I found Miss Jelliffe on the porch, with locks of her hair flying about her pretty head.

“You are not going,” she cried.  “You can’t possibly go off in such a storm.”

“I can see that no boat could leave the cove now,” I replied, “but if I should be badly wanted I might be able to make my way over there by land.”

“Oh!  I hope you won’t go,” she said.  “It is a terrible storm.”

Some men were coming towards us, their oilskins slatting in the wind that sought to tear them from their backs.

“’Tis a hard bit of a blow, sir,” said one of them.  “It’s too bad, for they is Dicky Jones, as has seven young ’uns, and they says he is mortal sick.  The woman o’ he she were bawlin’ terrible fer us to go an’ fetch yer, an’ we resked it, but now ’tain’t no use, for there ain’t no boat could ever get out o’ th’ cove an’ live.”

The other man was Sammy, who nodded gravely, in confirmation.

I looked at the raging seas that were now leaping over the little strait into our cove.

“I’ll have to try and get there by land,” I said.

“’Tis an awful long ways around,” said Sammy.  “Not as I says it can’t be done.”

“We’s fair done with th’ long pull we’s had,” said the messenger.  “I mistrust us men couldn’t do it.”

“You will stay here and rest,” I told him.  “I think I will have to try it.”

“You goin’ now?” asked Sammy.

“I’ll be off in a few minutes.”

“Then I goes wid yer, in course,” said the sturdy old fellow.  “I might be hinderin’ you a bit with th’ walkin’, ‘count o’ them long legs o’ yourn, but I knows th’ way an’ ye’ll be safer from gettin’ strayed.”

So I ran up to Atkins’, to see once more how the child was getting on, finding everything satisfactory enough.  I left some medicine and gave careful directions, after which I returned to the Jelliffes’ house.  Miss Helen was waiting, wrapped in a waterproof coat.  Her head was bare, and she did not appear to mind the gusts of rain which came down upon it, driven under the porch by the gale.

“Good-by, oh! good-by!” she cried.  “Thank you for everything and God be with you!”

She gave me a grip of the hand that was strong with a nervous force one would hardly have deemed her capable of, and I left her regretfully, I must say, for she had become such a comrade as a man seldom meets with.  Then Sammy and I started on our long walk over the ridges and barrens, striking well inland.  We had been gone but a few minutes before Sweetapple Cove was blotted from our sight by the pelting rain that spattered fiercely over our oilskins.

And now I am putting in another long night.

The storm still beats upon the roof and the wind is howling like some unmerciful beast unleashed.  The Snowbird surely could not sail away to-day, for the dawning is showing its first gleams through the tiny window panes, and there is no sign of any change.