"Oh, _look_ at that little man. He _hit_ him!" "Where?--Who?--Oh!" "Serves him ri--Ah-h!" It proved as the screamer said. The smallest rickey-drinker, not content with sounding the alarm, had gone brilliantly bolting down the beach. Taking his stand there at a given point, he had flung himself upon the youth who had so ably saved his own skin, as the latter waded ashore, and struck him savagely in the face. It was observed that the man from the sea seemed surprised by this attack. He stared at his small assailant in a confused sort of way; and then with passionate swiftness plucked hold of him by two favorite points of vantage, and threw him bodily into the water. This movement, as it chanced, turned his gaze seaward. The youth was seen to stand an instant, rigid as a bather in marble, staring out over the water he had traversed ... Then he turned, heedless of the brandishings of the little man behind him, and went away toward his bath-house in the manner that is best described as a slink. III How Carlisle screamed, when the Boat upset, or else didn't, as the Case might be; also of Mrs. Heth, who went down Six Floors to nail Falsehoods, etc. Miss Carlisle Heth sat cold and proud in the approaching lifeboat, picking at her sopping skirts. She ignored, hardly hearing, the conversation of her rescuer, hinting broadly that she should reveal these mysteries to him. Revelation, as she understood herself, was the contrary of her desire. The occurrences of the last quarter of an hour had actually dazed her; but the net result of them was sufficiently manifest. Her purpose had been to detach herself unnoticed from Dalhousie's gay fame. And now:--_Look at the boat pavilion_.... It was the bitterest moment of Miss Heth's well-sheltered young life. Of notoriety, of a vulgar sensation such as this, of malicious gossip, of all that was cheap and familiarizing, she had a deep-seated horror. Of the moment of reckoning with her mother, whose objections to noisy rumor rather surpassed her own, she felt a wholesome dread. There was also the matter of her personal appearance, which she conceived to be repulsive: she was confident that she looked a hideosity and a sight. Her eyes fastened from afar upon the staring faces on the pavilion. She saw hungry curiosity stalking there, naked and unashamed, and the sight sickened her. For these faces, as individual faces, she felt indifference and contempt. But in the mass they seemed to assume the enormous importance of good or ill repute. What these people were saying of her and Dalhousie to-day, the world would say to-morrow. To know what this was, she would have given on the spot all the money she possessed (eight thousand dollars, birthday and Christmas presents, in United States bonds). But to run the gauntlet of those questioning faces was just a little more than she could endure. She was quick in action. She said: "Land me here, Mr. Wedge. And you must walk with me to the hotel."