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straight to the guard-house and tried to open the door, but it was locked; then he went to the side and looked in. There was just sufficient light to see that the place was empty. So he went along the cliff looking for Willy. It was now light enough to see all round, for the blackness of the sky overhead had passed, the heavy clouds being swept away by the driving wind; but nowhere could he see any trace of the man he sought. He went all along the cliff up the Watter's Mou', till, following the downward trend of the rock, and splashing a way through the marsh - now like a quagmire, so saturated was it with the heavy rainfall - he came to the shallows opposite the Barley Mill. Here he met a man from The Bullers, who had come along by the Castle, and him he asked if he had seen Willy Barrow on his way. The decidedly negative answer "A've seen nane. It's nae a night for ony to be oot than can bide wi'in!" made him think that all might not be well with Sailor Willy, and so he went back again on his search, peering into every hole and cranny as he went. At the flagstaff he met some of his companions, who, since the storm had passed, had come to look for weather signs and to see what the sudden tempest might have brought about. When they heard that there was no sign of the coastguard they separated, searching for him, and shouting lest he might have fallen anywhere and hear their voices.

      All that night they searched, for each minute made it more apparent that all was not well with him; but they found no sign. The waves still beat into the Watter's Mou' with violence, for though the storm had passed the sea was a wide-stretching mass of angry waters, and curling white crowned every wave. But with the outgoing tide the rocky bed of the cove broke up the waves, and they roared sullenly as they washed up the estuary.

      In the grey of the morning a fisher-boy rushed up to a knot of men who were clustered round the guard-house and called to them:

      "There's somethin' wollopin' aboot i' the shallows be the Barley Mill! Come an' get it oot! It looks like some ane!" So there was a rush made to the place. When they got to the islands of sea-grass the ebbing tide had done its work, and stranded the "something" which had rolled amid the shallows.

      There, on the very spot whence the boat had set sail on its warning errand, lay its wreckage, and tangled in it the body of the noble girl who had steered it - her brown hair floating wide and twined round the neck of Sailor Willy, who held her tight in his dead arms.

      The requiem of the twain was the roar of the breaking waves and the screams of the white birds that circled round the Watter's Mou'.

      End

       Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I Second Sight

       CHAPTER II Gormala

       CHAPTER III An Ancient Rune

       CHAPTER IV Lammas Floods

       CHAPTER V The Mystery of the Sea

       CHAPTER VI The Ministers of the Doom

       CHAPTER VII From Other Ages and the Ends of the Earth

       CHAPTER VIII A Run on the Beach

       CHAPTER IX Confidences and Secret Writing

       CHAPTER X A Clear Horizon

       CHAPTER XI In the Twilight

       CHAPTER XII The Cipher

       CHAPTER XIII A Ride Through the Mountains

       CHAPTER XIV A Secret Shared

       CHAPTER XV A Peculiar Dinner-Party

       CHAPTER XVI Revelations

       CHAPTER XVII Sam Adams’s Task

       CHAPTER XVIII Fireworks and Joan of Arc

       CHAPTER XIX On Changing One’s Name

       CHAPTER XX Comradeship

       CHAPTER XXI The Old Far West and the New

       CHAPTER XXII Crom Castle

       CHAPTER XXIII Secret Service

       CHAPTER XXIV A Subtle Plan

       CHAPTER XXV Inductive Ratiocination

       CHAPTER XXVI A Whole Wedding Day

       CHAPTER XXVII Entrance to the Cavern

       CHAPTER XXVIII Voices in the Dark

       CHAPTER XXIX The Monument

       CHAPTER XXX The Secret Passage

       CHAPTER XXXI Marjory’s Adventure

       CHAPTER XXXII The Lost Script

       CHAPTER XXXIII Don Bernardino

       CHAPTER XXXIV The Accolade

       CHAPTER XXXV The Pope’s Treasure

       CHAPTER XXXVI The Rising Tide

       CHAPTER XXXVII Round the Clock

       CHAPTER XXXVIII The Duty of a Wife

      

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