man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with
him."

"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with
the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we
was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre
was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way,"
and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her
eyes as she looked down the road.

Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the
lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage,
and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which
the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The
keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a
mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out
sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of
the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of
the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man
seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed
to be repairing.

Round the extreme point of the headland, which in a succession of
uncouth shapes dropped its rocky outline into the shadowy purple sea,
there was visible, hastily clambering across pathless boulders, another
man, of a young and lithe figure, and with something in the eager,
forward thrust of the head, crouching gait, and swift, deft footing that
resembled an animal of the cat species when about to leap on its prey.
He was evidently making for the cove, but would have to take the rope
path in order to reach it, as there was no way of approaching it on that