olving fear, though
here he was her only hope and protector, and an utter uncertainty as
to what he might do. She could only hope that she might pine away
and die quickly, and _perhaps_ Charles Archfield might know at last
that it had been for his sake. And would it be in her power to make
even such terms as these?

How long she wept and prayed and tried to 'commit her way unto the
Lord' she did not know, but light seemed to be making its way far
more than previously through the shutters closed against the storm
when Peregrine returned.

"You will not be greatly troubled with those fellows to-day," he
said; "there's a vessel come on the rocks at Chale, and every man
and mother's son is gone after it." So saying he unfastened the
shutters and let in a flood of sunshine. "You would like a little
air," he said; "'tis all quiet now, and the tide is going down."

After two days' dark captivity, Anne could not but be relieved by
coming out, and she was anxious to understand where she was. It
was, though only in March, glowing with warmth, as the sun beat
against the cliffs behind, of a dark red brown, in many places
absolutely black, in especial where a cascade, swelled by the rains
into imposing size, came roaring, leaping, and sparkling down a
sheer precipice. On either side the cove or chine was closely shut
in by treeless, iron-coloured masses of rock, behind one of which
the few inhabited hovels were clustered, and the boat which had
brought her was drawn up. In front was the sea, still lashed by a
fierce wind, which was driving the fantastically shaped remains of
the great storm cloud rapidly across an intensely blue sky. The
waves, although it was the ebb, were still tremendous, and their
roar re-echoed as they reared to fearful heights and broke with the
reverberations that she had heard all along. Peregrine kept quite
high up, not venturing below the washed line of shingle, saying that
the back draught of the waves was most perilous, and in a high wind
could not be reckoned upon.

"No escape!" he said, as he perceived Anne's gaze on the
inaccessible cliff and the whole scene, the wild beauty of which was
lost to her in its terrors.

"Where's your ship?" she asked.

"Safe in Whale Chine. No putting to sea yet, though it may be fair
to-morrow."

Then she put before him the first scheme she had thought out, of
letting her escape to Sir Edmund Nutley's house, whence she could
make her way back, takin