Lynde 's brow darkened . She turned and walked away to the house without a word . On his way home that night Alan met Isabel King on the main shore road . She carried an armful of pine boughs and said she wanted the needles for a cushion . Yet the thought came into Alan 's mind that she was spying on him and , although he tried to dismiss it as unworthy , it continued to lurk there . For a week he avoided the shore , but there came a day when its inexplicable lure drew him to it again irresistibly . It was a warm , windy evening and the air was sweet and resinous , the lake misty and blue . There was no sign of life about Four Winds and the shore seemed as lonely and virgin as if human foot had never trodden it . The Captain 's yacht was gone from the little harbour where it was generally anchored and , though every flutter of wind in the scrub firs made Alan 's heart beat expectantly , he saw nothing of Lynde Oliver . He was on the point of turning homeward , with an unreasoning sense of disappointment , when one of Lynde 's dogs broke down through the hedge of spruces , barking loudly . Alan looked for Lynde to follow , but she did not , and he speedily saw that there was something unusual about the dog 's behaviour . The animal circled around him , still barking excitedly , then ran off for a short distance , stopped , barked again , and returned , repeating the manoeuvre . It was plain that he wanted Alan to follow him , and it occurred to the young minister that the dog 's mistress must be in danger of some kind . Instantly he set off after him ; and the dog , with a final sharp bark of satisfaction , sprang up the low bank into the spruces . Alan followed him across the peninsula and then along the further shore , which rapidly grew steep and high . Half a mile down the cliffs were rocky and precipitous , while the beach beneath them was heaped with huge boulders . Alan followed the dog along one of the narrow paths with which the barrens abounded until nearly a mile from Four Winds . Then the animal halted , ran to the edge of the cliff and barked . It was an ugly-looking place where a portion of the soil had evidently broken away recently , and Alan stepped cautiously out to the brink and looked down . He could not repress an exclamation of dismay and alarm .
A few feet below him Lynde XXXXX was lying on a mass of mossy soil which was apparently on the verge of slipping over a sloping shelf of rock , below which was a sheer drop of thirty feet to the cruel boulders below .
Alan Captain Oliver barrens day evening harbour manoeuvre spruces week