eant to me. I came away from
Europe believing that heaven would open at my feet. I said that a good
man loved me, and I gave myself heart and soul to him. Just a silly
little girl I was, who never asked questions, and trusted--yes, trusted
all who said they loved her. And then the truth, and a weary woman to
hear it! From little things which I would not see, it came speaking to
me in greater things which I dare not pass by, until I knew--knew the
best and the worst of it! And all my castles came tumbling down, and
the picture was shut out, and I thought it was forever. The message I
spoke to the sea would never be answered, or would be answered when I
no longer lived to hear it spoken. Do you blame a woman's weakness? Was
I wrong to believe that you would forget the promise?"

"I never forgot it, Miss Ruth," was my answer, "never for a moment.
'May-be,' said I to Peter Bligh, 'she'll laugh when I go ashore;
may-be--but it is a thousand to one against that--she'll have need of
me.' When I saw Ken's Island looming off my port-bow, why I said, 'It's
just such a picture of a place as a rich man would pitch upon for an
island home. It's a garden land,' said I, 'a sunny haven in this good
Pacific sea.' Judge how far I was from the truth, Miss Ruth, how little
I knew of this prison-house that, God helping me, shall stand open to
the world before many days have come and gone."

She was silent for a spell, for her eyes were searching the distant
island, and she seemed to be scanning its fog-bound heights and misty
valleys as though to read that secret of the night of which I hoped no
man had told her.

"The ship that came ashore last night, Jasper?" she asked, of a sudden.
"What have they done to the ship?"

I put my hand upon her arm and led her forward to the sea's edge,
whence we could espy both the sword-fish reef and the ashes of her
bungalow at the island's heart. The day had broken by this time, quick
and beautiful as ever in the Pacific Ocean. Sunny waves rolled up to
our very feet. There were glittering caps of rock gleaming above the
island of death. Czerny's yacht lay, the picture of a ship, eastward in
the offing. The longboats, twelve of them, and each loaded with its
devil's crew, drifted round and round the master's ship; but never a
man that went aboard from them.

"The ship," said I, "is where many a good ship has gone before: a
thousand fathoms down by yonder cruel reef. As for those that sailed
her, they