and as in a dream she heard herself pleading . . .

"Get out the ladder, there!" called the skipper.

They were in the boat, still as in a dream, sitting among these strange,
kindly people. In a dream, too, she was waving to Bill, who had come up
from below and leant over the bulwarks, staring as steamer and boats
fell apart in the fog. Then, at a word from the bridge, he waved his
hand for the last time and ran below. In a minute or so the _Evan
Evans_ began to feel around and edge away for the northward.

She faded and was lost in the vaporous curtain. Still the children
gazed astern after her over the backs of the huddled sheep. The rowers
had fallen to singing again--men and maidens in harmony as they pulled--

'The ransom'd sons of God,
All earthly things we scorn,
And to our high abode
With songs of praise return! . . .'

Of a sudden, while they sang and while the children gazed, the fog to
northward heaved and parted, pierced by a shaft of the sinking sun, and
there in a clear hollow lay land--lay an Island vignetted in the fog,
with the light on its cliffs and green slopes--an Island, resting like a
shield on the milky sea.

"Look!"

Arthur Miles clutched Tilda by the arm and pointed.

The old steersman turned his head.

"Aye," said he, "she looks pretty of an evening sometimes, does
Holmness."

CHAPTER XX.

INISTOW FARM.

"_Clean, simple livers._"--CRASHAW.

The rowers in the leading boat were seven--four young men and three
young women; and they pulled two to an oar--all but the bowman, a young
giant of eighteen or thereabouts, who did without help. A fourth young
woman sat beside, suckling a baby. And so, counting the baby and the
two children and the old steersman, whom they all addressed as
"Father," and omitting 'Dolph and the sheep, they were twelve on board.
The second and third boats had half a dozen rowers apiece. The second
was steered by a wizened middle-aged man, Jan by name. Tilda learned
that he was the shepherd. More by token, he had his three shaggy dogs
with him, crowded in the stern.

At first these dogs showed the liveliest interest in 'Dolph, raising
themselves with their forepaws on the gunwale, and gazing across the
intervening twenty yards of water. But they were dignified creatures,
and their self-respect forbade them to bark. 'Dolph, who had no
breeding, challenged back loudly, all his bristles erect--and still the
more ang