"Don't!" cried Myrtle, her clear voice ringing over the lap of the waves; "please don't!"
He swung around and turned his gaunt features upward to where the young girl leaned upon her crutches, with clasped hands and a look of distress upon her sweet face.
"Don't!" she repeated, pleadingly.
He passed his hand over his eyes with a very weary gesture and looked at Myrtle again—this time quite steadily. She was trembling in every limb and her cheeks were white with fear.
Slowly—very slowly—the man turned and began to climb the rocks; not directly upward to where the girls stood, but diagonally, so as to reach the walk some distance ahead of them. They did not move until he had gained the path and turned toward the hotel. Then they followed and kept him in sight until he reached the entrance to the court and disappeared within.
"I wonder," said Patsy, as they made their way to their rooms, "whether he really was thinking of plunging into the ocean; or whether that time at the Grand Canyon he had a notion of jumping into the chasm."
"If so," added Beth, "Myrtle has saved his life twice. But she can't be always near to watch the man, and if he has suicidal intentions, he'll make an end of himself, sooner or later, without a doubt."
"Perhaps," said Myrtle, hesitatingly, "I am quite wrong, and the strange man had no intention of doing himself an injury. But each time I obeyed an impulse that compelled me to cry out; and afterward I have been much ashamed of my forwardness."
They did not see the melancholy man at dinner; but afterward, in the spacious lobby, they discovered him sitting in a far corner reading a magazine. He seemed intent on this occupation and paid no attention to the life around him. The girls called Uncle John's attention to him, and Mr. Merrick at once recognized him as the same individual they had met at the Grand Canyon.
"But I am not especially pleased to encounter him again," he said with a slight frown; "for, if I remember aright, he acted very rudely to Myrtle and proved unsociable when I made overtures and spoke to him."