the breaking skies, when I heard a quick step behind me, and,
turning round, I saw Miss Ruth herself, and felt her gentle hand upon
my shoulder.

"I couldn't sleep, Jasper," said she, a little sadly I thought. "You
are not angry with me for being here, Jasper?"

It blew cold with the dawn, and I was glad to see that she had wrapped
her head in a warm white woollen shawl--for these little things stick
in a man's memory--and that her dress was such as a woman might wear in
that bleak place. She had dark rings about her eyes--which I have
always said could look at you as the eyes of no other woman in all the
world; and I began to think how odd it was that we two, whom fortune
had cast out to this lonely rock together, should have said so little
to each other, spoken such rare words since the ship put me ashore at
the gate of her island home.

"Miss Ruth," said I, "it's small wonder what you tell me. This night is
never to be forgotten by you and I, surely. Sometimes, even now, I
think that I am dreaming it all. Why, look at it. Not two months ago I
was in London hiring a ship from Philips, Westbury, and Co. You, I
believed, were away in the Pacific, where all things beautiful should
be. I saw you, Miss Ruth, in an island home, happy and contented, as it
was the wish of us all that you should be. There were never lighter
hearts on a quarterdeck than those which set out to do your bidding.
'It's Miss Ruth's fancy,' we told ourselves, 'that her friends should
bring a message from the West, and be ready to serve her if she has the
mind to employ them.' What other need could we think of? Be sure no
whisper of this devil's house or of yonder island where honest men will
die to-day was heard by any man among us. We came to do your bidding as
you had asked us. It was for you to say 'go' or 'stay.' We never
thought what the truth would be--even now it seems to me a horrid
nightmare which a man remembers when he is waking."

She drew a little closer to me, and stood gazing wistfully across the
westward seas, beyond which lay home and liberty. Perchance her
thoughts were away to the pretty town of Nice, where she had given her
love to the man who had betrayed her, and had dreamed, as young girls
will, of all that marriage and afterwards might mean to her.

"If it were only that, Jasper," she said, slowly, "just a dream and
nothing more! But we know that it is not. Ah, think, if these things
mean so much to you, what they have m