in a beauty show, no, not
much! Did ye see the hair of him, captain--did ye see the hair?"

"And the girls kissing him as though he were Apollo," cries Dolly Venn,
who, I don't doubt, would have done the kissing willingly himself. But
I hushed their talk, and without more ado I went straight down to Ruth
Bellenden's house. All the strange things we'd seen and heard, the
uncanny sights, the firing on the reef, the wild man ashore, the little
girls from the hills--all these, I say, began to tell me my mistress's
story as a written book might never have done. "She's need of me," I
said, "sore need; and by God's help I'll bring her out of this place
before to-morrow's sun."

For how should I know what long days must pass before I was to leave
Ken's Island again?

CHAPTER VI

JASPER BEGG MEETS HIS OLD MISTRESS, AND IS WATCHED

I had made up my mind to take every proper precaution before going up
to the house where my mistress lived; and with caution in my head I
left Seth Barker, the carpenter, up on the hill path, while I set Peter
Bligh at the gate of the garden, and posted Dolly Venn round at the
northern side, where the men who had looted the Santa Cruz might be
looked for with any others that I had no knowledge of. When this was
done, and they understood that they were to fire a gun if the need
arose, I opened the wicket-gate and crept up the grass path for all the
world like an ill-visaged fellow who had no true business there. Not a
sound could I hear in all that place; not a dog barked, nor a human
voice spoke. Even the wind came fitful and gusty about the sheltered
house; and so quiet was it between the squalls that my own footfall
almost could scare me. For, you see, a whisper spoken at the wrong time
might have undone all--a clumsy step have cost us more than a man cared
to count. We were but four, and, for all I know, there might have been
four hundred on Ken's Island. You don't wonder therefore, if I asked
myself at times whether to-morrow's sun would find us living or what
our misfortune might spell for one I had come so far to serve.

It was very dark in the garden, as I have told you, but two of the
windows in the house were lighted up and two golden rings of light
thrown out upon the soft grass I trod. I stood a long time debating
which window to knock open--for it was a fearful lottery, I must
say--and when I'd turned it over and over in my head, and now made out
that it was this window and now plu