"What is it? What has he got?" screamed Mary Smith in my ear. She must have come running from the back of the house at the recent outburst of racket. Her petticoats swirled; her red curls streamed (they were shining with wet). She had certainly been outdoors already, as early as it was, in the teeth of all this blow, and I was startled by the pale anxiety of her look. "What is it? Who is there?" she cried again shrilly. "Nobody but Crump with my baggage," I cried back. "What's the matter?" "Oh, Mr. Pendarves, haven't you seen them? They are both gone! I've looked everywhere about the house. They were gone when I got up, and I can't find them high or low!" "You mean Captain Pendarves--and the other?" She nodded, with terror-struck eyes on me; then, raising on tiptoe, screamed painfully, with her mouth close to my ear (it was almost impossible to hear otherwise): "He--your grandfather--has done it before. He's always restless in a storm. He goes down to the shore sometimes. I'm so afraid----" her look said the rest. "Ask him--ask Crump; maybe he's seen them," she added in a shriek, as I started to the carrier's help. It was but a few steps to the gate, yet I reached it wet through, half blinded by sheets of water driven slantwise in my face, and with the breath nearly beaten out of me. In the open, thus, the storm seemed to increase tenfold in violence; it filled the vast cloudy hollow of the sky with reverberating din; and I felt, or fancied I felt, the solid ground shiver with the pounding of the waves on the ledges along the Cat's Mouth. Crump greeted me with a cheerful grin; he had all the seaman's tolerance for the vagaries of the weather. "Coming on to blow some, ain't it?" he remarked at the top of his lungs. "Your old apple-tree's carried away--that one in the corner of the orchard, I mean. I could see it as I came along by the upper road." "Have you seen my grandfather anywhere about?" I shouted. He could not have understood the question, for he answered, squinting up at me knowingly as he stooped over his end of my chest: "I see you got rid of _him_, Mr. Nick, and in short order, too. I spoke him a little way back, bound for Sidmouth with all sails set--at least, he was laying a course that way. Come on board, ma'am!" He pulled his forelock and made a leg respectfully before Mary (albeit eying her with no small interest) as we shoved our burden through the door. The girl clapped it shut, with a sharp struggle against the draught, and in the momentary silence that followed we stood awkwardly and apprehensively surveying one another, while the hurricane rumbled outside. "I asked you if you had seen my grandfather," I said to Crump, at last. "Seen the cap'n? Why, no, sir," he said, surprised. "I was telling you I saw----" He stopped, with a glance at Mary. "Yes, go on. You saw _him_? Where? What was he doing?" she said sharply.