“Not much, that’s a fact,” he said, in answer to her question.  He would have liked to ask what she had been thinking that made his sudden appearance seem so odd.

“You came to see the sunset, I suppose?” she said hurriedly, as if to head off a question.  “So did I. It is a beautiful evening for a walk, isn’t it?”

She had said precisely the same thing on that other evening, when they stood in the middle of “Hammond’s Turn-off” in the driving rain.  He remembered it, and so, evidently, did she, for she colored slightly and smiled.

“I mean it this time,” she said.  “I’m glad you didn’t get cold from your wetting the other day.”

“Oh!  I wasn’t very wet.  You wouldn’t let me lend you the umbrella, so I had that to protect me on the way home.”

“Not then; I meant the other morning when Nat—­Cap’n Hammond—­met you out on the flats.  He said you were wading the main channel and it was over your boots.”

“Over my boots!  Is that all he said?  Over my head would be the plain truth.  To cross it I should have had to swim and, if what I’ve heard since is true, I doubt if I could swim that channel.  Captain Hammond helped me out of a bad scrape.”

“Oh, no!  I guess not.  He said you were cruising without a pilot and he towed you into port; that’s the way he expressed it.”

“It was worse than that, a good deal worse.  It might have been my last cruise.  I’m pretty certain that I owe the captain my life.”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“Your life?” she repeated.

“I believe it.  That part of the channel I proposed swimming was exactly where two men have been drowned, so people say.  I’m not a very strong swimmer, and they were.  So, you see.”

Grace cried out in astonishment.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.  Then pointing toward the bay, she asked:  “Out there, by the end of that leader, was it?”

“Yes, that was it.”

She drew a long breath.  Then, after a moment: 

“And Nat spoke as if it was all a joke,” she said.

“No doubt he did.  From what I hear of your brother, he generally refers to his own plucky, capable actions as jokes.  Other people call them something else.”

She did not answer, but continued to gaze at the half-submerged “leader,” with the pine bough tied at its landward end to mark the edge of deep water, and the tide foaming through its lath gratings.

“Your brother—­” went on the minister.

“He isn’t my brother,” she interrupted absently.  “I wish he was.”

She sighed as she uttered the last sentence.

“No, of course he isn’t your real brother; I forgot.  But he must seem like one.”

“Yes,” rather doubtfully.

“You must be proud of him.”

“I am.”  There was nothing doubtful this time.

“Well, he saved me from drowning.  I’m almost certain of that.”