se was going to rack and ruin with the way Anthony wouldn't mind
it on account of his being three-parts drunk most of the time. At last
the rain was coming in through the roof. When Anthony saw that he came
to himself a bit and sent for my grandfather and settled with him to put
a few patches of new thatch on the worst places. My grandfather was the
best man at thatching that there was in the island in them days, and
he took the job though he misdoubted whether he'd ever be paid for it.
Anthony never came next or nigh him when he was working, which shows
that he hadn't got his senses rightly. If he had he'd have kept an eye
on what my grandfather was doing, knowing what he knew, though of course
my grandfather didn't know. Well, one day my grandfather was dragging
off the old thatch near the chimney. It was middling late in the
evening, as it might be six or seven o'clock, and he was thinking of
stopping his work when all of a sudden he came on what he thought might
be an old petticoat bundled away in the thatch. It was red, he said,
but when he put his hand on it he knew it wasn't flannel, nor it wasn't
cloth, nor it wasn't like anything he'd ever felt before in all his
life. There was a hole in the roof where my grandfather had the thatch
stripped, and he could see down into the kitchen. Anthony's wife was
there with the youngest of the boys in her arms. My grandfather was as
much in dread of her as every other one, but he thought it would be no
more than civil to tell her what he'd found.

"'Begging your pardon, ma'am,' he said, 'but I'm after finding what
maybe belongs to you hid away in the thatch.'

"With that he threw down the red cloak, for it was a red cloak he had in
his hand. She didn't speak a word, but she laid down the baby out of her
arms and she walked out of the house. That was the last my father seen
of her. And that was the last anyone on the island seen of her, unless
maybe Anthony. Nobody knows what he saw. He stopped off the drink from
that day; but it wasn't much use his stopping it. He used to go round
at spring tides to the bay where he had seen her first He did that five
times, or maybe six. After that he took to his bed and died. It could be
that his heart was broke."

We slipped past the point of the pier. Peter crept forward and crouched
on the deck in front of the mast I peered into the gloom to catch sight
of our mooring-buoy.

"Let her away a bit yet," said Peter. "Now luff her, luff h