re silk. She found herself answering him. And presently--most
singular thing of all--he had properly ensconced himself by the tall
astral lamp like one of the family circle, balancing a Testament on his
knee and reading his verse in turn with surprising facility....

Captain Hull Gregson was one of those men apparently preserved in lard,
whose shiny, tanned skin seems as impervious as Spanish leather alike to
age and to rude usage. But if his years were indeterminate, his eyes
were as old as blue pebbles. By those eyes, as by his slow, forceful
speech and rare gesture, as by a certain ruthless jut of jaw, was
revealed the exploiter, the conquering white that has taken the South
Pacific for an ordained possession.

He had led a varied and more or less picturesque career up and down the
warm seas. He had been a copra buyer through black Melanesia in the open
days; had owned his ships and sailed them after labor in the Archipelago
with a price on his head and his life in his hand. And now, rich in
phosphate shares and plantation partnerships, a sort of comfortable
island squire, he had retired to peaceful Wailoa at last as a quiet
corner where business was play and the hot roll dropped on time from the
breadfruit-tree. So much was said of him, and it was not considered
the part either of wisdom or of island etiquette to say much more--nor
was much else required to set him in his place. Certainly he might have
seemed somewhat out of it now. The type does not pervade the parlors of
the missionaries as a rule.

But Captain Gregson turned it off very well. Once he had recovered his
breath, and a purplish haze had cleared from his face, he comported
himself easily, even impressively, neither belittling nor forcing the
social event, the while that Pastor Spener beamed encouragement and
smoothed a complacent brow....

"It's like I told you to-day, Pastor. The notion came to me like
that--I've been a bad neighbor. There's so few of us marooned here,
like. I said to myself--where's the use of being strangers, hey? Why not
get neighborly with those good folks and help along that good work of
faith and righteousness. Why not, hey--?"

He spoke with an effect of heartiness that delighted the Reverend
Spener, and that fell on the ear of the Reverend Spener's daughter as
hollow as a drum.

"Why not, indeed?" echoed the pastor.

"So many places you find a kind of feud betwixt the commercial people
and the mission people," continu