difference it made to me,
came and went; and the wild, blustering weather of January, with its
bursts and blinks of sunshine, its high winds and angry seas, was well
upon us.

There had been little to do in and around the store, so I was taking
the excuse to row over to Clarks' with their supplies, intending to
bring back any eggs they might have for my camp requirements.

It was a cold, blustery morning, with a high, whistling wind coming in
from the Gulf. The sky was clear and blue as a mid-summer's day and
the sun was shining as if it had never had a chance to shine before.

It was with difficulty that I got into my boat without suffering a
wetting, but I was soon bobbing on the crest of the waves or lying in
the troughs of the pale-green, almost transparent sea, making my way
across the Bay, as the waves climbed higher and still higher, with
white-maned horses racing in on top of the flowing tide.

It was hard pulling, but I was strong and reckless, fearing neither man
nor elements.

Every minute of that forenoon brought with it an increasing fury of the
storm; every minute greater volumes of water lashed and dashed into the
Bay, until, away out, The Ghoul looked more like a waterspout than a
black, forbidding rock.

Rita was surprised and angry at my daring in crossing, yet she could
not disguise her pleasure now I was with her, for she chafed with the
restrictions of a stormy winter and craved, as all healthy people do,
for the society of those of her own age.

"Seems as if it's goin' to be a hurricane," remarked old Andrew Clark,
looking out across the upheaving waters. "Never saw it so bad;--yet
it's only comin' on.

"Guess you'll ha'e to stop wi' us the night, George."

"--And welcome," put in his good lady. "There's always a spare bed for
George Bremner in this house. Eh! Andrew."

"Ay,--ay!" remarked the old man, reflectively. "We're no' havin' ye
drooned goin' away frae this place,--that I'm tellin' ye."

Like me, Rita was a child of stress and storm. She loved to feel the
strong wind in her face and hair. She gloried in the taste of the salt
spray. She thrived in the open and sported in the free play of her
agile limbs. Unafraid, and daring to recklessness, nothing seemed to
daunt her; nothing, unless, maybe, it were the great, cruel, sharks'
teeth of The Ghoul over which the sea was now breaking, away out there
at the entrance to the Bay: that rock upon which she had been wrecked
in