reach the ford on the river Illey which she must cross to gain
the southern shore, along which ran the path to Mother Hen-
die's islet.

Near the ford stood a group of mouldy cottages, the only
habitations on either bank from that point to the sea, and
in the reeking forecourt of one of them, not ten paces from
the ford, lingered a man who touched his forelock as Althea
hurried by. "Tide's setting strong, mistress," he said.
"Ye'll find the fording safer now than 'twill be an hour
hence."

Althea thanked him, but she did not lay to heart his warn-
ing. She saw the Illey, at that moment a shrunken stream
of harmless brown water, and with no fear of it she picked her
way across the stepping stones, and turning her face seaward,
hurried along her chosen path.

The rain was now falling in great sheets, and Althea felt
the chill of the cold drops strike through her cloak to her very
flesh. She tried to step more briskly, but her shoes were cum-
bered with wet clay and her bundle was a burden to her cold



192 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

and aching hands. Breathless and outworn, she halted a
moment, and putting back the wet hair that lashed her fore-
head, looked about her. Far away across the brown flats
and the widening stream of brown water, she could just dis-
cern the outlines of the low-lying northern bank, blurred and
obscured by the rain, and on the southern shore, she saw
only marshes that spread away as far as eye could reach.
Here and there a land-locked pool wrinkled under the spat-
ter of the rain, but except for such sinister movement, she
saw no sign of life.

In a world of rain and desolation Althea hurried on once
more, waist-deep in dank sedges, until after a long time she
heard beyond the grayness that masked the east the faint
boom of the great sea. Confident that she must be near to
her chosen haven, she gathered heart to run a few paces for-
ward, and a moment later she stood at the margin of the flats,
and looked, and was dismayed. Just as she had remembered
it, she saw the little islet that she had sought, a mere ill-
joined heap of earth, patched with gorse and fringed with
sedges, and at its highest point she saw the outlines of the
sagging roof of Mother Hendie's weatherbeaten hut and of
the ramshackle lean-to that huddled beneath its eaves, but,
not as she had remembered the scene, she saw between
herself and the islet a stream of sullen gray water that was
full five rods across. Here, within sound of the sea, the
Illey was no longer a river but an estuary, and what with
the incoming tide and the rising wind, an estuary that the
boldest might well hesitate to ford.

But, as it chanced, Althea, who was by birth a Heyroun and
a Holcroft, came of two strains of blood that did not lack
courage, nor, moreover, obstinacy to carry out a plan once
resolved upon. Amid the wash of the foam-streaked water
she could make out the brown surfaces of the stepping stones
that formed a passage to the islet, and she decided to risk



IN THE PLACE OF DESOLATION 193

the crossing. She knew that in June she had crossed by
those stepping stones, even at flood-tide, and, inland bred, she
did not know the difference between the tides of sunny June
and of wind-lashed October.

In this resolution she tucked up her gown, and grasping
her bundle fast, began her dangerous passage. For a little
distance she found the way easy, upon great, dry stones that
stood near together, so that she applauded her wisdom in
making the attempt. At the fifth stone, however, a sudden
upward swell of the incoming tide filled her shoes with icy
water, and she felt the chill of it strike to her heart. All
at once she seemed, to her startled fancy, to be walking
through the midst of the sea, and she needed all her reason
to assure herself that indeed the stepping stones were there,
even though she could not see them, half buried as they were
beneath the rush of the waters.

A second wave, foaming round her ankles, warned her to
make haste. With her sodden petticoat and her heavy cloak
dragging upon her, she floundered forward from stone to stone,
half blinded with the rain drops that were thick upon her
eyelashes, half deafened with the surging of the waves about
her. She was ankle-deep in water, she was knee-deep, and
she felt the tug of the waves, resistless, terrible as the rushing
current in a mill-race, and then she thought to see the whole
gray surface of the river arch upward, like the undulation of
a huge snake. She had space neither to cry out nor to
struggle, only space for the thought, " A greater wave than
any, and I shall surely drown!" Next instant she heard
the crash as the waters closed over her head. She felt
herself whirled along helpless, beaten, buffeted, and in that
age-long flight while her hands clutched wildly and closed on
emptiness, her heart was quiet, for she saw dear and remem-
bered faces, and she saw Jock's face, and she wondered in
what fashion the tidings of her end would come to him.



194 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

Then, to her amazement, she found herself alive. Half
drowned, choked, breathless, she clung to something that
was firm, and she saw the gray waves foaming past her. Of
a sudden she was afraid to die. Piteously she looked for
succor, and then she saw that the wave that had swept her
from the stepping stones had borne her upstream, almost
beyond the inmost point of the island, yet, by a caprice of
mercy, had carried her toward the island. She was clinging
to the rotten shell of an abandoned boat that lay within a few
feet of the shore, and on the shore was safety.

Tremblingly she worked her way, wading breast-deep,
alongside the boat toward the shore. Once and twice she
braced herself against the shock of the piling waves, and almost
gave herself for lost as she felt them surge to her very lips,
but she found that her hold on the boat was unslackened,
and she found too that the water through which she waded
was growing shallow. She waded knee-deep, she waded
ankle-deep, and then at last she heard the pebbles on the
margin rattle beneath her foot.

She had gained the shore, and in blind terror of the danger
that was past, she stumbled inland as fast as her feet would
bear her. As she climbed the hill she felt the gorse bushes
catch at her petticoat, and she shuddered in the belief that
once more the waves were dragging her back. Breathless
and gasping, she stumbled at last into the worn pathway that
led from a little spring to the hut, and she found comfort
in the mere act of setting her feet where human feet so recently
had passed. Surely, at Mother Hendie's hearth she would
forget the gray waves. Almost ready to laugh at her peril
now that help was so near, she laid her hand to the latch of
the sagging door and without ceremony entered the hut.

Once inside the door she paused for a moment and stood
blinking till she could accustom her eyes to the dimness of
the place. Just opposite her she made out, on the ash-strewn



IN THE PLACE OF DESOLATION 195

hearth, a pale glimmer of light that came from the chimney
above, and presently she made out too the shapes of a pallet
by the wall, a chest in a far corner, a low table, a rude stool
or two, but she saw no sign of human creature.

"Mother Hendie!" she spoke hesitatingly, and then, in
sudden alarm, called the name aloud. For answer she heard
only the patter of the rain on the thatch above her head.

Hurriedly she crossed the little room, and groping, found
the door to the lean-to, and opened it and looked in. Better
wonted now to the dim light, she saw a bucking tub, and a
broken form, and a litter of tools, and odds and ends of wood,
and a half-rotted fish-net, but she saw no sign of the old
woman on whose kindness she had relied.

In that hour it seemed to Althea that the earth had been
struck from beneath her feet. She dragged herself to the cold
hearth where she had looked to find a fire, and then she fell
a-shivering and burst into passionate sobs. Partly she cried
for sheer misery, because she was very cold and wet, and
partly for bitter disappointment, because she must go uncom-
forted beneath the roof where she had looked for kindness,
and partly too, it must be owned, because she realized now,
a little thing, yet a little thing that added to the rest was insup-
portable, that in the struggle with the waves she had lost her
bundle, and in the bundle was a kerchief that had been her
mother's.

For an unmarked time she sat and sobbed, while the rain
beat steadily upon the roof and now and again a drop fell
spattering upon the hearth, and then with an effort of will,
for at each movement she felt her wet clothes press clammily
against her body, she forced herself to rise and go to the chest
by the wall. Too desperate for civility, she searched the chest
through, and having found an old, worn smock, cast off her
dripping garments and put it upon her. All a-shiver still, she
crept to the pallet, and to her joy found there two blankets



196 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

and a coverlet. In these she wrapped herself, and then she
lay down and prayed that she might be warm again.

Very soon she drifted into a state that was neither waking
nor sleeping. She heard, now near, now far, the beat of the
rain and the rattle of the door as the wind rose higher. She
saw more and more faintly the outlines of the homely objects
in the room. These familiar sounds and sights became the
background for a phantasmagoria of known and unknown
shapes that flitted to and fro till she grew weary with watch-
ing their movements. Her head ached, her throat ached.
Feverishly she wished that the shapes might pass and she
be left in peace.

Of a sudden Althea found that the first part of her wish was
granted. The shapes had passed indeed, and once more she
was broad awake. How long it was since she had entered
the hut, she knew not, but she knew that all round her it was
pitchy dark and the wind was blowing a gale. She could
feel the frail hut shake in the blast. She was sitting up in
her bed and she was icy cold, but she knew that this was
different from the cold that came from drenched garments.
She felt this coldness grip her very heart. She was afraid
afraid of the dark, and the sound of the wind, and the loneli-
ness of that little islet, which in her mind's eye she seemed
to see, a desolate speck in the midst of the avid gray waves.
For this fear she called herself a coward, and trying to be
brave as her father would have wished her to be, she was just
lying down again, when in a lull of the wind she heard the
door rattle, and rattle, as she knew, beneath the touch of a
hand. In that instant she knew what it was that had chilled
her heart with fear.

For one second Althea felt the impulse to cower beneath
her coverings. Indeed she felt the impulse still, and she only
marvelled to find that, without conscious resolve, she had
risen softly from the bed. With a strange sense of standing



IN THE PLACE OF DESOLATION 197

aloof and watching her own scene of anguish, she knew that
she had snatched up the coverlet and noiselessly was stealing
across the icy floor of trodden clay to the door of the lean-to.
She pushed the door ajar just as she heard the outer door
clash open beneath the intruder's hand.

Down in her heart she knew that the man must be Phineas
Hendie, the ne'er-do-well, and because of that knowledge she
was fleeing, she cared not whither. Noiselessly, for very life,
she closed the door of the lean-to behind her and stole across
the cumbered space. At the far side of the lean-to, she re-
membered, was a window, closed with a shutter, through
which she hoped to escape into the storm. On tiptoe she
groped to find the bar that held the shutter, and found it
after long striving, and could not stir it from its place.

For a heartsick moment she crouched on the floor beneath
the window. In the main room of the hut she could hear
the man stumbling about, hurtling against stools and table,
and growling inarticulately as he did so. She judged him
far gone in drink, and in the terror of the thought pressed
her hands to her mouth to hold back a cry.

Presently she noted that the noise grew less and at last
died altogether, so that almost she dared to hope that the
man had sunk down to sleep, when suddenly, straight across
the darkness, she spied a rift of light. It shone, she realized,
beneath the door to the lean-to. In the main room the
man had lit a candle, and busied in that task had fallen
silent. His next movement, no doubt, since he was sober,
would be to seek firewood, and the wood was stored in the
lean-to.

In that moment of realization Althea heard again footsteps
crossing the main room, and saw the crack of light broaden.
She rose and stood at her full height, with the coverlet drawn
about her arid her arms crossed upon her breast, in her wonted
gesture in extremity. She heard the door go back with a



198 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

clang, she saw the glare of a candle that wavered in the gust
of the bearer's movement, and beneath the candle she saw
the man's white face and dripping hair and alert eyes.

She took a step forward, swaying as she went. "Oh, I
thank God !" she said in a voice that was hardly more than
a whisper, and held forth both her trembling hands. "Oh,
Jock! Jock Hetherington!"



CHAPTER XVIII

PASSAGE PERILOUS

WHEN Althea was laid once more on the pallet with the
blankets heaped about her, and the fire was blazing high on
the hearth, Jock searched the shelves that were nailed against
the wall, till he found meal and salt, and then he set porridge
to cook. Through half-closed eyelids Althea watched him,
while she felt the blessed warmth creep to her chilled body.
In the pauses of the wind she still could hear the thrumming
of rain upon the thatched roof, and at times she felt the ram-
shackle hut shiver in the sudden gusts, but she had no longer
any terror of the dark or of the storm. From the extremity
of peril and of fright she had come, how, she scarcely realized,
to safe harborage, and without question she yielded herself to
the sweet, unwonted sensation of being cared for and served.

Presently Jock came to her bedside with a wooden bowl
full of the smoking porridge and bade her eat. "'Tis ven-
geance hot," he warned, "but 'twill surely comfort you."

As she took the bowl from his hands she looked upon him.
Beneath his clinging, half-dried shirt, she could see the clean
outlines of his compact young figure and the swelling muscles
of his arms and shoulders, and she realized as never before
the strength that was in him. Half dubiously she let her
eyes travel to his face, and when she saw the unaccustomed
kindness that had softened his shrewd eyes and relaxed the
set line of his lips, she felt such a passion of gratitude that
he, so hard and strong, should bear himself gently toward

199



200 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

her, of all creatures, that she wanted but little of adoring him
outright. Terrified lest he read to her very soul, she let her
eyes fall, and then, half sick and overwrought as she was, she
felt the tears come.

" Ha' done 1" said Jock. " Else you'll make a fair hand at
cooling your porridge, kinswoman."

At that Althea contrived to laugh, albeit chokedly. " In-
deed, Jock," she said, "I'm a fool and to spare, for already
this day I've had salt water enough to content me to the end
of my life."

Then while she made pretence of eating, she talked, and
grew the steadier as she heard her own voice. She described
her desperate struggle to reach the islet, and told of Mother
Hendie and of Phineas and how she had come thither to
seek their hospitality, but of the reason for her expulsion
from Draycote she said never a word. "And now, in your
turn," she bade, "what kind chance was it brought you
hither?"

Thus entreated, Jock sat down on the table hard by the
pallet, and very briefly told her that he had made shift a
second time to escape from Graystones. "I am going now
to Clegden or wherever else Heaven pleases!" he amended
somewhat bitterly, "where I may get shipping out of the
kingdom, but I had not taken to consideration this accursed
river Illey. I tried to cross the ford in the darkness, and I
wanted but little of walking into the arms of two honest
cuddens that guarded the passage."

"So 'twas for that they kept their watch," Althea mur-
mured. She remembered the man who had spoken a warning
to her at the ford, and she understood now why he had waited
there in the drenching rain.

"I could not turn inland," Jock continued, "so I needs
must turn seaward. I found a path and I followed it, and
in time I came to some stepping stones. I could see naught



PASSAGE PERILOUS 201

for the storm, but I held that the stepping stones should lead
to the northern bank, so I ventured." After a moment he
added, " I spoilt the most of my powder, and that was worst
of all."

Characteristically he had not mentioned the fact that he
had been very nearly drowned in his passage to the islet, but
Althea guessed at what he left unsaid and shuddered for his
peril. "And after all you have not gained the northern
bank," she lamented, "and you can never swim the northern
channel. Tis deeper and more dangerous by far than the
southern channel that you have crossed. You are stayed
here on the islet, and you are losing time oh ! such pre-
cious time ! You must press on, Jock, at once, indeed you
must ! If Lambert Wogan takes you, he will have no mercy
on you now."

She bit her tongue as soon as she had let the words slip,
but it was too late, for Jock had heard and caught her mean-
ing. " So the story has reached Draycote," he said. " They
told you"

"They told me the false tale that Mistress Mallory told,"
Althea made answer.

Jock bent his head, fingering the edge of the table on which
he sat. "I thank you much for that word 'false,'" he said
at last in a low voice.

Once more he mended the fire, and then he came again to
the bed, and taking the bowl, chided Althea because she had
not eaten more of the porridge.

"Indeed I could not!" she pleaded. "My throat is pain-
ful when I swallow and I am not a-hungered." There she
put forth her hand timidly and laid it on his hand. "You
bear in mind the counsel that I gave ? Oh, Jock ! You will
go hence at once ? You will escape while yet there may be
time?"

He laughed outright. " Do you think me a great fish that



202 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

you would have me to swim farther?" he asked. "Nay,
Althea, I've no mind to trust myself on such a night to the
mercies of a river that I do not know. With your good
leave, I'll shelter me here till morning break and I can see
my path. 'Twas with that purpose that I first broke into
this hut."

He had spoken truthfully when he said that he dared not
attempt to swim the raging Illey in the darkness, but he had
not spoken the entire truth. Besides the regard for his own
safety that held him on the island, there was consideration
for the girl. He knew that she was come from an ordeal of
terror and cold that were enough to sap the strength of any
woman, and he saw in her flushed cheeks and bright eyes
signs that he dreaded to confess were signs of fever. He
could not well press on and leave her alone in that desolate
cottage, until he was sure, beyond all doubt, that she was not
going to be sick and, in her sickness, helpless.

For the present he could do nothing but wait and see how
it might fare with her after a few hours' sleep, and while he
waited, by old habit, he did those things that were immediate
and necessary. He ate some porridge, he mended the fire
softly, for he gathered from Althea's breathing that at last
she was fallen asleep and he would not disturb her. When
these tasks were done, he took up his wet doublet, which he
had cast off when he first had entered the hut, and spread it
before the blaze to dry. Then it was, as he sat tending the
fire, that his eyes fell on the sodden little heap of Althea's
wet garments.

With none save practical thoughts, he took up the dripping
smock and the blue underpetticoat and the little tawny-
colored gown, and wrung the water from them, but as he
spread them to the fire he found that the current of his thought
was altered. They were such little clothes, so frail and girl-
like. He fingered the tawny-colored gown lightly, and drew



PASSAGE PERILOUS 203

back his hand half ashamed, as if he had made free with
Althea herself.

When he had sat down again, ready at need to tend the
fire, he kept glancing at the little garments laid to dry. They
were so like the girl. She was such a piteous slip of a thing.
He felt his throat grow thick as he remembered how lost and
little and forlorn she had looked when he first had spied her,
there in the dark of the lean-to. Still with that thickening
in the throat, he recalled how she had come forward in perfect
trust, with arms held out to him to him of whom they had
told her their vile stories.

" By the faith of man, when she says she believes me honest
she must mean it!" he muttered.

Step by step he followed her wanderings, the story of which
she had told him so courageously, with such a resolute effort
to turn all to a jest. In his mind's eye he saw her lonely
little figure plodding along the rain-swept path by the river,
venturing timidly upon the treacherous stepping stones, and
then, lessoned by his own experience of the deadly peril of
that passage, he felt his heart die within him, as he saw her
borne from her feet and struggling with her poor strength
against that mighty tide.

In a sudden reek of terror lest his imagining were true, lest
she were indeed lost forever among the gray waves, he rose
and went to the pallet. She lay as he had left her, with one
hand beneath her cheek and her face turned toward the fire.
She breathed a little hurriedly, her cheeks were ruddier than
their wont, but for the moment he paid small heed to those
warnings of danger. Instead he noted the way in which her
half-dried hair fell loosely curling about her shoulders and,
dark in the shadows, caught a tint of gold from the firelight,
and he noted the way in which her lashes rested in a dark line
upon her cheeks. For the first time, in all the times that he
had looked upon the girl, he realized, seeing her asleep, the



204 THE FAIR MAID OF GRAYSTONES

loveliness of her smooth brow and her boyish, well-turned
chin and her white throat. With a sudden shiver he drew
back. Like a child in her helplessness and weakness she had
made her mute appeal for his protection, but in that moment
he laid the knowledge to heart that she was far more than
child.

Slowly he returned to his place by the fire. There were
long pauses in his task of renewing the blaze, and in such
pauses, while he listened to the storm that beat about the
hut, he thought disjointedly and, reviewing much that he
had planned and done in earlier years, looked back, as it were
from a height, and saw the folly of it. More than once in his
life he had looked upon a woman. No better than his fellows,
he had bargained for a kiss, and paid the price and taken the
goods, and gone lightly on his way. But always, unlike many
of his fellows, he had realized that the woman who some day
should be his wife must be of another mould.

Practically, unsentimentally, as was his habit, he had inven-
toried the virtues that that unknown woman must possess.
Of gentle blood she must be, assuredly, of unsullied reputa-
tion, with a fair face and a modest carriage, and on that
point he had had no doubts ! with a dowry, the richer, the
better. Since he had himself no heritage but his sword, his
wife, he reasoned logically, must not only bring money for
the family coffer, but the very coffer in which to stow it.
These virtues, he realized, were many to require of one woman,
but he was a patient man and nothing loath to wait. If he
married at twenty-eight or thirty, that were early enough,
he reckoned, and so he should have ample time in which to
find the useful paragon that he sought.

Now, as he sat by the fire with his eyes upon Althea's gown,
he saw that practical scheme of marriage, of which he had
been so proud, as the idle daydream of a foolish lad. He did
not want that comely, virtuous gentlewoman with the com-



PASSAGE PERILOUS 205

fortable dowry. He wanted Althea, poor, little, outcast,
penniless Althea. Struggling to reconcile desire with trusted
reason, he told himself that he turned to Althea because she
was kind and staunch-hearted, and full of trust in him, and
had blue eyes and a flashing smile, and at that point, with an