e watchers at the window. In less than ten minutes it
was over; she had passed the line of breakers, and was in the
comparatively smooth water of the bay, heading fast for the shore
under leeway of the great wall of towering rocks, at the foot of which
she seemed dwarfed almost into the semblance of a boy's toy vessel.
Within a quarter of a mile from the shore, she anchored, and a boat
was let down from her side.

A new lease of life seemed to have come to the man on the bed. The
morning sun had half emerged from a bank of angry purple-coloured
clouds, and its faint slanting beams lay across the white coverlet of
the bed, and upon his face. His eyes were bright and eager, and the
death-like pallor seemed to have passed from his features. His voice,
too, was firm and distinct.

"Place my despatch-box upon the table here, Gomez," he ordered.

Gomez left his seat by the window, and, opening a portmanteau, brought
a small black box to the bedside. His master passed his hand over it,
and drew it underneath the coverlet.

"I am prepared," he murmured, half to himself. "Father, according to
the physician's reckoning, how long have I to live?"

"Barely an hour," answered the priest, without removing his eyes from
the boat, whose progress he seemed to be scanning steadfastly. "Is
your eternal future of so little moment to you," he went on in a tone
of harsh severity, "that you can give your last thoughts, your last
few moments, to affairs of this world? 'Tis an unholy death! Take this
cross in your hands, and listen not to those whose coming will surely
estrange you from heaven. Let the world take its own course, but lift
your eyes and heart in prayer! Everlasting salvation, or everlasting
doom, awaits you before yonder sun be set!"

"I have no fear, Father," was the quiet reply. "What is, is; a few
frantic prayers now could alter nothing, and, besides, my work on
earth is not yet over. Speak to me no more of the end! Nothing that
you or I could do now would bring me one step nearer heaven. Gomez,
your eyes are good! Whom do you see in the boat?"

Gomez answered without turning round from the window, "Mr. Paul is
there, sir, steering!"

"Thank God!"

"There are others with him, sir!"

"Others! Who?"

"Strangers to me, sir. There is a man, a gentleman by his dress and
appearance, and a child--a girl, I think. Two sailors from the yacht
are rowing."

The dying man knitted his brows, and his fingers convulsively clu