tin' for
'God Save the Queen.'"

"Hullo!" hailed a voice alongside, at the foot of the accommodation
table; and Mr Philp's top hat, Mr Philp's deceptively jovial face,
Mr Philp's body clad in mourning weeds, climbed successively into view.
"There, naybours!" he announced. "I'm in the nick of time, after all, it
seems,--though when I heard the church clock strike twelve it sent my
heart into my mouth." He stood and panted.

"Ah! good-day, Mr Philp!" Mrs Bosenna turned, hailing his intervention,
and advanced to shake hands.

"Good-day to you, ma'am. Been enjoy in' yourself, I hope?" said Mr
Philp, somewhat taken aback by the warmth of her greeting.

"A most successful Regatta . . . don't you agree?"

"I might, ma'am," answered Mr Philp solemnly. "I don't doubt it, ma'am.
But as a matter of fact I have just come from a funeral."

"Oh! . . . I--I beg your pardon--I didn't know--"

"There's no call to apologise, ma'am. . . . The deceased was not a
relative. A farm-servant, ma'am--female--at the far end of the parish:
Tuckworthy's farm, to be precise: and the woman, Sarah Jane Collins by
name. Probably you didn't know her. No more did I except by sight: but
a very respectable woman--a case of Bright's disease. In the midst of
life we are in death, and, much as I enjoy Passage Regatta--"

"You have missed it then?"

"The woman had saved money, ma'am. There was a walled grave, by
request." Mr Philp sighed over this remembered consolation. "She could
not help it clashin', poor soul."

"No, indeed!"

"And you may or may not have noticed it, ma'am, but when a man sets duty
before pleasure, often as not he gets rewarded. Comin' back along the
town before the streets filled, I picked up a piece o' news, and hurried
along with it. I reckoned it might be of interest if I could reach here
ahead of 'God Save the Queen.'"

"Gracious! What has happened?" Mrs Bosenna clasped her hands.
Indeed Mr Philp, big with his news and important, had somehow contrived
to overawe everyone on deck.

"The news is," he announced slowly, "that the _Saltypool_ has gone down,
within fifty miles of Philadelphia. Crew saved in the boats.
Cable reached Mr Rogers at eleven o'clock, and"--he paused impressively,
"there and then Rogers had a second stroke. Point o' death, they say."

Above the sympathetic murmur of Mr Philp's audience there broke, on the
instant, a gasping cry--followed by a yet more terrible sound, as of one
in t