rength first. Then
you'll get on better and quicker. Now I'm going to leave you while you
change. You'll find plenty of warm things with the dressing gown."

She went out as before into the next room, and Helmsley managed, though
with considerable difficulty, to divest himself of his drenched clothes
and get on the comfortable woollen garments she had put ready for him.
When he took off his coat and vest, he spread them in front of the fire
to dry instead of the dressing-gown which he now wore, and as soon as
she returned he specially pointed out the vest to her.

"I should like you to put that away somewhere in your own safe
keeping,"--he said. "It has a few letters and--and papers in it which I
value,--and I don't want any stranger to see them. Will you take care of
it for me?"

"Of course I will! Nobody shall touch it, be sure! Not a soul ever comes
nigh me unless I ask for company!--so you can be quite easy in your
mind. Now I'm going to give you a cup of hot soup, and then you'll go to
bed, won't you?--and, please God, you'll be better in the morning!"

He nodded feebly, and forced a smile. He had sunk back in the armchair
and his eyes were fixed on the warm-hearth, where the tiny dog, Charlie,
whom he had rescued, and who in turn had rescued him, was curled up and
snoozing peacefully. Now that the long physical and nervous strain of
his journey and of his ghastly experience at Blue Anchor was past, he
felt almost too weak to lift a hand, and the sudden change from the
fierce buffetings of the storm to the homely tranquillity of this little
cottage into which he had been welcomed just as though he had every
right to be there, affected him with a strange sensation which he could
not analyse. And once he murmured half unconsciously:

"Mary! Mary Deane!"

"Yes,--that's me!" she responded cheerfully, coming to his side at
once--"I'm here!"

He lifted his head and looked at her.

"Yes, I know you are here,--Mary!" he said, his voice trembling a little
as he uttered her name--"And I thank God for sending you to me in time!
But how--how was it that you found me?"

"I was watching the storm,"--she replied--"I love wild weather!--I love
to hear the wind among the trees and the pouring of the rain! I was
standing at my door listening to the waves thudding into the hollow of
the coombe, and all at once I heard the sharp barking of a dog on the
hill just above here--and sometimes the bark changed to a pitiful little