rs in his voice for very
weakness. And, hearing him, it was as though something stirred within
Katherine which had long been bound by bitterness of heavy frost.

Vanstone shook his head.--"Very sorry, Sir Richard," he replied.
"Daren't let you off. I've got my orders, you see."

The bold and kindly eyes had a certain magnetic efficacy of compulsion
in them. The sick man drank, swallowed with difficulty, yet drank
again. Then he lay back, for a while, his eyes closed, resting. And
Katherine stood at the head of the bed, out of sight, waiting till her
time should come. She folded her hands high upon her bosom. Her thought
remained inarticulate, yet she began to understand that which she had
striven so sternly to uproot, that which she had supposed she had
extirpated, still remained with her. Once more, with a terror of joyful
amazement, she began to scale the height and sound the depth of human
love.

Presently the voice--whether that of husband or of son she did not stay
to discriminate--it gripped her very vitals--reached her from the bed.
She fancied it rang a little stronger.

"It is contemptibly futile, and therefore conspicuously in keeping with
the rest, to have taken all this trouble about dying only, in the end,
to sneak back."

"Oh! well, sir, after all you're not so very far on the return voyage
yet!" Vanstone put in consolingly.

Richard opened his eyes. Katherine's vision was blurred. She could not
see very clearly, but she fancied he smiled.

"Yes, with luck, I may still give you all the slip," he said.

"Now, a little more, sir, please. Yes, you can if you try."

"But I tell you I don't care about this business of sneaking back. I
don't want to live."

"Very likely not. But I'm very much mistaken if you want to die, like a
cat in a cupboard, here ashore. Mend enough to get away on board the
yacht to sea. There'll be time enough then to argue the question out,
sir. Half a mile of blue water under your feet sends up the value of
life most considerably."

As he spoke the sailor looked at Katherine Calmady. His glance enjoined
caution, yet conveyed encouragement.

"Here, take down the rest of it, Sir Richard," he said persuasively.
"Then I swear I won't plague you any more for a good hour."

Again he raised the sick man dexterously, and as he did so Katherine
observed that a purple scar, as of a but newly healed wound, ran right
across Dickie's cheek from below the left eye to the turn of the lo