She sank back and closed her eyes. Her husband bent a somber, sidewise look toward her, then laid his hand on one of hers. Her own turned and the thin fingers twined like clinging roots about his. “It won’t be hard,” he reassured. “Just give them a clear account of what you saw.” She waved the other hand in front of her face, like a person in unendurable pain, who makes a vague distracted gesture for silence. Anne spoke from the door: “There’s a light moving out from the shore.” The statement shook them. There was a simultaneous stir of feet and bodies, a heave of labored breaths. Bassett went to the entrance: “Yes--that’s a launch. They’re coming. I must go to meet them.” He looked over the company, the haggard faces all turned toward him. Some of them wore an expression of yearning appeal as if he was their only source of strength in this devastating hour: “Now remember there’s nothing to get scared or rattled about. They’ll ask you questions and what you must do is to answer them accurately--not what you think or imagine but what you _know_. Keep that in the front of your minds. The clearer you are in your statements the quicker you’ll get through. And please stay here, just as you are. They’ll probably want to see you right off.” A benumbed silence followed his departure. Anne moved from the door to a chair nearer the others. Stokes withdrew his hand from Flora’s and straightened himself, jerking down his waistcoat and craning his neck up from his collar. The low rippling murmurs of the receding tide were singularly distinct. Suddenly the shrill whistle of a launch pierced the night outside. Mrs. Cornell leaped as if the sound had been a weapon that had stabbed her: “Oh!” she cried, “why do they do that? Isn’t Sybil being murdered enough to stand!” “For Christ’s sake, keep your mouth shut,” Stokes flung at her, glaring. The savage quality in his voice penetrated Mrs. Cornell’s encasing terrors. She shrunk and slid the look of a frightened animal at Shine. Then the silence settled and they sat like those who have looked upon the head of Medusa. VIII BASSETT on the wharf in the cove watched the launch approaching over the glistening floor of water. As it grated against the boards he heard his name in a deep-throated bass voice and the big body of the sheriff climbed over the side. A rough padded hand grasped his, and “Well, Mr. Bassett, the law’s got us together again,” was growled into his ear. Two more figures followed him. One was Rawson, the district-attorney, whom the vivid light revealed as a man much younger than Williams, tall and narrow-shouldered, with a lean New England visage and a pair of horn spectacles astride a high-bridged nose. The other was disposed of with a casual hand-wave and a murmur of “Patrick,” brought, it was explained, to take charge of the causeway. Rawson, it appeared, knew Gull Island well, having been there several times on legal business for Mr. Driscoll.