the shoulder-knots. I saw the white flesh beneath bruised and
wealed, as though a whip had cut it, and I knew that this was her
witness to her story. What was in my heart at such a sight I would have
no man know; but my fingers closed about the pistol I carried, and my
tongue would speak no word.

"Why do you compel me to speak?" she went on, meanwhile. "Am I to tell
of all the things I have seen and suffered on this dreadful place in
the year--can it be only that?--the long, weary year I have lived here?
Do you believe, Jasper, that a man can fill his house with gold as this
is filled--this wild house so far from the world--and fill it honestly?
Shall I say, 'Yes, I have misjudged him,' the man who has shot my
servant here in this room and left me with the dead? Shall I say that
he is a good man because sometimes, when he has ceased to kill and
torture those who serve him, he acts as other men? Oh, I could win much
if I could say that; I could win, perhaps, all that a woman desires.
But I shall never speak--never; I shall live as I am living until I am
old, when nothing matters!"

It was a very bitter and a very surprising thing for me to hear her
speak in this way. Trouble I knew she must have suffered on Ken's
Island; but this was a story beyond all imagination. And what could I
say to her, what comfort give her--I, a rough-hearted sailor, who,
nevertheless, would have cut off my own right hand if that could have
served her? Indeed, to be truthful, I had nothing to say, and there we
were for many minutes, she upon one side of the fire and I upon the
other, as two that gazed into the reddening embers and would have found
some old page of our life therein recorded.

"Miss Ruth," said I at last, and I think she knew what I meant, "I
would have given much not to have heard this thing to-night; but as it
is spoken--if it were twenty times as bad for me and those with me--I
am glad we came to Ken's Island. The rest you will anticipate and there
is no need for me to talk about it. The day that sees me sail away will
find a cabin-passenger aboard my ship. Her name I will not mention, for
it is known to you. Aye, by all a man's promise she shall sail with me
or I will never tread a ship's deck again."

It was earnestly meant, and that, I am sure, Miss Ruth knew, for she
put her hand upon mine, and, though she made no mention of what I had
said, there was a look in her eyes which I was glad to see there. Her
next question