l enquired.

"Squire Fentolin," she answered, dropping her voice a little. "He's
a very kind-hearted gentleman, Squire Fentolin, but he don't like
strangers hanging around."

"Well, I am not exactly a stranger, you see," Hamel remarked. "My father
used to stay for months at a time in that little shanty there and paint
pictures. It's a good many years ago."

"I mind him," the woman said slowly. "His name was Hamel."

"I am his son," Hamel announced.

She pointed to the Hall. "Does he know that you are here?"

Hamel shook his head. "Not yet. I have been abroad for so long."

She suddenly relapsed into her curious habit. Her lips moved, but no
words came. She had turned her head a little and was facing the sea.

"Tell me," Hamel asked gently, "why do you come out here alone, so far
from the village?"

She pointed with her finger to where the waves were breaking in a thin
line of white, about fifty yards from the beach.

"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 the hall.

"You'll know him soon," she went on, "the kindest man