His father and Ethel refused, with a show of indignation over the begrudging form which the invitation had taken, and he was not sorry. Neither man nor girl could find anything to say as they walked side by side to the beach, and the former launched the dory tender. As he put off she waved him a cheery good-by, and sent her low voice across the broadening water: "Come back to us soon. And be careful. It is beginning to get rough already." With a note in his voice which she did not understand, he called back, "Perhaps I'll sail straight over to France. You wouldn't care." "Foolish man. You know that I would," she cried, and then turned to join the children in their game of skipping pebbles. Donald sent the skiff through the choppy waves with vigorous strokes and shot her around at the last moment for a perfect landing. The mainsail and jib went up with rapid jerks while the rings rattled their protest. The strenuous physical exercise brought him temporary relief; but, when he had cast off, taken the tiller and after a few moments of idle jockeying back and forth in the light puffs, squared away for the run seaward before the rising wind, his gloomy thoughts returned, to settle like a flock of phantom harpies and feast on his brain. Out of nothing grew a vision of Judd's chalky, troubled face, and he felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the crude mountaineer, who had likewise loved and lost. "Smiles wasn't to blame then. She isn't to blame _now_. She never led either of us on," he said aloud; but his clenched teeth cut through the end of his cigar, nevertheless. With only his moody thought to bear him company, Donald steered seaward. Starting slowly, the racing craft was momentarily given new impetus by swelling wind and following wave; but the man paid no heed to the things which should have served him as a warning--the higher heaving of the waters, now as gray and as cloudy green as a dripping cliff, and touched with flecks of milky spume; and the uneven tugging of the sail. When he did become aware of the swift change which had taken place, hardly five minutes had passed from the time he had started out, yet a quick glance behind him disclosed a new heaven and a new earth and sea; the old had passed away. Where else is nature's stupendous power so evident as in the sinister speed with which the armies of the tempest make their swift advance, company on company, regiment on regiment, division on division? In the moments which had passed unmarked by him in his absorption, the whole western sky had become overcast and blackened by the vaporous army of invasion, whose forecoursing streams of cavalry skirmishers were already high over his head. The earth had lost its laughing colors, and seemed to lie cowering, with its head covered with a dull mantle, and the sea had accepted the challenge of the storm clouds and was beginning to leap forward in swirling, gloomy waves.