philip's earthly doom.

For the doctors were both agreed; his internal injury was of a
mortal kind, although, as the spine was severely injured above the
seat of the fatal bruise, he had no pain in the lower half of his
body.

They had spoken in so low a tone that John Foster, standing only a
foot or so away, had not been able to hear their words. But Sylvia
heard each syllable there where she stood outside, shivering all
over in the sultry summer evening. She turned round to Kester.

'I mun go to him, Kester; thou'll see that noane come in to us, when
t' doctors come out.'

She spoke in a soft, calm voice; and he, not knowing what she had
heard, made some easy conditional promise. Then those opposite to
the cottage door fell back, for they could see the grave doctors
coming out, and John Foster, graver, sadder still, following them.
Without a word to them,--without a word even of inquiry--which many
outside thought and spoke of as strange--white-faced, dry-eyed
Sylvia slipped into the house out of their sight.

And the waves kept lapping on the shelving shore.

The room inside was dark, all except the little halo or circle of
light made by a dip candle. Widow Dobson had her back to the
bed--her bed--on to which Philip had been borne in the hurry of
terror as to whether he was alive or whether he was dead. She was
crying--crying quietly, but the tears down-falling fast, as, with
her back to the lowly bed, she was gathering up the dripping clothes
cut off from the