to descend twenty feet and more; but now the high tide left but
three of its rungs uncovered. At the young minister's feet a small
fishing-boat lay ready, moored by a short painter to the ladder.
The girl stepped lightly down and held up a hand.

"Thank you," said the young man with dignity, "but I do not want help."

She made no answer to this; but as he stepped down, went forward and
unmoored the painter. Then she pushed gently away from the ladder,
hoisted the small foresail, and, returning to her companion, stood
beside him for a moment with her hand on the tiller.

"Better slack the fore-sheet," she said suddenly.

The young man looked helplessly at her. He had not the slightest idea
of her meaning, did not in fact know the difference between a fore-sheet
and a mainsail. And it was just to find out the depth of his ignorance
that she had spoken.

"Never mind," she said, "I'll do it myself." She slackened and made
fast the rope, and took hold of the tiller again. The sails shook and
filled softly as they glided out from under the wall. The soft breeze
blew straight behind them, the tide was just beginning to ebb.
She loosed the main sheet a little, and the water hissed as they spun
down under the grey town towards the harbour's mouth.

A dozen vessels lay at anchor below the town quay, their lamps showing a
strange orange yellow in the moonlight; between them the minister saw
the cottages of Ruan glimmering on the eastern shore, and over it the
coast-guard flagstaff, faintly pencilled above the sky-line. It seemed
to him that they were not shaping their course for the little town.

"I thought you told me," he said at length, "that Mrs.--the dying
woman--lived across there."

The girl shook her head. "Not in Ruan itsel'--Ruan parish. We'll have
to go round the point."

She was leaning back and gazing straight before her, towards the
harbour's mouth. The boat was one of the class that serves along that
coast for hook-and-line as well as drift net fishing, clinker-built,
about twenty-seven feet in the keel, and nine in beam. It had no deck
beyond a small cuddy forward, on top of which a light hoar-frost was
gathering as they moved. The minister stood beside the girl, and
withdrew his eyes from this cuddy roof to contemplate her.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you don't take cold, wearing no
wrap or bonnet on frosty nights like this?"

She let the tiller go for a moment, took his hand b