beside him. For an instant she would have resisted, as the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks attested, and then, with the instinctive feminine baseness that compels every woman, when once she has met her master, she submitted.

"I am sorry, if you are offended,” said he. "But the captain cannot attend to you now, and it is necessary to be guarded in movement; for a slight thing on such occasions may produce a panic."

"You should not have forced me to sit," said she, in a smothered voice, without heeding him; "you had no right." "This right, that I assume the care of you."

Marguerite, I see that you are determined to quarrel.”

She paused a moment, ere replying; then drew a little nearer and turned her face toward him, though without looking up.

66

Forgive me, then!" said she. "But I would rather be naughty and froward, it lets me stay a child, and so you can take me in keeping, and I need not think for myself at all. But if I act like a woman grown, then comes all the responsibility, and I must rely on myself, which is such trouble now, though I never felt it so before, I don't know why. Don't you see?" And she glanced at him with her head on one side, and laughing archly.

"You were right," he replied, after surveying her a moment; "my proffered protection is entirely superfluous."

She thought he was about to go, and placed her hand on his, as it lay along the side. "Don't leave me," she murmured.

"I have no intention of leaving you," he said.

"You are very good. I have never seen one like you. I love you well." And, bathed in moonlight, she raised her face and her glowing lips toward him.

Mr. Raleigh gazed in the innocent eyes a moment, to seek the extent of her meaning, and felt, that, should he take advantage of her childlike forgetfulness, he

would be only reenacting the part he had so much condemned in one man years before. So he merely bent low over the hand that lay in his, raised it, and touched his lips to that. In an instant the color suffused her face, she snatched the hand away, half rose trembling from her seat, then sank into it again.

"Soit, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, abruptly. "But you have not told me the danger."

"It will not alarm you now?" he replied, laughing.

"I have said that I am not a coward."

"I wonder what you would think of me when I say that without doubt I am." "You, Mr. Raleigh?" she cried, astonishment banishing anger.

"Not that I betray myself. But I have felt the true heart-sinking. Once, surprised in the centre of an insurrection, I expected to find my hair white as snow, if I escaped."

"Your hair is very black.

And you

They suffered you to go on account of your terror? You feigned death? You took flight?"

Never at fault, he discovered a revolt, with intent to murder my companion and myself, and retreat to the mountains. Of course there was but one thing to do. I put a pistol in my belt and walked down and in among them, singled out the ringleader, fixed him with my eye, and bade him approach. My appearance was so sudden and unsuspected that they forgot defiance."

"Bien, but I thought you were afraid." "So I was. I could not have spoken a second word. I experienced intense terror, and that, probably, gave my glance a concentration of which I was unaware and by myself incapable; but I did not suffer it to waver; I could not have moved it, indeed; I kept it on the man while he crept slowly toward me. I shall never forget the horrible sensation. I did not dare permit myself to doubt his conquest; but if I had failed, as I then thought, his approach was like the slow coil of a serpent about me, and it was his glittering eyes that had fixed mine, and not mine his. At my feet, I commanded him, with a gesture, to disarm. He obeyed, and I breathed; and one by one they followed his example. Capua, who was behind me, I sent back with the weapons, and in the morning gave them their choice of returning to town with their hands tied behind their backs, or of going on with me and remaining faithful. They chose the latter, did me good service, and I said nothing about the affair."

"That was well. But were you really frightened?"

"Not exactly. I was thirty-seven last August."

"And will be thirty-eight next?" "That is the logical deduction." "I shall give you a birthday-gift when you are just twice my age."

"By what courier will you make it reach me?"

"Oh, I forgot. But Mr. Raleigh?" "What is it?" he replied, turning to look at her, for his eyes had been wandering over the deck.

"I thought you would ask me to write to you."

"No, that would not be worth while." His face was too grave for her to feel indignation.

"Why?" she demanded.

"It would give me great pleasure, without doubt. But in a week you will have too many other cares and duties to care for such a burden."

"That shows that you do not know me at all. Vous en avez usé mal avec moi!"

Though Mr. Raleigh still looked at her, he did not reply. She rose and walked away a few steps, coming back.

"You are always in the right, and I consequently in the wrong," she said. "How often to-night have I asked pardon? I will not put up with it!"

"We shall part in a few hours," he replied; "when you lose your temper, I lose

on deck, Capua consoling Ursule, the captain having told to each, personally, the possibility of escape"

"Allez au but!"

"That the lights are closed, the hatches battened down, and by dint of excluding the air we can keep the flames in a smouldering state and sail into harbor a shell of safety over this core of burning coal."

"Reducing the equation, the ship is on

fire?"

"Yes."

She did not speak for a moment or two, and he saw that she was quite faint. Soon recovering herself, —

"And what do you think of the mirage now?" she asked. "Where is Ursule? I must go to her," she added suddenly, after a brief silence, starting to her feet.

"Shall I accompany you?"

"Oh, no."

"She lies on a mattress there, behind that group,”—nodding in the implied direction; "and it would be well, if you could lie beside her and get an hour's rest."

"Me? I couldn't sleep. I shall come back to you,may I?" And she was

gone.

Mr. Raleigh still sat in the position in which she had left him, when, a half-hour afterward, she returned.

"Where is your cloak?" he asked, rising to receive her.

"I spread it over Ursule, she was so chilly."

"You will not take cold?"

"I? I am on fire myself." "Ah, I see; you have the Saturnalian spirit in you."

"It is like the Revolution, the French, is it not?-drifting on before the wind of Fate, this ship full of fire and all redhot raging turbulence. Just look up the long sparkling length of these white, full shrouds, swelling and curving like proud swans, in the gale,-and then imagine the devouring monster below in his den!"

"Don't imagine it. Be quiet and sit beside me. Half the night is gone."

"I remember reading of some pirates once, who, driving forward to destruction on fearful breakers, drank and sang and died madly. I wish the whole ship's company would burst out in one mighty chorus now, or that we might rush together with tumultuous impulse and dance, dance wildly into death and daylight." "We have nothing to do with death,” said Mr. Raleigh. "Our foe is simply time. You dance, then?"

"Oh, yes. I dance well,-like those white fluttering butterflies, as if I were au gré du vent."

"That would not be dancing well."

"It would not be dancing well to be at the will of the wind, but it is perfection to appear so."

"The dance needs the expression of the dancer's will. It is breathing sculpture. It is mimic life beyond all other arts."

"Then well I love to dance. And I do dance well. Wait, you shall see." He detained her.

"Be still, little maid!" he said, and again drew her beside him, though she still continued standing.

before him," replied the captain, bowing to Marguerite; and turning away, he hid his suspense and pain again under a calı

countenance.

Standing all this while beside Mr. Raleigh, she had heard the whole of the conversation, and he felt the hand in his growing colder as it continued. He wondered if it were still the same excitement that sent the alternate flush and pallor up her cheek. She sat down, leaning her head back against the bulwark, as if to look at the stars, and suffering the light, fine hair to blow about her temples before the steady breeze. He bent over to look into her eyes, and found them fixed and lustreless.

"Marguerite!" he exclaimed.

She tried to speak, but the teeth seemed to hinder the escape of her words, and to break them into bits of sound; a shiver shook her from head to foot.

"I wonder if this is fear," she succeeded in saying. 'Oh, if there were somewhere to go, something to hide me! A great horror is upon me! I am afraid! Seigneur Dieu! Mourir par le feu! Périssons alors au plus vite!" And she shuddered, audibly.

Mr. Raleigh passed his arm about her and gathered her closer to himself. He saw at once, that, sensitive as she was to every impression, this fear was a contagious one, a mere gregarian affinity, and that she needed the preponderating warmth and strength of a protecting presence, the influence of a fuller vitality. He did not speak, but his touch must in some measure have counteracted the dread that oppressed her. She ceased trembling, but did not move.

The westering moon went to bury herself in banks of cloud; the wind increasing piped and whistled in strident threatening through the rigging; the ship vibrated to the concussive voice of the mninute-gun. No murmurs but those of wind and water were heard among the throng; they drove forward in awful, pallid silence. Suddenly the shriek of one voice, but from fourscore throats, rent the agonized quiet. A red light

was running along the deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the forecastle, a spire shooting aloft. Marguerite hid her face in Mr. Raleigh's arm; a great sob seemed to go up from all the people. The captain's voice thundered through the tumult, and instantly the mates sprang forward and the jib went crashing overboard. Mr. Raleigh tore his eyes away from the fascination of this terror, and fixed them by chance on two black specks that danced on the watery horizon. He gazed with intense vision a moment. "The tugs!" he cried. The words thrilled with hope in every dying heart; they no longer saw themselves the waiting prey of pain and death, of flames and sea. Some few leaped into the boat at the stern, lowered and cut it away; others dropped spontaneously into file, and passed the dripping buckets of sea-water, to keep, if possible, the flames in check. Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite crossed over to Ursule.

The sight of her nurse, passive in despair, restored to the girl a portion of her previous spirit. She knelt beside her, talking low and rapidly, now and then laughing, and all the time communicating nerve with her light, firm finger-touches. Except their quick and unintelligible murmurs, and the plash and hiss of water, nothing else broke the torturing hush of expectation. There was a half-hour of breathless watch ere the steam-tugs were alongside. Already the place was full of fervid torment, and they had climbed upon every point to leave below the stings of the blistering deck. None waited on the order of their going, but thronged and sprang precipitately. Ursule was at once deposited in safety. The captain moved to conduct Marguerite across, but she drew back and clung to Mr. Raleigh.

"J'ai honte," she said; "je ne bougerai pas plus tôt que vous."

The breath of the fierce flames scorched her cheek as she spoke, the wind of their roaring progress swept her hair. He lifted her over without further consultation, and still kept her in his care.

There was a strange atmosphere on board the little vessels, as they labored about and parted from the doomed Osprey. Many were subdued with awe and joy at their deliverance; others broke the tense strain of the last hours in suffocating sobs. Every throb of the panting engines they answered with waiting heart-beats, as it sent them farther from the fearful wonder, now blazing in multiplex lines of fire against the gray horizon. Mr. Raleigh gazed after it as one watches the conflagration of a home. Marguerite left her quiet weeping to gaze with him. An hour silently passed, and as the fiery phantom faded into dawn and distance she sang sweetly the first few lines of an old French hymn. Another voice took up the measure, stronger and clearer; those who knew nothing of the words caught the spirit of the tune; and no choral service ever pealed up temple-vaults with more earnest accord than that in which this chant of grateful, exultant devotion now rose from roughthroated men and weary women in the crisp air and yellowing spring-morning.

As the moment of parting approached, Marguerite stood with folded hands before Mr. Raleigh, looking sadly down the harbor.

"I regret all that," she said, "these days that seem years."

"An equivocal phrase," he replied, with a smile.

I am

"But you know what I mean. going to strangers; I have been with you. I shall find no one so kind to me as you have been, Monsieur."

"Your strangers can be much kinder to you than I have been."

"Never! I wish they did not exist! What do I care for them? What do they care for me? They do not know me; I shall shock them. I miss you, I hate them, already. Non! Personne ne m'aime, et je n'aime personne!" she exclaimed, with low-toned vehemence.

"I have met your mother, and I knew you a great many years ago."

"Mr. Raleigh!" And there was the least possible shade of unconscious regret in the voice before it added,-" And what was I?”

"You were some little wood-spirit, the imp of a fallen cone, mayhap, or the embodiment of birch-tree shadows. You were a soiled and naughty little beauty, not so different from your present self, and who kissed me on the lips." "And did you refuse to take the kiss?"

He laughed.

"You were a child then," he said. "And I was not'

"Was not?".

Here the boat swung round at her moorings, and the shock prevented Mr. Raleigh's finishing his sentence.

"Ursule is with us, or on the other one?" she asked.

"With us."

"That is fortunate.

She is all I have remaining, by which to prove my identity."

"As if there could be two such maidens in the world!"

Marguerite left him, a moment, to give Captain Tarbell her address, and returning, they were shortly afterward seated side by side in a coach, Capua and Ursule following in another. As they stopped at the destined door, Mr. Raleigh alighted and extended his hand. She lingered a moment ere taking it,-not to say adieu, nor to offer him cheek or lip again.

“Que je te remercie !" she murmured, lifting her eyes to his. "Que je te trouve bon!" and sprang before him up the steps.

He heard her father meet her in the hall; Ursule had already joined them; he reëntered the coach and rolled rapidly beyond recall.

The burning of the Osprey did not concern Mr. Raleigh's business-relations. Carrying his papers about him, he had personally lost thereby nothing of consequence. He refreshed himself, and pro