as apparently his mission to straighten things out.
Some folks of his kind, she reflected, now and then made a good deal of
avoidable trouble; but there was in this man, at least, a
half-whimsical toleration, which rendered that an unlikely thing in his
particular case. Besides, she had already recognised that she was in
some respects fortunate in having such a man for her companion.

Her deck chair was always set out in the most sheltered and comfortable
place. If there was anything to be seen, a cargo boat plunging along
forecastle under, or a great iron sailing ship thrashing out to the
westwards, with the spray clouds flying about her hove up weather side,
he almost invariably appeared with a pair of powerful glasses. She was
watched over, her wishes anticipated, and the man was seldom
obtrusively present when she felt disposed to talk to somebody else.
It struck her that she had thought a good deal about him during the
last few days, and rather less than usual about Gregory, which was
partly why she did not walk up and down the deck with him, as usual,
after dinner that evening.

Three or four days later the _Scarrowmania_ ran into the Bank fog, and
burrowed through it with whistle hooting dolefully at regular
intervals. Now and then an answering ringing of bells came out of the
clammy vapour, and the half-seen shape of an anchored schooner loomed
up, rolling wildly on grey slopes of sea. Once, too, a tiny dory, half
filled with lines and buoys, slid by plunging on the wash flung off by
the _Scarrowmania's_ bows, and Agatha understood that the men in her
had escaped death by a hairsbreadth. They were cod fishers, Wyllard
told her, and he added that there was a host of them at work somewhere
in the sliding haze. She, however, fancied, now and then, that the fog
had a depressing effect on him, and that when the dory lay beneath the
rail there had been a somewhat unusual look in his face.

Then a breeze came out of the north-west, with the sting of the ice in
it, but the fog did not lift, and the _Scarrowmania_ plunged on through
it with spray-wet decks and the grey seas smashing about her bows. It
was bitterly cold and clammy, the raw wind pierced to the bone, but the
voyage was, at least, rapidly shortening, and one evening Agatha paced
the deck with Wyllard in a somewhat curious mood. Perhaps it was
merely the gloom re-acting upon her, for she was looking forward to the
landing with a certain half-consci