"Arthur gone to put them off?"

"Why, yes! Good-morning, Miss Gay."

"Good-morning, yourself, Colonel Meredith, and many of them. Want to look?"

"Thank you."

Colonel Meredith focussed the glasses upon the brown tents.

"What do you make them out to be?"

"I can make out a sort of nigger carrying tea into one of the tents. And there's a young lady in black. She seems to be walking down to the shore to meet your brother. And now she's waving her hand to him."

"The impudent thing," exclaimed Gay. "What's my brother doing?"

"He's paddling as if he expected to cross a hundred yards of water in a second. If the young lady comes any closer to the water, she'll get wet."

Suddenly blushing crimson, he thrust the field-glasses back into Gay's hands, and cried with complete conviction that he was "blessed."

In the bright field of magnification, hastily focussed to her own vision, Gay beheld her brother and the young woman in black tightly locked in each other's arms.

Chapter XXIX

*

To Arthur, half-way across the lake, considering just what he should say to the trespassers, the sudden sight of the person whom of all persons in the world he least expected and most wanted to see was a staggering physical shock. He almost fell out of his canoe. And if he had done that he might very likely have drowned, so paralyzing in effect were those first moments of unbelievable joy and astonishment. Then she waved her hand to him and swiftly crossed the beach, and he began to paddle like a madman. When the canoe beached with sudden finality, Arthur simply made a flying leap to the shore and caught her in his arms.

Then he held her at arm's length, and if eyes could eat, these would have been the last moments upon earth of a very lovely young woman.

Then a sort of horror of what he had done and of what he was doing seized him. His hands dropped to his sides and the pupils of his eyes became pointed with pain. But she said:

"It's all right, Arthur; don't look like that. My husband is dead."

"Dead?" said Arthur, his face once more joyous as an angel's. "Thank God for that!"

And why not thank God when some worthless, cruel man dies? And why not write the truth about him upon his tombstone instead of the conventional lies?

"But why didn't you write to me?" demanded Arthur.

"It had been such a long time since we saw each other. How did I know that you still cared?"

"But how could I stop caring—about you?"

"Couldn't you?"

"Why, I didn't even try," said Arthur. "I just gave it up as a bad job. But how, in the name of all that's good and blessed, do you happen to be in this particular place at this particular time? Did you, by any chance, come by way of the heavens in a 'sweet chariot'? I came to eject trespassers, and I find you!"