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They hurried back across the dampening sand as the sun disappeared, leaving a fiery spot behind him. The shore was no longer quiet and deserted. The little spot where the fishing house stood had suddenly started into life. Roughly clad boys were running hither and thither, carrying fish or water. The boats were hauled up on the skids. A couple of shaggy old tars, who had strolled over from the Point to hear about Young Si’s catch, were smoking their pipes at the corner of his shanty. A mellow afterlight was shining over sea and shore. The whole scene delighted Ethel’s artist eyes.

Agnes nudged her companion.

“There! If you want to see Young Si,” she whispered, pointing to the skids, where a busy figure was discernible in a large boat, “that’s him, with his back to us, in the cream-coloured boat. He’s counting out mackerel. If you go over to that platform behind him, you’ll get a good look when he turns around. I’m going to coax a mackerel out of that stingy old Snuffy, if I can.”

She tripped off, and Ethel walked slowly over to the boats. The men stared at her in open-mouthed admiration as she passed them and walked out on the platform behind Young Si. There was no one near the two. The others were all assembled around Snuffy’s boat. Young Si was throwing out the mackerel with marvellous rapidity, but at the sound of a footstep behind him he turned and straightened up his tall form. They stood face to face.

“Miles!”

“Ethel!”

Young Si staggered back against the mast, letting two silvery bloaters slip through his hands overboard. His handsome, sunburned face was very white.

Ethel Lennox turned abruptly and silently and walked swiftly across the sand. Agnes felt her arm touched, and turned to see Ethel standing, pale and erect, beside her.

“Let us go home,” said the latter unsteadily. “It is very damp here–I feel chilled.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Agnes penitently. “I ought to have told you to bring a shawl. It is always damp on the shore after sunset. Here, Snuffy, give me my mackerel. Thank you. I’m ready now, Miss Lennox.”

They reached the lane before Agnes remembered to ask the question Ethel dreaded.

“Oh, did you see Young Si? And what do you think of him?”

Ethel turned her face away and answered with studied carelessness. “He seems to be quite a superior fisherman so far as I could see in the dim light. It was very dusky there, you know. Let us walk a little faster. My shoes are quite wet.”

When they reached home, Miss Lennox excused herself on the plea of weariness and went straight to her room.

* * * * *

Back at the shore Young Si had recovered himself and stooped again to his work. His face was set and expressionless. A dull red burned in each bronzed cheek. He threw out the mackerel mechanically, but his hands trembled.

Snuffy strolled over to the boat. “See that handsome girl, Si?” he asked lazily. “One of the Bentleys’ boarders, I hear. Looks as if she might have stepped out of a picture frame, don’t she?”

“We’ve no time to waste, Curtis,” said Young Si harshly, “with all these fish to clean before bedtime. Stop talking and get to work.”

Snuffy shrugged his shoulders and obeyed in silence. Young Si was not a person to be trifled with. The catch was large and it was late before they finished. Snuffy surveyed the full barrels complacently.

“Good day’s work,” he muttered, “but hard–I’m dead beat out. ‘Low I’ll go to bed. In the name o’ goodness, Si, whar be you a-goin’ to?”

Young Si had got into a dory and untied it. He made no answer, but rowed out from the shore. Snuffy stared at the dory blankly until it was lost in the gloom.