But the answer of Clarice still more surprised him.  With her eyes gazing out on the sea, she stood, the image of silence, while Bondo warily set forth his hopes.  Old Briton and the dame looked on and deemed the symptoms favorable.  But Clarice said,—­

“Heart and hand I gave to him.  I am the wife of Luke;—­how can I marry another?”

Bondo seemed eager to answer that question, for he hastily waved his hand toward Dame Briton, who began to speak.

“Luke will never come back,” said he, gently expostulating.

“But I shall go to him,” was the quiet reply.

Then the old people, whose hearts were in the wooing, broke out together,—­and by their voices, if one should argue with them, strife was not far off.  Clarice staid one moment, as if to take in the burden of each eager voice; then she shook her head:—­

“I am married already,” she said; “I gave him my heart and my hand.  You would not rob Luke Merlyn?”

When she had so spoken, calmly, firmly, as if it were impossible that she should be moved or agitated by such speech as this she had heard, Clarice walked away to the beach, unmoored her father’s boat, and rowed out into the Bay.

Bondo Emmins stood with the old people and gazed after her.

“Odd fish!” he muttered.

“Never mind,” said Old Briton, hobbling up and down the sand; “it’s the first time she’s been spoke to.  She’ll come round.  I know Clarice.”

“You know Clarice?” broke in Dame Briton.  “You don’t know her!  She isn’t Clarice,—­she’s somebody else.  Who, I don’t know.”

“Hush!” said Bondo, who had no desire that the couple should fall into a quarrel.  “I know who she is.  Don’t plague her.  It will all come out right yet.  I’ll wait.  But don’t say anything to her about it.  Let me speak when the time comes.—­Where’s my pipe, Dame Briton?”

Emmins spent a good part of the day with the old people, and did not allow the conversation once to turn upon himself and Clarice.  But he talked of the improvements he should like to make in the old cabin, and they discussed the market, and entertained each other with recollections of past times, and with strange stories made up of odd imaginations and still more uncouth facts.  Supernatural influences were dwelt upon, and many a belief in superstitions belonging to childhood was confessed in peaceful unconsciousness of the fact that it was Clarice who had turned all their thoughts to-day from the great prosaic highway where plain facts have their endless procession.

VI.

Clarice went out alone in her fishing-boat, as during all the past week she had purposed to do when this day came, if it should prove favorable.  She wished to approach the Point thus,—­and her purpose in so doing was such as no mortal could have suspected.  And yet, as in the fulfilment of this purpose she went, hastened from her delaying by the address of Bondo Emmins, it seemed to her as if her secret must be read by the three upon the beach.