Mr. Trask eyed him, chin between two fingers and thumb. When he spoke again it was with lowered voice. "Is it altogether kind to the girl?" he asked. "Eh?" The Collector in turn eyed Mr. Trask. "O-Or even quite fair to her?"

"Oh, come!" said the Collector. "Tongues? I hadn't thought of that.”

"I daresay not." Mr. Trask glanced up at the windows of a two-storeyed house on the left, scarcely a stone's throw away, a respectable mansion with a verandah and neat gateway of wrought iron. "But at the end of this what becomes of her?"

The Collector shrugged his shoulders. "I have thought of that, at all events. My coach will be here to take her home. It lies on our road. As for me, I shall have to mount at once and ride though the nighta second test for the backbone."

"Ride and be hanged to you!" broke out Mr. Trask with a snarl of scorn. "But for the rest, if your foppery leave you any room to consider the girl, you couldn't put a worse finish on your injury. Drive her off in your coach indeed!-and what then becomes of her reputation?"

"-Of what you have left to her, you mean? Damn it-you to talk like this!"

"Do not be profane, Captain Vyell. . . . We see things differently, and this punishment was meted to her-if cruelly, as you would say-still in honest con

cern for her soul's good. But if you, a loose-living man—” Mr. Trask paused.

"Go on."

"I thank you. For the moment I forgot that you are not at liberty. But I used not that plainness of speech to insult you; rather because it is part of the argument. If you, then, drive away with this child in public, through this town, you do her an injury for which mere carelessness is your best excuse; and the world will assign it a worse.”

"The world!”

"I mean the world this young woman will have to live in. But we talk at cross-purposes. When I asked, 'What becomes of her at the end of this?' I was thinking of the harm you have already done. As a fact, I have ordered my cart to be ready to take her home."

Captain Vyell considered for a few seconds. "Sir," he said, "since plain speech is allowed between us, I consider you a narrow bigot; but, I hasten to add, you are the best man I have met in Port Nassau. By the way-that house on our left-does it by chance belong to Mr. Wapshott?"

"It does."

"I thought so. For a For a couple of hours past, in the intervals of my reading, I have discovered a family of tall young women peeking at us from behind the windows and a barrier of furniture; and once, it seemed

to me, I detected the wattles of your worthy fellowmagistrate. He ought not to strain that neck; you should warn him of the danger."

“It should have warned you, sir, of what mischief you are doing."

"I seem to remember," the Collector mused, "reading the words 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' to-day written on the wall behind you. Why, damn me, sir, for aught you or any of them can tell, I intend to marry this girl! Why not? Go and tell them. Could there, you'll say, be a fairer betrothal? The reputable plight their troth with a single ring around the woman's finger; but here are four rings around the four ankles, and the bar locked. With your leave, which is the more symbolical?"

"You are a reprobate man, Captain Vyell," was the answer, "and I have no relish for your talk. I will only say this; when her punishment is done, my cart shall be ready for her; and you, if you would vindicate an action which-for I'll give you that credit— sprang from a generous impulse, will go your ways and let this child live down her humiliation."

Mr. Trask turned and went his way up the alley, across which the sun made level rays of flame. The Collector sat in thought.

He turned his head, surprised by the sound of a sob. A small child had drawn near-a toddler of four, trail

ing her wooden doll with its head in the dust—and stood a few paces in front of Ruth Josselin, round-eyed, finger at mouth.

At the murmured warning she braced her body stiffly, and no second sob came. But the tears ranthe first in all her long agony-and small shivers, as light winds play on aspen, chased one another down her throat. Almost you could guess them passing down her flesh beneath the sackcloth, rippling over its torn and purple ridges.

He did not check her weeping. The child-small, innocent cause of it-stood round-eyed, wondering. "She has been naughty. What has she done, to be so naughty?"

Over the maples the town clock deliberately told the hour.

They were free. The Collector tossed away the half-smoked tobacco leaf-his twelfth-drew a long breath, and emitted it with a gay laugh of relief. At the same moment he saw Mr. Trask's bullock-cart approaching down the dappled avenue.

CHAPTER XII

THE HUT BY THE BEACH

"AND you'll never hold up your head again! No more will any of us. The disgrace of it! the disgrace of it!"

Ruth stood in the middle of the wretched room, with her hands hanging slack and her eyes bent wearily upon her mother, who had collapsed upon a block of sawn timber and sat there, with sack apron cast over her head, rocking her body.

"Hush, ye fool!" said old Josselin, and spat out of window. Mechanically, by habit, his dim eyes swept along the beach by the breakers' edge. "What's the use, any way?" he added.

"We, that always carried ourselves so high, for all our being poor! It's God's mercy that took your father before he could see this day. "Twould have broken his sperrit. Your father a Josselin, and me a Pocock, with lands of my own-if right was law in this world; and now to be stripped naked and marched through the streets!"

Ruth's eyes met the Collector's. He stood just within the doorway, and was regarding her curiously.