“Oh, is it, is it—-” cried the bewildered girl, with no hand to feel for her eyeglass.  “Where shall I go?”

“I tell you I can’t tell,” he shouted in answer to both questions, half angrily, already on his way.  “Don’t dawdle,” and he disappeared.

Poor Anna, she had no inclination to dawdle, but the two horses were a sore impediment, and she went on some way without seeing any houses.  Should she turn back to the little road leading down from Anscombe? but that was rough and difficult, and could not be undertaken quickly with a led horse; or should she make the best of her way to the nearest villas, outskirts of Rockquay?  However, after a moment the swish of bicycles was heard, and up came two young men, clerks apparently, let loose by Saturday.  They halted, and in answer to her agitated question where there was a house, pointed to a path which they said led down to the Preventive station, and asked whether there had been an accident, and whether they could be of use.  They were more able to decide what was best to be done than she could be, and they grew more keenly interested when they understood for whom she feared.  Petros White, brother to Mrs. Henderson, and nephew to Aunt Adeline’s husband, was one of them, the other, a youth also employed at the marble works.  This latter took the horses off her hands, while Petros showed her the way to the Coast-guard station by a steep path, leading to a sort of ledge in the side of the cliff, scooped out partly by nature and partly by art, where stood the little houses covered with slate.

There the mistress was looking out anxiously with a glass; while below, the Preventive man was unlocking the boat-house, having already observed the peril of the boys, but lamenting the absence of his mate.  Petros ran down at speed to offer his help, and Anna could only borrow the glass, through which she plainly saw the three boys, bare-legged, sitting huddled up on the top of the rock, but with the waves still a good way from them, and their faces all turned hopefully towards the promontory of rock along which she could see Gerald picking his way; but there was evidently a terrible and fast-diminishing space between its final point and the rock of refuge.

Anna was about to rush down, and give her help with an oar; but the woman withheld her, saying that she would only crowd the boat and retard the rescue, for which the two were quite sufficient, only the danger was that the current of the stream might make the tide rise rapidly in the bay.  There were besides so many rocks and shoals, that it was impossible to proceed straight across, but it was needful absolutely to pass the rock and then turn back on it from the open sea.  It was agonizing for the sister to watch the devious course, and she turned the glass upon the poor boys, plainly making out Adrian’s scared, restless look, as he clung to the fisher-lad, and Fergus nursing his bag of specimens with his knees