essive caution. "What on earth does he mean? I'll be hanged if I
wait. Where one of us goes, the other goes too!"

He hitched the loose end of the rope round the forward thwart of the
boat, and, swinging himself up the ladder, stood the next moment on the
deck. "Anything very dreadful on board?" he inquired sarcastically, as
he and his friend met.

Midwinter smiled. "Nothing whatever," he replied. "But I couldn't be
sure that we were to have the whole ship to ourselves till I got over
the bulwark and looked about me."

Allan took a turn on the deck, and surveyed the wreck critically from
stem to stern.

"Not much of a vessel," he said; "the Frenchmen generally build better
ships than this."

Midwinter crossed the deck, and eyed Allan in a momentary silence.

"Frenchmen?" he repeated, after an interval. "Is this vessel French?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"The men I have got at work on the yacht told me. They know all about
her."

Midwinter came a little nearer. His swarthy face began to look, to
Allan's eyes, unaccountably pale in the moonlight.

"Did they mention what trade she was engaged in?"

"Yes; the timber trade."

As Allan gave that answer, Midwinter's lean brown hand clutched him fast
by the shoulder, and Midwinter's teeth chattered in his head like the
teeth of a man struck by a sudden chill.

"Did they tell you her name?" he asked, in a voice that dropped suddenly
to a whisper.

"They did, I think. But it has slipped my memory.--Gently, old fellow;
these long claws of yours are rather tight on my shoulder."

"Was the name--?" He stopped, removed his hand, and dashed away the
great drops that were gathering on his forehead. "Was the name _La Grace
de Dieu_?"

"How the deuce did you come to know it? That's the name, sure enough.
_La Grace de Dieu_."

At one bound, Midwinter leaped on the bulwark of the wreck.

"The boat!" he cried, with a scream of horror that rang far and wide
through the stillness of the night, and brought Allan instantly to his
side.

The lower end of the carelessly hitched rope was loose on the water, and
ahead, in the track of the moonlight, a small black object was floating
out of view. The boat was adrift.

IV. THE SHADOW OF THE PAST.

One stepping back under the dark shelter of the bulwark, and one
standing out boldly in the yellow light of the moon, the two friends
turned face to face on the deck of the timber-ship, and looked at each
other in sile