r for a moment, and then she answered quietly, "Oh, yes,
it was a fine thing, no matter what happens. If he does not come back, I
shall make a bold stroke for widowhood; and if he does come back, he is
bound, after all this, to give me a good share of that treasure. So, you
see, we have done the best we can do to be rich and happy, if we are not
so unlucky as to perish among these rocks and sand."

"She is almost as horrible as Ralph," thought Mrs. Cliff, "but she will
get over it."

CHAPTER XVIII

MRS. CLIFF IS AMAZED

After the captain set sail in his little boat, the party which he
left behind him lived on in an uneventful, uninteresting manner,
which, gradually, day by day, threw a shadow over the spirits of each
one of them.

Ralph, who always slept in the outer chamber of the caves, had been a
very faithful guardian of the captain's treasure. No one, not even
himself, had gone near it, and he never went up to the rocky promontory
on which he had raised his signal-pole without knowing that the two
negroes were at a distance from the caves, or within his sight.

For a day or two after the captain's departure Edna was very quiet, with
a fancy for going off by herself. But she soon threw off this dangerous
disposition, and took up her old profession of teacher, with Ralph as the
scholar, and mathematics as the study. They had no books nor even paper,
but the rules and principles of her specialty were fresh in her mind, and
with a pointed stick on a smooth stretch of sand diagrams were drawn and
problems worked out.

This occupation was a most excellent thing for Edna and her brother, but
it did not help Mrs. Cliff to endure with patience the weary days of
waiting. She had nothing to read, nothing to do, very often no one to
talk to, and she would probably have fallen into a state of nervous
melancholy had not Edna persuaded her to devote an hour or two each day
to missionary work with Mok and Cheditafa. This Mrs. Cliff cheerfully
undertook. She was a conscientious woman, and her methods of teaching
were peculiar. She had an earnest desire to do the greatest amount of
good with these poor, ignorant negroes, but, at the same time, she did
not wish to do injury to any one else. The conviction forced itself upon
her that if she absolutely converted Cheditafa from the errors of his
native religion, she might in some way invalidate the marriage ceremony
which he had performed.

"If he should truly come to be