Again and again Morris spoke eagerly, entreatingly, but the aerophone was dumb. So he ceased at length, and even then well nigh laughed when he thought that in this useless piece of mechanism he saw a symbol of his own soul, which also had lost its mate and could hold true converse with no other. Then he started up, and just as he was, ran out into the raving night. Three hours later, when the sun rose upon Christmas Day, if any had been there to note him they might have seen a dishevelled man standing alone upon the lonely shore. There he stood, the back-wash of the mighty combers hissing about his knees as he looked seaward beneath the hollow of his hand at a spot some two hundred yards away, where one by one their long lines were broken into a churning yeast of foam. Morris knew well what broke them—the fallen ruins of the church that was now Stella’s sepulchre, and, oh! in that dark hour, he would have been glad to seek her where she lay. CHAPTER XVII. THE RETURN OF MARY Curiously enough, indirectly, but in fact, it was the circumstance of Stella’s sudden and mysterious death that made Morris a rich and famous man, and caused his invention of the aerophone to come into common use. Very early on the following morning, but not before, she was missed from the Rectory and sought far and wide. One of the first places visited by those who searched was the Abbey, whither they met Morris returning through the gale, wild-eyed, flying-haired, and altogether strange to see. They asked him if he knew what had become of Miss Fregelius. “Yes,” he replied, “she has been crushed or drowned in the ruins of the Dead Church, which was swept away by the gale last night.” Then they stared and asked how he knew this. He answered that, being unable to sleep that night on account of the storm, he had gone into his workshop when his attention was suddenly attracted by the bell of the aerophone, by means of which he learned that Miss Fregelius had been cut off from the shore in the church. He added that he ran as hard as he could to the spot, only to find at dawn that the building had entirely vanished in the gale, and that the sea had encroached upon the land by at least two hundred paces.