The Mermaid

a gray sea, merging into the blue and green and gold of the ordinary day. He got

as the day before without anyone being the wiser, but he saw no mermaid. He fully intended to spend

hear if anyone else had seen the mermaid, or had seen the face of a strange woman by sea or land. Of one or two female visitors to the neighbourhood within a radius of twenty miles

fe, and opined that a good swimmer might even cross the bay from Montrose or from the little port of Stanhope in the other direction; and when he saw the incredulity of his

o lay in his grave. It was perhaps this partnership with the dead that gave the matter its most incredible and unreal aspect. T

aius to himself, rolling upon a sleeples

the beginning of the rocky part of the shore, and then he drew the boat up upon the little island. He hid it perfectly among the grass and weeds. Over all the limited surface, among the pine shrubs and flowering weeds, he searched to see if hiding-place for the nymph coul

d Caius. "Where? Anywhere into the heart of the ocean,

ght have been given him to enter the world of dreams, and go on in some existence which was a truer reality than the one in which he now was. In a deliberate way he thought that perhaps, if the tr

afternoons and evenings thus without everyone's knowledge. He had a feeling, too, born, as many calculations are, of pure surmise, that he would have seen the mermaid again that afternoon, when

eakfast, a time which he could dispose of as he would without comment. As he walked the beach in the beauty of the early day, he realiz

sat on the rock which seemed like a home to his restless spirit, so associated it was

een stirred up by her startled movement on seeing him. For a moment she was still, resting thus close, and he could see distinctly that around her white shoulders there was a coil of what seemed like glistening rounded scales. He cou

hing its monstrous bulk under the waves. His vision was broken by the sparkling splash which the maiden deliberately made with her hands, as if divining his curiosity and defying it. He felt

. He knew enough to know that he might, by the practice of exercises, have made his muscles and brain the expression of his will, instead of the inert mass of flesh that they now seemed to him to be. He might-yes, he might, if he had his years to live over ag

ss to rise or speak or smile; he remembered the mirth that

, and made her way swift and straight toward the rocky point. Caius ran, following, upon the shore, but after a minute he perceived that she could disappear round the point before, either by swimming or wadi

, lo! when he came there no creature was visible in the sunny sea beneath or on the shelving red bank which lay all plain to his view. Far and wide he scanned the ocean, and long he stood and watched. He walked

th, he tarried now to put some question to the owner, just as we look mechanically for a lost object in drawers or cupboards in which we feel sure it cannot be. Caius found Day in a small paddock be

ows on the fence of

without words what he wan

thout receiving any encouragement, Caius

thing odd in the sea

ort of

ueer thing swimming

I did

m that, more than anything else, Caius judged that his words were true; but, because he was

ng girl about this

ld now have been a girl, drowned, her sister and brother exiled, and Day bound over by legal authority to see to it that no defenceless person came in the way of the wife who ha

t knowing why he turned until he saw that the constraining force was the presence of Day's wife, who stood at the end of the barn, o

ck hair was fastened rather loosely about her head. Her high-boned cheeks were thinner than of old, and her face wore a more excited ex

back to me!" s

ho

allers wanted to tell you I liked that stone;

e, that he had merely toyed with it as a beautiful fancy was proved by the fact that no

quisite happiness. "She is grown a big girl; she has curls on h

ould no

at him with curi

s she was married

. She only grew frightened at his questions, and begged him in moving terms not to tell Day that she had spoken to him-not to tell the people in the village that her daughter had come back, or they wou

eturned. The beautiful face looking from out the waves had no doubt wrought happiness in her; and in him also it had wrought happiness, and that which was better. He ceased to wrestle with the difference that the adventure had made in his life, or to try to ignore i