Mr. Butcher, however, inclined to the belief that the body was the person's the schooner's skipper took it to be. He wished to believe Miss Otway alive; he was by no means for despairing; whilst they were talking of this body, Miss Otway might be actually on her way home. What did Wall think? The honest seaman faltered; he saw that Mr. Butcher wished to cheer me up, but there could be no doubt he was of Mr. Hobbs's mind. They were all three agreed, however, that it was a puzzling, most wonderful thing. 'There's nothen for Mr. Moore to do,' said Wall, who, having been admitted into this council, considered himself at liberty to talk out, perhaps thinking he was expected to do so. 'Let him give the lady's portrait to some respectable man who'll go by steam, afore it's too late, and view the body and settle it.' 'To whose satisfaction?' inquired Mr Butcher, looking at me. 'Not to mine,' I exclaimed. 'I must decide with my own eyes.' 'In them warmer climates,' said Wall, 'ye've got to bear a hand in jobs of that sort.' Mr. Hobbs admonished the man with a frown. 'Surely, Mr. Moore,' exclaimed Mr. Butcher, 'you would be able to identify the young lady by the wearing apparel they removed, and are, of course, preserving at Cape Town?' I told him I had ascertained that morning that a jacket answering to the one found on the body had been sold to Miss Otway. He looked very grave at this, and I saw Mr. Hobbs exchange a glance with the seaman. Soon after this I thanked them for their sympathy and patience, and took my leave. I could think of nothing but the story of the body found at sea, and next morning went by an early train to the little seaside town where Sir Mortimer lived. As I drove from the station I passed by the ravine down which Marie and I had gone for a stroll upon the long, hard platform of sands one afternoon in the keen grey month that preceded the April she sailed in. It was October now--six months later; what had happened between? The blue sea ran up to the sky in a trembling, silken slope streaked with long gleams. I remembered how Marie had checked me in our walk to look at a passing sail, and how together we had watched the glimmering white square of her fade like mist in the evening gloom. Many gulls wheeled over the water. I saw them flying past the edge of the cliff, and remembered how Marie had paused and looked up to admire the marvellous grace of the windward flight of the birds then on the wing--perhaps those I now caught a glimpse of. An ocean life of many months had stretched before her, and whilst we walked I had noticed how she was letting the spirit of the sea sink into her, finding in the coil of the breaker, in the flight of the birds, in the shadowy distance of the horizon, a meaning she had never before heeded, only, perhaps, that she might enter with a little spirit into a scene of life from which I knew her very inmost soul shrank.