glad! We were beginning to despair--mamma and
I."

Dawes snatched her from the ground, and bursting into a joyous laugh,
swung her into the air. "Tell me," he cried, holding up the child with
two dripping arms above him, "what you will do for me if I bring you and
mamma safe home again?"

"Give you a free pardon," says Sylvia, "and papa shall make you his
servant!" Frere burst out laughing at this reply, and Dawes, with a
choking sensation in his throat, put the child upon the ground and
walked away.

This was in truth all he could hope for. All his scheming, all his
courage, all his peril, would but result in the patronage of a great man
like Major Vickers. His heart, big with love, with self-denial, and with
hopes of a fair future, would have this flattering unction laid to it.
He had performed a prodigy of skill and daring, and for his reward he
was to be made a servant to the creatures he had protected. Yet what
more could a convict expect? Sylvia saw how deeply her unconscious hand
had driven the iron, and ran up to the man she had wounded. "And, Mr.
Dawes, remember that I shall love you always." The convict, however, his
momentary excitement over, motioned her away; and she saw him stretch
himself wearily under the shadow of a rock.

CHAPTER XV. THE CORACLE.

In the morning, however, Rufus Dawes was first at work, and made no
allusion to the scene of the previous evening. He had already skinned
one of the goats, and he directed Frere to set to work upon another.
"Cut down the rump to the hock, and down the brisket to the knee," he
said. "I want the hides as square as possible." By dint of hard work
they got the four goats skinned, and the entrails cleaned ready for
twisting, by breakfast time; and having broiled some of the flesh, made
a hearty meal. Mrs. Vickers being no better, Dawes went to see her, and
seemed to have made friends again with Sylvia, for he came out of the
hut with the child's hand in his. Frere, who was cutting the meat in
long strips to dry in the sun, saw this, and it added fresh fuel to the
fire in his unreasonable envy and jealousy. However, he said nothing,
for his enemy had not yet shown him how the boat was to be made. Before
midday, however, he was a partner in the secret, which, after all, was a
very simple one.

Rufus Dawes took two of the straightest and most tapered of the
celery-top pines which Frere had cut on the previous day, and lashed
them tightly together, w