The gallant Captain Copp, his night-glass pushed out at the open window to an acute angle, had been contemplating these puzzling proceedings for some time. Fortunately he did not distinguish very clearly, and remained ignorant of the real matter. Ill-conditioned people, tipsy fishermen and else, their brains muddled with drink, found their way to the heath on occasion, and the captain considered it a duty to society to order them off. Sweeping the horizon and the nearer plain to-night, his glass had shown him some object not easy to make out. The longer Captain Copp waited for it to move, the longer it stayed stationary; the more he turned his glass, the less chance did it appear to give of revealing itself. Naturally, two people in close proximity, the head of the taller one bent over the other so as to leave no indication of the human form, would present a puzzling paradox when viewed through a night-glass: the captain came to the conclusion that it was the most extraordinary spectacle ever presented to his eyes since they had looked on that sea serpent in the Pacific; and he raised his voice to hail it when suspense was becoming quite unbearable. Isaac Thornycroft, adroitly sheltering his companion, glided up the little opening by Mrs. Connaught's. In a few minutes, when the captain had drawn his head and glass in for a respite, he walked boldly up to the door by the side of Anna. "Good evening, captain." "Good evening," blithely responded the captain. "Sorry you should have the trouble of bringing her home. Come in, Anna. I say, did you meet any queer thing on the heath?" "Queer thing?" responded Isaac. "A man without a head, or anything of that light sort?" "No. There's a strange horse browsing a bit lower down," added Isaac. "Some stray animal." The captain considered, and came to the conclusion that it could not well have been the horse. What it really was he did not conjecture. Meanwhile Anna Chester had gone upstairs to the pleasant little room she occupied, and took off her bonnet in a maze of rapture. The world had changed into a heavenly Elysium. CHAPTER III. Isaac Thornycroft's Stratagem. A still evening in October. The red light in the west, following on a glorious sunset, threw its last rays athwart the sea; the evening star came out in its brightness; the fishing boats were bearing steadily for home. Captain Copp's parlour was alight with a ruddy glow; not of the sun but of the fire. It shone brightly on the captain's face, at rest now. He had put down his pipe on the hearth, after carefully knocking the smouldering ashes out, and gone quietly to sleep, his wooden leg laid fiat on an opposite chair, his other leg stretched over it. Mrs. Copp sat knitting a stocking by fire-light, her gentle face rather thoughtful; and, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the hearth-rug, reading, was Anna Chester.