The almost running roar made conversation impossible, so he stood silent, watching the tempest sweep along the open space before him. The passion of it seemed grotesque, as wreaked upon a lifeless thing beyond the reach of hurt. It died away at last in tired, angry spasms and slow gleams, and the thick silence came again into the heavy sky. When it was spent, Lanty turned to say good-bye, hoping to make home before the storm returned, circling on its tracks like a driven hare, but as he reached the door a strange thing happened. Through the stillness dropped like a muffling shroud came a new sound, smooth, stealthy, swift, a soft sound as of shod wheels, swept wings and subdued speech; and in the same moment Mrs. Whinnerah collapsed in her chair, until he saw the thin, gray hair coiled at the nape of her neck. With an exclamation, half of pity, half wrath, Wolf turned and went back to her, and, looking out, Lanty saw the bore sweeping up over the vanishing sand. It was small to-day, innocent and slim, with a crest of white on its smooth head, but in the deadly certainty of its advance, the unhasting speed with which it met the sand and took it, there was a sinister promise of mightier power held back. The insidious reminder of its faint wash was almost as terrible as the shout of battle with which the winter tides came in. It slid lightly along the foot of the Lugg with barely a ripple, and the bank looked down almost unaware, like a dreaming graybeard at a child playing round his knees. Behind him, with a troubled sense of intrusion, he could hear Wolf’s voice, impatient and distressed, coaxing the crouching figure in the chair. “It’s by, lass--past an’ safe, by now--a whyet enough water with barely a lift to it. Nay, what you must be daft to take on like this! It’ll stand many a long year after we’re under the sod. You’ve no call to fret. It’s a Lancaster’s job, Martha, as sure as a gun an’ as right as a bobbin!” He looked up apologetically. “You’ll not take it amiss, sir? She’s always like this at the turn of the tide.” Lanty sympathised as well as he could, but when he would have held out his hand in farewell, she shrank away and hid her face once more. “The Lancaster hand!” she muttered, winding her fingers in the woollen antimacassar. “Oh, God! How long? How long?” With a pleading look, Wolf drew him out, and he went gladly enough, bewildered by the whole situation. There was mystery somewhere, and he did not like to ask the cause. “Mrs. Whinnerah seems thoroughly upset,” he ventured at last, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Living so long by the sea has got on her nerves, and I don’t wonder! It must be pretty drear out here on a rough night. You should get her away for a change,--she has a sister over at Bortun, hasn’t she? It doesn’t do to play with these things. If she keeps like this, you’ll surely never think of taking the cottage?”