water, like a still, silvery
sheet, for a mile or more. Philip scanned it for the canoe, but as far
as he could see there was not a shadow.

For a quarter of a mile he walked over the rocks, then returned. It was
nine o'clock. The moment had arrived for the appearance of Jeanne and
Pierre. He resumed his patrol of the cliff, and with each moment his
nervousness increased. What if Jeanne failed him? What if she did not
come to the rock? The mere thought made his heart sink with a sudden
painful throb. Until now the fear that Jeanne might disappoint him,
that she might not keep the tryst, had not entered his head. His faith
in this girl, whom he had seen but twice, was supreme.

A second and a third time he patrolled the quarter mile of cliff. Again
his watch tinkled the half-hour, and he knew that the last minutes of
the appointed time had come.

The third and last time he went beyond the quarter-mile limit,
searching in the white distances beyond. A low wind was rising from the
Bay; it rustled in the spruce and balsam tops of the forest that
reached up to the barren whiteness of the rock plateau on which he
stood; under him he heard, growing more and more distinct, the moaning
wash of the swelling tide. A moment of despair possessed him, and he
felt that he had lost.

Suddenly the wind brought to him a different sound--a shout far down
the cliff, a second cry, and then the scream of a woman, deadened by
the wash of the sea and the increasing sweep of the wind among the
trees.

He stood for a moment powerless, listening. The wind lulled, and the
woman's cry now came to him again--a voice that was filled with terror
rising in a wild appeal for help. With an answering shout he ran like a
swift-footed animal along the cliff. It was Jeanne who was calling! Who
else but Jeanne would be out there in the gray night--Jeanne and
Pierre? He listened as he ran, but there came no other sound. At last
he stopped, and drew in a great breath, to send out a shout that would
reach their ears.

Above the fierce beating of his heart, the throbbing intake of his
breath, he heard sounds which were not of the wind or the sea. He ran
on, and suddenly the cliff dropped from under his feet, and he found
himself on the edge of a great rift in the wall of rock, looking across
upon a strange scene. In the brilliant moonlight, with his back against
a rock, stood Pierre, his glistening rapier in his hand, his thin,
lithe body bent for the att