ht nothing of the fact that, after the Commandant's boat
had taken away the Commandant's wife another boat should put off with
the chaplain. It was quite natural that Mr. North should desire to bid
his friends farewell, and through the hot, still afternoon he watched
for the returning boat, hoping that the chaplain would bring him some
message from the woman whom he was never to see more on earth. The hours
wore on, however, and no breath of wind ruffled the surface of the sea.
The day was exceedingly close and sultry, heavy dun clouds hung on the
horizon, and it seemed probable that unless a thunder-storm should clear
the air before night, the calm would continue. Blunt, however, with a
true sailor's obstinacy in regard to weather, swore there would be a
breeze, and held to his purpose of sailing. The hot afternoon passed
away in a sultry sunset, and it was not until the shades of evening had
begun to fall that Rufus Dawes distinguished a boat detach itself from
the sides of the schooner, and glide through the oily water to the
jetty. The chaplain was returning, and in a few hours perhaps would
be with him, to bring him the message of comfort for which his soul
thirsted. He stretched out his unshackled limbs, and throwing himself
upon his stretcher, fell to recalling the past--his boat-building, the
news of his fortune, his love, and his self-sacrifice.

North, however, was not returning to bring to the prisoner a message of
comfort, but he was returning on purpose to see him, nevertheless. The
unhappy man, torn by remorse and passion, had resolved upon a course
of action which seemed to him a penance for his crime of deceit. He
determined to confess to Dawes that the message he had brought was
wholly fictitious, that he himself loved the wife of the Commandant,
and that with her he was about to leave the island for ever. "I am no
hypocrite," he thought, in his exaltation. "If I choose to sin, I will
sin boldly; and this poor wretch, who looks up to me as an angel, shall
know me for my true self."

The notion of thus destroying his own fame in the eyes of the man whom
he had taught to love him, was pleasant to his diseased imagination. It
was the natural outcome of the morbid condition of mind into which he
had drifted, and he provided for the complete execution of his scheme
with cunning born of the mischief working in his brain. It was desirable
that the fatal stroke should be dealt at the last possible instant; that