uch a soft one as he looks, that
chap," he observed. "Not by no manner of means. Do you know what
Columbine thinks of him?"

"How should I know?" said Rufus.

He stooped with an abrupt movement that had in it a hint of savagery,
and picked up the end of rope that lay jerking at his feet.

"Tell you what, Adam," he said. "If that chap values his health he'll
keep clear of me and my boat."

Everyone called the coxswain Adam, even his son and partner, Rufus the
Red. No two men could have formed a more striking contrast than they,
but their partnership was something more than a business relation. They
were friends--friends on a footing of equality, and had been such ever
since Rufus--the giant baby who had cost his mother her life--had first
closed his resolute fist upon his father's thumb.

That was five-and-twenty years ago now, and for eighteen of those years
the two had dwelt alone together in their cottage on the cliff in
complete content. Then--seven years back--Adam the coxswain had
unexpectedly tired of his widowed state and taken to himself a second
wife.

This was Mrs. Peck, of The Ship, a widow herself of some years'
standing, plump, amiable, prosperous, who in marrying Adam would have
gladly opened her doors to Adam's son also had the son been willing to
avail himself of her hospitality.

But Rufus had preferred independence in the cottage of his birth, and in
this cottage he had lived alone since his father's defection.

It was a dainty little cottage, perched in an angle of the cliff, well
apart from all the rest and looking straight down upon the great Spear
Point. He tended the strip of garden with scrupulous care, and it made
a bright spot of colour against the brown cliff-side. A rough path,
steep and winding, led up from the beach below, and about half-way up a
small gate, jealously padlocked in the owner's absence, guarded Rufus's
privacy. He never invited any one within that gate. Occasionally his
father would saunter up with his evening pipe and sit in the little
porch of his old home looking through the purple clematis flowers out to
sea while he exchanged a few commonplace remarks with his son, who never
broke his own silence unless he had something to say. But no other
visitor ever intruded there.

Rufus had acquired the reputation of a hermit, and it kept all the rest
at bay. He had lived his own life for so long that solitude had grown
upon him as moss clings to a stone. He did not seem