n thus. If I were you I would find work, and I would honourably
make my way back to fortune."

"But the Tresidders will not allow me," I replied, stung into shame by
her words, "they have always put obstacles in my path."

"Then I would go where the Tresidders could not harm me," she cried, and
then she went away, as though I were the merest commonplace stranger, as
indeed I was.

I mused afterward that she did not even tell me her name, although she
had no means of knowing that I had found it out, neither did she tell me
that she would keep the secret of my hiding-place from my enemies. And
more than all this, she bade me leave St. Eve, where I should be away
from her, although my longings grew stronger to stay by her side. All
this made me very weary of life, and I went back to the mouth of the
cave and sat watching the sea as it rose higher and higher around "The
Spanish Cavalier," and wondered with a weary heart what I should do.

When night came on Eli Fraddam brought me food, and sat by me while I
ate it, looking all the while up into my face with his strange wild
eyes.

"Jasper missuble," he grunted, presently.

"Yes, Eli," I said, "everything and everybody is against me."

"I knaw! I knaw!" cried Eli, as though a new thought had struck him,
"I'll 'elp 'ee, Jasper; I'll vind out!"

"Find out what, Eli?"

But he would not answer. He hugged himself as though he were vastly
pleased, and laughed, in his low guttural way, and after a time took his
departure.

When I was left alone, I tried to think of my plans for the future, for
Naomi's words kept ringing in my ears, "If I were you I would find work,
and I would honourably make my way back to fortune." I saw now that for
a year I had acted like a madman. Instead of meeting my reverses
bravely, I had acted like a coward. I had sunk in the estimation of
others as well as in my own. I had loafed around the lanes, and had made
friends with the idle and the dissolute. Even my plans for vengeance
were those of a savage. I, Jasper Pennington, could think of no other
way of punishing my enemies than by mastering them with sheer brute
force. Besides, all the time I had made no step toward winning back my
home, and thus obeying my father's wishes. I felt this, too; I had
deservedly lost the esteem of the people. I had become what the
Tresidders said I was. I saw myself a vagrant and a savage, and although
my fate had been hard, I deserved the punishment I was then