BEFORE the dream had fairly enchained him Colton was buffeted back to consciousness by a slamming of doors and a general bustling about in the house. He sat up in bed, and looked out over the ocean just in time to see a fiery serpent writhe up through the blackness and thrust into the clouds a head which burst into wind-driven fragments of radiance, before the vaster glory of the lightning surrounded and wiped it out. 

B

 “A wreck, I fear,” said Professor Eavenden in the hall outside. “I shall go down to the shore, in case I can be of assistance.” 

 “Indeed you shall not!” came a quick contradiction from the room at the end of the hall. “Not until I’m ready to go with you.” 

 It was the voice of the Vision. Colton observed that, soft as the tones were, a certain quality of decisiveness inhered in them. 

 “Can’t Mr. Haynes bring you?” suggested the professor mildly. “I see a light in his room.” 

 “He’ll have his hands full with Helga. Please wait, Dad. I won’t be ten minutes.” 

 From downstairs rose a banging of doors, a tramping of feet and the gruff voice of Johnston, the host, mingled with the gentle remonstrances of his wife, in which a certain insistence upon rubber boots was discernible. On the other side of Colton there was a swishing and thumping, as of one in hasty search for some article that had declined to stay put. “Where the devil is that sweater?” came in a sort of growling appeal to whatever Powers of Detection might be within hearing. 

 “Don’t swear, Mr. Haynes,” sounded in tones of soft gaiety from the end room, and the sweaterless one responded: “The half of it hath not been told you. Got a sweater to lend a poor man with a weak chest, Miss Ravenden?” 

 “I’m just getting into my one and only garment of the kind,” was the muffled answer. 

 A second woman’s voice, low, but with a wonderful, deep, full-throated sonance in it, broke in: 

 “My dream has come true,” it said gravely. “The ship is coming in on Graveyard Point. How long, Petit Père?” 

 “With you in a minute, Princess. Just let me get into my boots,” returned the voice of the seeker, but so altered by a certain caressing fellowship that Colton was half-minded to think he heard a new participant. 

 Prev. P 7/120 next