e arm, but Jacques intervened.

"Pray let the gentleman speak, Dick!" he said. "It will ease his feelings
perhaps."

"No!" broke in Hilary breathlessly. "No, no! I won't listen! I tell you
I won't!" facing the big man almost fiercely. "Tell me yourself if you
like!"

He looked at her closely, still with that odd half-smile upon his face.

Then, before them all, he took her hand, and, bending, held it to his
lips.

"Thank you, Hilary!" he said very softly.

In the privacy of her own cabin Hilary removed her tatters and cooled her
tingling cheeks. She and her brother were engaged to dine at Dick's
bungalow that night, but an overwhelming shyness possessed her, and at
the last moment she persuaded Bertie to go alone. It was plain that
for some reason Bertie was hugely amused, and she thought it rather
heartless of him.

She dined alone on the house-boat with her face to the river. Her fright
had made her somewhat nervous, and she was inclined to start at every
sound. When the meal was over she went up to her favourite retreat on the
upper deck. A golden twilight still lingered in the air, and the river
was mysteriously calm. But the girl's heart was full of a heavy
restlessness. Each time she heard a punt-pole striking on the bed of the
river she raised her head to look.

He came at last--the man for whom her heart waited. He was punting
rapidly down-stream, and she could not see his face. Yet she knew him,
by the swing of his arms, the goodly strength of his muscles,--and by the
suffocating beating of her heart. She saw that one hand was bandaged, and
a passionate feeling that was almost rapture thrilled through and through
her at the sight. Then he shot beyond her vision, and she heard the punt
bump against the house-boat.

"It's a gentleman to see you, miss," said the Badger, thrusting a grey
and grinning visage up the stairs.

"Ask him to come up!" said Hilary, steadying her voice with an effort.

A moment later she rose to receive the man she loved. And her heart
suddenly ceased to beat.

"You!" she gasped, in a choked whisper.

He came straight forward. The last light of the day shone on his smooth
brown face, with its steady eyes and strong mouth.

"Yes," he said, and still through his quiet tones she seemed to hear a
faint echo of the subdued twang which dwellers in the Far West sometimes
acquire. "I, John Merrivale, late of California, beg to render to you,
Hilary St. Orme, in addition to my resp