horus in the undergrowth; the intermittent
roaring of breakers on the rocks invaded the narrow creek. The medley
puzzled Iris, but the island woman well knew that stirring events were
being enacted on the other side of the hill. Her husband was there--he
had, indeed, prepared a careful alibi since Marcel visited him--and
wives are apt to feel worried if husbands are abroad when bullets are
flying.

So, while the girl, Manoela, was furtively appraising the clothing worn
by Iris, and wondering how it came to pass that in some parts of the
world there existed grand ladies who wore real cloth dresses, and lace
embroidered under-skirts, and silk stockings, and shining leather
boots--wore them, too, with as much careless ease as one draped one's
self in coarse hempen skirt and shawl in Fernando Noronha--her mother
was listening ever for hasty footsteps among the trailing vines.

At last, with a muttered prayer, she went to the door, and unfastened
the stout wooden staple that prevented intruders from entering unbidden.

It was dark without. Dense black clouds veiled the moon, and a gust of
wind moaned up the creek in presage of a tropical storm. Someone
approached.

"Is that you, Manoel?" asked Luisa Gomez in a hushed voice.

There was no answer. The woman drew back. She would have closed the
door, but a slim, active figure sprang across the threshold. She
shrieked in terror. The new-comer was a Brazilian officer, one of
those glittering beings whom she had seen lounging outside the
Prindio[1] during her rare visits to the town. She was hoping to greet
her Manoel, she half expected to find Marcel, but to be faced by an
officer was the last thing she had thought of. In abject fear, she
broke into a wild appeal to the Virgin; the officer merely laughed,
though not loudly.

"Be not afraid, senhora--I am a friend," he said with quiet confidence,
and the fact that he addressed her so courteously was a wondrously
soothing thing in itself. But he raised a fresh wave of dread in her
soul when he peered into the cabin and spoke words she did not
understand.

"I think you are here, mademoiselle," he said in French. "I am come to
share your retreat for a little while. Perchance by daybreak I may
arrive at some plan. At present, you and I are in difficulties, is it
not?"

Iris recognized the voluble, jerky speech. A wild foreboding gripped
her heart until she was like to shudder under its fierce anguish.

"You,