put both hands upon his shoulders and held
his lips at arms' length. And her wide eyes looked full into the glowing
gray ones of the mucker. And each saw in the other's something that held
their looks for a full minute.

Barbara saw what she had feared, but she saw too something else that
gave her a quick, pulsing hope--a look of honest love, or could she be
mistaken? And the mucker saw the true eyes of the woman he loved without
knowing that he loved her, and he saw the plea for pity and protection
in them.

"Don't," whispered the girl. "Please don't, you frighten me."

A week ago Billy Byrne would have laughed at such a plea. Doubtless,
too, he would have struck the girl in the face for her resistance. He
did neither now, which spoke volumes for the change that was taking
place within him, but neither did he relax his hold upon her, or take
his burning eyes from her frightened ones.

Thus he strode through the turbulent, shallow river to clamber up the
bank onto the island. In his soul the battle still raged, but he had by
no means relinquished his intention to have his way with the girl. Fear,
numb, freezing fear, was in the girl's eyes now. The mucker read it
there as plain as print, and had she not said that she was frightened?
That was what he had wanted to accomplish back there upon the
Halfmoon--to frighten her. He would have enjoyed the sight, but he had
not been able to accomplish the thing. Now she not only showed that
she was frightened--she had admitted it, and it gave the mucker no
pleasure--on the contrary it made him unaccountably uncomfortable.

And then came the last straw--tears welled to those lovely eyes. A
choking sob wracked the girl's frame--"And just when I was learning to
trust you so!" she cried.

They had reached the top of the bank, now, and the man, still holding
her in his arms, stood upon a mat of jungle grass beneath a great tree.
Slowly he lowered her to her feet. The madness of desire still gripped
him; but now there was another force at work combating the evil that had
predominated before.

Theriere's words came back to him: "Good-bye, Byrne; take good care
of Miss Harding," and his admission to the Frenchman during that last
conversation with the dying man: "--a week ago I guess I was a coward.
Dere seems to be more'n one kind o' nerve--I'm just a-learnin' of the
right kind, I guess."

He had been standing with eyes upon the ground, his heavy hand still
gripping the girl's