"

Tom hastened to acquiesce.

"You remember in the Book of Job? _Three things are wonderful to me, The
way of a ship on the sea, the way of an eagle in the air, and the way
of a man with a maid._"

"Ay, ay, sir," said Tom, "the way of a ship on the sea--but the way of a
man with a maid--"

"What's the matter with that, Tom?"

"They're all very pretty--just like the boat; but you'll not find one
near so true. We're better without them, if you ask my advice. A man's
all right as long as he keeps on his boat; but the minute he lands--the
girls and the troubles begin."

"Ah! Tom," I said; "but I think you told me you've a family--"

"Yes, sar, but the only good one amongst them is in the churchyard, this
fifteen years."

"Your wife, Tom?"

"Yes, sar, but she was more than a woman. She was a saint. When I talk
of women I don't think of her. No; God be kind to her, she is a saint,
and I only wait around till she calls me."

"Tom, allow me to shake hands with you," I said, "and call myself your
friend for ever."

The tears rolled down the old fellow's cheeks, and I realised how little
colour really matters, and how few white men were really as white as
Tom.

And so that night we made Harbour Island, and met that welcome that can
only be met at the lonely ends of the earth.

The Commandant and the clergyman took me under their wings on the spot,
and, though there was a good hotel, the Commandant didn't consider it
good enough for me.

Bless them both! I hope to be able some day to offer them the kind of
hospitality they brought me so generously in both hands; lonely men,
serving God and the British Empire, in that apparently God-forsaken
outpost of the world.

I liked the attitude they took toward my adventure. Their comments on
"Henry P. Tobias, Jr." and the paper I had with me, were especially
enlightening.

"The black men themselves," they both agreed, "are all right, except, of
course, here and there. It's fellows like this precious Tobias, real
white trash--the negroes' name for them is apt enough--that are the
danger for the friendship of both races. And it's the vein of a sort of
a literary idealism in a fellow like Tobias that makes him the more
dangerous. He's not all to the bad--"

"I couldn't help thinking that too," I interrupted.

"O! no," they said, "but he's a bit mad, too. That's his trouble. He's
got a personal, as well as an abstract, grudge against the British
Government."

"Treas