to me, and it is so many years--so many years----"

"My dear," said the Commandant, gravely, as he handed her down, "you
honour me more than I can tell. All my life I shall remember that you
have so honoured me."

But it did not appear that she heard him. Letting go his hand, she
seated herself on the edge of the tombstone, and looked up at him with
eyes that, barely touched by the light from the window, seemed to him
strangely, almost pitifully childish--eyes of a child that had lost its
mother young.

"Her face was not changed, or a very little; far less than I feared.
She is beautiful, my own Ruth--beautiful as she is good."

"And happy?" he found himself asking.

"Happy and unhappy. Happy in her good man, in her children?--oh, yes.
But unhappy, just now, because they are unhappy and in trouble. There
was a gloom upon Eli Tregarthen's face, a look of pain----"

"Of anger, too, and of wonder mixed with it, I daresay. He has been hit
by a blow he does not understand."

"But we will help them."

The Commandant stared into the darkness. There was gloom, too, on his
face, had there been light enough to reveal it.

"The Lord Proprietor is a very obstinate man."

"Yes, yes; but I mean that we will help them to-night. I cannot bear to
think of Ruth carrying her trouble home and lying awake with it."

"Perhaps she will not." The Commandant remembered how he himself had
carried a burden to church that morning and left it there.

"Ah!" exclaimed Vashti, swiftly, guessing his thought, though not the
occasion of it. "That may do for you and me. For my part, I am not a
religious woman--I mean, not religious as I ought to be. Yet I
understand. Often and often when worried or out of temper I go to
church and sit there alone until peace of mind comes back to me. But I
have no husband, and you no wife; whereas with Ruth all her soul's
comfort is bound up in those she loves. While Eli Tregarthen wears that
look on his face, she can never go home happy."

"But have we power to lift it?"

"We will try, and to-night."

She stood up, cast one look behind her at the lighted window, and led
the way back along the path, through the gate, and down the knoll to
the beach. While she cast off the rope from its mooring-stone he eased
the boat off and launched her.

"Shall I take the paddles?" he asked.

No; Vashti would pull back as she had come; and as she pulled she
talked of Ruth, out of her full heart. He listened, betwee