er that the old schooner had gone. At that instant, as if in
confirmation, a shattered board bumped against the boat's side.
She looked, and noticed that far and near the water was strewn with
such fragments.

She was pausing for a second to consider, when she caught sight of a
black object lying on the mud beside the shore, and with a short cry
fell to rowing with all her strength. She guided the boat as nearly
up to it as the mud allowed, and then, catching up her skirts, jumped
into the ooze and waded.

It was Mr. Fogo; but whether dead or alive she could not say.
Down on the mud she knelt, and, turning him gently over, looked
into his face. It was streaked with slime, and powdered with a
yellowish flake, as of sand. His locks were singed most pitifully.
She started up, took him by the shoulders, and tried to drag him up
to the firmer shingle.

Mr. Fogo opened his eyes and shut them again, feebly.

"Not dead! Oh! thank Heaven you are not dead."

With a sob she dropped again beside him, and brushed the flaked
powder from his eye-lashes.

He opened his eyes again.

"Would you mind speaking up? I--I think I am a little deaf."

"I thought you were dead," she cried, in a louder tone.

"No-o, I am not dead. Oh! no; decidedly I am not dead. It--it was
the Tea, I fancy."

He added this apologetically, much as some gentlemen are wont to
plead "the salmon."

Apparently believing the explanation sufficient, he shut his eyes
again, and seemed inclined to go to sleep.

"The Tea?" questioned Tamsin, chafing his hands.

"Or the Honey, perhaps--or the Putty," he answered drowsily.
Then, opening his eyes and sitting up with a start, "Upon my soul, I
don't know which. It _called_ itself Tea, but I'm--bound--to--
admit--"

He was nodding again. Utterly perplexed, Tamsin leant back and
regarded him.

"Can you walk, if you lean on my arm?"

"Walk? Oh! yes, I can walk. Why not?"

But it seemed that he was mistaken; for, in attempting to start, he
groped about for a bit and then sat down suddenly. Tamsin helped him
to his feet.

The reader has long ago guessed the cause of the catastrophe. It was
dynamite--conspirators' dynamite, and therefore ill-prepared.
Now dynamite, when it explodes, acts, we are told, with "local
partiality"; and of this term we may remark--

That it is given as an explanation by men of science,
Without being a "scientific" explanation;
But is, in fact, a "metap