this letter came.  It had brought many memories back to him with shocking clearness.  The old folk were still in the little home under the hill; they received his letters; they received the money he sent them each month—­but they wanted him.  The girl wrote with merciless candor.  He had been away four years and it was time for him to return.  She told him why.  She wrote what they, in their loving fear of inflicting pain, would never have dared to say.  At the end, in a postscript, she had asked for his congratulations on her approaching marriage.

To Nathaniel this letter had been a torment.  He saw the truth as he had never seen it before—­that his place was back there in Vermont, with his father and mother; and that there was something unpleasant in thinking of the girl as belonging to another.  But now matters had changed.  The letter was a hope and inspiration to him and he smoothed it out with tender care.  What a refuge that little home among the Vermont hills would make for Marion!  He trembled at the thought and his heart sang with the promise of it as he went his way again through the thick growth of the woods.

It was half an hour before he came out upon the beach.  Eagerly he scanned the sea.  The Typhoon was nowhere in sight and for an instant the gladness that had been in his heart gave place to a chilling fear.  But the direction of the wind reassured him.  Casey had probably moved beyond the jutting promontory, that swung in the form of a cart wheel from the base of the point, that he might have sea room in case of something worse than a stiff breeze.  But where was the small boat?  With every step adding to his anxiety Nathaniel hurried along the narrow rim of beach.  He went to the very tip of the point which reached out like the white forefinger of, a lady’s hand into the sea; he passed the spot where he had lain concealed the preceding day; his breath came faster and faster; he ran, and called softly, and at last halted in the arch of the cart wheel with the fear full-flaming in his breast.  Over all those miles of sea there was no sign of the sloop.  From end to end of the point there was no boat.  What did it mean?  Breathlessly he tore his way through the strip of forest on the promontory until all Lake Michigan to the south lay before his eyes.  The Typhoon was gone!  Was it possible that Casey had abandoned hope of Nathaniel’s return and was already lying off St. James with shotted gun?  The thought sent a shiver of despair through him.  He passed to the opposite side of the point and followed it foot by foot, but there was no sign of life, no distant flash of white that might have been the canvas of the sloop Typhoon.