so yesterday. It became
so only since he had been vouchsafed this revelation of her true nature.
"Bad cess to it now, it serves me right. It seems I know nothing at all
of human nature. But how the devil was I to guess that a family that can
breed a devil like Colonel Bishop should also breed a saint like this?"

CHAPTER VI. PLANS OF ESCAPE

After that Arabella Bishop went daily to the shed on the wharf with
gifts of fruit, and later of money and of wearing apparel for the
Spanish prisoners. But she contrived so to time her visits that Peter
Blood never again met her there. Also his own visits were growing
shorter in a measure as his patients healed. That they all throve and
returned to health under his care, whilst fully one third of the wounded
in the care of Whacker and Bronson--the two other surgeons--died
of their wounds, served to increase the reputation in which this
rebel-convict stood in Bridgetown. It may have been no more than the
fortune of war. But the townsfolk did not choose so to regard it. It
led to a further dwindling of the practices of his free colleagues and a
further increase of his own labours and his owner's profit. Whacker
and Bronson laid their heads together to devise a scheme by which this
intolerable state of things should be brought to an end. But that is to
anticipate.

One day, whether by accident or design, Peter Blood came striding down
the wharf a full half-hour earlier than usual, and so met Miss Bishop
just issuing from the shed. He doffed his hat and stood aside to give
her passage. She took it, chin in the air, and eyes which disdained to
look anywhere where the sight of him was possible.

"Miss Arabella," said he, on a coaxing, pleading note.

She grew conscious of his presence, and looked him over with an air that
was faintly, mockingly searching.

"La!" said she. "It's the delicate-minded gentleman!"

Peter groaned. "Am I so hopelessly beyond forgiveness? I ask it very
humbly."

"What condescension!"

"It is cruel to mock me," said he, and adopted mock-humility. "After
all, I am but a slave. And you might be ill one of these days."

"What, then?"

"It would be humiliating to send for me if you treat me like an enemy."

"You are not the only doctor in Bridgetown."

"But I am the least dangerous."

She grew suddenly suspicious of him, aware that he was permitting
himself to rally her, and in a measure she had already yielded to it.
She stiffened, and looked