at stage o' the game," thought the kind
pilot, and on each recurrence he noticed that they had got a bit farther
on in the story of Phyllis.

"How long is this island, Mr. Watson?" inquired Ramsey, as if islands
were all she was sitting up for.

"Two mile' 'n' a half. D'd you ask me that before? I don't hear much
behind me if it ain't hove right at me." Stalest device of the
sentimentalist--the self-sacrificing lie! But Watson cared not for its
staleness if it might promote the game. And the game, though as
wanderingly as the river, went on. Without strict order of time, now on
the bench, now on the roof, early and late, here is how it went:

"You're not afraid of my brothers, are you? I'm not."

"I'm afraid for them. And for my father and grandfather. And for your
father and your mother."

"Good gracious!" laughed Ramsey, then mused, and then asked: "Ain't you
afraid for me?"

Hugh said nothing, and thenceforth her tone grew more maidenly though
her words remained childlike enough.

"I know why you want to tell me about Phyllis," she added more softly.
"You think if you don't my brothers will."

"They don't know the facts," murmured Hugh.

"Don't they think they do? And ain't that the trouble?"

"Yes." Hugh thought her insight surprising, while she enjoyed the
spiritual largeness she fancied she saw in his immobile features. "Yes,"
he repeated, "they think they do; that's the trouble, much of it."

"How do you know they don't?"

"By what they believe and by what I know."

"How do you know you know?"

"By my own eyes and Phyllis's own lips."

"Would she tell you things she never told any one else?"

"Yes, things she never dared tell any one else."

Ramsey pondered, laughed, and pondered and laughed again: "Why, most of
that time you was--you were--nothing but a little toddler. Didn't she
love you?"

"She hated me."

Ramsey flinched but quickly laughed a bright unbelief to the youth's
face, a face which might as well have been a wood-carving. "Oh," she
cried, "how ridiculous!"

"She used to flog me, cruelly."

Ramsey gasped: "And you never told? Oh, why--why----?"

"She said she'd kill me--and my mother. And she'd have done it,
somehow."

"But she's been dead ten years!"

"Has she?"

"Why, of course! Wasn't she on the _Quakeress_ when----?"

"So was I."

Ramsey flinched worse and stared away with lips apart, wondering if that
was what gave him that look.

"But Phyllis," she resumed,