nd ask from beneath a sunbonnet, 'What
are the wild waves saying?' while she stood barefoot beside you on the
beach?"

"Oh, yes, and chewed spruce gum at the same time," he responded, also
laughing.

"Even when you kissed her?" queried Ethel. "It must have lent a
delightfully aromatic flavor."

Winn made no answer to this pointed sally. Instead he stroked his
moustache musingly, while his thoughts flew back to Rockhaven and Mona.

Ethel eyed him keenly.

"Quit mooning," she said at last, "and come back to Erin. I do not
expect you to admit you kissed this fair fisher maid. It wouldn't be
gallant. But you can at least describe her. Is she dark or fair?"

"I haven't the least idea," he said, "she was so sweet and charming; her
eyes might have been sea-green for all I can tell."

"You evade fairly well," rejoined his tormentor, "but not over well. You
still need practice. Now tell me about this old fellow Jack described as
a 'barnacled curiosity.'"

"Oh, Jess Hutton," replied Winn, relieved; "he is a curiosity, and of
the salt of the earth. If there was any one I fell in love with on the
island, it was he."

"That was fairly well done," laughed Ethel; "you are improving and in
time may hope to deceive even me."

"Never," responded Winn, sarcastically; "you are too well skilled in the
fine art of dissembling. You almost persuaded me to-day that you were
really glad to see me, instead of anxious to find out all about
Rockhaven and its fisher maids."

"That is unkind," replied Ethel, in a hurt tone, "and you know it.
Didn't I write you a nice letter, and have I shown the least resentment
at your failure to answer it? Come now, be nice and like your old dear
self, you big bear. I don't care if you did fall in love with an island
girl. You certainly would have been stupid not to if there was one worth
it, and I respect you the more for protecting her. Your friend Nickerson
wouldn't."

And Winn, mollified by this occult flattery, came near admitting--Mona
and all the summer's illusion--for that was Winn Hardy's way. Only one
thing saved her name from passing his lips,--the fact that no answer had
come to his letter. He began to feel that none was likely to, and that
the summer's idyl was destined to be but a memory like to the sound of
church bells in his boyhood days.

Then, while his thoughts went back to the island and all it contained,
he told the story of his sojourn there, of Jess and his fiddle, of the
l