he
cliff a few yards away from us.

She looked very beautiful as she stepped up on the sloping sward above
the haugh, with the pale moonlight just lighting her airy dress, and her
face all sad and careworn.

Leaving Kermode to the care of the constable, Fred and I noiselessly
followed the girl home, and saw her step over the obstacles in her path
as by instinct, turning her face neither to the right nor left.

We decided to awaken her before she reached the door of the farmhouse,
so that, according to the popular notion, she might never again become
somnambulent.

With this view I stepped before her as she approached the door, but was
astonished to find that she paused as if my presence blocked the way
before she yet saw me or touched me. But there was no misunderstanding
the blank stare in her wonderful eyes.

I gently put out my hand and took hers, as she put it out before her to
feel the influence of a presence she could not see.

She did not scream or faint. She awoke with a start, and let the eggs
fall on the ground.

At first she could not understand where she was, and just thought she
was dreaming; but by degrees it came to her that she was standing before
me in the pale moonlight when she thought she ought to be in bed.

Then I softly told her where she had been in her sleep, keeping back all
knowledge of Kermode's attempted revenge on Andrew, and how we had
decided to awake her. Then, with a little pleasant laugh, we both told
her that the mystery of the seagulls' eggs was solved, and that neither
Andrew nor she would be troubled again.

She fell to sobbing a little, and for the first time seemed to shiver
with the cold; then she lifted the latch and we bade her good night.

Nothing was done to Kermode, for the fellow swore he had no intention of
discharging the gun, and we could not prove he had, though the case was
clear enough in our eyes, and the deed would have been done had we not,
in God's providence, been there to prevent it.

Cubbin, the constable, it transpired afterwards, had overheard me giving
my theory of the sleep-walking to Fred in the hayfield, and he, too, had
been in hiding at the farm, and had watched and followed us all.

So there was a wonderful story for him to tell of how Deborah had made
good her defence against the charge he had laid against Andrew and her.
And the beautiful Deborah with the plain face became the bride of the
jolly Andrew, who was neither an artist nor an