“Katherine, did you take me for a ghost?” asked the voice of Jervis Ferrars.

“I think so,” she said faintly, then sent the boat with a jerk against the mooring post, where he tied it up for her.

“Did you really think we had gone down, or had you the cheerful faith of Mrs. Jenkin?”

“I—­I am afraid that I had no faith at all,” she said with an effort, and never guessed how complete was her self-betrayal.

He looked at her keenly, was apparently satisfied with what he saw, then said cheerfully:  “Will you row me up to Astor M’Kree’s, or, rather, permit me to row you?  I want to go and assure him that the Mary is quite safe, and the soundest boat that ever sailed the Bay.  Shall we leave this luggage here, or row it up river for the sake of having a load?”

“Rowing is quite sufficient exercise without having an unnecessary load,” replied Katherine, with a shake of her head, as she handed him the bundles to place on the bank.  She was trembling so that she could hardly trust herself to speak, and was horribly afraid of breaking down like a schoolgirl, and crying from sheer joyfulness.

When the bundles were all out, Jervis got in, took the oars, and sent the boat’s head round for up river again, then pulled steadily for a few minutes without speaking.

A boat is an awkward place for a person afflicted with self-consciousness.  Katherine would have been thankful for some shelter in which to hide her face just then, but, having none, she rushed into nervous speech instead.

“Were you in danger?  Was the Mary wrecked?” she asked, miserably conscious of the unsteadiness of her voice, yet feeling altogether too nervous to remain silent.

“No,” he said.  “We have had a very easy and prosperous time, though, unfortunately, we lost one of our boats on the way out—­the boat picked up by Oily Dave, which has made all the trouble.  We fell in with a lot of white porpoises; so the take has been a valuable one, and the men came home very well pleased with the venture:  though Nick Jones felt his spirits rather dashed by meeting his wife tricked out in mourning attire, and flying a pennon of widowhood from the back of her bonnet.”

Katherine laughed:  she could imagine the tragic figure Mrs. Jones must have looked, and the effect the sight would have on the susceptible nerves of a Bay fisherman.  Then she said hurriedly:  “I shall have great faith in Mrs. Jenkin’s judgment after this, although I have wondered how she could be so persistently hopeful in the face of such evidence as we had.”

“And you yourself—­how did you feel about it?  Would it have made any difference to you if I had gone under, dear?” he asked, with a caressing note in his tone that she had never heard there before.

For answer she jerked her head round, staring at the tops of the pine trees, with the blue sky behind them, but seeing nothing and heeding nothing save the world of happiness which had suddenly opened before her astonished eyes.