r I
am yours to my uttermost note of life.'"

"He knew--he knew!" Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and
drawing her to him. "If I could write, that's what I should have said to
you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till
you made me over. I was a bad lot."

"So much hung on one little promise," she said, and drew closer to
him. "You were never bad," she added; then, with an arm sweeping the
universe, "Oh, isn't it all good, and isn't it all worth living?"

His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined
life, and the girl beside him, a dark humiliation and a shame which
would poison her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little
house where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.

"Now for Caliban," he said.

"I shall be Ariel and follow you-in my heart," she said. "Be sure and
make him tell you the story of his life," she added with a laugh, as his
lips swept the hair behind her ears.

As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said proudly,
"As deep as the sea."

After a moment she added: "And he was once a gambler, until, until--"
she glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her
hands--"until 'those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of
your destiny.' O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful," she added
softly, "and I am rather happy." There was something like a gay little
chuckle in her throat.

"O vain Diana!" she repeated.

.......................

Rawley entered the door of the but on the hill without ceremony. There
was no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier
done without it.

Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a
full bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley
entered--through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped
on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.

"What do you want?" he growled at last.

"Finish your swill, and then we can talk," said Rawley carelessly. He
took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the
old man, as he tipped the great bowl towards his face, as though it
were some wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the
coat-front was spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard
were unkempt and long, giving him what would have been the look of a
mangy lion, but that the face had the expressio