ht was never lit there," he said. "It was simply to help me in
some electrical experiments."

Then, for the first time in their lives, those who were looking on saw
Mr. Fentolin apart from his carriage. Without any haste but with amazing
strength, Hannah Cox leaned over, and, with her arms around his middle,
lifted him sheer up into the air. She carried him, clasped in her arms,
a weird, struggling object, to the clumsy boat that lay always at the
top of the beach. She dropped him into the bottom, took her seat, and
unshipped the oars. For one moment the coast guardsman hesitated; then
he obeyed her look. He gave the boat a push which sent it grinding down
the pebbles into the sea. The woman began to work at the oars. Every now
and then she looked over her shoulder at that thin line of white surf
which they were all the time approaching.

"What are you doing, woman?" Mr. Fentolin demanded hoarsely. "Listen! It
was an accident that your people were drowned. I'll give you an annuity.
I'll make you rich for life--rich! Do you understand what that means?"

"Aye!" she answered, looking down upon him as he lay doubled up at the
bottom of the boat. "I know what it means to be rich--better than you,
maybe. Not to let the gold and silver pieces fall through your fingers,
or to live in a great house and be waited upon by servants who desert
you in the hour of need. That isn't being rich. It's rich to feel the
touch of the one you love, to see the faces around of those you've given
birth to, to move on through the days and nights towards the end, with
them around; not to know the chill loneliness of an empty life. I am a
poor woman, Mr. Fentolin, and it's your hand that made me so, and not
all the miracles that the Bible ever told of can make me rich again."

"You are a fool!" he shrieked. "You can buy forgetfulness! The memory of
everything passes."

"I may be a fool," she retorted grimly, "and you the wise man; but this
day we'll both know the truth."

There was a little murmur from the shore, where the fishermen stood in a
long line.

"Bring him back, missus," Jacob called out. "You've scared him enough.
Bring him back. We'll leave him to the law."

They were close to the line of surf now; they had passed it, indeed, a
little on the left, and the boat was drifting. She stood up, straight
and stern, and her face, as she looked towards the land, was lit with
the fire of the prophetess.

"Aye," she cried, "we'll leave hi