devout man.

He had read and reasoned himself into

a full conviction as to the being of a Creator. It is ridiculous, he would argue, to talk of chance, when you witness design everywhere. If the theory of chance is right, then creation is nothing but a dice-box, the issue of every throw unforeseen. He held that in nothing is design more visible than in evolution, with its enduring elements of prevision and provision. If evolution were merely chance, Creation would be chaos. He had once said to Lucretia, "What the learned call chance, I, who am not learned, call intention. Look at this little daisy: consider its colour, its form, the hand that grasps the petals, the airy beauty of the orange throne in the heart of it on which the viewless shape of the queen of the fairies sits on moonlighted nights, and let the Darwins of the age call this miracle of the meadow chance, if they can or dare!" Once, in taking a ramble in some fine scenery in New Zealand, he watched two birds, called huia birds, and was struck by the intention in form which their procedure explained. The male had a short, stout bill; the female a long, curved bill. He observed that they earned their living in company thus: the male, hopping or flying to a tree, with his strong bill knocked off the bark and exposed the grub, and the female, with her long curved bill, took the grub out, and between them they made a meal.

Thus it will be seen that when this man prayed to God, his heart spoke with conviction that he was addressing a Spirit who would give him heed though He made no sign.

It was lonesome sitting there with nothing but the voice of the sea to hear, and nothing but the sparkling suns of the sky to behold, for the island sank into ink on a moonless night; he rose, and made his way to the

dell, and got into the cleft and laid his broken face and weary head upon his grass pillow.

He fell asleep, and dreamed that his wife stood by his side. A cold star glittered on her forehead, and its radiations struck lances of ice into his heart. He awoke, and looked for his wife, and saw nothing but the stars shining at the edge of the fissure above the dell. But she had been with him, and with him in that same repellent spirit of chastity that had sundered them. Why should we deal lightly with, or speak in scorn of our dreams. Half our lives are formed of dreams, whether the visions shape themselves to the slumberer, or dwell in the stare of the waking abstracted eye. The boy dreams of the sea and of fairy lands forlorn; the maiden of that ideal man whom she shall not meet this side of the grave; the politician of power, and the philosopher of the undiscovered bourne; the king of a people's love, and the beggar of a copper ere noon. Rob the mind of dreams, sleeping or waking, and you extinguish one-third of the solid joys of life and two-thirds of its solid troubles.

Reynolds fell asleep again, but his wife did not

return.

CHAPTER VI

THE FISHERMAN

WHEN Reynolds again opened his eyes the day was

broad, brilliant, and noisy. He got out of the fissure which had supplied him with a sheltered mosscoated couch, and immediately made his way to a rise of ground to obtain a view of the sea. He swept the horizon with the practiced gaze of a sailor, observing in his wounded eye a little dimness of vision. Nothing that could be named a ship was in sight. Large dark clouds were sailing with the wind, but above them was a ceiling of mother-of-pearl that was settling slowly westwards. A fresh breeze was blowing. The sea was alive and leaping. On the shoal the water was the glaring whiteness of wrestling waves. The blow of the surge on the south-east side boomed with the deep note of heavy guns through the wind. The trees sang and the surf bellowed, and the full and spacious scene, from dome to liquid floor, throbbed and shouted and danced and roared with the spirit of ocean liberty.

Reynolds walked towards the foam-heap at the foot of the cataract and drank, then, stripping himself, plunged into the bright water of the little river, which was as sweet as honey for the distance of half a cable, with the force of the current that was rushed through the foam-mound by those water-falls, when it grew brackish and rapidly passed into salt water. He was

much refreshed by his bath, and ran to and fro to dry himself, and when he had put on his clothes he walked to the sand and got upon the rock to breakfast.

He ate heartily, for these were very fat and choice oysters though big. And for condiment they needed neither vinegar nor pepper, but the contents of the best of all cruet-stands (which he had)—that is, appetite.

Whilst he was thus occupied he saw swimming deep in the green crystal space of water betwixt the rock and the shore, where the creek began to widen, a number of big fish, of which he had before taken notice. He judged by their bulk that they would weigh from eight to thirty pounds. If they were not rock-cod they resembled that fish, but some were of a different species, and they were gay with colours and shaped like perch. Reynolds saw abundance of food beneath him, but how was he to get it? He was without hook or line, though there was plenty of bait in the thousands of limpets which adhered to this and other rocks. He recollected that a naval officer who was in a surveying ship off Patagonia had told him that the 'long-shore natives of that country took fish in this way. They fashioned lines out of tendrils of shrubbery; to the end of a line they attached a limpet ; this they dropped over the edge of their canoe. The fish gorged the limpet, and was warily drawn to the surface by the fisherman, who then dexterously passed his hand under the fish and tossed it out of water into the boat.

This memory determined Reynolds to try his hand; he was a sailor, and the possessor of a knife and a burning glass. And thus equipped he could not be at a loss. But as he never could be in want of food whilst oysters and other shell-fish abounded, he resolved first

to explore the island and to climb its highest point, which was a hill several hundred feet high, that hill from whose steeps the cataracts "blew their trumpets." It must be his business to prepare the means of making a smoke should a sail heave into view.

He wished to catch a sight of himself to judge of the extent of the injuries to his face, but there was no pool of water that was not blurred by the hurrying fingers of the wind. He got upon the shore and set out upon his adventures. This little principality was but a mile long, as you have heard, and three-quarters of a mile wide, and it was to be compassed and examined without much fatigue of walking. He climbed the hill and gained the summit, and the island lay below him in green and brown and grey, tender with verdure and splendid with its mighty dazzle of foam on the southeast side, and the brilliant cream of the surf that roared upon its coral strand from the north to right around by west to south. It blew fresh up there where he was, and the salt song shrilled past his ears as though he was aloft in a squall on a top-gallant-yard. There was a hollow a short distance down, and in that hollow he determined to collect the materials for a fire; but he was compelled to make many journeys before his heap for burning was collected and sufficient. There was no wood fit for his purpose on the hill. He cut and hacked with his knife, and painfully ascended with his arms full, but he did not cease in his toil until his work was ended, and then he sat down on the top of the hill to rest and muse and survey the sea-line.

He asked himself, "What is my chance of escape? The island was far out of the track of steamers bound north or south; nothing was likely to come that way

H