he old
loneliness and desolation would return and they were hard to dispel. He
could not keep from crying aloud at the cruelty of fate. He was young,
so vital, so intensely alive, so anxious to be in the middle of things,
that it was torture to be held there. Yet he was absolutely helpless. It
would be folly to attempt escape in the little dinghy, and he must wait
until a ship came. He would spend hours every day on the highest hill,
watching the horizon through his glasses for a ship, and then, bitter
with disappointment, he would refuse to look again for a long time.

Whether his mind was up or down its essential healthiness and sanity
held true. He always came back to the normal. Had he sought purposely to
divest himself of hope he could not have done it. The ship was coming.
Its coming was as certain as the rolling in of the tide, only one had to
wait longer for it.

Yet time passed, and there was no sign of a sail on the horizon. His
island was as lonely as if it were in the South Seas instead of the
Atlantic. He began to suspect that it was not really a member of any
group, but was a far flung outpost visited but rarely. Perhaps the war
and its doubling the usual dangers of the sea would keep a ship of any
kind whatever from visiting it. He refused to let the thought remain
with him, suppressing it resolutely, and insisting to himself that such
a pleasant little island was bound to have callers some time or other,
some day.

But the weeks dragged by, and he was absolutely alone in his world. He
had acquired so many stores from the schooner that life was comfortable.
It even had a touch of luxury, and the struggle for existence was far
from consuming all his hours. He found himself as time went on driven
more and more upon his books, and he read them, as few have ever read
anything, trying to penetrate everything and to draw from them the best
lessons.

As a student, in a very real sense of the term, Robert became more
reconciled to his isolation. His mind was broadening and deepening, and
he felt that it was so. Many things that had before seemed a puzzle to
him now became plain. He was compelled, despite his youth, to meditate
upon life, and he resolved that when he took up its thread again among
his kind he would put his new knowledge to the best of uses.

He noted a growth of the body as well as of the mind. An abundant and
varied diet and plenty of rest gave him a great physical stimulus. It
seemed to hi