Page:She's all the world to me. A novel (IA shesallworldtome00cain 0).pdf/77

 Ruby had tripped away for a moment. Returning with a little oval thing in her hand, she cried, "Danny, what's this? I found it under a stone, and its gills were shining like fire."

"A sea-mouse," said the lad, and taking it out of the child's hand, he added, "I'm less nor this worm to our Bill."

"Danny, would it hurt you much if you were to hear that your uncle Kisseck was being punished?"

The lad lifted his eyes with a bewildered stare. The idea that Bill Kisseck could be punished had never really come to him as within the limits of possibility. Once, indeed, he had thought of something that he might himself do, but the wild notion had vanished with the next glance at Kisseck's face.

"He could be punished," said Mona, "and must be."

Then Danny's eyes glittered and looked strange, but he said not a word. They walked on, the happy child once more taking a hand from each, and laughing, prattling, leaping, and making little runs between them. Ruby was in a deeper sense the link that bound them, and in the deepest sense of all she was the link that held them apart forever. They had walked to the mouth of the harbor, and Mona held out her hand to say good-bye. Danny looked beyond her over the sea. There was something in his face that Mona had never before seen there. What it meant she knew not then, except that in a moment he had grown to look old. "The storm is coming," said Mona. "I see the diver out at sea. Do you hear his wild note?"

"Ay, and ye see Mother Carey's chicken yonder,"