hen you weren't
here?"

"Then how did ye expect me to know what orders ye'd given?" Mr. Blood's
tone was positively aggrieved. "All that I knew was that one of your
slaves was being murthered by the sun and the flies. And I says to
myself, this is one of the Colonel's slaves, and I'm the Colonel's
doctor, and sure it's my duty to be looking after the Colonel's
property. So I just gave the fellow a spoonful of water and covered his
back from the sun. And wasn't I right now?"

"Right?" The Colonel was almost speechless.

"Be easy, now, be easy!" Mr. Blood implored him. "It's an apoplexy ye'll
be contacting if ye give way to heat like this."

The planter thrust him aside with an imprecation, and stepping forward
tore the palmetto leaf from the prisoner's back.

"In the name of humanity, now...." Mr. Blood was beginning.

The Colonel swung upon him furiously. "Out of this!" he commanded. "And
don't come near him again until I send for you, unless you want to be
served in the same way."

He was terrific in his menace, in his bulk, and in the power of him. But
Mr. Blood never flinched. It came to the Colonel, as he found himself
steadily regarded by those light-blue eyes that looked so arrestingly
odd in that tawny face--like pale sapphires set in copper--that this
rogue had for some time now been growing presumptuous. It was a matter
that he must presently correct. Meanwhile Mr. Blood was speaking again,
his tone quietly insistent.

"In the name of humanity," he repeated, "ye'll allow me to do what I can
to ease his sufferings, or I swear to you that I'll forsake at once the
duties of a doctor, and that it's devil another patient will I attend in
this unhealthy island at all."

For an instant the Colonel was too amazed to speak. Then--

"By God!" he roared. "D'ye dare take that tone with me, you dog? D'ye
dare to make terms with me?"

"I do that." The unflinching blue eyes looked squarely into the
Colonel's, and there was a devil peeping out of them, the devil of
recklessness that is born of despair.

Colonel Bishop considered him for a long moment in silence. "I've been
too soft with you," he said at last. "But that's to be mended." And he
tightened his lips. "I'll have the rods to you, until there's not an
inch of skin left on your dirty back."

"Will ye so? And what would Governor Steed do, then?"

"Ye're not the only doctor on the island."

Mr. Blood actually laughed. "And will ye tell that to his exce