oked at the water. Such light as struggled through the fog
was behind her, and the mist was thickening. At first she had some
difficulty in tracing her own likeness upon the glassy surface, but
gradually she marked its outline. It stretched away from her, and its
appearance was as though she herself were lying on her back in the water
wrapped about with the fleecy mist. "How curious it seems," she thought;
"what is it that reflection reminds me of with the white all round it?"

Next instant she gave a little cry and turned sharply away. She knew
now. It recalled her mother as she had last seen her seven years ago.

CHAPTER II

AT THE BELL ROCK

A mile or more away from where Beatrice stood and saw visions, and
further up the coast-line, a second group of rocks, known from their
colour as the Red Rocks, or sometimes, for another reason, as the Bell
Rocks, juts out between half and three-quarters of a mile into the
waters of the Welsh Bay that lies behind Rumball Point. At low tide
these rocks are bare, so that a man may walk or wade to their extremity,
but when the flood is full only one or two of the very largest can from
time to time be seen projecting their weed-wreathed heads through the
wash of the shore-bound waves. In certain sets of the wind and tide this
is a terrible and most dangerous spot in rough weather, as more than
one vessel have learnt to their cost. So long ago as 1780 a three-decker
man-of-war went ashore there in a furious winter gale, and, with one
exception, every living soul on board of her, to the number of seven
hundred, was drowned. The one exception was a man in irons, who came
safely and serenely ashore seated upon a piece of wreckage. Nobody ever
knew how the shipwreck happened, least of all the survivor in irons, but
the tradition of the terror of the scene yet lives in the district, and
the spot where the bones of the drowned men still peep grimly through
the sand is not unnaturally supposed to be haunted. Ever since this
catastrophe a large bell (it was originally the bell of the ill-fated
vessel itself, and still bears her name, "H.M.S. Thunder," stamped upon
its metal) has been fixed upon the highest rock, and in times of storm
and at high tide sends its solemn note of warning booming across the
deep.

But the bell was quiet now, and just beneath it, in the shadow of the
rock whereon it was placed, a man half hidden in seaweed, with which he
appeared to have purposely covered h