I

HE bench by the door of Laban's Folly is not much of a bench, but it must be comfortable enough, for it has supported many a back against the wall of the Folly, while the sun shone warm upon it and the gentle southwest wind blew in the faces of the owners of the backs. It has even performed that office many times in the mornings, when the sun does not shine upon it but it is in shade. And on this morning the shade would not have been ungrateful, and the breeze would have fanned the faces of the sitters, and they would have sat there whittling, perhaps, or doing nothing but smoke their leisurely pipes; and they would have looked out over the wharf, and their gaze might have been arrested by the three men who sat upon the string-piece fishing silently.

And the gaze of the sitters would pass beyond the men fishing, as it would pass beyond the nest of piles at the corner of the wharf, as being a thing familiar and of no moment, and it would linger on the surface of the harbor, where many small boats and a few larger ones swung at their moorings, and where the breeze ruffled the water and little waves danced in the sun; and it would soon pass to the opposite shore of the harbor, where many windmills turned above little square, weatherbeaten roofs, pumping up water for the making of salt. Here their gaze would linger the longest, and they would marvel afresh that Hannibal Horne should have bought the old salt-works some years before. They were never done wondering at that. But they marvelled still more that he was engaged in the making of salt or, rather, it was Helena, his wife, who attended to that. As for Hannibal himself, the war had taken him elsewhere.

But the bench was empty when a big

motor-car came swiftly and silently down the wharf, and came silently to rest beside it, and the door opened and a girl got out-girl or woman, it was not easy to tell which, for a veil covered her face. Her figure was that of a girl but her bearing that of a woman, proud but listless, as if life had turned to ashes in her mouth.

She looked about her and she pushed her veil aside, disclosing the face of a young woman of a cold and stony kind of beauty. She spoke to the chauffeur, and her voice was low and even and clear and hard as steel.

"This must be the place," she said. "There are the harbor and the boats and the wind and the opposite shore and the windmills. There is even this ugly square building on the wharf. I will sit here a while. You may wait."

The chauffeur bowed, and the girl sat down upon the bench, rigid and erect, and again she looked around.

"Eleanor told me," she murmured, "to sit here for an hour and not to think. I will do the best I can."

So she sat there, gazing out and seeing nothing, while the sunshine lay hot upon the wharf and the shadow which the building cast before her got less and less. And the soft wind blew gently in her face as she sat, and it made little soft noises with its blowing, and there were the gentle sounds of the little waves and little distant noises-the cluck of a block, the sound of oars in a boat, the subdued talk of men that she could not see, the soft, drowsing silence of a hot morning, the lazy clatter of a horse's hoofs on the wooden bridge, the gentle clacking of the windmills on the opposite shore as they turned in the sun.

The salt wind and the little soft sounds soothed the girl sitting there. She was no longer erect and rigid, but leaning forward, crossed arms upon her knees. Her eyes had a softer look. The clacking of the windmills was louder and more rapid,

and there was no shadow before her, but the sunlight lay upon the bench and shone upon her dark hair where it had escaped beneath her veil, and brought out a tinge of red in it.

She sat straight once more. "Fayette," she said, "how long have I been here?"

"An hour and a quarter, Miss Challis." There came a burst of clacking from the windmills. She rose and went toward the car.

"I will go now and see the salt-works -those clattering windmills," she said. "They make salt over there. I have a fancy to see the place."

There is a long rack, lean and tall, filled with brush, and with three windmills on top. And beside the rack are low square roofs in rows, like a squat fishing village with windmills here and there among its roofs. And each roof rises to a peak in the middle, and under the roof is a shallow vat about breast high; and in some of the vats is what seems to be clear water, and in others is a faintly colored syrup, and the bottom and sides of the vat covered with a thick layer of white crystals. And the narrow streets of this dwarf village are carpeted deep with seaweed long grown dry and brittle and bleached almost white with age.

Lydia Challis stepped out upon the soft white weed. Far down the aisle she saw the figure of a man cross and recross. It was an ancient figure, tall and spare and angular. His movements were stiff and deliberate as he pottered about the vats. He did not even glance up at the approach of Miss Challis, but kept at his work of filling a barrow with dripping crystals of salt, and she went on through a labyrinth of narrow passages, ducking under channels which carried sluggish currents of syrupy liquid, across soft carpeted aisles, and she came out in the heart of the saltworks.

It was a sort of little place or square, with an old ship's deck-house directly before her, set on low posts, forming one side. At the back of this place rose that long, lean rack, and against the rack, in the sun, lay an ancient ship's mast. It was a great mast that had journeyed over thousands of miles of ocean, and it lay

now half buried in the seaweed and the earth, the upper side polished smooth and shiny with much sitting upon it. The floor of this place was covered thick with soft white weed, and on that weed, leaning against the old mast, sat a woman with uncovered hair, and her hair was in great ropes and coils that looked like halfpulled molasses candy. She was looking down and smiling tenderly, and at her knees as she sat were many shining new tins, and a baby about a year old played with the shining tins.

Miss Challis stopped short. There was a strange catch at her heart and in her voice.

"Oh!" she breathed. "A baby!"

The baby looked up and smiled adorably, and the mother smiled, too, and got quickly to her feet, her beautiful face flushing prettily. She was tall and stately.

"I feel like apologizing," she began, "for being found so. Baby and I spend most of our time here, and we have become accustomed to the lovely loneliness of it. We do not often have visitors. Will you sit down?”

"Oh, may I? Let me sit among the tins-with the baby." It was

The mother smiled once more. a lovely smile.

"The baby will be delighted," she said, "and so shall I."

Miss Challis bent and swept a place for herself clear of tins, which made a great clatter. The baby looked up and laughed at the noise and beat upon a tin between her knees with a soft little fist. Miss Challis sat on the white weed and leaned against the mast, with the baby and the tins at her right, and the mother sat as she had been sitting, with the baby and the tins at her left. It was a most desirable arrangement.

The baby looked up again and laughed and tried to take two tins in her hands to beat them together. They made a beautiful noise when they were beaten together so, but her hands were too small. So Miss Challis helped her with one, and her mother helped with the other, and one tin beat gently on the other, and they made a gentle noise. The baby laughed with delight, and the mother laughed, and Miss Challis laughed. She laughed aloud,

just a joyous ripple of laughter. It was not just what would have been expected of Lydia Challis.

Miss Challis could hardly believe it herself. There was a lovely flush upon her face as she looked up with soft eyes. "Do you know, Mrs. Horne," she said, almost with awe, "what you and your baby have done? I have not laughed for months."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Helena Horne softly; "and I'm glad baby has done that.'

And she bent to the baby, while the windmills clacked above them and the wind blew softly; and the baby smiled and made soft little noises, and the tins rolled away unheeded, and they sat for a long time in silence. Then the baby turned to Miss Challis and stretched her arms toward her, and Miss Challis took her. And she made a dive at a little gold chain that was about Miss Challis's neck, showing but a glint of the gold at the bosom of her dress.

"I am Lydia Challis, Mrs. Horne," Miss Challis began, holding the baby close. "I was told by a friend to come down here and to sit on the wharf for an hour and think of nothing. I did so this morning with some benefit. Then I was to go over your salt-works, and I came, thinking to find-almost anything but a baby."

The baby had been busy, meanwhile, tugging at the gold chain. Now she raised her head, regarded Miss Challis solemnly, and made a baby's sound of interrogation. She was holding up her hand with the chain dangling from it, and on the loop of the chain hung a ring which shone with colored lights.

Lydia Challis went red as the ruby in her ring, then white.

"Is it pretty?" she asked quietly. "Is it, baby?"

The baby signified that it was. She seemed to think that it might be good to eat, but Helena stopped her.

"No, treasure," she said. "Give it back now. See, there comes Mr. Barnet

with the salt." Miss Challis dropped the ring into the bosom of her dress.

"I'm afraid," Helena went on, hesitat

should be glad to have you come home to luncheon with me-unless you have some other

"I have no engagements in the world. If you really want me, it will be a charity." Helena looked at her shyly. "I really want you if you care to come. Baby and I are all alone, except for the servants, and I don't know when they may leave us. My house was burned down last winter, and I am in a cottage close by while it is being rebuilt. And I will not bore you with my salt-making. Eleanor Hamilton used to call me a salt herring." Miss Challis smiled. "It was Eleanor Hamilton who sent me here."

II

LYDIA CHALLIS sat on a pile of lumber and inhaled its fragrance and watched the men at work. She was Mrs. Horne's guest, and had been for three weeks, for Helena Horne was lonely, with Hannibal away, and had longed for an excuse to ask somebody to visit her; and Lydia Challis had been lonely and only too glad of an excuse to stay. Eleanor Hamilton had been the excuse.

And Lydia had been sitting on that pile of lumber, as it dwindled from day to day, leaning forward, her chin in her hand, and with interest in her eyes; or she had fished from the string-piece of the wharf, and had caught, perhaps, three chogset an hour; or she had gone to the salt-works with Helena and the laughing baby; or she had been sailing with Helena in the little white schooner.

Helena came out of the cottage, the baby in one arm, and stopped beside Lydia Challis.

"Will you go sailing?" she asked shyly. "To the ends of the earth." Helena smiled. "There will hardly be time to go so far."

The little white schooner was ready, with her mainsail up. Lydia took the wheel and the baby, while Helena went to help Gotthard. It all went like clockwork. Helena walked aft and sat down beside Lydia.

"I didn't suppose you knew so much about a boat."

"Or a baby," said Lydia. "You

"And your disagreeable child," Lydia interrupted. "You are talking great nonsense, Helena."

The baby was growing sleepy, and now her little sunny head drooped against Lydia's side, and Lydia's arm tightened about her. There was a brisk wind, but they were well in the lee of the land, and there was no sea, only little waves which made a soft plashing as the schooner pushed through them.

And the soft salt breeze blew in their faces, and it made a sound as it blew, and above their heads there was the measured tapping of a slack rope on the taut canvas, and from the bow the sound of water as it was pushed aside, and down by the lee scuppers the gentle hissing of breaking bubbles that passed swiftly astern. Lydia's eyes were fixed on the far horizon, on the hazy blue line of the islands, and the baby was fast asleep in Lydia's arm, and she smiled in her sleep. And Gotthard was sitting on the coaming of the galley hatch, and he gazed out ahead and leaned his elbows on his knees.

They passed great bare rocks, like huge apple-dumplings, near the shore, their surfaces scarred with cracks and weather ing, and of a tender brown, like pie-crust. And they passed a rocky cliff crowned with dwarf cedars that were gnarled and twisted, and a keg set high upon a spindle in the midst of the waters; and another rock, covered with barnacles, and with a fringe of rockweed waving gently in the water. And they came to the white lighthouse with its white dwelling, set upon the top of another rock, and anchored to it lest it slide off into the sea. Here the seas were suddenly greater, for there was no longer the lee of land, and a tide-rip ran past the rock. And the schooner began to bow gracefully, then to pitch and to throw the spray high; and suddenly Gotthard sprang to his feet and

threw the hatch cover over, and the water fell upon the deck with a great noise and came racing down the scuppers.

The noise of the hatch cover and of the water falling woke the baby, and she opened her eyes and looked up at Miss Challis and laughed gleefully. And once more the baby caught a glimpse of gold shining, and she clung to Lydia Challis's shoulder and pulled herself to her feet, and she snatched at the gleam of gold, and she got it, and she pulled forth the ring. And she pulled so suddenly and so hard that the slender gold chain was broken and the ring fell, and it bounded once upon the deck and rolled into the scuppers.

"Oh, baby!" Lydia cried. "My ring! What have you done!"

"I'll get it, Lydia," said Helena. And she went down upon one knee and retrieved the ring.

"Here it is, Lydia," she said, smiling. "It's not hurt at all."

Lydia sighed deeply. "If the ring had gone overboard," she said, "I think I should have gone after it." But she made no move to take it.

"I don't see," said Helena, "but you will have to wear the ring."

"Oh, no, no!" cried Lydia, looking up with tears in her eyes. "Never again, Helena. I couldn't." She smiled faintly. "Sit there and hold it."

She fixed her gaze once more upon the islands, which were no longer a hazy indigo line upon the horizon, but she could see the stone walls and the spire of a little church, with some sheep feeding in the bare brown field beyond.

"Two years ago," she began, gazing at the little church, "I was wearing that ring, and I thought I was happy. Then, one day, he came to me, hesitating. He had something to ask of me. He had fallen in with some British officers-they may have been Canadians—at his club. These officers had been talking of the war, and the result had been that quite a bunch of men, as he called it, had enlisted with the Canadians, and he was one of the bunch; and he wanted me to marry him within a fortnight. He was to go in three weeks.

"It was not much that he asked, and I ought to have been glad to do it. But it

I said

meant sacrificing my plans, and I was a proud, obstinate fool and I made difficulties. The war had never seemed very near; not our war, not my war. just that, and that I knew he looked upon it as I did, and that he was going because of some absurd spirit of adventure, and I was not inclined to humor him.

"He was as obstinate as I.

"No, Lydia,' he said, 'you're wrong. I haven't yet got to the point of going because of Belgium and the Lusitania and all that, but if those men need my help, they're going to have it. They're fine men in a tight place. I would have gone before but I didn't realize their situation.' "Then I forbade his going. He only smiled and said that it was too late; that he was not regretting, and that what he asked of me was not so impossible. Thousands of girls had been married on half an hour's notice.

AGAIN the windmills clacked lazily in the gentle southwest wind, and the sunlight lay warm and comforting on the little square roofs and on the soft white weed that lay between the vats, from which came the sound of slowly trickling water, and upon the old log half buried in the weed, and upon Helena's coils of hair. Helena was sitting upon the log in an attitude of dejection, her head in her hands, gazing down with sombre eyes at a row of tins ranged before her and pretending to be busy inspecting the filled tins. She had to keep busy.

She did not look up even after she had become aware of a silent presence, for she thought it was the old man with his bar

"Lydia,' he said, 'does that ring mean nothing to you?'

"For answer I drew it off my finger and laid it on the table beside me. Then he laughed.

"I don't know how I got out of the room. Presently I heard the door shut. I was listening and waiting, and instead of his voice calling me softly, I heard the door boom like a distant gun.

"I ran down, and there was the ring on the table where I had put it. I snatched it up and went to the door, but he was gone. I have not seen him since."

She glanced at Helena with a little mournful smile; but the smile broke down and her eyes were brimming.

"Didn't he answer your letters, Lydia?"

"I didn't write him for a year and a half," said Lydia in a monotonous voice. "But even in a year and a half-surely he answered that?"

"I did get a reply-of a sort-to that. They wrote me that he was missing and that they feared he was killed. It was not so blunt as that, but that was the substance of it."

Suddenly there came to them the measured tolling of a bell from the midst of the waters. Lydia started. "What is

His

after a long time she looked up, and it was not Barnet she saw standing at a little distance before her, but a young man, or the wreck of one, tall and bronzed, but lean and thin to emaciation. cheek-bones hung like ledges over his hollow cheeks, his hair was gray, and a great livid scar ran across one cheek; his upper lip was nothing but a scar, and his mouth seemed to have been cut back at the corners as if by a tight bit that was sharp. It was hard to imagine what he had looked like before he lost those great pieces out of his face, but he was not unpleasant to look upon even now. Strangely, his scars seemed to dignify him. His hat was in his hand. "I beg your pardon," he said in a pleasant voice. "I landed here in my boat to look about the old salt-works, and I met an old man who directed me in here. I am afraid I have no excuse for my trespassing."

Helena had got to her feet. "We do not regard visitors as trespassers."

"I have never before seen a place of this kind," he said. "It is most soothing. I should like to spend a month or two in such a place. I suppose the old man can do all that is needed?"

"Why, yes," said Helena slowly. "Did you

"I want to get something to do in a