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Rh high, dried himself fairly well, and waited sleepily. Still nothing appeared from harbor mouth or sea-wall. Suddenly it flashed through his drowsy brain that he was expected back at Powell's that night. This bit of civilized obligation came like something laughable, out of some other person's life. It was in a droll dismay that he hurried off up the hill.

Once, through a gap in the black layers of the fir branches, he caught the shine of lights far below. "Let them go till morning. I 'll be back," he thought. Perhaps the little boy was not hurt so much, after all. Like one in a heavy dream he climbed wearily over the hill and downward through starlit fields to the house.

A candle, burning low, waited for him in the little brown hall. He locked the door without a sound. "What a mess for a visitor!" he pondered ruefully. But the thought that Helen was in the same house, even though she were asleep, came to him like a comfort.