fore answering, she sat down on the grass, clasping her hands over
her knees. I squatted a short distance from her.

"Only Englishmen go swimming hereabouts in the morning."

"Do you often stumble across stray, swimming Englishmen?" I asked in
banter.

"No!--but three summers ago there were some English people staying in
that house at the wharf that's now closed up:--the one next Horsfal's,
and they were in the water so much, they hardly gave the fish a chance.
It was the worst year we ever had for fishing."

I laughed, and she looked up in surprise.

"Then we had an English surveyor staying with us for a month last year.
He was crazy for the water. He went in for half an hour every morning
and before his breakfast, too. You don't find the loggers or any of
the settlers doing silly stunts like that. No, siree.

"Guess you're a surveyor?"

"No!"

"Or maybe a gentleman up for shooting and fishing? Can't be though,
for there ain't any launches in the Bay. Yes, you are, too, for I saw
a launch in yesterday."

"I hope I am always a gentleman," I said, "but I am not the kind of
gentleman you mean. I have no launch and no money but what I can earn.
I am the new man who is to look after Mr. Horsfal's Golden Crescent
property. I shall be more or less of a common country storekeeper
after to-day."

"Heard about that store from old Jake. Granddad over home was talking
about it, too. It'll be convenient for the Camps and a fine thing for
the settlers up here."

She jumped up. "Well,--I guess I got to beat it, Mister----"

"George Bremner," I put in.

"My name's Rita;--Rita Clark. I stay over at the ranch there, the one
with the red-roofed houses. This island's named Rita, too."

"After you?"

"Ya!--guess so!"

She did not venture any more.

"Been here long?" I asked.

"Long's I can remember," she answered.

"Like it?"

"I love it. It's all I got. Never been away from it more'n three
times in my life."

There was something akin to longing in her voice.

"I love it all the same,--all but that over there."

As she spoke, she shivered and pointed away out to the great
perpendicular rock, with its jagged, devilish, shark-like teeth, which
rose sheer out of the water and stood black, forbidding and snarling,
even in the sunshine, to the right, at the entrance to the Bay, a
quarter of a mile or so from the far horn of Golden Crescent.

"You don't like rocks?"

"Some rocks," she whispered,