ndered at your going off in such a hurry----"

"Do you think that man will be here soon?" interrupted Mr. Mellen.

The fisherman felt ruffled and injured at having his gossiping
propensities cut short in that manner, but that instant a step sounded
on the stone porch without, and he said, grumblingly:

"There he is. I 'spect there'll be a touse about getting him to go."

But Mr. Mellon took the matter in his own hands when the man entered,
and the liberal offer he made speedily put Jake in excellent spirits for
the expedition.

"My baggage must be disposed of first," said Mr. Mellen. "Some one must
get it from the pilot-boat."

"Jake and I'll fetch it in here," returned the old man.

"I will send for it in the morning," observed Mr. Mellen.

While they went down to the shore and were bringing in the trunks Mr.
Mellen stood by the fire, quite regardless of the curiosity with which
the children regarded him, and unconscious of several modest attempts at
conversation made by the old man's daughter:

"Your clothes are wringing wet; hadn't you better get some things of
father's and start dry?"

"No," answered Mellen, glancing at the water-proof carpet-bag which he
had seized on leaving the boat, remembering that it contained important
papers. "I have some things in here, and they will find my macintosh in
the boat."

He left the room while speaking, and, knowing the house well, went
upstairs, in order to change his wet garments. The young woman uttered a
little cry of dismay and ran a step or two after him, but turned back,
seized with terror of the dead body, about which she would gladly have
given warning.

Mellen had taken a candle from the table when he left the kitchen, and
entered the little room upstairs with it flaring in his hand. It did not
illuminate the whole chamber, but a cold feeling of awe crept over the
man as he stepped over the threshold, and a shudder, which sprang from
neither cold nor wet, passed to his heart.

With a trembling hand he set the light on a little pine table and looked
around. A bed stood in the further corner of the room, a great and
coldly white bed, on which a human form was lying in such awful
stillness as death alone knows.

Breathless and obeying a terrible fascination, he went up to the bed and
drew down the coarse linen sheet. A beautiful face, chiselled from the
marble of death, lay before him, with a cold smile on the lips, and the
blue of the eyes, that had been