s heart. The girl attended him
like something in the corner of his eye. Times past count, he plied his
oars among the cross currents to the westward of that island, hoping to
catch a glimpse of his siren on the crags.

Sometimes for long moments he lay on his oars, hearing the blue tide
with a ceaseless motion heave and swirl and gutter all round its rocky
border, and the serpents' hiss come from some Medusa's head of trailing
weed uttered in venomous warning. Under flying moons the shaggy hemlock
grove was like a bearskin thrown over the white and leprous nakedness of
stony flanks. At the approach of storm the shadows stealing forth from
that sullen, bowbacked ridge were blue-filmed, like the languid veil
which may be seen to hang before blue, tear-dimmed eyes.

Deep-water Peter felt from the first that he could not dwell for long on
the mysteries of that island without meeting little Rackby's mad
challenge. Insensibly he drew near--and at last set foot on its shores
again. Late on a clear afternoon he landed in the very lee of the
island, at a point where the stone rampart was fifty feet in height,
white as a bone, and pitted like a mass of grout. This cliff was split
from top to bottom, perhaps by frosts, perhaps by the fall of the buried
meteor. A little cove lay at the base of this crevasse, and here a bed
of whitest sand had sifted in, rimmed by a great heap of well-sanded,
bright-blue shells of every size and shape. This was the storehouse from
which Day Rackby drew her speaking shells.

He looped the painter of his dory under a stone and ascended the rock.
His heart was in his throat. All the world hitherto had not proffered
him such choice adventure, if he had read the signs aright. As if
directed by the intuition of his heart, he slipped into the shadows of
the grove. Fragrance was broadcast there, the clean fragrance of nature
at her most alone. Crows whirred overhead; their hoarse plaint, with its
hint of desolation, made a kind of emptiness in the wood, and he went
on, step by step, as in a dream, wrapt, expectant. Was she here? Could
Rackby's will detain her here, a presence so swift, mischievous, and
aerial? Such a spirit could not be held in the hollow of a man's hand.
He remembered how in his youth a man had tried to keep wild foxes on
this same island, for breeding purposes, but they had whisked their
brushes in his face and swum ashore.

The green dusk was multiplied many times now by tiny spruces,