t would be hard for you to have to spend the
little that Liardet left you, I have made arrangements for you to draw
a few pounds whenever you need it from the agents. And as long as ever I
have a pound in the world, Dave Liardet's wife----"

"Wife!" and the blue eyes flashed angrily. "He is dead and I am free.
Why do you always talk of him? I hate the name. I hated him--a coarse,
money-loving----"

"Stop!"

Russell stepped forward. "Good-bye, Mrs. Liardet. I hold to what I have
said. But the man that you call coarse and money-loving died in trying
to make it for you. And he was a good, honest man, and I can't stay here
and hear his memory abused by the woman he loved better than life." And
then he turned to go, but stopped, and, with a scarlet face, said, "Of
course you're a lady and wouldn't do anything not right and straight, so
I know that if you intend to marry again you'll send me word; but if you
don't, why, of course, I'll be proud and glad to stand by you in money
matters. I'm sure poor Dave would have done the same for my wife if I
had got that knife into me instead of him."

Nell Liardet, sitting with clenched hands and set teeth, said, in a
hoarse voice, "Your wife! Are you married?"

"Well--er--yes, oh, yes. I have a--er--native wife at the Anchorites.
Poor old Dave stood godfather to one of my little girls. God knows how
anxious I am to get back to her."

"_Good_ bye, Mr. Russell!"

KENNEDY THE BOATSTEERER

Steering north-west from Samoa for six or seven hundred miles you will
sight the Ellice Group--low-lying, palm-clad coral atolls fringed on the
lee with shimmering sandy beaches. On the weather-side, exposed to the
long sweep of the ocean-rollers, there are but short, black-looking
reefs backed by irregular piles of loose, flat, sea-worn coral, thrown
up and accumulating till its surface is brushed by the pendant leaves of
the cocoanuts, only to be washed and swirled back seawards when the wind
comes from the westward and sends a fierce sweeping current along the
white beaches and black coral rocks alike.

*****

Twenty-three years ago these islands were almost unknown to any one save
a few wandering traders and the ubiquitous New Bedford whaler. But now,
long ere you can see from the ship's deck the snowy tumble of the surf
on the reef, a huge white mass, grim, square, and ugly, will meet your
eye--whitewashed walls of a distressful ghastliness accentuated by doors
and windows of th