d
across the Island to the Hut--the trail along which Gregg had so often
come to meet her. She had not dreamed that life could hold so much of
emptiness nor that longing for a loved one could be so intense as to be
almost a physical pain. She sank down beside the dull ashes of last
night's fire. The loneliness was almost unbearable.

From the pocket in her blouse she took a folded paper. Gregg had
pressed it into her hand as he left that morning. She unfolded it. It
was a verse from some poet unknown to her. "Read it when I am gone,"
he had whispered to her.

"When I am standing on a mountain crest,
Or hold the tiller in the dashing spray,
My love of you leaps foaming in my breast,
Shouts with the winds and sweeps to their foray;
. . . I laugh aloud for love of you,
Glad that our love is fellow to rough weather--
No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew,
But hale and hardy as the highland heather,
Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills,
Comrade of the ocean, playmate of the hills."

Before Jean had finished, her shoulders had straightened. She felt
strangely comforted, lifted out of herself. Surely, she thought,
nothing but happiness could come of a love like this. Even the
elements must be kind to one who loved so. Back in her little bunk she
thought of him out on the dark sea in an open boat with only the night
for a covering, and to calm her fears she repeated over and over again
the words of the verse he had left her.

Her faith was sorely tried the next morning when she woke to the old
familiar roar of wind and wave, and felt the cabin trembling in the
blasts of a gale. She saw, with alarm, that Ellen was not in her bed.
On investigating, Jean found her out on the beach standing bareheaded
while the wind wound her garments about her, loosening the strands of
her braided hair and pelting her with rain and flying spray. Ellen was
gazing, in a fascination of dread, at the green-back waves humping
their backs like fearful monsters, chasing one another in to the line
of foaming breakers that spent themselves at her feet.

Jean slipped her hand into her sister's and drew her back to the cabin.
When they entered Loll was up making a fire in the Yukon stove.

The day wore on. The storm increased, though it never became as
violent as some they had experienced during the winter. The direction
of the wind was favorable to their sailors. Both women knew that no
make-shift