for the youth to finish dressing; then, seizing a
pistol, he hurried out of the house. Looking quickly round he just
caught sight of the skirts of a woman's dress as they disappeared
through the doorway of a hut which had been formerly inhabited by a poor
native who had subsisted on the widow's bounty until he died. The door
was shut immediately after.

Going swiftly but cautiously round by a back way, Henry approached the
hut. Strange and conflicting feelings filled his breast. A blush of
deep shame and self-abhorrence mantled on his cheek when it flashed
across him that he was about to play the spy on his own mother. But
there was no mistaking Gascoyne's voice.

How the supposed pirate had got there, and wherefore he was there, were
matters that he did not think of or care about at that moment. There he
was, so the young man resolved to secure him and hand him over to
justices.

Henry was too honourable to listen secretly to a conversation, whatever
it might be, that was not intended for his ears. He resolved merely to
peep in at one of the many chinks in the log hut for one moment to
satisfy himself that Gascoyne really was there, and to observe his
position. But as the latter now thought himself beyond the hearing of
any one, he spoke in unguarded tones, and Henry heard a few words in
spite of himself.

Looking through a chink in the wall at the end of the hut, he beheld the
stalwart form of the sandalwood trader standing on the hearth of the
hut, which was almost unfurnished--a stool, a bench, an old chest, a
table, and a chair, being all that it contained. His mother was seated
at the table with her hands clasped before her, looking up at her
companion.

"Oh! why run so great a risk as this?" said she, earnestly.

"I was born to run risks, I believe," replied Gascoyne, in a sad low
voice. "It matters not. My being on the island is the result of
Manton's villainy--my being here is for poor Henry's sake and your own,
as well as for the sake of Alice the missionary's child. You have been
upright, Mary, and kind, and true as steel ever since I knew you. But
for that I should have been lost long ago--"

Henry heard no more. These words did indeed whet his curiosity to the
utmost, but the shame of acting the part of an "eavesdropper" was so
great that, by a strong effort of will, he drew back and pondered for a
moment what he ought to do. The unexpected tone and tenor of Gascoyne's
remark had sof