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Reeves was interested.

“Was anyone ever caught by the tide?”

“Yes,” returned Helen, with a shudder. “Once, long ago, before I was born, a girl went around the shore to the cave and fell asleep there–and the tide came in and she was drowned. She was young and very pretty, and was to have been married the next week. I’ve been afraid of the place ever since.”

The treacherous cave proved to be a picturesque and innocent-looking spot, with the beach of glittering sand before it and the high gloomy walls of rock on either hand.

“I must come here some day and sketch it,” said Reeves enthusiastically, “and you must be the Kelpy, Helen, and sit in the cave with your hair wrapped about you and seaweed clinging to it.”

“Do you think a kelpy would look like that?” said the girl dreamily. “I don’t. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches for victims.”

“Well, never mind your sea kelpies,” Reeves said, fishing out his Longfellow. “They are a tricky folk, if all tales be true, and it is supposed to be a very rash thing to talk about them in their own haunts. I want to read you ‘The Building of the Ship.’ You will like it, I’m sure.”

When the tide turned they went home.

“We haven’t seen the kelpy, after all,” said Reeves.

“I think I shall see him some day,” said Helen gravely. “I think he is waiting for me there in that gloomy cave of his, and some time or other he will get me.”

Reeves smiled at the gloomy fancy, and Helen smiled back at him with one of her sudden radiances. The tide was creeping swiftly up over the white sands. The sun was low and the bay was swimming in a pale blue glory. They parted at Clam Point, Helen to go for the cows and Reeves to wander on up the shore. He thought of Helen at first, and the wonderful change that had come over her of late; then he began to think of another face–a marvellously lovely one with blue eyes as tender as the waters before him. Then Helen was forgotten.

The summer waned swiftly. One afternoon Reeves took a fancy to revisit the Kelpy’s Cave. Helen could not go. It was harvest time, and she was needed in the field.

“Don’t let the kelpy catch you,” she said to him half seriously. “The tide will turn early this afternoon, and you are given to day-dreaming.”

“I’ll be careful,” he promised laughingly, and he meant to be careful. But somehow when he reached the cave its unwholesome charm overcame him, and he sat down on the boulder at its mouth.

“An hour yet before tide time,” he said. “Just enough time to read that article on impressionists in my review and then stroll home by the sandshore.”

From reading he passed to day-dreaming, and day-dreaming drifted into sleep, with his head pillowed on the rocky walls of the cave.

How long he had slept he did not know, but he woke with a start of horror. He sprang to his feet, realizing his position instantly. The tide was in–far in past the headlands already. Above and beyond him towered the pitiless unscalable rocks. There was no way of escape.

Reeves was no coward, but life was sweet to him, and to die like that–like a drowned rat in a hole–to be able to do nothing but wait for that swift and sure oncoming death! He reeled against the damp rock wall, and for a moment sea and sky and prisoning headlands and white-lined tide whirled before his eyes.

Then his head grew clearer. He tried to think. How long had he? Not more than twenty minutes at the outside. Well, death was sure and he would meet it bravely. But to wait–to wait helplessly! He should go; mad with the horror of it before those endless minutes would have passed!