thinking much of the girl. She looked strangely beautiful and unreal in the dim light—curiously visionary—and yet he felt that she radiated warmth and life. Something stirred hotly within him: he was drawn to her as with many hands.

'It would interest me,' she said—'it would interest me deeply.' She turned her face up to him, and her eyes caught the light, and burned with curious lustre in the shadowy face.

He did not misjudge her; he knew her concern for him to be the outcome of gratitude and the kindliness of a simple nature, but it conveyed a sweet flattery. Her hand rested upon his arm, and from its soft pressure flowed currents of emotion. At his heart was a savage hunger. The faint scent her hair exhaled seemed to cloud his brain and his vision.

'I feel that it is some sorrow, some wrong done you in your early life, that makes you so bitter against the world,' she said. 'You think ill of all because one or two have been unkind and unjust, perhaps. Because someone has been false or unfair to you at home there, you are cold and contemptuous and distrustful of the people around you here, who are eager to be your friends.' Her tone was almost caressing.

For answer he caught her up in his arms, using his strength roughly, cruelly, clasping her to his breast, and kissing her mouth twice, thrice, with a fierce rapture. A moment he held her thus, gazing into her face, and the girl's hands seemed to flutter up to his neck. Suddenly she experienced an awakening. On the heels of the new joy came a new terror. Setting her palms against his breast, she pushed herself from his relaxed arms. A few feet of deck, a space of cold moonlight, divided them, and they stood thus, facing each other in silence. Lucy had an intuitive expectancy; the situation called for an avowal. It became awkward. A boyish shamefacedness had followed Done's outburst of passion, and he spoke never a word. The two were victims of a painful anti-climax. A girl has but one resource in such an emergency. The tears came, and Lucy Woodrow turned and stole away, leaving Jim stunned, abashed, with unseeing eyes bent upon the sea. Done's right hand was striking at the woodwork mechanically; his mind was in a turmoil. The blows increased in force till blood ran from his knuckles, and then through his clenched teeth came the bitter words. His rage against himself had a biting vindictiveness. He cursed in whispers.

What a fool he had been! What a fatuous, blundering ass! What had he done? Why had he done it? Was he in love, with Lucy Woodrow? This latter question recurred again and again through the night, and the answer came vehemently—no, no, and no again! He had nothing in common with the girl. He recited a score of her simple, silly opinions in self-defence, and, having strenuously reasserted his freedom, turned over to sleep, and slept never a wink all night. What disturbed him most was the fear of meeting Lucy Woodrow again. Perhaps she would avoid him now. There was no comfort in the thought. He knew that what had happened must alter their relations towards each other, but could neither admit that Lucy was necessary to him nor summon up a comfortable indifference.

V

DONE caught a fleeting glimpse of Lucy Woodrow next day, Tuesday. She was certainly avoiding him. The conviction made him bitter. How well Schopenhauer knew these women! Lucy's squeamishness was further proof of a narrow and commonplace mind. Had he suffered so much all his life at the hands of people of this class, and learned to measure them so well and hate them so sincerely, only to be won over by the prettiness of a simple girl? He brooded over the matter for some hours, when it was driven from his mind by an important happening. Early on the following morning the first mate reported that land had been sighted. The news stirred the ship as an intruding foot stirs an anthill. The people swarmed upon the decks, and strained their eyes in the direction pointed by Captain Evan's glass, which was in eager demand amongst the cabin passengers all the forenoon.

One sailor, a canny Scot, produced a battered old telescope, and did a very profitable business with the excited emigrants, whom he charged 'saxpence' for their first peep at the land where fortune and glory waited them. The telescope was quite unequal to the occasion, but its owner had carefully drawn a mark on the lens to represent the desired object, and there were no complaints, although the Australian coast-line sometimes sloped at acute angles, and often appeared to be quite perpendicular.

Jim awoke to new sensations, and all his hopes and ambitions surged back upon him with redoubled force. A childish rapture possessed him; he had an impulse to run and jump, to act foolishly, and to yell like a boy at play. It required some self-restraint to keep from throwing wide his arms to the warm sun, that seemed to instil delight into his very veins.

Meanwhile Lucy Woodrow had experienced another shock, and had been afforded some idea of the cheerful readiness with which a censorious world misconstrues our amiable intentions, and imputes selfish motives to the most disinterested missioner. She found herself quite unable to work up a proper feeling of indignation against Done. Her training impelled her to stigmatize his conduct as ungentlemanly, ungenerous, and absolutely shocking. The words of condemnation came readily enough, but there was no proper spirit of maidenly pride behind them. On the contrary, deep down in her breast there glowed a sense of triumph, an abiding joy, of which she made some effort to be ashamed. Her avoidance of the young man on the day following his misdemeanour was a pathetic bit of dissimulation, an effort on Lucy's part to deceive herself with a show of coldness and dignity.

During the Tuesday afternoon and evening Mrs. Donald Macdougal had assumed towards Lucy the touching airs of an injured innocent. Her cough required more than usual attention, and her head was extremely bad, but she bore it all with conspicuous resignation. She could not contain herself long, however, and gave utterance to her grievance in the evening.

'I do think you ought to give me a little more of your confidence, Lucy,' she said, with an aggrieved air.

'In what way, Mrs. Macdougal?' asked Lucy, surprised at the words and the tone.

'Well, my dear, I have treated you almost like a sister. I am in a manner your guardian; and it's nice to feel one is trusted, is it not?'

'But I do trust you; and I am grateful too—most grateful.'

'It isn't that. You don't tell me things. For instance, about young
Done.'

'Really, Mrs. Macdougal, there is nothing of interest that you do not know.