tide fall."

"About three, unless this yer wind piles it up on the Marsh afore then.
Why?"

"I was only wonderin' if the boat wus safe," said Maggie, rising.

"You'd better hoist yourself outside some quinine, instead o' talken
about those things," said Jim, who preferred to discharge his fraternal
responsibility by active medication. "You aren't fit to read tonight."

"Good night, Jim," she said suddenly, stopping before him.

"Good night, Mag." He kissed her with protecting and amiable
toleration, generously referring her hot hands and feverish lips to
that vague mystery of feminine complaint which man admits without
indorsing.

They separated. Jim, under the stimulus of the late supposed robbery,
ostentatiously fastening the doors and windows with assuring comments,
calculated to inspire confidence in his sister's startled heart. Then
he went to bed. He lay awake long enough to be pleasantly conscious
that the wind had increased to a gale, and to be lulled again to sleep
by the cosy security of the heavily timbered and tightly sealed
dwelling that seemed to ride the storm like the ship it resembled. The
gale swept through the piles beneath him and along the gallery as
through bared spars and over wave-washed decks. The whole structure,
attacked above, below, and on all sides by the fury of the wind, seemed
at times to be lifted in the air. Once or twice the creaking timbers
simulated the sound of opening doors and passing footsteps, and again
dilated as if the gale had forced a passage through. But Jim slept on
peacefully, and was at last only aroused by the brilliant sunshine
staring through his window from the clear wind-swept blue arch beyond.

Dressing himself lazily, he passed into the sitting-room and proceeded
to knock at his sister's door, as was his custom; he was amazed to find
it open and the room empty. Entering hurriedly, he saw that her bed
was undisturbed, as if it had not been occupied, and was the more
bewildered to see a note ostentatiously pinned upon the pillow,
addressed in pencil, in a large school-hand, "To Jim."

Opening it impatiently, he was startled to read as follows:--

"Don't be angry, Jim dear--but it was all my fault--and I didn't tell
you. I knew all about the deserter, and I gave him the clothes and
things that they say he stole. It was while you was out that night,
and he came and begged of me, and was mournful and hidjus to behold. I
thought I was helping