They scrambled together up the rocks, and then struck a winding
sheep-path that led them over the shoulder of a heath-clad hill.

At first they walked in silence, the girl in front, going at a
great speed up the narrow track; and Estein watched the wind blow
her fair hair about her neck in a waving tangle, and he saw that
she was tall and slender. By-and-by, when they had crossed the
hill and reached a less broken tract of ground, he came up to her
side.

"How did you come to be down where you found me?" he asked.

"I was on the hill," she answered, "when I saw ships in the sound
rowing hard to escape the current, and then I saw that some had
been wrecked. Wreckage was floating by, and I espied, for my eyes
are good, a man clinging to a plank; and presently he drifted upon
a rock, and I thought that perhaps I might save a life. So I went
down to the shore--and you yourself know the rest."

"I know, indeed, that I have to thank you for my life, such as it
is. And I know further that every girl would not have been so
kind."

She smiled, and her smile was one of those that illuminate a face.

"Thank rather the tide, which so kindly brought you ashore, for I
had done little if you had been in the middle of the sound. But
you have not yet told me how you came to be wrecked."