anxious, and was going to seek him when he saw him coming slowly from the direction of the river, holding what resembled a satchel in his hand. He stepped with this satchel-like thing into the cave, and emerged with nothing in his hands.

Reynolds looked at him and instantly observed a diminution of his bulk-that bulk of trunk whose extravagance had often puzzled him. He said nothing, and Goodhart, coming near the cook-hole with his kind and gracious smile, seated himself. Undoubtedly his figure had undergone a change since he had visited the river. He was now a well-proportioned man, without that stuffed look which had excited conjectures in Reynolds. His coat lay open. The massive watch-chain rested upon his waistcoat; his attire was indeed in a state of princely freshness compared with that of his companion; but then he had not been seven months on the island, nor had he been thrown ashore on toothed rocks by the breakers of a gale of wind.

Goodhart's smile vanished as he viewed his friend thoughtfully, with an impressive and inspiriting air of kindness. They had ceased to "captain" and "mister" each other.

How long will you be able to support this sort of existence ?" said Reynolds.

"I keep my mind tranquil with the fixed assurance of release," answered Goodhart, taking up a slice of fish with a leaf and beginning to eat. "It may be delayed; but it will come. I do not think of myself as a prisoner. I could be worse off, I have been worse off. This fish is excellently tasted. I do not miss liquor; those cascades are a noble drinking-fountain. I should be glad of a substitute for bread, but whilst our mushrooms flourish I shall not grumble."

"I am sick of it, Goodhart," said Reynolds. "So will you be soon."

"I assure you, Reynolds,” replied Goodhart, with a note of cordial cheerfulness, "that your companionship, and my own state, tastes, and habits of life render this imprisonment, as you term it, so little disagreeable to me that if a few comforts could be contrived I should be very well pleased to accept this brief sentence of exile as a pleasant holiday in a delicious climate under circumstances delightfully romantic."

Reynolds smiled and bowed, and said, "You are a true philosopher."

"What are our wants for this holiday until we are taken off? A little cottage, a loaf of bread a day, a joint of fresh meat to vary the eternity of the produce of the creek, tobacco for the pipe, and a few boxes of cigars. We enjoy a royal state, for we do not need money, and the greatest monarch might envy us for that. But weigh against our humble requirements the blessings of our escape from shipwreck, yonder glorious privilege of bright falling waters, the agreeable dishes swimming in that creek, or sticking to the rocks, or growing in the ground. We might go further," he added, looking significantly seaward, evidently thinking of the boat, "and fare worse."

"When you get home-I will not say if you get home, in the face of your magnificent spirit of hopewhere shall you settle?"

"Not in Ireland."

"You are the sort of man they want there."

"Well, it may come to Great Britain dealing with Ireland as a colony and extirpating the few lingering natives by swamping the country with British emigrants and settlers."

"That would solve the Irish question," question," said

Reynolds.

"There

"I shall settle in London," said Goodhart. you can get everything you want, the best and the worst of everything, and with judgment you can make ten shillings do what a sovereign scarcely does in a provincial town."

"I hate London," burst out Reynolds. larly Bayswater."

"Particu

"But why Bayswater?" laughed Goodhart. "Why not Hackney or Clapham ?"

"I was married in Bayswater," answered Reynolds ; and, jumping to his feet, he hove a stone at a penguin that was sitting like a robed bishop on a rock.

Goodhart viewed him for a moment or two in thought.

"Do you observe," said he, putting his hands to his sides, "that I have lost weight since bathing?"

"You are certainly thinner."

Goodhart again viewed him as though he had fallen into a fit of profound musing, then, rising, he said— "Reynolds, come into the cave with me."

CHAPTER X

TWO GRAVES

REYNOLDS, greatly marvelling, followed his com

panion into the cave. After the necessary pause to accustom the sight to the interior gloom, Goodhart, stepped to the old sea-chest, and, opening the lid, took from the bottom two thin bags united by a pair of shoulder-straps. He carried these bags or satchels to the mouth of the cave. Each bag was formed of a waterproof tissue with a rope handle of silk connected with straps like a man's braces. It was easy to see that these satchels or bags had been made to wear on the back or chest. They were filled with folded documents.

66

'These," said Goodhart, holding up the satchels, "represent all that I possess in the world outside what I carry in my pockets. They contain the product of thirty-five years of hard labour."

He hung the satchels by their straps over his arm and extracted one of the documents, and opening it, handed it, with his delightful smile, to Reynolds, saying

"There are eleven of them, and they all carry the same face."

The document in Reynolds' hand was a onethousand pound Victoria four per cent. bond, the date

of whose issue was 1885. It was shorn of the coupons which had matured.

"These bags," continued Goodhart, receiving and returning the bond to its sack, " contain Colonial Government securities amounting to the value of eleven thousand pounds, and you will easily understand why I chose to remain a bloated body whilst the sailors stayed on the island."

"But why do you carry such things about with you?" said Reynolds, who was not very much affected by the sight of the sacks: rather disappointed, indeed, for he had looked for something solemn and deep, and not a commonplace exhibition of Stock Exchange securities, in his friend's invitation to follow him into the cave. "All that money might have gone down in the Esmond."

"When it was suggested to me to convert the bonds into inscribed stock, I found the difference in price sufficiently great to determine me to keep what I had got. Besides," said Goodhart, with his mild look and gentle smile, "had these bonds foundered with me, I should have been disproving the general belief that a man cannot take his money with him to the grave."

He was going to the chest to replace the

sacks.

"Do you mean to keep them there?" said

Reynolds.

“Why not ?”

Suppose such another crew as yours comes ashore -would to God they would!-and we are on the other side of the island, or they catch us napping, and they come to this cave and forthwith open the chest."