een. Tell her I'll come back to her. Bid her not forget
the great oath we took together this morning; she's as much my wife
as if we'd gone to church;--I'll come back and marry her afore
long.'

Philip said something inarticulately.

'Hurra!' cried Carter, 'and I'll be best man. Tell her, too that
I'll have an eye on her sweetheart, and keep him from running after
other girls.'

'Yo'll have yo'r hands full, then,' muttered Philip, his passion
boiling over at the thought of having been chosen out from among all
men to convey such a message as Kinraid's to Sylvia.

'Make an end of yo'r d--d yarns, and be off,' said the man who had
been hurt by Kinraid, and who had sate apart and silent till now.

Philip turned away; Kinraid raised himself and cried after him,--

'Hepburn, Hepburn! tell her---' what he added Philip could not hear,
for the words were lost before they reached him in the outward noise
of the regular splash of the oars and the rush of the wind down the
gully, with which mingled the closer sound that filled his ears of
his own hurrying blood surging up into his brain. He was conscious
that he had said something in reply to Kinraid's adjuration that he
would deliver his message to Sylvia, at the very time when Carter
had stung him into fresh anger by the allusion to the possibility of
the specksioneer's 'running after other girls,' for, for an instant,
Hepburn had been touched by the contrast of circumstances. Kinraid
an hour or two ago,--Kinraid a banished man; for in those days, an
impressed sailor might linger out years on some foreign station, far
from those he loved, who all this time remained ignorant of his
cruel fate.

But Hepburn began to wonder what he himself had said--how much of a
promise he had made to deliver those last passionate words of
Kinraid's. He could not recollect how much, how little he had said;
he knew he had spoken hoarsely and low almost at the same time as
Carter had uttered his loud joke. But he doubted if Kinraid had
caught his words.

And then the dread Inner Creature, who lurks in each of our hearts,
arose and said, 'It is as well: a promise given is a fetter to the
giver. But a promise is not given when it has not been received.'

At a sudden impulse, he turned again towards the shore when he had
crossed the bridge, and almost ran towards the verge of the land.
Then he threw himself down on the soft fine turf that grew on the
margin of the cliffs overhanging the sea