Montevedo's hands and knees were swollen to twice their natural size, and, like all other persons so afflicted, he could not keep the affected parts quiet. It always seems to the sufferer from inflammatory rheumatism that some other position than that in which the aching member is, would be more comfortable. The swollen and padded hands and arms of the fisherman aroused 'Liphalet's sympathy; but he had still another question to ask. "How long since Miss Sue left here, Suz? Seems like I ought to've met her comin' along from Tapp Point, if not t'other side of it." "She be gone twenty minutes--not more," groaned the sufferer. "Twenty minutes? Nonsense!" ejaculated 'Liphalet. "I was all that comin' along the cliff. I didn't see nary sign of her." "Did I not say she was an angel?" cried Montevedo. "Ah, _Dios_! She has been carried home t'rough the storm in a chariot of the saints." "By Hannah!" ejaculated his visitor, rebuttoning his coat, "she's more likely to have been carried over that bank by the wind, and without no chariot. Twenty minutes ago? Are you sure, Suz?" "Oh, yes, Mist' Life. Sure as sure," sighed the fisherman. "It seemed she had scarcely closed the door when you opened it." The other said no further word, and he stood not on the order of his going. He plunged out of the shack into the gale with a stricture about his heart that was positively painful. Twenty minutes before he had been at the beginning of the patrol path, there by the corner of the Tapp estate. Through a rift in the curtain of sleet he had seen faintly that wraith, or figure, staggering for an instant on the verge of the cliff. Had that ghostly specter of the storm been Sue Ambrose? Where could she have gone from Suz Montevedo's shack save toward home? Yet he had not met her as he plowed along the patrol path. In the other direction there was no dwelling until one reached the life saving station. And he was sure Miss Sue would not go there. Why should she? Was it a haven she craved, the fisherman's shack under this sheltering bank was sufficient. Had she started for home, what other way could the doctor's sister have gone save by the path by which 'Liphalet came to Suz Montevedo's hovel? The ex-steward, backed up against the driving sleet, trying to pierce the smother ahead of him with fear-sharpened vision, chewed for that moment a bitter cud of uncertainty. To the right, across the vacant lots and by an uncertain path, lay Betty Gallup's little cottage. But the "Able Seaman" was at this time of day redding up the rooms behind and above the store on the Shell Road, and her door would be locked. No storm would keep Mrs. Gallup at home, and the doctor's sister must know there would be no refuge for her there.