on its half-dried boards.  In arranging these domestic details he had to change the position of a little mirror; and glancing at it for the first time in many days, he was dissatisfied with his straggling beard,—­grown during his voyage from Australia,—­and although he had retained it as a disguise, he at once shaved it off, leaving only a mustache, and revealing a face from which a healthier life and out-of-door existence had removed the last traces of vice and dissipation.  But he did not know it.

All the next day he thought of his fair visitor, and found himself often repeating her odd remark that she was “not that kind of girl,” with a smile that was alternately significant or vacant.  Evidently she could take care of herself, he thought, although her very good looks no doubt had exposed her to the rude attentions of fishermen or the common drift of San Francisco wharves.  Perhaps this was why her father brought her here.  When the day passed and she came not, he began vaguely to wonder if he had been rude to her.  Perhaps he had taken her simple remark too seriously; perhaps she had expected he would only laugh, and had found him dull and stupid.  Perhaps he had thrown away an opportunity.  An opportunity for what?  To renew his old life and habits?  No, no!  The horrors of his recent imprisonment and escape were still too fresh in his memory; he was not safe yet.  Then he wondered if he had not grown spiritless and pigeon-livered in his solitude and loneliness.  The next day he searched for her with his glass, and saw her playing with one of the children on the beach,—­a very picture of child or nymphlike innocence.  Perhaps it was because she was not “that kind of girl” that she had attracted him.  He laughed bitterly.  Yes; that was very funny; he, an escaped convict, drawn towards honest, simple innocence!  Yet he knew—­he was positive—­he had not thought of any ill when he spoke to her.  He took a singular, a ridiculous pride in and credit to himself for that.  He repeated it incessantly to himself.  Then what made her angry?  Himself!  The devil!  Did he carry, then, the record of his past life forever in his face—­in his speech—­in his manners?  The thought made him sullen.  The next day he would not look towards the shore; it was wonderful what excitement and satisfaction he got out of that strange act of self-denial; it made the day seem full that had been so vacant before; yet he could not tell why or wherefore.  He felt injured, but he rather liked it.  Yet in the night he was struck with the idea that she might have gone back to San Francisco, and he lay awake longing for the morning light to satisfy him.  Yet when the fog cleared, and from a nearer point, behind a sand dune, he discovered, by the aid of his glass, that she was seated on the sun-warmed sands combing out her long hair like a mermaid, he immediately returned to the cabin, and that morning looked no more that way.  In the afternoon, there being no sails in