"It is very nice of you," she said, with her slight foreign accent, "to come and fetch me. Should I have been drowned?"
"No!" he answered. "As a matter of fact, the spot where you were standing is not often altogether submerged. You might have been a prisoner for a few hours. Perhaps as the tide is going to be high, your feet would have been wet. But there was no danger."
She settled down as comfortably as possible in the awkward seat.
"After all, then," she said, "this is not a real adventure. Where are you going to take me to?"
"I can only take you," he answered, "to the village. I suppose you came from the Hall?"
"Yes!" she answered. "I walked straight across from the gate. I never thought about the tide coming up here."
"You will have to walk back by the road," he answered. "It is a good deal further round, but there is no other way."
She hung her hand over the side, rejoicing in the touch of the cool soft water.
"That," she answered, "does not matter at all. It is very early still, and I do not fancy that any one will be up yet for several hours."
He made no further attempt at conversation, devoting himself entirely to the task of steering and propelling his clumsy craft along the narrow way. She found herself watching him with some curiosity. It had never occurred to her to doubt at first but that he was some fisherman from the village, for he wore a rough jersey and a pair of trousers tucked into sea-boots. His face was bronzed, and his hands were large and brown. Nevertheless she saw that his features were good, and his voice, though he spoke the dialect of the country, had about it some quality which she was not slow to recognize.