hand. This youngster wants his mother. Hand him to me, and then give way with a will."

No need for the piermen to ask this white-haired, gray-bearded old gentleman, "Was you ever at sea, sir?" There is what scientific men call a natural affinity among sailors. They mutually attract one another, and are drawn together by a law which is as much ocean's secret as that of gravitation is the earth's.

The men pulled the boat round to the harbour landing-steps. A great crowd was there to witness what was to happen. Lucretia made one of that crowd, and stood very near to the mother of the child, who was crying and trembling at the head of the flight of stone stairs. When Reynolds stepped out of the boat, sopping, a soaked parcel of manhood, clasping another but a smaller parcel equally soaked, up went a cheer that was louder than the roar of the surf upon the sands. Oh, my ducky! Oh, my darling!" sobbed the young mother, taking the streaming child from Reynolds. "How did I come to do it? Oh, I have nearly drowned you! Oh, my sweet pet lamb!" And she kissed the child and mouthed, and then burst out weeping hysterically. "Oh, sir, how am I to thank you! How noble you are! How good you are! I shall always—always ask God to bless you."

"Now, my dear lady,” said Reynolds, "your child needs attention. Walk away home with him as fast as you can. You'll know what to do. If not, send for

a doctor."

He offered to make his way through the crowd, who formed a lane for him, and groaned at him in exclamations of respect and admiration. But Lucretia, who stood near, advanced with outstretched hand.

"Mr. Goodhart," she said, speaking with a vibratory note, so impassioned was the emotion that possessed her; "I cannot express how much I honour and respect you for this act. It is beautiful—” She wished to say more, but she had been crying just a little time before he jumped into the sea, the weakness of tears was still hers, and she turned away her head.

"We shall be meeting soon," said he, and walked down the pier as fast as he could, leaving a wake of wet behind him, for his pockets and boots were full, and he was buttoned up in a waistcoat that held water. A watchman ran after him with his cap and coat. He overtook the mother hurrying home with her damp, but apparently cheerful burden, and begged her to be quick, and dry the child, and get it into blankets. He then walked to a cab-stand, jumped into a cab, and was driven to the hotel,

N

CHAPTER XV

MR. GOODHART OFFERS MARRIAGE

On the morning following the life-saving incident, Reynolds awoke and found himself heavy, depressed, low with malaise. He felt his pulse-seventy. He got out of bed, opened the dressing-case, and took out a clinical thermometer. His temperature was 103. He quite understood that this signified a return of Malta fever, whether due to his plunge last evening, or to the perception of certain secreted microscopic bacilli that a time had come when they should make their presence felt, was not of the smallest consequence. The remedy was bed, patience, and abstinence.

He kept his room all day, but his yearning after Lucretia was so great that he must needs write this note to her

"DEAR MRS. REYNOLDS,

"I am confined to my room by a slight attack of Mediterranean fever, but hope to be well to-morrow, and in any case to be able to meet you on the day following. Possibly I shall find you on the East Cliff esplanade at five o'clock (let me definitely name the day after to-morrow), when I hope you will return with me to drink tea. I am afraid I shall not be able to tell you anything about Captain Reynolds' money by then, because before the Bank remits they

will require proof of Captain Reynolds' death. But I have referred them to Lloyds' and to other authorities, and have little doubt that before a week has passed I shall have the pleasure to hand you a cheque. With kind regards,

"Yours very truly,

"JOHN GOODHART."

He used pencil and took great care to disguise his hand which he readily contrived as he wrote in bed, and his writing was a ragged scrawl. He sent this note to be delivered by hand. Next to talking to her it pleased him to write to her. Goodhart's prophecy had come to pass the old magic had done its work: the spell was on him. How passionately was he loving her!-never more so than now-never even in days when his heart was younger by eight years, when it had not been chilled and sickened by unnatural and unwomanly revolt, when love was sweet and fresh with the glory of the rose on the bush, not the rose in the hand, nor the petal of memory betwixt the leaves in the shut volume of years. And it was his passion to possess her that determined him to go on wooing her as he now was, as Goodhart, a stranger, an acquaintance, a fast-ripening friend of deep sympathy, a man to be trusted and honoured, to whose custody, absolutely convinced that her husband Frank was dead, she might in time be coaxed and courted into committing the delicate precious charge of her virginal being.

And you will suppose that to the degree of his desire for her was his fear of detection lest the old loathing should return, like the entry of a hideous fiend, to tear and rend to pieces the machinery of a mind that was to be likened to some hall of ice far north, a

moonlit vision of white pillars, and roof gleaming with cold stars, and a floor upon which no fairy that ever sang with the grasshoppers in the land of romance would choose to dance!

He lay in a bedroom from which he could view the sea shining in a blue lake-like surface, and lying alone he thought much of his term of solitude on the island, how different his condition when he had the fever there from what it was now, how he had dragged his legs of lead, and poised his head like a hot cannon-ball between his shoulders, to the foam of the cataracts' stroke, how he had lain in his cheerless crack of earth gazing with fevered eyes at the stars, and wondering how long he should live, and thinking of Lucretia as he now thought of her. His mind rambled to the old sea-chest and to the letter he had nailed to the lid, and this memory caused him to consider that he had not made a will, and if he died and nobody could prove his identity his money would be lost to Lucretia.

He deliberated how he should go to work. He would not trust a local lawyer with the secret. The gentleman might be a member of the club at Ramsgate, and some provincial lawyers talk about their clients as some provincial doctors talk about their patients, so that if he went to a lawyer in Ramsgate to make his will, his secret business might, God knows how, leak out and trickle to that one ear in the world whose reception of it might desolate his heart, and bring his fabric of self-respect down upon his head in dusty ruin.

He rose early next day, being perfectly recovered from his attack, and took the train to Deal. This little town is seated opposite the Downs. It is remarkable for the number of its public-houses. Its beach is a