ill not even refer to any future settlement
of that question. The plan I present rests entirely upon my non-return."

"But if you do return?" persisted Edna.

The captain smiled and shook his head. "You must excuse me," he said,
"but I can say nothing about that."

She looked steadily at him for a few moments, and then she said: "Very
well, we will say nothing about it. As to the plan which has been
devised to give us, in case of accident to you, a sound claim to the
treasure which has been found here, and to a part of which I consider I
have a right, I consent to it. I do this believing that I should share
in the wonderful treasures in that cave. I have formed prospects for my
future which would make my life a thousand times better worth living
than I ever supposed it would be, and I do not wish to interfere with
those prospects. I want them to become realities. Therefore, I consent
to your proposition, and I will marry you upon a business basis, before
you leave."

"Your hand upon it," said the captain; and she gave him a hand so cold
that it chilled his own. "Now I will go talk to Maka and Cheditafa," he
said. "Of course, we understand that it may be of no advantage to have
this coal-black heathen act as officiating clergyman, but it can do no
harm, and we must take the chances. I have a good deal to do, and no time
to lose if I am to get away on the flood-tide this afternoon. Will it
suit you if I get everything ready to start, and we then have the
ceremony?"

"Oh, certainly," replied Edna. "Any spare moment will suit me."

When he had gone, Edna Markham sat down on the rock again. With her hands
clasped in her lap, she gazed at the sand at her feet.

"Without a minute to think of it," she said to herself,
presently,--"without any consideration at all. And now it is done! It
was not like me. I do not know myself. But yes!" she exclaimed, speaking
so that any one near might have heard her, "I do know myself. I said it
because I was afraid, if I did not say it then, I should never be able
to say it."

If Captain Horn could have seen her then, a misty light, which no man can
mistake, shining in her eyes as she gazed out over everything into
nothing, he might not have been able to confine his proposition to a
strictly business basis.

She sat a little longer, and then she hurried away to finish the work on
which she had been engaged; but when Mrs. Cliff came to look for her, she
did not find her packing provi