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Presently she heard a shout from the shore and, turning around in dismay, she beheld a man on the rocks behind her. He was evidently shouting at her. What on earth could the creature want?

“Come in,” he called, gesticulating wildly. “You’ll be in the bottomless pit in another moment if you don’t look out.”

“He certainly must be a lunatic,” said Katherine to herself, “or else he’s drunk. What am I to do?”

“Come in, I tell you,” insisted the stranger. “What in the world do you mean by wading out to such a place? Why, it’s madness.”

Katherine’s indignation got the better of her fear.

“I do not think I am trespassing,” she called back as icily as possible.

The stranger did not seem to be snubbed at all. He came down to the very edge of the rocks where Katherine could see him plainly. He was dressed in a somewhat well-worn grey suit and wore spectacles. He did not look like a lunatic, and he did not seem to be drunk.

“I implore you to come in,” he said earnestly. “You must be standing on the very brink of the bottomless pit.”

He is certainly off his balance, thought Katherine. He must be some revivalist who has gone insane on one point. I suppose I’d better go in. He looks quite capable of wading out here after me if I don’t.

She picked her steps carefully back with her precious specimens. The stranger eyed her severely as she stepped on the rocks.

“I should think you would have more sense than to risk your life in that fashion for a handful of seaweeds,” he said.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” said Miss Rangely. “You don’t look crazy, but you talk as if you were.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t know that what the people hereabouts call the Bottomless Pit is situated right off that point–the most dangerous spot along the whole coast?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Katherine, horrified. She remembered now that Aunt Elizabeth had warned her to be careful of some bad hole along shore, but she had not been paying much attention and had supposed it to be in quite another direction. “I am a stranger here.”

“Well, I hardly thought you’d be foolish enough to be out there if you knew,” said the other in mollified accents. “The place ought not to be left without warning, anyhow. It is the most careless thing I ever heard of. There is a big hole right off that point and nobody has ever been able to find the bottom of it. A person who got into it would never be heard of again. The rocks there form an eddy that sucks everything right down.”

“I am very grateful to you for calling me in,” said Katherine humbly. “I had no idea I was in such danger.”

“You have a very fine bunch of seaweeds, I see,” said the unknown.

But Katherine was in no mood to converse on seaweeds. She suddenly realized what she must look like–bare feet, draggled skirts, dripping arms. And this creature whom she had taken for a lunatic was undoubtedly a gentleman. Oh, if he would only go and give her a chance to put on her shoes and stockings!

Nothing seemed further from his intentions. When Katherine had picked up the aforesaid articles and turned homeward, he walked beside her, still discoursing on seaweeds as eloquently as if he were commonly accustomed to walking with barefooted young women. In spite of herself, Katherine couldn’t help listening to him, for he managed to invest seaweeds with an absorbing interest. She finally decided that as he didn’t seem to mind her bare feet, she wouldn’t either.

He knew so much about seaweeds that Katherine felt decidedly amateurish beside him. He looked over her specimens and pointed out the valuable ones. He explained the best method of preserving and mounting them, and told her of other and less dangerous places along the shore where she might get some new varieties.