give all? Miss Greta appeared to have abandoned herself to the inevitable. More pathetic than domineering, she had uttered. her preliminary protest, "The water looks rougher out there to-day," and then resigned herself to the cushions at the stern. Napier lounged at her feet. Nan, in the bow, seemed to forget not only Napier, but Miss Greta, after that fleeting glance and the comment intended for Julian: "So unselfish of her to come! I'm afraid she

is n't really enjoying it."

"I should think it more than probable," returned Julian in a too careless tone. But if Miss Greta heard, she gave no sign.

The Kelpie shook out her sails and ran lightly before a delicate breeze, with an eager girl at the prow, a languorous woman at the stern, youth and manhood on board, a cargo of fair hopes borne along under skies of summer to airs of extreme sweetness. It was the very light opera of seafaring and of life. No faintest hint of the weightier merchandise for which mankind takes risks; no reminder of the organ music in the waves or in those wild wind instruments of the orchestra of heaven or in the terror-breeding reverberation of great seas on the drum of a frail ship's hull.

Julian looked back at the receding coastline.

"How gloriously Glenfallen stands!" He quoted: "A great sea mark outstanding every flaw.'

Innocent as it was, the comment seemed not to please Miss Greta. She thought the castle was probably not so great a "'sea mark' as it looks to us."

Julian assured her that you could see Glenfallen tower "a long way beyond those cruisers."

"What cruisers?" All the eyes except Miss Greta's swept the horizon, and all found it featureless till Bobby picked out a couple of dun-gray shapes.

Nan looked at Julian with admiration. "My! what wonderful eyes you must have! I can't see a thing!"

"Pooh! Mr. Grant is n't a patch on Ernst Pforzheim," said Bobby.

"No, not even most sailors. Jim could n't do what I've seen Mr. Ernst do." His sailor brother was Bobby's beau ideal, so the tribute was high. "And those are n't cruisers. They 're battle-ships."

"What do you suppose we'd be doing with battle-ships in that-"

"We are n't. They ain't our battleships."

"Cruisers!" repeated Julian, teasing. "Battle-ships!" How did he know? They were either the very same ones or exactly like the ones he had seen when he was out fishing yesterday evening. Mr. Carl had been the first to see them. "Our friends have come out from Rosyth," he said. "Mr. Ernst gave only one glance, and then did like this": Bobby gave his head a short, emphatic shake. "Nicht Englisch!' Mr. Carl sat up. Französ isch?' he said, and then both together, 'Rüssisch!'"

After that, Bobby said, they looked at him.

"They seemed to think," he explained, naïvely to the party, "that I might take it for swank. They said anybody who had ever noticed ships at all, knew those differences."

"That is n't so," Napier interrupted. "I assure you, with us, yes," said Miss Greta, smiling a sickly smile. "The eye is trained. Oh, the commonest thing—” She would n't leave it; she went on, hardly able to speak, telling how in German schools a study of silhouettes was just part of the ordinary discipline of the eye. Then she closed her own and lay very still, but listening, Napier was sure.

"Don't they look exciting?"

Julian seemed to know Nan was n't meaning the ships.

"Yes," he said. "There's something about an island-what is it?"

"It must be because an island 's so safe," the girl answered with a touch of wistful

ness.

"Safe? Awfully jolly, any way."

"Safe. Nobody could ever come near without your knowing a long way off."

They went on celebrating islands. There was no such framework for romance. Robinson Crusoe's, Treasure Island, Iona, the isle of Calypso, the South Sea coral kingdoms, "Summer Isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea." Julian wound up with: "And ours."

Napier caught Julian's eye. "Why?" they both asked silently.

And now even the devoted Nan was ready with:

"Dearest Greta, why not?"

"Because it-it 's too dangerous, I tell you!" She had carried a handkerchief to her colorless lips. Over the handkerchief the eyes looked out to the Gull rocks with an expression not easy to define. But Napier felt as clearly as ever he 'd felt anything in his life: she will do something to prevent those two from wandering away together on Gull Island. What would she do? What could she do? He lay in the boat and speculated. The arguing and

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise;
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this
England."

Miss Greta's comment upon John of Gaunt's remarks, "We can't unpack luncheon in water as rough as this," lacked her usual nice sense of the appropriate. But it did not fail of its mark. Julian deflected Madge's course to the left of Gull Island.

"Oh, let's go a little nearer!" Madge implored.

"No, the channel is n't safe," came from the cushions in the stern. "Keep further to the left."

Julian began to tell about bird-nesting over there when he was a boy. In a hollow among the rocks he and his brothers had played a glorious game of robbers'

cave.

"Oh, my!" came the familiar note. "We simply must go and explore!"

"No!" said Miss Greta, decisively; and again, that there might be no mistake about it, "No!"

fell upon Julian and rent him when he said, hesitating, that Miss Greta might be right about the landing being a little difficult for girls.

"For girls, indeed!" Nan Ellis echoed in her penetrating voice. "Now you 've simply got to take us over. Must n't he, Madge?" And for once Madge made common cause with the interloper.

Miss Greta's conception of her responsibility for their safety produced a curious agitation in that lady. She dashed her handkerchief down from lips that were seen to be trembling and called out roughly:

"Madge! I forbid it!"

"Why-Miss Greta?" said the astonished girl, staring at her altered idol with wide eyes.

"I don't know what you 've been hearing about Gull Island," Julian said soothingly. "There's nothing the least dangerous, really. I only said for girls it might n't be so easy, and I 've been terrified into admitting there is n't much even in that." He looked at Nan Ellis. Those two laughed into each other's faces, ignoring all the world.

Greta von Schwarzenberg had gone from green to white. She sat up straight. "You must turn back," she said, her bosom heaving.

Whether Julian did not hear or would. not hear, Napier did not know. Nan Ellis had turned to look at the island. She