her eye fixed on her mother. As if
fascinated, she could see nothing else in heaven or earth but that dark
figure, hurrying along with a dogged determination, and then stopping a
moment to look round, as if in fear of a pursuer. And then Grace lay
down on the cold stones, and pressed herself into the very earth; and
the moment her mother turned to go forward, sprang up and followed.

And then a true woman's thought flashed across her, and shaped itself
into a prayer. For herself she never thought: but if the Coast Guardsman
above should see her mother, stop her, question her? God grant that he
might be on the other side of the point! And she hurried on again.

Near the Nose the rocks ran high and jagged; her mother held on to them,
passed through a narrow chasm, and disappeared.

Grace now, not fifty yards from her, darted out of the shadow into the
moonlight, and ran breathlessly toward the spot where she had seen her
mother last. Like Anderssen's little sea-maiden she went, every step on
sharp knives, across the rough beds of barnacles; but she felt no pain,
in the greatness of her terror and her love.

She crouched between the rocks a moment; heard her mother slipping and
splashing among the pools; and glided after her like a ghost--a guardian
angel rather--till she saw her emerge again for a moment into the
moonlight, upon a strip of beach beneath the Nose.

It was a weird and lonely spot; and a dangerous spot withal. For only at
low spring-tide could it be reached from the land, and then the flood
rose far up the cliff, covering all the shingle, and filling the mouth
of a dark cavern. Had her mother gone to that cavern? It was impossible
to see, so utterly was the cliff shrouded in shadow.

Shivering with cold and excitement, Grace crouched down, and gazed into
the gloom, till her eyes swam, and a hundred fantastic figures, and
sparks of fire, seemed to dance between her and the rock. Sparks of
fire!--yes; but that last one was no fancy. An actual flash; the crackle
and sputter of a match! What could it mean? Another match was lighted;
and a moment after, the glare of a lanthorn showed her mother entering
beneath the polished arch of rock which glared lurid overhead, like the
gateway of the pit of fire.

The light vanished into the windings of the cave. And then Grace, hardly
knowing what she did, rushed up the beach, and crouched down once more
at the cave's mouth. There she sat, she knew not how long, liste