* * * * * * *

Monkshaven is altered now into a rising bathing place.  Yet, standing near the site of widow Dobson’s house on a summer’s night, at the ebb of a spring-tide, you may hear the waves come lapping up the shelving shore with the same ceaseless, ever-recurrent sound as that which Philip listened to in the pauses between life and death.

And so it will be until ‘there shall be no more sea’.

But the memory of man fades away.  A few old people can still tell you the tradition of the man who died in a cottage somewhere about this spot,—­died of starvation while his wife lived in hard-hearted plenty not two good stone-throws away.  This is the form into which popular feeling, and ignorance of the real facts, have moulded the story.  Not long since a lady went to the ‘Public Baths’, a handsome stone building erected on the very site of widow Dobson’s cottage, and finding all the rooms engaged she sat down and had some talk with the bathing woman; and, as it chanced, the conversation fell on Philip Hepburn and the legend of his fate.

‘I knew an old man when I was a girl,’ said the bathing woman, ’as could niver abide to hear t’ wife blamed.  He would say nothing again’ th’ husband; he used to say as it were not fit for men to be judging; that she had had her sore trial, as well as Hepburn hisself.’

The lady asked, ‘What became of the wife?’

’She was a pale, sad woman, allays dressed in black.  I can just remember her when I was a little child, but she died before her daughter was well grown up; and Miss Rose took t’ lassie, as had always been like her own.’

‘Miss Rose?’

‘Hester Rose! have yo’ niver heared of Hester Rose, she as founded t’ alms-houses for poor disabled sailors and soldiers on t’ Horncastle road?  There’s a piece o’ stone in front to say that “This building is erected in memory of P. H.”—­and some folk will have it P. H. stands for t’ name o’ th’ man as was starved to death.’

‘And the daughter?’

‘One o’ th’ Fosters, them as founded t’ Old Bank, left her a vast o’ money; and she were married to distant cousin of theirs, and went off to settle in America many and many a year ago.’

THE END.