ived, what would he do?
Answer me that."

"Come up to our hut next Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, and I _will_
answer you."

"What! do you mean to say that you'll let me in, and them women-folks
there too?"

"Certainly we will," said Captain Staunton heartily. "We are all
mortal, like yourself; and the ladies will not refuse, I am sure, to
meet a man who feels as you do."

"Then I'll come," exclaimed the man with a frightful oath, intended to
add emphasis to his declaration, and then, as the boat's keel grated on
the beach, he and his mates sprang into the shallow water, and, lifting
Bob in his impromptu stretcher carefully upon their shoulders, they
proceeded with heedful steps to bear him toward the hut.

"Now, there," remarked Captain Staunton in a low voice as they hurried
on ahead to get Bob's bunk ready for him, "there is an example of a
human soul steeped in sin, yet revolting from it; struggling desperately
to escape; and in its despair only dyeing itself with a deeper stain.
It is a noble nature in revolt against a state of hideous ignoble
slavery; and I pray God that I may find words wherewith to suitably
answer his momentous question."

"Amen," said Lance fervently, raising his hat reverently from his head
as the word passed his lips.

In another ten minutes they had poor Bob safely in the house and
comfortably bestowed in his berth. The medicine-chest had been brought
back in the boat and was soon conveyed to the hut; and while Lance
busied himself in mixing a cooling draught for his patient, Dale, to the
intense astonishment of everybody, voluntarily undertook to prepare some
strengthening broth for him. The man's supreme selfishness gave way,
for the moment, to admiration of Bob's gallant deed--so immeasurably
beyond anything of which he felt himself capable--and, genuinely ashamed
of himself, for perhaps the first time in his life, he suddenly resolved
to do what little in him lay to be useful.

When Lance came down-stairs for a moment after administering the saline
draught, he found Dickinson and his three companions still hanging about
outside the door in an irresolute manner, as though undecided whether to
go or stay. He accordingly went out to them and, with an earnestness
quite foreign to his usual manner, thanked them warmly yet courteously
for their valuable assistance (Lance _never_ forgot that he was a
gentleman, and was therefore uniformly courteous to everybody), and then
dism