It took me quite ten minutes to reach his house, and I felt as if I had gone through a battle when I arrived there at length, quite spent and breathless.  I saw a light in the lower room, and I found Mr. Christie and his wife and children sitting in the room where I had passed through so much the night before.  Marjorie and little Jack were in their nightgowns, wrapped in a blanket, and sitting in the same arm-chair.  My mother’s picture was looking at me from the wall, and I fancied that she smiled at me as I came in.

‘What a terrible night!’ said Mrs. Christie.  ’The children were so frightened by the noise of the wind in their attic that we brought them down here.’

I told them my errand, and Mr. Christie at once offered to go with me for the doctor.  I shall never forget that walk as long as I live.  We could not speak to each other more than a few necessary words, we were simply fighting with the storm.  Then, to our disappointment, when our long walk was ended, we found that the doctor was away, and would probably not return until morning.

The walk home was, if possible, worse than the walk there, for the wind was dead against us as we came down the cliff.  It had changed somewhat the last hour, and was now blowing from the north-east.

‘There will be trouble out at sea,’ Mr. Christie said, as we stopped to take breath.

‘And what about the boats?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, almost with a groan, ‘what about the boats?’

We could see very little out at sea, though it was beginning to grow light, but we determined to make our way to the shore, to see all that it was possible to distinguish.  He went home for a moment, and then followed me to my lodging.  Polly and her old friend were still watching the child.

‘I think he’s a little better, sir,’ she said; ’he’s quieter.  Oh, Mr. Christie, I am glad to see you, sir!  Will you pray, sir?  I think I shall hear the wind less if you pray!’

We knelt down beside the child’s bed, but the noise of the storm almost drowned his voice.  At the end of the prayer the child began once more to cry for his father, so piteously, so beseechingly, that at last I could bear it no longer, but ran downstairs, to be out of the sound of that touching little voice.  Mr. Christie soon followed me, and we went out together in the grey light of that terrible morning.

‘The child is dying, Jack,’ he said.

‘Oh, don’t say so, Mr. Christie!’ I answered; ’dying before his father comes back.’

‘God grant he may come back!’ he said; ‘look at the sea, Jack.’

The sea was dashing wildly against the rocks, and the noise of the wind was so great we could hardly hear our own voices.  In the dim uncertain light we could at length distinguish a group of anxious watchers on the shore.  Some old fishermen were there trying to hold a telescope steady in the gale, that they might look across the water for any sign of a boat, and mothers and wives and sweethearts of the absent fishermen were there also, with shawls tied over their heads, and with troubled and tear-stained faces, peering out into the dismal light of that sorrowful morning.