All night Lois and Giles were praying in anguish of grief for their children of adoption, even when hope was beaten out by the heavy-handed storm. For three days and nights the seas were sailless, though the hulks of two wrecks were spied drifting; and after, still they ran so high, that a fifth day dawned before a lugger beat in aside her course on a kindly errand. Then up the street leapt news to the desolate pair: how Rhoda and Christian lived; how their boat had been run down in the night, and themselves snatched gallantly from death; how they had been put ashore at the first port a mastless ship could win, and there received by the pity of strangers; and how all the while Christian lay raving and dying, and by now must be dead.

But to hope reborn this last was unbelievable. Lois said she should find him alive and to live, since Heaven had twice willed him to escape the jaws of death. And her heart of confidence she kept for more than two weary days of difficulty and delay. But when she reached his bed her hope wavered; she saw a shorn head, and a face blanched and bloodless like bone, fallen out of a shape she knew into strange hollows, with eyes showing but a glassy strip, and grey, breathless lips. 'To-night,' said Rhoda.

Breathless also through the night they watched till came the first shiver of dawn. Then his eyelids rose; he looked with recognition at Lois, and moved a hand towards hers; and with a quiet sigh his eyes closed, not for death, but for blessed, feverless, breathing sleep.

The one who wept then was Lois, and Rhoda clasped her in a passionate embrace of comfort, and herself shed no tear.

The child had deserted Rhoda for ever, as the boy Christian. She knew it: she had kissed her childhood dead on his lips, and now past any recall it had been buried, and lay deep under such a weight of sorrow as fate can hew only for a woman full. No tear she shed, no word she said, and she ordered her face to be serene.

She had a word for Lois not at first to be understood. 'God has been good to heal,' she would say; but the whole truth did not declare till Lois, regarding the future again, had sighed: 'Where shall he go?' 'Home,' said Rhoda. Lois shook her head sadly: 'He could not bear it.' The girl, with arms round her neck and a hid face, whispered again: 'God has been good to heal—I think so—do you not know it yet?'

So a day came when a wasted shadow of the old Christian was borne along the quay and up the street, while men and women stept out to observe. Their eyes he met with placid recognition, clear of any disquiet.

The devil had gone out of the fellow at last, they said, when he could not lift a hand for injury, nor gloom a resentful look. And so hard doings were justified; and none intolerant could begrudge him the life he had brought away, even before a guess began that he had not brought away his full wits.

Out in the porch he would come to bask in the sun for hours with animal content. Out to the gate he would come, going weakly to and fro as he was bid. But Giles was surly to men, and to women Lois was iron cold, and Rhoda had deft ways of insult to repulse unwelcome intrusion; and so for a little while those three guarded him and kept close the secret of his ruin.

Then one at an unguarded moment won in, and spied, and carried her report of his mild, his brute-mild gaze, and his slow labour of speech: it was the mother of Philip. Rhoda found a token of her left beside Christian, a well-intended, small peace-offering, in a cheese of her sole make.

'Who brought this?' she asked; and he told.

'She offered it—to you?'

'To us,' he returned quietly.

'And you took it—thanked her and took it?'

He looked up and studied her face for enlightenment.

'The mother was not here.'

Rhoda's passion surged over. 'How dared she, how dared she!' she stormed, and seized on the poor gift, cast it down, stamped it into the sandy path, and spurned it over the sweet herbs into the sluggy kail beyond.

Like a child, chidden for some uncomprehended fault, he looked at her, distressed at her condemnation, anxious to atone, wondering if his senses told him true. Her anger failing under an agony of pity and remorse, from the unendurable pain of his look she fled to hide her passionate weeping. When Lois came out to Christian he was deeply asleep.

Soon he carried into the street his brute-mild gaze, and his slow labour of speech. And no thumb turned against him. For all who chose to peer in on his blank mind found how shame and rancour could take no root in a void of memory. He met every face with an even countenance, showing no recall of a debt to any.

In a very literal sense it was now said that the devil had gone out of him. Willing belief held that he had been actually possessed, and delivered only when a right instinct of severity had spoiled him for habitation. Some compunction showed over the mooted point whether the pitiful lasting flaw had not rather come of the last spite of an evicted devil, than of the drastic measures of exasperated men.

In nowise did Christian's reason now work amiss, though it was slow and heavy; nor had his memory lost all its store, nor quite its power to store. Of earlier days his remembrance was clear and complete though a little unready, but of passing hours some only did not float clean out of mind to be forgotten. This was a deficiency that mended by degrees, and in time bid fair to pass. Where the break began, none who loved him ventured to discover. Once when, as shall be told, Giles incautiously touched, Christian turned a dazed, painful face, and grew white and whiter, and presently laid his head down on his arms and slept deeply. In those days frequent slumbers fell, and for the most part memory was blurred behind them.

Lois in her heart sometimes had a secret doubt that oblivion had not entirely satisfied him. His reason seemed too serviceable to lie down without an effort; and it was hard to imagine how it could account for certain scars that his body would carry to the grave; or account for the loss of two boats—the old drudge and his own murdered Beloved. Yet when in his presence they held anxious debate on the means to a new boat, he listened and made no comment.

The poor wronged household was hardly set. Restitution was unlooked for, and not to be enforced, for woe betide any who against the tyranny of the fishers' law invoked higher powers and another code. Though now the alien was tolerated under a milder estimate, an outcast he remained, and none were so hardy as to offer fellowship with him and his. The cost of a boat was more than Giles could contrive on his own poor securities, and none could he find to share for profit or risk in any concern that Christian would be handling. It was only on his Reverence offering surety for instalments that the dread of ruin and exile for one and all passed them by, and means to a livelihood were obtained.

Together, as in the long past days when Christian was yet a child, and Giles was still hale, the old man and the young returned to daily toil on the coral shoals. Giles was the better man of the two at the first, for necessity had admitted of no delay; but as the younger gained in strength the elder lost; by the month's end his feeble stock of strength, overdrawn, failed suddenly, not enough remaining for him to potter about the quay as before. In months succeeding, his goings came to be straitened, first to the garden, then to the house, then to one seat, one bed. Before the year's end it was to be to the straitest lodging of all—green turfed.

Alone, quite alone again, with sea and sky whispering together round him, and no sail near, well might those who loved Christian pray for him hourly.

His first return was so late that terrors beset all three. The two women were on the quay when his boat glided in under dusk, and up he stept with a load. The hearts of both were beating thick for dread of a rich load that would blast him afresh, for thus in old days had he glided in at dusk.

But what he bore was only his nets, which he dropped before them. He stood silent and downcast. They saw that one of the cross-beams was broken; they saw that the meshes were torn incredibly.

They saw that he was waiting in dumb distress to be told by them if he were to blame. Ah, dear aching hearts! not a word, not a look was there to weigh on him in his disappointment. Rhoda stripped off the netting and carried it home, with a gay boast of proving her proficiency, for she had learned net-making from Christian in his idle days of weakness. Half the next day she sat mending, and was proud of her finished task, expecting some reward of praise. But it never came. The fresh netting he had taken he brought back torn hideously, so that dismay fell.

Christian and Giles together had met only poor luck, but here came a stroke of so deliberate an aim that the word misfortune seemed indifferent to describe it.

And this was but the beginning of a long course; again and again Christian returned with spoiled nets; and, even on better days, few there were when his takings were not conspicuously poor in amount and quality. Such loss was the graver since an instalment was due at the season's close, and except the dawning autumn brought fair success, sore straits would come with the winter.

Rhoda proved good for bread-winning. Before, she had practised lace-making, taught her at the convent school, and now she turned to it with all her energy. Early and late found her bending over her pillow. No more net-mending for her: for the sake of unroughened hands she had to leave that to Christian and the elders. Yet her work was but poorly paid, and the sale uncertain.

As autumn came in, Christian still gained in physical strength up to near his old level; but Giles declined slowly, Lois grew thin and worn, and Rhoda was losing something of her bloom.

The heart of the old man yearned over the girl, and he knew that his time was but brief. For hours he would sit and watch, fondly and sadly, her dear bent head and her hands playing over her pillow in a patch of light under the pinned-back blind. At last he told Christian his heart, even Christian.

'Take care of my little maid, lad.'

He answered 'Ay,' stupidly.

'For I reckon I may not be here long to care for her myself.'

That was all he said at first, but that he would say often for some days, till he was sure that Christian had taken the sense in full, and had failed to quite disbelieve his foreboding.

'Before I lie down in the dark, I would like main to hear you take oath on it, lad.'

'I take oaths never,' said Christian mechanically.

'Right, right! save in this wise: before God's altar with ring and blessing.'

Christian examined his face long to be sure of understanding; then he said, 'No.'

Giles was disappointed, but spite of the absolute tone he would not take a negative.

'When I am gone to lie yonder east and west, and when some day the wife shall come too to bed with me, how will you take care of my little maid? her and her good name?'

'Oh, God help us!'

'Look you to it, for I doubt she, dear heart, cares for you—now—more than for her mere good name.'

'How can she!' he muttered.

Said Giles hazardously: 'Once I knew of a girl such as Rhoda; as shy and proud and upright; and a lad she liked,—a lad, say, such as you, Christian, that she liked in her heart more than he guessed. Until he got shamefully mistook, miscalled, mishandled, when she up and kissed him at open noon in the face of all. And then, I mind, at need she followed him over seas, and nought did her good heart think on ill tongues. There is Rhoda all over.'

He watched askance to see what the flawed wits could do, and repented of his venture; for it was then Christian so paled and presently so slept.

But Giles tried again.

'Do you mind you of the day of Rhoda's coming? Well, what think you had I at heart then? You never had a guess? You guess now.'

Christian said, 'I will not.'

'Ah! lad, you do. And to me it looked so right and fit and just. That the wife might gainsay, I allowed; but not you. No; and you will not when I tell you all.

'Christian, I do not feel that I have left in me another spring, so while I have the voice I must speak out, and I may not let you be.

'You know of Rhoda's birth: born she was on the same night as our child. As for me, I could not look upon the one innocent but thought on the other would rise, and on the pitiful difference there was. Somehow, the wife regarded it as the child of its father only, I think always, till Rhoda stood before her, the very image of her mother. And with me 'twas just the other way about; and I was main fond of the poor young mother; a sweet, gentle creature she was—a quiet dove, not a brave hawk like little Rhoda. I wished the little thing could have shared with ours heart and home; but that the wife could not have abided, the man being amongst us too. But I went and managed so that none can cast up on Rhoda as a pauper foundling.

'Lad, as I would like you to think well of me when I am gone, God knows I can ill afford to have more than is due stand against me; so look you, lad, I was not such a wastrel as you had cause for thinking. I don't deny what may have been in old days before, but for a good seventeen year when I have gone off for a fling now and then, Rhoda has been the better for it, not I the worse. It has been hard on the wife, and I own I have done a deal of cheating by her and by you too, and have stinted you unfairly. There, there, hold your tongue, and let me start fair again.

'After our child was taken from us, and the poor wife took on so for our blame, it was borne in on me that the rightest amending was not far to seek; and I put it to her at last. But I spoke too soon, when her hurts were quick and raw, and she could not bear it. She was crazy-like then, and I put my notion by for a bit. You see, it was like this: I reckoned the fatal misdoing was unchristian rancour against the father, and care for his deserted child should best express contrition. But the wife couldn't look that way—and she got from the Book awful things to say against the wicked man and his children; and all she repented on was her wrong ways, in neglect of right worship to affront the man; and I think in her heart she cursed him more bitter than ever. A penance it would have been to her to do violence to her griefs and indignations by taking up the child; but it would have righted her as nothing else could, and that I knew, and I looked to bring her to it yet. For me, well, I was on other ground before then, and more than once Rhoda's baby hand had closed upon my finger, ay, upon my heart, though then she was not like my own. And that in a way made me slack to drive against the grain, when with me the point ran smooth and sweet.

'Now, Christian, what came next?'

The old man had been very slow with his tale, watching his listener intently all the while to be sure he heeded and understood. Christian shook his head, but there was very sensible apprehension on his face as he looked to Giles.

'You came, Christian.

'You took the place in heart and home that might have come to be little Rhoda's, as I hoped.

'You came from the sea that had taken our own, and so the wife said it was the hand of God. I thought the hand of God pointed otherwise. Christian, what say you?'

He could answer nothing: Giles waited, but he could not.

'You will take care of my little maid as I want?'

'I cannot! ah, I cannot!'

'All these years Rhoda has wanted a home as I think because of you; and because of you I could not hope for the wife's heart to open to her.'

'She should hate me! you should!' said Christian. His face was scared.

'You can make ample amends—oh! ample; and Rhoda will count the wants of her youth blessed that shall lay the rest of her days to your keeping. She will—Christian, are you so blind?—she will.

'Ah, dear lad! I got so well contented that the wife had had her way and had taken you, when I saw what the just outcome should be; and saw her shaping in the dark towards the happy lot of the sweet little slip she ignored. Long back it began, when you were but a little chap. Years before you set eyes on her, Rhoda had heard of you.

'In the end I could fit out no plan for you to light on her; and a grubby suitor was bargaining for her, so I had to make a risky cast. She was to enter as a passing stranger I had asked to rest. The wife fell on her neck, before a word. Well, well, what poor fools we had both been!

'Christian, why do you say No?'

'I wish her better.'

'But she loves you! I swear she loves you! And I, O good Lord! I have done my best to set her affections on you. How shall I lie still in the grave while her dear heart is moaning for its hurt, and 'tis I that have wrought it.'

To a scrupulous nature the words of Giles brought cruel distress. Christian's eyes took to following Rhoda, though never a word of wooing went to her. In the end he spoke.

'Dear Rhoda,' he said, and stopped; but instantly she looked up startled. His eyes were on the ground.

'Rhoda, I love you dearly. Will you be my wife?'

She grew white as death, and stayed stone-still, breathless. Then he looked at her, stood up, and repeated resolutely: 'Rhoda, dearest, will you be my wife?'

She rose to confront him, and brought out her answer:

'No.'

He stared at her a moment in stupid bewilderment.

'You will not be my wife?' he said.

She put out all her strength to make the word clear and absolute, and repeated: 'No.'

His face grew radiant; he caught her in his arms suddenly and kissed her, once, twice.

'O my sister!' he cried, 'my dear sister!'

She did not blush under his kisses: she shut her eyes and held her breath when his eager embrace caught her out of resistance. But when it slackened she thrust him back with all her might, broke free, and with a low cry fled away to find solitude, where she might sob and sob, and wrestle out her agony, and tear her heart with a name—that strange name, that woman's name, 'Diadyomene.'

She had his secret, she only, though it was nought but a name and some love titles and passionate entreaties that his ravings had given into her safe keeping.

On the morrow Christian's boat lay idle by the quay. Before dawn moved he had gone.

'I think—I think you need not fear for him,' said Rhoda, when the day closed without him. 'I think he may be back to-morrow.'

'You know what he is about—where he has gone, child?'

First she said 'Yes,' and then she said 'No.'

In the dusk she crept up to Giles. Against his breast she broke into pitiful weeping.

'Forgive me! forgive me! I said "No" to him.'