l
shrewdly suspected that Billy Bluff, big though he was, and bold as a
lion, might be worsted. For Billy, after all, was decadent according to
the standards of the wilderness.

He lived on a chain, protected by the police, and fed by hand. Every man
was not his enemy, and he had not to hunt for each meal or go without.
Billy Bluff, however fine a fellow he might be in his own eyes, was a
poor creature in that of Warrior Badger. Civilization, if it had given
him much of which the badger recked nothing, had also taken her toll of
him.

Thinking vaguely thus, the girl once down the hill caught hold of
Ragamuffin and spun him along the valley between the hills till she came
to the coastguard station, straggling like a flock of sheep across the
Gap.

At the mouth of the Gap was a familiar post.

She slipped Ragamuffin's rein over it, and ran down the steep, uneven
way through the chalk cliff, her bob-tail baying at her side.

Right athwart the Gap, peering into it, shining-eyed and splendid, lay
the sea, calling her.

"I'm coming!" her heart answered with a thrill, and she swooped toward
it with a whoop and widespread arms.

Her feet crashed into the jolly shouting shingle, and she ploughed her
way through it, to the rocks under the cliff which made her bathing
tent.

The tide was brimming and beautiful. It came welling up, curled and fell
with a soft, delicious swish on the answering beach.

Calm and full, twinkling still through faint mists, its shining surface
was ruffled faintly by a light-footed breeze.

Swift as a bird the girl, blue-clad now, came rushing out from her
hiding-place, her fair hair bunched in a cap, the sea in her nostrils,
and exaltation in her heart.

This surely was heaven!

A moment she hovered on the brink, testing the waters with a tentative
foot.

Then with a sigh of content she trusted herself to the deep. It closed
about her like the arms of a friend.

She had not bathed since November, and it seemed to her the ocean
welcomed her, clinging to her, lifting her, loving her, holding her
close.

She buried her face in it, rose dripping, shaking the water off her eyes
and face and hair, and swam out to sea with long and steady strokes.

She did not shout, she did not splash, she did not play the fool, and
did not want to; rejoicing deeply in the quiet of her great friend,
heart to heart and flesh to flesh, while the waters made music all about
her.

The first bath was for he