that I
promised to go tonight. Act quietly; say that you have been upset, but
that you will give him an answer tomorrow. Then at eight o'clock--it
will be dark early tonight--walk out to the wharf. That is all. But it
must be done without any hesitation; you must be even cheerful, kinder
to him."

He was thinking: She must be out of the way when I meet Nicholas. She
must not be subjected to the ordeal that will release her from the
dread fast crushing her spirit.

She swayed, and he caught her, held her upright, circled in his steady
arms.

"Don't let him hurt us," she gasped. "Oh, don't!"

"Not now," he reassured her. "Nicholas is finished. But you must help
by doing exactly as I have told you. You'd better go on. It won't be
long, hardly three hours, until freedom."

She laid her cold cheek against his face, while her arms crept round
his neck. She said nothing; and he held her to him with a sudden throb
of feeling. They stood for a moment in the deepening gloom, bound in a
straining embrace, while the rats gnawed in the sagging walls of the
store and the storm thrashed without. She reluctantly descended the
stair, crossed the broken floor and disappeared through the door.

A sudden unwillingness to have her return alone to the sobbing menace
of Iscah Nicholas, the impotent wraith that had been Lichfield Stope,
carried him in an impetuous stride to the stair. But there he halted.
The plan he had made held, in its simplicity, a larger measure of
safety than any immediate, unconsidered course.

John Woolfolk waited until she had had time to enter the orange-grove;
then he followed, turning toward the beach.

He found Halvard already at the sand's edge, waiting uneasily with the
tender, and they crossed the broken water to where the _Gar's_ cabin
flung out a remote, peaceful light.

X

The sailor immediately set about his familiar, homely tasks, while
Woolfolk made a minute inspection of the ketch's rigging. He descended
to supper with an expression of abstraction, and ate mechanically
whatever was placed before him. Afterward he rolled a cigarette, which
he neglected to light, and sat motionless, chin on breast, in the warm
stillness.

Halvard cleared the table and John Woolfolk roused himself. He turned
to the shelf that ran above the berths and secured a small, locked tin
box. For an hour or more he was engaged alternately writing and
carefully reading various papers sealed with vermilion wafer