he astounding intelligence
that they had just heard. "Your love was more to me than all the gold
in the world. I had won you. I meant to keep you, but I refused to buy
you."

He turned to her father. His pent-up emotion mastered him, and he spoke
as one who could no longer restrain his feelings.

"I have had no chance to thank you for the words you uttered at the
moment we quitted the ship. Yet I will treasure them while life lasts.
You gave Iris to me when I was poor, disgraced, an outcast from my
family and my profession. And I know why you did this thing. It was
because you valued her happiness more than riches or reputation. I am
sorry now I did not explain matters earlier. It would have saved you
much needless suffering. But the sorrow has sped like an evil dream,
and you will perhaps not regret it, for your action today binds me to
you with hoops of steel. And you, too, uncle. You traveled thousands of
miles to help and comfort me in my anguish. Were I as bad as I was
painted, your kind old heart still pitied me; you were prepared to
pluck me from the depths of despair and degradation. Why should I hate
Lord Ventnor? What man could have served me as he did? He has given me
Iris. He gained for me at her father's hands a concession such as
mortal has seldom wrested from black-browed fate. He brought my uncle
to my side in the hour of my adversity. Hate him! I would have his
statue carved in marble, and set on high to tell all who passed how
good may spring out of evil--how God's wisdom can manifest itself by
putting even the creeping and crawling things of the earth to some
useful purpose."

"Dash it all, lad," vociferated the elder Anstruther, "what ails thee?
I never heard you talk like this before!"

The old gentleman's amazement was so comical that further tension was
out of the question.

Robert, in calmer mood, informed them of the manner in which he hit
upon the mine. The story sounded like wildest romance--this finding of
a volcanic dyke guarded by the bones of "J.S." and the poison-filled
quarry--but the production of the ore samples changed wonder into
certainty.

Next day a government metallurgist estimated the value of the contents
of the two oil-tins at about L500, yet the specimens brought from the
island were not by any means the richest available.

And now there is not much more to tell of Rainbow Island and its
castaways. On the day that Captain Robert Anstruther's name appeared in
the _Ga