“I’m sure, Nan, you will not be heartless enough to tell Donald McKaye of my visit to you,” she pleaded, as the girl started down the beach.

“You have all the assurance of respectability, dear Mrs. Daney,” Nan answered carelessly.

“You shall not leave me until you promise to be silent!” Mary Daney cried hysterically, and rose to follow her.

“I think you had better go, Mrs. Daney.  I am quite familiar with the figure of The Laird since his retirement; he walks round the bight with his dogs every afternoon for exercise, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, that is he coming down the beach.”

Mrs. Daney cast a terrified glance in the direction indicated.  A few hundred yards up the beach she recognized The Laird, striding briskly along, swinging his stick, and with his two English setters romping beside him.  With a final despairing “Please Nan; please do not be cruel!” she fled, Nan Brent smiling mischievously after her stout retreating form.

“I have condemned you to the horrors of uncertainty,” the girl soliloquized.  “How very, very stupid you are, Mrs. Daney, to warn me to protect him!  As if I wouldn’t lay down my life to uphold his honor!  Nevertheless, you dear old bungling busybody, you are absolutely right, although I suspect no altruistic reason carried you forth on this uncomfortable errand.”

Nan had heretofore, out of the bitterness of her life, formed the opinion that brickbats were for the lowly, such as she, and bouquets solely for the great, such as Donald McKaye.  Now, for the first time, she realized that human society is organized in three strata—­high, mediocre, and low, and that when a mediocrity has climbed to the seats of the mighty, his fellows strive to drag him back, down to their own ignoble level—­or lower.  To Nan, child of poverty, sorrow, and solitude, the world had always appeared more or less incomprehensible, but this afternoon, as she retraced her slow steps to the Sawdust Pile, the old dull pain of existence had become more complicated and acute with the knowledge that the first ray of sunlight that had entered her life in three years was about to be withdrawn; and at the thought, tears, which seemed to well from her heart rather than from her eyes, coursed down her cheeks and a sob broke through her clenched lips.

Her progress homeward, what with the heavy bundle of driftwood, in her apron impeding her stride, coupled with the necessity for frequent pauses to permit her child to catch up with her, was necessarily slow—­so slow, in fact, that presently she heard quick footsteps behind her and, turning, beheld Hector McKaye.  He smiled, lifted his hat, and greeted her pleasantly.

“Good-afternoon, Miss Nan.  That is a heavy burden of driftwood you carry, my dear.  Here—­let me relieve you of it.  I’ve retired, you know, and the necessity for finding something to do—­Bless my soul, the girl’s crying!” He paused, hat in hand, and gazed at her with frank concern.  She met his look bravely.