p your
mystery if you will; but set yourself right on one point--you will--for
my sake you will.'

Christian looked at the old man, bent, shrunken, halt, and smiled out of
bland confidence.

'The burden shall not light on you, Dad. And has no one told you what I
have done single-handed? just for display of her excellent parts, worked
the boat and the nets too, and hauled abreast of any. Not a boat that
watched but cheered the pair of us.'

'I heard, I heard,' said Giles ungraciously. 'A show off for an hour or
two. What's that to work week in, week out?'

Christian was looking aside. He saw the head of Lois leaning out,
attentive to all.

He took a heavy heart out of her sight. 'She does not trust me,' he said
of her face.

CHAPTER V

Scattered far and wide over the fishing-grounds lay the coral fleet.
There, a solitary, went Christian to a far station. Yet not as an
outcast. He had tried his strength against his world, and the victory
inclined to him. For a week he had been baited hard and cut off, as Giles
had forewarned; and through it all he had kept his own counsel, and his
temper, and his place with the fleet, defiant, confident, independent.
And luck attended his nets. Therefore another week saw unsubstantial
suspicion waning; scoffs had their day and died of inanition; and the
boy's high-hearted flouting of a hard imposition annulled its rigour. Not
a few now would be fain to take their chance with him. For Giles's
consolation he had not rejected all advances, yet as often as not he
still went alone, declining another hand. Thrift and honest glorying in
his strength so inclined him, though a perverse parade may not be
disclaimed. Yet none of these accounted for a distinct gladness for
solitude that grew unawares.

What colour were her eyes? The moonlight had withheld certainty, and he
had not given his mind to it then. Dark, he knew, to match her hair: rare
eyes, like pansies dewy in shade?

Down swung with their swags of netting the leaded cross-beams from his
hands into the shadowed water, and its dark, lucid green was faced with
eddies. Down, deeper than the fathoming of his eyes, plunged his spirit,
and walked the sea's mysteries in vain imaginings. Mechanically he set
the boat crawling while he handled the guys. A trail of weed swam dim
below; it entangled. His wits said weed, nothing but weed, but his pulse
leapt. Day after day, not to be schooled, it had quickened so to
half-expectanc