mber-schooner. It was due yesterday, but had not yet
arrived.

"You are sure," MacAulay said to her, as they rode along, "that they
will come with Ben?"

"Quite sure. They preferred it to the cars for the novelty of the thing,
and the storm lulled the day they were to sail. Could the schooner make
this inlet in a sea like that?"

Doctor Dennis, stooping to arrange the harness, pretended not to hear
her.

"Ben, at least," he thought, "knows that to near the bar to-day means
death."

"One would think," he added aloud, "that Dick Bowdler's gray hairs and
thirty years of preaching would have sobered his love of adventure. He
was a foolhardy chap at college."

Miss Defourchet's glance grew troubled, as she looked out at the
gathering gloom and the crisp bits of yellow foam blown up to the
carriage-wheels. Doctor Dennis turned the mare's head, thus hiding the
sea from them; but its cry sounded for miles inland to-day,--an awful,
inarticulate roar. All else was solemn silence. The great salt marshes
rolled away on one side of the road, lush and rank,--one solitary dead
tree rising from them, with a fish-hawk's uncouth nest lumbering its
black trunk; they were still as the grave; even the ill-boding bird was
gone long ago, and kept no more its lonely vigil on the dead limb over
wind and wave. She glanced uneasily from side to side: high up on the
beach lay fragments of old wrecks; burnt spars of vessels drifted ashore
to tell, in their dumb way, of captain and crew washed, in one quick
moment, by this muddy water of the Atlantic, into that sea far off
whence no voyager has come back to bring the tidings. Land and sea
seemed to her to hint at this thing,--this awful sea, cold and dark
beyond. What did the dark mystery in the cry of the surf mean but that?
That was the only sound. The heavy silence without grew intolerable to
her: it foreboded evil. The cold, yellow light of day lingered long.
Overhead, cloud after cloud rose from the far watery horizon, and drove
swiftly and silently inland, bellying dark as it went, carrying the
storm. As the horse's hoofs struck hard on the beach, a bird rose out of
the marsh and trailed through the air, its long legs dragging behind it,
and a blaze of light feathers on its breast catching a dull glow in the
fading evening.

"The blue heron flies low," said the Doctor. "That means a heavier
storm. It scents a wreck as keenly as a Barnegat pirate."

"It is fishing, maybe?" said Mary,