Again the draught from the window reduced the light of the candle to a mere blue tongue, and a shadow fell across the woman's face. It blotted out the lips which had been on the point of revealing their tender secret when the blow fell; it still further shrouded the eyes, which through the succeeding weary months gazing from the windows of the alien house, had noted the rags of mist that went floating by and vanished--like human hopes. It blotted out the hands, eloquent of agony, heavy with ungiven caresses. For an instant the shadows obliterated the whole slight frame that until recently had carried beneath its heart another life. Suddenly the candle flame brightened, and simultaneously a cry, small, sharp, almost impudent, broke the silence. The old man started from his sleep. The cry was repeated. A smile so triumphant that it was sly, spread itself across his wrinkled visage. Seizing the candle which lit the room of death, he trotted into the room of the creature just born. Outside, the hearse stood in the moonlight. And over yonder at the lighthouse a boy tossed restlessly on the bed beside his mother. In his imagination he still saw the hearse and it filled him with dull questioning. Lifting himself, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his drowsing parent. 'Why were they going to take the woman away?' he asked. 'Because--why because it was necessary.' 'Were they going to put her in the ground? 'Yes, that also was necessary.' 'But wasn't it dark under the ground, and wouldn't she be afraid?' The mother sighed in her sleep. The boy regarded her for an instant. Then propping his head on his hand, he fell to listening to the beat of the surf. Gradually his fears ceased, for each silver-lipped wave seemed to be speaking not alone to him, but to the dead woman. "_Rest, rest,_" they seemed to say, "_rest, rest._" CHAPTER III THE SUN Old David Beckett, though he never spoke on the subject, was haunted by memories of a childhood passed amid scenes of refinement and wealth. He had a hazy impression that his father had been a gentleman of local distinction in a Canadian town. However, with his father's death had come a change in the fortunes of the family. Its members had drifted apart, and David himself, at the time scarcely more than a child, had gone to Philadelphia. Year after year he had worked in the car shops until the lead in the paint had affected his health. This break-down had occurred after his wife's death, in his fiftieth year. Reduced in strength he had come to the Point where one of the owners of the shops, in recognition of his long and faithful service, had given him a little house and a bit of land. This change David had welcomed, but it had engendered in his son Thomas a brooding discontent which had increased with the years.