She had gone to the bay-window that overlooked the stretch of coast on which the heavy winter tide was coming in, and grown silent watching it. The Captain called to her; he wanted nothing to put the breakfast back this morning. And he fancied that to a woman who had been a leader in the world of culture and refinement yonder this sky and loud foreboding surf might have some meaning of which he knew nothing. "Nature's voices, eh?" coming to her side. Some expression that had held her face suddenly escaped it. "I am watching for Jerome. Yonder he comes with your fisherman, by the inlet,"--pointing to two dark figures in the mist crossing the sands below. The house stood on a ledge, facing the sea: ramparts of rock, gray and threatening in this light, running down on either side, and shutting out all outlook but that of the dull, obstinate stretch of sand on which the sea had beaten and fallen back for centuries, with the same baffled, melancholy cry. Behind the house were clumps of pines and cedars. Nature had done all she could in wringing out whatever green and lusty life was left in rocks and sand to make the place home-like and cheerful. Beside the trees, there was a patch of kitchen-garden back of the house, a grape-vine or two on the walls, trailing moss hanging to its eaves,--the delicate web-like moss that grows along this coast out of dead wood; even the beach rocks glowed into colors,--dark browns, purples, and reds. But for all these it needed summer and sunshine. On this, the day before Christmas, the house and the land about it were smothered in a cold mist: only the shivering sea beyond had voice or motion. "It's a dull, uncanny place, Mrs. Jacobus," said Lufflin, anxiously. "It looks like a prison to me to-day. What if we've made a mistake?" "We have made no mistake," calmly. "Indoors," he persisted, "the house is cheerful enough. But it's a rough coast, and the oyster-dredgers and wrackers hint that the house be n't above highest water-mark. They're a wild pack, them wrackers. I doubt it's a gloomy home I've picked for M. Jacobus, after all his"-- Something in her face silenced him. "You did right, Uncle George," she answered, cheerfully. But the pleasant eyes he had liked so much last night he noticed were turned to the sea now with a hard look, new to him, begotten both of great pain and obstinate endurance. "Of course you know, Charlotte,--of course. God knows I want to do what's for the best." He hesitated, then went on briskly, taking courage. "See now, Lotty, I'm an old fellow. I've walked you to sleep many's the night, being your father's chum, and living in his house till the day of his death. I'd like you to know I'm a true friend. If so be as you're in trouble, you must tell me. If this house is a sort of hiding, as I've thought once or twice, speak the word, and there's nobody shall get below Barnegat, to disturb it, or"--