ook at it, ma'am. Until you came here I had
not seen a white woman for nigh on twenty years, and when I did first
see you I was all a-trembling--fearing to speak--for you looked to me as
if you were an angel, instead of----"

"Instead of being just what I was--a wretched, half-mad creature, whom
your kindness and care brought back to life and reason."

The old man, who even as he sat leant upon a stick, pointed towards the
setting sun, whose rays were shedding a golden light upon the sleeping
sea.

"Whenever I see a thing like that, Mrs. Marston, I feel in my heart,
deep, deep down, that God is with us, and that I, Jim Manning, the old
broken-down, poverty-stricken trader of Anouda, has as much share in
His goodness and blessed love as the Pope o' Borne or the Archbishop o'
Canterbury. See how He has preserved you, and directed that schooner to
drift here to Anouda, instead of her going ashore on one of the Solomon
Islands, where you and all with you would have been killed by savage
cannibals and never been heard of again."

Amy Marston left her seat, came over to the old man, and kneeling beside
him, placed her hands on his.

"Mr. Manning, whenever a ship does come, will you and your sons come
away with me to Samoa, and live with me and the kind friends of whom I
have told you. Ah, you have been so good to me and my baby that I would
feel very unhappy if, when a ship comes and I leave Anouda, you were to
stay behind. I am what is considered a fairly rich woman----"

"God bless you, my child--for you are only a child, although you are a
widow and have a baby--but you must not tempt me. I shall never leave
Anouda. I have lived here for five-and-thirty years, and shall die here.
I am now past seventy-six years of age, and every evening when the sun
is setting, as it is setting now, I sit in front of my little house and
watch it as I smoke my pipe, and feel more and more content and nearer
to God. Now, Mrs. Marston, I must be going home. Where is Lilo?''

"Out on the reef somewhere, fishing. Serena and the baby are in the
breadfruit grove behind the village. I sent them there, as it is cooler
than the house. I shall walk over there for them before it becomes too
dark. Ah, here comes the breeze at last."

"Lilo is a good boy, a good boy," said the old man as he rose and held
out his hand; "he is very proud of calling himself your _tausea_,{*} and
that he 'sailed' the _Lupetea_ so many hundreds of miles."

* P