any friends or relatives of your father's or Hester's?"

She shook her head, carelessly but definitely.

"Does Caliban?"

But this question was beyond the poor lout's intelligence; he could
only blubber and fend off possible chastisement.

"Take another nap, if you can, Margarita," said Roger, "and I will go
to the beach. Call me if you want me."

She went off to her warm straw, threw herself on it like a tired
child, and passed quickly into a deep sleep; he tramped for a moment
on the beach, then stretched himself in the lee of a sun-warmed rock
and fell into the dreamless, renewing rest that he took as his simple
due from nature.

CHAPTER VI

FATE CASTS HER DIE

When he woke it was full sunset. The lonely reefs were red with it, (O
Margarita, well I know that hour! Do you remember our talks?) the
point of land seemed drowned in it, and with a sense of something
inexcusably forgotten and put off, Roger hurried to the house that
stood strangely deserted, it seemed, in the dying glow. In just that
glow I have watched it, leaning on my oars, and for a few strange
minutes, the exact time necessary for the sun to drop behind the
coast-hills, I have felt myself a small boy again, crouched in a cane
chair before my mother's sewing-table, unable for very terror to drop
my feet to the floor as I gazed through wide eyes at the House of
Usher, that home of sunset mystery. Such a strange, Poe-like
atmosphere could that sanded, secret cottage take upon itself.

Roger pushed rapidly up the beach and entered the house quietly, so
quietly that he caught Margarita's last sentences, which struck him as
odd even in his utter ignorance of their connection. She was evidently
scolding Caliban, for his grunts and shufflings punctuated her pauses.

"It is very saucy and unkind of you, Caliban," she was saying, "and
you need not think you can do as you like because Hester is dead. I
know she can not walk any more. My father could not walk when he was
dead. And you need not think that Roger Bradley will not ask, because
he will. He knows everything."

Roger thought that the lout had been teasing her with stupid ghost
hints and bade him begone sternly, more vexed than before as he
noticed the dim twilight drawing in and realised how late and
inconvenient the hour was for all he had to do.

"Can you get me a lantern, Margarita?" he said shortly. "I must get
back to the village and try to bring someone out with me to see ab