FORE they killed him! What do you mean? They are not--? They are
not--?"

She was thinking of what Clayton had said of the forest man's probable
relationship to this tribe and she could not frame the awful word.

"Yes, Miss Porter, they were--cannibals," he said, almost bitterly, for
to him too had suddenly come the thought of the forest man, and the
strange, unaccountable jealousy he had felt two days before swept over
him once more.

And then in sudden brutality that was as unlike Clayton as courteous
consideration is unlike an ape, he blurted out:

"When your forest god left you he was doubtless hurrying to the feast."

He was sorry ere the words were spoken though he did not know how
cruelly they had cut the girl. His regret was for his baseless
disloyalty to one who had saved the lives of every member of his party,
and offered harm to none.

The girl's head went high.

"There could be but one suitable reply to your assertion, Mr. Clayton,"
she said icily, "and I regret that I am not a man, that I might make
it." She turned quickly and entered the cabin.

Clayton was an Englishman, so the girl had passed quite out of sight
before he deduced what reply a man would have made.

"Upon my word," he said ruefully, "she called me a liar. And I fancy I
jolly well deserved it," he added thoughtfully. "Clayton, my boy, I
know you are tired out and unstrung, but that's no reason why you
should make an ass of yourself. You'd better go to bed."

But before he did so he called gently to Jane upon the opposite side of
the sailcloth partition, for he wished to apologize, but he might as
well have addressed the Sphinx. Then he wrote upon a piece of paper
and shoved it beneath the partition.

Jane saw the little note and ignored it, for she was very angry and
hurt and mortified, but--she was a woman, and so eventually she picked
it up and read it.

MY DEAR MISS PORTER:

I had no reason to insinuate what I did. My only excuse is that my
nerves must be unstrung--which is no excuse at all.

Please try and think that I did not say it. I am very sorry. I would
not have hurt YOU, above all others in the world. Say that you forgive
me.

WM. CECIL CLAYTON.

"He did think it or he never would have said it," reasoned the girl,
"but it cannot be true--oh, I know it is not true!"

One sentence in the letter frightened her: "I would not have hurt YOU
above all others in the world."

A week ago