fill the _Emily_ and the _Flibberty-Gibbet_
with recruits. Recruits are needed right now on Berande more than
anything else.

And please, please don't be angry with me. You said I shouldn't go
recruiting on the _Flibberty_, and I won't. I'll go on the _Emily_.

I bought two cows this afternoon. That trader at Nogi died of fever,
and I bought them from his partner, Sam Willis his name is, who agrees
to deliver them--most likely by the _Minerva_ next time she is down
that way. Berande has been long enough on tinned milk.

And Dr. Welshmere has agreed to get me some orange and lime trees from
the mission station at Ulava. He will deliver them the next trip of
the _Apostle_. If the Sydney steamer arrives before I get back, plant
the sweet corn she will bring between the young trees on the high bank
of the Balesuna. The current is eating in against that bank, and you
should do something to save it.

I have ordered some fig-trees and loquats, too, from Sydney. Dr.
Welshmere will bring some mango-seeds. They are big trees and require
plenty of room.

The _Martha_ is registered 110 tons. She is the biggest schooner in
the Solomons, and the best. I saw a little of her lines and guess the
rest. She will sail like a witch. If she hasn't filled with water,
her engine will be all right. The reason she went ashore was because
it was not working. The engineer had disconnected the feed-pipes to
clean out the rust. Poor business, unless at anchor or with plenty of
sea room.

Plant all the trees in the compound, even if you have to clean out the
palms later on.

And don't plant the sweet corn all at once. Let a few days elapse
between plantings.

JOAN LACKLAND.

He fingered the letter, lingering over it and scrutinizing the writing in
a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was his thought, as he
studied the boyish scrawl--clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the
less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her
cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very
clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded
lips, and the throat, neither fragile nor robust, but--but just right, he
concluded, an adequate and beautiful pillar for so shapely a burden.

He looked long at the name. Joan Lackland--just an assemblage of
letters, of commonplace letters, but an