the dense hazel, a cry which was neither that of man nor animal but of a woman; and with an answering shout Nathaniel sprang forward to meet there in the edge of the thicket the white face and outstretched arms of Marion.  The girl was swaying on her feet.  In her face there was a pallor that even in his instant’s glance sent a chill of horror through the man and as she staggered toward him, half falling, her lips weakly forming his name Nathaniel leaped to her and caught her close in his arms.  In that moment something seemed to burst within him and flood his veins with fire.  Closer he held the girl, and heavier he knew that she was becoming in his arms.  Her head was upon his breast, his face was crushed in her hair, he felt her throbbing and breathing against him and his lips quivered with the words that were bursting for freedom in his soul.  But first there came the girl’s own whispered breath—­“Neil—­where is Neil?”

“He is gone—­gone from the island!”

She had become a dead weight now and so he knelt on the ground with her, her head still upon his breast, her eyes closed, her arms fallen to her side.  And as Nathaniel looked into the face from which all life seemed to have fled he forgot everything but the joy of this moment—­forgot all in life but this woman against his breast.  He kissed her soft mouth and the closed eyes until the eyes themselves opened again and gazed at him in a startled, half understanding way, until he drew his head far back with the shame of what he had dared to do flaming in his face.

And as for another moment he held her thus, feeling the quivering life returning in her, there came to him through that vast forest stillness the distant deep-toned thunder of a great gun.

“That’s Casey!” he whispered close down to the girl’s face.  His voice was almost sobbing in its happiness.  “That’s Casey—­firing on St. James!”

CHAPTER VII

THE HOUR OF VENGEANCE

For perhaps twenty seconds after the last echoes of the gun had rolled through the forest the girl lay passive in Nathaniel’s arms, so close that he could feel her heart beating against his own and her breath sweeping his face.  Then there came a pressure against his breast, a gentle resistance of Marion’s half conscious form, and when she had awakened from her partial swoon he was holding her in the crook of his arm.  It had all passed quickly, the girl had rested against him only so long as he might have held half a dozen breaths and yet there had been all of a lifetime in it for Nathaniel Plum, a cycle of joy that he knew would remain with him for ever.  But there was something bitter-sweet in the thought that she was conscious of what he had done, something of humiliation as well as gladness, and still not enough of the first to make him regret that he had kissed her, that he had kissed her mouth and her eyes.  He loved her, and he was glad that in those passing