“Perhaps the people have gone to bed,” I suggested jocosely. “Then hadn’t we better turn back, sir?” “What—two yards from the gate?” The boy was silent: certainly there was a gate ahead, and presumably, behind the dripping trees, some sort of dwelling. Unless there was just a field and the sea ... the sea whose hungry voice I heard asking and asking, close below us. No wonder the place was called the Bay of the Dead! But what could have induced the rosy benevolent Mary Pask to come and bury herself there? Of course the boy wouldn’t wait for me.... I knew that ... the _Baie des Trépassés_ indeed! The sea whined down there as if it were feeding-time, and the Furies, its keepers, had forgotten it.... There _was_ the gate! My hand had struck against it. I felt along to the latch, undid it, and brushed between wet bushes to the house-front. Not a candle-glint anywhere. If the house were indeed Miss Pask’s, she certainly kept early hours.... II Night and fog were now one, and the darkness as thick as a blanket. I felt vainly about for a bell. At last my hand came in contact with a knocker and I lifted it. The clatter with which it fell sent a prolonged echo through the silence; but for a minute or two nothing else happened. “There’s no one there, I tell you!” the boy called impatiently from the gate. But there was. I had heard no steps inside, but presently a bolt shot back, and an old woman in a peasant’s cap pushed her head out. She had set her candle down on a table behind her, so that her face, aureoled with lacy wings, was in obscurity; but I knew she was old by the stoop of her shoulders and her fumbling movements. The candle-light, which made her invisible, fell full on my face, and she looked at me. “This is Miss Mary Pask’s house?” “Yes, sir.” Her voice—a very old voice—was pleasant enough, unsurprised and even friendly. “I’ll tell her,” she added, shuffling off. “Do you think she’ll see me?” I threw after her. “Oh, why not? The idea!” she almost chuckled. As she retreated I saw that she was wrapped in a shawl and had a cotton umbrella under her arm. Obviously she was going out—perhaps going home for the night. I wondered if Mary Pask lived all alone in her hermitage. The old woman disappeared with the candle and I was left in total darkness. After an interval I heard a door shut at the back of the house and then a slow clumping of aged _sabots_ along the flags outside. The old woman had evidently picked up her _sabots_ in the kitchen and left the house. I wondered if she had told Miss Pask of my presence before going, or whether she had just left me there, the butt of some grim practical joke of her own. Certainly there was no sound within doors. The footsteps died out, I heard a gate click—then complete silence closed in again like the fog. “I wonder—” I began within myself; and at that moment a smothered memory struggled abruptly to the surface of my languid mind.