gh sea boots, coming
half-way up his thighs. I recognised him at a glance as being the same
man who had been left on the wreck the night before.

"Hullo!" I said, in an aggrieved voice. "You got ashore all right,
then?"

"Yes," he answered, in good English. "It was no doing of mine. The waves
threw me up. I wish to God I had been allowed to drown!"

There was a slight foreign lisp in his accent which was rather pleasing.
"Two good fishermen, who live round yonder point, pulled me out and
cared for me; yet I could not honestly thank them for it."

"Ho! ho!" thought I, "here is a man of my own kidney. Why do you wish to
be drowned?" I asked.

"Because," he cried, throwing out his long arms with a passionate,
despairing gesture, "there--there in that blue smiling bay, lies my
soul, my treasure--everything that I loved and lived for."

"Well, well," I said. "People are ruined every day, but there's no use
making a fuss about it. Let me inform you that this ground on which
you walk is my ground, and that the sooner you take yourself off it the
better pleased I shall be. One of you is quite trouble enough."

"One of us?" he gasped.

"Yes--if you could take her off with you I should be still more
grateful."

He gazed at me for a moment as if hardly able to realise what I said,
and then with a wild cry he ran away from me with prodigious speed and
raced along the sands towards my house. Never before or since have
I seen a human being run so fast. I followed as rapidly as I could,
furious at this threatened invasion, but long before I reached the house
he had disappeared through the open door. I heard a great scream
from the inside, and as I came nearer the sound of a man's bass voice
speaking rapidly and loudly. When I looked in the girl, Sophie Ramusine,
was crouching in a corner, cowering away, with fear and loathing
expressed on her averted face and in every line of her shrinking form.
The other, with his dark eyes flashing, and his outstretched hands
quivering with emotion, was pouring forth a torrent of passionate
pleading words. He made a step forward to her as I entered, but she
writhed still further away, and uttered a sharp cry like that of a
rabbit when the weasel has him by the throat.

"Here!" I said, pulling him back from her. "This is a pretty to-do!
What do you mean? Do you think this is a wayside inn or place of public
accommodation?"

"Oh, sir," he said, "excuse me. This woman is my wife, and I fe