But there was more to be done; he aroused himself presently and wandered around to the engine-room, where the Major was prowling about, fussing and fuming and bullying his engineer.

"Major," said Darrow, guilelessly, "do you suppose Haltren's appearance has upset his wife?"

and fixed them on the inlet and the strip of Atlantic beyond.

"If the Dione isn't in by three o'clock, Haltren will have his chance," he murmured.

He was still inspecting the ocean and his watch alternately when Mrs. Haltren came on deck.

"Did you send me the canoe?" she asked, with cool unconcern.

66

"It's for anybody," he said, morosely. Somebody ought to take a snap shot of the scene of our disaster. If you don't want the canoe, I'll take it."

"No, sir! Why the devil should you assume that liberty?" demanded Major Brent. "Allow me, sir; allow me! Mrs. Haltren is my guest!"

The Major's long - latent jealousy of Darrow was now fully ablaze; purple, pop-eyed, and puffing, he toddled down the companion on his errand of consolation.

Darrow watched him go. "That settles him!" he said. Then he called the engineer over and bade him rig up and launch the portable canoe.

"Put one paddle in it, Johnson, and say to Mrs. Haltren that she had better paddle north, because, a mile above, there is a camp belonging to a man whom Major Brent and I do not wish to have her meet."

The grimy engineer hauled out the packet which, when put together, was warranted to become a full-fledged canoe. "Lord! how she'll hate us all, even poor Johnson," murmured Darrow. "I don't know much about Kathleen Haltren, but if she doesn't paddle south I'll eat cotton waste with oil dressing for dinner!"

At that moment the Major reappeared, toddling excitedly toward the stern.

"What on earth is the trouble?" asked Darrow. "Is there a pizen sarpint aboard?"

"Trouble!" stammered the Major. "Who said there was any trouble? Don't be an ass, sir! Don't even look like an ass, sir! Damnation!"

And he trotted furiously into the engine-room.

Darrow climbed to the wheel-house once more, fished out a pair of binoculars,

He was also rude enough to turn his back. She hesitated, looked up the lagoon and down the lagoon. She could only see half a mile south, because Flyover Point blocked the view.

"If Mrs. Castle is nervous you will be near the cabin?" she asked, coldly. "I'll be here," he said.

"And you may say to Major Brent," she added, "that he need not send me further orders by his engineer, and that I shall paddle wherever caprice invites me."

A few moments later a portable canoe glided out from under the stern of the launch. In it, lazily wielding the polished paddle, sat young Mrs. Haltren, bareheaded, barearmed, singing as sweetly as the little cardinal, who paused in sheer surprise at the loveliness of song and singer. Like a homing pigeon the canoe circled to take its bearings once, then glided away due south.

Blue was the sky and water; her eyes were bluer; white as the sands her bare arms glimmered. Was it a sunbeam caught entangled in her burnished hair, or a stray strand, that burned far on the water.

Darrow dropped his eyes; and when again he looked, the canoe had vanished behind the rushes of Flyover Point, and there was nothing moving on the water far as the eye could see.

About three o'clock that afternoon, the pigeon-toed Seminole Indian who followed Haltren as a silent, dangerous dog follows its master, laid down the heavy

pink cedar log which he had brought to the fire, and stood perfectly silent, nose up, slitted eyes almost closed.

Haltren's glance was a question. "Paddl'um boat," said the Indian, sullenly.

"Perfectly-and thank you. I hope you are well, Jack."

"Thank you, Kathleen."

She picked up a chip of rose-colored cedar and sniffed it, daintily.

"Like a lead-pencil, isn't it? Put that

"Hunh!" grunted the Seminole. "Paddl'um damn slow. Bime-by you hear." And byme-by Haltren heard. "Somebody is landing," he said.

The Indian folded his arms and stood bolt upright for a moment; then, “ Hunh!” he muttered, disgusted. "Heap squaw. Tiger will go."

Haltren did not hear him; up the palmetto-choked trail from the landing strolled a girl, paddle poised over one shoulder, bright hair blowing. He rose to his feet; she saw him standing in the haze of the fire and made him a pretty gesture of recognition.

"I thought I'd call to pay my respects," she said. "How do you do? May I sit on this soap-box?"

Smiling, she laid the paddle on the ground and held out one hand as he stepped forward.

They shook hands very civilly.

"That was a brave thing you did," she said. "Mes compliments, monsieur."

And that was all said about the wreck.

"It's not unlike an Adirondack camp," she suggested, looking around at the open-faced, palm-thatched shanty with its usual hangings of blankets and wet clothing, and its smoky tin-pan bric-àbrac.

Her blue eyes swept all in rapid review, the guns leaning against the tree; the bunch of dead bluebill ducks hanging beyond; the improvised table and bench outside; the enormous mottled rattlesnake skin tacked lengthways on a live-oak.

"Are there many of those about?" she inquired.

"Very few "-he waited to control the voice which did not sound much like his own-" very few rattlers yet. They come out later."

"That's amiable of them," she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. There was a pause.

"I hope you are well," he ventured.

He lifted the great log and laid it across the coals.

Suppose we lunch?" she proposed, looking straight at the simmering coffeepot.

"Would you really care to?" Then he raised his voice: "Tiger! Tiger! Where the dickens are you?" But Tiger, half a mile away, squatted sulkily on the lagoon's edge, fishing, and muttering to himself that there were too many white people in the forest for him.

"He won't come," said Haltren. "You know the Seminoles hate the whites, and consider themselves still unconquered. There is scarcely an instance on record of a Seminole attaching himself to one of us."

"But your tame Tiger appears to follow you."

"He's an exception."

"Perhaps you are an exception, too."

He looked up with a haggard smile, then bent over the fire and poked the ashes with a pointed palmetto stem. There were half a dozen sweet potatoes there, and a baked duck and an ash-cake.

"Goodness!" she said, "if you knew how hungry I am you wouldn't be so deliberate. Where are the cups and spoons? Which is Tiger's? Well, you may use his."

The log table was set and the duck ready before Haltren could hunt up the jug of mineral water which Tiger had buried somewhere to keep cool.

When he came back with it from the shore he found her sitting at table with an exaggerated air of patience.

They both laughed a little; he took his seat opposite; she poured the coffee, and he dismembered the duck.

"You ought to be ashamed of that duck," she said. "The law is on now." "I know it," he replied, "but necessity knows no law. I'm up here looking for wild orange stock, and I live

on what I can get. Even the sacred unbranded razorback is fish for our net—

with a fair chance of a shooting scrape between us and a prowling cracker. If you will stay to dinner you may have roast wild boar.

"That alone is almost worth staying for, isn't it?" she asked, innocently.

cleared circle, she picked up her paddle. He followed her, and she looked around gayly, swinging the paddle to her shoulder.

"You said you were thinking of today," he stammered. "It-it is our anni

She raised her eyebrows. "I am astonished that you remembered. . I think that I ought to go. The Dione will be in before long-”

"We can hear her whistle when she steams in," he said.

"Are you actually inviting me to stay?" she laughed, seating herself on the cracker-box once more.

They became very grave as he sat down on the ground at her feet, and, a silence threatening, she hastily filled it with a description of the yacht and

Again the huge shadow swept between them; she shrank back with a little gesture of repugnance. Perhaps she was thinking of her nearness to death in the inlet.

"Yes; they run away from you."

"And moccasin snakes?"

"Some. They don't trouble a man

who keeps his eyes open."

"It has buried itself," she said, under her breath.

"To-morrow is Easter," he went on, slowly. "Can there be resurrection for dead days as there is for Easter flowers?

dawn on a world of blossoms. May I

"Anything else?"

"Sunshine all the year round. I have a house covered with scented things and buried in orange-trees. It is very beautiful. A little lonely at times-one can't have Fifth Avenue and pick one's own grape-fruit from the veranda too."

A silence fell between them; through the late afternoon stillness they heard the splash! splash! of leaping mullet in the lagoon. Suddenly a crimson-throated humming-bird whirred past, hung vibrating before a flowering creeper, then darted away.

"Spring is drifting northward," he said. "To-morrow will be Easter dayPasque Florida."

She rose, saying carelessly, "I was not thinking of to-morrow; I was thinking of to-day," and walking across the

"It is I who should speak," she said. "I meant to. It is this: forgive me for all. I am sorry."

"I have nothing to forgive," he said. "I was a-a failure. I-I do not understand women."

"Nor I men. They are not what I understand. I don't mean the mob I've been bred to dance with I understand them. But a real man-" she laughed, drearily,-"I expected a god for a husband."

"I am sorry," he said; "I am horribly sorry. I have learned many things in four years. Kathleen, I-I don't know what to do."

"There is nothing to do, is there?"
"Your freedom-"

She looked him full in the eyes. "Do you desire it?"

A faint sound fell upon the stillness of the forest; they listened; it came again from the distant sea.

"I think it is the yacht," she said.

They rose together; he took her paddle, and they walked down the jungle path to the landing. Her canoe and his spare boat lay there, floating close together.

"It will be an hour before a boat from the yacht reaches the wrecked launch," he said. "Will you wait in my boat?"

She bent her head and laid her hand in his, stepping lightly into the bow.

"Cast off and row me a little way," she said, leaning back in the stern. "Isn't this lagoon wonderful? See the color in water and sky. How green the forest is, green as a young woodland in April. And the reeds are green and gold, and the west is all gold. Look at that great white bird-with wings like an angel's! What is that heavenly odor from the forest? Oh," she sighed, elbows on knees, "this is too delicious to be real."

A moment later she began, irrelevantly: "Ethics! Ethics! who can teach them? One must know, and heed no teaching. All preconceived ideas may be wrong; I am quite sure I was wrongsometimes."

And again irrelevantly, "I was horribly intolerant once."

"Once, you asked me a question," he said. "We separated because I refused to answer you."

She closed her eyes and the color flooded her face.

"I shall never ask it again," she said. But he went on: "I refused to reply. I was an ass: I had theories, too. They're gone, quite gone. I will answer you now, if you wish."

"Kathleen."

She made no movement.

Far away a dull shock set the air vibrating. The Dione was saluting her castaways. The swift Southern night, robed in rose and violet, already veiled the forest; the darkling water deepened into purple. "Jack."

He rose and crept forward to the stern where she was sitting. Her hands hung idly; her head was bent.

Into the purple dusk they drifted, he at her feet, close against her knees. Once she laid her hands on his shoulders, peering at him with wet eyes.

And, with his lips pressed to her imprisoned hands, she slipped down into the boat beside him, crouching there, her face against his.

So, under the Southern stars, they drifted home together. The Dione fired guns and sent up rockets, which they neither heard nor saw; Major Brent toddled about the deck and his guests talked scandal; but what did they care!

Darrow, standing alone on the wrecked launch, stared at the stars and waited for the search-boat to return.

It was dawn when the truth broke upon Major Brent. It broke so suddenly that he fairly yelped as the Dione poked her white beak seaward.

It was dawn, too, when a pigeon-toed Seminole Indian stood upon the veranda of a house which was covered with blossoms of Pasque Florida.

Silently he stood, inspecting the closed door; then warily stooped and picked up something lying on the veranda at his feet. It was a gold comb.

"Heap squaw," he said, deliberately. "Tiger will go."

But he never did.