old friends and asked after all her old interests. But the
letters came to be more and more like those of a stranger and one
apart from the Racicot life, and the father and mother felt it.

"She's changing," muttered old Nathan. "It had to be so--it's well for
her that it is so--but it hurts. She ain't ours any more. We've lost
the girl, wife, lost her forever."

Rob Fletcher always came and listened to the letters in silence while
the others buzzed and commented. Rob, so the Harbour folk said, was
much changed. He had grown unsociable and preferred to stay home and
read books rather than go a-visiting as did others. The Harbour folk
shook their heads over this. There was something wrong with a man who
read books when there was a plenty of other amusements. Jacob Radnor
had read books all one winter and had drowned himself in the
spring--jumped overboard from his dory at the herring nets. And that
was what came of books, mark you.

The Camerons came later to Dalveigh the next summer, on account of
John Cameron's health, which was not good. It was the first of August
before a host of servants came to put Dalveigh in habitable order, and
a week later the family came. They brought a houseful of guests with
them.

At sunset on the day of her arrival Nora Shelley looked out cross the
harbour to the fishing village. She was tired after her journey, and
she had not meant to go over until the morning, but now she knew she
must go at once. Her mother was over there; the old life called to
her; the northwest wind swept up the channel and whistled alluringly
to her at the window of her luxurious room. It brought to her the tang
of the salt wastes and filled her heart with a great, bitter-sweet
yearning.

She was more beautiful than ever. In the year that had passed she had
blossomed out to a gracious fulfilment of womanhood. Even the Camerons
had wondered at her swift adaptation to her new surroundings. She
seemed to have put Racicot behind her as one puts by an old garment.
In everything she had held her own royally. Her adopted parents were
proud of her beauty and her nameless, untamed charm. They had lavished
every indulgence upon her. In those few short months she had lived
more keenly and fully than in all her life before. The Nora Shelley
who went away was not, so it would seem, the Nora Shelley who came
back.

But when she looked from her window to the waves and saw the star of
the lighthouse and the blaze of the s