To be honest! Tony’s chance phrase recurred ironically; and after it, his saying on the hill above Kilmarnock, “You’re the sort a man can trust.” With what? thought Miles bitterly: with lies, calculated, shaped as confidences. He had not known, before, how utterly the older man had captured his liking; or how, divorced from belief, liking could become reproach. A raw simpleton, to lend a stranger his heart! In this mood he found himself halting, without purpose, on the Admiral’s quarter-deck. From the rail he saw neither rocks nor river, but only the globular, spiny tufts of young Norway pines that stepped down toward the beach. Wind-slanted, rooted in crevices, they lent their fixity as a gauge to sight: their needles, carding sluggish vapor, freed the spellbound air; formlessness became texture; and fleecy filaments dissolving, twining, blending, thick as the smoke of wet brushwood, set the whole snowy void adrift in level motion. Somewhere, far below in the bay, a whistle mournfully bellowed. Nearer home, but deep in the fog, sounded the unsteady bumping of a single oar. “Hallo-o-o!” The rowing stopped; and a moment later the same high, clear voice called, “Hallo-o-o!” Miles trumpeted through his hands an answering hail. “Oh!” cried the rower, with evident relief. “Hallo again. Are you a vessel or the shore?” “I’m the shore,” laughed Miles. “What’s wrong?” “I’m lost out here.” The voice, floating across the hidden surface, rang clear as from the throat of a singer. “One oar went overboard, and the more I pull, the faster this thing goes round and round. And the tide’s running down--out, I mean--and I’m frightened.” The bumping noise broke in again, and again ceased. “No use! Hallo! Why, now you’re clear round on the _other_ side!” “Stay where you are!” cried Miles eagerly. “Wait. There’s no danger. I’ll come out and tow you.” He scrambled down to the beach, and along it to where Tony, for no apparent use, maintained a small boat moored on an endless rope. Hauling home till the black bow came cleaving the fog, he ordered peremptorily,-- “Keep on shouting, there! What’s the matter with you? How can I find--” “I was just thinking,” replied the voice calmly, from no great distance. “If you come out, you may get lost, too.” Miles cast off, and jumped in. “On this river?” He laughed somewhat breathlessly, half at the warning, half at a strange excitement which had mastered him. This drifting voice he had known, from the first hail, to be a girl’s; what girl’s, he had nearly guessed from the second; and pulling vigorous oars, he was not surprised to see, after blind exploration and shouting, the square bow of the magician’s punt focusing from out the heavy smoke. Bareheaded, half turned on a thwart, and peering anxiously through that smoke, sat a misty figure, whose light, strong lines of active youth not even a man’s cardigan jacket could muffle. She gave a little cry of deliverance.