Page:She's all the world to me. A novel (IA shesallworldtome00cain 0).pdf/136

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132
SHE'S ALL THE WORLD TO ME.

of the old man himself. Where was Christian? Did he know what Kisseck had done? It must have been Kisseck. But God would punish him. Had Christian gone out to sea?

Mona set off for the Lockjaw Creek, thinking that some trace of Christian might perhaps be found there.

She took the high path. The sun had risen, and the gorse fire burned blue. When she came by the mouth of the old mine she was thinking both of Danny and of Christian. "He will be cold now; he will be in heaven," she muttered to herself.

Then it was that, half-buried in the pit, she saw the pallid, deep-plowed face of Christian himself. She could not suppress a cry. Then she heard the creak and the fall of the timbers under him. For a moment she lost consciousness, and in another moment she was in Christian's arms.

Hardly had the bewildered senses of these two regained an instant's composure when a man came running toward them from the town. In disjointed words he told them that some fearful thing had washed ashore in the bay, and that Mylrea Balladhoo was there, raving over it like one mad. This is what had happened.

As Balladhoo turned along the shore toward his home, bemoaning what he believed to be the death of Christian, his dazed eyes caught sight of a curious object some distance out at sea. It might be a gig with a sail, but it looked too small. It might be a diver or a solan goose with outspread wings, but it looked too large. What it was mattered little to him. The world had lost