Now that the long physical and nervous strain of his journey and of his ghastly experience at Blue Anchor was past, he felt almost too weak to lift a hand, and the sudden change from the fierce buffetings of the storm to the homely tranquillity of this little cottage into which he had been welcomed just as though he had every right to be there, affected him with a strange sensation which he could not analyse.

And once he murmured half unconsciously: "Mary! Mary Deane!" "Yes,--that's me!" she responded cheerfully, coming to his side at once--"I'm here!" He lifted his head and looked at her.
"Yes, I know you are here,--Mary!" he said, his voice trembling a little as he uttered her name--"And I thank God for sending you to me in time! But how--how was it that you found me ?" "I was watching the storm,"-- she replied--"I love wild weather!--I love to hear the wind among the trees and the pouring of the rain! I was standing at my door listening to the waves thudding into the hollow of the coombe, and all at once I heard the sharp barking of a dog on the hill just above here--and sometimes the bark changed to a pitiful little howl, as if the animal were in pain.

So I put on my cloak and crossed the coombe up the bank--it's only a few minutes' scramble, though to you it seemed ever such a long way to-night,--and there I saw you lying on the grass with the little doggie running round and round you, and making all the noise he could to bring help.

Wise little beastie!" And she stooped to pat the tiny object of her praise, who sighed comfortably and stretched his dainty paws out a little more luxuriously--"If it hadn't been for him you might have died!" He said nothing, but watched her in a kind of morbid fascination as she went to the fire and removed a saucepan which she had set there some minutes previously.

Taking a large old-fashioned Delft bowl from a cupboard at one side of the fire-place, she filled it with steaming soup which smelt deliciously savoury and appetising, and brought it to him with some daintily cut morsels of bread.