boat drifted
out. Soon that red glare was a glowing line that rose and fell, dipping
and rising and wavering along a two-mile stretch, a fiery surf beating
against the forest.

Down in the engine room Barlow finally located the trouble, and the
motor took up its labors, spinning with a rhythmic chatter of valves.
The man came up into the pilot house, wiping the sweat from his grimy
face.

"Gee, I'm sorry, Mrs. Fyfe," he said. "A gas-engine man would 'a' fixed
that in five minutes. Took me two hours to find out what was wrong.
It'll be a heck of a job to fetch Cougar Bay now."

But by luck Barlow made his way back, blundering fairly into the landing
at the foot of the path that led to the bungalow, as if the cruiser knew
the way to her old berth. And as he reached the float, the front
windows on the hillock broke out yellow, pale blurs in the smoky night.

"Well, say," Barlow pointed. "I bet a nickel Jack's home. See? Nobody
but him would be in the house."

"I'll go up," Stella said.

"All right, I guess you know the path better'n I do," Barlow said. "I'll
take the _Bug_ around into the bay."

Stella ran up the path. She halted halfway up the steps and leaned
against the rail to catch her breath. Then she went on. Her step was
noiseless, for tucked in behind a cushion aboard the _Waterbug_ she had
found an old pair of her own shoes, rubber-soled, and she had put them
on to ease the ache in her feet born of thirty-six hours' encasement in
leather. She gained the door without a sound. It was wide open, and in
the middle of the big room Jack Fyfe stood with hands thrust deep in his
pockets, staring absently at the floor.

She took a step or two inside. Fyfe did not hear her; he did not look
up.

"Jack."

He gave ever so slight a start, glanced up, stood with head thrown back
a little. But he did not move, or answer, and Stella, looking at him,
seeing the flame that glowed in his eyes, could not speak. Something
seemed to choke her, something that was a strange compound of relief and
bewilderment and a slow wonder at herself,--at the queer, unsteady
pounding of her heart.

"How did you get way up here?" he asked at last.

"Linda wired last night that Charlie was hurt. I got a machine to the
Springs. Then Barlow came down this afternoon looking for you. He said
you'd been missing for two days. So I--I--"

She broke off. Fyfe was walking toward her with that peculiar,
lightfooted step of his, a queer, tense l