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Old Eddard has saved you, Old Eddard and the good Goad together!" Meanwhile the boat had been got round, and the men were rowing for Bryngelly as warm-hearted sailors will when life is at stake. They all knew Beatrice and loved her, and they remembered it as they rowed. The gloom was little hindrance to them for they could almost have navigated the coast blindfold.

On board one of these, Owen Davies worked in various capacities for thirteen long years. He did his drudgery well; but he made no friends, and always remained the same shy, silent, and pious man. Then suddenly a relation died without a will, and he found himself heir-in-law to Bryngelly Castle and all its revenues. Owen expressed no surprise, and to all appearance felt none.

"What is it?" she cried. "Murder!" they answered with one voice, and sped on towards Bryngelly. Another moment and Elizabeth was at hand, horror written on her pale face. Beatrice clutched at her. "Who is it?" she cried. "Mr. Bingham," gasped her sister. "Go and help; he's shot dead!" And she too was gone.

Geoffrey was perfectly prepared to risk a swim to the shore on his own account, but he did not at all like the idea of leaving this young lady to find her own way back to Bryngelly through the mist and gathering darkness, and in that frail canoe. He would not have liked it if she had been a man, for he knew that there was great risk in such a voyage.

But half an hour before he had made up his mind not to go to Bryngelly. And now The vision of Beatrice rose before his eyes. Beatrice who had gone cold all winter and never told him one word of their biting poverty the longing for the sight of Beatrice came into his heart, and like a hurricane swept the defences of his reason to the level ground.

"Ah, well, the fact is I did not come to see over the place. I came to live there. I am Owen Davies, and the place was left to me." Beatrice, for of course it was she, stared at him in amazement. So this was the mysterious sailor about whom there had been so much talk in Bryngelly. "Oh!" she said, with embarrassing frankness. "What an odd way to come home.

But Owen Davies was not in the least mad, at any rate not then; he was only a creature of habit. Then he took a second-class ticket to Bryngelly, where he had never been in his life before, and asked his way to the Castle. He was told to go to the beach, and he would see it.

She had gone away from the Bryngelly Station on that autumn morning of farewell sick at heart, and sick at heart she had remained. Through all the long winter months sorrow and bitterness had been her portion, and now in the happiness of spring, sorrow and bitterness were with her still. She loved him, she longed for his presence, and it was denied to her.

The idea that Owen Davies, Esq., J.P., D.L., of Bryngelly Castle, absolute owner of that rising little watering-place, and of one of the largest and most prosperous slate quarries in Wales, worth in all somewhere between seven and ten thousand a year, was unfit to black her beautiful sister's boots, was not an idea that had struck Elizabeth Granger.

Three weeks passed at Bryngelly, and Elizabeth still held her hand. Beatrice, pale and spiritless, went about her duties as usual. Elizabeth never spoke to her in any sense that could awaken her suspicions, and the ghost story was, or appeared to be, pretty well forgotten. But at last an event occurred that caused Elizabeth to take the field.