ping.
Doubtless he looked just as if he had dropped them from under his arms,
and why shouldn't he have the benefit of a great implication?

"I've saved them both," he roared; from which, of course, the ready
creole imagination inferred the extreme of possible heroic performance.

"Bring them to my house immediately," and it was accordingly done.

The procession, headed by M. Roussillon, moved noisily, for the French
tongue must shake off what comes to it on the thrill of every exciting
moment. The only silent Frenchman is the dead one.

Father Beret was not only well-nigh drowned, but seriously hurt. He lay
for a week on a bed in M. Roussillon's house before he could sit up.
Alice hung over him night and day, scarcely sleeping or eating until he
was past all danger. As for Beverley, he shook off all the effects of
his struggle in a little while. Next day he was out, as well and strong
as ever, busy with the affairs of his office. Nor was he less happy on
account of what the little adventure had cast into his experience. It
is good to feel that one has done an unselfish deed, and no young man's
heart repels the freshness of what comes to him when a beautiful girl
first enters his life.

Naturally enough Alice had some thoughts of Beverley while she was so
attentively caring for Father Beret. She had never before seen a man
like him, nor had she read of one. Compared with Rene de Ronville, the
best youth of her acquaintance, he was in every way superior; this was
too evident for analysis; but referred to the romantic standard taken
out of the novels she had read, he somehow failed; and yet he loomed
bravely in her vision, not exactly a knight of the class she had most
admired, still unquestionably a hero of large proportions.

Beverley stepped in for a few minutes every day to see Father Beret,
involuntarily lengthening his visit by a sliding ratio as he became
better acquainted. He began to enjoy the priest's conversation, with
its sly worldly wisdom cropping up through fervid religious sentiments
and quaint humor. Alice must have interested him more than he was fully
aware of; for his eyes followed her, as she came and went, with a
curious criticism of her half-savage costume and her springy,
Dryad-like suppleness, which reminded him of the shyest and gracefulest
wild birds; and yet a touch of refinement, the subtlest and best,
showed in all her ways. He studied her, as he would have studied a
strange, showy and