hat do you think of it?" I asked her.

No human memory could forget her lustrous eyes, solemn and yet lighted
by the beauty of her thoughts, as she gazed out over the waters,
troubled by the flowing tide.

"I can't make anything out of it," she told me at last. "It doesn't seem
to make good sense. Yet there have been hundreds of more baffling
mysteries, and they all were cleared up at last. Cleared up
intelligently, too, if you know what I mean."

"You mean--with credible motives and actions behind them."

"Yes, and _human_ actions. I'm thinking about--you know what. Human
agents were the only agents in this crime. In the end it will prove out
that way."

"Then you aren't at all superstitious about--this." I indicated that
eery, desolate lagoon with its craggy margin, stretching away like a
ghost-lake in the gray light. As always the tidal waves were bursting
with ferocious, lunging onslaughts on the natural rock wall, and the
foam gleamed incredibly white against the dark water.

"Not in the least," she answered me. "I don't like the place when the
tide's rolling in--it's too rough and too fierce--but it's lovely in
the ebb-tide! Did you ever see anything so still as it is then--the
water's edge creeping inward, and such a wonderful blue-green? No, I'm
not superstitious about it at all. I'm going swimming, one of these
nights, when the tide's going out. I'd cross it to-night in an
emergency."

"You're a strong swimmer, then."

"I can swim well enough--nothing to boast of though. Ned"--for we had
got to the first name stage, long since--"this whole matter will be
cleared up in a few days more. Such things always do come out right. I
wouldn't be surprised if that poor man's body should be found any day,
dragged into some thicket. The rocks are full of caves--perhaps the drag
hooks simply failed to find it."

"And your uncle--he feels the way you do?"

"Of course. If you are talking about that silly legend--it gives him
only the keenest delight as a big story to tell his friends. He has no
more superstitious fear about this lagoon than I have."

"Have you talked to him since the inquest?"

"You know I haven't."

"He got two telegrams to-day. They seemed to go mighty hard with him. I
was wondering--whether you ought to go to him now."

A little line came between her straight brows. "I can't imagine what
they could be----" she said.

"The loss of some friend? Financial loss, perhaps----?"

"I don't know