supply of fresh water on shore."

"Must you still remain absent from us?" asked the gray-haired woman, sighing.

"Unfortunately, yes. I expected to attain my purpose in a shorter time, but fate is against me; whenever I have thought I was approaching my goal, I was thrust back. Twice I have acquired some property, but ill-luck deprived me of it, and I was forced to begin anew."

"Ill luck?" asked the younger sister, "that means shipwreck and pirates, doesn't it?"

"Yes, shipwreck."

"And not pirates? We have feared them most! How often we have said that they might capture or kill you, leaving us to weep for you forever."

The young man smiled.

"Fear nothing from them, dear. They will not harm me. At the utmost, they will rob me of my property, and you would receive me kindly, were I to return penniless, would you not?"

"Ah, if only you would never go," whispered his beautiful fiancée.

"Nay, dearest, I cannot let you spend your life here; I wish to see you in splendor. I long to take you to some great, beautiful city, where you can have pleasant society, where the sun cannot scorch these fair features, nor toil roughen these little hands. You will see that it will yet come to pass."

"Add: with the help of God!" said the grandmother. "Every enterprise must begin with God's favor, then it will end with it. Do you still pray, William?"

The young man sighed.

"You once taught me many prayers, grandmother."

"Do not forget them. We pray for you every day."

"Yes indeed," said the younger sister. "Grandmother reads from the prayer-book, and then we repeat a long prayer, in which we name all the good things we entreat God to grant you and all the evil ones from which we beseech him to guard you: storms, sickness, shipwreck, hunger, thirst, sharks, savages, and above all, Robert Barthelemy."

The young man gazed at her with a smile. "And why from Robert Barthelemy?" he asked.

"Because he is a wicked pirate, whom no one can resist, who is in league with the devil, and who either burns all whom he captures over a slow fire or else casts them into the sea."

"That is not true, Barthelemy never tortures any one."

"Oh, we remember him, too, in our daily prayer."

"Do you?"

"Yes indeed. Every day, crossing ourselves three times, we entreat God to sink to the bottom of the sea the horrible monster, whom we hold in such fear for your sake."

"So you all remember Robert Barthelemy at the end of your prayers?" asked the youth, embracing the girls in turn as they hung weeping and laughing around his neck.

"Julietta!" said one, "sing William the song you composed about him and the pirates."

"You have composed a song about me and the pirates?" asked the youth.

Julietta flushed crimson and after withdrawing shyly from his embrace she sang in a sweet, tremulous voice: