It may seem strange to you that Roger did not immediately ascend the stair and confirm Margarita's report, but he did not. Instead he spoke to Caliban. "Is the woman dead?" he asked shortly. The clumsy, slow-witted youth nodded his head and sobbed noisily, with strange animal-like grunts and gulps. "Has she been dead long, do you think?" Roger asked. Caliban raised his hand and checked off the five fingers slowly. It was understood that he indicated so many hours. He placed his hand upon his heart, then shook his head from side to side. Suddenly he shifted his features unbelievably and Roger gazed horrified upon a very mask of death: there was no doubt as to what Caliban had seen. This being so Roger thought a moment and then spoke. "I am very sleepy, Margarita," he said, "and I don't care to walk back to the village directly, since it would do no especial good. I think I will take a little nap on the beach, if you don't mind, and then I'll go to the village and get help to--to do the various things that must be done. Later I will have a talk with you. Tell me once again--you do not know of any friends or relatives of your father's or Hester's?" She shook her head, carelessly but definitely. "Does Caliban?" But this question was beyond the poor lout's intelligence; he could only blubber and fend off possible chastisement. "Take another nap, if you can, Margarita," said Roger, "and I will go to the beach. Call me if you want me." She went off to her warm straw, threw herself on it like a tired child, and passed quickly into a deep sleep; he tramped for a moment on the beach, then stretched himself in the lee of a sun-warmed rock and fell into the dreamless, renewing rest that he took as his simple due from nature. CHAPTER VI FATE CASTS HER DIE When he woke it was full sunset. The lonely reefs were red with it, (O Margarita, well I know that hour! Do you remember our talks?) the point of land seemed drowned in it, and with a sense of something inexcusably forgotten and put off, Roger hurried to the house that stood strangely deserted, it seemed, in the dying glow. In just that glow I have watched it, leaning on my oars, and for a few strange minutes, the exact time necessary for the sun to drop behind the coast-hills, I have felt myself a small boy again, crouched in a cane chair before my mother's sewing-table, unable for very terror to drop my feet to the floor as I gazed through wide eyes at the House of Usher, that home of sunset mystery. Such a strange, Poe-like atmosphere could that sanded, secret cottage take upon itself. Roger pushed rapidly up the beach and entered the house quietly, so quietly that he caught Margarita's last sentences, which struck him as odd even in his utter ignorance of their connection. She was evidently scolding Caliban, for his grunts and shufflings punctuated her pauses.