hearts. And yet, says reason, if it so
befall that you yourselves may go ashore to yonder island, what logic
shall keep Czerny's men from the same good anchorage? They are as
twenty to one against you. If there are houses there, and stores for
the sun-time, who will shut them to this horde of desperadoes? Aye, the
head reels to think of it; the hours pass slowly; to-morrow we shall
know.

Now, I have thought of all this, and yet there are other things in my
mind, and they jostle one with the other, the sweet and the bitter, the
good and the bad, until it seems to me that I no longer get at the
heart of it, but am as a man drifting without a chart, set free on some
unknown sea whose very channels I may not fathom. Three hours ago when
I came ashore and lifted the dead man out, and sent the sleeping girl
to shelter, Ruth Bellenden's hand was the first to touch my own, her
word the first my ear would catch. So clear it was, such music to a man
to hear that girlish voice asking of his welfare as a thing most dear
to her, that all the night vanished at the words, and Ken's Island was
lost to my sight, and only the memory of the olden time and of my
life's great hope remained to me.

"Jasper!" she said, "it was not you--oh, Jasper, it was not you, then!"

I stepped from the boat, and, taking her hand in mine, I drew her a
little nearer to me; then, fearful of myself, I let go her hand again
and told her the simple truth.

"Miss Ruth," said I, "it is yon poor fellow. I will not say 'Thank
God!' for what right have I to serve you before him? He did his duty;
help me to do mine."

She turned away and gazed out over the sea to the yacht still
thundering its cannon and ploughing with its wasted shot the
unoffending sea. Deep thoughts were in her mind, I make sure, a torture
of doubt, and hope, and trepidation. And I--I watched her as though all
my will was in her keeping, and there, on the lonely rock, was the
heart of the world I would have lived and died in.

"You cannot forbid me to be glad, Jasper," she said, presently; "you
have given me the right. I saw you on the shore. Oh! my heart went with
you, and I think that I counted the minutes, and I said, 'He will never
come; he is sleeping.' And then I said, 'It is Jasper's voice.' I saw
you stand up in the boat and afterwards there were the shadows. Jasper,
there cannot be shadows always; the sun must shine sometimes."

She held my hand again and touched it with her chee