Caius clambered up the cliff and over the fence to the highroad. A man with a cartload of corn was coming past. Caius looked at him and his horse, and at the familiar stretch of road. It was a relief so to look. On a small green hillock by the roadside thistles grew thickly; they were in flower and seed at once, and in the sunshine the white down, purple flowers, and silver-green leaves glistened a little picture, perfect in itself, of graceful lines and exquisite colour, having for its background the hedge of stunted fir that bordered the other side of the road. Caius feasted his eyes for a minute and then turned homeward, walking for awhile beside the cart and talking to the carter, just to be sure that there was nothing wild or strange about himself to attract the man’s attention. The cart raised no dust in the red clay of the road; the monotonous creak of its wheels and the dull conversation of its owner were delightful to Caius because they were so real and commonplace.

Caius felt very guilty. He could not excuse himself to himself for the fact that he had not only seen so wild a vision but now felt the greatest reluctance to make known his strange adventure to anyone. He could not precisely determine why this reluctance was guilty on his part, but he had a feeling that, although a sensible man could not be much blamed for seeing a mermaid if he did see one, such a man would rouse the neighbourhood, and take no rest till the phenomenon was investigated; or, if that proved impossible, till the subject was at least thoroughly ventilated. The ideal man who acted thus would no doubt be jeered at, but, secure in his own integrity, he could easily support the jeers. Caius would willingly have changed places with this model hero, but he could not bring himself to act the part. Even the reason of this unwillingness he could not at once lay his hand upon, but he felt about his mind far it, and knew that it circled round and round the memory of the sea-maid’s face.

That fresh oval face, surrounded with wet curls, crowned with its fantastic wreath of glistening weed it was not alone because of its fresh girlish prettiness that he could not endure to make it the talk of the country, but because, strange as it seemed to him to admit it, the face was to him like the window of a lovely soul. It was true that she had laughed and played; it was true that she was, or pretended to be, half a fish; but, for all that, he would as soon have held up to derision his mother, he would as soon have derided all that he held to be most worthy in woman and all that he held to be beautiful and sacred in ideal, as have done despite to the face that looked at him out of the waves that afternoon. His memory held this face before him, held it lovingly, reverently, and his lips shut firmly over the tale of wonder he might have told.

At the gate of one of the fields a girl stood waiting for him. It was his cousin Mabel, and when he saw her he knew that she must have come to pay them a visit, and he knew too that she must have come because he was at home. He was not attached to his cousin, who was an ordinary young person, but hitherto he had always rather enjoyed her society, because he knew that it was her private ambition to marry him. He did not attribute affection to Mabel, only ambition; but that had pleased his vanity. To-day he felt exceedingly sorry that she had come.

Mabel held the gate shut so that he could not pass.

“Where have you been?” asked she, pretending sternness.

“Just along by the shore.” He noticed as he said it that Mabel’s frock had a dragged look about the waist, and that the seams were noticeable because of its tightness. He remembered that her frocks had this appearance frequently, and he wished they were not so ill-made.

“I shan’t let you in,” cried Mabel sportively, “till you tell me exactly what you’ve been doing for this age.”

“I have not been serving my age much,” he said, with some weariness in his tone.

“What?” said Mabel.

“You asked me what I had been doing for this age,” said he. It was miserably stupid to explain.

When Caius and Mabel had sauntered up through the warm fields to the house, his mother met them in the front parlour with a fresh cap on. Her cap, and her presence in that room, denoted that Mabel was company. She immediately began to make sly remarks concerning Mabel’s coming to them while Caius was at home, about her going to meet him, and their homeward walk together.

The mother was comparatively at ease about Mabel; she had little idea that Caius would ever make love to her, so she could enjoy her good-natured slyness to the full. What hurt Caius was that she did enjoy it, that it was just her natural way never to see two young people of opposite sex together without immediately thinking of the subject of marriage, and sooner or later betraying her thought. Heretofore he had been so accustomed to this cast of mind that, when it had tickled neither his sense of humour nor his vanity, he had been indifferent to it. To-night he knew it was vulgar; but he had no contempt for it, because it was his mother who was betraying vulgarity. He felt sorry that she should be like that that all the men and women with whom she was associated were like that. He felt sorry for Mabel, because she enjoyed it, and consequently more tenderhearted towards her than he had ever felt before.

He had not, however, a great many thoughts to give to this sorrow, for he was thinking continually of the bright apparition of the afternoon.

When he went to his room to get ready for tea he fell into a muse, looking over the fields and woods to the distant glimpse of blue water he could see from his window. When he came down to the evening meal, he found himself wondering foolishly upon what food the child lost in the sea had fed while she grew so rapidly to a woman’s stature. The present meal was such as fell to the daily lot of that household. In homely blue delft cups a dozen or more eggs were ranged beside high stacks of buttered toast, rich and yellow. The butter, the jugs of yellow cream, the huge platter heaped with wild raspberries as each of these met his eye he was wondering if the sea-maid ever ate such food, or if her diet was more delicate.

“Am I going mad?” he thought to himself. The suspicion was depressing.

Three hours after, Caius sough his father as the old man was making his nightly tour of the barns and stables. By way of easing his own sense of responsibility he had decided to tell his father what he had seen, and his telling was much like such confession of sins as many people make, soothing their consciences by an effort that does not adequately reveal the guilt to the listener.

Caius came up just as his father was locking the stable door.

“Look here, father; wait a minute. I have something to say. I saw a very curious thing down at the shore to-day, but I don’t want you to tell mother, or Mabel, or the men.”

The old man stood gravely expectant. The summer twilight just revealed the outline of his thin figure and ragged hair and beard.

“It was in the water swimming about, making darts here and there like a big trout. Its body was brown, and it looked as if it had horny balls round its neck; and its head, you know, was like a human being’s.”

“I never heard tell of a fish like that, Caius. Was it a porpoise?”

“Well, I suppose I know what a porpoise is like.”

“About how large was it?” said the elder man, abandoning the porpoise theory.

“I should think about five or six feet long.”

“As long as that? Did it look as if it could do any harm?”

“No; I should think it was harmless; but, father, I tell you its head looked like a person’s head.”

“Was it a shark with a man stuck in its throat?”

“N n no.” Not liking to deny this ingenious suggestion too promptly, he feigned to consider it. “It wasn’t a dead man’s head; it was like a live woman’s head.”

“I never heard of sharks coming near shore here, any way,” added the old man. “What distance was it off half a mile?”

“It came between me and the little island off which we lost baby Day. It lay half-way between the island and the shore.”

The old man was not one to waste words. He did not remark that in that case Caius must have seen the creature clearly, for it went without saying.

“Pity you hadn’t my gun,” he said.

Caius inwardly shuddered, but because he wished to confide as far as he might, he said outwardly: “I shouldn’t have liked to shoot at it; its face looked so awfully human, you know.”

“Yes,” assented the elder, who had a merciful heart “it’s wonderful what a look an animal has in its eyes sometimes.” He was slowly shuffling round to the next door with his keys. “Well, I’m sure, my lad, I don’t know what it could ha’ been, unless ’twas some sort of a porpoise.”

“We should be quite certain to know if there was any woman paying a visit hereabout, shouldn’t we? A woman couldn’t possibly swim across the bay.”

“Woman!” The old man turned upon him sternly. “I thought you said it was a fish.”

“I said she swam like a fish. She might have been a woman dressed in a fish-skin, perhaps; but there isn’t any woman here that could possibly be acting like that and old Morrison told me the same thing was about the shore the summer before he died.”

His father still looked at him sharply. “Well, the question is, whether the thing you saw was a woman or a fish, for you must have seen it pretty clear, and they aren’t alike, as far as I know.”

Caius receded from the glow of confidence. “It lay pretty much under the water, and wasn’t still long at a time.”

The old man looked relieved, and in his relief began to joke. “I was thinking you must have lost your wits, and thought you’d seen a mermaid,” he chuckled.

“I’d think it was a mermaid in a minute” boldly “if there were such things.”

Caius felt relieved when he had said this, but the old man had no very distinct idea in his mind attached to the mythical word, so he let go the thought easily.

“Was it a dog swimming?”

“No,” said Caius, “it wasn’t a dog.”

“Well, I give it up. Next time you see it, you’d better come and fetch the gun, and then you can take it to the musee up at your college, and have it stuffed and put in a case, with a ticket to say you presented it. That’s all the use strange fish are that I know of.”

When Caius reflected on this conversation, he knew that he had been a hypocrite.