day-time do not walk on the ridge or they may see you--"

"And the gun? What is that for?"

"If they should come here after you, you will keep them off with it,"
she said, with a spurt of the true Island spirit. "It is your life they
seek, and they are in the wrong. But no one ever comes here, and you
will not need it. Now, good-bye! And God have you in His keeping!"

"And you, dearest--and all yours!"--and she was gone like a flitting
shadow.

And while he still stood peering into the darkness into which she had
merged, she suddenly materialized again and was by his side.

"I forgot. Bernel told me to tell you it throws a little high. But I
hope you won't need it. And there is fresh water among the rocks at the
south end there."

He caught her to him again, and kissed her ardently, and then she was
gone.

He strained his ears, fearful of hearing her slip or fall in the
darkness, but she went without displacing a stone, and he was alone with
the sickly moon, and the sombre sky, and the voices of the rising tide
along the grim black ledges of his sanctuary.

CHAPTER XXI

HOW LOVE TOOK LOVE TO SANCTUARY

It all seemed monstrous strange to him, now that he had time to think of
the actual fact apart from the difficulties of its accomplishment.

An hour ago he was lying in his bed at Plaisance, in low enough spirits,
indeed, at the outlook before him, but his gloomiest thought had never
plumbed depths such as this.

He wondered briefly if so extreme a step had been really necessary.

And then he heard again the purposeful tramp of those heavy feet on the
Coupee, and fathomed again the menace of them.

And he felt Nance's guiding hand trembling violently in his once more,
and he said to himself that she and Bernel knew better than he how the
land lay, and that he could not have done other than he had done.

Then he became aware that the dew was drenching him, and so he bent and
groped in the dark for the shelter Nance had spoken of.

The strip of moon had paled as it rose, the huge white stones glimmered
faintly in it, and a darker patch below showed him where the entrance
must be. He crept into the darker patch on his hands and knees, bumping
his head violently, but once inside found room to sit upright. Snaking
out again, he laid hold of the two bundles and the gun, and dragged them
into shelter.

What the bundles contained he could not tell in the dark, but one felt
like a thick woollen cloak,