ard at a considerable
distance.

"They be a bad lot, the rats--a bad, destructive lot," said the old man
solemnly. "I wonder why such vermin was made. You'd never believe the
number of fish and young wild-ducks, and game of different sorts, which
are eaten up every season by them slippery rascals."

CHAPTER XVIII

_THE ISLAND_

"What hath life been? What will it be?
How have I lived without thee? How
Is life both lost and found in thee?
Feel'st thou For ever in this Now?"
--OWEN MEREDITH.

People were coming down to the river when the boat touched the bank
again; there was a large group gathered at the landing-place. Two men
started forward to help Miss Kilner to step on shore.

Elsie's good angel must surely have taken wing at that moment. With a
bright smile, and a sudden flashing look from her dark eyes, she gave
her hand to Francis Ryan, and then, chancing to make a false step, she
nearly fell into his arms.

He was charmed, puzzled, delighted. Brown eyes sometimes say more than
they mean, and Elsie never knew how much seemed to be conveyed in that
flashing look. Had she awakened all at once to the knowledge that
Francis (with a very little encouragement) was willing to lay himself
and all his worldly goods at her feet?

Arnold Wayne was puzzled too, and a sharp pain smote him to the heart.

Was this the woman who had spoken to him in the little London room, with
a voice like that of an angel? Then they had seemed to stand on the
threshold of a beautiful life to be. There had been the unuttered
consciousness of a comfort that each could give--a feeling of need and
longing that each could fill.

And that golden hour had gone by. She was only a flirt, after all; more
clever and more refined than the other flirts he had known, but just as
unreal and unscrupulous as the rest.

She did not know what she had done. It seems to be a long way down from
the mountain-top to the common earth at its base; but a woman can
accomplish the descent in a moment.

She was very beautiful, certainly; he had not discovered until this
instant what a power of witchery lurked in those dark eyes. He had gazed
into their brown depths as a man who looks deep into a crystal pool,
thinking that he sees all that is there.

She had not looked at him when she rejected his aid and sprang out with
the help of Francis. She did not look at him when she turned and took
Jamie by the