Then Danny's eyes glittered and looked strange, but he said not a word. They walked on, the happy child once more taking a hand from each, and laughing, prattling, leaping, and making little runs between them. Ruby was in a deeper sense the link that bound them, and in the deepest sense of all she was the link that held them apart forever. They had walked to the mouth of the harbor, and Mona held out her hand to say good-bye. Danny looked beyond her over the sea. There was something in his face that Mona had never before seen there. What it meant she knew not then, except that in a moment he had grown to look old. "The storm is coming," said Mona. "I see the diver out at sea. Do you hear his wild note?" "Ay, and ye see Mother Carey's chicken yonder," said Danny, pointing where the stormy petrel was scudding close to a white wave and uttering a dismal cry. Then, absently and in a low tone, "I think at whiles I'd like to die in a big sea like that," said the lad. Mona looked for a moment in silence into the lad's hopeless eyes. Danny turned back with his hand in his pockets and his face toward the sand. Truly a storm was coming, and it was a storm more terrible than wind and rain. Mona and Ruby continued their walk. It was the slack season at the factory, and Mr. Kinvig's jewel in looms was compelled to stand idle three working days out of the six. The young woman and the child passed down the quay to the bridge, crossed to the foot of the Horse Hill, and walked along the south side of the harbor--now full of idle luggers--toward Contrary Head. When they reached the narrow strait which cut off the Castle Isle from the mainland, they took a path that led upward over Contrary Head. A little way up the hill they passed Bill Kisseck's cottage. The house stood on a wild headland, and faced nothing but the ruined castle and the open sea. An old quarry had once been worked on the spot, and Kisseck's cottage stood with its front to what must have been the level cutting, and its back to the straight wall of rock. A path wound round the house and came close to the edge of the little precipice. Mona took this path, and as they walked past the back part of the roof a woman's head looked out of a little dormered window that stood in the thatch. "Good-morning, Bridget," said Mona, cheerfully. "Good-mornin'," answered Bridget, morosely. "It's middlin' cowld, isn't it, missis, for you and that poor babby to be walkin' up there?" "It's a sharp morning, but we're strong and well, Ruby and I," said Mona, going on. "The craythur!" mumbled Bridget to herself when they were gone, "it's not lookin' like it she is anyway, with a face as white as a haddick."