When I went back to the house the rain was beginning to fall; but there was no wind or sound in the air—­only that dismal stillness, as if the world were holding its breath in expectation of a calamity.

Josie was standing by the window, looking out and listening.  I tried to induce her to go to bed, but she only shook her head.

“I might fall asleep and not hear him when he called,” she said.  “I am always afraid to sleep now, for fear he should call and his mother fail to hear him.”

Knowing it was of no use to entreat, I sat down by the table and tried to read.  Three hours passed on.  When the clock struck midnight she started up, with the wild light in her sunken blue eyes.

“He is calling,” she cried, “calling out there in the storm.  Yes, yes, sweet, I am coming!”

She opened the door and fled down the path to the shore.  I snatched a lantern from the wall, lighted it, and followed.  It was the blackest night I was ever out in, dark with the very darkness of death.  The rain fell thickly and heavily.  I overtook Josie, caught her hand, and stumbled along in her wake, for she went with the speed and recklessness of a distraught woman.  We moved in the little flitting circle of light shed by the lantern.  All around us and above us was a horrible, voiceless darkness, held, as it were, at bay by the friendly light.

“If I could only overtake him once,” moaned Josie.  “If I could just kiss him once, and hold him close against my aching heart.  This pain, that never leaves me, would leave me than.  Oh, my pretty boy, wait for mother!  I am coming to you.  Listen, David; he cries—­he cries so pitifully; listen!  Can’t you hear it?”

I did hear it!  Clear and distinct, out of the deadly still darkness before us, came a faint, wailing cry.  What was it?  Was I, too, going mad, or was there something out there—­something that cried and moaned—­longing for human love, yet ever retreating from human footsteps?  I am not a superstitious man; but my nerve had been shaken by my long trial, and I was weaker than I thought.  Terror took possession of me—­terror unnameable.  I trembled in every limb; clammy perspiration oozed from my forehead; I was possessed by a wild impulse to turn and flee—­ anywhere, away from that unearthly cry.  But Josephine’s cold hand gripped mine firmly, and led me on.  That strange cry still rang in my ears.  But it did not recede; it sounded clearer and stronger; it was a wail; but a loud, insistent wail; it was nearer—­nearer; it was in the darkness just beyond us.

Then we came to it; a little dory had been beached on the pebbles and left there by the receding tide.  There was a child in it—­a boy, of perhaps two years old, who crouched in the bottom of the dory in water to his waist, his big, blue eyes wild and wide with terror, his face white and tear-stained.  He wailed again when he saw us, and held out his little hands.