CHAPTER VI

THE MIDSUMMER MOON


It was very late that night, just as the first long rays of a full moon
streamed across a dreaming sea, that the door that led out of the
conservatory at The Ship softly opened, and a slim figure, clad in a
long, dark garment, flitted forth. Neither to right nor left did it
glance, but, closing the door without sound, slipped out over the grass
almost as if it moved on wings, and so down to the beach-path that wound
steeply to the shore.

The tide was rising with the moon; the roar of it swelled and sank like
the mighty breathing of a giant. The waters shone in the gathering light
in a vast silver shimmer almost too dazzling for the eye to endure. In
another hour it would be as light as day. A few dim clouds were floating
over the stars, filmy wisps that had escaped from the ragged edges of a
dark curtain that had veiled the sun before its time. The breeze that
had blown them free wandered far overhead; below, especially on the
shore, it was almost tropically warm, and no breath of air seemed to
stir.

Swiftly went the flitting figure, like a brown moth drawn by the
glitter of the moonlight. There was no other living thing in sight.

All the lights of Spear Point village had gone out long since. Rufus's
cottage, with its slip of garden on the shelf of the cliff, was no more
than a faint blur of white against the towering sandstone behind. No