Dick bent forward clumsily; Maisie drew the hand away, and Dick blushed.
'It's very pretty,' he said.
'Pooh!' said Maisie, with a little laugh of gratified vanity.

She stood close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time and fired over the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world.

A puddle far across the mud caught the last rays of the sun and turned into a wrathful red disc.

The light held Dick's attention for a moment, and as he raised his revolver there fell upon him a renewed sense of the miraculous, in that he was standing by Maisie who had promised to care for him for an indefinite length of time till such date as---- A gust of the growing wind drove the girl's long black hair across his face as she stood with her hand on his shoulder calling Amomma 'a little beast,' and for a moment he was in the dark,--a darkness that stung.

The bullet went singing out to the empty sea.
'Spoilt my aim,' said he, shaking his head.