ns her haunting face, with eyes alight with love, looked into his.

"D------n!" He rose from his couch, opened the gate, and went out along
the white dazzle of the starlit beach. "What the devil is the matter
with me? I must be drunk--on two or three nips of whisky.... What a
glorious, heavenly night!... And what a grand old fellow Baldwin is!...
And I'm an infernal scoundrel to think of her--or a d------d idiot, or a
miserable combination of both."

*****

In a few days two things had happened. Baldwin had married Loise, and
Brice was madly in love with her and she with him. Yet scarcely a word
had passed between them--he silent because of genuine shame at the
treachery of his thoughts to the old man; she because she but bided her
time.

One day he accepted an invitation from the old French priest to pay a
visit to the Mission. He went away quietly one morning, and then wrote
to Baldwin.

"Ten miles is a good long way off," he thought. "I'll be all right in a
week or so--then I'll come back and be a fool no longer."

The priest liked the young man, and in his simple, hospitable way, made
much of him. On the evening of the third day, as they paced to and fro
on the path in the Mission garden, they saw Baldwin's boat sail up to
the beach.

"See," said the priest, with a smile, "M. Baldwin will not let me keep
you; and Loise comes with him. So, so, you must go, but you will come
again?" and he pressed the young Englishman's hand.

The sturdy figure of the old trader came up through the garden; Loise,
native fashion, walking behind him.

Knitting his heavy white eyebrows in mock anger he ordered Brice to the
boat, and then extending his hand to the priest--"I must take him back,
Father; the _Malolo_ sails to-morrow, and the skipper is coming ashore
to-night to dinner, to say good-bye; and, as you know, Father, I'm a
silly old man with the whisky bottle, and I'll get Mr. Brice to keep me
steady."

The tall, thin old priest raised his finger warningly and shook his head
at old Baldwin and then smiled.

"Ah, M. Baldwin, I am very much afraid that I will never make you to
understand that too much of the whisky is very bad for the head."

With a parting glass of wine they bade the good Father good-bye, and
then hoisting the sail, they stood across for Rikitea. The sun had
dipped, and the land-breeze stole softly down from the mountains and
sped the boat along. Baldwin was noisy and jocular; Brice silent and ill