The girl shook her head. “Not in Ruan itsel’--Ruan parish. We’ll have to go round the point.” She was leaning back and gazing straight before her, towards the harbor’s mouth. The boat was one of the class that serves along that coast for hook and line as well as drift-net fishing, clinker built, about twenty-seven feet in the keel and nine in the beam. It had no deck beyond a small cuddy forward, on top of which a light hoarfrost was gathering as they moved. The minister stood beside the girl, and withdrew his eyes from this cuddy roof to contemplate her. “Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you don’t take cold wearing no wrap or bonnet on frosty nights like this?” She let the tiller go for a moment, took his hand by the wrist and laid it on her own bare arm. He felt the flesh, but it was firm and warm. Then he withdrew his hand hastily, without finding anything to say. His eyes avoided hers. When, after half a minute, he looked at her again, her gaze was fixed straight ahead upon the misty stretch of sea beyond the harbor’s mouth. In a minute or two they were sweeping between the tall cliff and the reef of rocks that guard this entrance on either side. On the reef stood a wooden cross, painted white, warning vessels to give it a wide berth; on the cliff a gray castle, with a battery before it, under the guns of which they spun seaward, still with the wind astern. [Illustration] Outside the sea lay as smooth as within the harbor. The wind blew steadily off the shore, so that, close-hauled, one might fetch up or down channel with equal ease. The girl began to flatten the sails, and asked her companion to bear a hand. Their hands met over a rope, and the man noted with surprise that the girl’s was feverishly hot. Then she brought the boat’s nose round to the eastward, and, heeling gently over the dark water, they began to skirt the misty coast, with the breeze on their left cheeks. “How much farther?” asked the minister. She nodded towards the first point in the direction of Plymouth. He turned his coat-collar up about his ears, and wondered if his duty would often take him on such journeys as this. Also he felt thankful that the sea was smooth. He might, or might not, be given to seasickness; but somehow he was sincerely glad that he had not to be put to the test for the first time in this girl’s presence. They passed the small headland, and still the boat held on its way. [Illustration] “I had no idea you were going to take me this distance. Didn’t you tell me the house lay beyond the point we’ve just passed?” To his amazement the girl drew herself up, looked him straight in the face, and said: “There’s no such place.” “What?” “There’s no such place. There’s nobody ill at all. I told you a lie.” “You told me a lie--then why in the name of common sense am I here?” “Because, young minister--because, sir, I’m sick o’ love for you, an’ I want ’ee to marry me.”