At times cities would be delicately outlined with towers and roofs rising loftily; then again one might see a deep wood with a road winding far and away, luring home-tied feet to wander.  And sometimes—­not often, to be sure—­the Ship would ride at anchor as on a painted sea.

The Ship boded no good to Silver Gap as any one could tell.  It had brought the plague and the flood; it brought bad crops and raids on hidden stills; it waited until its evil cargo had done its worst and then it sailed away in the night, bearing its pitiful load of dead, or its burden of fear and hate.  Surely there was good and sufficient reason for dreading the appearance of The Ship, and on a certain autumn morning it appeared and soon after the two women, unknown to each other, came to Ridge House and this story began.

CHAPTER I

“Wait and thy soul shall speak.”

There is, in the human soul, as in the depths of the ocean, a state of eternal calm.  Around it the waves of unrest may surge and roar but there peace reigns.  In that sanctuary the tides are born and, in their appointed time, swelling and rising, they carry the poor jetsam and flotsam of life before them.

The tide was rising in the soul of Meredith Thornton; she was awake at last.  Awake as people are who have lived with their faculties drugged.  The condition was partly due to the education and training of the woman, and largely to her own ability in the past to close her senses to any conception of life that differed from her desires.  She had always been like that.  She loved beauty and music; she loved goodness and happiness; she loved them whom she loved so well that she shut all others out.  Consequently, when Life tore her defences away she had no guidance upon which to depend but that which had lain hidden in the secret place of her soul.

As a little child Meredith and her older sister, Doris, lived in New York.  Their house had been in the Fletcher family for three generations and stood at the end of a dignified row, opposite a park whose iron gates opened only to those considered worthy of owning a key—­the Fletchers had a key!

In the park the little Fletcher girls played—­if one could call it play—­under the eye of a carefully selected maid whose glance was expected to rest constantly upon them.  The anxious father tried to do his double duty conscientiously, for the mother had died at Meredith’s birth.

The children often peered through the high fence (it really was more fun than the stupid games directed by their elders) and wondered—­at least Doris wondered; Meredith was either amused or shocked; if the latter it was an easy matter to turn aside.  This hurt Doris, and to her plea that the thing was there, Meredith returned that she did not believe it, and she did not, either.

Once, shielded by the skirts of an outgoing maid, Doris made her escape and, for two thrilling and enlightening hours, revelled in the company of the Great Unknown who were not deemed worthy of keys.