las. Yet with Millie in a
semi-collapse, and the bare possibility of Nicholas' knifing them
both, he felt that this was his only course. Halvard was an unusually
powerful, active man, and the other must have suffered from the stress
of his long conflict in the hall.

The thing terminated speedily. There was the sound of a heavy
fall, a diminishing thrashing in the saw grass, and silence. An
indistinguishable form advanced over, the wharf, and Woolfolk
prepared to shove the tender free. But it was Poul Halvard. He got
down, Woolfolk thought, clumsily, and mechanically assumed his place
at the oars. Woolfolk sat aft, with an arm about Millie Stope.
The sailor said fretfully:

"I stopped him. He was all pumped out. Missed his hand at first--the
dark--a scratch."

He rested on the oars, fingering his shoulder. The tender swung
dangerously near the corrugated rock of the shore, and Woolfolk
sharply directed: "Keep way on her."

"Yes, sir," Halvard replied, once more swinging into his short,
efficient stroke. It was, however, less sure than usual; an oar missed
its hold and skittered impotently over the water, drenching Woolfolk
with a brief, cold spray. Again the bow of the tender dipped into the
point of land they were rounding, and John Woolfolk spoke more
abruptly than before.

He was seriously alarmed about Millie. Her face was apathetic, almost
blank, and her arms hung across his knees with no more response than a
doll's. He wondered desperately if, as she had said, her spirit had
died; if the Millie Stope that had moved him so swiftly and tragically
from his long indifference, his aversion to life, had gone, leaving
him more hoplessly alone than before. The sudden extinction of Ellen's
life had been more supportable than Millie's crouching dumbly at his
feet. His arm unconsciously tightened about her, and she gazed up with
a momentary, questioning flicker of her wide-opened eyes. He repeated
her name in a deep whisper, but her head fell forward loosely, and
left him in racking doubt.

Now he could see the shortly swaying riding light of the _Gar_.
Halvard was propelling them vigorously but erratically forward. At
times he remuttered his declarations about the encounter with
Nicholas. The stray words reached Woolfolk:

"Stopped him--the cursed dark--a scratch."

He brought the tender awkwardly alongside the ketch, with a grinding
shock, and held the boats together while John Woolfolk shifted Millie
to the de