they took him?--What
indeed? Her fingers played with the object, closed hard on it. Why
should she care if he paid the penalty; he, a self-confessed---

Something fell from the velvet covering in her hand and struck with a
musical sound on the hard, polished top. Amid a turmoil of thoughts, she
was vaguely aware of it gleaming there on the cold white marble, a small
disk--a gold coin. At first it seemed only to catch without interesting
her glance; then slowly she took it, as if asking herself how it came
there, on her handkerchief, which, she dimly remembered, had been lying
on the floor. Some one, of course, must have picked up the handkerchief;
but no one had been in the room since she had noticed it except--

Her gaze swung to the window; he, then, had left it. Why? What had she
to do with anything that had been his?

More closely she scrutinized it, the shining disk on her rosy palm; a
King George gold piece! Above the monarch's face and head with its
flowing locks, appeared a tiny hole, as if some one had once worn it;
beneath, just discernible, was the date, 1762. She continued to regard
it; then looked again at the bit of velvet, near-by. It had been wrapped
in that, carefully; for what reason? Like something more than what it
seemed--a mere gold piece!

"1762." Why, even as she gazed at the cloth, felt it, did the figures
seem to reiterate themselves in her brain? "1762." There could be
nothing especially significant about the date; yet even as she concluded
thus, by some introspective process she saw herself bending over,
studying those figures on another occasion. Herself--and yet--

She was looking straight before her now; suddenly she started and sprang
up. "A King George gold piece!" Her hair, unbound, fell around her,
below her waist; her eyes like sapphires, gazed out from a veritable
shimmer of gold. "Date--" She paused. "Why, this belonged to me once, as
a child, and I--"

The blue eyes seemed searching--searching; abruptly she found what she
sought. "I gave it to the convict on the _Lord Nelson_." She almost
whispered the words. "The brave, brave fellow who sacrificed his life
for mine." Her warm fingers closed softly on the coin; she seemed
wrapped in the picture thus recalled.

"Then how--" Her brows knitted, she swept the shining hair from her
face. "If he were drowned, how could it have been left here by--" Her
eyes were dark now with excitement. "Him? Him?" she repeated. "Unless,"
her bre