ee who
her companion in distress might be, she uttered a sharp scream of
horror, for the man who stood before her was no other than Reuben May.

"Then you're not glad to see me, Eve?" he said, for the movement Eve had
involuntarily made was to put out her hands as if to push him away.

Eve tried to speak, but the sudden fright of his unexpected presence
seemed to have dried up her throat and tongue and taken away all power
of utterance.

"Your old chum, Capen Triggs, asked me how I should like to take a bit
of a trip with him, and I thought, as I hadn't much to keep me, I'd take
his offer; and, as he's stopped at Plymouth for a day or so, I made up
my mind to come so far as here and see for myself if some of what I've
been told is true."

"Why, what have you been told?" said Eve, catching at anything which
might spare her some of the unpleasantness of a first communication.

"Well, for one thing, that you're going to be married to your cousin."

Eve's color rose, and Reuben, thinking it might be anger, said, "Don't
make any mistake, Eve: I haven't come to speak about myself. All that's
past and over, and God only knows why I ever got such folly into my
head;" and Reuben thought himself perfectly sincere in making this
statement, for he had talked himself into the belief that this journey
was undertaken from the sole desire to carry out his trust. "What I've
come to do is to speak to you like a friend, and ask you to tell me what
sort of people these are that you're among, and how the man gets his
living that you're thinking of being married to."

Eve hesitated: then she said, "There is no need for me to answer you,
Reuben, because I can see that somebody already has been talking about
them to you--haven't they?"

"Yes, they have, but how do I know that what they've said is true?"

"Oh, I dare say it's true enough," she said: "people ain't likely to
tell you false about a thing nobody here feels ashamed to own to."

"Not ashamed of being drunkards, law-breakers, thieves?" said Reuben
sternly.

"Reuben May," exclaimed Eve, flaming up with indignation and entirely
forgetting that but a little time before she had held an exactly similar
opinion, "do you forget that you're speaking of my own father's
blood-relations--people who're called by the same name I am?"

"No, I don't forget it, Eve; and I don't forget, neither, that if I
didn't think that down here you would soon become ruined, body and soul,
I'd rather