gain in my heart; and I set my face resolutely for this man of
the island, and walked briskly towards him.

He was concealed by this time behind another tree-trunk; but he must have
been watching me closely, for as soon as I began to move in his direction
he reappeared and took a step to meet me. Then he hesitated, drew back,
came forward again, and at last, to my wonder and confusion, threw
himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in supplication.

At that I once more stopped.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Ben Gunn," he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a
rusty lock. "I'm poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven't spoke with a
Christian these three years."

I could now see that he was a white man like myself, and that his
features were even pleasing. His skin, where-ever it was exposed, was
burnt by the sun; even his lips were black; and his fair eyes looked
quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen
or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters
of old ship's canvas and old sea cloth; and this extraordinary patchwork
was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous
fastenings,--brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin.
About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the
one thing solid in his whole accoutrement.

"Three years!" I cried. "Were you shipwrecked?"

"Nay, mate," said he--"marooned."

I had heard the word, and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of
punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender is
put ashore with a little powder and shot, and left behind on some
desolate and distant island.

"Marooned three years agone," he continued, "and lived on goats since
then, and berries, and oysters. Where-ever a man is, says I, a man can do
for himself. But, mate, my heart is sore for Christian diet. You mightn't
happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many's the
long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly--and woke up again,
and here I were."

"If ever I can get aboard again," said I, "you shall have cheese by the
stone."

All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my
hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his
speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow-creature.
But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness.

"If ever you can get