"No news yet of that scapegrace lad, ma'am!" he said, a quaver of trouble in his voice. "He must have swum off to get succour for you, Miss Ella, as it was his duty to do; but Heaven alone knows where he's got to." Ella smiled. She believed Hubert to be perfectly safe and quite able to take care of himself, but she wished to set the old retainer's doubts at rest. "Be at ease, Aaron. After a feat like that your nephew would naturally need some recreation; I dare say he has gone away for a few days' holiday. We shall see him back again shortly." "What I can't get out of my head is this: that he might have been left on board. And oh, my dear young mistress, that night the wreck went to pieces in the gale!" "He was not left on board, Aaron; rely upon that: and one of the boatmen, you know, saw him swimming towards the shore. It must have been he; nobody else was out. Believe me," impressively added Miss Winter, "there is not, so far as I believe, the slightest cause for alarm. Hubert is gone away, perhaps on business, combining that at least with pleasure, and you will soon have him at home again. Such is my opinion, and I have good grounds for it." Aaron felt reassured. He acknowledged that it might be so. "Not but what the careless young jackanapes ought to have told me before he went, Miss Ella!" he urged. "Or have written to you," replied Ella. But as more days passed on and Hubert neither came nor sent, other people as well as Aaron began to wonder; and the question, What could have become of him? made the chief topic of the neighbourhood. That he had undertaken this bout of swimming to obtain succour for Miss Winter, none disputed, and Ella did not undeceive them. The real facts, there could be little doubt, were these. Upon Hubert's forcing the closed door and finding Miss Winter senseless on the deck, he must at the same time have seen the little boat coming to her rescue. Fearful that her first words might be to denounce him, and probably feeling heartily ashamed of himself, he must have plunged into the sea to swim ashore, not choosing to stay and face the result. But on what part of the shore had he landed, and where could he be staying? What, in fact, had become of him? Aaron and his wife grew strangely uneasy: if anything were detaining him, business or pleasure, surely he would write, they said to one another. "He has not got so much as a clean shirt with him--or a collar," lamented Dorothy. "What _can_ he do without them?" "Oh, drat the shirts and collars!" retorted Aaron, not less crusty and contradictory than usual. "As if he couldn't buy himself things o' that sort!"