The path by which she must have come to the shack, was the path by which she must have essayed her return--this along the treacherous verge of the sand cliff. Yet taking the Portuguese fisherman's statement of time with more than the proverbial grain of salt, Miss Sue could not have so quickly reached the one open house along The Beaches--that of the younger Tapps--wherein to find shelter. The ground, of course, offered no spoor of any character. The force of the wind was driving the snow and sleet so rapidly that nothing stuck to the frozen earth. No footprint of any kind, therefore, was visible. The fierceness of the wind, so apparent now to 'Liphalet as he leaned back against it, roweled the fear already roused in his heart. With this blast behind her how could Sue Ambrose's frail body have offered resistance? In coming over from Tapp Point he had noted no fresh break in the bank where any part of the patrol path had been recently carried away. However, as he had declared to Doctor Ambrose, the wind was strong enough to have picked up his sister and swept her bodily over the cliff's verge. This thought, born of the travail of the ex-steward's mind, took hold upon him now with a grip that was not to be shaken off--with a certainty that no optimism could deny. And just now Eliphalet Truitt was in no optimistic mood. He felt that his suspicion of Sue Ambrose's fate was a certainty. Possibly the moment following that lull in the gale when he was able to see some distance along the patrol path, was the instant she had come to grief. He remembered vividly the spot at which he had seen that wraith of the storm. Her cry as she was carried over the brink would be smothered in the hullabaloo of the gale. He had passed the place of her catastrophe and had heard nothing to warn him that she had there come to disaster. The breakers were covering the narrow beach with wreckage and all manner of culch. At some points they dashed against the bluff itself and reached ravening hands half way up its face. 'Liphalet knew well the lay of the land here, and every contour and wavering line of the cliff. In his mind's eye he saw a picture of that bit of the bluff where he believed the tragedy had taken place. He whirled suddenly, with a prayer upon his lips, and dashed into the shed adjoining Suz Montevedo's cottage. There upon a wooden peg hung the coil of line he had seen the fisherman purchase at Cap'n Abe's store a week ago, to reeve new halyards on the catboat, _Loretta_. In the corner stood a heavy crowbar. He flung the coil of rope over his head and one shoulder, hoisted the iron bar to his other shoulder, and thus burdened, staggered out into the storm again. The wind was really an aid to him, for it was at first almost directly at his back. It thrust him on, burden and all, at a furious pace.