tted to a warm embrace.

"Oh, you darling!" repeated Letta; "where have you been? why did you go
away? I thought you were dead. Naughty thing!"

Recollecting Robin with a shock of self-reproach, she dropped the monkey
and ran to him.

"It is an old friend, I see," he said with a languid smile, as she came
up.

"Yes, yes; an old pet. I had lost him for a long time. But you're not
killed? Oh! I'm _so_ glad."

"Killed!" repeated Sam, who was down on his knees carefully examining
the patient; "I should think not. He's not even bruised--only stunned a
little. Where did you fall from, Robin--the tree top?"

"No; from the edge of the precipice."

"What! from the ledge sixty or seventy feet up there? Impossible! You
would certainly have been killed if you had fallen from that."

"So I certainly should," returned Robin, "if God had not in his mercy
grown trees and shrubs there, expressly, among other purposes, to save
me."

In this reply Robin's mind was running on previous conversations which
he had had with his friend on predestination.

The idea of shrubs and trees having been expressly grown on an island of
the Southern Seas to save an English boy, seemed doubtful to Sam. He
did not, however, express his doubts at the time, but reserved the
subject for a future "theological discussion."

Meanwhile, Slagg, Stumps, and Johnson, having spread some palm branches
on a couple of stout poles, laid our hero thereon, and bore him in
safety to the pirates' cave, where, for several days, he lay on one of
the luxurious couches, tenderly nursed by Letta and the old woman, who,
although she still pathetically maintained that the "roberts an pyrits
wasn't all so bad as each oder," was quite willing to admit that her
present visitors were preferable, and that, upon the whole, she was
rather fond of them.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

VARIOUS SUBJECTS TREATED OF, AND A GREAT FIGHT DETAILED.

It was the habit of Robin and his friends at this time, the weather
being extremely fine and cool, to sit at the mouth of their cavern of an
evening, chatting about the events of the day, or the prospects of the
future, or the experiences of the past, while old Meerta busied herself
preparing supper over a fire kindled on the ground.

No subject was avoided on these occasions, because the friends were
harmoniously minded, in addition to which the sweet influences of
mingled star-light and fire-light, soft air, and lovely prospect of