During the afternoon an elegant close carriage, drawn by a superbly harnessed pair of high-stepping bays, which were in turn driven by a liveried negro, came dashing down the avenue, and drew up before the Brighton. A man of some thirty-five years of age leaped from the carriage, and entered the hotel--a man with a sinister yet handsome face, ornamented with a sweeping mustache, and a pair of sharp, black eyes. He was attired in spotless white duck, with patent-leather boots, and a white "plug" hat, and was evidently a person of some importance! He soon came out of the hotel, accompanied by the young woman Fritz had defended, and entering the carriage, they were whirled away down the avenue out of sight. "Dot settles dot! My game's gone und I don'd got some professional detective gase, there," Fritz growled, as he watched the receding carriage. "I'll bet a half-dollar I neffer see dem again." But he was mistaken. That evening when the moon was sending a flood of brilliant light down upon the long level beach, he was one of a thousand who took a stroll along the water's edge, over the damp sands of the sea. He was thus engaged, and watching the great luminous moon which seemed to have risen out of the distant watery waste, when a man touched him upon the shoulder. "Excuse me," he said, respectfully, "but are you Fritz, the young man who took a young lady's part, on a ferry-boat near Philadelphia, to-day?" "Vel, I dink I am, uff I recomember right. Vot of it?" Fritz replied. "Well, sir, you are wanted to bear witness to a marriage ceremony, to-night, up the coast, and I was sent for you. Step this way, to the carriage, sir." Scarcely knowing what was best to do, Fritz followed, got into an open carriage, and was driven rapidly north along the beach, through the romantic moonshine. But, how romantic was his little adventure destined to turn out? That was what he asked himself, as he gazed doubtfully out upon the greenish blue of mother ocean. CHAPTER II. THE STRANGE MARRIAGE. In the course of little over an hour, the carriage stopped at the inlet, where Fritz was told to get out and take a small boat and row across the water to the other shore, where he would find another carriage to complete his journey in. He accordingly did as directed, and had soon crossed the inlet, found the second carriage, and was once more rolling northward, along the sandy beach. It seemed hours to him ere his conductor drew rein in front of a jutting bluff which interrupted their further progress along the beach, from the fact that it reached to the water's edge; for another hour he followed the driver, a grim, uncommunicative fisherman, on foot up a jagged path, which finally led into a lonely ocean cave which the high tides of many centuries had washed out to about the size of an ordinary room. A torch thrust in a crevice in the rocky wall, lit up the scene in rather a ghostly way.