The kitchen was empty. So were all the rooms of the house, he soon enough found out. Not a sound but that of the steeple clock on the kitchen shelf, waddling on at its imperfect gait, loud for a few seconds, and then low. Jethro went outside. The stillness rising through the blue dusk was marvelous, perfect. But an icy misgiving raced through his frame. He began to walk faster, scanning the ground. At first in his search he did not call aloud, perhaps because all his intercourse with her had been silent, as if she were indeed only the voice of conscience in a radiant guise. And when at length he did cry out, it was only as agony may wring from the lips a cry to God. He called on her in broken phrases to come back. Let her only come, she might be sure of forgiveness. He was an old man now, and asked for nothing but a corner in her house. Then again, he had here a little surprise for her. Ah! Had she thought of that? Come; he would not open the package without a kiss from her finger ends. He hurried forward, hoarse breathing. A note of terrible joy cracked his voice when the thought came to him that she was hiding mischievously. That was it--she was hiding--just fooling her old father. Come; it wouldn't do to be far from his side on these dark nights. The sea was wide and uncertain--wide and uncertain. But he remembered that ominous purchase of the pearls by Deep-water Peter, and shivered. His voice passed into a wail. Little by little he stumbled through the hemlock grove, beseeching each tree to yield up out of obdurate shadow that beloved form, to vouchsafe him the lisp of flying feet over dead beech leaves. But the trees stood mournfully apart, unanswering, and rooted deep. Now he was out upon the pitted crags, calling madly. She should have all his possessions, and the man into the bargain. Yes, his books, his silver spoons, that portrait of a man playing on the violin which she had loved. With a new hope, he pleaded with her to speak to him, if only once, to cry out. Had he not said she would, one day? Yes, yes, one little cry of love, to show that she was not so voiceless as people said.-- He stood with awful expectation, a thick hand bending the lobe of his ear forward. Then through silver silences a muttering was borne to him, a great lingering roar made and augmented by a million little whispers.--The Old Roke himself, taking toll at the edge of his dominions. Nothing could approach the lonely terror of that utterance. He ran forward and threw himself on his knees at the very brink of that cracked and mauled sea cliff. It was true that Peter, in his absence, had disembarked a second time on Meteor--a fit habitation for such a woman as Day Rackby. But did that old madman think that he could coop her up here forever? How far must he be taken seriously in his threat?