ortals. There
was the ghostlike harbor of the spirit-land, the water gleaming betwixt
its dark walls, one solitary boat motionless upon it, the men moving about
like shadows in the star twilight. Here stood three women and a man on the
shore, and save the stars no light shone, and from the land came no sound
of life. Was it the dead of the night or a day that had no sun? It was not
dark, but the light was rayless. Or rather it was as if she had gained
the power of seeing in the dark. Suppressed sleep wove the stuff of a
dream around her, and the stir at her heart kept it alive with
dream-forms. Even the voice of Peter's Annie, saying, "I s' bide for my
man.--Gude-nicht, my leddy," did not break the charm. Her heart shaped
that also into the dream. Turning away with Malcolm and Lizzy, she passed
along the front of the Seaton. How still, how dead, how empty like
cenotaphs, all the cottages looked! How the sea, which lay like a watcher
at their doors, murmured in its sleep! Arrived at the entrance to her own
close, Lizzy next bade them good-night, and Clementina and Malcolm were
left.

And now drew near the full power, the culmination of the mounting
enchantment, of the night for Malcolm. When once the Scaurnose people
should have passed them, they would be alone--alone as in the spaces
between the stars. There would not be a living soul on the shore for
hours. From the harbor the nearest way to the House was by the sea-gate,
but where was the haste with the lovely night around them, private as a
dream shared only by two? Besides, to get in by that they would have had
to rouse the cantankerous Bykes, and what a jar would not that bring into
the music of the silence! Instead, therefore, of turning up by the side of
the stream where it crossed the shore, he took Clementina once again in
his arms unforbidden and carried her over. Then the long sands lay open to
their feet. Presently they heard the Scaurnose party behind them, coming
audibly, merrily on. As by a common resolve they turned to the left, and
crossing the end of the Boar's Tail, resumed their former direction, with
the dune now between them and the sea. The voices passed on the other
side, and they heard them slowly merge into the inaudible. At length,
after an interval of silence, on the westerly air came one quiver of
laughter, by which Malcolm knew his friends were winding up the red path
to the top of the cliff. And now the shore was bare of presence, bare of