his
strong, slender fingers sent a thrill to her heart. She was stirred by
the magic of his nearness.

"Good . . . night," she whispered wonderingly. She longed to linger
there in the dusk with him, but--because of her desire--she turned and
ran up the steps to the cabin. . . .

Ten minutes later she stood in the twilight on the bank below the
cabin. The sea, the night, the world seemed to hold out loving arms to
her. A feeling tremulously new and enchanting had come to her. . . .
She tucked her violin beneath her chin and drew her bow softly across
the strings. This night she could play as she had never played before.
This night she must play.

The music floated up through the dusk with dreamy, questioning
sweetness. . . . Time slipped by. . . . At last she drifted into the
notes of her good-night. She felt that there was a special tenderness
in the chords from her long-drawn singing bow tonight. Lost in the
harmony of her own creating she hardly knew when the voice--his voice
from the hilltop, took up the strain. So softly was it done that she
was unsurprised. The words came down to her now clear, mellow,
thrillingly masculine, and--did she only imagine there was something
personal in them?

"In the West
Sable night lulls the day on her breast.
Sweet, good-night! . . . Love, good-night!"

CHAPTER XXIII

ELLEN

The days passed. They were growing noticeably shorter now and provisions
were getting low. The trail up the steep hillside behind the cabin
became hardened by the feet of the watchers alert for the hourly expected
arrival of the _Hoonah_. At the top which they all had come to call the
Lookout, every hour of the day found some one of the party anxiously
scanning the ocean toward Katleean.

Many cannery steamers and whalers on their way south were sighted, but
all gave the Island a wide berth. The hundred reefs of Kon Klayu had no
lure for sailors of the North Pacific.

Boreland, who never failed to patrol the beach daily, found one more
patch of ruby sand, which the three men rocked out. He weighed the gold
after the clean-up.

"This sand is richer than the other batch, El!" he exclaimed
enthusiastically.

For a moment Ellen eyed the yellow gleam of the dust without interest,
then she leaned over and dipped her fingers into the golden flakes,
letting them fall slowly back into the scales.

"Shane, Shane"--she turned away and patted his arm maternally--"you are
like