"It's the cemetery, that," she said, "the village cemetery, you
know. I have three buried there: George, the eldest; James, the
middle one; and David, the youngest. Three of them--that's why
I come. I can't put flowers on their graves, but I can sit and
watch and look through the sea, down among the rocks where their
bodies are, and wonder."

Hamel looked at her curiously. Her voice had grown lower and lower.

"It's what you land folks don't believe, perhaps," she went on, "but
it's true. It's only us who live near the sea who understand it.
I am not an ignorant body, either. I was schoolmistress here before
I married David Cox. They thought I'd done wrong to marry a
fisherman, but I bore him brave sons, and I lived the life a woman
craves for. No, I am not ignorant. I have fancies, perhaps--the
Lord be praised for them!--and I tell you it's true. You look at
a spot in the sea and you see nothing--a gleam of blue, a fleck of
white foam, one day; a gleam of green with a black line, another;
and a grey little sob, the next, perhaps. But you go on looking.
You look day by day and hour by hour, and the chasms of the sea will
open, and their voices will come to you. Listen!"

She clutched his arm.

"Couldn't you hear that?" she half whispered.

"'The light!' It was David's voice! 'The light!'" Hamel was
speechless. The woman's face was suddenly strangely transformed.
Her mood, however, swiftly changed. She turned once more towards