"It's a queer world,--or rather, it's a good world with queer people in it. One would expect to find love and harmony in the home every time away up here, but it does not always follow. Old Margaret Clark is the gentlest, dearest, most patient soul living. Andrew Clark is a good man in every way but one,--but in that one he is the Rock of Gibraltar itself, or, to go nearer the place of his birth, Ailsa Craig, that old milestone that stands defiantly between Scotland and Ireland. Andrew Clark is immovable. He is hard, relentless, fanatical in his ideas of right and wrong; cruel to himself and to the woman he vowed to love and cherish. Oh!--he sears my heart every time I think of him. Yet, he is living up to his idea of what is right." The white-haired old gentleman,--bearer of the burdens of his fellows,--did not confide in me as to the nature of Andrew Clark's trouble, and it was not for me to probe. "As for Rita," he pursued, "poor, little Rita!--she is no relative of either Margaret or Andrew Clark. She is a child of the sea. Hers is a pitiful story, and I betray no confidences in telling you of it, for it is common property. "Fourteen years ago a launch put into the Bay and anchored at the entrance to Jake's cove. There were several ladies and gentlemen in her, and one little girl. They picnicked on the beach and, in the evening, they dined aboard, singing and laughing until after midnight. Jake was the only one who saw or heard them, and he swears they were not English-spoken. Though they were gay and pleasure-loving, yet they seemed to be of a superior class of people. "He awoke before daylight, fancying he heard screams in the location of The Ghoul Rock. He got up and, so certain was he that he had not been mistaken, he got into his boat and rowed out and round The Ghoul,--for the night was calm,--but everything was quiet and peaceful out there. "Next morning, while Joe Clark was scampering along the shore, he came across the unconscious form of a little girl about four years old, clad only in a nightdress and roped roughly to an unmarked life-belt. Joe carried her in to his grandfather, old Andrew, who worked over her for more than an hour; and at last succeeded in bringing her round. "All she could say then was, "Rita, Rita, Rita," although, about a year afterwards, she started to hum and sing a little Spanish dancing song. A peculiar reversion of memory, for she certainly never heard such a song in Golden Crescent. "Jake swears to this day that she belonged to the launch party, who must have run sheer into The Ghoul Rock and gone down. "Little boy Joe pleaded with his grandfather and grandmother to keep the tiny girl the sea had given them, and they did not need much coaxing, for she was pretty and attractive from the first.