ld have risked my life a hundred times over for
her. It was a rough night, and I kept seeing her pale, hunted-looking
face before me, though there was not half the danger I've often been in
round our islands. I couldn't keep myself from fancying we were all
going down to the bottom of the sea, and that poor young thing, running
away from one trouble, was going to meet a worse--if it is worse to die
than to live in great trouble. Dr. Martin, they tell me all the bed of
the sea out yonder under the Atlantic is a smooth, smooth floor, with no
currents, or tides, or streams, but a great calm; and there is no life
down there of any kind. Well, that night I seemed to see the dead who
have perished by sea lying there calm and quiet with their hands folded
across their breasts. A great company it was, and a great graveyard,
strewed over with sleeping shapes, all at rest and quiet, waiting till
they hear the trumpet of the archangel sounding so that even the dead
will hear and live again. It was a solemn sight to see, doctor. Somehow
I came to think it would not be altogether a bad thing for the poor
young troubled creature to go down there among them and be at rest.
There are some people who seem too tender and delicate for this world.
Yet if there had come a chance I'd have laid down my life for hers, even
then, when I knew nothing much about her."

"Tardif," I said, "I did not know what a good fellow you are, though I
ought to have known it by this time."

"No," he answered, "it is not in me; it's something in her. You feel
something of it yourself, doctor, or how could you stay in a poor little
house like this, thinking of nothing but her, and not caring about the
weather keeping you away from home? But let me go on. In the morning
she came on deck, and talked to me about the islands, and where she
could live cheaply, and it ended in her coming home here to lodge in our
little spare room. There was another curious thing--she had not any
luggage with her, not a box nor a bag of any kind. She never knew that I
knew, for that would have troubled her. It is my belief that she has run
away."

"But who can she have run away from, Tardif?" I asked.

"God knows," he answered, "but the girl has suffered; you can see that
by her face. Whoever or whatever she has run away from, her cheeks are
white from it, and her heart sorrowful. I know nothing of her secret;
but this I do know: she is as good, and true, and sweet a little soul as