Up and over the rocks! Oh, the good rocks, gray and black, with their clinging lichens of orange and russet! Oh, the friendly touch of them on her feet as she ran! The beach, with its white shell-sand disfigured by heads and entrails of fish, had no charm to stay the girl for an instant. The rocks drew her. Over them, away and away, round the point where the cliff nodded outward; there was home, and rest, and peace. The light broadened and brightened, the sea turned from gray to blue again, the grass shimmered in green and gold, for it was buttercup time. Isla stopped now and again to lay her hand on some well-known stone, to greet an old tree that had been her friend ever since she could remember. The ravens were still asleep, were they? Lazy old ravens; how she would startle them! But they would see that she came alone. She moaned, and ran on the faster. Past the Dead Valley now. They were sleeping, too, the old mammoths,—they had never missed her, had never known how she dreamed of them, how she longed for them. The sea knew; it murmured and sang to her, telling her over and over again, how glad it was to see her home again. Now, only one more point to round, and she was home indeed. The strip of white sand where Jacob had slept that last time she ever left him till now, the roll of seaweed that marked the boundary line; then through the swampy bit, and up into the little green glade, where the cottage clung to the wall of the sheltering cliff behind it. Isla stood and looked where her home should be, and saw a heap of ashes, gray as the rock behind them, with charred beams scattered here and there. CHAPTER XIII. THE LAST. NOT many days after this, a sad and anxious group of people stood beside the ruins of the Heron cottage. Joe Brazybone, or the distracted ghost of him, the trustee, who had thrown over everything else and come with Joe, and the young missionary. The latter had come to visit the school only the day after Isla’s flight; what more natural than that she should join in the search? The trustee had gladly acceded to her petition that she might accompany him. “Yes, yes!” he said; “a woman is the thing. A woman can make her listen; poor lost lamb! Miss Stewart cannot leave her post, and you are the very one we need.”