The task of getting Ethel Marion from the boat to the shore was not as difficult as Garnet had anticipated. She was buoyed up wonderfully by the thought that comfortable quarters awaited her and good clean food to satisfy an appetite that was fast becoming ravenous. Had it not been for the injured ankle, she could have walked as rapidly as either of the men from the landing stage to the house. But when she rested her full weight on it, she found that it was still painful, so that it was necessary for the Doctor to support her on one side while the Squire gallantly gave his aid on the other. As they reached the porch, there was a stealthy sound of scurrying and the pattering of bare feet, as the young-men callers slipped away in the darkness to their homes. Then the two young women hastened forward to greet the strangers in true Core Sound style. "Ma" was in bed, they explained, but they themselves, with easy, unaffected kindness proceeded to make the invalid at home. Then one of them hurried into the cook-room to prepare a quick meal. Ethel Marion, a girl of high society in New York City, and reared in luxury, had hitherto known little of humble homes such as this in which now she was being cared for so generously. As she glanced about her, she saw that the walls were not covered with a paper especially prepared for the purpose, in the manner to which she had been accustomed. Instead, they carried sheets of ordinary newspapers, most of them of a religious character. It was a quaint and indisputable witness to the fact that here she was in the home of a God-loving, Christian family. All of the furnishings were simple; most of them of great age. Among them were antiques to warm a collector's heart. It was plain that these had been handed down through many generations. Those of later origin were carefully wrought duplicates of the choicest models. In her astonishment amid surroundings so strange and yet so pleasant, with the savor of cooking food in her nostrils, Ethel for the moment almost forgot the mystery and the peril through which she had passed--almost forgot, for a fleeting instant, the lover she had summoned to her aid by a message cast into the sea. CHAPTER XIV GARNET THE HERO