The Beloved Pawn (Everybody's Magazine 1922-23)

 Extracted from the serial in Everybody's magazine, November 1922 to February 1923, pp. 05-31, etc. Accompanying illustrations by Stockton Mulford may be omitted. Note that the Parts are not marked; headings have been added for convenience in navigation. See Discussion page for some background information by the author.

THE
BELOVED PAWN

A New Serial by the Author of “Foraker's Folly"

A Robust Novel of Action Set in a district—the Great Lakes—Which Has Been Made by Vigor of Brain and Muscle. The Chief Ingredients Are Adventure and Wholesome Heart-Interest—a Combination That Wins

By Harold Titus

PART I

THE Beaver Islands lie crouched in the vigorous blue of Lake Michigan not far from where this inland sea surrenders its flow to the Straits of Mackinac. There are nine in all, ranging from Beaver Island itself, which is a dozen miles long by half as many at its greatest width, down to a boulder hummock showing above the shoals and designated on charts as Hat Island. To the westward of Beaver lies High Island, and beyond it little Gull. North and east from High, Trout, Whiskey and Squaw Islands punctuate an eight-mile line which brings the last named to the northward of the entire group. On the other flank—aside from tiny Hat—lies Hog Island in its big area of bright shallow water, and in the center of the group, the very heart of this archipelago, rests Garden Island, with its green forest, its safe harbor, its people.

To the northward, lean freighters ply from the straits for Poverty Island, Death's Door or other passages, Milwaukee or other ports above; to the eastward, luxurious passenger-vessels steam down past Skillagalee light toward Grand Traverse Bay, the Manitous, the east-shore cities and Chicago. All about and within sight of the Beavers is the come and go of to-day, and yet they are untouched by it. Their fish go out to feed cities; their sons go out to man ships, but little of the outer world reaches the islands, and their people fight the lake and the weather and the luck of fishermen, as their fathers did before them.

It was so in the beginning, when those intrepid French explorers saw the great uninhabited island sprawling there in uncharted water, a score of miles and more from the untraveled mainland, with a hook like a flat tail making a harbor at its lower end, and named it Isle de Castor. They were the first whites to set foot there likely. What they did is forgotten, and even the isolated name they gave has now been Anglicized. Then, generations later, came King Strang with his Mormon followers, and dominated and persecuted and died violently where gentle ripples lap the shining beach round which now stretches the village of St. James. The Irish followed and fought the dead Strang's influence and stamped it out and established themselves and their culture; they still persist. Other sects than the Mormons have thrived and perished in the isolation of the group. The native Indian still transports his dead across many miles of water to insure unbroken rest in the quiet of the islands. Strange men have sought the goodly seclusion offered. Lore has endured; fictions have become fact; generation has given way to generation without developing the impulse to change the Beavers. And King Norman has ruled on Garden Island.

When that other man who called himself a king came here, it was with a measure of pomp and dignity. He had followers; he had the driving purpose of religious fanaticism, but when King Norman came, it was without the fervor of a pilgrim seeking new soil for his faith and deeds, without a follower except the shy little girl with the great blue eyes and blue-black hair, her face whitened by infancy spent in a convent school, and the sooty-faced ruffian in the fire-hole of the rickety tug which Eldred wheeled out of the straits himself—for that was all men called him when he came: Norman Eldred.

It was spring, with the net-stakes just going in when he appeared. They saw him come into Beaver Harbor, pass the light, skirt the docks, standing on the stem with hands clasped lightly behind his back, head bowed and shoulders sagged a trifle, as though the head, so held, were a great weight for them. The girl, Eve, was at the wheel, and she peered out at St James almost as though it might be a hostile village. They swung past the last dock and went back into the lake, discarding the only settlement on all the islands as a stopping-place. Eldred explored the remainder of the group and finally dropped his anchor in Indian Harbor and went ashore on Garden Island, where no whites lived and where the Indians were few and scattered.

A log house stood close to the beach in not bad repair, and Eldred and his red-haired helper, Dimmock, made this habitable. Net-reels went up, and within a week he was established with a suggestion of permanence, had twine set and was lifting. He was ragged; the child's face was pinched with privation; his tug was hardly seaworthy—a tramp fisherman, but there was that about him in his silences, the strength of his great body, his alternate quickness and deliberation which made men know he would not fail.

He did not fail anywhere, unless one considers his relations with other men and believes that respect and friendship are desired possessions. The next spring found him with another boat and more luck, and his fortune with fishing held until his fleet numbered six, and thirty men lived in the slab shacks he built behind his net-reels. These men were called the scum of the lakes, and they were no more than just that—hard men only would work for King Norman, and that seemed to feed his strange pride; he wanted only hard and rough men.

He built the big white house where he lived with his daughter; he handled fish for the few Indians and built a store where they and his men traded; he made his harbor a shipping-point and was not dependent on any other port.

He was a friend to no one. In the first place, his manner of speech and action were different, lifting him above usual men and making a barrier against acquaintances. When a few tried to penetrate his strangeness and reserve, they were repulsed ungently, and that made Eldred singular; but it was when Jode MacKinnon came across from Big Bay de Noc to fish the waters off the island, and seemed for a time to get along with the newcomer only to meet with tragedy, that men realized there was something horrible about this man. Most of them shunned him, and those who tried to cross him only encountered disaster, and before long it was recognized that the only way to maintain peace was to allow Eldred his way.

The good priest then at St. James, reading casually in a book on genealogy, came across the name of Eldred. It is Anglo-Saxon and means “the Terrible.” “He is well named,” the father said, and men echoed that. Eldred the Terrible! He was no less, surely.

AND all this time the girl was growing. The pinched look left her face; she developed into a slender, erect, wonderful young woman, her eyes the color of the lake on a June morning, her soft skin mellowed by clean winds, her hair as black—as her father's heart, men said. She kept much to herself and always she went with her father on his rare trips to St. James or CHarlevoix or into the straits, and then she was stared at curiously. She was King Norman's daughter and that would have been enough without the stories—even the story of what she helped do to Jode MacKinnon.

There was love in Eldred for the girl, a fierce passion showing when he let his gaze linger on her face and seeming more in evidence when others were about who also looked at her. It was the hunger of his heart reflecting itself in his eyes—hunger and jealousy.

Yes; jealousy was there, and well proven. Eve was beginning to mature when Eldred brought from far down the state a spinster school-teacher to keep his house and go on with the girl's education. Eve took to the lessons with that eagerness which is the first creation of monotony, and it was only a few days before she found in the woman herself at least as great an interest. Then, without explanation, the woman was sent away, and Anna John, a paunchy squaw, was brought in to keep the house.

Stories of the girl became part of the Eldred tradition. To her, Eldred had given the responsibility of the store, and it was there, with just the counter between them, that she had her only contacts with the men of the crew. Otherwise, they kept away from her because, whenever a new man came to work, Eldred gave him but one instruction: “You will talk to my family only when spoken to. Dimmock will give you other orders.” But when they did meet Eve in the store, she showed hostility, a coldness, a superior indifference. With a girl of her beauty on the one hand and men such as they on the other, there could not help being danger, and it was to forestall this that Eldred made the rule which gave men no opportunity to be sly. An indiscreet word, even an uncautious look, and punishment was forthcoming. Such punishment! Those beatings which Eldred had given men were tales to tell, indeed. For her attitude of being of better clay, and because the urge which she touched in all men only meant danger, she was disliked, ridiculed foully when men were in safe company, and made the central figure of many an astonishing yarn.

Some of these stories told about Eve had the background of probability and the evidence of witnesses; many others were vague, conflicting tales of harshness and cruelty. But regardless of their intrinsic worth, they were remembered and retold and passed on until King Norman's daughter became an outstanding figure, to be shunned as her father was shunned; and if this had not been so, if people had been skeptical of the things that were said of her, they would have ceased much of their doubtings when the story seeped over the lake that she, as a little girl, had had a part in the thing which happened to Jode MacKinnon. It was likely, if one accepted the character which Eldred's men gave to Eve, and it dovetailed with the story that Jode's helper left behind him when he fled from Garden Island and to the mainland, to get as far away as he could from the spirit he had seen flaming in Eldred's eyes that night on the beach, with the surf roaring in across the reef and wreckage coming ashore.

And so King Norman ruled, sufficient unto himself, with the commerce of an every-day world slipping past his dominion, amassing wealth, making his position more secure, the great passion for the girl growing with the years, standing now and again on the decks of his tugs as they passed the lake ships, the broad brim of his black, round-crowned hat blown back, hands clasped lightly behind him, head forward—truly a kingly figure, powerful, aloof, unchallenged. And Eve became a woman, knowing only Garden Island and its life—her father, who was called a king, and the men of his crew, who were called the scum of the lakes.

THE time was early May, but there was little spring in the gale which rushed down from the northwest, sending great gray seas heaving across Lake Michigan, clipping their dingy crests and bearing the spray along in a scud to mingle with the falling snow and make the weather thick as night. It wailed through the naked trees of Garden Island and swept on into the murk beyond with a steady, hungry roar—the hunting-cry of savage weather.

Smoke poured from the chimneys of the shacks where the crew smoked about stoves to keep off the chill. The beach was deserted, and Eldred's fleet, tied nose to stem along the wharf before his long net-house, seemed to snuggle close, as though conscious of their luck in being there, safe.

It was no day for craft or men to stir, but craft were on the lake, and there was at least one on Garden Island who had braved the weather.

EVE ELDRED crouched in the shelter of balsams that grew on the beach beyond the buildings, protected from the cold by a flaming red Mackinaw jacket, gray skirt and laced boots. On her head was a yellow oilskin hat, its strap fitted snugly beneath her chin. Beside her, a gaunt mongrel dog squatted on his haunches, ears erect, bright eyes fast on the harbor entrance. The girl spoke excitedly.

“Another boat. Friend! They can't make it; they've got to get shelter.”

She watched the distressed gasoline-boat that lurched into sight, rolling heavily while it nosed its way into the channel and straightened out for the run across the reef.

“That's the supply-boat from the light,” she said, as though the dog could understand. “They've been to St. James and can't get back.”

She watched the boat come into the quiet water of the harbor and make for the dock, and then she sank back to her heels with some of the enthusiasm gone from her face.

“Maybe the keeper's wife's aboard. I'd like to talk to a woman again,” she said dully. “There's Gam Gallagher out there”—looking toward a fishing-boat that now swung at anchor, after having put in with its motor working erratically. “He couldn't get home. That's the only reason he came here. That's the only reason anybody comes. He looks nice, too.”

She rose to her feet with a sigh and shoved a loose strand of hair back under the hat, then parted the branches that concealed her and looked up toward the big white house. There was in her face a childish quality, a gentleness and a timidity that would have made one who had listened to the stories about her pause and consider.

A voice whipped past her on the gale, and the sounds of heavy feet. She crouched again quickly, a hand on the dog's neck, and remained so until the men had entered the nearest shack, when she relaxed slowly and stood up, watching the harbor where people were—people she did not know and would like to talk to.

She had always wanted to know about people, but ever since she could well remember there had been barriers to that; besides, there had been so few opportunities that the longing for new friends which had once been high in her heart had lost much of its reality. Her experience in the convent had been strange and rigid and unreal; impulses which were inherent had been repressed, and she had looked on her departure from the place with her father as liberation. She had been patient, and her patience had been rewarded by the coming of Jode MacKinnon, and that luxury had ended with such a shock. Then more waiting and wondering and wanting; and the school-teacher had arrived and been sent away before the girl could wholly comprehend that this delight of companionship was hers. Thereafter she settled to the waiting again, and occasionally questioned her father, for her patience was not as steady as it was once; but he gave her no satisfaction—just talked vaguely about people who were envious and inferior.

The impulse to keep away from the men who worked on the island was a newer thing than this loneliness. When she was a little girl, it had been her father's warnings that had kept her to herself, but after she developed and passed that divide which brought her into womanhood, she needed no warning other than that in her heart. She had to meet them in the store, and that was all her courage could bear.

Perhaps there was little danger from most of them, but her distrust of all men had grown lately.

Particularly of one, a Frenchman, Jean Mosseau. He had never spoken to her except when he bought things in the store, but he watched—watched so steadily and so knowingly, as though his eyes were saying things which she did not understand. He would loaf in the shadows of the store and keep his bright eyes on her until she felt chills up her back and flushes in her cheeks. When she walked near the beach where he was at work, she could feel him looking, looking after her; even when she was with her father and Mosseau was within sight, she could sense that his eyes were on her face when Eldred was not watching. The Frenchman had been in the woods lately getting out stakes for the nets, and Eve, had kept near the house because of it, but now his task was about through, she knew, and soon she would feel free to go back there through the forest. That would help, for it was spring and things were growing. Anyhow, she told herself now, perhaps Mosseau was no more dangerous than any other; surely he had never transgressed——

The dog beside her whined and stiffened.

“What's— Oh, another boat!”

A thrill was back in her voice, and her eyes were animated as she stepped clear of the trees to see a hooker wallowing in through the buoys like a thing in conscious agony. It was a small schooner, flying a jib only, and with the tattered remnants of a foresail snapping from the gaff. She was heeled low under that rag, and, in her fresh white paint, she looked like a ghost ship coming from the grayness of fading daylight, now touched by a faint luminosity—a ghost, but a jaunty ghost, for her rs had a fine rake and the tilt of her slender bowsprit was nothing less than saucy.

ON THE deck was a lone figure clinging to the wheel, bowed over as though fighting against sickness. The man moved sluggishly; the jaunty clipper bow, splitting the sullen water of the harbor, swung up; the spars lost some of their pitch, and she lode on even keel into the shelter.

The canvas flapped as the man let go lines and stumbled forward. He nearly fell, but caught at the shrouds and kept on to the bow, where a kedge-anchor lay. It required great, awkward efforts for him to get it to the rail, but he succeeded and let it go, and the chain ran out with a sound lost in the hubbub of weather. The hook bit the bottom; the slack went out of the cable; the hooker stopped short with a dip of her nose and a slatting of the jib, and the man, bulky in oilskins, worked with the halyards. The sail came down jerkily and lay untidily in the bow, flopping like a wounded wing. The man bent over, made a momentary effort to furl and pitched forward to the deck.

An inarticulate exclamation broke from the girl's parted lips. The man lay where he had fallen, moving slowly in a struggle to regain his feet.

“Friend, he brought her in alone, and out of that,” the girl said. “Why, he may be hurt; he may need—” She checked herself, irresolute; then, with a jerk of the head and a quick look about, she said, with something like doggedness in her tone, “Well, somebody's got to go.”

She trotted swiftly along the beach to where a yawl was drawn up, shoved it off and stood in the stem and sculled deftly toward the hooker, while Friend, his paws on the gunwale, watched the man who had fallen crawl slowly aft, laboriously open the scuttle of the cabin companionway and half slide, half fall from view.

At that, the girl stopped sculling and looked back at the beach. No figure stirred, and in the lighted window of the big house she could see her father's shadow. She again made that somehow defiant movement of her head, sent her boat alongside the hooker, made the painter fast and scrambled aboard.

On deck she stood still a moment, listening. No sound but the yelp of the wind in the rigging and the heavy flop of the neglected sail. She went to the open companionway.

“Down there!” she called, and waited. “Are you all right?”

No reply for a moment; then a stir and an incoherent mumbling. She moved as if to step to the ladder, hesitated and then, as a half-choked moan came upward, slipped down the narrow steps. Everything was dark, but when she stood still, she could sense a figure stirring near her feet.

“Are you hurt?” she asked again.

Then a man's voice, strained and weak:

“No. Strike this match—will you?”

She felt a hand waving uncertainly before her and grasped it. The flesh was stiff and wet and very cold, but in the fingers was a bunch of matches. She struck one and held it high. His sou'wester was off, and she had a flash of a white face, half-closed eyes, a mouth that drooped with exhaustion. He was propped against a bunk and was trying to smile as he struggled to get up. The indecision which had been on the girl from the time she came aboard vanished. This man could hurt no one.

A lamp hung in gimbals at Eve's shoulder, and she lighted it, heart hammering, then looked down at the man again as he floundered to his feet and sank back on the bunk. She had seen men come off the lake before with their vitality sapped by wind and cold. She knew what it meant, and looked about quickly. A tiny galley-stove was there, with kindling in a box.

“Stay there,” she said. “I'll fix you up. It's quicker than taking you ashore.” But her tone on that last implied that, under no circumstances, would she have taken him ashore.

She dropped to her knees, struck the match and leaned low. Her young face was very earnest as she waited for the wood to ignite. A tendril of flame crept up and wavered and caught and grew, shooting a warm glow into her face, and with a whiff of satisfaction she closed the door, leaned back and looked at the man.

He was staring at her with a dull sort of wonder, an expression which, without the cloud of half-consciousness, might have been amazement. When she moved, that passed, and his head drooped.

“Much obliged,” he muttered.

He could not help himself, so she fumbled at the snaps of his oilskin and opened it.

“Can you take it off?” He nodded and grunted and tried and failed. She seized the sleeve and pulled it from his arm, saying: “You can't do anything; you're all gone— Why, you're wet! You've been overboard!”

“Overboard,” he muttered. “Damned cold!” Speech and movement, though they drew on his strength, seemed to clear the man's faculties. “Lucky you're here. Lay hold those boots, will you? Can't bend to 'em. Then put on some coffee—if you will——”

Eve dropped to her knees and tugged at the boots, which spilled water across the floor as they came off, and then she turned to the cupboard behind the tiny stove, found the pot hanging there and coffee on a shelf.

“Obliged,” he murmured, running a hand through his light hair and watching her as though he wanted to force the stiff flesh of his face into a smile. “I'll get along—now——”

The girl hesitated.

“You're pretty weak. You— I'll stand by on deck until you get changed.”

She slipped up the ladder and walked to the rail, watching the shore while Friend nosed her hand. Figures were moving in her father's house, and she frowned.

Soon she heard his voice:

“On deck, there! All right!”

She went below, leaving the dog at the top of the ladder, and found him barefooted but in dry shirt and trousers, hunched over the stove, shivering. He turned his face and smiled this time, and shuddered again as the chill which lake water had put in his bones convulsed him.

Eve loosened her jacket, for the place had warmed very quickly, and watched the man as he rubbed his forehead. He was like his cabin—neat and compact. He was young. His shoulders were broad; his hands and feet were large and competent. He had youth and vitality.

“Were you alone?” she asked.

“Alone—thank God!”

“And where did you come from a day like this?”

“Somewhere west of lee.” He laughed feebly.

“You mean you lost your bearings?”

“That's it—lost. Everything all right above?” he asked.

“All snug; you did it.”

He made a sound that was like a laugh.

“I didn't know. I didn't remember. I thought the Annabelle was all through. Saw some buoys—an' a boat standin' in. My head wouldn't work—not much.”

He rubbed the palm across his eyes unsteadily. For a time, silence. He shivered again and hugged his body with his strong arms, crouching closer to the warmth. The coffee boiled over with a sharp hiss, and Eve, snatching it up, poured a thick cup full of the scorching drink.

“Obliged—thanks! Ah, that chases the cold!” He held the cup in his two hands and sipped it noisily. Until it was half gone—and he drank very slowly—no further words were spoken.

FINALLY the man began to talk, gaze unfocused before him, a grim smile on his lips.

“Whisky and water—they won't mix; not a lot of whisky an' a—lakeful of water. A man's a fool to try it.” He laughed shortly and drank again. “Last thing I remember last night was tryin' to stay sober enough to get gas before I pulled out of Escanala. Handle her anywhere alone with the kicker. Next thing, I was outside Poverty Island passage with the tank dry an' a squall bustin' out of the no'thwest with me alone to get canvas on her.”

He twisted his head seriously.

“Kind God, how it blew! Me workin' alone with foam comin' aboard so's you could hardly see the length of her. I did it, though! Got her under way an' then didn't dare try to get back into a lee because it was snowin' so hard. Headed for Beaver Island, thinkin' I could get across with it on my quarter, all right. Thought the wind 'd hauled after the squall settled to a blow, an' didn't find out till the fo'sail blew out that I'd dropped my clasp-knife under the compass-box an' threw her off a half-dozen points. Sailed that way Lord knows how long!”

He drank again and rubbed his head and laughed.

“That was when I went overboard, after th' fo'sail went into ribbons. Lord—can feel it yet! Squeezes breath out of you like you'd squeeze the life out of a frog. Lucky day, though. Line hangin' over the rail; caught it with one hand an' got back——

“Cold? Never knew what the word meant before! Wind and snow. Seemed I'd sailed for weeks. Couldn't think; could only keep goin'. Seas broke up once, an' knew I was in shoal water, but couldn't help myself. Then, after I hadn't seen anything but that rag of a jib for years, she lift a bit an' I saw a boat headin' in here, away off. Just a glimpse, just a second, but it was a good bet, so I come on an' picked up some buoys—an' here I am!”

He emptied his cup and held it out for more. Eve poured it out, and as she put the pot back on the stove-edge, a scratch and whining came from above.

“My dog,” she explained. “Be still, Friend!”

This quieted the dog, and when she looked at the man, his eyes, fighting off the fog in them, were on her and he was smiling slightly.

“Funny name for a dog. Friend.”

“He's the only one I've got.” She smiled, too, but there was no lightness in her voice.

“That so? You deserve a lot of 'em.”

His manner was reassuring, and the girl, in whose face had appeared a flash of caution, flushed and looked away.

“An hour ago-out there, thinkin' I'd be all done any minute; an' now—snug, with a nice girl to help me.” The dog scratched at the scuttle again. “Must be nice to be your friend—an' follow you round.”

That was not boldness—would not have been, Eve was sure, had he possessed all his strength. Her face lighted quickly, but shyness came, and when the man reached for the coffee-pot himself, she turned toward the ladder with something of the same alarm which had come upon her when she heard the men passing her vantage-point on the beach. Then the man looked at her over the cup's rim, and she was struck again by something in his eyes which thrilled her as only the stirring of old and pleasant memories can thrill. Her gaze fell off and deeper color came into her cheeks.

“Goin'?” he asked.

“Yes. It's late and—you're all right.”

“To-morrow—say, to-morrow, maybe you'll let me say how obliged I am.”

“Perhaps,” said a bit breathlessly, and started up the ladder, impelled to run—not from fright, from stimulus.

Friend pounced on her, and she put him away and turned as the man hailed her again.

“Say, what place is this? Where'd the lake throw me?”

She looked down.

“Why, didn't you know? This is Garden Island.”

“Garden Island!” she heard him mutter. “You mean this is—Eldred's harbor?”

“Of course. Ours is the only harbor here.”

“And you? Who are you?”

“Why, I'm Eve Eldred.”

She loosed her painter, dropped into the yawl and sculled away. To-morrow! He wanted to thank her to-morrow!

THE cup from which the man had been drinking went from his hand. It did not drop. Had it dropped, it would not have broken, for it was very heavy. Instead, it crashed to bits under the stove, clear across the cabin. His breath sucked in audibly and came out again in a sound of disgust.

“Hell! Tossed in here! An' her hands help me!"

He grimaced, as though the drink the girl had made for him was bitter on his tongue.

THE lighthouse supply-boat, which had attempted to run from St. James back to its station on Squaw Island only to be driven into Indian Harbor by the blow, carried two people, a man and a woman. The man was Ned Borden, keeper of the light, and the woman was his wife, Jenny, who had a rating of second assistant keeper in the service. It was their first trip back to St. James after the opening of the light a month before.

Borden had stood by the motor while they ran across the reef, and the woman, though her hands gripped the spokes of the wheel firmly enough, had seemed less concerned with her course than with what might be revealed once they gained their shelter. She swung the boat in a wide circle for the dock and brought it alongside with a bump and a list, for her eyes had scanned beach and buildings closely as though on the watch for some definite thing at the cost of a handy landing.

Borden entered the house after putting out the lines and eyed the pile of boxes abaft the motor.

“Plenty to eat, shelter from the weather, mail to read—we're as snug as a bug in a—spider's web,” he said drolly. His wife was still gazing shoreward. “It's an evil place; but you're not going to worry, are you, Jenny?”

“Worry!” she burst out in a large, gruff voice. “Blistering Moses. It'd take a flock of black devils like this one to make me lose any sleep. I'm just curious about that girl.”

Borden took up a lantern.

“She must be a queer one,” he said, as he struck a match. “Seems like everybody hates her without any reason, unless just because she's Eldred's daughter. 'Course, there's that story about her and the beacons, and that's— Sounds far fetched to me; but all the others they tell seem to be moonshine. There's a lot of wickedness in the world for sure, but when people tell stories such as they tell about this girl. I'm always a doubter.”

He put the burnt match carefully in his pocket and hung up the lantern, adjusting the wick with squinting eyes.

“At that,” he went on, “she may be pretty bad. If there's anything to the story of that man MacKinnon and her hand in it, shows she's pretty hard-hearted for a girl.”

“But she was only a baby,” protested his wife.

“Sure! That's so. Well, it ain't much matter, Jenny, but in ten years I've never known you to be so curious about anybody.” The woman looked at him sharply as he turned away from the lantern, as though to detect some expected and half-feared expression on his face, but it was passive, a gentle face, wide brow, thin lips, steady eyes; strength and tenderness were there at once. He picked up a newspaper and shook out the folds. “I'd say these people were good for just one thing—to let alone.”

His wife turned to a window which, with the gloom on one side and the lantern-light on the other, made an imperfect mirror. She straightened her hat, a wide, high-crowned affair of brown straw with one stiff feather stabbing backward.

“I don't see how you ever learned so much as you have, Ned Borden,” she boomed. “If your appetite wasn't any bigger'n your curiosity, you'd 've starved to death forty years ago. The only way I can find out things is to find out about folks.”

“The world would be better off if it knew less about some people,” he said, and then, with a tolerant smile, altered his dictum. “Or, the world would be better off if there wasn't so much to know about some people.”

Jenny grunted in response, and then for a time was busy with the many packages, opening pieces of dress-goods and examining them carefully in the lantern-light, rubbing a thumb critically over the fabric, stretching it, shaking out other pieces.

“Wisht my Up-to-Date had come,” she muttered once. “Ain't got a rag to my back and don't know no more about what they're going to wear than a bumblebee does about cooking.” But with all her evident interest in her purchases, there was a measure of abstraction, as though her mind might be concerned elsewhere, and when some time had passed, she smoothed the skirts of her coat and sighed ponderously and announced,

“My underpinning's all full of cramps; guess I'll go ashore."

Ned looked over the top of his paper.

“Here, Jenny? Don't you want me——”

“Jiminy fish-hooks! I guess I got along on and around and over and through these blasted lakes for forty years without a guardian, and I don't intend starting in to be a weak and leaning stalk now. Stick your blessed nose back into the news of two weeks back Thursday. I'm going to give this corner of hell a look at a righteous woman!”

She lumbered up the steps of the companion-ladder then, while the man watched her go with a twinkle in his eyes. When she had closed the door, he craned his neck to see her walk along the dock toward shore, scanning the beach thoroughly. No one was in sight, and he went back to his paper.

Jenny Borden was a large woman, large of limb and girth and feature, and her walk was normally heavy and measured, but when she stepped from the dock planking to the sand, her movements became somewhat lighter. She awkwardly achieved a degree of stealth.

She passed the shacks where the crew lived and the boarding-house where a cook worked over his stove and went up the path toward the big house, a faint hulk of white in the darkness now. At the steps she paused and scanned the windows. The one light that showed was on Eldred's desk, and she could see him bent forward beside it. She went up to the veranda carefully, walking on the balls of her feet, and, with a good view of the room, scanned it quickly. A fire burned in a great fire place, and Eldred was alone, writing.

She released the latch so carefully that it made no sound and stepper! inside with out betraying her presence. Before closing the door, however, she spoke, standing there with a hand gripping the knob.

“Hello, Ed Lasker!”

AT her words, his pen stopped. Then he turned slowly to look at her.

“Good-evening," he said in his rich, heavy voice. “You are mistaken. My name is Eldred.”

At that the woman closed the door ungently and walked toward him, stopping beside his desk, arms akimbo.

“Don't try that with me, Lasker!” Her voice trembled. “Look at me! Do you know who I am?"

She saw light-points leap in his eyes.

“My name is Eldred.” he insisted. “As for knowing you——”

“My name is Borden,” she interrupted in tart mimicry of his deliberate manner. “Jen Borden, Aunt Jen, 'Red' Jenny Avery that was. Now do you know me?”

He nodded.

“Your face, yes"—ironically. “I knew that from the first. Your rashness was confusing. All people who come here know who I am, and you always were—discreet.”

“King Norman Eldred!" she scoffed. “Yes; we know each other. There ain't any mistake.”

A pause, while she eyed him, breathing rapidly. Then he put down his pen and clasped his white, hair-tufted hands in his lap, sitting back in the chair with a sardonic smile.

“Red Jenny," he said ever so softly, and laughed, lifting his chin a bit. “Red Jenny, with the red gone to silver now—the faded rose, with age dulling its judgment!” The woman stirred and moistened her lips. “Of course, I knew you were on the light—as I know everything.”

“Everything?”—contemptuously.

He gave no heed to this, but said:

“I am honored by this call. Won't you sit down?” He rose, with an ironical bow.

“Not under this roof!”

He lowered his head again, this time in mock humility.

“Very well. Red Jenny—Jen Borden—Mrs. Borden. How long have you been married to this particular man?”

“He's the first, which you'd 've known if you know everything. Ten years I've been married and in the service, keeping sailors off shoals instead of leading 'em into foul water!”

“Ten years,” he repeated musingly. “And ten years of—of peace, Jenny?”

“Peace and happiness, thank God! Ten years with a real man, Lasker, a good man!”

“A good man—a Christian, I understand. You are fortunate. I would have said there were few who could have made you happy—or would have.”

Her face worked at the sting of his implication, but she said humbly enough:

“Only that sort would, Lasker. Only that sort, with great hearts and clean minds and the grace to overlook blunders.”

Her voice gave a trifle and, in a flash, his eyes, which had only mocked and leered, were prying—prying——”

“He has overlooked, then?”

“Everything! Do you think I'd hide a thing from a man like that?”

The man's eyes searched her face when her gaze fell, and a smile touched his lips.

“Remarkable!” he said under his breath, and laughed. Then, “And you came here to see me!”

“Don't fool yourself! You know why I come here. Five years ago I satisfied myself who King Norman was; for five years I pulled wires and schemed and planned to get us transferred to this district and this light. Not to see you, Lasker—to see—her.”

“And do you think you will?” he asked almost slyly, and smiled again.

“Think I will? Do I think I will, Lasker? Do you think I won't? Oh, you don't know women, Lasker! You don't know what that meant to me, that girl, the first decent thing that come into my life! For twenty years I've felt her baby body in my arms; for twenty years I've heard her saying those first little words; for twenty years I've thought about rocking her at night and picking her up in the morning again. For twenty years my arms have been empty and my heart hungry— And you think I won't see her now, Lasker?”

HE HAD started to turn away, but on that last he whirled savagely.

“Eldred!” he said between clenched teeth. “Eldred for you as well as for the rest of the world, Red Jenny.” He advanced menacingly and stopped, poised above her, held the pose a moment and relaxed suddenly. “That much for that!”

Jen Borden laughed then.

“And that's why I'll see her! That's why I'll know her again, 'cause I know' more than anybody knows—but you. Oh, you're a devil, Lasker! But you brought something into my life that was sweet and good; you tried to take it away and you did; but you couldn't take the feel of her away, nor make me stop wanting her back.” Her voice shook, and she spoke with great difficulty. “That was the thing that made me fit to be the wife of a good man—and it was strong enough to make me work to get near her, where I could see her.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and the man smiled.

“And your disappointment will pay for your presumption,” he said lowly.

The hand holding the handkerchief remained clenched before her chin.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You. are dense, Red Jenny. When I took her out of your life, it was final. When I brought her here, it was to keep her for myself—only. When I made myself what men call a king, it was for her—to keep her close, to keep her away from everybody!”—voice dropping to a stressed whisper. He paused; then: “Can you understand that? You talk about the love of women; you don't know the love of men. You talk about the feel of a child in your arms; you're ignorant—you know nothing of the sight of a child becoming a woman under your eyes, and the walking image of another. Share her? Share her with you? I'd sooner—lose than share her!”

He drew a deep breath, squaring his shoulders, and his eyes, on the woman's frightened face, were wide and evil.

“It is a good thing you came so early. Perhaps we can understand each other. Let it be the last time you come to my island, Red Jenny; let to-night be the last time you ever hope to see Eve. Men here will tell you I'm not to be fooled with, and I will tell you this: She is life to me; she is the object in keeping on. I've risked everything for her, and there's nothing for me to lose in trying to keep her. I will not give her up; I will not share her—not so much as a chance acquaintance!”

“Lasker, you for——”

“Eldred!” he corrected in a shout. “Eldred, for the rest of your life!”

“Eldred be blamed!” Her burst of temper was as hot as his. “You're Lasker for me to my last breath. I don't forget. I've kept my mouth shut, but I don't forget. The people of Port Bruce don't forget, either. Wetherby's alive, and he ain't forgot. That makes you squirm? All I have to do is open my mouth and tell the story and——”

“Then your good Christian husband will know,” he broke in.

It was like an unexpected blow. The woman tried to go on and stammered helplessly. She saw his leering mirth and heard his laugh.

“'Ten years of happiness, thank God!'” he quoted. “And now, for another ten, you can thank Norman Eldred!”

“Lask——”

“Eldred!”

“Eldred, then”—weakly. “What are you driving at?”

“At your secret, which you betray so clumsily.” He chuckled, toying with a watch-charm fashioned from a Petoskey agate in the shape of a fish. “You never were a good liar, Jenny; you bluster too easily when you try to deceive. You've told him everything, eh?”

“Everything”—in a whisper, catching at the desk corner.

“Told him of our little transaction? He had heard and he has forgiven?”

“Of course! Do you think——”

“Let me meet him, then. He might——”

“For God's love, Lasker, not that!”

“Eldred!” he corrected, mockingly. Their gazes clung a moment, his derisive and triumphant, and strength went from the woman's; it wavered, and he made a soft sound that might have been the echo of a laugh. “And when you schemed and pulled wires to get here, he did not know; and now, if he guessed why you are here, what would he say to that?”

She lifted her face to his and studied it with something like awe.

“You're a devil—a black devil,” she repeated faintly. “You always could guess what was in folk's minds. I—I'll trade with you. Las—Eldred; I'll keep on keeping my mouth shut. I'll keep our secret, yours and mine. Listen, Eldred; what would 'ave become of Eve if I hadn't loved her first? If it hadn't been for me— Why, I might 'ave had her now with me with nothing to hide. If she's been the one thing in life for you, ain't I got any rights?

“I'll—I'll keep my cowardly tongue between my teeth; I'll say nothing that'll set her to wondering, but I want a part of her, Eldred—just a little part.” Tears were in her eyes and voice, and the one hand, holding the ball of handkerchief, was held out in appeal. “It means so much—to an old woman like me. And haven't I helped you? Don't I deserve something for what I done—for giving you the only thing you had to live for?”

Her voice was wretched with heartache, with pleading, and her extended hand trembled, but the man only laughed—low and mockingly.

“I'm not ungrateful. I've told you what she means to me; you've made your claim. Now it is my turn to share, to give something in return——”

“Thank God, Lasker!”

“And I do. Another ten years of silence, which means another ten years of happiness for Red Jenny.”

“Oh, you wont do that! You'll let me see her, Lasker! You'll——”

He made a quick gesture of dismissal, and she could see a glint of teeth through his beard.

“No exceptions! She is for me alone. If this blow drops by morning, you leave my harbor; if it holds, you keep to your boat. Do I make myself clear?”

He towered above her, all cruel strength, and the woman let the one hand drop limply to her side. There the red fist clenched and a tremor ran through her bulky body. She lifted her face to speak again, but before words could come a step sounded and Eve came into the room.

SHE stood still, looking first at her father and then at the woman. She saw, at first, only a stranger, and that—finding her there in the house—was startling enough; but it was not this which caused her to check the movement that would have closed the door. It was the expression on the woman's face—tender, gentle, amazed, hungry—yes; hungry—not the hunger for possession but the hunger for service, the hunger to help.

They stood so for a fraction of a moment only, and then Eldred spoke to Jen Borden.

“We understand one another”—stiffly. “It is unfortunate your time has been wasted. Good-evening.”

She turned to confront him once more, fresh courage in her heart and words bursting at her lips, but she read in his face such a blazing fury, such a destroying threat that her heart failed and she drew away, frightened and beaten. Eve had stopped in the center of the room, and as the woman moved toward the door she gave one more long look at the girl; then, on the threshold, she turned and flashed at King Norman,

“Some day my cowardly heart 'll find a little starch, and when it does——”

“It will be interesting—very interesting,” he broke in, as he turned away.

The woman's chin trembled, more in anger than in broken spirit, but when it seemed as though she were about to speak once more, her breath caught and she turned and went abruptly out. On the veranda, she stood a moment, peering through the glass at the girl who watched her; then she disappeared.

Eldred, again at his desk, stared blankly at the paper on which he had been writing, breath held short as he strained his ears for word or movement from Eve. When she spoke, it was in a low tone of puzzlement.

“Father, who is that woman?”

There was something savage in the abruptness with which he faced her.

“No one you should know!”

His unusual fierceness startled the girl, wiped the questioning look from her eyes, and when he saw this, he softened.

“No one you should know,” he repeated less emphatically. “She was called 'Red Jenny' years ago, and was notorious on the lakes. She's the wife of the light-keeper now. She ran a sailor's boarding-house in Buffalo—a hell-hole. She thinks she has a claim against me that I owe her. I have told her not to come near you again.”

“Near me? Did she come here to see me?”

“You? No”—with a shake of his head and a brief laugh. “But you are here, and she's not fit to walk the same land.”

Eve said rather absently,

“And she seemed so—so motherly!”

Angry lights flared in his eyes.

“Motherly!” he scoffed. “She's—She's—” It seemed there was no expletive which could convey his contempt. He eyed his daughter angrily and then looked at Friend, who had slipped into the room with his mistress. “Put that dog out!” he said heavily and left the room.

WHEN she was alone in the room, with Friend outside and staring at her through the long glass in the door, Eve drew her outer garments off slowly and stared with abstraction into the blazing logs. Her brows were slightly gathered, and for a moment she stood so, dejected and puzzled, and after that short interval she turned and moved across the room.

It was a big, barren room, with white plaster, uncurtained windows, and the floor was bare except for rag rugs of squaw manufacture. The furniture was of unstained wood and massive in structure. There was one shelf of books above the roll-top desk.

On all the wall-space was but one picture, a framed photograph, and before this the girl stopped, searching the gentle face of the likeness as though pleading for understanding. Seeing the two together, there was no mistaking that this was a photograph of her mother.

For several minutes the girl was there, fingers of one hand plucking at her flannel blouse, looking at the picture. Her breath grew a trifle rapid, and then, reaching out quickly to touch the frame in a mute and futile appeal, she said,

“Mother—why?” Just that—and turned away almost guiltily when she heard her father returning.

Throughout the meal which Anna spread on the table in the far end of the room. Eve was conscious of a strange quality in her father. His gaze held on her for long intervals, and in it was something which she did not understand. It made her uneasy, and she tried to avoid it by making talk, which was a difficult matter with Eldred.

The wind shrieked about the building, tearing at cornices, bubbling heavily in the chimney, and at one particularly savage blast, she said:

“No wonder they came in here. No small boat could live in this; could it, father?”

“Unlikely. They were both wise.”

“Both? There are three boats in!”

“Three? Gallagher, the supply-boat and——”

“A little schooner. She came in at dusk, and it looked as though there was only one man aboard.”

“Hooker, eh? What was her name?”

The girl felt herself flushing.

“It was dark and I couldn't see.” She could feel him prying, she thought, and her sense of guilt was high. She was glad that he asked no more and that the meal soon ended.

Eldred went from the table to his desk, but Eve lingered at her place until he said,

“They will be waiting for you at the store.”

She rose reluctantly and drew on her jacket.

“Father, if I had to call a night like this, you couldn't hear me.”

He went on writing for a moment; then, blotted a page.

“The best way to avoid the necessity of calling is to know it never will be necessary.” He looked at her and continued, quite gently, “I'd hear you, daughter, across miles of water—any place—any time.”

When the girl was out of hearing, Eldred called,

“Anna!” His heavy voice carried through the house and the squaw came hurrying. “Tell Dimmock to come here.”

The woman drew a black shawl about her shoulders and went out. Dimmock followed her back and grunted as he entered, china-blue eyes roving the room restlessly. Eldred spoke.

“Dimmock, a hooker made the harbor.”

“So? I didn't know.”

“Unfortunately, you have only two eyes”—sarcastically. “Use them. Look her over now; if she's all right, send the master here.”

AHALF-HOUR later, another step was on the veranda and knuckles rapped at the door. Eldred, over his desk, did not move, but said heavily,

“Come!”

He did not look up as the other entered, but when he had walked to the middle of the room and was apparently hesitating, Eldred turned, and his black eyes ran the length of the trader's figure, coming to a stop at the face. It was red and puffed from the abuse of weather, but the gaze that met his was steady and—hostile. That last quality was the one which nipped Eldred's attention first; he studied those eyes and drew a cautious breath of covered surprise. For an instant there was about him bafflement and dismay; but those passed, and his looked settled to composure and met the hostility of the other with a growing mockery.

“Sit down.”

“I'll stand.”

For the second time in a few hours, that small hospitality had been refused.

“Your own choice. You've a trading hooker?”

“The Annabelle.”

In their voices was enmity, a sparring, as though neither gave words to his uppermost thoughts. Eldred's tongue-tip roved his lips and he was very alert, now. The other waited, watching closely.

“My man Dimmock said something to you about my needing a hooker?”

“That's why I'm here.”

No truth in that! Nor was it intended for truth; it rang with ironic evasion, but Eldred appeared not to detect this. He said:

“I have three or four weeks' work for a hooker—box lumber from Pine Lake, some supplies from Charlevoix, perhaps carrying a few fish. My boats are busy. I've been on the watch for some one; maybe your boat will do.”

“Maybe. I go with the boat.”

That was a taunt, but again Eldred gave no heed. He spoke briefly of distances and rates, outlining his plan. The other made but few comments and then with only a word or two, and his manner suggested that, while he was immensely interested in talking to Norman Eldred, he cared not one fig for the discussion of work. So with Eldred as well. But, finally,

“Well, what do you say?”—rising.

“I'll say this first, King Norman: I don't like to deal with you.”

“Ah, yes”—in relief, as though glad that something honest had been said, and he lowered his head slightly in that mock humility. “Yes; stories are told. I suppose every trader knows them.”

“Stories! So I need stories, Eldred?” the man flashed, and King Norman spread his feet as if to steady himself to a blow. “Do I need to listen to others?” He approached, thrusting his face close. “No; I don't have to tell you who I am!” Eldred stared back at him for the space of a slow breath, and then gave his head the slightest shake of negation. “That's truth, anyhow. You knew when you first looked at me. Did you think a ghost had come to haunt you?”

“You are rash. Your attitude will not help to an amiable understanding.”

“Rash?” He relaxed and laughed. “Amiable understandin'? Who asked for it, Eldred? Plain understandin' suits me, an' that's what we've got. You called me up here to make your offer. Eldred, tell me this: Do you want the Annabelle so badly now that you know her master?”

Eldred's red lips stirred, showing a gleam of white teeth.

“Knowing her master, and having him come this way, defiant and prejudiced, makes me want his hooker twice as badly.” The trader sniffed. “But you have mentioned stories; you have listened to them, and perhaps that is as well. Things have happened to men who come here as you have come—insolently, looking for trouble. For your own good, now' that you've brought up the matter, it might be wiser for you to go, at least until you can come back—with an open mind.”

The trader laughed again, quite easily this time, with some of the bitterness gone from his gray-brown eyes.

“I didn't plan to come here—I never did. The lake threw me in, an' if your threats scared me, I'd have to stay now. You don't want me because I'm who I am, an' so I've got to stay'. You think I'm a fool an' lookin' for trouble. That so? Yes; I thought so. Now, I've got this to say to you: Be careful, King Norman; be damned awful careful!”

He emphasized his last words by a leveled finger, and not until the hand had sunk slowly to his side did Eldred reply.

“Good! We quite understand one another, which makes everything simple and easy. Day after to-morrow, probably, you can start. Until then——”

For another moment they faced one another, but without speaking, and then the trader turned and walked deliberately out, without looking back. As the door closed, he began whistling a light, gay, happy little tune. After a lengthy interval, Eldred sat down and rubbed a palm slowly along the chair-arm.

“An ill wind—” he began, but did not finish, because his voice choked as if with anger.

THE logs were embers. Eldred was still in his chair before the hearth, huge legs sprawled toward the fire, hands crossed on his stomach, eyes vacant. He was alone and lonely, as kings are said sometimes to be. Outside his house were shadows—moving shadows—and in his heart was anger which, in the beginning, had been apprehension. He would not fear; he would rage—at misgiving and at shadows.

There were shadows enough in the life of Norman Eldred, but never before had it been necessary for him to summon rage to drive them down. Two had come back to him that night—the one had been easy to brush away, but the other— It was a new thing, and a strange thing, to find a man who challenged him—a new and strange thing to be challenged by a shadow!

The tumult of the storm was yet unabated. The forest rocked and the house trembled before the weather. And then, above it all, came another sound, a throaty cry, wavering, then rising shrilly, long-drawn, high in pitch, ringing through the house. It stopped Eldred's heart and sent him to his feet.

“Father!” came the word, and again: “Father! Father!”

Then the sound of bare feet on the stairs, a door opened, and Eve, clad in her simple nightgown, burst into the room, eyes wide and bewildered. Red spots were on her cheeky, and she stopped, clinging to the door, breathing quickly.

“Eve! What is——”

His hands closed on her firm arms, and she lifted her frightened gaze to his face. A shudder ran through her slender body, and she moved her arms as though to free them from his touch.

“A dream, father!”

“Dream?”—with a laugh of relief. “It can upset you so?”

Her breath caught sharply.

“But this one! It was more like remembering; I was only half asleep. It seemed—it was so—” Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“Tell it to me.” His voice betrayed alarm.

“I—I saw mother,” she said, words widely spaced, “and she was in trouble. And you weren't there, father. Another man, but not you. And that woman, the one who was here to-day—I saw her. They were all together and all so troubled—Father!”

She drew away from him, a palm at her breast, for at mention of her mother he had stiffened; one hand had sought his side and clutched the flesh as though burning pain were there.

“Only a dream,” he said dryly, relaxing.

“But it was so awful! Unhappiness all about, like fog.”

Her eyes were clearer now. They left off their staring at his face, and that broke his tension.

“It's all right, daughter. You tumble down here half asleep, a nightmare be fuddling you, and frighten your father.”

“I didn't mean— You are the only one I have to go to.”

He stepped close and put his arms about her with a long sigh. He could not see that her face against his breast was fired with a look that was almost revulsion, did not know that her palms against his shoulders were impelled to push and break that unwelcome embrace, did not detect the tremor that ran through her body as he stroked her sleek, warm back.

“The only one you have,” he said, lifting his chin as though in a boast. “Yes; the only one— Good-night, now. Go back to sleep.”

His lips touched her hair. She slipped from him with a murmur and went silently toward the stairway, giving, somehow, the impression that she would like to run.

After she had gone, Eldred stood staring at the door a long moment; then he braced his shoulders with a swagger and turned to face that framed photograph on the far wall. It was, at that distance and in the low light, only a blank rectangle, but his eyes held steady, and into them came a positive leer.

“But she comes to me,” he muttered. “She comes—to me!”

DOWN in the light-house supply-boat, Ned Borden lifted his head from the cushion where it lay and listened.

“Jen?” he asked softly. “Jenny?”

“Well?”

“You don't sleep.”

“What a fine observer you are!”

“Count sheep,” he advised.

“Sheep be blistered! I wish to high heaven I had my machine here!”

That ended their talk, but twice more Ned Borden lifted his head to stare in the direction of his wife, and for long lay awake himself, wondering.

Outside one of the shacks, Eldred stood talking cautiously to Dimmock. He had come to his man instead of sending for him an unusual happening. He turned to go.

“I saw the look,” mumbled Dimmock, “I thought it was him.”

Eldred halted.

“Two of us know—you and I. That is enough. If the men guess and the story starts, stop it! Bad enough to have it spread round the other islands, as it will. For Eve—it's as forbidden as—other happenings.”

“Aye. I know.”

The gale was gone with morning. There had been stirrings aboard the boats that had taken refuge in the harbor long before dawn. Gam Gallagher, who had worked late on his crippled motor, called in Ned Borden for help, and the sound of metal striking metal came early from the Kititiwake. The keeper's wife appeared on her boat, shaking out the skirt of her suit with petulant mutterings for the wrinkles.

The trader had been busy on the deck of his hooker since the stars faded, and as Jen Borden watched, he slung a line between the spars and hung a half-dozen freshly washed garments to dangle limply in the early sunlight.

“A man's heart,” she said to herself, “is only as clean as his shirt. That boy's get the cleanest heart on the Great Lakes.”

She told that to him a half-hour later—rowed over herself and stopped and talked while the master was bending new canvas to replace that which had blown away. When she paid her compliment, he grinned and bobbed his head.

“She's a lady, too,” Jen said, indicating the graceful little schooner.

“That's why,” he said, and she knew that he meant the washing, that he respected his ship and had a love for her and would keep her trim and match her faultless condition with his own. The woman's eyes warmed, and they talked at length. Ned finally hailed his wife, but before she dipped her oars, she said,

“You know what you're doing, dearie?” He nodded. “You've heard the stories about him?”

“All”—rather bitterly.

“And they tell me that none deals with him that don't come out the little end of the horn.”

“They tell me that, too.”

The concern in her eyes deepened.

“You mean you've got to trade with him? He's got you owing him something?”

“That's it. I owe him somethin', an' I've been too long gettin' here to pay my debt now!”

“Well, nobody can say you're going into this here spider's web with your eyes shut. But be careful of him, boy.” She looked shoreward and spun her dingy round. And be careful of that girl, dearie!” But this last was no warning; it was more like supplication, and the man looked sharply. But Jen Borden was pulling away with short, sharp strokes, scanning the buildings on shore, an unmistakable misgiving in her lace.

Before he pulled out of the harbor, Gam Gallagher went aboard the hooker and talked. The master of the Annabelle was amiable, he found, and the Irishman lingered for the better part of an hour. Among other things, he learned that the trader had arranged to work for Eldred, and after that statement had been made, a considerable silence followed.

“I s'pose you know about him,” Gam said finally, and the other laughed, which put a look of concern in the older man's eyes. “He ain't to be monkeyed with, for no reason. We've all learned that. There was Olaf Erickson, from Harbor Springs; he tried to stand up for his rights an' Eldred rammed him with his steam tug an' sunk Olaf's boat in forty fathom, an' when they had him up, his crew lied him out of it There was an Injun poacher, too, who speared out of Eldred's pound-nets, an' what happened to him was a-plenty. He couldn't walk for over a month, an' his body's twisted to this day. That's what he does to them that crosses him, an' it's little better if you try to deal with him in business. He'll stop at nothin' when it's to his advantage. Why, there was Jode MacKinnon, as fine a man as ever stood at a wheel, an' Eldred——”

“I know. I've heard the stories.” Until then, the trader had listened with good humor, but this interruption was brusk.

Gam scratched his gray beard.

“Well, then you know what to look for,” he said, watching the lad's face curiously, as if trying to remember where he had seen it before. “There's just one other thing”—as he put a foot over the rail—“it's that gel.”

The trader looked up quickly. Did all people insist on warning him against Eve Eldred?

“She's the apple of his eye, an' them that let theirs rest on her handsome ones too long—it's worse than tamperin' with his nets.”

“No worry, my friend, about that,” said the other, so strangely that Gallagher remembered the tone and wondered long after he had left the harbor behind.

ART of Eldred's fleet went out to lift that morning; the balance of the crew was busy on shore, and King Norman himself stood directing the erection of a tar-pot when a man emerged from the fringe of trees, an ax over his shoulder. He was big, as tall as Eldred. though not so massively built, swarthy of face and with a black mustache.

“Finished, Mosseau?”

“Oui. Twenty stakes more. An' dat iss all now, eh, Eldret?” pause. “You won' wan' Jean Mosseau longair, eh?”

In that question was a tinge of eagerness which was also reflected in his eyes; but that died when Eldred replied:

“Another set of stakes yet. Anyhow, you will stay on.”

The man put down his ax rather dejectedly.

“Why for you wan' me. Eldret? Me, I wan' for to go away. I haf work laak hell for you two, t'ree year, now, an' p'raps, Keeng Norman, it be bettair for you to let me go now.”

“Possibly it would be better for one of us if I should let you go. No matter—you are going to stay.”

Dark color swept into the Frenchman's face.

“Py damn, Eldret; you maak wan fool from me, eh? You play' wan minute too long wit' Jean Mosseau! Me, I am——”

“Wanted in Ottawa,” broke in Eldred, with a half-laugh. “And you cannot get to the mainland before I can. They'll be waiting for you, Mosseau.”

The flush drained from the other's face and he stood a moment as if he would resume argument or plea, but Eldred walked away, giving directions to another man, and Mosseau turned toward the woods. A dozen paces, and he halted to look back. He hated Eldred very much, it was evident, but fear was more pronounced than his hate.

E took the road that led down the island to where he had been felling saplings for pound-net stakes and muttered to himself now and then as he walked, shaking his head from time to time. The character of the forest changed; he entered a finger of swamp where the road was damp and brown water stood on either side. Rounding an abrupt bend, he came face to face with Eve Eldred and her dog. The girl stopped short at sight of him and then, with a curious resolution coming to mingle with her surprise, started to pass on. The man dropped the ax from his shoulder.

“Mees Eve, wait wan minute.”

The girl stopped, for he was squarely in the middle of the way.

“What do you want, Jean Mosseau?”

“Do not back up”—when she moved as if to retreat. “Do you not know what it iss I wan', Mees Eve? Mus' I tell you wit' my voice, laak I tell you wit' my eyes, eh? Haf you not seen all wintair what it iss I mus' say to you?”

“I don't know what you mean. You better not stop me. My father——”

“Ah. Your fadair! It is heem who maak me spick. He will not let me go away from you who tormen' me!”

That astonished Eve, halting the growth of her fright.

“Torment you?”

“Tormen' as no man has efer been tormen'. I haf try to keep my voice still, but I cannot—no longair. It iss my 'eart which maak my voice spick; my 'eart, which has lost its pride an' iss 'urt an humble—because of you!”

“Because of me? What are you talking about?”

“About my 'eart, which has no pride. When Jean come here, his 'eart haf pride; when he look at your face”—a shrug—“his pride she begin to go, laak snow in April. When he stay here wan year, hees pride she iss all crowd' out. When lofe she come to a man, dere iss no longair room for pride.”

A deep flush came into the girl's face; her blue eyes flashed angrily.

“My father—” she began sharply, but the man interrupted.

“I know; I know your fadair. I ask heem many taam to let Jean go away, but he say,'No.' He bring me here when I come from Canada by St. Ignace; he hear me tell my frien' in a saloon when I drink too moch dat Canada she wan' Jean for to put heem in jail, mabbe. Jean she iss glat to come here wit' your fadair, den; dis islan' she wan fine place to hide, eh? Oui; wan fine place for to hide ontil a man's 'eart—” He laughed and stuck his ax in a stump. “Jail she iss wan bad place, an' Jean Mosseau she don' laak jail, hut Garden Islan' she iss wan bad place for me, too. When firs' I look into your mos' beautiful eyes, ma'mselle, when firs' I see your most lofely lip—ah, I t'ink per'aps dere be bettair place dan heafen an', mabbe, worse place dan jail.

“I haf know how you keep away from men, laak wan queen, ma'mselle”—nodding, with a sly smile showing in his face. “I haf watch; I haf leesten, an' I haf know. You maak men t'ink you fierce laak wan wil'cat, eh? You haf maak dem afrait you scratch an' bite an' tear, yes. But Jean she know”—tapping his breast. “Jean she know at 'eart you are laak wan sweet flower, eh? So gentle, so sof', so easy to—crush, eh?” He waited, head nodding lightly and eyes narrowed as he read in her changing face that he had guessed the truth. “I know dese t'ing, an' I haf wan' to go away because Jean's 'eart she what you call fain'. She don't hope moch; she jus' suffair.

“To-day, I ask wan taam more to go away, an' your fadair he say, 'No.' I can't go onless I gp to jail. I don't care for jail now, Mees Eve; my 'eart she spick! I can no longair keep heem still. My 'eart she don' wan' for to hurt wan small flower; my 'eart she bow. See! I ben' my knee—so; I bow my 'ead—so. I ask you, ma'mselle, what Jean Mosseau she can do to maak lofe come into your eye when he look into your lofely face, to maak wan smile come to your mos' beautiful lip—Mees Eve!”

At the beginning of this recital, the girl had been caught by cold fear, for behind the gentle pleading of the Frenchman was steely resolution, thinly cloaked. He had guessed that she had feared him while she appeared to be indifferent, and that had set her in a panic, but, on the heels of that revelation, his voice had become gentle, broken, and now, as he bent his knee before her, as he lowered his head, as he spread his hands in a graceful gesture of courtliness given to him, perhaps, by some forgotten ancestor of the old empire, she felt her courage rising above the fear. She stepped forward quickly.

“Jean Mosseau, you're a fool!”

His head flashed upward, and she saw a glint of teeth as his lip drew back; and then—of course there was nothing else to do. Her small palm caught him a stinging crack on the cheek, and she brushed past him, running up the road swiftly, breath quick and legs unwieldy as they are in dreams.

She did not slacken her pace until her heart's leaping was fit to choke her. She walked on then, a hand at her heaving breast, looking backward frequently.

“Oh, Friend, but that was a scare!” she said finally, eying the palm that had struck the blow. “And he knows I'm afraid, and it'd do no good to slap him—another time!”

Mosseau, surprised by Eve's action, did not attempt pursuit. He rose slowly from his knees and retrieved his ax with an angry wrench. Then he listened for sounds of the fleeing girl.

“All righ',” he said, with a nod. “All righ', Mees Eve. All righ', Keeng Norman! Jean she stay here, eh? All righ'—all righ'——”

He did not stop at the slashing which had been his destination. He came back to it later, but not until he had gone far through the forest and come out on the beach to the rude domicile of a breed. There was talk with the man, and argument and threat; and then they went inside and dug in a barrel of flour and brought out a jug. From the jug the Indian poured a bottle of liquid, and this Jean Mosseau carried back with him.

ELDRED'S store resembled more the van of a lumber camp than any other establishment, although the scattered Indian farmers and fishermen from further down the island made their purchases there, it was maintained primarily for the men of the fishing crew, not for their convenience but for Eldred's profit. And perhaps there was a deeper motive behind the establishment of that store, because, as has been recorded earlier in this narrative, it was here that Eve was forced to face those men.

It was a small place, with a counter along one side, heated by a large box stove and lighted by one swinging lamp suspended squarely in the center of the ceiling. Usually it was open only at evening and served as a gathering-place for the crew. It was their club and, to a constrained extent, their forum also, it was the place which afforded opportunity for their eyes to rest naturally on the one piece of loveliness which daily moved among them, a privilege which, at other times, was tacitly forbidden.

They would sit about the stove in cold weather, on the steps in fair, and yarn and expound and argue, while behind the counter the girl stood, outwardly indifferent to them, outwardly cool and collected, outwardly contemptuous and with something like her father's detached assurance. Those things the men saw and, knowing that she was backed by Eldred's strength, none seemed curious to look further. A more careful observer, however—such as Mosseau had been—could have seen indications of misgiving. Eve was always stimulated there, keyed to a point of maintaining her show of superiority, and this forcing of a manner which her heart did not share was evidenced in an uneven poise, a curtness when curtness was not necessary, a uniform coldness which she used when dealing with the most presumptuous of the men and with the weakest alike. Her conduct never harmonized with her lips and her eyes and the gentle timbre of her voice.

To-night, it was more of an ordeal than usual for her because, from the beginning, Mosseau was there, apart from the group about the stove, leaning against a barrel, cap shading the eyes which followed her every move and which, she now knew, detected the sham. He had been like that many nights before, staring at her when she stood, between customers, back against the shelves, arms folded, waiting with her show of counterfeit composure. But to-day he had pleaded love and, beneath his urging, had displayed a knowledge of her and a desire which had shaken her thoroughly; and to-night there was a new and alarming glitter in his eyes.

For many minutes no newcomer had entered, and those who were there showed no inclination to buy further. Eve drew the strings tight on the leather purse which served as a till, and moved as though to pass from behind the counter and lower the light, signal for the men to disperse. Then it was that the Frenchman hitched at his belt and swaggered across the floor. The girl stopped, hand on the counter, pulse in quickened measure.

“Mees Eve, I need wan pipe.” He stopped. His voice had been a trifle loud, and the steadiness of his gaze was confusing. None other, though, but Eve seemed to notice.

He selected a pipe and asked for tobacco.

“Is that all?” the girl asked as he threw down a bill.

He chuckled.

“All from de shelf, Mees Eve.” He placed both hands on the counter and leaned close, so close that she caught the whiff of whisky on his breath. It stopped her heart. “All Jean wan' to buy, yes; but two t'ing he wan' yet from Mees Eve.” He held up two extended fingers. “Two t'ing,”—shaking the hand close to her face—“firs', she iss wan smile from your mos' beautiful eye; de odder, she is wan kees from——”

“That'll do!”

The girl's frightened word cut short the talk round the stove. She stood very straight, but her knees shook.

“That will do!” she repeated. “Here is your change.”

The silver jingled on the counter, but Mosseau did not so much as look at it.

“No; dat won' do. To-day your pretty feet stamp on de 'eart of Jean Mosseau. Jean she go away from here might' queek now, but he do not go onless he taak wan smile, wan kees to remembair wan mos' beautiful yo'ng woman.”

“My father——”

“Your fadair, pah!” He spat to show contempt. “Jean not afrait from no man! You call out; your fadair come. But before he come, wan smile been maak my heart joomp; wan kees she has——”

His hand whipped across the counter and grasped her wrist. A cry of appeal broke from her lips as she turned her face sharply toward those who watched, but she read there only excitement, amazement. A great helplessness settled down on her.

Mosseau grinned, leaning lower, imprisoning both her wrists in one hand. His free arm swept about her waist, and she felt herself lifted and dragged rudely across the counter.

They swung half round beneath the lamp, the girl struggling fiercely in a grip that would not yield. For a moment she was like a trapped animal with strength and vigor and murder in her face, but he pinned her arms and drew her close, breathing hard. She tipped her head backward and tried to scream, but the effort brought only a gasp.

“So?” she heard him jeer. “So you t'ink you can get away from Jean Mosseau after he beg, eh?”

One of his hands went behind her head, forcing her face upward until their lips were not separated by the length of a finger.

“Don't!” she gasped, fight gone from her. “Let me——”

“Ah, now ma'mselle she beg, eh?”

He ended with a growl, deep in his throat, and it seemed to Eve that her racing heart would burst with shame and fright. Blood crowded into her ears; she felt him talking further but could distinguish no word, could not even hear the new, quick step on the floor.

“Let her go!”

But those three words, spoken evenly, struck like blows on her consciousness. The trader was standing there beside them, his gray-brown eyes glowing. Mosseau turned sharply, to eye this intruder.

“Ho! You wan' for me to let 'er go, eh? All righ', when I taak what I wan'!”

His lips dropped for their prize. In a split instant he would have made good his purpose, but as his mustache brushed the lightest strands of Eve's hair, a stinging crack met his head, driving it sideways with a snap.

EVE found herself free and backed against the counter, watching the Frenchman crouch and with a roar rush for the trader. Blows had been struck; Mosseau had been knocked down. She saw the trader's arms drive out like metal rods, heard the crunch of hard knuckles meeting the charging skull. The group about the stove fell away, giving more room.

She caught a flash of Mosseau's face, white—white, with dark blood flowing across it. She saw his catlike crouch again, saw him rush once more and wind his arms about the other's thighs and sweep him back and upward against the wall with a sickening crash. They went down together, Mosseau on top, but a knee doubled and drove into the pit of his stomach, flinging his body clear, flung it at Eve's feet, where he lay a moment, retching for breath.

The stranger waited across the room, making no move to carry the fight. His eyes glowed, and about his mouth was a twitching, as though he were ready to smile. Eve wanted to run, but could not move; she strained back against the counter in effort to be away from the cursing figure at her feet which struggled to its knees. A flash like cold fire swept beneath her eyes as the Frenchman's knife came out, naked and ready. The watchers surged into the corners with a staccato'd stamping. Some one shouted a warning—and Eve realized that it had been her voice.

The knife hand whipped back; the blade poised almost beneath her chin; the arm swept forward in a quick arc—and a chair, gathered with a backward sweep of the trader's big hand, met and turn it and flew on, crashing into Mosseau's chest.

And before Jean could recover his balance, the other was on him, aggressive, merciless, his blows sounding like a thick stick beating meat until the other man sagged and wilted, a battered hulk on the floor.

The trader stopped then abruptly. He stood up and looked down, then stooped, fastened his fingers in the Frenchman's collar and jerked him to his feet.

“You get out, now!” he said, without much anger.

He propelled the man to the doorway and, outside, with Mosseau standing on the top step, let him go. He fell, cursing, into the dirt.

There was a stirring in the group that had watched; it stopped when Eve stepped impulsively forward to meet the trader, who was reentering. Her eyes were burning, as her heart burned with this new possession—this incredible pride at having found a champion. One hand was lifted in a gesture that could have but one meaning—glad gratitude.

“I hope,” the man said, halting very close to her and looking into her face with a slight frown, “that you aren't goin' to thank me.”

“Thank you,” she said lowly, and laughed nervously. “Of course I am!”

“Don't!” he cut in dryly. “I didn't like to see the frog get away with it. You, though—I guess you had it comin'. I came in for some tobacco”—passing on to the counter.

Minutes later. Eve found herself alone. The men were gone; a coin lay where he had dropped it. She was conscious of only two things—the fire in her cheeks and the lead in her heart.

EVE ELDRED went slowly up the path. Minutes before, when in physical need, there had been a name to call—her father's. Now, with a need greater if not so spectacular, there was no name to call and but one place to go. She started as soon as the first bewilderment left her and, entering the house, stood there with shoulders drooping, a hand against the wall, staring mutely at her mother's photograph.

She looked younger than ever, and her slenderness seemed frailty. Her gaze held on the sweet face behind the glass with a dull hopelessness, as if there were no way to be rid of the trouble which weighed so heavily on her now. After a time she sighed unsteadily and said flatly,

“I deserved it, he said——”

Just that aloud; and the words went round and round the limited cycle of her thought, unchanging and unbroken, until her father entered.

“You're all right?” he asked sharply, walking quickly to her.

“I'm not hurt.”

He put one hand on her shoulder and cupped her chin with the other.

“I didn't figure on whisky; without it, he'd not have had the courage. I'm going to find him now, and—make him pay.”

The girl drew away from his lips in her hair, but he did not notice. Sounds of his departure died, and Eve moved to a window from where she could see the light she had left in the store, the lights from the shacks—where the men had reassembled to talk and to gloat over her double humiliation, likely. And another light—the bright riding-light of the hooker lying against the dock.

She did not think more of her father or his errand. The fright that Mosseau had set in her heart was gone. She did not care what happened to him. She was concerned with this question: Why could a man fight like that for her and then tread upon her grateful heart?

Over and over again that question shaped itself in her mind, bewildering and shaming her. In the beginning, that was all that it did—bewildered and shamed—and then, as her excitement wore down, she tried to answer the query for herself. Last night, when she went aboard his schooner to help him, he had seemed fine and kind; she had brought ashore with her a warming secret, the first truly delightful experience in months. She had let herself dream of him throughout this day. To-night, the thing which she had feared would come had happened. She had been in danger from a man, with her father beyond call. Before to-night there had been no other to defend her but her father; having another was a luxury of which she had had little hope, indeed. And then this trader, had come, and the shock which the Frenchman had given her was wiped out in a breath by the realization that she had a friend.

This was too valuable a thing to relinquish without a struggle. He had scorned her thanks; he had said the thing which no friend would have said, and yet he had done the friendly thing. That much was hers—that much he could not take away. He had been her champion, her first champion, and now, as she stood alone in that large room trying to think it all out calmly, she discovered that she was peculiarly miserly of that experience. She wanted to keep fresh the thrill which he had given her, wanted to keep it unblemished, wanted this so much that she found herself growing half indignant that any man—even the trader—should rob her of the gift which he had bestowed. She had wanted friendship so badly! She had waited for it so long. And now a man would fight for her, but would scorn her while he fought.

Why? If there was a reason for it, she had a right to know, had she not? There was no justice in it—no justice——

She heard herself say, “I've a right to know,” and with the spoken words her spirit gained strength. Her voice had been unsteady, and now she compressed her lips to keep them from trembling. It was enough to be rebuked like that, too much to let it go without understanding why.

She pondered over that, again and again and then said, half aloud,

“I've a right—” She moved to the door and stood a moment, and then she said it again. She turned the knob and hesitated; finally, with a gesture of resolution, she slipped out and ran down the steps and into the path to the dock.

ON THE Annabelle's rail she poised as lightly as a gull settles on a net-stake. No sound. She went softly to the scuttle. It was open, a light burning down there with the smell of pipe-smoke coming up; she parted her lips to hail him as she had hailed last night when he lay exhausted below, but now her voice failed and a panic of shyness swept over her. Resolution was shattered; she did not know what to say should he come. Confronting him was, suddenly, an ordeal, and she turned for flight.

“Who's there?”

His muffled exclamation froze her, and she crouched in the shadow of the cabin, heart lurching in unsteady measure. Silence, followed by his feet on the companion. She had wasted the golden moment; she could have been gone by now had she kept on, but he was there, above her in the moonlight, and she strove to retrieve that escape which she most wanted, but she was not quick enough. His hand caught her wrist as the Frenchman's had caught it; her flight was arrested; she was pulled back none too gently, and stood on the deck facing him, her free hand against her breast.

“So? You pay a visit an' change your mind!”

“Yes. Let me go, please. I have changed my mind.”

He laughed.

“Scared at bein' caught, eh? There's no need of it, though, unless it's your guilty conscience— Or haven't you got one—a conscience?”

His bitterness stung her, and when she looked into his darkened face, she tried again to break free.

“Please let me go!”

“Fair enough—if you'll tell me why you sneaked aboard.”

“It was nothing. I—I came to ask a question; then I—I decided not to. Please!”

He studied her face a moment and then let go her wrist.

“They say that's a woman's right,” he said sarcastically. “It's higher, I expect, than an owner's right to know who prowls round his boat after dark.”

THE irony in tone and manner started a warmth flooding through the girl; that was her pride stirring—when she had thought it dead! He believed she had something to hide, and she had nothing—except that bruise on her pride.

“No; we've both got some rights,” she said more steadily. “It's your right to know why I came aboard, I guess. I—I'm—I came here to ask you why you said that I deserved a thing like that—like would have happened if you hadn't been here to-night.”

Aside from the slight tremor in her voice, she did not betray her excitement. The moon lighted her face, and the trader looked into it with a queer expression.

“Do you know my name?”

She shook her head, wondering at this irrelevancy.

“Perhaps that will explain everything, then. My name is MacKinnon.”

Her lips formed a silent “Oh!” and she half lifted one hand in a gesture of surprise.

“MacKinnon? Oh, I should have known that! You were something to him? To Jode? You look like him round the eyes.” Her face brightened and her voice was glad excitement. The trader, however, only said, with no response to her mood,

“He was my father.”

Eve's breath caught.

“You are his boy! You were the one he—David? That is your name?” He made no reply; his eyes were burning as they search her face. “Why, I thought I—I—” She faltered at his forbidding silence, and confusion came over her. “But you said that explained everything! I don't even know what you mean.”

“Don't know?” he burst out savagely. “You don't remember what happened to my father here?”

“Oh, yes”—very lowly, and nodding. “I remember that. I walked the beach for days, thinking he might come back—all right. I cried every night for so long. He was my only friend; he used to take me on the lake with him sometimes, and he talked to me in the evenings and told me about you—and your sister.”

“What did he tell you about her?”

“Why, that she was about my age, and that she was sick. She'd fallen—hadn't she?—and hurt her back.”

“You remember that all right!”—bitterly. “That's why he came over here. Because the run wasn't good in Green Bay, an' he had to have money so he could get her to a big doctor in Chicago. Luck was good here, in the beginnin'; you were on the island, livin' in the house he'd built years before, an' he let you alone an' lived aboard his boat with his helper. Your father's luck wasn't much good, I guess, an' maybe that made him jealous. It was good enough when he started liftin' our nets; it made the beginnin' of his—kingdom. What do you remember about beacons?”

“They fixed some,” she replied. “Jode used to be out late, and sometimes we were, too. The reef was always bad, so they fixed the beacons so that a boat holding on them would have enough water.”

He said something under his breath, and his eyes, fast on hers, glowed in a sudden burst of rage.

“But he went on, after all, didn't he? He didn't have any trouble gettin' in before they were placed, did he? But the first night that she blew hard from the s'thwest an' he trusted to those beacons, he went on the rocks, didn't he? And his helper got ashore by the grace of God, but my father——”

“Oh, I know! We looked and looked, and I stood down there in the rain and called to him. I remember it so!”

Her voice was pregnant with sorrow, and the man gave an audible whiff of breath.

“It didn't kill my father only. My sister went out a little while afterward. The money he'd have made in those few weeks would have saved her likely. An' the next winter my mother died. They said it was a broken heart. An' we never even got the nets that had fished so well. Your father claimed he'd bought——”

The girl's gesture was but the lift and fall of a hand, but in it was such sincere pain and sympathy that few could have doubted the shock his story gave her.

“Say; are you actin'?” he burst out, but her blank stare dulled the bite of his question. “Don't you see now why all I can hope for you folks here is harm?”

“Harm?” The word came timidly, and she dropped one hand into the other.

“Don't you know that he went on the reef because the beacons were changed—that my father was murdered here?”

“Changed?” she cried, and her eyes held on his without a flicker.

“Changed! His helper knew that, because he was wheelin', an' my father stood right behind him, an' Fred—that was the helper—got to the mainland as fast as he could and as far away from your father as he could go, I guess. He told the story, an' I know, an' a hundred men know, that with weather like that an' true lights to go by, my father'd never gone on; he was too good a sailor. What Eldred threatened Fred with nobody knows, but he went through St. James an' Charlevoix scared stiff, an' he wasn't a coward. You see, I know all this, so don't try to make me think you don't. Don't try to lie to me!”

She drew back from his fierceness, lifting her clasped hands; they were small, ivory-white in the moonlight, and the man looked at them closely.

“Lie? Why should I lie to you, David?”

Her voice retained that genuine quality, and he moved uneasily, but his gaze went back to her hands.

“The story has it that your hands changed the lights that night.”

“We changed them!” she cried, missing his point, and he started as in relief at the pronoun she had used with such evident spontaneity. “Oh, no! He was so good to us; he was so kind to me. Do you believe we would do that?”

She raised in appeal one of the hands that he had suspected. He studied it, fine and small and well proportioned, and he rubbed his chin slowly with the backs of his fingers. He said, almost reluctantly,

“Well, maybe you didn't.”

“Oh I'm glad of that—I'm so glad of that!” Relief tumbled from her lips in words and tone, and for a time she pleaded with him to forget the story, to believe that no planned harm would have come to his father there, and her impulsiveness, her beauty, the spell of youth and moonlight took both suspicion and steadiness from David MacKinnon's heart. “Since then I've had no one, but my dog and—my mother.”

“Mother?”

“Her picture. That's all I have of her; it's all I ever knew of her.” He meditated on this as she continued: “Your father liked my mother's picture. He saw it the night before he—died. He took it in his hands and told me he hoped I'd grow up to be as sweet a woman as my mother must have been. He was so gentle.”

The lad nodded.

“A kind man,” He was as sober as he had been bitter. “Was he—was he happy that night?”

“He wasn't ever happy. He was just kind, and sometimes sort of sad, but he always tried to make people happy. It seems to me that that last night his smile was—sort of sweeter than ever. He stood for a long time holding my mother's picture in his hands, alone with me, and talking about girls growing up. I used to hold it afterward when I wanted him. It was the last thing of mine he touched. Would you like to see my mother's picture, David?”

He hesitated and looked about slowly.

“Yes,” he decided. It was, somehow, a link with his father.

He followed Eve over the rail to the dock.

“Is this all wrong?” he asked himself. “Is she, like the rest here, at his mercy? Or is it only actin'? I shouldn't be leavin' my boat alone—not here—but——”

He did not notice the dark blotch in the shadow of the net-house as they passed, and he did not look back, so he had no chance of seeing it stir and grow to the proportions of a man, peering out at the two figures going away.

MacKINNON stood again in the room where he had stood last night, but this time there was about him no hostility or defiance. He held the photograph to the lamplight and asked himself how a woman like that could mate with a man like Eldred. A sensitive face, a sweet face—so in contrast with the man who was called “king”—and looking suddenly at the girl, he felt a wave of sympathetic curiosity for her—and a thrill, for her serious eyes were so clear and her parted lips so gentle. His reason called out to him to beware, but a more powerful impulse made him put by the warning that this was Garden Island and that last night he had defied Norman Eldred!

“I've been glad an' sorry that the storm put me in here,” he said finally. “I guess now I'm glad again.”

“I am, too. Why didn't you come before?”

He spoke gravely.

“This place has meant a run of bad luck for us, an' that was all. When my mother died I wanted to come—was only a kid, but I was for it”—unsteadily. “She made me promise I wouldn't, so I stayed away—or tried to. The lake itself pitched me in here.”

He talked slowly, with considerable pauses between phrases, and seemed more interested in the girl's face than in what he said.

“A man's a fool to try to get away from the job that's cut out for him. You can't beat it. I promised I wouldn't come an' tried to stay away, an' here I am! I've thought about it a lot an' about my father; I've wondered what he was thinkin' just before the end.”

He looked down at the picture he held and then placed it on the table with a queer smile.

“That's one reason I'm glad I'm here; I've found out somethin' about him. I'll be goin', now.”

“Don't go—not just yet!”

There was anxiety in her voice, and when a shadow of suspicion crossed his face and he asked sharply, “Why?” the girl was confused—just for a moment, and then, putting her finger-tips on the table-top, she said:

“Because in the morning you'll be going away and you'll be in and out, and there's no telling when I can talk to you. I've been needing somebody, and you're the first one—and it seems as if I'd have to talk.”

“What about?”

“My father—” she began and looked away as if confused, then set her gaze on his face and went on, talking in a low voice and unsteadily: “I don't like it here any more. I don't know what to make of things or of myself—the way I feel, I mean. Did you ever want to talk to somebody so bad that you thought you'd—you'd cry if you didn't, and there wasn't anybody to talk to?”

David settled himself on the corner of the table, arms folded, one foot swinging.

“No; I've never felt that way.”

“But there always has been somebody to talk to when you wanted to talk, hasn't there?”

“Maybe that's it. Maybe I've never had to talk very' bad.” And when she did not continue he asked, “What's the matter here with your father and you?”

She shook her head.

“I don't know. I've thought that if your father was here, I could talk to him and he'd help me understand. He was the only one I could think of until you came yesterday. When I saw you, and you talked to me and I wasn't afraid of you, and when I found out you were going to sail from here, I thought, maybe—perhaps you were going to be my friend, like your father was, and that I could talk to you like I could to him.” Her constraint was gone by then. She talked rapidly, naturally, without confusion, and most earnestly. “I expect a girl could get along with being just lonesome. I know I could, because I was lonesome for a long time. I didn't know what it was at first. It seemed I'd been lonesome for years before I found out about it. That wasn't so long ago—when I found it out, I mean—and then I found out another thing—something worse. I'm—I'm afraid, David.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

SHE was troubled by that and shook her head.

“I don't know. Of everything, I guess. Of the men, mostly, and of my—” She checked herself, paused and hurried on: “Yes; the men. I always kept away from them, even when I was a little girl, because they frightened me. But that kind of fright isn't like—like being afraid now is.

“I don't know much about men except what my father has told me, but a girl doesn't have to be told, I guess. It isn't what they say or do; it's the way they look at you. I knew what that meant before my father said anything. Any girl could understand that without being told. Some times, lately, it's seemed like I couldn't stand it another day. So long as my father was here, I felt sort of safe—until to-night, when Mosseau grabbed me, and now I know I'm not safe even with my father. But even the other, even when I told myself that men wouldn't do more than look while my father was here, I—I can't tell you what it was, except that I was afraid and didn't know why.”

She paused and traced a line on the table with a small finger, hesitating.

“And then there's—my father.” Her voice was only a breath, and MacKinnon's foot stopped swinging. “He—he's so strange. He wants me to keep by myself, like he keeps by himself. Just the two of us; that's all he wants—nobody else at all. He brought Miss Whitney here—she was a school-teacher—and when I got to liking her, he sent her away. He won't let me talk to other folks; he doesn't even like me to have my dog Friend. I went out to your boat last night, because I knew you were alone and all gone and couldn't hurt me, and I—it seemed I couldn't go another day without seeing somebody and talking to somebody. He's warned me about men ever since I was little, and tells me the only way to be safe is to expect they're going to hurt me and be ready for it—and he keeps me in the store when I'm more afraid all the time. He's right. If I let the men think I was afraid, nothing could stop them. I know that. Whenever my father thinks I'm wanting to talk to other people, it makes him mad. It seems it's bwn this way for ever so long—that I've been lonesome and afraid, and that my father has been this way. Maybe I notice it now because I'm getting a little—tired.”

Her voice, anyhow, was weary on this last, and David unfolded his arms, puckering his lips as if he might whistle. He studied her briefly and then said,

“You don't care much about your father.”

She started.

“Don't say that!”—breathlessly.

“Why not?”

“Because that would be wrong.”

“What would?”

Their gazes clung an instant and then Eve turned her face away as if in shame, but she said,

“Not wanting your father—even to touch you!”

“So it's that bad, eh? Oh, you've told me now; no use tryin' to explain,”—as she started to protest somewhat guiltily. The girl lowered her head again and was silent, and for a moment the man gazed at her, very conscious of the splendid column of her neck, the fine texture of her skin, the sheen on her blue-black hair. He rose and stood close to her, touching her shoulders to turn her about. “Look up at me! I've been around a little, but this is the queerest yarn I've ever heard. Believe me, if it hadn't been, I wouldn't 'ave stayed here this long, leavin' my boat alone in this place. Now, what do you want me to do for you besides listen?”

At first he thought he saw response in her uplifted face, but that faded, and the girl drew away rather sharply, as though in alarm; but her gesture was accounted for by this, to her, incredible fact: a man she did not fear, who had fought for her once, was offering to help her now, and against her father.

She was confused and frightened and flattered, but she had him to think about, and she burst out nervously:

“I want you to go away now, David. I've talked and it's helped. My father—he'd be terribly mad if he thought you'd said that—offered to do more than listen. He wouldn't stop at anything if he thought I had told you this, and if he came in and found you here——”

“He don't scare me.”

“Don't you say that!” she cried. “Don't say that, David MacKinnon, or what you think happened to your father——”

He had moved as she drew away from him, and that change brought him in line with a window which the girl's body had screened. He started.

“What's that?”

Eve turned, too, and looked out. A crimson smear was rising into the night.

“Fire!” she whispered.

MacKINNON sprang forward. As he opened the door, he swung about and turned one scorching, accusing look on the girl behind him, a look which wiped out all that he had said, as his rebuke in the store an hour ago had wiped out the sweetness of having been defended. He left the door open behind him and ran down the steps, down the path toward the dock, desperately, for his Annabelle was a hopeless mass of flames.

PART II

Eve Eldred Is Forced to Take a Step That Means Great Peril. David MacKinnon Will Not Learn His Lesson, and King Norman Finds His Realm in Complete Chaos

Begin this serial with any instalment. The story is here up to this issue.

IT WAS surely fate that drove David MacKinnon in his little trading hooker to seek shelter in the harbor of Garden Island in Lake Michigan on the night of a spring storm, for it was the very place he had been warned to keep away from—the place where his father had come to a tragic end, his boat driven on the rocks through the treachery of “King Norman” Eldred, who changed the beacons that marked the narrow channel.

The island was Eldred's realm. Here he lived with his daughter Eve, now in the years of early womanhood, and held despotic sway over the rough men that helped him with his fishing industry. Eve was all the world to him. He had taught her to fear the men and kept her to himself, resenting strongly the interest taken in her by Jenny Borden, wife of the lighthouse keeper on near-by Squaw Island, So the girl was quite alone and had no companion but her dog. Her chief duty was tending the island store which her father had established. The arrival of David wakened new interests. He was different from the other men, and she believed that he would be a friend—but he would leave in a day or two. Perhaps this was just as well, for her father's hostility toward the lad was only too evident,

The night before his departure, David came into the store, and found Eve repelling the unwelcome advances of Jean Mosseau, a French-Canadian, David thrashed the fellow and threw him out. Eldred, when he learned what had occurred, set out to find Mosseau, and later Eve took David into the house to show him a picture of her mother. Here she told him of her life and wretched loneliness, and warned him against her father, who wouldn't stop at anything if he knew what she had told him.

As they talked, a light from the harbor came through the window. David rushed out, turning one searching, accusing look on the girl. There at the dock, his hooker, the Annabelle, was a mass of flames. Had Eve, by detaining him at the house, been a party to a dastardly deed?

Norman Eldred left his house to hunt Jean Mosseau and make him pay for his treatment of Eve, but outside he paused for one look about, and the first object on which his gaze focused was the hooker at the dock, gleaming white in the moonlight

Dimmock had carried the story of what transpired to his master, omitting nothing, and now a portion of Eldred's rage was diverted from Mosseau to MacKinnon. All day, anyhow, he had been uneasy. The shock of last night's recognition had endured without a break.

Jode MacKinnon was buried in the lake; he had no fear that a law would be brought to harry him—no law from boos—but he was uneasy before the accusing eye of this other MacKinnon, and David's warning had been ringing in his consciousness during all waking-hours since last night.

A dull ache flooded his breast as he stood there, but after that came strength, the strength of rage that has been held back, and he went along the dock and stepped carefully aboard the Annabelle.

The hatch cover was off and he dropped into the hold, stood still to listen and struck a match. The clean brasses of the motor gleamed at him and, again in darkness, he knelt beside it, fumbling beneath the gasoline-tank. A grunt and a sigh; another match, but his fingers were not strong enough. By the smoky flare of the match he found the pliers in a closed box. He groped for the pet-cock with their jaws, and clamped his hand and felt the tool bite into the softer metal. He moved his wrist, and a trickle of running liquid sounded. There was work with a tin bucket. He stumbled in the dark and muttered impatiently. Then a third match and a hasty scramble for the deck.

As Eldred's heavy torso was lifted upward, his watch-chain broke and, on hands and knees on deck, he felt the dangling ends and groped hastily for the charm that was missing. He cursed under his breath as he felt along the planks, then peered into the hold, lighted well enough by then, and stared, but could not see the trinket. He stuffed the broken chain into his vest pocket as he began running stealthily up the dock. Behind him, the spars of the schooner commenced to flush from the light in her hold.

DAVID MacKINNON shouted a protest to a man who ran before him with an ax to cut the lines that held his hooker against the dock, and then he realized that it was useless to keep her there, for in her vitals roared a furnace that no line of buckets could extinguish. She drifted off, flames belching through her one hatch, illuminating the night. With a sharp thud, a leap and a shower of flame, the gasoline-tank exploded and burning fluid clung to spars and rigging and took hold and ate until the Annabelle looked like some pageant-ship festooned in fire as she drifted on to her flamboyant death.

The trader stood with drawn face among the other watchers, seeing the fire eat up the thing he loved so well. The mainmast went down with a crash and a shower of sparks; the foremast went next, slowly, as if yielding reluctantly to weakness. The planking melted; the vessel grounded and held motionless, then began to list slowly. Dismantled, black, with great holes eaten in her body, she lay there helpless. But no flame had found hold on the bowsprit. The spar remained intact, and pointed shoreward with that saucy tilt, as though the Annabelle had gone to her end unbroken and undismayed.

Norman Eldred appeared from nowhere. His men made way for him. He stopped beside MacKinnon.

“Unfortunate,” he said, when he saw that his presence alone would not compel the other's notice. After their gazes met, he added, “For you.”

Light-points danced in his eyes—not anger, this time, but hinting at good humor, a feeling of well-being. And as he saw this and caught the ironical ring of triumph in King Norman's voice, thunder grew in MacKinnon's face.

“An ill wind that blew you in here,” Eldred said, “although it might have happened anywhere—might have,” he repeated, and could not keep the gloat from his tone.

MacKinnon said harshly,

“Until now, Eldred, it's blown you no good.” He walked away, cramming his hands into his pockets.

A gasoline-boat was standing into the harbor, but David gave it no heed until the Kittiwake docked and Gam Gallagher stood beside him.

“That yours?” the Irishman asked.

Their eyes met, and words were not necessary for reply.

“This soon? Ah, boy, it's hell's acre ye picked out to trade in this time!”

MacKinnon nodded.

“And I'd like to get away now. I don't want to go off half cocked, and I'm pretty mad. If I stay here, I'll have to hurt somebody, and maybe I wouldn't do a good-enough job.”

They went aboard the Kittiwake together and started out of the harbor. Until they made the turn toward Beaver Island, MacKinnon stood on the stern watching the ember that had been his Annabelle. Then he muttered,

“If it's so, you're as black a vixen as you seemed to be a white angel.”

And about that time a Mackinaw boat, which had been making her slow way up Thunder Bay all the afternoon, came to anchor off Alpena. An old man was sailing her alone. His hair was gray, his scraggly beard gray, his skin gray and drawn and wrinkled. Over his right eye was a ragged scar, suet against gray. The sinews at his wrists stood out sharply, making deep hollows as he stowed his canvas for the night.

He had a crude little shelter rigged between the two stubby spars; an oil-stove was there, some pots and pans, a bunk. He lighted the stove and put water on to boil. Then, standing up outside, he scanned the fishing-boats at anchor between him and the lights of the town. His lips worked continually and his eyes roved without cessation with a queer, bright, vacant light.

Ever since the ice moved in Lake Huron he had been doing that—staring at boats with his vacant eyes. More, he had scanned the settlements of fishermen, and in the towns where only one or two made their livelihood by handling nets, he hunted out their homes and peered and mumbled.

Last year it had been the Canadian side of the lake he sailed; the year before it had been Lake Erie, and always his manner and method were the same. He asked few questions, just mumbled and stared, but he was persistent, and little remained unseen by those odd eyes.

People talked to him rarely, and then, for the most part, he appeared not to hear what was said to him. One question, though, always arrested his attention, for when men asked, “Lookin' for somebody, dad?” or, “Who you expectin', uncle?” his eyes would remain on their faces a lengthy period and his hands would rummage in his beard as though striving to concentrate on a reply; now and then he would mumble as he shuffled away, “Two—two hearts—both mine—one to—and one to keep——”

He was a weird figure as he stood in his boat this May evening, weak of body, burning with some uncanny strength of purpose. Once, however, as his eyes roved among the scattered boats at anchor about him, tears came into them and a sob ran through his thin throat. After that he turned back to his sputtering oil-stove and sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and began preparing a scanty meal, his lips still moving.

His boat swung idly at her anchor. On her bows a name was painted, done in crude characters. The lettering read:

REVENGE

PORT BRUCE, ONT.

SO DAVID MacKinnon came to the Beavers, where his father had met disaster and confronted the same force, bravely, arrogantly, and came off second-best, as other and older and as good men had done.

The story spread out over the lake, into the Straits, over into Green Bay and the Bays de Noc, where David was well known; it went down the east shore, too, and whenever men heard it they shrugged and said it would be well for the lad to let bad enough alone.

That is what the good Irishmen at St. James, where David had gone with Gam Gallagher told him, too; more, they urged that he keep away from Garden Island and Norman Eldred. They urged, because, when they spoke their minds and proffered advice to this son of the man they had known and liked, he did not respond with assent, he did not argue with them, and though he whistled his aimless, gay little tune, there was a look on his face which was nothing if not determination—unless it were obstinacy.

The trader liked Gallagher; it was to his house he went for shelter on the night of the fire. It was Gam alone of those the lad met who forebore any well-intentioned attempt to frighten David away from the islands and Norman Eldred; he kept silent and never brought up the matter until the last night that David was to be in his house.

After a winter of idleness and with his boat gone, it was necessary for David to do some manner of work. As Gam had given his shelter, so he gave him opportunity to be busy, because he had planned extensive fishing and men were scarce. A set of trap-nets off the shore of High Island bothered him particularly, and he talked it over and found that MacKinnon was willing to handle the Islander, another of his gasoline-boats, and live on that island with the Indians who were to be his helpers.

“There's a good house to live in there,” he said. “I've used it myself other springs. The Indians have their own shack, too, an' ye'll have so much to do that maybe it'll help ye forget yer hot reception to the Beavers.”

David laughed shortly.

“I wouldn't like that. I want to remember it.”

Gam rubbed his Ibeard thoughtfully.

“It's none of my business boy, but I like ye, as I liked yer father, an' I'm not wantin' to see ye in more trouble.” This elicited no response, and after a pause he went on: “I've had a notion ever since yer boat burned that mebbe ye wanted, or mebbe ye thought ye could get back at Eldred.” He looked cautiously at his companion. “It's a bad job, lad. To try to do anything would only—” It was his manner to leave sentences unfinished.

“Make matters worse; is that it, Gam?” David stirred and smiled slightly.

“Perhaps,” Gam answered.

“Funny how time'll heal up hurts, and how a man can't get away from his job! It don't seem real any more—the things I went through when I wasn't any bigger than your littlest. I was just that—a little kid—when you come over to Fayette to tell us about my father. I cried all night, I remember; thought I'd never have a dry eye again, but that was only the beginnin'. I thought a lot of my sister——”

HIS hands were locked behind his head, and he gazed at the low ceiling as he spoke without a tremor of emotion.

“And then, when we'd scarce got used to havin' her out of the house, my mother began to go, and something told me from the beginnin' that she'd never get up again. She didn't care about it, I guess. Oh, she cared enough for me; but her heart was gone—understand? Nobody can keep on without a heart. Just one thing she seemed to care about in those days—that Eldred didn't take the last of us, which was me. She'd talk about what I was goin' to do when she was gone and planned school and things for me that'd take me off the lakes, and make me promise over and over that I'd never set foot on the Beavers.

“But I couldn't keep off the lakes—might as well have tried to stop eatin' as that. I grew up with the fishermen, but the older I got the more restless I was—because I was tryin' to dodge my real job, I expect. I went with a trader, and we had a little luck and I got hold of a boat of my own. She made money, carryin' shingles and hay and the like, and finally I had the Annabelle and thought I was satisfied and settled down.

“I'm no better or worse than the run of men on the lakes. Sort of shiftless, maybe. All I cared about, I thought, was to keep my hooker in as good shape as a good boat deserved. I've done my share of hellin'. I've been broke and drunk for quite a while at a stretch. I've combed the beaches after wrecks and beat the underwriters to it more 'n once. But I guess all the while I've been dodgin' what I had to do, tryin' to keep busy and keep away from it, and that made me sort of shiftless.

“When I pulled out of Green Bay this spring, I meant to go way below, into Erie, anyhow, and maybe Ontario, which I expect was another scheme to make me keep the promise I made to my mother. But it wouldn't work. The lake—see?—tossed me into Eldred's arms, and here I am, with the whole thing— my father and what happened to the rest—as fresh as it was when I was a kid, almost—only, I don't feel like cryin' now.”

He was silent a moment.

“Of course you and I and the rest round here are pretty well satisfied my father was killed. Nobody can prove it, though. I—I sort of dared Eldred to try dirty work with me, and the next night he burned me out. Anyhow, it's reasonable to think he did. I don't know for sure yet, but I'm goin' to find out, if that can done. I think he and the girl planned the whole works; she dragged me ashore with a damned cock-and-bull story, and when I flared up about her father—he was mentioned—she got sore, and about that time the Annabelle was on fire.

“That's why I want to hang round. I don't want to try to hit him before I know, but I'll tell you and these islands and anybody else who wants to listen that if I find out for sure that he set my hooker afire, he's goin' to pay with everything he's got. We never can quite prove that other—what he likely did to my father, but if I can prove this, I'll collect enough to square the whole account, as near as a bill like that can be collected!”

It was indicative of the judgment of Gam Gallagher that he made no remonstrance. His only comment was:

"Luck to ye, lad!”

AND so another tale went across the lake—not told with so much interest as the other, not reaching such remote places, but it was a tale which made men who knew Eldred stop and consider, for tongues had it that young Dave MacKinnon, the trader, had not been frightened away by the king of Garden Island—that he had made threats, not as men usually threaten, but only when forced to it by those well-intentioned advisers who would have him make the best of a bad mess.

Among the other places, this story was told on Garden Island itself, in Eldred's own house, by the red-beard Dimmock. Eldred listened without comment; even his eyes did not change as they rested on Dimmock's face, but once his hand moved on the chair arm jerkily.

Fragments of the tale reached elsewhere—the ears of Eve Eldred, for one; she knew that MacKinnon was fishing on High Island, but when she carried the query to her father, she was met by evidence of displeasure. It was well, he said, that MacKinnon's hooker had burned, because he was a trouble-hunter by nature.

“But Jode—” she began.

“He is not like his father,” Eldred interrupted sharply.

A moment of silence.

“I thought, perhaps, he might be, that he might be my—friend.”

The man walked away then with a short laugh, and the girl stood watching him go, greatly troubled.

It had been momentary relief to Eve to tell David MacKinnon of her fears and misgivings and unhappiness. Relief had come when she was talking to him and could see response in his face, but thereafter it seemed as though the very crystallizing of thought into expression increased the significance of all those factors which had disturbed her. The thing on which she had touched most lightly in her talk with her father was the outstanding phase of the situation, and this weighed the more heavily thereafter. She inwardly shrank from his touch and was in turmoil when near him. Fear of betraying this revulsion came now to heighten her discomfort, and, with the attitude of the men of the crew, such as it was, she needed his actual protection more than ever.

Whenever mention had been made of MacKinnon, her father acted strangely, and twice after the fire she had seen him aboard the ruin that had once been a graceful hooker, poking among the charred timbers as though in search of something. Quite innocently, she remarked about his missing watch-charm, and he had been impatient at her wonder, saying he had lost it back in the forest.

Mosseau had escaped, vanished, without leaving a trace of which she was aware, but what he had done remained a matter for discussion among the crew. She could tell that from the way they looked at her. She did not know who would be the next to dare.

Then there was MacKinnon. She did not care so much, because the men who had seen him humiliate her did not know that he had made amends for that, but, having made him her confidant, she was in great need of him, and he was gone, his return unlikely, now that his schooner was a charred ruin on the beach. One thing troubled her—that look he had flashed before he swung through the door to run toward the burning Annabelle. It was little short of ferocious, and it shocked her as his rebuke in the store had shocked her. But it was unexplained; she was not certain that she had interpreted the expression rightly, and there were so many other memories of him that were pleasant.

She kept to the house largely in the following days, and when she went outdoors it was with care not to be far from her father, at once a cause for depression and her protector. For hours she would scan the lake with a glass, hoping to discover David coming back, that she might again talk to him. And one afternoon that hope took fire as Gam Gallagher's Islander banged her way into the harbor and came to anchor in the shallow water by the remains of the Annabelle, and MacKinnon and Fred Mink, one of his Indian helpers, protected by hip-boots, dropped into the charred hulk and began the task of salving what remained of value.

Atremble with excitement, Eve stood by a window to see the men toil. Stood there until darkness came—uneasy, undetermined, seeing the motor slung laboriously aboard, watching David and his man work in the cold water. This vigil was interrupted by the coming of her father, who had been back on the island on some errand. Half guiltily the girl turned away from the window when she saw his approach, and soon after he entered she left the room. Returning shortly, she found that he had taken her place and stood, hands clasped behind his back, head hung forward. He did not appear to hear Eve coming, and she stopped in mid-room, attracted by his heavy breathing. When he did turn, it was with a start, as though detected in some guilty act, and he went to his desk, where he sat with his head bowed so his daughter might not see the strange new lights of apprehension that danced with the anger in his eyes.

TWO hours passed. Eve was in the store, with the usual dozen or more men lounging about the stove. The buying for the evening was practically over, and the girl behind the counter piled stocks on a shelf, acutely aware of the eyes which did not leave her for long.

Dimmock and another stood near the door, conversing lowly, when boots came up the steps in hurried measure and stopped on the threshold. The newcomer was David MacKinnon, and he stopped outside, looking in. About him was that which caused men to stop talking, and it was the hush which attracted Eve and made her turn. Her heart leaped, because he was there, within a few feet of her; and then it went on in swift measure because she saw a belligerent tensity which alarmed her.

David's survey of the room was swift and decisive. He advanced toward Dimmock.

“Where's Eldred?” he asked, and Eve started because his manner was clearly a challenge.

Dimmock eyed him suspiciously and replied.

“Ain't he in the house?”

“Went there first.”

“If he ain't there, I don't know.” And then, “What you after?”

With that question, MacKinnon's face broke into a scornful smile as he looked down at the articles he held in his hands.

“See that, Dimmock?” Eve heard him say, as he held up a blackened bit of twisted metal. She could not see that attached to one end was a pet-cock, turned open and with the marks of pliers' jaws on it. “And that?”—as he flipped the pliers open. He thrust them toward the other so he could see. “Those marks came from these, didn't they? And it was closed when I left. She burned like a torch, Dimmock. You know where that came from!” He tossed the watch-charm that Eldred had worn to the counter. His words were meaningless to the girl, and she could not see Dimmock's face as he studied the pet-cock which had drained the Annabelle's gasoline-tank, with its telltale evidence of treachery.

“What do I want, Dimmock? I'll tell you what I want. I want to tell the man that you call 'king' here that he's been runnin' on a long line, but that now he's used up the slack. I want to tell him that he's tried the MacKinnons once too often. That other”—voice shaking a trifle—“is too long ago, so long that it's all guesswork. There ain't any guesswork here”—wiping his hands slowly on his hips—“and I'm lookin' for King Norman to knock his damned crown off!”

His voice was steady and clear and loud, rising as he delivered his threat, and Eve felt her heart chilling. Not because of the threat against her father, not because of any outraged sense of loyalty, but because this was the man she had liked—he who, she had hoped, was to be her friend.

She found herself slipping round the end of the counter, walking quickly toward him.

“I thought from the first that this happened,” David went on, “and everybody else thought so, but I wouldn't open my head until I was sure. I'm sure enough now, and I've come to say that for the last time Eldred has played his hand too high. I——”

He stopped shortly, because Eve was before him, very white of face.

“Don't say that!” Her voice was pinched, and the words sounded as though very little breath had been behind them. “Go away! You don't know what you're doing!”

She was unconscious, as she spoke, of the men about her, hardly conscious of what she said. She wanted this man to run, to board his boat and seek the safety of distance, wanted to warn him that this was foolhardy. though she did not even know the quarrel. She had wanted him for her friend, but now she knew she could not have him. The next thing was to be a friend to him, to wish him well, to head him away from difficulties into which he was rushing.

But he did not take it so. Some of the rigidity went from his shoulders as he looked down at her, and she heard him laugh.

“So you'd like to have me pull out, eh?” he ask. “The king wants me to go, and the princess, too!” He laughed again and moved forward. Eve felt hot blood beating into her cheeks and her knees trembled. “I'd almost forgotten about you,” he went on, “almost forgotten you, you little—decoy!”

He fairly spat out that epithet. Eve checked her slow retreat.

MacKinnon laughed once more.

“You were damned anxious to thank me, weren't you? You were right on the job with your song and dance. Or was the whole thing framed with the Frenchman to drag me in?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said breathlessly. “You threatened my father and I told you to go. Now, don't you threaten me!”

She drew herself up in an unconvincing show of courage, not designed to impress the trader but for the men.

“I don't recollect makin' any threats to you,” he said, “but, now you mention it, maybe there's one or two due you. Bad luck—wasn't it?—when I stopped the frog here in this room. It'd have served you right—if it wasn't a frame-up—to 've had him kiss you. Maybe that'd help even our score—yours and mine.”

His advance had brought him close to her, reckless amusement with the anger in his eyes. His hand went to hers, which lay on the counter, and clenched it.

“Let me go!” she cried sharply. “Let me— What are you doing?”

David laughed and imprisoned her other hand when it flashed out to strike his wrist.

“I'm goin' to take back the only thing I ever did for you. The frog isn't here, but I'll finish for him. I'll kiss you, you decoy, and make you like it!”

Eve cried out, and her voice sounded faint even in her own ears—just the one word: “Father!” She saw Dimmock's amazed face behind MacKinnon, saw others, heard them moving, and caught for a scant instant the picture of one fisherman grinning. They were glad to see her in trouble.

MacKinnon's arms were about the girl, and his body was pressing close to hers. She was making half-choking, throaty sounds, and she bent backward, shaking her head, fighting against this humiliation with her weakened body, her faint heart. He was only playing her, then, as an angler plays a well-hooked fish. Then her face was brought close to his, roughly and bruskly; she saw his lips lowering, saw for an instant his eyes so close to hers, and with all the hard luster in them there was something else—some new thing, something which neutralized a part of her fear.

And then his lips were on hers, bruising and burning, and she was fighting to be rid of their touch, even while some bursting emotion which had forever been pent up and held from expression rose to that brutal caress. She felt his breath on her cheek and was conscious of the dependable strength of his arms, of the firmness of his flesh—and of the peculiar pleasure which came even with his roughness. She did not want to escape. She did not want to be free. And so, for a split instant, she relaxed and lay there in his arms, her lips against his.

A cackling laugh, rising from behind, roused the girl and caused her to throw her head desperately aside, tearing her lips from his. She was free, staggering from him, brushing a hand across her mouth as though to wipe off the memory of that enforced kiss, flaming with humiliation while MacKinnon stood laughing in easy triumph.

The silence which had shut down upon the room after that scant fraction of time was as complete as it was unprefaced. MacKinnon followed some intuitive impulse and looked toward the doorway.

NORMAN ELDRED was standing there. He had seen and stopped, balanced on the balls of his feet, watching MacKinnon, watching Eve now, who was backed a half-dozen paces from the man who had accomplished that which he had once prevented another from doing.

Time seemed to slow for that instant; it was only the space of a breath, but for Eve Eldred it was a season, an era, an unendurable period. She saw her father's rage, saw the tensity sweep over those others as it had come upon her, because she knew what happened to men on Garden Island when Norman Eldred's temper was roused.

And then it came—a squaring of his feet for a firmer stance, the whipping of a hand toward his hip beneath the jacket he wore, and it came back in the space of an eye-wink, dragging in its clasp the dull blue of an automatic pistol.

Dimmock turned and vaulted the counter; behind the stove men scurried for safety, for they were in line with the trader, who stood crouching for his spring.

But he did not leap because, as the hand with the pistol whipped upward to fire, there came another movement and Eve closed the distance between herself and MacKinnon. She was beside him, before him, back against his body, clutching for his wrists and crying:

“Father! Father!”

The gun-hand had come to its shooting-position. Eldred was swaying forward as though he would speed the bullet with the bitterness in his own heart, but the trigger-finger did not move. That cry, twice repeated, was filled with pleading, with terror, and for an instant Eldred stared into his daughter's face as she shrank there, braving the weapon he held.

Then came a twitching of the arm. It lowered slowly, hesitated, began to rise. It went up, and his teeth fished in the depths of his beard as at a twinge of pain, or as though it required great physical effort to move that arm. And then his hand sank to his side, all but dropped to his side; the fingers opened and the pistol thumped to the floor. He put out the other hand quickly to the door-casing, while the one which had dropped the weapon groped to his side and clenched there, as if some burning pain gnawed at the flesh.

That roused the girl, who through the tense interval had made no move. She took the few steps quickly and stopped very close to her father.

“Father—I will go to the house.”

Then she moved again toward the door, but a twitching of the hand that had been at his side checked her, and she stood watching him while he seemed to struggle for strength to speak. His eyes focused on her face after an effort, and with a shove of the hand against the casing, he brought himself erect. His voice came dully.

“House? Whose house?”

“Why—” She did not go on, for he was smiling—a sickly, terrible smile.

“Not my house,” he said. “You have made your choice. Not to my house. To his house who will have you—who can take you——”

By the stove, some one stirred and muttered, and Eve turned her head quickly. She looked at that group of faces, saw them staring at her father, saw the man who had grinned turn a brutal gaze on her face. Still looking over her shoulder at them as one who was all but compelled to remain in danger by the fascination of that danger, she went through the doorway.

And then, in the silence, MacKinnon laughed again, and with a hand in his pocket went close to Eldred, who stood with his head drooping.

“I was lookin' for you, King Norman, to knock your damned crown he said, “but this—it's enough for a beginnin'!”

He lifted his free hand then, and snapped the thumb close against Eldred's face and, chuckling to himself, walked out.

EVE halted half-way between store and house and watched David MacKinnon go down the beach.

For a certainty she was without protection now. There went the only man but one who had ever defended her, and that other had just refused even the shelter of his house.

She could hear the men stirring in the store, hear their voices rising in the first murmurs of embarrassed talk, and those sounds struck her with cold fear. No longer was the presence of her father a restraint upon them; no longer was there anything between their impulses and her safety.

Go back to her father and argue? It gave her a creepy sensation, for she had seen him enraged before, but never had she seen such evil in his face as had been there a moment ago.

If she could get away from this island, she might be safe, but what good would an attempt do when stronger arms than hers could propel boats in chase? If a friendly tug should happen in, if that woman from the light should come, if David MacKinnon— She caught her breath. She heard a man on the store steps speak. She was flying through the shadows.

It was only a short distance to the beach, but by the time Eve had emerged from the shadow of the net-house, her breathing was desperately fast.

“Come back!” she called chokingly.

David, splashing through the water and already half-way to his anchored boat, stopped and looked about. She stood at the water's edge, watching him.

“Now what do you want?” he asked sharply.

“Come back!” she repeated, and added a faint “Please!”

For a moment the man remained irresolute, and then turned slowly toward shore, curiosity stirred by this summons.

“Well, I'm back,” he said, stopping close to her.

The girl studied his shadowed face.

“You didn't hear what my father said?”

“Yes.”

Eve looked back at the store again and tugged at one hand with the other.

“He said—that his house wasn't mine any more. He told me——”

“I was there, and I've got ears. Did you think——”

“That is why I followed you, to have a place—to go.”

The man lifted a hand and rubbed his chin with the backs of his fingers.

“So that's it!” She nodded. “You're comin' to me for help?”

“You are my only chance.”

“What makes you think I'll help you?”

She waited a bit before saying in a whisper,

“Because you—you're different.”

He laughed rather scoffingly.

“What if I say that I won't help you?”

“You're not going to say that! You know what it means to leave me here.” He laughed once more, but she went on, reaching out to grasp his sleeve and shake the arm intently: “I told you the other night that it's been my father who's stood between me and those men. I told you how they—how they looked at me, how they waited and watched, and how I'd been safe because they were afraid of him—my father. To-night they heard him send me away—and he said that I belonged to—whoever could take me. That's what he said, and they heard him.” She halted, for her excited breathing broke up the sentences. “You're my only chance at safety—that's why I ran after you. Just to-night—just to help me away.”

Her voice caught on the last, and the hand that had touch his sleeve let go its hold.

MacKinnon stirred and look from her frost-white face to the shadows of men approaching the shacks. Some had stopped and were watching him, he knew. The girl had not overstated her situation.

“You're not safe here,” he said. “That's sure. Do you think you'd be safe with me?”

She looked up, and her expression changed from desperation to a certain calculation, a certain hardness.

“I'm not asking you for—for safety,” she said. “I'm just asking you to take me away—that's all——”

Her expression puzzled him; he did not know whether it was fear or guile, but while he watched her and absorbed the shock of her reply this fact struck him: that the girl was in his hands. To-night he had shattered King Norman's dream of keeping his daughter ever loyal to him, and it was not unlikely that Eldred's regret for what he had done would be as sudden and as profound as the rage which had put her away. Here, then, was a chance to remove her presence, and should the king want her back, that revenge would be picturesque indeed!

“Fair enough!” he said and laughed. He stooped and lifted her and sloshed out through the water and set her lightly down on the rail and scrambled aboard himself.

IT IS an hour's run from Garden to High Island for a craft like the Islander with its heavy-duty motor, and in that time at least two people aboard did a deal of thinking. Fred Mink, the Indian, sat at the wheel and steered, and if he thought much, he gave little evidence of it.

After the motor was turning regularly and he had looked at the oil-supply, David drew off his oilskins and stood abaft the engine, looking at the girl, who sat crouched on a locker behind the Indian, dimly revealed by the reflected glow of the binnacle-light. She had not spoken since she came aboard; she had dropped on that locker as though the last strength had gone. Her face was in shadow.

THE man went out on the stern, where he stood looking along their wake to the few lights that showed on Garden Island. That particular smile with which he had listened to the warnings of men who feared that he would come to grief with Eldred was on his face now, accentuated and augmented by a dancing light of boyish triumph. He ran a hand through his hair as he remembered Eldred's collapse when Eve sprang to protect him, and he chuckled when he thought how the story would go over the lakes—that Jode MacKinnon's boy had run away from Garden Island, with Eve Eldred for his prisoner.

That is what she was—his prisoner. He considered her so. For a flash, back there on the beach, he had been conscious of pity, because it was not pleasant to think of any girl with eyes and lips and a body like Eve's left to the mercy of men like her father. But that was gone now, and what he saw in the situation was a second blow at her father; more than a blow—stock with which to make the man ridiculous!

And he owed the girl a score, too. He was now helping her out of one hideous situation, but she would be far from comfortable in that escape, he told himself. No, indeed! She would pay for this rescue, and fully! She would pay, too, for the part she had played in the destruction of the Annabelle. She would pay with suspense and uncertainty and fear, for he would keep this girl guessing.

And while he stood outside. Eve sat slumped forward. As the boat gathered way her spinning mind had steadied a bit, and by the time David had gone on deck, she was thinking fast.

She was free from the menace of her father's men, and she had traded on the beach with MacKinnon very eagerly; but now, with the one danger obviated, the other loomed before her as a thing as monstrous as the first.

She heard again his challenge: “Do you think you'd be safe with me?” and in memory his tone became more insinuating, more forbidding. She had come with him; she had even said that she was not asking for safety. She had lied then in her bargaining, for she thought it would be a bribe which she could retrieve later. There had been no time for regard of truth and honor there on the beach.

At least she had achieved something. The menace was concentrated in one man. She knew that, except for the Indians, he lived alone on High Island; she did not fear Fred Mink and the other. To protect herself from MacKinnon, then, became her sole objective.

And, as she planned, she became desperate; but she was alert, frightfully calm, driven to clear thought by the situation. There would be no escaping him; that much was certain. She could not argue with him because his front to-night had been one of scornful enmity.

She tapped a foot swiftly and hugged her body. To protect herself from him—to keep him away until morning—for a day—a week. He was hard—as hard as rock, as hard as steel. As hard as the steel of those knives used in dressing fish which were racked against the wall—as hard as those knives— She started. There were three, blades narrow and thin from long use. They were sharp knives—very sharp, she knew. A bargain meant nothing; she was concerned with one thing—her safety. MacKinnon had taunted her with his own menace. And her strength was no strength for his.

She sat further forward. David could not see her. Mink lounged on the wheel, watching the water ahead. She drew a foot across the boards, but he did not look back. She stirred, but still the Indian showed no interest. She stood up, and he did not move. And then, like a stalking cat, she crossed the housing, waited, looked swiftly about. She sat down again and tapped her foot and hugged her body, but not so tightly as before, for in her blouse was a knife, one hand gripping its handle.

She was aware of the mechanics of bringing the boat to dock, heard the lines go out and made fast. She was alone, with both men outside. She heard words, muffled, and then Mink said:

“All righ'. See you in the mornin', Dave.” And his footsteps went up the resounding dock.

Eve was more alone than she had ever been in her life. A show of strength, her father had preached, was the assurance of safety; she had summoned that front almost daily for years, but it had never been convincing perhaps to any man, and she even had confessed her weakness and fear to MacKinnon.

But now it was not so. What protection she might have would come from her own wits and strength of heart, and as she stood there in the darkness of the boat listening for David's next movement or word, that front which she had only assumed became real. It was one of those moments of peril when slack and flabby courage becomes taut and strong, and as she felt the boat list slightly when MacKinnon's weight came on it, she gathered herself for a spring, and her heart was as determined, as unfaltering as the grip of the hand on that knife-handle. He was saying,

“Come along now; we'll go to the house.”

One impulse in the girl was to rebel, to force the issue then and there; but another—some sudden weakness, some part of her which still shrank from the crisis, which, perhaps, was hope for an easier way—urged her on, and she went.

His one foot was on the rail and the other on the dock. She hesitated, and, as though from a considerable distance, she heard him say, “Here; I'll help you across.” And his hand was on her arm, helping her step to the dock, steadying her; and the hand held there while they walked forward, tightening like a locked band of steel.

“Cold?” he asked, and she shook her head, at which he laughed. “Not afraid, are you?”—mockingly. “You tremble so.”

Resentment came with that, and she tried to pull away, but he hung on and, an instant later, steadied her as she walked a stringer of the half-ruined wharf. She did not know whether his hand was aid or trap. She was aware that he was searching her and she flashed a look at him, at which he laughed. Rage came, paralleling fresh fear; he seemed to be so sure of her, so sure of himself, as though he followed some well-formed and familiar plan.

They went slowly up the beach. Eve's pulses hammering at her ears, fully alive to but one thing: the knife which she clutched—her last hope, her only chance, she felt.

They stopped in the shadow of a log house and MacKinnon fumbled at the latch and looked at her with that deviling laughter still in his eyes.

And then she was inside, alone with him in a dark room, and his hand was gone from her arm. She went forward swiftly, turning in the darkness with the knife drawn, for she expected pursuit. She heard him moving. He was not following, and under cover of the sound she kept on until she touched a wall. It was rough and hung with clothing. She went along it slowly, breath quick, until she came to a door—a door!

She reached for the knob, all but sobbing aloud in suspense. She could not face him there in a room within four walls—strong walls. Her courage was failing; she could not fight with the spirit that her father had encouraged. She must flee, must be away, outside—and here was a door!

Her hand found the knob, and in a flutter of excitement and relief she turned it, but before the latch moved, a match scratched and flared. Eve found herself backed tightly against the door, facing him, waiting. But David was turned the other way as he fussed with the bracket-lamp on the wall, burning match in one hand, chimney in the other. The wick flared; the chimney went on. Carefully he waved out the match, tossed it toward the cook-stove which stood in one corner and turned.

The girl shrank farther back against the panels of the door. Her face was half averted as though from an expected blow.

He stepped forward, and a last flare of desperate courage swept through the girl, but he stopped by a chair in mid-floor and drew it back against the w;all. Then he looked closely at her.

“Rough—but good enough,” he said. “Your room”—with an exaggerated wave of a hand toward the door against which she cringed and a derisive bow—“and the door locks from the inside. I sleep on the boat. Sweet dreams!”

Eve found herself standing alone, staring at the knife she held as though it fascinated her. Then, with a gesture that was almost fright, she sent it spinning across the floor.

HOW long a time passed before Norman Eldred moved from the doorway in which Eve had left him he did not know.

It was a seemingly endless interval of suffering, of dumb pain, of confusion and heart-break. He stood there as a man whose whole world has collapsed and who has no further need for the ability to move or think or speak. In an instant his kingdom had become chaos. Not because he had lost command of his crew, not because his property or profits or ascendency was threatened, but because the object for which he had worked and dominated was wiped out.

Strong as he was, Eldred had had moments when rage could not drive fear completely from his heart. One of them came when he looked into the face of Jode MacKinnon's son and saw that the boy was undismayed at the prospect of a clash with him. That was something new—encountering a man who dared challenge him, who, instead of showing humility, showed insolence.

For the hour he had been able to put this by, promising himself that the trader would pay as others had paid, and then he had stood in the shadows and seen David Mac Kinnon listening to what Eve so earnestly told him—listening and watching her with something more than curiosity.

With that came panic. Eldred fired the Annabelle, and felt sure that the way of strength had triumphed again and that he was rid of the trader. But MacKinnon would not learn his lesson. He remained near and made threats; he was audacious; he knew no caution, and all these factors combined to put Eldred in a ferment of rage.

He planned many manners of revenge, but in each instance he came against this hard fact: David MacKinnon did not fear him, and it was fear in the hearts of other men on which Eldred had built his position. And then, this night, he had come upon the trader in the store, with Eve in his arms, fighting and calling for help—the fairest avenue to revenge that even a fair-minded man could ask!

AGREAT joy had come into his heart as he reached for the pistol, and a great sickness as Eve, in that stressed second, made her choice. She would defend against her father the man who had humiliated her! Beyond that, there could be no more complete renunciation of the thing for which Norman Eldred had hoped. And so, as a man who had dedicated every hour and every energy toward one objective, only to see it go beyond his touch, he was rocked to the foundations of his consciousness.

The chagrin, the disappointment, the heart-wrench which Eve's action caused him turned the passion that had held her close to his heart to an equally virulent passion that would put her away. She was gone in that one moment, dismissed from his life, he thought. He was once more at the beginnings, with nothing at hand but his tortured heart, his body, his senses. He was aware that the men went out, leaving him alone; he moved to a packing-box and sat down like one who is mortally wounded. His hands hung between his knees; his head drooped forward. After a long time he lifted his face and stared about dully, as though expecting to find others viewing his misery.

But he was alone, except for Friend, just coming to a stop in the doorway, peering at him inquiringly with his amber eyes. The dog was dripping water, for he had swum until tired in the wake of the boat that carried Eve away and had come back.

Eldred rose. Friend advanced, sniffing, and watched as the man stooped to recover his pistol; then he smelled the weapon, and after the tongue of fire had leaped out to sear his troubled nose, he ran in a brief half-circle with his head held close to one shoulder. Then he lay down and turned on his side, and when Eldred walked out, his lifeless tail was thumping the floor in a reflex of his gone happiness. For long Eldred had hated the dog because he had a place in Eve's affections. That cruel and childish revenge seemed to steady his weakened legs and he walked with a degree of assurance as he passed out of the store, unmindful of the lights which still burned, not even taking the precaution to close the door behind him.

He went up the path to his house. Opening the door, he stood and peered into the big room. No lamp was there, but a half-burned log smoldered, throwing the room into eery lights and shadows. He went within, closing the door softly, and looked about. For many minutes he stared into the shadows, and then began to walk among them slowly, groping with his feet, half leaning on chairs as he passed, as though feeling out the obscured places.

He came to a halt by the stairway door and stood looking at the black knob. He was listening, and after he drew the door wide he listened again.

“Eve?” he called finally. “Eve?”—waiting. “Eve?”—the last in a husky tone.

No response, and he made as if to call again, but did not and went up the stairs, clinging to the rail. He paused before her door and listened again and tapped timidly, as though fearful of touching the pine panel. The force of his knuckles was enough to start the unlatched door swinging wide open.

It was as though an invisible hand had drawn it back to show him the white interior bathed in moonlight—and empty.

Eldred spoke the girl's name in a whisper again, and then turned and went downstairs. A thin blue flame burned in the maw of the fireplace, and as he stood at the foot of the stairs, a reflected light-point caught his eye—in the glass of that one picture which hung against the wall. He began to move across the darkened room, eyes on that mirrored light as though it fascinated him. He did not stop until he stood directly before the photograph.

“So!” he cried, and the sound was soft, and long-drawn, like the sighing of wind. “So-o-o! So!”

Then, with a mighty sweep of an arm he snatched the picture from the wall, brandished it about his head and dashed it violently to the floor. He stood staring down at it a long moment as though trying to realize what he had done; then he lifted his feet and stamped the glass and frame and picture to slivers and splinters and rags. It was a dance, a wild, weird dance of hate—and when it was ended the man went across the room with an exaggerated swagger, climbed the stairs and threw himself, still clothed, upon his bed.

The Mackinaw boat, Revenge, was standing up Lake Huron in a light night breeze. The soiled and aged man was at the tiller, scanning the lake with those vacant eyes. He was holding almost due north, which course would put him into Detour Passage and Lake Superior. For long he had been muttering incoherently to himself, hut of a sudden he stopped. He laughed, too, a strained, husky sound, there alone on the lake, and put his tiller down. The Revenge swung up. He flattened his canvas as she took the tack into the west, toward the Straits of Mackinac, which gave him egress to Lake Michigan.

For an hour or more Eve Eldred lay face down on the bed, hands gripping the blankets lightly, breath at first swift and irregular as it bordered on sobs, later easing to a degree of calmness. Finally she sat up. The lamp still burned in the other room, and its glow fell on her through the open door. She rose and went to that door, examining it. A bolt was there, attached to the inside.

“Yes—he was right,” she said.

Then she went in, extinguished the lamp and gazed through the window. The boat lay. against the dock, and no movement disturbed the still night. She turned and went back to the bedroom, closing the door behind her. For a moment she fingered the bolt, sliding it into its socket; then pushed it back, leaving the door secured only by its latch. She unlaced her boots and without further preparation covered herself with the blankets.

“I was wrong,” she said soberly. “And he—didn't mean it.”

For the first time her breath caught in an actual sob, but tears did not come, and presently she slept.

SHE watched him come up from the boat in sharp outline against the hard silver of the young day. She stood motionless in the middle of the room as he approached, and could see through the cracks in the door that he paused outside as if listening. She saw, too, his one hand draw back as though he would rap to announce his coming, and heard him grunt to himself as instead of sending his knuckles against the wood he opened the door with a shove of his palm.

“Good-morning,” he said and bowed, as he had bowed last night, ironically, with that half-sneering smile on his face.

Eve's lips moved to acknowledge that greeting, but her voice was only a murmur.

MacKinnon advanced to the stove and dropped to his knees, thrusting driftwood into the box and striking a match.

“Pleasant dreams?”—as he carefully applied the flame to the tinder.

“One—I think,” she said, and he looked over his shoulder sharply. When he saw the serenity of her eyes, a flicker of astonishment crossed his face and he turned back to the fire.

He rose and began taking cooking-utensils and food from the shelves behind the stove, whistling lightly to himself, not looking at the girl, who stood watching him. Then he took the water-pail from its box and started for the door, still whistling and ignoring her.

“While you get water,” she said, “I'll start getting things ready.”

She said this eagerly, and the tone might have arrested David under other circumstances, but his reply, as he passed out was:

“You can't do anything here any more than you could if you were in jail.”

Eve folded her hands rather meekly before her.

“My, but you put yourself to a lot of trouble!” she said.

He did not reply to this and, as he was then through the doorway, she could not see that his color deepened. She watched him as he tied a line to the pail and dropped it into the lake. Then, before he drew it up, she saw him rub his chin with the backs of his fingers.

For a time thereafter, Dave was occupied with the preparation of breakfast. He made a great clatter with his pans and spoons; he set the table carelessly, dropping plates and cutlery with much noise, and not once did he look at the girl.

He finished stirring his cake-batter. He was adept, demonstrating those fine points of cookery which men who have lived much alone develop, but with the griddle smoking and the fat ready to be smeared on its surface, just, in fact, as he dipped the spoon into the golden batter, the girl asked,

“Don't you ever put salt in your cakes?”

He did not know whether the clearing of her throat before she spoke was an indication of apology or to check laughter; it sounded suspiciously like the latter, and he mumbled something and began to whistle quite loudly, but by the time the salt was stirred in and the first cake was baking, his whistle had died. The coffee boiled over with gusto, and when David thumped down his bowl of batter and pulled the pot to one side. Eve spoke again.

“There! Now, if I'd been helping——”

At once he resumed whistling, without deigning reply.

THE breakfast ready, MacKinnon dragged a chair to the table and looked at Eve.

“Bring up a chair,” he said.

They ate in silence, David with a show of appetite, Eve slowly, as though the food did not interest her. The man did not look up from his plate except once, and then to ask Eve if she would have more coffee.

The meal was over, and the sun, which had climbed above the forest-crowned sand bluffs of Beaver Island, was flinging its first level rays through the windows of the cabin. MacKinnon shoved his chair back to rise when Eve spoke abruptly:

“When I tried to thank you that other time, you wouldn't let me. You'll have to now.”

The half-concealed smile which had been in her eyes until then was gone, and she was very serious.

“Thank me for what?”

“For last night.”

He shrugged then and rose and laughed.

“You better hang on to your thanks until you see what'll happen to you. Remember, you've only landed here; there's lots of time for things to happen that you won't thank me for.”

The steadiness of her eyes was most discomfiting, less so, though, than her words, for she went on:

“That's what you said last night, or you meant about that. You're a lot like my dog, Friend. He growls pretty bad, but that's as far as it goes. He'll be friends with anybody. I told you once that a girl doesn't have to know much about men; she can feel what men are like, and you're not like any man I ever knew. You scared me, like Friend scares folks, but you're—you're just decent.”

In the silence that followed, she looked up at him, and there was that frankness in her eyes which checked what he had in-intended to say.

“Last night, when I asked you to bring me away with you, I thought—I thought you meant what you said, maybe, that I wouldn't be safe with you. But I'd rather be in danger from one man than from a lot—and—besides, you were different. I meant it when I said that all I cared about was getting away; I meant that until we got out of my father's harbor. For a long time I've tried to make men think I was a fighter when I knew I wasn't, but last night, when I was alone with you, I thought I sure was going to have to fight. So I got hold of that.” She pointed beneath the stove, and MacKinnon saw the dressing-knife on the floor, where she had flung it.

“Ready to knife me, eh? I'd expected as much, even after you made your bargain. I didn't promise anything but to take you away.”

She nodded assent.

“I wasn't thinking about that. I knew that if you were mean I'd have to fight, and that I wasn't strong enough to drive you off. That knife was the best help I could find, and I brought it along.”

He said something that indicated contempt, but she did not notice.

“And then you gave up your bed to me and told me I could lock the door. That's what I wanted to thank you for.”

“I told you once to be careful of your thanks. That ought to be enough.”

She looked soberly at him a moment.

“You're trying to scare me. You had trouble with my father, and you're trying to take it out on me. I don't know what that was about. All I know is that you've treated me as no other man I've ever known would treat me. You were good to me last night; you almost knocked on the door before you came in this morning. You were—were almost kind to me at breakfast. You would've been, too, if you hadn't kept your mind on trying to act as if you weren't decent. You can't scare me—not any more.”

“All right,” he said, as he picked up his cap. “If that's the way you look at it, fair enough!” He started out and paused, half turning in the doorway. “I'm goin' to be working on the traps yonder”—with a gesture—“and I'll be in sit of the harbor all day. The only boats on the island are here, and if you try to make a getaway. I'll see you. You won't have a chance!”

He went away toward the dock, but the girl followed as far as the threshold.

“David,” she called, “don't worry about my running-away! I'm going to stay here—with you—as long as you'll let me!”

He did not even look back, but as he reached for the bow line of the Islander, the backs of the fingers of the other hand rubbed his chin in that gesture of perplexity.

An hour later Eve stood on the extreme point of the sand spit which strikes out eastward to form the High Island harbor. The stiff south wind whipped the skirt about her slim legs and riffled tendrils of dark hair about her erect little head. In her nostrils was that fine, clean smell of wind over great bodies of fresh water, damp, and soft with spring. Her blue eyes were very bright, her lips parted, and cheeks stained with color as she watched. One after another, tugs had appeared from Norman Eldred's harbor and had gone their way to the business of fishing. Now the last had cleared the buoys and was swinging to the northward with a stake-driver in tow. The girl drew one hand through the other and swallowed slowly, and her lips moved.

“Mother,” she said huskily, “is it wrong? Is it wrong to feel this way? So—relieved?”

IN THE early afternoon. Gam Gallagher, standing home from the northward, headed in toward the Islander, which swung at anchor. He put out in a pound-boat to watch David and his Indians setting the trap-nets, and though the talk was of the fishing, the older man's curiosity was caught by that half-laughing, half-perplexed look in the eyes of his helper.

The work over, David and Gallagher sat on the stern of the Kittiwake while the Indians cleared up odds and ends preparatory to going ashore, and it was there that Gam's curiosity was satisfied.

His eyes did not leave the younger man's face for an instant until MacKinnon looked up and laughed, like a delighted boy.

“And here I am, holdin' the apple of his eye in the palm of my hand!”

Then Gam shook his head slowly and chuckled.

“It's a good un on him, lad! It's the best ever.” Then he became grave. “Ye couldn't've struck so hard a blow by cuttin' the heart out of his body! Ye're not expectin' him to let her go without tryin' to get her back, are ye?”

“It's likely he'll try.”

“An' if he does?”

“That'll be another thing. I'm not makin' any more cracks, but he don't thrill me a dime's worth. In a fight, Gam, it's' the first punch that counts the most. I wasn't scared of him at first, and there's sure no need to get lily-hearted now.”

The other shook his head skeptically.

“Mebbe not, Dave; mebbe not.” And then, after a moment, “An' now, if it's any of my business, what's yer plan for her?”

The lad stirred restlessly, and the other looked closer, for a change came over the face he watched—a shadow of doubt.

“It's killin' two birds with one rock, Gam. It don't square any account, not by a damn sight, but it's a fair beginnin' because it's such sweet punishment for him to lose her; and it'll serve her right to be kept guessin' a while—a few days.”

“Ye'll turn her back, then?”

David shrugged.

“I only want to worry her a lot, and after that I don't care.”

But he did not look at Gallagher when he said this, and the man's eyes were very keen as they searched his face. After a moment, he laid a big hand on Dave's knee.

“Go easy, boy; ye're young, an' it's springtime, an' whatever else ye'll say of her, she's as fair as a May mornin'!”

David laughed rather hollowly, but Gam did not notice that. He stood up.

“Come inside, lad. I guess Eldred's put no fear into ye, an' mebbe ye can go it alone, but I know him an' his ways, an' I don't want to see ye caught with nothin' but yer hands an' wits when mebbe ye'll need somethin' else.”

He opened a locker and drew out a rifle, wrapped in greasy cloths.

“I've carried it,” he said, holding it out, “because Eldred fishes these same waters; but I guess he'll bother none of the rest of us for a while now. Take it an' keep her handy.”

Dave stepped into his boat and pushed off. Gam stood watching him.

“That's for Eldred,” he said, as Dave put down the rifle; “but for the other—there's nothin' I can give ye for her, not even advice.”

{[di|E]}VE watched the work that David did that afternoon, and when she saw that the task was almost over, she began preparing the evening meal. She was frying potatoes when he entered and did not look up, though the comers of her mouth twitched as if begging to be allowed to smile. She said,

“It'll be ready in a minute.”

He stood over the stove, and finally she lifted her face to see his, cold and clouded.

“Hereafter you'll do no cookin',” he said.

“But I like to! And there's nothing for me to do——”

“That don't matter to me,” he snapped. “I don't trust you—in anything. A man wants to know what he eats. There's nothing here but toadstools and broken glass, but——”

She put down the fork and again her mouth twitched, but not from laughter this time.

“David, if I'd wanted to hurt you, it would have been easy last night,” she said flatly.

He only said,

“You can't get up any argument here; what I say happens to go!”

If developments depended on his saying anything, little would have been accomplished thereafter that night, for they ate without the exchange of a word and the man went out immediately, without so much as a glance at the girl. Eve listened to his departure and drew a chair close to the stove and put her feet on the hearth and clasped her arms about her knees. Her brows were in a frown and on her face now was real melancholy.

She did not know that aboard the Islander, an oil-lamp swinging in gimbals, blankets of his bunk folded to make a comfortable couch, David MacKinnon stared for a half-hour at a single paragraph on the page of a battered magazine. At the end of that time he threw the book away irritably and sat up, putting his head in his hands, and remained so for another lengthy interval. Then he rose and went outside and stood on the dock, gazing out into the lake. There was about his picture something counterfeit, as though his chief interest did not lie yonder across the water, and when the moon, which had been shining through a rift, was again obscured, he turned and went up the beach. But when he approached the cabin where Eve sat before the stove, he went slowly and with great caution, and when he drew near the window through which he could see her, he halted.

For an interval he stood there, a score of feet from her. She moved but little and then only her head, for she still hugged her knees. Once more he became acutely conscious of the luster of her hair, the fineness of feature, soft texture of her skin. And she seemed small—small and alone and defenseless, as she had last night when he held her prisoner and strained her against his body to force her lips to his.

It was of that moment Eve was thinking while he watched. Twenty-four hours ago—and yet it seemed so long since he made that threat before her father's men, and she swallowed dryly as some of the fright returned to her and her lips trembled at memory of that humiliation.

At this point, a strange thing occurred. She could feel his arms roughly about her, again sensed the panic of helplessness as she tried to break free, could feel, in memory, his hot breath on her throat, on her cheek and his lips on hers, and, with this last, that odd something which had been brought to life by the hard caress last night and which had been driven back into her subconsciousness by the events which immediately followed burst into new life. It sent her heart thumping, shot a strange warmth through her body, and she felt herself trembling, not with fright or shame but with some other thing, something new, something delightful!

She lifted her face as though she had been alarmed by a sound, and the man outside was startled at sight of the dynamic beauty which came over her and started back, fearing that in that moment of excitement he had spoken or betrayed himself in some other way.

He circled away from the house and made toward the boat. Eve rose shortly and put out the light. She was turning toward the bedroom door when a low hail from outside attracted her. She paused and listened and heard the voice again; she moved to the window and stared out.

A man was standing there, half-way between the house and the water, and another was coming rapidly toward him through the sand. The first was Mink; the other was MacKinnon. She heard David ask:

“What you doin', Fred?”

“After wood.”

“You don't come this way after wood. Get it off the spit.”

The Indian said something Eve could not hear.

“Never mind that! You get your wood in daylight from now on, and don't prowl round this house any time so long as she's here.”

Without reply. Mink turned and went back to his shack and slammed the door behind him.

Eve saw MacKinnon return to his boat, and watched until the light was extinguished. Then she turned to her bed and nestled in the blankets, curled closely, at once perplexed and at peace. She was puzzled, but felt safe—very safe—on this island with him.

THAT night, Ned Borden and his wife, Jen, were waiting the return from St. James of Pete Larsen, the first assistant keeper, who had gone over at dawn in the supply-boat.

The light glowed in its tower; the fire roared in the stove below, and Aunt Jen, who had been busy for a week in her hours off watch arranging and readjusting the furniture in the dwelling, rocked and darned beside the stove while her husband read from a published volume of sermons by the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage. Her eyes were far away when her work dropped into her lap. She sighed and breathed an “Oh dear!” Ned looked up.

“What is it, Jenny?”

The woman stopped her rocking.

“I'm just wondering if Pete'll bring back my Up-to-Date. I'm all settled now and 've got the goods; time I was working on clothes if I ain't going to look like a grand old relic whenever I go offen this light.”

Borden's face broke into a grave smile.

“Bless you, Jenny! You're the best dressed woman on the lakes. Seems to me we didn't bring much but your clothes when we moved over.”

Jen sniffed.

“Clothes! I ain't got a thing but that mohair and my old tan tailored to wear ashore. I got that piece of taffeta and the lawn for a dress. If Up-to-Date ever gets here. I'll know what they're going to wear this summer, and then I can get busy. This setting and setting when I'm off watch ain't very satisfying.”

“What boils were to Job, idleness is to you, my dear. Didn't I hear the machine going late last night?”

“Just some underthings—didn't need 'em, and nobody who counts ever 'll see 'em unless I get in a wreck, but a body has to be doing.”

Ned went back to his book of sermons; then after a moment looked up at his wife and cleared his throat.

“My dear, you aren't going to be unhappy here?”

Jen looked at him, startled.

“Unhappy? Why in tarnation do you ask a question like that, Ned Borden? Ain't I got you, you blessed old hay-bag?”

There was, with her bluster, something like fright.

“Why, it's seemed to me that ever since we came here you've been uneasy. It's Eldred's being near here hasn't gotten on your nerves, has it?”

“Humph. Him?"

“I know—I know you wouldn't worry over a dangerous man; but there's—I don't know”—closing his book on a finger in the place and leaning forward earnestly—“I can't tell you what it is, but it seems like there's something about you I don't understand. Ever since that night we had to put into his harbor, it's seemed like there was—something between us, Jenny.”

“Something between us? Why, you old rooster, you don't mean anything I do 's making you unhappy, do you?”—voice trembling with concern.

“Me unhappy? The only way you could ever make me unhappy would be to be unhappy yourself or to do something that would be unworthy of you, Jenny. You know that. I've thought you were worried and hiding what worried you so it wouldn't upset me. That'd be like you. And be cause you couldn't sleep that night in Indian Harbor, I thought maybe it was the stories you'd heard about Eldred.”

“Do I look like a woman to be upset by fairy-tales?”—driving the husk out of her voice with a forced belligerence. “I guess not! You're mooning, Ned; you need a dose of sulphur and molasses.” She shifted her big bulk on the chair and sniffed contemptuously. “He may be called bad by folks round here, but I've yet to see a black-whiskered devil who'd scare me!”

Borden smiled, but he was not satisfied.

Jen rocked again when he stepped to the door and looked out to see that the light burned properly.

“If I was to set out, now, to make you uneasy, just what would you recommend me to do?” she asked gruffly. “The time may come, dearie, when I want to devil you, and just what would you recommend?”

“You're making fun of me.”

“I'm making talk on a lonesome night.”

Borden placed a marker in his book and stretched and yawned.

“Oh, you could lie to me or you could do something dishonorable. That is, another woman could; you couldn't——”

“Go 'long with you!” she said, but there was trouble in her heart. “Lying would do it, eh? Or something dishonorable?”

Borden was not particularly interested in this discussion of a possible provocation of his distrust, and though Aunt Jen tried in a clumsy manner at intervals to continue talk on the point, conversation rambled into less speculative affairs. It did not lag, however; their talks never did. They had enough in common and enough diversity in points of view to interest one another, and there were few silences.

THE contentment, with its rare suggestion of romance, had come to both after years of loneliness. Borden had entered the service when the lights were few and primitive. He had been reared on the shore of Lake Ontario, but assignment took him into the St. Lawrence River, where he served through his young manhood and into middle life. He was competent, conscientious and liked responsibility; he was a keeper at thirty, and many a season thereafter he was privileged to wear the efficiency star, badge of faultless performance of duty.

He was not worried about pay or pension; he saved always, and men who worked with him knew that he invested what little he could put by. He had but one extravagance, and this was the purchase of books on theology and volumes of sermons. In the years he had accumulated a sizable library of these which he reread slowly, carefully and, it is likely, with good understanding. A Christian, Norman Eldred had heard of him, and all men recognized a fine spirit in the keeper, but there was yet to be one who had heard cant from his lips or who had been urged to change his manner of life. Borden's religion was a personal matter with him, not to be boasted of, not to find outlet in dictation to other men. His business was to guide ships, and he let the spiritual misadventures of men alone.

Early in that last decade in which the white wings of sailing craft vied with the coming of steam to the Great Lakes, “Red Jenny” was well known from Superior to Buffalo—just “Red Jenny” to most men, marine cook, with personality and temper, and a tongue and a quantity of blazing red hair which had given her the name.

She was of the lakes wholly; so it caused speculation when the thing happened which sent her ashore and establish her as mistress of a sailors' rest, a Buffalo boarding-house.

THE early history of her establishment was no different from that of many another water-front boarding-house in many another lake port. It was frankly and openly in its special class, without pretense or distinction except that the woman who operated it was headstrong and had certain rigid rules which she enforced. Then, too, there was her room off the kitchen and, at first, the sound of a child's voice there. Both room and infant were guarded without relaxation.

But of a sudden there came a face-about in the conduct of the sailors' rest. It was after a night when the mistress was heard crying behind her locked door, and the next morning at an unseasonable hour certain occupants went tumbling through the door, unceremoniously ejected. There were two women and a half-dozen men in this group.

That was the only time, it developed, that objectionable people were flung out of her boarding-house, due to that discrimination with which she accepted guests thereafter. Her place became known as respectable and, finally, unprofitable. The beds were clean, the meals splendid, but no drunken sailors were accepted, and no woman entered the door. Neither, it was casually remarked, was there sound of a child's voice. The clientele was limited indeed, and though Red Jenny was cook and clerk and chambermaid in one, she was finally forced to give up and to bend over a stove that was not her property.

She made her arrangements, and as the last thing went to. the office of the rental agency to settle that obligation, she gave them a piece of her mind loudly and without regard for niceties.

“There's your blood-money!” she boomed. “I hof)e the devil himself 'll blister the heart of the party who owns that shack that depends on whisky and women for profit!”

There were expostulations, of course, and the manager glanced apprehensively at the one other occupant of the room, a tall, well-boned man, in reefer and cap, who listened intently. Jen saw that man when she turned to go, and met his stare defiantly.

A week later, in her new place, she saw him again. The man became regular at his table, and before long he spoke to the cook, saying, without preface:

“I hope you don't mind being followed up. I sort of liked what you said about the guilt of a certain person.”

Jen was about to retort bruskly, but his honesty and gentleness checked her, and instead she mumbled an evasive reply and talked of other things. That night the man stayed on, and within a fortnight she had consented to be the wife of Ned Borden.

“You know me?” she asked tremulously, when he asked her to go with him. “Red Jenny?”

“I know enough.”

“Mebbe you think you do. You've got to know everything. Now, listen.” She began at the beginning then and talked, revealing her life completely, resolutely, and it was not until she appreciated his fine understanding and the genuine greatness of his heart that her courage failed and she stopped—just before she had reached the one thing which she held lowest of all. She tried to go on and could not. She put it off and was married, and tried again a number of times, and failed, and locked the secret in her breast, dreading the consequences of its revelation.

It was remarked on the lakes that Red Jenny, the bellowing shrew, had married that fellow from down the St. Lawrence and that she was quite changed. Men laughed when they heard this.. Red Jenny, the wife of that soft-spoken deacon! He'd bitten off a sweet mouthful, he had! But their skeptical prophecies did not materialize, and Red Jenny became “Aunt Jen,” as loud as ever, perhaps, but with a great heart close behind her bruskness.

This changed life could not change one impulse in the woman, and that was to excel. Instead of dominating men and being recognized as an outstanding figure among sailing people, she now took up the matter of dress, and although most of the time she was on lonely lights, she devoted more energy to the matter of clothes than a débutante. She studied fashion magazines and shopped with fervor when given the opportunity, and sewed hours at a time when not on watch, because she soon earned herself a recognized place in the service. Most of her spare time was spent in cutting and stitching, or in altering the many clothes which hung unused for months at a time.

Since their coming to Squaw Island, Aunt Jen had employed the machine regularly, It was to her like drug to an addict, and when her nerves were in a jangle, it was the manufacture of garments which would steady them. Also, when she was bent low and apparently absorbed in her work, none could see a reflection of that misgiving and fright which was in her heart.

To-night there were indications of a growing restlessness while she talked, but she kept to her chair until the thin whistle of the returning supply-boat came to them.

Jen followed her husband to the water's edge and took from Larsen the bundle of mail he had received at St. James. She went back to the house while the two men drew the boat up its slide and tore the wrapper from a magazine. She spread it on the table, scanning with great interest the slight, hollow-chested young woman who adorned the cover of Up-to-Date Modes and who was attired with all the elegance of contemporary dressmaking art. There was admiration in Jen's eyes for the lines of the figure which she could never have, and with a movement as of resignation she riffled the pages until she came to a department headed: “The Stylish Stout.” Then she sat down and propped her head on her hand and read diligently.

She did not look up when the two men entered, though the Dane was talking almost excitedly. Ned interrupted him.

“What do you think's happened, Jenny?”

She put a finger on the paragraph she had been reading and turned her head:

“They're going to wear 'em to their heels for one thing; what else?”

“Remember that trader, MacKinnon? Well, he's kidnaped the girl.”

The finger which had held Jen's place dragged across the page as if pulled by a great weight; the hand fell over the edge of the table into her lap.

“Say that again,” she said sharply.

“You tell her, Pete”—turning to his assistant. “Go back to the first. There's the hand of the Almighty in this somewhere.”

“Well, I was 'use comin' down from das store when Gam Gallagher he coom oop an' tole about young MacKinnon,” he began, and then recited at length the tale that Gam had taken to St. James that afternoon.

WHILE he talked with a small measure of excitement showing through his natural stolidity, Jen sat tense and tight-lipped, following his every syllable. She did not move except for a clenching of the hand that had dropped into her lap, but her gray eyes, fixed on the Dane's face, were alive—alive with something more than interest, with alarm, perhaps—perhaps with anxiety. She was as one who has waited for long, half in horror, half in impatience for some specific happening, and it was as though the story which Pete told was the thing which she had anticipated.

He finished with a short laugh.

“Eferyboty say Eltret, it serfes him right,” he said. “He bane crazy aboot das gel, an' now he ain't got her aany more.”

“The hand of the Almighty,” repeated Ned solemnly.

“Yah. Das iss it. He had it coomin'—sure!”

And then Jen shifted sharply in her chair and leaned forward.

“And you say this young MacKinnon's got her down on High Island alone?”

“Yah. 'Use him an' der Indians.”

“And he's keeping her there against her will?”

“Yah; das what Gam said”—nodding enthusiastically. “She helped wreck his ladder, an' she teast him away froom hiss hooker when her old man set her afire. Serfes her right, by gosh!”

“Oh, the poor dearie!” Jen rose and moved about aimlessly, letting one hand rise and fall repeatedly into the palm of the other. “The poor dearie! There alone with him— And did Gam say that he'd—” She broke the question as her voice caught. Then, stopping before Jensen, “He ain't harmed her, has he, Pete?”

The other flicked the ash from his cigar.

“By gosh, I dunno! She's dere alone with him.”

“Oh, that dearie! There alone with him! Ned, ain't that tough?” Her husband started to comment, but she went on: “Still, he didn't look like a bad sort and he didn't seem like a bad sort. That morning he done his wash before he done anything else, and when a man's clean— Oh dear!”

Ned put a hand on her shoulder.

“Jenny, don't take on like this. It's likely she's all right, and, anyhow, you don't even know the girl——”

“Know her?” she burst out. “Know her!”—looking up with a blaze of fury through her tears. “Ain't I—ain't she”—her voice weakening as her husband stared at her with amazement—“ain't she a human being? Ain't she in trouble, and ain't I the nearest woman to her?”

It was all too evident that this sense of general obligation was not the thing which had been in her mind when she interrupted her husband. The contrast between her hard-flung challenge and the subsequent questions was too great to cover that truth. Ned doubted, too. He looked closely into her face.

“Yes; you're the nearest woman to her, Jenny. You're right. We must help her if we can.”

Pete rose to go to his own quarters, but before he had exchanged the briefest of good-nights with the keeper, Jen had left the room and was back with a bolt of white goods under her arm. She dropped it to the table, dragged her sewing-machine closer to the lamp with great vigor, produced shears and patterns and fell to work.

“Sewing this time of night?” Ned asked.

“Tarnation, yes! It's my watch in an hour, and that dearie probably didn't take a stitch with her except what she had on her blessed back.” She smoothed out the pattern muttering, “She can't be more 'n a thirty-four.”

Ned climbed the tower to the room where the lamp burned in its nest of lenses, where the silent machinery revolved, making the fixed red light wink with a deeper crimson at regular intervals. He timed the mechanism with a stop-watch and went down again slowly.

When he entered the room where he had left his wife, he was greeted by the click of the foot clamped down on her cloth. She spun the wheel with her hand, and then, leaning heavily on the machine with both arms, face close to the zipping needle, drove the device at high speed, intent on her work. And long after Ned Borden, whose watch ended at midnight, went to bed, the machine whirred on, driven at a speed which made the very building vibrate.

Now and then it was halted while the woman smoothed out patterns and wielded her shears and mumbled to herself while holding thread and pins in her lips. After these intervals, she would back to the machine once more, still mumbling.

At half-hour intervals she got up and went outside, looked upward at the beacon and across the lake at the weather, for she was in charge now, and nothing, not even the turmoil in her heart, could make her relax her vigilance which would guide mariners who might be out there. Except for two instances, her work was otherwise uninterrupted.

The first of these was when, with an explosive “Tarnation!” which sent pins showering from her mouth, Jen stopped her machine and searched irritably for a handkerchief, wiped her eyes and blew her nose with vigor. The next break was of a longer duration, when she sat back in her chair, stout arms folded, and stared blankly before her, chin unsteady now and then. Tears came this time, also, but they were unheeded until she muttered aloud:

“And I've lied to him and done a dishonorable thing! And my cowardly heart ain't got a drop of faith! Oh, Neddie, Neddie!” She clapped a hand over her mouth and gave way to a moment of bitter sobbing. Then she sniffed angrily, spun the wheel and resumed her feverish work.

It was dawn when she snipped the last thread and put the cover on her precious machine. She could hear the keeper stirring in their room.

“He'll know,” she sighed. “He always knows when I'm upset, but I'm hanged if I ain't done a night's work for that dearie!”—pitting the pile of nearly finished garments with pride.

BY THE time the story of MacKinnon's prank had reached the woman on the light, it had spread the length of Beaver Island, reaching the remote farm in the forest where a countryman of Jean Mosseau's eked out a living and where the Frenchman had taken refuge from the wrath of Norman Eldred.

When his friend brought that word to him, Mosseau shoved his cap at a rakish angle and thrust his hands into his waistband and swaggered about the room, his eyes dancing.

“So!” He laughed. “So she iss no longair wit' Keeng Norman! An' she iss on High Islan'; an' de trader he iss not so smart— Jean she owes heem wan grudge, too! Eef Jean she not be drunk, yo'ng MacKinnon he be seek now, wit' broken bones—eh?”

He laughed again and twirled his mustache. He did not forget his grudges, nor the blows which David MacKinnon had rained on him. No more could he forget that he had openly defied the king of Garden Island.

And the next morning, Norman Eldred, seated at his desk, idle, silent, motionless, saw Dimmock come rapidly up from the beach. Dimmock had been in St. James that morning and had just returned; his haste denoted that he bore news of importance.

Though they had been together for years, sharing hardships and fortunes, and though Dimmock knew many of the secrets which Eldred held in his heart, there was ever between them that gulf which separates conscious master from conscious man, and when he entered the room, the red-haired fisherman closed the door and paused with that hesitancy which may indicate respect or fear or both.

Eldred turned in his swivel chair and fixed the other with that slowly focusing gaze—a gaze that Dimmock had never known until forty-eight hours ago. It was as though a deep sickness had fallen on the man. His eyes were not alert and alive and responsive as they had been. His step was slow; his speech was feeble. The reason for living had gone out of his life and taken his strength. For a moment he eyed Dimmock and then said, in a little more than a whisper,

“Well?”

On the word the other moved forward quickly and leaned on the desk, both hands gripping it.

“I thought you'd like to know. She's on High Island with him.”

The spring of the swivel chair creaked sharply, though Eldred's outward movement was hardly perceptible. His eyelids sagged as though they would close; his head moved backward ever so slightly.

“On High Island—with—with——”

“Aye. With MacKinnon.”

“And they know in St. James?”

“It's all they do know to-day.”

“What else, Dimmock?”

The voice was louder and his question came almost sharply.

“That's about all. He's plannin' on keepin' her there, they say. She's all right, I guess, but he's holdin' her to get back at you. That's what he told Gallagher—to hit back at you, an' that's what they're sayin' on Beaver to-day. She's livin' in his house, an' he's goin' on with his trap-nets.” He had spoken quickly and stopped short. “That's all,” he finished, and stood erect.

Eldred reached out for a corner of the desk and pulled himself from the chair. He turned toward the window and, hands clasped behind his back, head slightly hung, he stared out across the dancing lake to where the two humps of High Island showed in the distance. Dimmock stood still, waiting. Then Eldred turned his head.

“I'm not afraid of him.” A simply stated and simple sentence, but it was a shock to the other, because Eldred had deemed it necessary, and that shock showed in the man's china-blue eyes.

“I'm not afraid of him,” Eldred repeated, voice rising, quivering slightly. One hand at his side opened and closed slowly. “Damn him!”—in a whisper. “Damn him! I'm not afraid!”

AND then that was revealed to Dimmock which he had never dreamed: Norman Eldred knew the fear of another man. After those years of ruthlessness and heartlessness and unbroken triumph, he was afraid! It showed in his speech now, in the assertion of fearlessness which was only an indication of the craven in his heart. It showed in his face, too, and in the roving of his tongue along his lips.

Dimmock said,

“No. Sure not!”

“No. Sure not!” Eldred repeated his man's words and then walked the length of the room, steadier than he had been yesterday, pace quickening as his excitement grew. He came back. “Listen to me! If you think or any man on this island or any man on the lakes thinks I'm afraid of him. I'll—I'll”—he drew the one clenched hand up to a level of his chin and stared at it—“I'll ruin him—as I'll ruin this trader before I get through!”

“Sure you'll spoil him! We all know that.”

Dimmock himself was afraid now to see his master trying to cover with such hollow braggadocio that very evident misgiving.

“I'll ruin him—when the time comes, but that time isn't now. There's one thing to do now, and that's to bring her back— now—to-day! You understand that?” He looked about dully for a moment as though bewildered by his inability to think in terms of action. “He must not harm her! To prevent that I'll hold back. I'll be gentle, I'll even be humble, Dimmock.” There was relief in his manner now. He had found a way, an excuse, a plan whereby to slip past acknowledgment of this fear and attain his end.

“He wouldn't dare——”

“He would dare! He's a fool, and a fool will dare anything. He dared me, didn't he? He came here and defied me. A man who'll do that—would harm her”—rage congesting in his throat to make his voice thick. He paced again, and Dimmock watched, his heart hammering. “Here”—halting with a gesture—“here it is: We'll go gently so she will be safe, as gently as you'd carry precious eggs—or dynamite! Yes; dynamite. We'll be humble; we'll admit—to him only—that we're beaten.” He advanced and took the front of Dimmock's shirt between thumb and forefinger, shaking it slowly. “You go now. You find MacKinnon, wherever he is, at his work, ashore, in St. James—wherever he is. You find him to-day! Hear that?”

“Sure! To-day.”

“You find him and you tell him this.” He looked away, tongue on his lips. “No; you ask him this—ask him when and where he will talk with me, when and where he will—treat with me. Put it that way, Dimmock, in your own words. Let him think he has me beaten; let him think he has me down, and that I've had enough—hear? Understand that? Make it strong, but not too strong. He'll know what I want to talk about. Ask him when and where— Only, it's got to be to-day, because—” The hand which had grasped Dimmock's shirt dropped to his side and then went slowly behind his back, clasping the other. He averted his eyes so that his gaze went down upon his harbor, the heart of his little kingdom. “There's only one thing I fear, and that's being without her—” It was again the voice of a sick man, and he looked back at Dimmock and nodded with that melancholy again in his face. “I'm not ashamed of that. You know. You've been here; you've watched her grow up, too. You know that the roots of her life are tangled round my heart-strings. To tear her away from me—” His hand sought his side and clenched there, fingers gripping the flesh. “I thought that night when she turned on me, when she crossed me and protected the man who had—humiliated her, that it was only anger. I meant it, then, that I was through. I thought I could put her out of my life. That is what I thought when I told her to go.”

HE drew a great, unsteady breath and searched the face before him as if in desperation, as a man who, for the first time in his experience, needs sympathy and knows that all sources of sympathy are closed to him. He realized at last the prodigality with which he had frittered his human relationships and for lack of that one touch he was compensating for all that he had won. He did not find response he needed in Dimmock, and something like a cynical smile played about his mouth.

“That is what I thought—that I could do without her. And I was wrong. I get what I want, Dimmock—I always have—and now I want her more than I want this beat in here”—a hand on his breast.

He turned away abruptly, as though he could say no more, and went to the desk to seat himself again, but before it he steadied and his voice came firm and deliberate again, perhaps a bit forced, but no longer faltering and husked.

“That is why I can be clever instead of strong for an hour; that is why I can humble myself. I need her so. And if I'm to have her back unharmed, I—” He cut off with a quick gesture of dismissal. “You understand. Go, now!”

He sat down stiffly as the man went out with no delay, relieved at being away from bis master.

PART III

David MacKinnon Finds That He Has Played the Game All Wrong from the Beginning. Norman Eldred Descends Upon High Island and Events Take a Totally Unexpected Turn

Begin this serial with any instalment. The story is here up to this issue.

DID Eve Eldred have any part in the dastardly and cowardly act her father committed when he set fire to David MacKinnon's trading hooker? It was hard for the lad to believe this, for hadn't the girl shown that she wanted to be his friend, and hadn't she gone away willingly with him—even begged him to take her—when the angry father had turned her out after that stormy scene in which she had proved her feeling for him? And yet—why had she detained him at the house while Norman Eldred slipped down to the dock to do his evil work?

Well, he had his revenge now. He had carried her off to High Island, and while he was treating her with all respect, the father back on Garden Island must be in an agony of doubt as to her fate.

Norman Eldred was the fisherman “king” of Garden Island in Lake Michigan, holding despotic sway over the rough characters whom he employed. With him lived his daughter Eve, whom he passionately loved, guarding her zealously from the men who surrounded her. Hers was a lonesome life, and her dog her only friend. Then, one spring night, a storm compelled young MacKinnon to seek shelter in Eldred's harbor—the very place he had been warned to keep away from, for some years before his father had been lured to his death there by Eldred.

Eve liked David from the first, and Eldred resented this. Before two days were over, things came to a climax. David protected Eve from the advances of a French-Canadian, Mosseau, and just then her father realized her feelings for the stranger. Followed the burning of the Annabelle and the casting-out of the girl. Then it was that David had taken her to High Island.

But now David's love for his daughter had reasserted itself, and he had sent Dimmock, one of his men, to High Island to make terms with MacKinnon.

On the neighboring Squaw Island lived “Aunt Jen” Borden. wife of the lighthouse keeper. She had, for some reason, a strong interest in Eve, and when she heard of the girl's predicament, she set about making some clothes to take to her.

While Dimmock was in St. James hearing the story that he had later related to Eldred, and which resulted in the visit to MacKinnon, the lighthouse supply-boat came to dock at High Island.

There were new grates to be put in the boiler at Squaw Island—a task for the two men which could not be delayed—and the keeper did not want his wife to go on this trip alone. Furthermore, though she had gone to bed for a brief time after her night at the sewing-machine, he knew she had not slept, but he did not find the heart to protest vigorously against her going by herself, because, for one thing, he saw her eagerness and, for another, he sensed that there was something here which she would not confide to him, and this realization hurt.

EVE saw the boat coming and watched from the house until it had docked and the woman started for shore alone, a bundle under one thick arm. Then the girl went to meet her, surprised and animated.

“Hello, dearie!” boomed Aunt Jen, when they were fifty yards apart. “Gosh A'mighty, this sand sure gives a body's heart all the gas it'll stand!”

She came to a halt, panting, but it was not natural that an active woman should breathe that rapidly, no matter if the sand was deep.

“I heard about it all,” she went on, before Eve could speak. “And just to show that I can be neighborly, I stitched up a few things you might be needing.”

Eve took the offered package wonderingly, looking from it to the woman.

“For me? Oh, isn't that nice?” There was something childish in this. “Clothes? Why—why, nobody ever made clothes for me! Nobody has since I was a little girl in the convent.”

“Then they're considerably overdue, ain't they?” Jen's eyes were busy—oh, so busy!—on that fine face. “I had to guess at your figger, having seen it only once since—since I come up here”—faltering and then hurrying on with only a slight show of her confusion. “Come up to the shanty and let's see what kind of a job I've done. Alone?”

Yes; Eve was alone. MacKinnon was on the lake, down the shore there. She tore the wrapping from the bundle eagerly, holding up the garments one after another and exclaiming over each.

“Nothing much,” Jen blustered modestly. “I only put beading in one of them shimmys, and I brung along that pink ribbon so's you could run it in if you like pink. I do myself, though there's them that prefers blue. Brought that tape-needle, thinking you might 'ave mislaid yourn. Then there's some pink silk there, too. A row of French knots on them nightgowns wouldn't be a bad idea”—indicating with a finger—“if you get the time. Hold it up ag'in' you— There! Yeah—long enough all right, and not much too big.” She reached for a waist and shook out the folds. “This is all that worries me, having to guess at your figger the way I did. It's a nice, soft voile if it fits. Take off that shirt an' slip it on.”

Exclaiming over the garment, as enthusiastic as a child with a new toy, as grateful as a woman for some necessary service rendered. Eve stripped off the flannel shirt she wore. The other watched her, nodding when the full lengths of her fine arms were exposed, and stroking the smooth, small shoulder.

“What a neck!” she whispered, as if to herself. “Dearie, you're built like a bird!”

Then she held out the waist for the arms and fastened buttons and helped adjust the skirt-band, standing back then, with critical gaze and head tilted, while Eve looked down and smoothed the front of the waist in delight.

“Not so bad,”' the woman said roughly. “Not so——”

And then the impulse that had been growing in her heart broke through the shamming words, and she lifted her hands to take Eve's face between her palms and stare into it with tears springing into her own eyes.

“Dearie, dearie, you're all right, ain't you?” The hands slid down to Eve's shoulders and the big arms folded the slight figure close to the broad bosom. “Thank the Lord!” she whispered. “Thank the Lord!” For the answer to her question was there to read.

Confused and embarrassed by this outburst, Eve stood passive, and after a moment Jen released her and, wiping her eyes, said hoarsely:

“There! I'm a blamed old baby, ain't I? A blamed old hen; but I've been thinking so hard about you, dearie, since I heard you'd come here. I was so scared last night; I was so worried coming down this morning. I didn't think he looked like the kind that'd hurt you; but men— Shucks! I didn't come down here to blubber and pry into your business. What's happened to you ain't any business of mine so long's you're all right, is it?”

Eve answered that question soberly and as if it had been put with the expectation of a reply.

“Not unless you make it your business. I mean”—when Jen looked quickly at her—“that maybe you'll understand when I say that there's times when a girl has to talk. I didn't know that until a little while ago. Then I did talk, and it helped; but this time I think I've been needing to talk to a woman—like you. Would you make it your business to listen?”

AND so the barrier of unfamiliarity that had been between them crashed down. For a moment, Aunt Jen eyed the girl while her own overwrought emotions swirled down to normal.

She put both hands on Eve's shoulders.

“You mean that? There's something you've got to tell? About your—about Norman Eldred?”

“No; not about him this time. It's about—David”—timidly.

The woman was at once relieved and surprised.

“Is it that you want to get away from him?”

The appraising look which scanned her face then was startling. Jen felt that she was being weighed in the girl's judgment. When Eve finally spoke, it was not in reply.

“Of course it's only been such a little while. This is just the second day; but when a man talks to you as though he hated you, when he does all he can to scare you, and when he can't always remember to act that way, but when he's sometimes—well, almost polite to you, and when he guards the place where you are at night from other men, do you think he means it when he says you're not safe with him?”

The woman drew a deep breath and took her hands from the girl's shoulders.

“I'd say offhand,” she began finally, “that a man who'd do that was one thing or the other—that it'd pay to watch him, close, never letting him surprise you, or that you was as safe as if you was in your mother's arms.”

“That's about what I've thought, but you see”—she frowned slightly—“there's so much I don't know, and this is the first time— Do you know about me?” The question was rather sharp, but that was not enough to give Jen Borden such a start. Strangely, too, she seemed relieved when the girl went on, “About the way I've lived on Garden Island, I mean.”

“I've heard, o' course.”

“I guess it's been as bad as anybody would hear it was, and if you've heard— I don't like to talk about it now. I did once; I had to once. I told David about it, and now I've got to talk to somebody about David, because it's worse—needing to talk, I mean.”

The two sat down then, facing one another, and the girl began slowly, thoughtfully, telling the story from the begininng, very earnest and sober, and halting occasionally as she tried to explain her bewilderment. She told of that night in the store, of the trip across to High Island, of the knife, of the next day, of how MacKinnon drove Fred Mink back to his shack last night, and of his silence and gruffness this morning.

“But once I looked up and he was looking at me—so—why, so funny! It seemed it was like the way my father used to look at me sometimes. And it seemed, too, that he was asking himself something, some question about me. I was quite happy yesterday, because I was so relieved at being away from my father, and to-day—I don't know. One time it seems like I'd be happy here always—just this way, and at others I don't know about him.”

She tugged at her thumb and looked away then, and Jen sat back, relaxing.

“He's done enough to make you ready to run away,” she said, “if it wasn't for the other things he's done. It balances up, don't it? Pretty well, I'd say. He's bark at you a lot, but he's—he's stopped at that, when there wasn't any reason for his not biting if that suited him. Is there anything, dearie, that you know about that'd make him want to hurt you?”

“He quarreled with my father.”

“Just that? With your father? Sure he don't have nothing to hold against you?”

“Why, no! Nothing.” That came after a moment of debate, and with some surprise. On the answer, Jen visibly relaxed.

“Thank the Lord—for the third time to day!” she murmured. “Oh, dearie, if there should be anything—if you can think of one little thing that he might be holding against you, don't you keep it back—tell him. Because”—her voice grew husky—“because it's hard to tell at the start, but it's worse a million times afterward. And you'll wish you told him if you keep on thinking you want to stay—as long as he stays.”

EVE showed no surprise at this, but, after a pause, asked seriously,

“Do you think I'll want to do that?”

Jen reached out a hand to the girl's and said bruskly,

“What is it you hope, dearie?”

Eve said steadily,

“I hope that I will want to stay with him—always.”

She could feel the tremor that ran through Aunt Jen's body and down to the hand that clutched hers.

“If that's what you want, work for it, pray for it, think about it, dearie! Don't let go of it, but don't be blind; suspect everything he does and says, but hope that it'll come out the way you want it to.

“Oh, you never can tell when the thing's coming that'll change your whole life. You never can tell on what a small stake you can tie your happiness fast.

“I know, dearie; I know what it means to pass up love. Not the love of a man—thank my stars I didn't pass that by when it come, but I did pass up other things that's next to it.”

Unconsciously she had substituted the word “love” for “happiness.” She had meant it so from the first.

“I've been on the lakes since I can remember. I was brung up on a trading hooker, sailing alone with my daddy after my mother died, and when he died I went from one thing to another until I got to be 'Red' Jenny—from my hair and my temper, they told me. I'd cooked on lumber schooners for years—lumber and ore schooners. A hard life in them days, without much love in it. And then, one night, when I was on the Belle o' Scotland, out o' Traverse City for Tonawanda, on the last trip of the season. Lake Erie was standing on end. Do you re—did you ever know about Lake Erie?”

She corrected herself hastily, but Eve did not notice the quick flush that came into Jen's cheeks, only to ebb as suddenly.

“No; I've never been there.”

“It's bad water—shallow—and when she blows down there, she goes inside out. Old man Denoir was master of the Belle, and all day he'd been beating up to the no'th'rd, trying to get shelter under the Ontario shore. 'Twas thick, too, with snow in the air. The deck-load was gone, and we was leaking when night come, and I guess everybody was thinking of their sins and what might 'ave been, more or less. Oh, the Lord's makes a lot of Christians on the Great Lakes with his November blows, dearie!”

She retrieved her handkerchief from her bosom and blew her nose.

“But what I was coming to was this: I'd been thinking of how my life hadn't brung me much to be proud or glad about while I stood in the galley holding the coffee-pot on the stove with my hands—the seas was that bad and the crew so in need of it. Then I heard somebody sing out and somebody answer, and seen one of the crew go running past the cabin with a line in his hands. He heaved it, dearie, and I thought first somebody'd gone overboard; but the mate come fighting his way back through the water in the waist, and I made the coffee-pot fast with a couple o' bricks for a minute and looked out. It was dark, but I could see 'em hauling on that line, slow-like, very careful, and then I made out a small boat. Yes, sir; a small boat out in that weather!

“Bad enough, that; and when I seen a man being swung aboard, I thought for sure the Lord was watching Lake Erie that night. But when he come over the rail with a bundle in his arms and I seen what was in that bundle, I forgot all about the Lord's goodness, my coffee, the storm and all. That man was carrying a baby, dearie!”

“From a wreck?”

Jen nodded grimly.

“A wreck? Yes; a wreck, and a lee-shore wreck.” Her voice, on that, was rough and harsh again, but it modulated as suddenly when she continued: “I found myself outside, wet to the knees with green water, and soaked from there up with spray, grabbing that baby out of his arms. You know, dearie, sometimes a body don't know much about herself. Kids had always been kids to me, noisy and dirty and underfoot, but I hadn't stood over my stove five minutes with that cold baby in a dry blanket before something give way inside me and let loose a lot thoughts and feelings I'd never had before.

“A terrible fear come up in me that that baby wasn't safe. From then on, that was all that mattered—a baby's safety. Holding her in my arms, feeling her get warm, sent something through me I'd never dreamed about before—a contented feeling, a peace like I'd never thought a woman could feel. And that with the old Belle groaning and taking water every minute! Oh, happiness come to me that night, but with it come that fear which was as terrible as the other was sweet.”

Her chin quivered, and she sniffed.

“But old Denoir made it that night, and we found shelter and got on to Tonawanda when the blow dropped, and I went ashore with the baby for the winter.”

“You kept it?”

The woman shook her head.

“Not for long. Not long enough. That's why I'm telling this story, dearie. She brought me something that I'd never dreamed about before. Men thought I was a bad woman—Red Jenny, a tough nut, but that baby made me over. It was better'n getting salvation in a sailors' mission. And I let her go! I let him take her away—devil that he was!—when I should 'ave kept her if I'd had to claw his eyes out for it.”

“But would he have let you?”

A low moan escaped the woman and she shook her head.

“He didn't love it like I did. Maybe I didn't have any right to that baby girl, but neither did he—'cause he don't know what love means. I let her go, and for years my life was worse 'n empty because in that time I had her I'd known what content and happiness meant.” She put a hand over her eyes for a moment.

“And she never came back?” asked Eve.

Jen did not speak for a moment, and when she did it was not to reply.

“It was a hard lesson, a terrible hard lesson—never give happiness a chance to drift off when it comes your way. Lay hold of it and make it fast, so's nothing can tear it from you.” After a moment: “Dearie, if I was to tell you that you could come to Squaw Island and stay with us as long as you wanted to, what would you say?”

It required a deal of courage for Jen to put that question, because if the girl answered in the affirmative, she did not know just what she could do. It would bring very close to the surface the thing she dreaded. So she watched with breath held down while Eve looked at her thoughtfully.

After that moment of consideration, during which Jen leaned forward, Eve said:

“That's the first time I've ever been asked anywhere in my life. It's what I wanted more than anything—friends, and places to go. But now—you see——”

It was not necessary for her to proceed. She had found this short experience, filled as it was with contradictions, most enjoyable, and the hope that those difficulties would melt away was so evident that her purpose was clear.

“I understand, dearie; I know.” Jen was rising, and had Eve's hand again. Her voice was firmer, and some of the keenness was back in her eyes. “I hope it's your chance—your big chance; and if it is. Lord forbid it's Aunt Jen who should drag you away!”

Their talk did not end there, but it was the beginning of departure, and a half-hour later Eve stood on the dock and cast off the line that held Jen's boat.

“If ever you need me, come; if you can't come, send word. I won't be far off, ever, and I'll be thinking of you and dropping in whenever there's a chance.”

That was Jen's parting promise, and a moment later she was inside, changing her suit coat for a denim jumper and spinning the fly-wheel of the motor, crying without restraint.

DAVID MacKINNON was lifting traps that morning, and from afar he had seen the boat making toward the harbor which was for the time his home. He got his glass hastily and made her out. For the moment he felt relief to know that it was from the light and not from Garden Island, but after that came perplexity, and he was curt with his helpers, mind more on what might be happening back yonder than on their work. Later he watch the departure, and could see Eve standing on the dock while the boat drew away, and that, also, was relief.

But this relief was wholly a relative matter and did not put his mind at rest. He had, strangely, resented the coming of another to talk with Eve and had put in a bad half-hour wondering what the upshot of that meeting would be; he was distinctly glad when the visitor left and Eve remained. Was he jealous, he asked himself, and denied that sharply. And then wondered again.

He settled down to the serious business of self-interrogation.

Was he fulfilling his avowed purpose in bringing this girl here—to keep her in suspense? He was not, most assuredly. The tables had been turned, and it was he who was guessing now. As he looked back on his attempts to impress Eve with the dangers of this circumstance, he felt chagrined, because his posturings seemed so artificial and feeble and futile—mere stalkings and mouthings, badly executed, with the girl looking on with an odd delight and seeing completely through the sham.

Was, for that matter, his intent to exact compensation from Eve for what she had done to him as hot as it had been night be fore last, when he carried her from her father's shore to his boat? Again his reply was in the negative, and this actually surprised him, for it was the first time that he had brought his own point of view up for conscious inspection. That she had conspired to destroy his hooker he did not doubt, that she had helped in a greater piece of treachery— No; he put that other suspicion back resolutely. Whatever she might have done and however great her ability to deceive, that surprise of hers when he told of the storied part she had had in his father's death could not have been assumed. That surprise was real; it was convincing—no matter what men said of her.

He rubbed his chin with his finger-backs, shocked by this ready defense of the girl before his own judgment. And then, after a moment, went back to consideration of the point which had brought it about. Somehow, since yesterday morning, when she gave him her thanks for the service he had rendered, when she had accused him of being decent and kind and at heart gentle, his animosity had been disintegrating. There were moments when he felt her call, as he felt it when she first came aboard his Annabelle and helped him, as when, the next night, she had stood on the hooker's deck and plaintively wanted to know why she deserved humiliation, as when, a dozen times yesterday, he had caught her looking at him with half-amused curiosity while he was doing his best to frighten her, as when, above all, he had peered in on her before the stove last night and beheld the splendor of her beauty.

He stirred uneasily at that, and felt himself in the grip of a helpless denial of all the purposes he had avowed concerning the girl.

People had warned him of her—Jen Borden, first; Gam Gallagher again. But the woman's warning had been more as a plea, and yesterday Gallagher had said that she was as fair as a June morning. She was!

He put down his knife and went out on the stern to be alone, and after he had stood there a moment, he laughed aloud.

Why, he had done everything for her that a lover could have done except woo her! He had made her comfortable; he had protected her from the remote possibility of harm at the hands of the Indians. He had felt responsible for her in every sense, and he had even been jealous when he saw that another had come to talk to her. A species of rage rose then, and the humor in his face gave up to darkness. Damn her—she'd ruined him, hadn't she? He'd show her, he told himself; he'd show her now, to-day—to-morrow; he'd break down her assumption that she was in no danger here; he'd do that or he'd get rid of her tantalizing presence!

And then he stopped this contradictory nonsense and watched closely the steam-tug that bore down on him from Garden Island.

ELDRED was on the dock when Dimmock brought his tug home from that day's errand. The man stepped over the rail almost hesitantly, and the gaze with which he fixed his master had something of anxiety, something of dread. Eldred saw it, and a rigidity ran through his figure, to be gone in an instant and replaced by a flexity which was almost lassitude.

“You—” A feeble gesture of Eldred's one hand suggested the question.

“Aye.” Dimmock nodded. “And he's a fool, Eldred!” No response, just the interrogation of those pain-filled eyes and a twitching of one hand. “But she's all right; I saw her on the beach.”

A long sigh of satisfaction slipped from Eldred, as though threat of an impending blow had been removed.

“You saw her, then?”

“Aye! But he's a fool, Eldred.”

“I know that; I told you that”—suggesting in his manner an approach of impatience. “What else? When will he——”

Dimmock had his cap in his hands and picked at it nervously.

“I told him you wouldn't,” he began doggedly. “I told him he was a fool to think that you'd——”

“Would what? Come!”

The other looked away, and his eyes watered with embarrassment.

“He went too far. I done like you said. I put it that you asked him to come see you, and that it was all—friendly like. He laughed at me!”

“He refused?”

“That's it. He won't come. He'll talk, but not here.”

“He'll talk, eh?” Eldred stirred. “He'll talk?” His face became alert.

But that gratification seemed to embarrass Dimmock further, for he nodded and hesitated, finally saying:

“He'll talk. He said he would, but—but where he wants, and when—and his own way. I—I'd 'ave choked him, Eldred. I'd 'ave broke his spine for it, but I knew you wouldn't want that. So I told him you'd see him in hell first. He said that he'd talk to you if you'd come to him; he won't come an inch. He said he was through with Garden Island until he come to—to touch you up again. Them was his words—to touch you up again. But he said that if you'd come to him he'd talk to you—Thursday, at four o'clock.” He paused and licked his lips nervously. “He said if you'd come as he said, he'd talk; that if you'd come in a small boat, leavin' your tug a mile away, he'd row out and meet you. He said—said for you to come without a gun. He said to tell you that—without a gun, and to leave your tug a mile away and row toward him—Thursday—and this is only Tuesday. I told him he was a fool, that he was playin' with fire. I told him you'd——”

“I'd what?” Eldred interrupted sharply.

The other stopped fussing with his cap, amazed.

“Why, that you'd see him in hell first. But he laughed and said 'twas no matter to him—Thursday—and this is Tuesday—and you to go that way!”

“Didn't I tell you to be humble?”

“Aye; but this, Eldred!”

He spread one hand in a gesture of incredulity as he watched the anger grow in Eldred's face. Incredulity, for he saw that he had been wrong, that King Norman meant not only to humble himself but to undergo degradation if there should be no other way!

“Sometimes, Dimmock, you're a fool,” Eldred said. “At four o'clock—Thursday.”

THE action which transpired on High Island between Tuesday afternoon, when David went ashore, until Thursday morning, when he left for his day on the lake, may be related in a very few words.

What went on in the mind of Eve Eldred as well may be set down in a small space, because her rôle in that interval was one of waiting, hopefully, expectantly, consoled by the fact that she was losing nothing if nothing had been gained.

But what happened to David MacKinnon is another matter. He was peculiarly reluctant to approach the house when he landed after returning from St. James, where he had taken his lift. He fussed around the fish-boxes long after Mink and John had gone to their shack, and did not finally stop his unproductive and unnecessary puttering until well after dark.

The lamp in his house was lighted, the fire roaring, because May on the lakes is not a temperate month, and Eve was just emerging from her bedroom when David entered. He did not intend to stop and stare at her; he detected the impulse to do this and fought against it, but it was irresistible. In her apparel was but one difference—she was wearing the white waist that Aunt Jen had brought her—but it was sufficient to produce an amazing change in the girl. It gave a slenderness to her torso that he had not seen before, and the neck, square and moderately low, relieved the splendid upward flow of her throat; it set off the rich olive of her skin, the blackness of her hair, the size and color of her remarkable eyes. More than all, its effect was chastening, taking away the hint of hardness that had so often been about her, softening the lines of her face as well as making more impressive those of her waist and arms and shoulders. Before, even in those intervals when he was made breathless by her striking beauty, she had yet remained for him the daughter of Norman Eldred; to-night, as she stood drawing that door shut behind her, she was a gentle, tender, beautiful girl, divorced from every suggestion of Garden Island.

He thought she would turn about and see him before he could recover, and he did not want that; and the device by which he recovered his self control was this: He said silently to himself, “But she dragged me away from my hooker so her father could burn me out.”

It was like a steadying drug. He took off his hat and went casually enough, to all out ward appearances, about the business of making their supper.

So much for that.

David did not speak—did not trust himself with words, though his curiosity was high—until well through the meal. Then he said,

“You had a visitor to-day.”

He tried to put the bite of accusation into that remark, but Eve must have missed it, for she looked up brightly.

“Yes. The woman from the light. 'Aunt Jen,' they call her.”

“And what business has she got here?”

“She brought me some things. This”—indicating the waist with a lowering of her head and placing a hand on her bosom to smooth the front of the garment—“and some other things.”

“Other things, eh?” he began harshly and with a swagger. “I suppose she brought you some——”

Oh, no! A hard school of manners, his; he was not much different from the run of men who have lived their lives on the lakes, and he was doing his best to make this girl uncomfortable. But he found, with something like surprise, that he could not stoop to coarseness with Eve Eldred. He flushed smartly and did not hear what she said, though she talked as long as she could on the matter of Aunt Jen's visit, taking that opening with enthusiasm because he had given it to her. And MacKinnon had come so close to a shameful blunder that he could not try again to play the tyrant that night.

He could not even pretend to read later, but walked the beach for miles, up and down, up and down. That was easier than sitting in his boat, but even such a diversion presented its difficulty. One was the potent urge to creep close to the house and watch Eve through the window—and he could not drive that away until he said to himself, aloud this time, “She was a damned decoy!”

And Wednesday morning he told himself the same thing when he approached the house for breakfast—just as a precautionary measure.

ALL day he gave himself momentary resolution and relief by a repetition of that accusation, and went ashore with a feeling of better fortitude than he had had last night, but this was shattered when Eve, without leading up to it and as though she had intended mentioning it for long, said,

“That woman—Aunt Jen—told me I could come to Squaw Island and stay if I wanted to.”

This gave David an unreasonable start and stirred, among other things, that flash of jealousy he had experienced when he saw the supply-boat come into High Island. It shook his self-possession, and he blurted out,

“Then why didn't you go?”

He was not looking at her, so he could not see the mischief which came into her face.

“Because I'm as good as—in jail here.”

The lightness was in her voice, too, and stung him, because again she was making a bubble of his attempt to intimidate her.

“Jail be damned!” he cried, rising. “You're free to go when you want to.”

His front, his defense—which had begun by being an offense—crumbled before that smile of hers; but a new resistance sprang to life when he saw her, the smile gone from her eyes, lips parted seriously, a hand half lifted toward him.

She spoke his name: “David!” just once, but the intonation was both reproach and plea. Oh, he knew why she reproached, but could only guess vaguely why she should plead, and in that moment he struggled desperately between two urges—the first of which was natural—the urge to take her, to hold her, to leave off this shamming, to make as brave an attempt to comfort her as he had a crude effort to humble her; and the other was that reasonable thing, that matter of logic in which he heard his own voice whispering, “She helped put me ashore; a woman like that'd stop at nothing!”

She was saying:

“I knew that. If I'd wanted to go, I'd have gone day before yesterday when she was here. But I wanted to stay here, because——”

“Why you wanted to stay don't interest me,” he said doggedly. He saw the hurt sweep over her face and, for the moment, took a savage delight therein, because he was again holding the whip-hand. “Nothin' you say about anythin' interests me.” He was at the door then, opening it, attempting to cover his confused retreat by this show of repugnance; but her words followed him across the threshold.

“Then why do you run away from me, David?”

Run away! The door slammed. And he did just that—ran away. Down on the beach again, he walked and grumbled and admitted defeat and told himself that she was a decoy, a hell-cat, and that, by all the laws of reason, he should loathe her. By all the laws of reason—yes!

But to-morrow was near. If Eldred had agreed to the meeting, provision for which David had sent back by Dimmock, he would be coming to ask for his daughter. And which would be the easier: to rid himself of the torment of her presence or to let Eldred off with only one payment made upon his incalculable debt? That was a fine point, indeed. Consideration of it demanded his concentration, and this gave him more peace than had been his measure for days. Finally he slept.

DAYLIGHT seeped across a lake that lay like a great, dusty mirror, the last undulations of yesterday's swell seeming as imperfections in glass. About the horizon hung a dirty haze which seemed heavy and deep and persistent enough to hold back the full measure of light for long, but when the sun pushed its rim above the distant mainland, it ate the mists in the east rapidly, and through the opening thus made poured across the water a flat yellow smear, turning the mirror to a plate of hammered brass. The rest of the murk was put to early flight by the breeze which came blowing out of the south, quite gentle and its chill tempered by a mellow promise. The stir of air touched the lake only here and there at first, spoiling the glaze on the surface, changing the color from brass to vivid blue. These patches grew, sending out long fingers, filling in the spaces between one another, throwing off a host of reflected light-rays as the wavelets picked up and recast the beams of the first sunlight, and finally, when the whole area of water became wind-riffled and the sun cleared the horizon, the lake became alive, a dancing and vivid blue, delicate, tremulous, beautiful.

David watched this change from the stern of the Islander, where, he had gone to slosh water from a bucket over his head and chest, and the clearing-away of the mist which had cloaked the lake had a counter part in his mind. There was one thing only for him to do: to be rid of this girl. He fought back the twinge that decision caused, bu the must not let any action of his work to the advantage of her father. He would plunge himself into the business of making Eldred uncomfortable now, seeking in that purpose relief from the confusion which his first step toward it had brought upon his head. His decision brought relief. He felt like a remade man, he told himself.

Yet he ate his breakfast with the Indians and did not go near Eve.

At four o'clock that afternoon, Fred Mink looked up from his work and stared hard at the tug which was bearing down on the Islander through the deepening haze from the direction of Eldred's harbor. He said no word, but MacKinnon, perceiving his concentration, looked also. After a moment he was certain that it was the craft which had brought Dimmock Tuesday, and a smile twitched at his lips. He had sent that humiliating message to Eldred, prescribing conditions which were not prompted by caution or fear but solely by a deviling sense of humor, and now Eldred was accepting—probably.

The qualifying probability was wiped out in a few minutes, for the tug's progress was checked, the bone in her teeth dwindled to a riffle, and a skiff, which had been in tow, put out from her with one man aboard.

It was a condition which he had set down. Not until the small boat had come well toward where the Islander lay at anchor, however, did MacKinnon set about meeting it. He saw the man who rowed turn to look in his direction, saw him dip his oars and come slowly on, and then David took out the rifle that Gam Gallagher had given him, dropped into his heavy pound-boat, placed the gun across the seat and began sculling quickly out to the meeting.

He looked out and saw Eldred, who had stopped rowing and was waiting his approach, and the vigor of his oar's push against the water abated somewhat. It was one of two things now. This morning he had told himself that there must be no question about what he would do; the manner of doing it, he had decided then, left the only room for argument. And now, despite his best effort, there was room to choose.

“Turn back; give her up!” one voice within him insisted.

That was his reason talking, prodded by all his experience with men and women, with all his appreciation of what Garden Island had meant to him.

But there was another voice, a quieter, gentler, sweeter voice, which whispered: “Oh, she is lovely, wholly lovely—and you may be wrong. Her hands and her heart may be clean!”

And then he was swinging his heavy boat about, bringing it broadside to the one a dozen feet away, and smiling as he looked into the face of Norman Eldred, who sat awaiting him, obedient to his orders.

Shaken and unpoised though he had been after that last scene in the store, Eldred's faculties were clear now, sharpened by the necessity of the occasion. His eyes, alive and alert, with all those quick lights playing in their depths, traveled the figure before him, which stood spread-legged, holding the long oar in one hand, balancing with grace against the moderate sea. There was hatred in the gaze as it rested on MacKinnon's face, which bore now an expression of amusement; contempt in Eldred's eyes as they followed the lines of the lad's figure into the rolled-down hip-boots, and a slowly kindling wrath as they rested on the rifle across the seat.

“You bargain with reservations,” he said.

“Not a one, Eldred. You're here as I said.”

“Unarmed.”

“Perhaps. I didn't take a chance that you might cheat. I came ready.”

“No one has ever doubted my word.”

“And I wouldn't take it for the price of tacks.” This was spoken lightly with a smile flung into the black look of the older man. “I'm here to listen to you and to plug you if you make a crooked move.” And he laughed outright, hugely enjoying the situation.

Eldred's gaze roved to the shore, searching it keenly, but no one was in sight.

“I've come,” he began, still looking toward the island, “to talk about my daughter. She is here with you, and I want her back.”

“After you drove her out, eh?”

Eldred looked at David.

“A man can't put away his obligations so easily.”

“That's right, Eldred.”

“She's a girl, alone, without even a mother. She needs protection.”

“Damned funny how we think alike, ain't it?”

Eldred stirred nervously and dipped the oars to steady the drift of his skiff.

“That's why I could come—this way, as you prescribe. Her well-being is more important than a man's pride—a father's pride.”

“Well?” said David, as in challenge, and Eldred moved again on his seat.

“You've been rash—and a fool; you've played with fire. Ask any of them”—with a sweeping gesture—“and they'll tell you what comes to men who try to play me tricks. You've done more than any other ever has; you've sowed generously of—whirlwind, perhaps. You've one chance left to cancel that record and begin over again, with everything forgotten.”

His eyes held steadily on David's face, and the boy lifted a hand to rub his chin with the finger-backs.

“Yeah? Go on.”

“That's it; that's what I came to say. Turn her over to me now, unharmed, and I can forget. I can forget, boy, as well as I can remember.”

“Lucky!” David laughed. “Damned lucky! I can't, Eldred. I can't forget a thing, let alone the burnin' of my hooker. And besides, anyhow, it's new and comfortable to have a woman round the place, doin' things.”

ONE of Eldred's oars slipped from his grasp. It may have been a trick of the swell, but the hand did not catch at it immediately. It started toward his side, as though to grip the flesh there, but was checked and almost snatched at the oar again. His heart had leaped and stopped and gone on unevenly. That was the thing he had feared!

“So,” he said in assent, struggling to gather his wits. “But there are women—and women. She's—she's not your sort, MacKinnon—not the sort to do things for a man for long.”

THAT was what David's reason had been saying for days. For an instant, Eldred's voice struck a sympathetic vibration in his mind, and in that instant it passed, for there was in the man's manner something unreal, something counterfeit.

“And what of that?” he asked, trying to taunt. “It's said that King Norman's never been sent for before. That's what Dimmock told me the other day; but you're here. The impossible can happen. Your daughter has spirit, but spirits can be broken.”

The white teeth gleamed through Eldred's black beard, and a smile lighted his eyes.

“You boast. You don't know her—and her moods.”

“Yes; she has moods.” Ah, he knew that the girl had moods; he had been drawn away from his Annabelle by one; he had been made breathless by others, and once she had carried an unsheathed blade for his body. He wanted to tell all he knew; the impulse to show his sagacity to this man was strong, and he went on, taunting with tone and smile. “She has moods—some of them lovely. You should have seen her the other night, sittin' by my stove with the firelight across her face, alone and yet not afraid—sort of sad, but with the smile close to her lips.” To save himself, he could not keep a tremor from his voice, and Eldred detected that which he would conceal. Once again he stirred on the seat, and this time the hand did touch his side and clench there. Love! He was face to face with a man who not only had tormented him by an extravagant trick but who now had a reason equally strong with his, perhaps, for holding Eve close to him.

“Moods, ho! And there are others, Eldred. She'd have knifed me that night I brought her here. She drove a bargain with me for help, and she'd have knifed me before she said. She's that kind—yes! And that's the thing, likely, that lets her conspire with firebugs to draw men away from their boats while you put in your dirty licks!” The bitterness here was as pronounced as his unacknowledged love had been a moment before.

A new thrill ran through Eldred, but he did not so much as lift his gaze from the rail of his skiff, though the eyes narrowed slightly. So MacKinnon suspected innocent Eve, did he? So he believed she would practise duplicity. It was good! He warmed inwardly.

“So long as you do her no harm,” he began, with an effort to hold his voice low, “there'd be a way out for me if the responsibility could be shifted, you see.” He looked up craftily and saw the trouble in the lad's face, brought to the surface by his own talk of the girl. “I did drive her out; I was through with her. I would be now if I thought—But you've made a fool of your self once over the burning of your hooker; because of that, remembering what she did, her part in it, you might forget these other, gentler moods, MacKinnon. She might not be safe with you always.”

“So you're coming clean, eh? So you admit it?”

“Admit? Perhaps I boast that I—that Eve and I—stop at nothing.” There was a false note in his tone which caught David's ear, a discord when he spoke of Eve, stressing the pronunciation of her name, and Eldred moved on his seat once more eagerly—with overeagerness, David thought—and lifted a hand in quick gesture, animated, without reserve, so very eager in his argument. “Admit? Of course I admit! And I boast that worse things will happen unless you let me rest here”—tapping his breast. “No matter what she is, firebug or worse, she's mine, mine to protect—no other man will do that. You won't, MacKinnon. You”—he laughed again—“giving shelter to the woman who helps put you on shore, who took away your fine liberty and made Gam Gallagher's hired man of you!”

He threw back his head and laughed again, and though his mirth was loud enough, it had no ring and fell dead.

“You, in comfort with a woman of the Eldreds! Ah, that night— Moods? You should have seen her then, boy! She planned so carefully what she'd say; she plotted every move with me. I watched when she took you up the path to the house; I waited until she had you inside.

“Moods? I could see her then, and I could see you falling into the trap. Her eyes, you said, when they're somehow, when they smile! They smiled that night—didn't they, MacKinnon? That dragged you into helplessness, and I fired your hooker and you can't prove it. There's nobody here to listen now; there'd be men to swear me an alibi if I needed one. But I won't—I won't. It's our secret—yours and mine and Eve's.”

He was agitated, breathless, his poise completely gone as he overstressed his argument; but his assertions fell flat, and before the suspicion that formed in David's mind he found something melting within him, giving way, and that was his reason, which had held him away from Eve, which had told him that she was a firebug, that she had conspired to ruin him; and as he looked into that face so close to him—for the boats were bumping rails—with its lifted eyebrows, the anxiety in its eyes, the tensity as of a man who grasps at a straw, he felt that this all was a lie, a ruse.

Eldred had stopped talking. One hand was half extended as if to beg credence for his charge against Eve. David again rubbed his chin, perplexed and saving time.

“Yes,” he nodded; “it's all right. All that you say is right, Eldred. But what about the Annabelle? You want your property and your responsibility back, but where do I come in? What do I get?”

The other's hand dropped to his knee; he looked away a moment.

“Your hooker,” he said flatly, as in surrender.

“My——”

“The price of her, and on top of it a season's earnings.”

“For what?”

“The return of Eve—now—to-day.”

“If I don't agree?”

“You will.”

“You're mighty certain.”

“Certain that you won't keep her, because she's as dangerous to you as I am if you refuse.”

David laughed again.

“You—dangerous? Eldred, you're a joke. And as for your bargain— Hell! I've got a responsibility, too. Any white man has a responsibility to any woman who's good to look at. A firebug? A plotter?” He nodded. “All of 'em, maybe, Eldred; but no matter what she's done, no matter what she is, no matter what she may do at any time, she's a girl, and you are King Norman of Garden Island, and livin' there with you is too bitter a dose for her.” The other lunged forward as if to rise. “Sit down!”

The smile was gone from David's face now as, with long oar upraised, he poised himself for a blow. The other sank back, eyes flaming.

“That's why I brought the gun. If you'd had yours—and it's likely you have—you'd drill me cheerfully. Now you've said your say and you've got your answer. I've no more time for kings to-day.”

He bowed in stiff mockery and laughed boyishly, whole-heartedly, as one who embarks on an alluring adventure.

Eldred sat still for a moment, motionless and dumb, hate in his eyes. He watched MacKinnon drop the oar into place, watched the skilful wrench which put the heavy boat under motion, watched a breadth of water come between them. He rose then and lifted his clenched fists.

“You refuse?” he moaned. “You send me away? Damn you, MacKinnon; I'll——”

He choked to wordlessness in search of a threat which would relieve his rage, but David only bent forward and laughed again.

“Look out, King Norman!” he cried. “Your damned throne's makin' bad weather of it. If you don't stand by and watch somethin' 'll blow your tin crown overboard! And if I could reach you now, damn me if I wouldn't uproot a bunch of whiskers!”

He was gay in this, his second triumph, and the buoyancy of his mood was enhanced by the growing thing of wonder, the suspicion that Eve Eldred was not what he had thought her, that the last hold reason had upon his impatient heart was slipping.

For a long time Eldred stood in his boat, reeling as she rose and fell on the seas, watching David go away. He said no more, made no further gestures, but in his heart, mingling with the fear of the boy which had only been enhanced by this meeting, was a savage lust for revenge—and a growing hopelessness which had reached the point which all but discards caution.

THEY had eaten their meal together with hardly a word. Throughout, the girl's eyes had watched David, watched him from the time he landed at dusk, through the process of making the meal until now, when he was finishing his last swallow of coffee. But once, that she had observed, had he looked at her.

Yet there was something new about his silence now. He was thinking of her, and it was difficult for him to keep his eyes away from her. She was certain of that much. Finally she spoke.

“My father was out there this afternoon.”

He lifted his gaze.

“That's what I've got to talk to you about.”

His manner alarmed her, sent a sharp fright through her like a chill. She took no pains to conceal this, but shrank against her chair-back, giving herself that appearance of smallness which had been marked at those other times when he had seen her frightened. After a pause, he said abruptly,

“He wants you back.”

One of her hands, which had rested in her lap, slid off and hung limply at her side. She said flatly,

“I suppose so.”

Resignation was in that short sentence, as though all the hope that had been in her heart for these last days had drained out—had gushed out, leaving it cold and empty.

MacKinnon felt himself trembling. Now was his time! This was the moment in which he must know. His reason still clamored a warning, crying that he beware of this child of the Eldreds, that the only foundation for his hope that her hands were clean and her record free from duplicity was a wild guess. But his heart was leaping, because, for the first time since her appeal had taken such a place in his consciousness, he had at least some ground for believing that she was completely worthy of admiration. He was strangely self-possessed, capable of being deliberate to a degree; he would not rush forward blindly now, he told himself.

“He wants you back, and he wants to pay me for the Annabelle," he said.

His eyes missed no phase of the girl's expression, and he saw a dull show of surprise come through her hopelessness.

“To pay you? But she's burned up! She isn't worth——”

“That's why he came, to pay for burnin' her.”

At first it was as though Eve had not heard. Then she start slightly and leaned forward.

“Burning her?” There was no flicker of caution, no steeling herself to meet some dangerous accusation—only amazement. “David, do you mean that he set her on fire?”

HE FELT as though something were bursting in his breast. A great, joyous surge swept him, so remarkable in its potency that it brought in its wake a strange fright. If this should not be true! He heard himself saying—trying to search her heart from another angle:

“Your father set fire to her to drive me away. You should have known that.”

If it were acting which made her seem not to hear that last, it was superb acting.

“He burned your boat because he didn't like you!” she cried, voice very low and uncertain, a hint of color creeping into her face. “I didn't know—I never dreamed— So that was why you were mad at him that night!”

He eyed her through a long moment of silence, searching her face, prying into her very soul to detect fraud, and his heart leaped until his temples throbbed. She was lovely in this incredulous intentness,

“He set her afire while I was with you. He waited until you had taken me ashore and into your house.”

Her repressed dismay at this was wholly honest, and in that moment, between pulse-beats, MacKinnon's skepticism vanished. He ceased to be her judge and, instead, he became a timid suitor, covering his misgivings, assailed by all the doubts and fears that only youth with heart disturbed can know. With that change there came into his mind an absurd question—absurd, yes—but, nevertheless, one which put him into panic. She was clean of hand and heart, he knew; she was worthy of the love of any man, but what if the thing he wanted to say should be unwelcome—what if there should be some bond which held her to Eldred, which would make her want to go back to Garden Island? An unreasonable fear, of course, but it set him in a panic because an incredibly precious possession seemed to be within his reach, and he feared to believe that there was no trick about it, no lurking factor which would snatch it from him.

“And now he wants to make it right—as near right as he can,” he found himself saying. “He wants to pay me now for both.”

“Both?”

He stared hard at her.

“For the Annabelle and for you.” Her lips twitched, and she drew back into her chair again very slowly, with that small portion of color draining from her cheeks. “That's the bargain—that he'll pay me for the Annabelle and give me a season's earnin's, make me a free man again so I can be my own master instead of workin' for somebody else—if I'll send you back to him.”

She started as though frightened by a menacing sound.

“And you told him?”

He leaned forward with sudden intentness, so earnest that his face was set in an expression which was almost savage.

“What do you think I'd tell him? You've had a good deal to say since you've been here about my kindness and decency. What kind of answer do you think I'd give a man to such a proposition as that?”

AND then it was Eve's turn to steel herself against the hope that had been growing with the days. He had at once threatened and protected her; he had failed to cover his decent impulses. But those were forgotten now in the fear that swirled up to confound her. Her father had played a treacherous trick on David MacKinnon, and it was not reasonable to believe that he would have charity in his heart for her. Her hope of happiness and ultimate escape from Garden Island was the price of his hooker, his liberty, his independence to go when and where he chose. He was taunting her now with the fact that she was the daughter of Norman Eldred, that she could expect no mercy from him, who had suffered wrong at the hands of the man who was called king. There could be, she felt then, no other explanation for his tensity and the fire in his eyes. He was challenging her to fritter her hope on the improbability that a man who bore such a grudge against her kin would do anything less than trade her back for what he had lost, and she was in the grip of despair.

She rose sharply, without looking at him, and walked to the window and stood staring at the rain-clashed glass, opaque and glittering against the night. The wind sobbed about the building, but for a moment there was no other sound in the room save the drawing of the stove. Eve's knees shook once spasmodically, and a blindness not of tears shut out even the glisten of the drenched glass before her. MacKinnon, unconscious of what he did in the excitement of that moment, drew his pipe from his shirt pocket and scratched a match.

At the sound, the girl turned on him with such a look as he had never seen on human countenance. The features were not contorted; the eyes did not blaze; it was composed of none of the usual factors which go to make up expressions of violent emotion, but it was as though she saw clearly and with no mistake a fate which had neither mercy nor chance of change. A repressed bitterness was there—a bitterness directed at no individual but at the fate which had closed in about her after her hour of hope. And then she laughed—a tremendous laugh, as repressed as the look on her face, short and sharp and flat—mockery of mirth itself.

“If that's the case,” she said, “I guess I can go back well enough, and I guess that after this nothing that'll happen to me on Garden Island will be so very bad. I guess I can be hunted like a rabbit the minute I'm out of sound of my father's voice and it won't be such a terrible thing now, I guess I won't mind not having a f-friend——”

He rose quickly.

“Eve, you're all——”

And then fury blazed out at him from her eyes.

“Never mind!” Her look and her voice, sharp and explosive, balked him. For a second they stood confronting one another, and then she went on rapidly, drawing one hand through and through the other. “Never mind—anything, please! It's all over. Everything is over; and the sooner I make up my mind to it the better off I'll be. That don't mean anything to you, I suppose, but it counts with me, and I'll keep what I have—what peace I have”—with bitter irony. And she repeated the word again—“peace”—in a whisper, and followed it with a laugh, which may have been forced to cover a catch in her breath.

“But, Eve, listen to me! I didn't——”

“Please—don't—talk—to—me.” Her words, widely spaced, fell on him like blows, though her voice was hardly of normal tone. “If it weren't for you, this-wouldn't have happened—what's going on in here now, I mean”—a hand at her breast. “It's all because you came to Garden Island. It was bad enough before that, but now it'll be ten times worse—and it won't matter.

“You were Jode MacKinnon's boy, in the first place, and then you were nice to me and that made me think that maybe things were going to be different. It was the first time I'd hoped for it, and that hope made me dissatisfied.

“It wasn't my fault that my father burned your boat, unless it's my fault being his daughter. I didn't know anything about that, but I see now why you—what makes you— You came into the store looking for him to start trouble”—voice steadying after the momentary break—“and you did what you did and then I made my choice between my father and you—because I liked you. I saved your life, I guess; but I was glad to. I didn't even want anything in pay for it at first, and then all I wanted was to get away from Garden Island——”

“Oh, I got away, all right and I got to a place where I saw you every day and I let myself be a fool over you. I let myself hope that you'd keep me here, that you'd get to like me. I even thought you did, and that you were having a hard time hiding it. And now I'm going back to my father——”

“If you'll listen——”

She drew back at his approach, putting a chair between them and crying out:

“Don't come near me! Don't try to argue with me! Don't you see that the only way I can go back there and live is to hate you? Don't you see that after I've loved you I've got to hate you to have any peace? Don't you see that I've got to look at what you're going to do as if you were selling me back to slavery?

“For the price of your hooker! Why, I'd have worked my hands off for you; I'd have paid you that much money a dozen times over—I'd have got it somehow—just to be near you, and now, because I happen to be my father's daughter, I've got to be traded back—and I've got to hate you, David MacKinnon! I've got to think you're worse—worse than—worse——”

She stammered, and something changed in her manner—a swift passing of the iron that had been in her will. She paused a moment, not hearing his burst of words, seeing him approach through that dry blindness in her eyes, and then she whirled, stumbling into her room, slamming the door behind her, and as MacKinnon, recovering his balance finally, his tongue loosened, flung himself against it, she drove the bolt home, crying out brokenly:

“It locks from the inside! And you told me that—and it was the first thing that made me— But I don't! I don't! I'm going to hate you, David MacKinnon; I'm going to hate you!”

“Eve, don't do that! Open the door! You're all wrong—wrong from the beginnin'!” He beat with his flat palms on the panels and shook the latch, but the door remained fast. “Open it, Eve. You've got to listen to me!” he cried in panic.

“No! Go away! If you want to make it easier for me, go away!”

HE HEARD her move and tried the door again, but the bolt had not been withdrawn. Then he relaxed and listened.

“Eve, are you there?” No reply. “You've not left the room; I know that. You're goin' to listen to me now. I'm not goin' away, and all I have to say is this: That if you go back to him, you'll go after I'm helpless to stop you. Hear that? After I'm helpless to stop you! I wanted you to say that you knew I wouldn't let you go back. I wanted you to say again that I couldn't do you any harm. I wanted you to know that without bein' told. That was why I didn't tell you what I told him—that I was goin' to keep you here—as long as you'd stay. Do you hear that, Eve?”

He could not know that, with dry throat and lungs which seemed crushed by a great weight, she tried to speak and could not.

“I brought you here to play a trick on him. I didn't care anythin' about you then, but somethin's happened to change that, and you're here to stay or go when and where I go—always! Do you hear that?”

He had been very emphatic, almost belligerent in his intentness. He stopped, and, though no response came, he thought he could hear her breathing, close against the other side of the door.

“I've been all wrong about you. I've been fightin' against admittin' I was wrong. I listened to stories and believed them. I listened to the story that said that you with your own hands changed the beacons that sent my father on the reef, and I believed it!” He could not hear the light moan of the girl who crouched low against the door. “I believed that until I talked with you that night aboard my hooker. And then I thought for sure you must have planned with your father to get me away so he could set the fire. I believed that until now, until to-night. Oh, Eve, Eve, I've been the fool! I've played the game all wrong from the beginnin'; but it was because I was afraid!”

He was seized with a spasm of remorse and desire and beat again on the door.

“Let me in!”—tone savage with intent. “You think bolts can keep you from me now? You think you can keep me out, now that I've come this far? I'll have you now if it takes my last breath; I'll have you if it's the last thing I do!”

He heard her stirring, and then her voice came, strangely weak:

“Oh, first, David—haven't you something to say first?”

His beating on the door frightened her; the hoarseness of his voice was alarming. She wanted him to come, yes—wanted with every fiber of body and soul—but not that way—not as a destroyer, but as a lover with words of that love on his lips.

He drew back, puzzled by her faint plea, and to them, from out on the lake, came four short, dull blasts of a boat's whistle.

It struck through David's tumult, froze the girl, too, because it was the call of sailors in distress. Four whistles, four barks from the metal throat of a steamboat coming when a swirl of passion was in the breast of David MacKinnon; but it meant need, and his were the ears which had heard it, his the duty to answer.

“Eve; hear that?”

His voice was still strained. He heard her say, “Yes” as though startled, heard her move, with a hand on the bolt, but waiting to listen. It was the whistle of her father's tug Elsa, and apprehension shot through her.

“Come,” he said, as the whistle came again, four times, short and sharp.

He crossed the floor, and Eve knew by the sound that he was lighting a lantern. As she moved for her heavy jacket, she hard him getting into his oilskin coat. The outer door opened, and he said again,

“Come, Eve!”

She drew back the door that she had bolted against him and, stopping to adjust a sou'wester on her head, followed into the night, where he had gone.

DAYLIGHT had faded early that evening, and rain, which had come on the rising wind from the southwest, had made weather thick, and before darkness itself shut down, three boats were making slowly through the water of the lake, each of which would have its bearing sooner or later on the fortunes of the man and girl in the house on High Island.

The first was a steam-tug, slipping out of Norman Eldred's harbor just as dusk came, showing no lights, holding south of west. One man worked between the fire-hole and the engine; Dimmock puttered for'ard, and Eldred himself at the wheel made up the crew. The latter did not sit on the stool in the pilot-house, but stood over the wheel, staring into the night. Now and again his lips moved, and e faint light from the binnacle showed that rage was dancing in his eyes. Since yesterday he had smarted in silence; since yesterday he had nursed and prodded that rancor, fed it in the hope that it would eat away the fear that lingered in his heart. Fear was still in him, but with the motion of the tug over the dingy seas, he sensed relief. This was action—and night was coming.

And another boat, too, was bearing on High Island. A catboat, this, launched from the western shore of Beaver Island, its one sail catching the breeze and driving it on its way. One man was aboard, steering by the aid of a pocket-compass and by instinct, for he knew boats and water and weather. Now and then he drew his oilskin hat closer and wriggled and chuckled over the thing which he anticipated. The man was Jean Mosseau. Each day since his friend had brought the story of MacKinnon's prank on Eve Eldred, Mosseau had lain for long, watching the water. Tuesday, his vigil had been rewarded by sight of Eldred's tug standing across to High Island; it had come again to-day and he had witnessed the meeting of small boats. He could only conjecture as to the men in them, though he spied with a glass, but Eldred's tug went away without touching land. So there was a good chance that the girl was still there. He also was going into action now, his courage rehabilitated by the passage of days, his chagrin mounting as the story of what David had done to him became light and common gossip.

And away to the north a third boat, which had been under way all that day, came to rest against a rickety dock at Naubinway. An old man, with soiled and grizzled hair, whose eyes were vacant and staring, whose neck was thin, whose lips moved constantly, made her fast and went ashore. He stood staring about for a time and then went up the dock to the land. He stared up and down until he made out the nearest lighted window; he went forward and peered into the room, fixing his immoderate stare on each of its occupants in turn. The face he sought was not there evidently, for he went slowly away, peering into other houses, watching rare figures on the village street. When all the windows were darkened, he returned to his mackinaw, crawled into the crazy little cabin and drew soiled blankets over his withered body. He muttered to himself for long, and now and then sat up and looked about in the darkness. Toward morning he slept.

WHEN David MacKinnon walked from the beach to his house that night to prepare the evening meal and confront Eve, his were not the only feet treading those sands.

The tug which had borne down on High Island from Indian Harbor had come the last mile silently, its engine turning ever so slowly, its exhaust making no noise that could be detected far up-wind.

“Here,” said Eldred finally, and gave the wheel to Dimmock. He stepped outside, moved aft and gave a gesture to the engineer; the machinery stopped.

Then, speaking no other word, for their plan was well conceived, Eldred hauled on the long line that towed his skiff. He moved quickly, as a man will under great excitement, but when he put the oars aboard the small boat and lowered himself to it, he was most cautious to make no sound. He stood there, listening, and felt in his coat pocket, where the savage pistol lay ready.

He rowed toward the faint blotch of light and beached his boat on the sand spit. He stood for some time, watching and listening, and then he moved forward a few steps, waited, and went on again with great stealth, approaching the house from the rear by a circuitous route, as any prowler would. His heart beat quickly against his ribs and his hand went from time to time to that side pocket where the weapon nestled. He had need of the feel of that compact bolster for his courage. His fear of David was no less than it had been; perhaps it was greater after their interview of yesterday, but his humiliation had given way to rage, and that rage knew little compromise, not even in the face of great fear—only the compromise of coming in secret and after dark, with a weapon handy to use.

He reached a point directly back of the house and waited. Light from one window threw a yellow blotch out on the sand, and the scattering rain-drops shot across it. A half-dozen steps, with his heart beating almost to the point of suffocation, and he could see within.

He saw Eve, first, and his hand opened and shut against his side spasmodically, and a shudder ran through him, as though he had tasted something terribly bitter. Then he stared at the bent back of MacKinnon as he ate, eyes on his food, and Eldred's hand slipped down to caress once more the pistol.

And now, what? he debated, as he stood there with the fear coming up through his resolution again. He could shoot from where he stood, could shoot the lad from behind and without danger to himself, and yet he feared even to strike from behind. It was uncanny—the way this youth could mock at him! It was an unheard-of thing! And though Eldred clamped his teeth and fought against weakness, he found himself turning, withdrawing into the darkness—to wait—and for he knew not what.

He went on carefully to the rear of the house and stood there, listening. He heard the sound of voices within suddenly and squatted.

The voices subsided, covered by the wind and the waves on the beach. Eldred moved again, then froze against the ground. The faintest sound had come from back there against the gloom of the forest, and he checked his breath to listen. He could hear no more, not until his sight had functioned, and he made out a slightly luminous blotch in the darkness, and from that traced the outlines of a man's head and shoulders, standing still.

A hissing breath slipped from his lips before he could check it. Suspected? Stalked? He felt again for the pistol, but it had lost its charm. The fool knew no fear! That figure was moving forward for all the world as though it hunted some one, and Eldred shrank even closer to the ground to let him pass.

Such slow steps! The figure was discernible now; it was abreast of him. Inside the house a lifted voice, and the figure moved quickly, changing its direction, and, with a sound like a moan, a shape rose at its feet and binding arms clamp about its legs, for this other had all but stepped on Norman Eldred.

They went down into the sand, fighting blindly, madly, threshing about, grappling for holds. Hands sought Eldred's throat, and he could not give up his struggle against them even long enough to try to get the pistol.

They rolled over, Eldred now on top, again underneath, seeking to bring the great power of his arms and hands to bear, but the other was agile, lightninglike in his shiftings. He threshed his arms free. A hand clamped on Eldred's chin, tearing at the beard, fumbling, relaxing, and then, close in his ear, a voice:

“Sacré! Eldret!”

On those words, all movement stopped, and Eldred remained fixed. He was not hunted. The man was not MacKinnon! He leaned forward—they were both on their knees—thrusting his face close to the other.

“Mosseau!”

“Ah!”—a gasp of fright.

“You followed me"—is that it?”—fingers fastening in the clothing of the now thoroughly frightened Frenchman.

“Na! No, Eldret!” Mosseau's voice rose in the cry of protest. “I did not come here for you.”

“Eh? Not for me?” Eldred was holding the other man half erect as he got to his feet, and felt rather than saw the other shake his head. “What are you here for, then?”

An inspiration was shooting through him as he recollected the facts which governed the relations between Mosseau, himself and MacKinnon.

“Leesten, Eldret; you know mahbe for why Jean Mosseau she come here. You know what de trader she do to Jean. Py gosh, I come to get efen!”

“Even? How? What were you going to do?”

Jean shrugged.

“He push my face off in your store, by gosh! Jean she not forget. She wait an' watch an' plan an' to-night she come wit' wan long knife, mabbe, to get back!”

FOR a moment they stood silent, staring at one another in the darkness. So this man, too, had come to seek vengeance on David MacKinnon! So he, too, was a coward, and ready to strike in the dark!

There was, true, the probability that Mosseau had deigns on Eve, but that did not bother Eldred then. The Frenchman feared him, was abject before him, and perhaps he could use this fear and humility, perhaps he could bring it to bear against David MacKinnon.

“I've a score to settle with you—a heavy one, Mosseau. We won't talk of that to-night. He”—gesturing toward the house—“too, owes me. You know who is here with him?”

“Oui!”

“I am here for her; that is all—to-night. If you want to work out a part of your debt to me, Mosseau, maybe I'll let you help.”

The Frenchman could feel that gaze in his face, felt, too, a hand grope for his wrist and mighty fingers clamp there. He drew back, and the strength that was in Eldred's arm gripped down, and he found himself jerked close to the other.

“No; you can't get away! I've had other things to think of, Mosseau, or you'd have paid before now. I've known all about you; you'd never have gotten to the mainland——”

“Ah—for sure, Eldret! Jean she was drunk——”

“Never mind; we won't talk of that now. You're here, and you'll help me, or——”

“Sure, Eldret!” Mosseau was thoroughly alarmed now. “You come to get her bark. Py gosh, Jean she come to use hees knife, eh? Py gosh; mabhe Jean hurt heem more by helpin' you, eh?”

“You seem to understand—” The hand that had gripped Jean's wrist relaxed. “Back this way—” They walked fifty paces from the house and stopped. “Listen, Mosseau!”

Eldred talked rapidly, injecting a question now and then, voice becoming firmer and louder as his plan developed, as dread of that meeting which had, a half-hour ago appeared inevitable, diminished. He breathed easier; he even showed his old ironic triumph, and the Frenchman, listening, shrugged and nodded and watched this man whom he feared above all others. And he could appreciate the subtleties of revenge, could Jean!

Again Eldred went through the darkness, but this time swiftly, and he laughed to himself as he pushed off his skiff and rowed out. He stopped and listened and whistled sharply. An answering whistle came out of the thickness, and in a moment he was against his tug, being helped aboard.

“Easily,” he said to the engineer. “Easily.” And, to Dimmock, “Stand down the east side, past his harbor.”

AND before the wheel had gone down to send the tug southward, Jean Mosseau was peering into the window of the log house, watching Eve Eldred confront MacKinnon. He strained forward, because that day when he had told the girl that her beauty had put him beside himself there had been no untruth spoken. He gripped the window-sill and watched with lips twitching, and then drew back, waiting, straining to hear what went on in there, waiting for the sound from the lake.

It came, and Mosseau flattened himself against the wall of the house. David ran down the beach peering into the thickness. His lantern flared as he reached the water's edge—and just as Eve was crossing toward the outer door—and he stopped, holding it against his body to lift the chimney and adjust the wick. Its light, for the moment, was screened from the house.

And so, when Eve looked out, she saw no evidence of a lantern. The bark of the whistle came again. She stepped into the sand; she started forward on a run, and an arm swept across her face, covering her mouth, cutting off her breath, and another grappled for her hand. She whirled, making the man's oilskin crackle.

“David!” she choked. “David, why——”

He made no answer. His arms were about her, trying to lift her from her feet. She caught a glimpse of him against the background of light.

“David!” She choked again. “Don't!”

And then she was free. A smashing of her two small fists into his face, a doubling of her knee that sent the breath driving from him broke his hold. She whirled and flung into the house, slamming the door, and the lamp was blown out by the draft. Then on, into her room, slamming that door, too, and bolting it, falling with her back against it, hands outspread.

“Why?” she cried to herself. Why had he done this? Why had he lured her outside? He had warned her that bolts would not suffice to-night—and there he was, coming across the other room!

She stood stock-still, trying to summon her faculties. He came on, knocking over a chair. He was at the door, fumbling for the latch, rattling it.

“David!” she called in low appeal; but he made no reply.

Instead, as though her word assured him of her whereabouts, he shoved against the door and wood cracked, but the barrier did not give. He drew back, and she could hear the breath beaten from him as he put his weight on the panels. The hinges started. No; bolts would not hold him!

Eve retreated across the room, weak and panic-stricken. She heard him again lunge against the door, and something broke and fell with a tinkle—a hinge, likely. Yes; she could see the glow of the stove through the opening made by the sagging door.

She thrust a foot over the window-sill and slid out. She was under the dripping eaves when the door gave. And then she was running through the wet sand, down toward the little harbor, to the only safety left her—he big lake and a small boat.

The girl stumbled into a skiff and fumbled for oars. The thing glided from shore. She dropped the oars into their locks with trembling hands and rowed awkwardly to turn the boat about.

She felt the heave of the first light swell and rowed faster to be away from that pestilential place where men waited and grappled with her in the dark. Her stroke settled to an even measure; she was outside the harbor, rolling in the trough of the seas.

She stopped all movement then. The distress-signal had stopped. The wind was brisk in her face and the hiss of rain on water was incessant.

And where now? She was alone on Lake Michigan, alone in the world, with the man who had given her sanctuary turned into a madman, lying in wait for her, shattering all the trust that he had built for himself in those broken protests outside her broken door. Alone! A feeling of being the only life anywhere swept through her, and then, out of the night, far away, ever so faint at that distance, blotted out completely except for this moment's respite of wind and rain, came the steady, deep moan of a fog-whistle.

Squaw Island—and Aunt Jen Borden!

With a cry of relief the girl dipped her oars and, guided by the wind in her face, by the sound of the whistle which at first came only at rare intervals, she set herself for that journey.

And Jean Mosseau, leaving the broken door and the open window, slipped quickly out of the house and down the beach toward where he had left his catboat. He watched MacKinnon coming back carrying his lantern, stopping now and then to listen for the whistle which came no more, and when David was safely past him,the Frenchman ran on along the hard sand.

Afloat, he sat for a time indecisively. Eldred had charged him with this errand and he had failed. He might try to flee now, but he knew that Eldred was right. He could never get away—and, anyhow, he had tried—and he might try again because their scores—both his and King Norman's—were still unsettled.

IT WAS a bewildered David MacKinnon who walked back to his house and found no Eve there.

From the beginning, the incident which had interrupted his stormy wooing had borne a strange face, he felt now. The boat sounding the distress-signal had gone steadily to the southward; then, he thought, it swung into the east and, circling, went back on the way it had come.

He had the impression once that the ship was not far from him and stopped to listen and consider. If it were merely lost, it would be giving the prescribed fog-warning; but this was unmistakably a call for help.

Standing there, he felt a strange uneasiness come over him and looked about quickly beyond the small space lighted by his lantern with a sensation as if some one were near by who meant him no good. For long he was motionless, listening to the repeated whistling; then he began to walk down the beach.

All the way back he had that impression of impending danger, of the closeness of one who meant him harm, and reaching the point from where he could see the house, he was further alarmed at discovering it dark. So he went on at a run until he reached the door. It was open, and he stopped to listen, even calling Eve's name and waiting for reply. None came. He went in and held up his lantern and looked about in bewilderment. A chair was overturned, and he crossed the room to the bedroom door.

“Eve!” he said sharply and opened his lips to speak again, but did not; the fresh crack in the door-panel, the slight sagging of the door itself caught his eye. He put out a hand and shoved lightly; the door reeled inward on its broken hinges.

He was all action. He burst into that room, calling the girl's name, staring about, bewildered. In mid-floor lay a part of the broken door-latch, and one window was open.

Fright came then, and he could hear his own breath, quick and a bit hoarse, mingling with the light moan of the forest out there and the sound of rain on the roof. The apprehension which he had felt, the doubt of the genuineness of that call of distress from the lake became more pronounced. Eve was gone; a strong body had broken down the door of her room, and that call of distress had been a fraud!

Panic overwhelmed him as he ran toward the shack where the Indians were sleeping, and had been sleeping, likely, since their early meal. He swung his lantern into their faces and cried out excitedly, and they rolled out of their greasy quilts, befuddled with sleep. He question them a moment, when his judgment should have told him that they surely could know nothing. Then he explained and got lanterns from the boat, while they struggled into their boots, and sent them searching the beach.

The downpour had increased to an extent which obliterated tracks which might have told much of the story of the evening, but they did discover three things which betrayed the presence of men who had not been seen. A boat had landed on the sand spit and another, a larger craft—probably a sail boat—had been grounded far up the island. Lastly, a skiff was missing. Scant evidence, surely, but to MacKinnon, considering the broken door in the house, it meant enough, and when, after a hurried tramping through the forest behind the house and repeated shoutings, he was satisfied that Eve was no longer on the island, he led his helpers to the dock and aboard the Islander.

There the men demurred, for they had guessed what David had deduced.

Peter John said something to Mink in his native Chippewa.

“What's that?” David asked.

“Eldred is a damn bad man, Dave.” the Indian said. “He——”

“Never mind about Eldred! I'm as bad as he is. Get a move on!”

AN HOUR later, Norman Eldred and Jean Mosseau sat, one on either side of the table which bore an unshaded oil-lamp, in Eldred's house.

Mosseau leaned forward with elbows on his knees and talked and watched the other. There was craft in his expression and hope and inspiration in his heart. He made the second man to share knowledge of this weakness of Eldred's; Dimmock was the first—and Dimmock had been amazed—but Mosseau experienced only a strong elation at his discovery. Eldred had made a poor job of covering his secret, and his clumsy efforts did nothing but establish in Jean's mind the conviction that the man who was called king feared David MacKinnon desperately. He had sensed that first when Eldred, on the heels of their struggle in the darkness, evolved his hasty plan which placed the burden of a physical encounter with the trader on other shoulders; that was not like the Eldred who had ruled so ruthlessly. His suspicion had grown to certainty as he sat and debated with himself in his boat after shoving off from High Island when their plan had failed by the flight of the girl. Jean was even then a bit fearful of Eldred's successful pursuit if he tried escape from the islands, but the thing which set him sailing before the wind for Indian Harbor was not reluctant acknowledgment of this man's far-reaching power but the brazen hope that he now had Eldred in a corner.

He saw unlimited possibilities opening before him. He was not afraid of MacKinnon, and that courage was something for which Eldred would pay handsomely. His deduction was without error, and that was proven when he landed on Garden Island and Eldred had only a brief show of scorn for his failure and great eagerness to learn what had happened, and a manner of forgetfulness that there had ever been a quarrel between them. He was saying now:

“Py gosh, when she go t'rough dat window, Jean he t'ink for sure he catch her now! Hon my word, she go out from sight laak wan deer. She ron—py gosh, how she ron, an' nobody can see her!”

“But MacKinnon wasn't there? He was away up the beach, you said. Why didn't you stay?”

Mosseau shrugged.

“Py gosh, Eldret, a man wan beeg fool to taak many chances from MacKinnon, Wait! Py gosh, wait! Wan odder taam an' we catch heem.”

“You should have waited to-night,” Eldred said, with truculence. “She's there on the island somewhere. She couldn't get off, and if you were there now, maybe——”

He stopped and turned sharply, and Mosseau caught his breath, for a foot jammed against the door. It swung open, and David MacKinnon stood there, a rifle in the crook of his arm.

For an instant none of the three moved, and then Eldred rose rather unsteadily. The rifle twitched ever so slightly.

“Well?” grunted Eldred in a weak, characterless exclamation of amazement; then he steadied himself. “Hunting, eh? You must be hunting trouble.”

“Not trouble, unless somebody gets in my way. Then there'll be trouble a-plenty. I'm after your daughter.”

Now, it was no wonder that a man like Jean Mosseau should betray his surprise by a low ejaculation when a man like Norman Eldred let his amazement cross his face with such an unmistakable flash; but when the Frenchman made that sound, Eldred turned on him such a flash of rage that the rifle twitched again. For that sound, that look, that movement bred quick suspicion in David.

When Eldred's gaze came back to MacKinnon, the latter saw something like gratification mingling with the chagrin and temper, and then Eldred laughed quite easily and with a genuine ring, because something had happened, and this man who had crossed him was also foiled. Eve was gone from High Island, and the trader was guessing wide of the mark, coming here for her.

David was damning himself. He had stepped into something unexpected; he had certainly guessed badly, because Mosseau's surprise, which showed him his mistake, and Eldred's one look of anger, which proved that Eldred knew the French man's poor poise, had set David right, convinced him that he had followed a cold trail and that Eve was not here.

But Eldred was covering up as well as he could the botch that had been made. He said:

“After my daughter, are you? And by what right do you come hunting her—with that?”

Something of his old fine scorn was in the voice and a measure of his once secure superiority in the contempt with which he gestured toward the rifle.

So he was going to play it through this way, was he? David asked himself. They were going to try to cover up what they knew? Well, several could play at that.

“Right!” he said, under his breath. “Every right under the sun, Eldred. I'm after her to take her back with me, to keep her. And that's what I'll do, s'help me!”

The other put back the surge of jealousy that swept him and laughed again.

“You can't seem to learn, MacKinnon. Your rashness seems to grow with the days. You were rash when you took Eve away, a fool to make threats against me; you were worse than that when you refused the offer I made you yesterday—to settle for your hooker. To-night you have no boat, no money, no Eve! It would have been so different for you if you'd taken me up. But you were a fool—and again a fool for coming here this way.”

David let the muzzle of the gun drop.

“You're right, Eldred. I was a fool. I gave you credit for doin' somethin' you're not up to. You had me guessin' wrong, but you couldn't fool Eve. You didn't bring her back, did you? Your little scheme only worked half-way!”

He laughed freely then, for shaking off the pretense of not understanding that both he and Eldred had given themselves away made him easier. That laugh sent a dark flood into the other's face, and his voice was thick.

“She is here! She's safe under this roof where she belongs, where she——”

“And that'll make me mad, Eldred, if you keep on! There's nothing that'd make me madder than to have you think you could lie to me and make it good. She's not here. Fair enough—I've showed my hand, but you've showed yours. Good-night, and when you come again, bring a bigger crowd. King Norman, because you're going to need it!”

And he was laughing as he ran down the steps and disappeared, hurrying back to the Islander, with relief wiping out the dismay at having guessed badly.

Eve was not here; she had not left High Island; he was going to find her!

BUT she was not on High Island.

Tardy dawn was seeping through the mist, and David, alone before the cook-stove in his house, shivered and stirred himself to replenish the fire. He was still clammy wet from the sweat that tramping through the forest had started; he began that tramping as soon as he had returned from his ill-advised trip to Eldred, and it had continued for hours without encountering a sign of the girl.

He stood up and stared at the broken door and rubbed his chin with the backs of his fingers. He was for the first time in hours wondering again. He had felt so singularly alone, so impressively beaten and confounded that recently there had been no energy for speculation. The Annabelle was gone, and now the girl, who had come to take a place that no material possession could fill, was gone. She was not in his house, not on his island, not with her father, either. But where?

He began to wipe his palms on his hips in excitement, and after a moment he laughed briefly, as a man will who is recovering from severe fright.

“Of course!” he said aloud. “A skiff's gone, and she's gone, and the other day the old girl told her she could come there. It was Eldred who broke down this door, and she got away—she got away!”

PART IV

Nemesis in Strange Guise Overtakes the King of Garden Island and Eve Finds the Tragedies Which Battered at Her Heart Gone Like a Disturbing Dream

Begin this serial with any instalment. The story is here up to this issue.

WHEN Eve Eldred fled in the dark night from High Island and—as she supposed—the brutality of David MacKinnon, the whole structure of faith she had reared in a few eventful days crumbled away. The coming of David to Garden Island, one of the Beaver group in Lake Michigan, where he sought shelter for his trading hooker from a storm, meant that the lonely girl had at last found a friend. Years she had lived there with her father, “King Norman” Eldred, surrounded only by rough men—“the scum of the lakes,” who help him in his fishing industry. For these men she had only fear, as her father had taught her.

But David had come to the very spot he had been warned to keep away from, where his father had been treacherously lured to his death by Eldred, who was jealous of the affection Eve showed the kindly man. And so with the son—Eldred would not tolerate his presence. So he set fire to his hooker—and under such circumstances that David believed Eve assisted him in the dastardly act. And then, when the girl continued to show her liking for the young fellow, Eldred in rage cast her out, and David took her over to neighboring High Island—away, as she had begged him to—where he kept her prisoner but treated her with all chivalry, in revenge upon Eldred.

The latter, repenting and wanting his daughter back, had gone to the island, but MacKinnon, instead of treating with him, drove him away. Also to the island had gone Jean Mosseau, a French-Canadian, who wanted to kidnap Eve, and it was he, not David, who had tried to seize her in the darkness.

Eve knew where to go. In an open boat she pulled for the light on Squaw Island, where dwelt Ned Borden, the keeper, and his wife and assistant, “Aunt Jen.” For some reason which Eve could not fathom, the woman had evinced a strange interest in her, and with Aunt Jen the girl knew she would be safe.

Jen Borden's watch began at six that evening, and at five o'clock Ned had put fire under the boilers because the weather was thickening. True, it might lift, but Borden had burned many a ton of government coal to make steam that was never used in his years of service—better that than to be even a few minutes late with his fog-whistle, when those minutes might mean the risk of ships and the lives in them. But by the time the watch changed, this preparation was justified, because rain and mist cloaked objects two hundred yards away.

Her hair drawn close over her head and tied in one large knot at her nape, wearing a denim jumper, an old gingham skirt and large, broken shoes, Jen shoveled coal into the fire, and the light from the open door showed her face set in a look of absorption not, it was evident, wholly concerned with her work.

The woman's mind was never far from her work, to be sure, because, when she slammed the door of the fire-box, she went outside and looked first at the light, its steady red beam accentuated every fifteen seconds by a flash of brilliant crimson, and then off to the northward, where ships, passing to or from the straits, would need that beacon. On the wall of the boiler-house a clock ticked and a small lever functioned to send the velvety bass voice of the fog-whistle in a five-second bellow down the wind to warn those mariners who could not see the light in this murk; silence for twenty seconds, except for wind and rain and the surf running on the gravel; another blast, then silence for twice the former period.

Nothing was in sight on the lake, though she strained her eyes to see. A light burned in the keeper's dwelling, where Ned lay sleeping. Jen watched is a moment, and then turned back to the boiler, closed the door and sat down in a wooden chair.

“Oh dear!” she murmured. “I'm glad it's thick. Sewing's a poor excuse for needful work when a body's head's as full as mine.”

She sighed again and, though she sat still in the chair, her hands fidgeted slowly.

Monday night she had been at her sewing-machine until morning, and Tuesday, following her return from High Island, she had driven it steadily. Afterward she slept restlessly, but again last night it was very late when the hum of the speeding needle left off, and now, but for the necessity of firing the boiler, she would have been fashioning garments from her stock of plain cloth for the relief it gave her.

In these days, her manner with her husband had been changed. She did not bluster, and her usual volubility was missing. She was gentle, almost meek at times, and always she went about half abstracted, with her mind on some other matter than that which occupied her. She had given Ned a rather sketchy account of her visit to Eve, and after that seemed as eager to avoid the subject as she had been to make the trip to the girl.

When she was not with Ned, though, he was much in her mind—at her work about the light, when she performed her household duties and, especially, when she bent over her sewing-machine, she was occupied with thought of him.

“I'll tell him—I'll be blistered if I won't tell him!” she said again and again. The first time that she gave words to such a resolve was when she set the supply-boat on its course home from High Island. But her determination waned when she approached the landing, only to gain strength again when the first opporutnity for confiding the thing she dreaded to reveal had come and passed. “I'll tell him!” she promised the sewing-machine later—but she did not. “Oh, you cowardly heart!” she moaned, when still another opportunity had passed. “Oh, you white-livered old liar! One more chance—just one!” But no revelation was made when that desired chance did arrive.

And now as she sat with an eye on the steam-gage and an ear for any sounds that might come from the lake, she was living it all again—her failure to speak when she was so strongly impelled to unburden herself; her scene with the girl and, lastly, the words of Norman Eldred spoken that night in his house recurred again and again: “You have told him about our little transaction? He knows?”

She rose and paced nervously, finally slicing her fire with savage thrusts of the bar.

THE hands of the clock swung on toward that point where her husband would relieve her of duty. Ten o'clock passed, and eleven. At regular intervals she looked out at the light and at the lake, and once she timed the blasts of the whistle, to be certain that the mechanism functioned properly. Eleven-thirty now. A half-hour more, and then sleep—if she could find the peace of mind to close her eyes.

She stepped outside again. The light in her husband's room was brighter, and she could see him moving about as he dressed. She looked out across the lake, straining her eyes, and then stared at the near water. She started forward, with her lips shaping an unspoken exclamation of amazement.

A boat was approaching the landing—a small craft, an open boat. Shaken from her own distress by this suggestion of mishap and need, she hurried down the beach, heedless of the rain.

There was but one figure in the boat. She heard the oars thump and rattle as they were shipped, saw the occupant crawl out on the landing, and then she was close, breaking into a run, crying out:

“Dearie! Dearie!” Eve Eldred stood there, her face very white in the darkness. “What's the matter?” asked Jen in a strained voice, grasping the girl's wet hands.

Eve swayed a trifle, as though dizzy.

“For a little while,” she said weakly, “I thought there was no place to come. And then I remembered——”

She crept then into the woman's eager arms, and Jen breathed,

“Something terrible's happened—and, dearie, you've come home!”

Before the boiler, where her clothing could dry and where the chill of wind and rain and fright could be driven from her bones. Eve told her story. Not all of it—not everything that had happened—but enough so that Jen could guess what had taken place on High Island that night and could be sure what had happened in the girl's heart.

Eve found herself to be peculiarly reticent. All the way up, through all those hours on the lake when she had had strength only to hold the skiff on its course and let wind and current bear her toward this safety, her breast had been bursting for the relief of pouring her story into this woman's ears. But now her throat was stiff and unwieldy, and the words she wanted most to say would not come. She stumbled through the story of what had happened, and it was not until she reached that part which had to do with her father, his offer to MacKinnon, the impending fact of her return to Garden Island, that she could talk clearly and evenly. That was terror, real and to be faced, not something which was gone, irretrievably lost, and though this sanctuary might endure for only a few hours, it was something to be valued beyond price.

“But I had to come—I had to come here first, even if it makes going back worse than ever!”

She had just spoken that sentence when the door opened and Ned Borden stepped in. He stopped in surprise, and Eve felt Aunt Jen, who stood close to her, shudder. The pause was long enough to indicate to the girl that her coming meant something to those two people of which she was not aware—the pause and the look on the man's face, and that shudder of the woman. But Jen was the first to speak.

“Ned, the Lord's sent this girl to us to escape the devil and a passel of his works.”

The keeper looked at her searchingly for a moment, and Jen caught her breath. Then he smiled gravely and said:

“There's worse places, I guess. Glad you're here”—to Eve. “What's ours belongs to those who need it.”

He repressed his curiosity about the reason and manner of this coming; but that was easy—he had become accustomed to holding back questions in these weeks.

When the women had gone, and after he had looked at the gage and water-glass, he stood a moment as though listening for an expected sound; then he shook his head and compressed his lips patiently.

REFRESHED by the sleep into which Jen Borden had coaxed her, Eve woke to the warm spring day and dressed and, knowing from the silence of the dwelling that the woman to whom she had come still slumbered, she went outside, and stood a moment on the steps, watching a boat which was heading toward the landing.

She recognized it, of course, and after a moment turned sharply, as though she would slip back into the house and hide. The mood which would prompt hiding was on her well enough, evidenced by a drooping of the mouth, a frightened look in her eyes, but the impulse to run away passed, and a slow flush came into her cheeks and her eyes were not pleasant.

David saw her from a distance and did not wait for the Islander to be made fast before leaping ashore and striding up the path. She was waiting for him half-way between the light and the beach.

“Eve! You're here—all right—safe!”

He had one hand extended for hers, but checked his swift approach when she turned from him with something like a shudder, and the hand went slowly back to his side.

“Why, Eve, what is it?”

She looked at him squarely, and he had every opportunity to see the scorn in her eyes.

“What did you come here for?” she asked.

“For you, of course. Why else, Eve?”

“Then you'd better go,” she said, with a half-laugh. “I might have known I should believe you when you told me about yourself over and over again.” Her voice was hard as she steeled herself for this, but when she stopped she compressed her lips and breathed deeply, as though her voice was made even and firm only by great effort. “I didn't believe you when you said 1 was in danger. I was a fool——”

“Eve, look here!”

She backed a sharp step or two to keep distance between them as he advanced.

“Don't come near me!” she cried. “Don't ever come near me again! I don't ever want to hear your voice. I don't ever want to see your face. I don't even want to think about you, because, if I do—I'll be sorry I threw that knife away that night.”

Her voice pitched up and thinned out on that, and with one scorching look at him—a look which, closely analyzed, carried as well a beseeching quality—she turned and fled for the house.

Until she gained the doorway, David stood dumfounded; then he called her name sharply, with something like desperation, and began pursuit, mounting to the porch with a bound and flinging himself against the door which Eve had slammed behind her. He called again and rapped savagely and started forward eagerly when the door was opened—and stopped abruptly, because Jen Borden stood facing him.

The woman had watched what happened through a window, had come down the stairs just as Eve burst into the house and now confronted MacKinnon—a ludicrous figure in her flowered kimono and lace boudoir-cap; yet there was nothing grotesque in her face, and the quality of its expression would have made even a disinterested observer forgetful of her morning get-up. It was very grave, with an under-shading of sorry accusation; no anger was there, because her regret for this happening was too pronounced to leave room for anger at the moment. But it did not need anger to stop David, for he could read in the woman's face evidence of great distress, and that was enough. Jen was the first to speak.

“Oh, don't make it any worse, boy,” she said; “don't make it worse.” Her voice was low and tender and appealing.

“There's somethin' wrong here,” David said tersely. “I've got to see Eve and get it straightened, so——”

“It's all straight,” Jen answered, shaking her head slowly. “It's all straight enough so's her mind's made up. If there's any pity in your heart, boy, go away and leave her be. She's been through enough with you now; her heart's broke, and the only way to mend it is to help her forget. She can't do that if you're around.”

That gentleness, her slow speech—such good evidence of assurance—stripped David of the ability to think, let alone retort. He stood there striving to rally his wits, and the woman went on:

“I thought when I first heard you had her there that it'd be all right, mebbe; I thought that after I went to see her, too, and that's why I blame myself for not bringing her back. Oh, son, I guess you don't know much about a girl's heart; I guess you don't understand that there's times and places for everything. I'm sorry. I liked you; and I can't do that any more. There ain't any time to argue now. I've got my hands full trying to make this girl's heart well after what you've done. You'll have to go, boy; you'll have to go.”

He was hardly conscious that she had closed the door gently, shutting him out without a chance for reply. And yet, given the chance, what would he have said? What had he done to Eve? What was this terrible thing he had brought upon her? For it must be terrible—else that woman would never have looked like that.

He found himself walking slowly down the path to the dock, and when, once aboard his boat and under way again, he reached to drag a stool so he might sit as he wheeled, his movements were those of a man who is very weary, whose heart is gone.

ELDRED had watched David go into the darkness of the night before with anger in his eyes, but after a moment a sort of elation came to replace it. However, when he was sure he was alone with Mosseau, he turned savagely on the man.

“You're a fool,” he said heavily, “as great a fool as he is, Mosseau.” The Frenchman shrugged. “You understand what's happened? She's gone—somewhere. He'd thought she was here for sure if you'd kept your head. Ah, you're a fool in a world of fools!”

He said that last after advancing and standing over the other, who was badly frightened by the outburst and cringed when Eldred flung out a hand in gesture, as though he would strike. But he did not strike—just retained his tense pose for a moment and then turned away.

“Not here; not with him—there's but one place,” he said, as if to himself, and repeated, “one place. You'll go down with the crew,” he went on, as if mentioning a minor matter, “and you won't leave this island. You're a fool, but maybe I'll have use even for a fool.”

At sunrise, Eldred took the road that led down the island, walking briskly, and in an hour came out on the beach. He could see the Islander well over toward the light, and as he stood focusing his glass, he said in a whisper,

“But for the fool, he'd not have——”

He stood there while the distant boat landed, and held his glass steadily in the one position until she was clear again. He had seen one figure go up toward the tower, had seen it return alone; no other had boarded David's boat, he believed. For a moment he experienced relief, and this was followed by a new misgiving. Had he been wrong, after all? Had he been wrong? Was there another place to which Eve might have gone?

And thereafter, during many of the daylight hours, Norman Eldred patrolled that beach, glass in hand, and for long intervals he would stand motionless, with the instrument leveled on Squaw Island, watching for boats to arrive or depart. And Dimmock, from the pilot-house of his tug, watched, too, as he went back and forth on the business of fishing. But the red-haired ruffian had nothing to report and Eldred had nothing to show for his pains.

It was not until the afternoon of the third day that he was rewarded. Then he saw the lighthouse supply-boat go into the water, and strained his eyes to see figures aboard. Two only—just two; and both of them men, he could make out. He watched the boat until it was nearly abreast of him, and then took his way back to the head of the island, hastening through the woods.

“WELL, we're alone!” Aunt Jen spoke these words to Eve as though the condition were a relief. She had waved a farewell to her husband and Pete from the landing, and walked back to the dwelling, where Eve sat on the steps, chin in hands. The girl smiled ever so faintly as the woman stood looking down at her. Then Jen sat down.

“Why can't you let me help you, dearie?”

Eve shook her head slowly.

“I don't know.”

“Don't know! You mean you don't want to talk? For three days you've been trying your best to keep it to yourself, but it ain't going to work, dearie. Bottling it up's the worst thing you can do. Is it your father that worries you so?”

A moment of deliberation. Then,

“Yes.”

Jen eyed her skeptically and sniffed.

“He comes second, don't he?”

Eve lowered her head, and her assent was little more than a whisper.

“Looky here, dearie; the Lord didn't give women a tongue for nothing; he didn't give ears to folks who understand the trouble of others for nothing, either. You ain't got any cause to worry about your father now that you're here—safe with us. Just you forget him—or leave him to me.” She took Eve's hand in hers and the girl turned a slow gaze to her face. “It's him that makes you this way, ain't it?” Jen urged.

Eve nodded.

“Yes”—lowly. “You see, I can't forget it. I've tried—for three days, but I can't. And I want to so!” She drew an unsteady breath. “I'd been hoping so much! I'd been watching and waiting and trying to see happiness through it all, just as you told me to. I almost thought I saw it; I was so sure of it that last day. And then——”

A shudder traveled her body and she sat erect, the hand that Jen held working nervously. The wall of reserve with which she had penned up the hurt in her heart was breaking; her breath became uneven before the surge that swept through her, up from her very soul to her lips, and words tumbled out, relieving words, hurting while they came, perhaps, but draining the wound of the poison which silence and brooding had let accumulate.

“It had been a nightmare with my father; nothing could have been much worse except what I thought when David took me away that night. But he treated me as nobody had ever treated me; he was different.

“I couldn't blame him for wanting to sell me back to my father when he thought that I'd—helped burn his boat. But I hadn't expected it, and something seemed to break inside me. I'd been so almost happy there. I didn't want to go back to Garden Island; it seemed that I never could go back, and I said things that I felt, I guess—” Her voice was flat and dry and she paused a moment. “I don't remember just what I said, but I guess I told him that I—that I cared for him; and when I said that—” She broke off short and shook her head. “I can't explain it. A look came into his face that scared me, and I wanted to get away from him. It was—like fire in his eyes, and when he began to talk, it scared me worse. I didn't want him to talk that way—savage, as if he did want to hurt me.

“He said that doors and locks wouldn't stop him. And then that whistle blew and he went out, and—you see”—spreading a hand and frowning—“he must have been afraid of doors and locks after all; he must have wanted to get me out of that room that he told me once was a safe place. He must have waited, and when I ran out, he——”

She stopped abruptly again and laughed and disengaged the hand which Jen held and smoothed hair that did not need attention.

“It isn't so much David,” she said in a voice that shook. “It's in here, in my heart! I was almost happy there. I'd fooled myself and dreamed and built up a lot of hopes—and now I haven't any, except that I won't have to go back to my father.”

Jen's face worked.

“There, there, dearie! You won't have to—leave that to your Aunt Jen. Blast that trader's heart, anyhow! I'd like to have him here to listen to a piece of my mind. If he can know when I'm thinking of him, I'll bet his ears are frizzling up like bacon in a pan. You forget him—or leave him to me. You just chuck him out of your mind, dearie.”

Eve shook her head. There was the rub. She could no more put MacKinnon out of her mind than she could control the functioning of her heart-muscles. He was in her consciousness every moment, an exalted being on the one side, tender and gentle and chivalrous, and close against that impression was the other—of the destroyer in whom she had placed her faith to have it shattered. She had had a glimpse of happiness, and for a brief period she had been able to look back on Garden Island as a disturbing dream only, had been able to put out of her mind the danger of being dragged there again by her father, but with the disruption of her dream of the future, the possibility of a return to her father's house loomed large—so large that she could see nothing else before her.

And this was in her mind when Jen led her into the house, dragged out a trunk and began tossing from it a great array of out-of-date clothing.

“Now, here's that blue taffeta. I wore it twice in Oswego and put it on once more, but never got out of the house. That's every blessed time it was on a body's back since I snatched the basting threads. You'd look fine in that shade of blue, dearie. I can cut down the neck and drape the skirt, and take the sleeves off at the elbow— You got lovely arms, dearie—and I got a real swell pearl buckle for a belt. These here linen suits, too, 'll make over into nice summer dresses for you, and that black satin. My! How that'll set off your eyes, and Up-to-Date's got a smart pattern that made me think of you when I seen it.”

She rummaged again.

“Then, come fall, you might just's well use this broadcloth suit. There ain't a spot or a worn place on it”—hanging the skirt over her arm and taking it to the light. “Guess there ain't many girls on the Beavers who'll look any smarter 'n you when I get done with this!”

But to none of this did Eve respond. She had sunk back into the silence which had endured since her coming to the light except for that brief interval this afternoon when she had talked, and then she talked only to give voice to her hopelessness.

FOR three days the older woman had tried to distract the girl's attention and rouse her spirits, but her resources had been taxed without result. She knew the twin tragedies which had battered at Eve's heart—the loss of her faith in MacKinnon, the fear of a return to Garden Island. But nothing that she could say or do would mitigate them or take the forlorn look from the girl's face. She accepted Eve's report of what had happened that last night on High Island without question and, viewing it so, of course there was nothing she could do but condemn David. And she knew the real menace of Norman Eldred to the girl, knew it, perhaps, better than Eve did, knew it from more angles, had known it longer, and it was that which made her assurances of prolonged sanctuary weak and unconvincing and which set trouble prominently in her keen gray eyes.

Now she settled herself to ripping up the blue taffeta while Eve stared across the steel-gray lake, splashed with silver here and there as lightly screened sunlight filtered through the soggy, broken clouds. Without design or intent, reminded by some small detail, Aunt Jen began telling a tale of the lighthouse service, of that terrible night when, blinded by snow, a big ore-vessel bashed her nose on the reef and hung there, wave-swept, breaking up, and of how Ned Borden had held her in his arms before he stepped into the tiny supply-boat and put out into the lather of surf to pick up a line among the rocks which the distressed craft had tried to get to shore. He achieved the impossible, brought in the line, established a breeches-buoy and got the crew to safety just as the texas began to crumble.

She grew animated as she relived these scenes, and, without knowing it, she had caught Eve's interest. The girl watched the woman as she talked, sketching in those tragic moments with such simple words, and was quite lifted above her own distress by the narrative. Jen went on to tell of that helpless day when they watched a tow of two barges break loose and go past them to certain destruction, helpless to do more than pray. She told of other times as thrilling, and always it was with modesty, accepting duty as a matter of course, without heroics, teaching in parables the gospel of service. That was the kernel of her narratives—service, without cant or pretense, and there was a sincerity in it that did for Eve what coaxing and more conscious attempts at diversion had failed to do.

The girl began to ask questions and Jen's heart glowed, and then she stopped talking as Eve rose with a light gasp.

“The Elsa!” she whispered.

Jen stood up and peered through a window which gave a view of the landing.

Eldred's steam-tug was checking down, and King Norman himself stood beside the pilot-house, a line in his hands.

“Well, he's come,” said Eve dryly.

For a moment the older woman did not reply, and upon them both was the silence of impending tragedy. Jen Borden was crushed, confused, bewildered, but through this swirl of broken thought and changing emotion came her own words of the early afternoon: “You forget him—or leave him to me.”

Was she merely a talker? Was the safety which she could offer reduced to mouthings? Was she— She heard herself saying,

“He's come sure enough, but scorch me if he ain't going to put about, too!” She flung aside the cloth, dropped her shears with a clatter. “Here, dearie—this way!”

HALF dragging, half shoving Eve, the woman opened the door that led into the tower, slammed and locked it and slipped the key into her apron pocket. She heard Eve's one stifled cry; she stepped to the window and looked out. Eldred was walking toward her, searching the house with intent eyes.

“O Lord, give me strength to meet this devil!” prayed Jen, as his feet sounded on the steps.

She did not wait for his rap but flung the door wide and stood squarely in his way, glowering. Eldred came to a halt with a faint suggestion of a derisive bow.

“Well?” she challenged.

“You know why I'm here,” he said.

There was in the confidence of that statement something strained, a note that roused suspicion in the woman, who was now alive and alert, every faculty in acute accord with her purpose.

“Oh, I know, do I, Lasker? You give me credit for mind-reading. All I can tell you is that it's no good purpose that's brought you.”

“But you've expected me.”

“Huh! I'd as soon 'ave expected leprosy and been about as joyful over it.”

He eyed her a moment, trying to probe through her bluster.

“I've come for the only thing that would bring me here—for Eve.”

“For Eve?” Her amazement was well feigned, and she saw that it balked him. “What makes you come here, Lasker? I'd heard she was gone, and that the trader stole her. Lord knows what's happened since!

“She's left High Island,” he said evenly. “She left there and you gave her shelter. he's been here three days, and now I've come for her—when you're alone.”

“Three days?”—sarcastically. “Lasker, if——”

“Eldred!” he broke in. “Eldred, or I'll——”

“You're in fine shape to threaten anybody, ain't you?” She bristled. “Here you come to me for help and start in by making threats. That ain't any way to get advice.”

“No advice! I came for something real.” He moved closer. Jen held her ground, giving him stare for stare. “Do you tell me she's not here?”

“If she was here, do you think I'd be facing you this way? Lasker, if she ever comes into these old arms again, they'll her this time—hold her tight. They won't let her go—not for hell itself!”

Her voice had risen, but it did not impress the man, because something like a tolerant smile crossed his face.

“You'd be amusing,” he said, “amusing, Jenny, if you weren't standing in my way. I'm sort of starved for her, and a hungry man”—with a slight gesture—“is in no mood for talk.”

“Then you'd better be making tracks out of here. Talk's all you'll get, King Norman, and blessed little more of that!”

This time, no smile crossed his face, but a whip of anger.

“Don't trifle! I give you that warning—the nearest to a friendly act you'll ever have from me.” He put one hand against the casing and breathed heavily. “Things have happened lately to make—to drain a man's patience. It can't go on; you can't play with the fire as MacKinnon has done.

“He hit me hard. I'll admit that to you, Red Jenny, because any of my secrets would be safe with the wife of Ned Borden. I've been hungry for days—hungry as I never knew a man could hunger. There's been nothing in life—not even rest—nothing but haunting shadows and jeering voices and thought of Eve yonder—gone from me. Do you know how I can hate? Aye; you do”—nodding heavily. “You, of all people, should know. You don't know how I can love, but, take my word for it, I can love as deeply as I can hate.”

HE WAS lashing himself into a fury with his own words, and a thrill of fright at the hideousness of his face went through the woman, but she did not betray it. Also, there was a sound behind the door she had locked as of some one drawing close to it as if to listen. Eldred went on:

“I drove her away, and it was like tearing the heart out of my body. For a minute that night I hated her because she had stung my pride, and, in the next, I'd have groveled to her if she'd have come back. Too late! Yes—I can admit being wrong. That's why I humbled myself—because I'd been wrong. I humbled myself for Eve and to that trader—that spittle! Does that indicate love to you, when I'd go crawling to him—when I could bargain with him so nothing wrong could happen to her?

“Why, I offered to buy her back, offered him the price of his hooker which burned in my harbor if he'd give her back.” He laughed sharply. “He thought Eve had a hand in that little trick, thought she lured him away from his boat, and I let him go on thinking it. I boasted to him that Eve and I plotted to burn him out, and he threw my offer back in my face!” His rage choked off the words and he shook his head and cleared his throat. “That made a double humiliation piled on top of hate and love—see? And then I went further into humiliation—because of my love for her. Instead of wringing his neck and taking her, I went in the night to bring her back, so he wouldn't know and try to do her harm to spite me. I schemed and plotted and skulked—to keep her safe.

“I got MacKinnon out of his house and away from her by a trick; I had a man outside the door, and when Eve followed the trader out, the fool let her get away. Because he was afraid of MacKinnon, he did that. He smashed down the door of her room to get at her and then slunk off because he was afraid of the trader.” He waggled his head and gave a moaning laugh, and said no more for a long moment.

“I tell you these things”—leaning close to the woman and speaking in low confidence—“so you'll know how badly I want her and how far I'll go to have her back. There's no violence I won't use now; there's no crawling that I'd scorn. She's not with him; she's not with me. You're going to help me find her, Red Jenny, and first you're going to prove that she's not here!”

He straightened and lifted his eyebrows, and his look was terrible.

“She ain't here, Eldred!” Jen cried in a sudden display of fright. “I couldn't give her to you if I would”—lying in her desperation.

“Not here, eh?” He looked narrowly at her. “And where, then?”

“How could I know?”

“You're lying!”

“No, Las—Eldred! Before God——”

“I'll have a look.”

“You'll keep out! This is government property.” The words came without thought, but they gave her assurance. “Set foot here, and I'll report you, and you can't stand looking into very much.”

He stood back, but he laughed in a sort of careless triumph.

“You report me? And what if I told Ned Borden why I cam* here? What of that? What if I'd explain just why I should look here for Eve?”

She saw his teeth gleam. Panic, bewilderment, suffocation gripped her; the lake, the island, his boat were reeling senselessly. She felt his hand on her arm, as if he would thrust her out of the way. She cried aloud, inarticulately, and then, through a slit in a cloud that hung on the western horizon, the red rim of the disappearing sun showed, casting the water before them into crimson shot with blue.

The light fell on Eldred's face and the woman turned to see its source. It steadied her. That same sense of duty which had made the tales she had been telling Eve live roused her above fright. Sundown! And she the keeper of the light! Weakness slipped from her; fright drained away. A righteous rage came in the place of dismay, and with a powerful movement of her arm, she shook off his grasp with such a show of contempt that Eldred was staggered.

“Let go, you carrion! Get out of the way!” she cried. “It's sundown. You're interfering with the light.”

And, backed by her sense of obligation, given assurance and strength and stability by the rigid call of duty when nothing else would have sufficed, she slammed the door and shot the bolt home.

Eldred beat upon it with both fists and cried out, but no response came. He listened and heard heavy feet on the tower stairs. He moved down the steps and looked up ward. The red of the sunset was gone, having endured but that passing moment, but up above another red appeared, as if the crimson of the west had been caught and preserved and focused by the lens in the tower.

A section of the big cylinder up there opened. Jen Borden emerged, a keeper's cap askew on her graying hair, a shotgun in her hands. She stood on the platform with one hand on the railing, looking down at the amazed Eldred.

“I've got enough on you now to put you away for a long time, Eldred, and there's something besides cowardice in my heart to-night,” she said grimly. “The government don't fool with men who fool with lights. See it? A red light, with a bright red flash. It means shoal water for ships, Ed Lasker, and it means darned dangerous water for you! Your move—and good-night!”

She twitched the gun, and Eldred began to move slowly down the path. On his tug he turned to watch her, but she remained on the platform, gun resting across the rail, and she was still there when he rang for the speed ahead which checked the backward movement of his tug and swung him away toward his harbor and the house that was empty.

FOR a long time the woman stood there, gun loose in her hands now, her weight against the tower. She breathed through parted lips as though physically exhausted, and when she went inside, her movements were slow.

Eve was at the bottom of the tower stairs, cringed against the wall, face in her hands. She had not uncovered her eyes when Jen passed her on the way up, nor had she moved since then. The girl was not crying. She was numb only; she was cold, her mind centered on one fact:

MacKinnon had protected her even while he believed she had betrayed him. MacKinnon had defied her father's offer of money while he believed she had conspired to destroy his boat. And it had not been MacKinnon's arms which gagged and hurt her in the darkness that night.

These things raced through and through her mind—and one other: David had come here, searching for her, harried and relieved at sight of her. And she had flung out at him these things: That she never wanted to look in his face again, that she never wanted the sound of his voice in her ears again, that she never wanted a vestige of his memory to remain with her!

It was when Aunt Jen sat down on the step beside her, silent, slow of movement, that a warmth ran through Eve's body—warmth which meant scalding tears and broken sobs and shudders and a yearning for the great arms which did embrace her.

Jen sat without a word, holding the girl close, making no attempt at first to check the outburst, murmuring from time to time her “There, there's!” patting the shuddering back. And that was all. She did not attempt to dam that flood of tears.

“He—he didn't— It wasn't David who grabbed me. You understood?”

“I heard, dearie”—very gently.

“And he wouldn't sell me back. And he never told me he would. I was so afraid—so afraid——”

“We've been wrong about him.”

Silence, and Jen felt the girl tremble before she whispered:

“And I drove him away from here! I told him I never even wanted to think about him again!” All the misery which can be bred between regret and knowledge of injustice done was in that tone, and the woman held her closer, cold cheek against the fever-hot face of the girl.

“And now?” she urged.

“Oh, he was good to me! And I didn't believe him! And there's nothing I can do to make it right now!”

“If you're trying to tell yourself that you're all wrong, dearie, two wrongs never made a right yet; and, anyhow, it ain't in your power to say what you'll do now. There's only one thing to do when your heart talks. You'll go to him—that's what you'll do. It's all you can do, dearie. Nothing else would be right or fair. He had every reason under the sun to hate you and hurt you, and yet he protected you, and it was a dirty, low trick that made you think he wasn't honest to the core. And all this means just one thing, dearie: he loved you; he respected you, and he's down there on his island now, with his heart bleeding, I'll bet. We'll bring him back; I'll bring him back myself, 'cause it was me who sent him away when he came after you.”

“Oh, I couldn't look at him!”

Those were the words she spoke, but the tone was a call, a broken cry of need, of longing, of love, and Jen, gathering her closer, half smiled as she cried:

“It's none of your business now! It's your Aunt Jen's, and before God I'll set this straight if I'm spared another day of fair weather!”

She helped Eve to her feet and led her out of the gloomy stairway. She replenished the fire and turned to see Eve watching her.

“Why,” the girl asked slowly, “did you call my father 'Lasker?'”

IT WAS as if she had, in all calmness, cursed the woman, because Jen's relaxation was more than amazement or shock; she seemed to wilt and reached out a hand to a chair for support. Eve waited, struck by this change, and then walked slowly to the woman.

“You called him 'Lasker,' and said that he couldn't take me from you again. Did that mean—” Jen made a half-movement of her hand, but it was eloquent of a plea for reprieve, for silence. “And he threatened you, and you were afraid. I don't want you to be afraid on my account. That's why I asked you why you called him by another name. What is there about him, Aunt Jenny, that you know?”

“Before the good Lord, Eve, I wish I could tell!” she burst out chokingly. “I can't, though, dearie. It's your right to know, but it ain't my right to tell you—yet. It's somebody else's right to know first. O God, put some starch into my heart!” She lifted her one hand and struck the back of the chair feebly. “Strength is what I need, and faith, and a little Christian trust.” She shook off Eve's reassuring clasp on her hand and moved across the room. “They'd ought to be back before long,” she said huskily, “and mebbe to-night—and mebbe to-morrow——”

She began to cry silently, and Eve did not move or speak, but stood there until Jen made a light and began to prepare the meal. Very little, indeed, was said until the supply-boat chugged to its berth, and then Jen told of Eldred's coming, of driving him off, but she spoke no word of the factors which had so distressed her, and not once did she look at Eve.

THAT night, David MacKinnon sat beside Gam Gallagher's wood-stove in St. James and smoked his pipe and talked in short sentences that seemed to hurt.

“I don't like to leave you flat. You can get Patrick, and he'll do as well as I could; the heavy work's done there, anyhow, and—it's my move.”

His smile was strained. The older man smoked a while in silence.

“It's none o' my business, o' course. I wouldn't have ye stay on. I was afraid from the first that somethin'——”

They let the matter rest there then, the one reticent, the other demonstrating that delicacy of feeling of which gruff men are sometimes capable. But he did say this:

“An' ye'll be goin'?”

David shifted with something like relief; this was fresh interest.

“I'll take the first tug over to Charlevoix. That'll likely be to-morrow afternoon, when the lift's in. I guess I'll go to salt water, Gam. It's a long way off, and the lakes—they're a little raw!”

The new day was crystal-clear, with a light breeze out of the northwest and the near horizons crisp as the lines of a steel etching. Off to the westward, where no land lay in sight, a false wall of cliffs, colored in changing lavenders and mauves, hung between the pale blue of sky and deep blue of water. Deep blue, indeed, as only these lakes can be blue, flecked by silver crests of bursting wavelets here and there and with fingers of vivid green stretching out into it, where shoals shelved toward great depths. The forest-clad Beavers, until now gray-brown and brash, stood in soft, pale verdure beneath the unclouded sun.

From the straits a trio of lean carriers progressed up Lake Michigan, stately in length and line, drawing their majestic plumes of smoke after them. Between these and the Squaw Island lighthouse, a tug lifted its gang of gill-nets, crawling under checked power as the miles of twine with their imprisoned fish came over the drum. A host of gulls wheeled above the craft, flashing silver against the sky as the foaming crests flashed silver against the lake.

Eve stood near the boat-landing, watching the supply-boat bear southward. Ned Borden and his wife were aboard and their destination was High Island, and their errand was to quiet the turmoil in her heart. She knew that, and Aunt Jen had been strong in her promises that their problem was simple, but, for all this, the girl was filled with misgiving. Yesterday she had said that she could not find the courage to call David back; this morning she had drawn back fearfully from Jen's suggestion that she go with them, but now she knew there was nothing she would not do, no begging, no humility she would not undergo to pick up the thread of her relationship with David where it had been broken.

Had she been less disturbed, it is likely that Eve would have marked the change that had taken place in Aunt Jen. Since Ned's return last evening, when he had been told of that ominous visit of the afternoon, the woman had gone about as though repressing some impulse that was clamoring for outlet. Eve had heard her voice late at night, talking earnestly to Ned, an unbroken, monotonous blur of sound, but there could have been no expression of what was in Jen's heart, because this morning she had been unchanged, absorbed, meeting even the girl's eyes with only fleeting glances and hardly looking at her husband.

But there was too much of her own self in Eve's mind to think about others that morning, and now, as she stood alone, she was engaged in trying not to let her hope rise too recklessly, and she began to walk up and down slowly. Pete Larsen had come off watch at six and was asleep now, and she knew that the Dane would slumber noisily for hours. Eve was glad to be alone.

She had only half-consciously remarked the tug lifting far away. It was the only indication of life she saw, besides the pair of loons with necks erect not far offshore. What was astir on the lake, now that the supply-boat was gone, did not interest her, and so she was not aware of that other craft, the gray of whose hull and sails made it inconspicuous. She did not see it at all until the boat was within a mile, and then she gave it no heed, for the mackinaw's course was laid before the wind and it would pass Squaw Island by with a good margin.

She walked down the beach, and it might have been her movement, the flash of her white waist against the gold and green of the background that attracted the man in the sailboat. Anyhow, he altered his course and stood in, craft heeled slightly with the breeze.

Eve stopped when the change attracted her. She saw the boat approach, saw a figure huddled over the tiller, peering landward fixedly. Soon she made him out—a grimy, gray old man with vacant brown eyes, and when he was near, she could see the lips moving silently in the thin beard.

Until he was almost inshore the man retained that strained position over the tiller and then, with a start, put down his helm. The mackinaw came into the wind, came to rest against the landing, and the man stood up.

He remained there for an interval with the canvas whispering and the reef-points rattling in gentle staccato, staring at the girl as if transfixed, as if oblivious of any other thing on lake or land, and then he stepped out of the boat, clambering over the rail without once taking that set stare from Eve. A long white welt of scar ran over his right eye into the hair. One hand went up there to rub the scar, and something like dismay came into his gaze. His lips stopped moving for the moment, but they began again when he went slowly toward the girl.

On that, Eve became frightened. She drew back a step, as though to run away, for this strange old man and his unnatural interest filled her with apprehension. But he spoke.

“You!” he muttered shortly, and then spoke the word again, long-drawn and in something like a wail this time. “You-u-u-u!”

He began to breath sharply, as if the brief effort had drained his strength. The girl could see that he trembled, but he kept on toward her very slowly, one hand outstretched.

“You!” he cried again. “I came for him—and I find——”

It was not fear of violence which went through the girl wave after wave. There was no danger from that feeble old man, but fright was heavy on her—the fright of the weirdly strange—for his words chilled her as might an unexplained and eery sound.

“What do you want?” she heard herself asking. “Who are you looking for?”

He did not appear to notice, but came on until he was a half-dozen paces from her and frowning as he stared into her face.

“For him—for him! And I find you—you—Eve!”

ON HER name, a change appeared in his eyes, like a passing moment of clarity, fading into irresolution and perplexity, and then that unwavering stare returned.

Something in the girl stirred—some long-forgotten, feeble thing, like faint memory striving its best to rise to the surface. He had spoken her name—this man she had never seen, this crazy man, and she turned to be away from him.

But on that gesture he lurched forward, dropping to his knees, struggling to rise, snatching at her for help, and his clawlike hand caught hers; and though she would have drawn it away from him, he clung—not desperately, not with strength, but gently, with something of a childish touch, an appeal, and for the instant she remained passive. Then he began to laugh and cry out:

“For him—and I find you! Little Eve! Little Eve! My Eve!”

His cracked voice was terrible. The relief, the elation, the triumph in it put her in a panic. She tried to draw away, but he had her one hand in both of his, and she could feel the steady tremor of his body.

“For him! For him— I came, and it's you— Dear little Eve! My Eve! Ho! Ho! Ho!”

His voice died out, and something like bewilderment came over him. He let go her hand and made a brushing gesture before his eyes as though smoke were there. He looked away from her, out into the lake, and began to laugh—a terrible laugh. The misery, the heart-break, the disillusionment in it! It was weak at the beginning, and it died to a whisper in his throat, and the whisper ended in a sob.

He rose, panting; he looked into Eve's face, and a smile of great sadness twitched at his lips as he shook his head.

“No,” he whispered; “it can't—” He frowned, as though trying to remember. “No—you're like her. No—it can't——”

He turned about, and his eyes rested on his sailboat. He threw out a hand then and his head rocked backward and he laughed once more—a bitter, beaten laugh—and walked to the landing. He put the force of his scrawny arms on the bow of the boat and shoved; the craft moved, and the wind set her in a slow drift from the land. He scrambled aboard and made his way aft to the tiller, fumbling with the sheet-lines.

He turned the boat before the breeze and her wings took it; she edged away from the lee of the island and the water began a contented purr about her bows. He settled himself beside the tiller, and once again his head rocked backward and the girl heard that empty, hopeless laugh.

He had spoken her name; he had touched something in her heart.

“Come back! Here—come back!”

She found herself calling out to him, but he did not turn to look. A puff of wind heeled the mackinaw, speeding it, and then died.

“Why, he's——”

She did not even know what had prompted that sentence which she could not finish. She turned about toward the buildings, as though to ask for help, but only Pete was there, sleeping soundly. She looked again at the sailboat, and running along the beach to where a skiff was resting, shoved it into the water. She looked over her shoulder for direction and began to row feverishly. The light skiff surged across the water, but the wind, which had dropped, freshened for the time and she could not gain. She realized this after she had gone a mile, and stood up and waved and called again, but if the man looked back, she could not see, he was that far away.

It was useless to keep on, so she sat down in the skiff and, drifting slowly, watched the sailboat move on toward Garden Island. The wind lifted, leaving the water about her undulating glass, but it dipped again yonder; she could see its black line, and the mackinaw kept on. She started to row back and found that she had little strength. She stopped and sat still. That old man! Eldred—his coming yesterday—her panic at thought of his power—her suffering when she knew that David had been— These, and others—the undefined distress that was on her now. She sat still for a long time, then rowed again and stopped. She did not want to go ashore. The light motion of the boat soothed her. Now and then she dipped the oars to overcome the drift and, when the sun grew hot, she dozed. The wall of mirage in the west gave way to a sharp horizon; the freighters were out of sight, their smoke a faint blur.

TWICE again the old man laughed. He paid little attention to the progress of his boat, and between those outbursts of crazy mirth he sat bent over the tiller, lips tight and no longer moving, but once he sat up sharply and made that brushing gesture before his eyes, as if he would clear his mind of the haze which fuddled it.

Land loomed before him. He was close in, and a man was standing on the beach, watching him through a glass. For long the glass held on the boat, and then it was lowered. The hand which held it went behind Eldred's back to be clasped lightly by its mate, and he stood, shoulders slightly drooped, head hung forward.

On that gesture, the man at the tiller straightened. It was not a start; he brought himself to an approximately erect position slowly, as a man will into whose understanding dawns some fact too important to cause a start. He fumbled in his shirt-front and then let his hand rest there, gripping, content.

He let go the tiller; the canvas swung over, going limp as the wind drained out. The boat bumped on the boulders and listed a bit and swung round and came to a stop. The old man stood up. The uncertainty which had been about his movements was gone. With a hand on the mizzen-shrouds, the other still thrust into his shirt-front, he stepped into the water. He slipped and floundered and fell, but no shock at the chill showed in his face and the one hand was not withdrawn from his breast. Water dripping from his scraggly beard, even, he stood up and waded toward Norman Eldred, who waited, watching curiously his approach.

And at the edge of the water, twenty feet from Eldred, the other halted. There was a stiffness to his back, an obvious effort to square his shoulders, and then he laughed. That laugh! It was wild, weird triumph—success, joy, incomparable rage were mingled in it.

“Lasker!” he shouted in his thin, cutting voice. “Lasker, you've——”

The glass had dropped from the other's hand and it had whipped to his side pocket, but even as the pistol came out, spurting its jet of flame, the old man drew his hand from his shirt; a rusted, aged revolver was clutched there, and he brandished it in an imperious gesture as its muzzle fell toward Eldred.

Just that—those two shots, the one following the other as quickly as a man can clap his hands. The bareheaded old man staggered a bit and spread his feet as if to resist a blow. Eldred's hand dropped to his side; the pistol fell into the sand, muzzle first, sticking up there as if it had been planted. Then the other hand moved slowly to spread itself over his belly. He swayed, and a sound came from him that a man might make who had been kicked in the stomach. His legs gave suddenly and he pitched forward, falling on hands and knees, hatless, head swaying like a bear in distress.

The other did not speak. He turned and waded stiffly toward his mackinaw. The wind was gone now. He clambered painfully aboard and hauled down on the foresail. He half fell into the cockpit and his revolver rattled in the bottom. A breath of breeze came and swung the boat about. She was free, making bare headway off the beach.

And Eldred, lifting his face as the first drop of crimson stained the yellow sand where his dark shadow lay, could see the lettering:

REVENGE
PORT BRUCE. ONT.

His lips formed one word: “Missed.” And again, in a hateful whisper: “Missed.”

Over at High Island the lighthouse supply-boat was docked, and Gam Gallagher, who had just brought his Kittiwake in behind her, stood on deck, talking to Borden and his wife.

“He was goin' to Charlevoix on the first tug,” he said thoughtfully. “It's likely he's gone by now.”

Jen turned abruptly to her husband as though she would speak, but she did not for a moment; then her words came in a whisper:

“He's running away. He's running away and he's got a darned big start, Ned. What'll we do?”

The keeper looked at her gravely.

“It seems,” he said, “that this keeps slipping through our fingers.”

“Oh, no! Don't say that!” she burst out, with a queer panic. “Don't say that, Ned! We've got to find him. I owe it— Come aboard here; come with me!” she cried almost frantically, grasping his arm, and led the way into the supply-boat's cabin. She slammed the companion-door and faced him. “This is for you alone,” she said. “My cowardly heart, Ned, my cowardly heart—” After a moment she began to talk rapidly in a strained voice.

DIMMOCK, from the doorway of the ice-house, where he hounded two men who were packing fish, caught a glimpse of a strange object making through the trees behind the store. He turned and stared a moment and then began to run.

“Hi!” he called. “Hi, Eldred! What——”

At his shout, the laborious progress, half a crawl, half a dragging of the numbing legs, was checked, and Eldred sank, panting, to one hip. He looked up with a twisted grimace when Dimmock squatted beside him.

He said one word: “Shot,” and moved his hand to his stomach, and the other, looking, saw the dark stain on the clothing.

“Shot! Who done it, Eldred? Who?” The barest suggestion of a dismissing gesture checked him.

“Get me in—and get Eve. Send every boat—to High, St. James—Squaw—everywhere!”

He closed his eyes then, and Dimmock heard his teeth grind against pain or weakness.

Dimmock roared for help, cursing as men ran up from the beach. They bore Eldred to his house and stretched him on the wide window-seat, and Dimmock began unfastening his clothes.

“Not that!” The eyes did not open, but the voice had some of its normal timbre. “I'll be gone—soon. Get Eve—or I'll follow you back from hell itself!”

There was scattering then. Three of the fleet were in the harbor, two steam-tugs and one of the gasoline-boats. One went to High Island, another to St. James, and to Squaw a third. To the man at the wheel of the tug bound for Beaver Island, Dimmock talked earnestly,

“A doctor,” he said, with an emphatic nod. “Stop at the coast-guard station an' telephone across. Tell 'em to come; it's life or death, with death gainin' fast—tell him!”

The boats were gone, stringing out across the reef, separating then with engines wide open, bright excitement dancing in the eyes of the crews.

And the one bound for St. James checked first, while a man ran into the coast-guard station and told the keeper his errand. The one for High Island passed the lighthouse supply-boat as it left the harbor, while the last bore down upon the skiff drifting off Squaw Island, and the man at the wheel saw the girl who had been dozing start and look up and grasp her oars and row frantically for the light. He opened the pilot-house door and hung out and rang for the motor to stop as he drew near.

“Your father's been shot!” he called. “He's sent for you!”

His words penetrated Eve's panic. The earnestness of his face could not be doubted, but for a moment she did not cease rowing. The boat was close beside her. She could have touched it with an oar. She saw the man at the motor peering out at her, and in his eyes was that same consternation which marked the expression of the other.

It was not until after she spoke that she stopped her mechanical effort to escape.

“Shot?” she asked explosively,

“Shot.” The wheelsman nodded. “An hour ago. He sent for you. Dimmock said to come.”

Shot! Dying! It did not occur to her that this might be a ruse; the expressions of those faces could not have been feigned.

Dying! The thought went through her with a thrill. Relief? Terror? She did not know.

She knew this, though: She was no longer afraid. Death had laid its hand on the power that had made her fear. She found herself standing tight-faced on the stern of the boat bound back for Indian Harbor, the skiff she had been in towing at its hundred feet of line.

IN CHARLEVOIX, a young physician was speaking into a telephone.

'Hello! … You, Sheriff? Say—I've just had a call from St. James. Eldred's been shot. … Yes, Sure enough! Bad, too, I guess. They want help, and I—… You bet!” He laughed rather nervously. “I didn't want to go alone.”

His gaze went out the window while he listened to what the other said, and he saw a varnished speed-boat drop its bow in a long glide across the harbor. He spoke.

“Tim White's been tuning up that big speed-boat. … Sure! … S'pose he would. She'll do forty miles an hour.”

He hung up the receiver and began packing instruments in a bag.

Dimmock was alone in the room with Eldred when Eve came through the door.

Eldred was lying where he had been put down, breathing slowly. Now and then his face had wrenched with pain, but he had not spoken since giving that imperious order. He had looked at Dimmock questioningly when he returned after despatching the messengers, and had closed his eyes when the man began to report. Dimmock's voice died out, and he sat down and waited, eyes very wide with excitement. A half-hour later he rose and brought water. Eldred drank without a word and sank back. The drink had been good, but his ironical smile seemed to ask: “What for? Why this moment of respite?”

Dimmock did not get up when Eve entered. She looked first at him, then at the figure on the window-seat, hands crossed over the wound. She made hardly a stir as she came in, but his eyes opened and looked at her, and after an interval one hand reached out appealingly.

The girl stood by the door a moment, drawing back, staring at that white, bloodless hand with the tufts of black hair; then her gaze went to his face and saw the hunger—the terrible, unearthly hunger—in his eyes.

“Eve,” he said then in assurance. “Eve.” It was like the ending of suspense.

She went forward and took the hand, kneeling beside him, speechless. He drew her hand close to his side and pressed it there, where she could feel the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed.

“You're back!,” he said weakly and smiled. “Back!” And a movement of his chest startled her—it was so strong an indication of the laugh which did not reach his throat.

He had looked away, and now he sighed and then moved his head so he could see her.

“There isn't much time,” he began, and his face showed a flicker of pain. “It is something I hadn't planned on—this talk, I mean—something I'd intended to keep. Death hadn't entered my plan—” He released her hand and she sank down, sitting on one hip, listening. “Confession!” There was contempt in the word. “King Norman at the confessional!”—with much of his old jeering irony, and a breath of laughter followed. “Not to clear my conscience, though—whatever that may be—not to unburden myself. I'd rather go on—holding it, like I've held this kingdom of mine; but it's all I can do for you now—take away the wonder.”

He paused for a time and closed his eyes and did not open them when he went on:

“Once, years ago, I thought about dying—just casually. I made a will. Dimmock knows; somebody else witnessed it, too. It's in the box in the desk there. It leaves this—this kingdom to you. 'To the woman known as Eve Eldred,' it says. That, so there'd be no mistake. But you'd—have wondered.”

His eyes opened and searched her face; their luster was dimmed so that they were almost gentle—a quality which she had never seen there. They were almost soft eyes now, nearly tender and loving. She stirred and caught her breath.

“No—not you! I don't want to hear you speak, daughter—want to remember your last words down there in the store, asking for my—protection. Besides, there's no time for two—to talk——”

His fingers dallied with the skirts of his coat and he looked into space.

“'To the woman who is known as Eve Eldred,'” he repeated in a whisper. “That means, of course, that you're not Eve Eldred. You're Eve—not Eldred.”

ASHUDDER ran through the girl, and she looked about quickly. Dimmock sat gripping the arms of his chair. Eldred's eyes were on her with a slight show of irritation at her movement.

“We'll get back, somehow—to the beginning. It's hard”—frowning—“to know I just where——”

That was a really long pause; his eyes held on the girl's face, but he seemed to be speculating about something else, not thinking of her. The room was absolutely silent. Eve could hear the pelt of her own heart.

Finally he whispered ever so faintly:

“You're so like her”—as though his strength was draining—“all but the hair. You know that, though; you saw her picture. It was hers—your mother's.” His emphasis startled her—it came with such strength—and his voice seemed fuller after that.

“Her hair was light, as light as—yours is dark.

“She was as bewitching as you—perhaps more so—I can't tell. Years and thus—this hole in me get between us.” He stirred slightly and frowned. “She could drive men wild, but she wouldn't—try for that. She could have anything, any man she wanted—but she wasn't interested.

“That's the way sometimes—not contempt—indifference—worse than contempt. It's a rampart and can't be beaten down.

“That was in Port Bruce, Ontario. She was there when I came, young and a buyer. I was only to stay a few days. I stayed until——”

He tried to shake his head, for he seemed to be rambling from the course on which he had determined, and for many minutes he lay with closed eyes; but there was that about him which kept the girl quiet and motionless except for one appealing glance at Dimmock, who responded in no way, but sat there like a man carved from wood and hideously colored, with his blanched face and flaming beard and china-blue eyes.

“That was the end of me.” He went on so unexpectedly that his voice was a shock. “I was all befuddled, all lost. I'd had situations before, with women, with men—and had handled them offhand—that way. She—was different.

“She'd listen—so gently—and smile. She was sorry, she said. I believe she was, in a manner. But she always—shrank. It was a gesture she always greeted me with—shrinking. Hard enough to break in men or dogs, but with women—” His movement, had he been erect, would have been a shrug. “It ruined me. I guess there is such a thing as heart-break. Looking back, I can explain it no other way—heart-break. But they mend—hearts. There was a man— Wetherby— William— Hah!” His voice had risen on the name; his snort was disdain. “Gentle, meek, soft-handed and soft-voiced. I cracked his head with my open hand when I knew.

“She wouldn't take me, who became a king. She'd have Wetherby. Ah, she'd have Wetherby!” He tossed himself half over, with a surprising show of vitality, and lay with his face toward the window, staring at the harbor. “She'd have Wetherby.” And then he lay still, lay there so long and so motionless that Dimmock rose cautiously, eyes even wider than before, but on the light creak of his chair, one of Eldred's arms lifted and he strained in an attempt to roll back and face Eve. She rose quickly. She did not speak; she could not have uttered a sound—her throat was that dry—but she turned him over and he sighed and smiled.

“Not Edward Lasker—that was me. She'd have Wetherby. No; a man can't forget.

“A man can't. I know! I tried all sorts of things—women and work, and crime, even; but a man can't—not things like that—in here. Eve, in your heart. A hurt in your heart makes this I've got in my body to-day seem like balm. No—a man can't.

“I had to go back, you see; I had to see her again. I hoped maybe she'd have tired of Wetherby. Oh, yes; I'd have been glad of that. I'd have waited. I'd have been second or—tenth—any place—just to have her; but she wasn't that kind.

“Three years I waited, fighting it, hoping she'd be tired and—relish a change—any change—even me—and afraid to see that my hope had no foundation. I should have known that—knowing her, your mother.”

ANOTHER pause and, after working his lips, he gestured for the water again. Eve held it and he drank, his head trembling as she supported it. He sank back, whispering, “Rest—rest,” and did not rouse for a time.

Eve turned to Dimmock and whispered:

“How did it happen? Who——”

But she saw the change in his face and looked to see one of her father's hands upraised, commanding silence. Dimmock did not reply; she gave up trying.

“Eve?” He called her back, and she sat on the bench beside him, looking down into his face, restraining her impatience.

“I looked in,” Eldred went on. “Looked in their window at night—three years afterward. She—your mother—was putting their child in bed—their child—his child, by her—his Eve. And she was happy! Ah, happy!” His voice had whined up to a snarl which sent a chill through the girl's limbs. “Happy, with his child—and with him— God Aldmighty, a fool could have told” that! A fool could have seen that happiness—she with him—and his child——”

His eyes blazed a moment, and then he closed them.

“It's a short passage from loving to hating, Eve—little Eve—my Eve! I've been a good hater always; women and men both knew it. She—your mother—said that she knew it; that was the reason—one reason— And I, Edward Lasker, outside, peering in at that happiness. God, if I'd had a conscience, it wouldn't have stood before that—that night!” He swallowed and caressed his lips with his tongue. “So easy,” he went on. “So very easy—and unique. That was why. You'd never suspect that—would you, Dimmock? You'd never suspect a man would steal the child of a woman who'd broken his heart, would you? No—that saved it for me. Unique, by God—different! Killed him? Killed her? Bah! Anybody could have done that; but to steal their happiness— That hurt!”

He was looking straight at Eve, but if he detected her horror and recoil, he gave no evidence of it.

“It wasn't easy—you squawked.” He laughed grimly. “They had the town out, and it was a blow from the north. I tried the beach and knew I couldn't make it, carrying you. I came on a boat hauled up; I got in and afloat—blowing great guns, and I didn't have a plan and only one oar. But I didn't care—not much. There was nothing in life for me that night but the stealing of their happiness. You in your blankets didn't mean anything then, except that—their happiness, not mine—not that night.”

He shook his head and sighed, and the girl, horror-struck, started to draw away. He felt the movement, and, without opening his eyes, caught her skirt to hold her there. She was so weak that that feeble impediment would have been enough. She was dizzy, taken with vertigo; she sat down after a long wait and he went on:

“God was with me—I mean that—if there ever was a God. A schooner beating up for a lee picked me up and we made it all light—you and I, Eve. You didn't know—you were only two. Only two—years of happiness for them—with you.

ALONG pause. The wind rustled the young leaves and died, and that pregnant silence endured interminably before Eldred spoke again.

“Where was I? Ah, yes.” A sigh. “That was the beginning. I'd figured on ditching you safe somewhere—not for your sake, but so they couldn't get you. I turned you over to a woman—and somehow she hung on, got to loving you. Me, Edward Lasker, becoming Norman Eldred, keeping low, still hot with revenge achieved.

“She—your mother—died that spring. Ah, it was blow for blow, an eye for an eye, a life for a heart! She went out—just faded—after her damned happiness with him— Come back, Eve!”

She had risen, whirling away and hiding her face.

“Eve?”—very gently. “Not that, please! Remember, I'm drunk with death. If I overstate—forgive. I want you to know—there'll be no mystery by night then.”

After she came back, he repeated, “By night,” and strained to look outdoors at the peaceful sunlight filtering through the greening boughs of trees and at the flat, ice-blue lake.

“That's all—except about you.” His eyes on her began to smolder with a new light; it began with that tenderness again, and the tenderness gave to a passion—a hunger, joy of a fierce sort. “And then I began to know how sweet my revenge had been. You! They'd loved you—yes; and I—” He smiled, and one hand stirred as in a gesture of helplessness.

“Red Jenny—she was the woman who took you. She kept you a year in her house. And she learned, too, to love— A devil of a time—driving her off from sharing you. You'd got into her heart, too, by then—aye; into her heart! Like mine—deeply in. Sentiment? Bah! No; not sentiment—something else. I had something to live for you—and I was sharing you with Red Jenny.

“Had to threaten her—had to threaten that she'd been a party to abduction. She didn't know where you came from until then. She thought— Devil knows what she thought! I didn't care—at first. I'd figured on ditching you with her—anywhere but sending you back to Wetherby and your mother. But I couldn't get you out of my arms—out of my mind, I mean—smiling faintly. “And Red Jenny—a Tatar! She'd have loved you if I'd let her. You'd have been safe enough; but it would have meant—my sharing you.

“And there was danger from Wetherby.” He stirred sharply, and one hand hovered over the wound. “It had put him off his head by then. He'd begun to hunt, and I—moved just in time. He came to her place—to Red Jenny's. He was that close, but he was off his head and couldn't make her understand then or she might have turned on me and helped him. Yes; she would have—surely.

“And I had you safe—in the Quebec convent.” His fingers plucked at his coat again, and his voice had sunk to a mere whisper. “I shut her mouth—with threats. She was innocent, but she didn't know that. Abduction! It sounds ugly to a woman. And Wetherby was gone, and nobody knew where, and the story was fading out. You—I had you safe—for myself alone!”

He tried to laugh, but no sound came, and again there was silence. His breath was faster and lighter, and it seemed an effort for him to hold his eyelids open. A faltering hand moved to his abdomen, and on its light pressure he winced.

“I wouldn't share you”—in a bare whisper. “I wouldn't share you with anybody. Jode MacKinnon—I wrecked him because you liked him. The story got about that you'd helped, that you'd changed the lights. I let it go. It helped—to keep you safe for me. Then the woman to teach you—I wanted you to learn, but I sent her away because you liked her.”

He lay still for a long time, and the girl watched him in dumb horror.

“They all loved you, Eve. I brought the men here—'scum of the lakes,' they're well called— I brought that kind so you'd need me more than ever. Red Jenny came and risked her happiness to be near you, and I sent her away. That was a scare—when she came. I had one chance—her love for her husband. It makes cowards of men—and women. Your dog, even, I shot, because you—liked him—him—a dog——”

Again the plucking of fingers a moment, and then the hand that had been moving slipped from his body to the cushion on which he lay upturned, fingers curled lifelessly. His eyes were half closed, and his breath through the pale and parted lips was very slight.

The girl rose, and he did not stir. She made a movement as though to fly from that room but stopped. Where to go? And there was no danger here now.

Dimmock rose and approached softly, looking down at the figure of his master. He rubbed his chin and then his wide eyes turned on Eve.

“I sent for a doctor,” he whispered hoarsely. “You stay. I'll go look where it happened.”

He was gone softly, as from a room where some one slept, closing the door without a sound. Eve watched him go through the trees beyond the store, head lowered as he scanned the ground and found the trail he sought.

Her heart was rapping smartly; there seemed no strength in her body. She tried to look at the figure of the man she had so long called “father” and could not. A sharp shiver ran through her. She moved along slowly toward that one nail in the wall, the place where the picture of her mother had hung. It was gone, and she searched Eldred's desk for it. It was not there. It was nowhere in the room. Back by where it had hung she stopped again, and the high sunlight, striking through the window, was caught by a glass particle on the floor. She stooped and saw it—fine glass stamped to powder. She guessed vaguely at what had become of the picture.

The things her father had told her came pelting back—her abduction, Jen Borden's place in it, the savagery with which Eldred had tried to hold her as his own. But one thing, she thought, had he left untouched in his narrative—David's part in this tragedy of a house of cards. David! She felt a wave of elation at thought of him, and a sickening swirl downward again.

IN THE stillness of the day, a faint droning, steady, regular, drew near. Eve looked out and saw, standing in through the buoys, the low hull of a speed-boat, bow high out of water, fan-shaped wake of foam spreading out across the calm lake, its spume of vapor thinning in the sunshine. The drone rose to a bellow, and the bellow ceased suddenly. The boat rode on even keel into the harbor, swinging for the dock.

And then they were in the room, confusing the bewildered girl—the doctor, another man who was the sheriff, and Dimmock, holding in his hand the pistol Eldred had dropped on the beach.

Her father did not stir when the physician bent over him and felt for a pulse, but he moved sharply when the practised hand drew apart his clothing and displayed the white flesh about the dark blotch with its small puncture. His eyes opened, and he looked into the face of the man.

“No—use,” he said in a weak, throaty tone.

Again the hand on his pulse and his eyes closed, and the doctor looked at the others. When he spoke, it was to the sheriff.

“No chance,” he said.

On that, Dimmock started and uttered a slight groan. Eve remained standing apart, watching all in silence.

Then it was the sheriff addressing her and Dimmock with an inclusive glance.

“What happened?”

Dimmock shook his head and held out the pistol.

“He come draggin' himself in three hours ago. I found this by his tracks on the beach. No other sign; no track but his.” The sheriff took the pistol and threw out the magazine. “Here!” Dimmock handed him an empty cartridge-shell. “I found it by where he fell.”

“He fired, eh?” The sheriff's gaze was challenging Dimmock. “That's all you know? This may be murder, and if you know anything——”

“That's every word.”

The other considered, looking at the physician.

“Well, God knows he had enemies enough! Maybe somebody had cause enough; but it's a killing, and——”

His unfinished sentence indicated clearly that there could be but one path of duty for him. He turned to the girl.

“What do you know?” She tried to speak and could not; just shook her head. “Where were you?”

She gestured and said:

“Squaw Island. In a skiff this morning——”

The man looked at her sharply and would have spoken again, but a murmur from Eldred attracted him. The four looked at the dying man.

“Eve”—a mere breath of the word—“Eve.” The fingers of the outstretched hand moved, a suggestion of a beckoning gesture. “Come close. Ah, Eve, don't hate me—don't hate me!” And in the feeble voice, an echo of the ironical strength it had once possessed, was tragedy—stark, utter tragedy, the cry of a broken heart.

The girl stood above him, shrinking, eyes filled with terror. The sheriff stepped close to her.

“Ask him what about it—who did it,” he prompted.

At that, Eldred's eyes opened wider, and after a sustained effort he moved his head slightly, looking from one to the other—Dimmock, to the doctor, to the sheriff—and in their mournful depths lighted one more flare. It was diabolical; it was hatred; it was cunning—a last flash of the soul that was passing.

“Simple,” he said, “Simple. MacKinnon—he thought I had you, Eve. He shot me down. He—MacKinnon—ah, he——”

The breath drained from his chest and the rigidity went from his figure. His neck settled and the beard was crushed against his chest. His lids sank slowly until only a slit of his eye showed, and that flare of triumphant bitterness faded slowly into expressionless extinction. The doctor touched the wrist again and unclasped his fingers and rose.

“The king is dead,” he said grimly.

And in Eve's ears was penting one word: “MacKinnon—MacKinnon—MacKinnon.” She was in terror this time. That was murder, and David, because of her, for revenge—for——

Then the word again:

“MacKinnon! MacKinnon, eh?” It was the sheriff's voice. “Hell! That's too bad.” And from his tone it was certain that there was no way out.

He was shaking his head regretfully, but checked the gesture, for Eve was facing him, lips working, palms tight against her breasts.

“What's the matter?” he said, for her expression was startling.

“It wasn't MacKinnon,” she answered evenly. “I killed him—I did! This morning. I rowed over from the light. Larsen was alone there and asleep. They caught up with me before I got back. I did it, and Dimmock can tell you why. He heard——”

The sheriff took the cigar from his mouth in amazement.

Eve walked across the room and stood, face to the cold fireplace, hands clasped tightly. They had accused David, and this would let him get away—get away——

“Well, that makes it simple,” she heard the sheriff say. “But maybe you'd better get the bullet, Doc. We may need some evidence.”

Then they were stirring about the room, and she put out a hand to the mantle for support.

“You watch her, Doc,” the sheriff added. “I'll look around.”

IT REQUIRED a long, long time for Jen Borden to tell her story. She spoke slowly, in a flat, strained voice, and there was so much to tell—the secrets of so many years to be bared. Her husband sat on the locker beside her, and his eyes did not leave her face for an instant, nor did he speak. There was no occasion for interruption, because the story she had to tell had been repressed for long, had been rehearsed so many times that it came clearly and with no lapses in narrative to confuse her listener.

“That's all,” she said finally. “That's all, Ned. That's what I've carried for ten years. That's what I've been too big a coward to tell, because I've been so happy. You said once that the thing I could do to make you hate me would be to lie or to do something dishonorable. Well, I've lived a lie, I guess, and I've done as dishonorable a thing as any woman could do. It wasn't too late when I found out, mebbe. I might'ave set out then and found Wetherby and put him on Lasker's track. We'd found the baby, mebbe, but I was afraid. I'd been a party to it— I— Oh, Neddie!”

She turned from him then, rising and fumbling for her handkerchief, but he was beside her, drawing her back to the seat.

“I've known for a long time,” he said, “that there was something between you and Eldred or the girl. It didn't matter much, but it used to hurt, except when I stopped to think that maybe I couldn't have a right to know everything that you had to tell.”

After a moment she looked at him curiously, with wet eyes.

“What are you driving at?”

“I guess I know what you've been through in keeping something back. Do you remember, Jenny, that day you paid your last rent on the Sailors' Rest and damned the man who'd take money from a business that couldn't pay without women and whisky? Those were your words: 'Women and whisky.'”

“Why, sure! That's where I seen you first. That's where this—this blessed happiness begun, wasn't it?”

“I owed it to you,” he said, and, at her startled exclamation, went on: “You see, I realized your hopes had gone smash because you tried to be decent in a hell-hole. Jenny, I was the man who was taking the money from you. My savings had gone into that building.”

“Oh, and I said them things about you!”

He nodded.

“And they're still on my heart like scars, and since then I've been trying to sort of make up by being as good to you as I knew.”

Jen dropped her handkerchief and straightened.

“Why, you old skinflint!” she boomed. “You old bloodsucker! If I'd known that, do you think you'd had a minute's peace from then on? Do you think I'd worried about what was none of your business if I'd known that you was holding out on me? So that was it, eh? That's why you hounded me—because you wanted to wash out your sins? And that's how the Sailors' Rest got to be a sailors' mission, is it?” He nodded. “Well, of all the skulking, low-down——”

And then the emotion which her bluster had covered burst out, and he held her close while she clung to him and wept.

They were heading across toward Beaver Island shortly, standing side by side at the wheel of the boat, a new excitement about Jen, a new enthusiasm in Ned's face.

“It's our job, sure enough,” he said. “We're the ones who know; we'll have to get that boy if we follow him to kingdom come. And Eve—Lord, Jenny, it's another part of our job trying to make up to her for what she's been through.”

As they rounded the lower end of Beaver Island to swing southward, four boats were revealed moving toward them and in a close line. It was late in the day for fishers to be starting out, and Ned watched their approach curiously. As they came abreast of the leading boat, a man leaned over its rail and shouted. Ned put his head out and tucked a hand behind his ear; the man called again and pointed toward Garden Island, but still they could not make out what he said above the bang of exhausts.

“Strange!” he commented. And then, from his wife:

“Lookit! There's David now. See? In the pilot-house of the Fisherboy!”

The keeper saw David. Even at that distance, his face seemed to be drawn. They signaled, but he replied only with a brief gesture, mistaking their hails for greetings. They swung about at once to follow and overtake, and came abreast of the second boat—a steam-tug, this, making less noise—and the man who leaned out to give the news could make himself heard.

Jen was still trying to attract David by waving her handkerchief, but the man who called across the water took her mind from this.

“Hear about Eldred?”

“No. What?”

“Shot!”

“Shot?”

“Yup. Dyin'. Doctor an' sheriff are there. Come on!”

They fell into the procession of boats which made toward Indian Harbor.

AS THE first of them gained a view of the well-protected bay, they saw the sleek speed-boat just moving out from Eldred's dock, the sheriff standing in the cockpit and watching them. The bellowing of the motor was checked at a word from the sheriff, and when the first tug came close enough for him to see David MacKinnon on deck, he gave another order and the fleet craft pulled again to her moorings.

“You're MacKinnon,” the sheriff said when David came to the rail. “Come on along here. Got somethin' to talk over with you.”

The two men went up the dock to the beach while the other tugs came to rest and the word spread among the Beaver Islanders. Rumor and conjecture flew while Aunt Jen Borden stood listening and blurting impatient questions and watching David anxiously.

The sheriff stopped and looked closely at MacKinnon.

“Eldred said just before he died that you shot him.”

David's brow wrinkled, but more in perplexity than surprise.

“I shot him?”

“That's it. His last words were that you shot him.”

Then David laughed in explosive surprise, without a trace of dismay. The officer was looking closely at him, not as an accusing official but with a curious wonder.

“Where were you this morning?”

“St. James. Been there since last evenin'. Why, any of 'em can tell you”—gesturing toward the group on the dock. “I was round McCann's dock all momin', waitin' for a tug to take me to Charlevoix.”

The sheriff nodded grimly.

“Then I guess it's up to her,” he said.

For a moment, David stared at him, and a strange creep went up his back.

“Her?”

“Yup. The girl. She's here, and she admits that she did it.”

A low moan escaped MacKinnon, and his hands, which had been thrust into his waistband, went down, to hang limply.

“She said that the minute Eldred was through sayin' it was you. She was alone at Squaw Island. Larsen was there, but she said he was asleep. They went after her and caught her in a skiff, rowin' back to the light from here. Guess it's all day with her. Funny, though, the way he tried to hang it on you!”

David hardly heard these words. Eve had killed her father! Eve was somewhere in the hands of the law. She had shot him down, and she must answer for that! And he—what he had done had brought this about? He heard himself talking rapidly. He had the sheriff by one arm, ripping out questions, expostulating.

“I don't know myself,” the man said, drawing away. “I've told you all I know. She wouldn't talk any more after she admitted it.”

THEN David was alone, the sheriff stalking up toward the big white house, and Aunt Jen came heavily up the dock. They did not see one of Eldred's boats, returning from its lift, entering the harbor with a Mackinaw boat in tow.

David did not hear what the woman said to him and neither had thought for their last meeting; but his own voice sounded large in his ears:

“It's Eve. She killed him!”

Jen went white and made as if to lift a hand to her face, but there was no strength in her arm.

“Oh, boy! Boy, she done that? It can't be! There's something wrong here. Why, she——”

“But they found her going back to the light in a small boat and she admitted it to the sheriff. She killed him. Oh, don't you know something that'll clear her?”

He put that last desperately, but Jen shook her head in helplessness.

“We was after you to take you back to her. We thought it was all right. She's learned what happened that last night she was on High Island. She thought you tricked her. Oh, boy, it's all right, and we come after you because she was waiting at the light for you, with her heart breaking and all. And now this has come to her! Where is she?”

“In the house, and the sheriff won't let me see her,” David replied, and rubbed his forehead with an unsteady hand.

Jen turned then and cried tremulously:

“Ned! Ned!”

David turned also, and that brought them facing down the dock to where the tug, with its sailboat in tow, was making fast. The men out there were in a compact knot, peering down into the mackinaw, and Ned Borden did not heed his wife's call as he looked at the frail figure that seemed to be sleeping in the cockpit until one saw the telltale smear of crimson on the thwart beneath it.

The intentness of this group, the way each face turned when the wheelman of the tug stepped ashore and began to explain what had happened caught the interest of MacKinnon and the woman, and they walked hastily out to join the curious.

“He was driftin' out there, half a mile off the island,” the man was saying. “Thought there wasn't anybody aboard until we run dost. Then we seen him, an' I thought he moved when I stepped in. But he didn't after that. Shot through here—see?”

He dropped into the mackinaw and drew the shirt from the scrawny chest of the old man so they could see the hole that had drilled his right lung.

“An' here's his gun”—holding up the ancient weapon. “Mebbe he shot hisself, 'cause one cartridge 'd been fired.”

“That's two this morning,” said somebody.

“Two!” The man looked up in amazement.

“Yeah. The feller you called king got his, too!”

But the surprise with which Eldred's men received this news was covered by the cry of Jen Borden, who had shouldered her way through the group and stood looking down at the body, its face now turned upward to the light, pitifully weak and old and drawn, with the white scar above the right eye whiter than the blanched, lifeless skin.

“It's Wetherby!” she cried tremulously, and reached out a hand to catch her husband's wrist and bring him closer. “Wetherby, Ned! Don't you see that scar? I've carried a picture of that face for years.” She straightened suddenly and searched out David. “Boy, had Eldred been shooting?”

In the silence that followed her sharp question, men stared at her fixedly. David did not speak, but Dimmock, who had joined the group, nodded slowly and said,

“He shot—once.”

They looked from Aunt Jen to him, and a murmur of consternation ran through the group as the woman put a hand on her husband's shoulder for support.

“It was Wetherby's hand, Neddie,” she said huskily, “guided by the hand of the Almighty!”

THE doctor was talking, holding the rusted revolver in one hand, the misshapen bullet which had taken Norman Eldred's life in the other.

“A forty-five, all right,” he said. “And the bullet that took the old chap's life there”—nodding toward the tarpaulin-covered body on the beach—“was steel-jacketed. That's what Eldred shot.” He turned to the sheriff. “How about it?”

The officer shook his head and said:

“That sure ought to satisfy anybody, but I can't figure out the girl. Here she comes. Clear out, you! If that's her father, as Mis' Borden says, she won't want you gawpin' here.”

Beside Aunt Jen, Eve, white of face, as though walking in a dream, passed the men, who streamed away from the beach. She did not look at them, nor did she see David standing beside the covered figure.

For a half-hour the older woman had been telling the story over and over, trying to make Eve understand that the suspicion she had brought on herself was mistaken, but the girl had not seemed to realize what was said. She sat in her own bedroom, a crouched, silent, cowering figure of a child, not manifestly frightened, not saddened, just dumb—dumb and without the ability of comprehending what was said to her. She had not even spoken to Jen Borden; her hand had not responded to the woman's clasp. And now Jen was bringing her out to walk in the frantic hope that movement might do what her supplication had failed to accomplish.

When opposite David, the girl's eyes turned and she stopped. One hand fluttered to her breast and lay there. She moistened her lips and tried to speak, but at first no sound came. The dulness of her eyes gave way to alarm and she caught her breath.

“David!” she whispered. “David! You didn't—get away?”

He came forward, impelled by her manner.

“No; I'm here. Eve. I came when I heard. I thought—maybe you'd let me help you.”

The girl stared at him and then looked at the woman, as though struggling to force her mind to function.

“But the sheriff! He thought—my father said——”

“I've talked to him. It's all right He knows where I've been all day.”

She withdrew her arm from Jen's clasp and went close to him.

“Then you didn't— It wasn't you?”

A great surge of understanding swept through him and he cried:

“That's why! That's why you took it on yourself—so I could get away! And if I'd been gone. Eve, maybe you would have paid. Oh, Eve, Eve!”

And she was in his arms, crying like a child, clinging to him, pressing her face against his breast, sobbing his name again and again, hanging to him desperately.

“They're looking,” muttered Jen. “They're staring at you, boy. Take her away.”

And as David led the girl toward the fringe of friendly cedars where she could sob unseen and unheard, where she could hear from his considerate lips enough of the story to make it clear, Jen turned to Ned Borden, who was approaching her.

“Neddie, it's all over but the smiling, which'll come after the tears. I've got to stay here a while, and I've got to have something to do. S'pose you can get my sewing-machine before night?”

IT WAS evening of the next day. In the west the sun was touching the lake, which lay like a mighty chalice of pale-amber wine. Above the horizon, a fleet of stately clouds reared cumulus plumes to majestic heights.

Eve and David stood on the beach, watching silently, elbows touching. In the house Aunt Jen was busy, and they could hear the drone of her sewing-machine in the silence.

That morning, the body of Eve's father had been carried from St. James up the King's Highway to Watch Hill and put to rest beside the sturdy church of Holy Rosary parish. When those who had followed it returned to Garden Island, Dimmock and others had completed another task—leveling the sand under the trees so not so much as a mound should remain to keep green the memory of the man who had been called king.

It was at this spot that the good priest from Beaver Island now stood, head bowed, his fine face lined with sorrow. But there was peace in his eyes and patience about his mouth as he made the sign of the cross and lifted his face to the glory of the west.

David looked about. The horizontal rays of the sun were striking through the trees, throwing the forest into contrasted light and deep she, and against the cool shadows the trilliums stood out like great flakes of snow, motionless on their long stems, placid faces toward the dropping sun. It was like a quiet garden. Garden Island was well named that evening, with the carpet of flowers beneath the clean green of new foliage, and as the boy looked, somewhere near by a whitethroat began its plaintive evening song.

Eve turned to follow his gaze. He heard her breath draw in slowly and slip out with a prolonged sigh. It was not an indication of trouble or regret, but as though those things which she had known in such weighty measure were slipping from her heart.

“If my father had come sooner, it wouldn't have been any better for him, would it, David?”

“No; you can't think of that. Eve. He was gone from the time your—mother died. It's all past, and you can't think of it, except to remember that after a blow there's bound to be fair weather.”

Her hand felt for his, and he gripped it and looked down into her face and then out across the harbor.

“Somehow, we'll get her rebuilt,” he said gently, and she knew he spoke of the Annabelle, his hooker that Eldred had burned to the water's edge. “We'll rebuild her and fit her out, and then we'll go, just you and I, wherever the wind takes us—Georgian Bay, the St. Lawrence, Superior and the Pictured Rocks. Wherever the wind or our fancy takes us, Eve—you and I alone, in a hooker that's a lady! If you want to come back, we will—in spring, when Garden Island's a garden, like it is now—we'll remember it like it is now—all fine and green with the flowers——”

Her hand tightened on his, and he looked down at the sweet, sweet smile on her face.

“That night on High Island—the night Mosseau waited for you—when I told you that bolts wouldn't hold me, and you wouldn't open the door. You held it shut; you said— You asked me if there wasn't somethin' I wanted to say first. What was it? What was it you wanted me to say?”

She turned to face him and lifted her arms to his shoulders. She gripped his flesh and held herself away from him so that she could look full into his face.

“I love you! I love you!”

That may have been reply to the question he had asked, and it may only have been that which had seethed in her heart through all those oddly crowded days. No matter. He took her in his arms and held her close, and their lips met in the first lingering kiss, and the good padre from St. James stopped his progress toward them and veered sharply and went through the soft sand on tiptoe toward the big house with long, glad steps, eyes twinkling through the mist that was in them.

THE END

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 Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the 
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