gallants full up of
fine phrases and eager for your service--."

"Well, Martin?"

"Instead of the which you have this island!"

"An earthly paradise!" says she.

"And myself!"

"A foolish being and gloomy!" says she. "One that loveth to be woeful
and having nought to grieve him for the moment must needs seek
somewhat! So will I to bed ere he find it!"

"Look now," quoth I, as she rose, "in losing the world you do lose
everything--."

"And you also, Martin."

"Nay," says I, "in losing the world of yesterday I may find more than
ever I possessed!"

"Meaning you are content, Martin?"

"Is anyone ever content in this world?"

"Well--I--might be!" says she slowly. "But you--I do fear you will
never know true content, it is not in you, I think."

And off she goes to bed leaving me very full of thought. Howbeit the
moon being very bright (though on the wane) I stayed there until I had
finished her hairpin, of the which I give here a cut, viz.:--

(Sketch of a hairpin.)

CHAPTER XXXII

TELLS HOW I FOUND A SECRET CAVE

Next morning I was up mighty early and away to the little valley, first
to view my pots and then to pick some flowers for her birthday,
remembering her great love for such toys. Coming to the ashes of the
fire, I must needs fall a-cursing most vilely like the ill fellow I
was, and to swearing many great and vain oaths (and it her birthday!).
For here were my pots (what the fire had left of them) all swollen and
bulged with the heat, warped and misshapen beyond imagining.

So I stood plucking my beard and cursing them severally and all
together, and fetched the nearest a kick that nigh broke my toe and set
the pot leaping and bounding a couple of yards, but all unbroken.
Going to it I took it up and found it not so much as scratched and hard
as any stone. This comforted me somewhat and made me to regret my ill
language, more especially having regard to this day, being as it were a
day apart. And now as I went on, crossing the stream at a place where
were stepping-stones, set there by other hands than mine, as I went, I
say, I must needs think what a surly, ill-mannered fellow I was,
contrasting the gross man I was become with the gentle, sweet-natured
lad I had been. "Well but" (thinks I, excusing myself) "the
plantations and a rowing-bench be a school where a man is apt to learn
nought but evil and brutality, my wrongs have made me what I am. But
again" (thinks I--blaming mysel