they burned a blue light, which the "Dauntless" answered with another and ran up a masthead lantern to guide them. A few minutes later they clambered up the ladder, the boat was hoisted in, and the boatswain's whistle was rousing the watch on deck.

"Mainsail haul!"'

By morning the island had sunk behind them, and standing on the dizzy main-royal yard, with one arm round the mast, Jack could make out nothing but a little cloud on the horizon.

At sixty John Garrard was a post-captain, a Knight-Commander of the Bath, and within a year of receiving flag rank and the command of a fleet. His career had been more than distinguished, and he had won his way to the front as much by his fine personal qualities as by his invariable good judgment and high professional attainments. He had earned the character of a man who could be trusted in situations involving tact, temper, and diplomatic skill; and no captain in the navy was more confidently ordered to those scenes of international tension, which, in spite of statesmen, so often arise in some distant place to menace the peace of the world.

He had never married, and when rallied on the subject was wont to say, with a laugh, that the sea was his only mistress. No one had ever ventured to question him much further, though his friends were often piqued especially the women-as to an implied romance in the captain's earlier life. It was known he supported two old maid sisters, the Misses Hadow, the impoverished daughters of his first commander; but in view of his considerable private fortune this drain on his resources seemed scarcely the reason of his renunciation. Nor did it seem to his admirers that any woman could have had the heart to refuse him, for even at sixty he was a noticeably handsome man, and was endowed besides with more than the advantage of good looks-a charm of manner, a distinction, a captivating gallantry that made him everywhere a favorite.

"But, you see, Jack isn't a marrying man," his friends explained, as though that well-worn phrase explained everything.

He was in command of the "Inflexible"

battleship, one of the Australian squadron, when she developed some defects in her hydraulic turning gear and was ordered home to England by Admiral Lord George Howard for overhaul. The captain's heart beat a little faster as he realized his course would take him south of the Societies. He spread out the chart on his cabin table and sighed as he laid his finger on Borabora. He shut his eyes and saw the basaltic cliffs, the white and foaming reefs, the green, still forests of that unforgotten island. He was a boy once more, with flowers in his hair, wandering beneath the palms with Tehea. How often had he thought of her during all these years, the years that had left him gray and old, the years that had carried him unscathed through so many dangers in every quarter of the world. For him she was still in her adorable girlhood, untouched by time, a radiant princess in her radiant isle, waiting by the shore for his return. It shocked him to remember she was not far short of sixty-a fat old woman, perhaps, married to some strapping chief, and more than likely with grown children of her own. How incredible it seemed!

But a word and he might land and see her. But a word and the questions of forty years might yet be answered. Answered, yes, to shatter as like as not, with pitiless realities, the tender figment of a dream. No, he said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No, but he would carry his ship close inshore and watch from the bridge the unfolding bays and tiny settlements of that lost paradise; and then, dipping his flag to his vanished youth, he would sink over the horizon, his memory thrilled and his sentiment unimpaired, to set his face for England.

Dawn was breaking as he slowed down to leeward of the island and watched the shadows melt away. It was Sunday, a day of heavenly calm, fresh yet windless, with a sea so smooth that the barrier reefs for once were silent, and one could hear, from across the hushed and shining water, the coo of pigeons in the forest. Under bare steerage way, with the leadsman droning in the forechains, the ship hugged the shore and steamed at a snail's pace round the island. On the lofty

bridge, high above the wondering faces of his command, the white-haired captain, impassive, supreme, and solitary, gave no sign of those inner emotions that were devouring him. Along the shore the sight of the battleship brought out here and there a startled figure or a group. A couple of laughing girls, astride on ponies, raced the Inflexible" for a mile, and then, their road ending in a precipice, threw kisses with their saucy hands. Little children ran out into the lagoon, shouting with joy; old men, in Sunday parius and with black Bibles under their arms, turned their solemn eyes to seaward and forgot for a moment the road to church.

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A white

man, in striped pajamas, was surprised at morning coffee on the veranda of his little house. He darted inside, and reappeared with a magazine rifle, which he emptied in the air, and followed up his courtesies by raising and lowering a Union Jack the size of a handkerchief. battleship dipped her stately white ensign in acknowledgment, as a swan might salute a gnat, and swept on with majesty.

The

With every mile the bays and wooded promontories grew increasingly familiar as Sir John was borne towards Lihua, the scene of his boyish folly. He looked ashore in wonder, surprised at the vividness and exactness of his recollection. He might have landed anywhere and found his way through those tangled, scented paths, with no other guide but memory. There was Papaloloa, with its roaring falls; there, the ti'a a Peau, where he had shot his first goat; yonder the misty heights of Tiarapu, where Tehea and he had camped a night in the clouds in an air of English cold. It was like a home-coming to see all these familiar scenes spreading out before him. He looked at his hands, his thin, veined, wrinkled hands, and it came over him, with a sort of surprise, that he was an old man.

"That was forty years ago," he said to himself. "Forty years ago!"

As Lihua opened out and he perceived, with an inexpressible pang, the thatched houses set deep in the shade of palms and breadfruit-trees, he felt himself in the throes of a strange and painful indecision. He paced up and down the bridge; he lit a cigar and threw it away again; he twice approached Commander Stillwell as though

to give an order, and then, still in doubt, turned shamefacedly on his heel.

"By the deep nine!" came the hoarse murmur of the leadsman.

It lay with him to stop the ship or not a word and she would come shivering to a standstill; a word and the boatswain would pipe away his gig and the crew would be running to their places. His heart ached with the desire to land; but something-he knew not what-withheld the order on his lips. Let him remain silent and the opportunity would pass away for ever. It was passing now with every turn of the propeller. Had he not told her he would return? Had he not whispered it that night when they were torn apart? Did he not owe it to her to keep the promise of forty years, a promise given in the flush of youth and hope, and sealed with scalding tears?

His resolution was taken. He ordered Commander Stillwell to stop the ship and lower a boat.

"I am going to treat myself to a run ashore," he said by way of explanation.

The vessel slowly stopped. The covers were whipped off the gig. She was hoisted out and lowered, the crew dropping down the ladder into their places at the peeppeep-peep of the whistle.

"I leave the ship," said Sir John, not to convey a fact patently obvious, but in obedience to a naval formula.

He was landed at a little cove where in bygone days he had often whiled away an hour waiting in charge of Hadow's boat. It gave him a singular sensation to feel the keel grate against the shingle, and to say to himself that this was Lihua! He drew a deep breath as he looked about and noticed how unchanged it all was. There were some new houses in new places, and grass on the sites of others that were endeared to him in recollection; but it was Lihua after all, the Lihua of his boyhood, the Lihua of his dreams. For a while he strolled about at random, walking with the phantoms of the past, hearing their laughter, seeing their faces, recalling a thousand things he had forgotten.

It came over him with a start that the village was empty. Then he remembered it was Sunday, and they were all in church. Thank God, there were none to watch him, no prying, curious eyes to disturb

his thoughts. But they would soon be out again, and it behooved him to make the best use of his solitude while he might. He struck inland, his heart beating with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he would turn quickly and look back with a haunting sense that Tehea was near him; that perhaps she was gazing at him through the trees. He approached his old home through overgrown plantations. It awed him to part the branches and to feel himself drawing near at every step to the only house he had ever called his own. As he heard the splashing waterfall he stopped, not daring for the moment to go on. When at last he did so, and mounted the little hill, he found no house at all. Nothing but ferns and weeds, man high. He moved about here and there, up to the arm-pits in verdure, in consternation at discovering it gone.

His foot struck against a boulder. He had forgotten there were any rocks on the hill. He moved along and his foot struck again. He pressed the weeds back and looked down.

He saw a tomb of crumbling cement, green with age and buried out of sight under the tangle.

It had never occurred to him before that Tehea might be dead.

He held back the undergrowth again and peered into the depths. Yes, it was the grave of a chief or a woman of rank, one of those artless mounds of cement and rock that the natives, with poetic fancy, used to call falelauasi, houses of sandalwood; oliolisanga, or the place the place where birdssing; orin vulgarer speech simply tuungamau, or tombs. These words, unspoken, unthought of for forty years -lost, overlaid, and forgotten in some recess of his brain --now returned to him with tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dragged it out with the same ferocity. It was intolerable that she should suffocate under all this warm, wet jungle that intruded itself, like a horrible canaille, where there were none to drive it back. He would give her air and sunshine, she that had loved them both; he would uncover the poor stones that marked

her last resting-place; he would lay bare the earth that wrapped her dead beauty.

He

He worked with desperation until his hands were bleeding, until his eyes were stung and blinded with the streaming sweat. Dizzy with the heat, parched with thirst, and sick with the steam that rose from the damp ground, he was forced again and again to desist and rest. cut his waistcoat into slips and bound them round his bloody hands; he broke the blades of his penknife on recalcitrant roots that defied the strength of his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him, the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the postcaptain was forgotten in the man, as he mused on the tragedy of human life, on the mysteries of love and death and destiny, on his own irrevocable youth now so far behind him, when he had forfeited his honor for the dead woman at his feet. He called her aloud by name. He bent down and kissed her mossy bed. He whispered with a strange conviction that she could hear him, that he had kept his promise to return.

Then, rising to his feet, he turned towards the sea and retraced his steps. The people were still in church, and the village was deserted as before. He walked swiftly, lest they might come flocking out before he could reach his boat, to torture him with recognition, with the question they would ask, with their story of Tehea's death. Then he laughed at his own fears, remembering his white hair and the intervening generation. Time had passed over Borabora too. The world, he remembered, was older by forty years. Older and sadder and emptier.

He swung himself up the ladder, mounted the bridge, and put the vessel on her course. The telegraph rang, the engineers repeated back the signal, and the great battleship, vibrating with her mighty engines, resumed once more her ponderous way.

F all the laws in the archives of the Board of Education there is none more heartless than that which decrees "That the marriage of a female teacher shall constitute resignation."

In an East Side school, a year or two ago, there was a First Reader class watched over and ruled by a female teacher, who was, in turn, watched over and ruled by a cabinet of three. These powers behind the throne were Morris Mogilewsky, Monitor of the Goldfish Bowl; Nathan Spiderwitz, Monitor of Window Boxes; and Patrick Brennan, Leader of the Line. In years they were very young, but in worldcraft they were very old, for the green fields of their childhood were the swarming streets, and their fairy tales the corner gossip of the district. Chief in their queer assortment of memories was that of a kindergarten teacher of transcendent charm, who had married and faded from

their loving ken. They had learned the law by that bereavement, and now, when they found themselves raised to such high places by the pleasure of their sovereign, they kept watchful eyes upon her. Losing her they would lose love and power-and love and power were sweet. No heiress to broad acres could be more carefully chaperoned by a bevy of maiden aunts than was Teacher by Morris, Nathan, and Patrick.

Morris was the first to discover definite grounds for uneasiness. He met his cherished Miss Bailey walking across Grand Street on a rainy morning, and the umbrella which was protecting her beloved head was being held by a tall stranger in a long and baggy coat. After circling incredulously about this astounding tableau, Morris dashed off to report to his colleagues. He found Patrick and Nathan in the midst of an exciting game of craps, but his pattering feet warned them of

Say, Patrick," suggested Nathan; "I'll tell you what to do. You ask her if she's goin' to get married."

"Naw," said Patrick. "Let Morris ask her. She'd tell him before she'd tell any of us. She's been soft on him ever since Christmas. Say, Morris, do you hear? You've got to ask Teacher if she's going to get married."

"O-o-oh! I dassent. It ain't polite how you says," cried Morris in his shocked little voice. "It ain't polite you asks like that. It's fierce."

"Well, you've got to do it, anyway," said Patrick darkly, "and you've got to do it soon, and you've got to let us hear you."

"It's fierce," protested Morris, but he was overruled by the dominant spirit of Patrick Brennan, that grandson of the kings of Munster and son of the policeman on the beat.

Morris's opportunity found him on the very next morning. Isadore Wishnewsky, the gentlest of gentle children, came to school wearing his accustomed air of melancholy shot across with a tender pride. His subdued "Good morning" was accompanied with much strenuous exertion, directed apparently to the removal

and exhibition of a portion of his spine. After much wriggling he paused long enough to say:

"Teacher, what you think? I'm got a present for you," and then recommenced his search in another layer of his many flannels. His efforts being at length crowned with success, he drew forth and spread before Teacher's admiring eyes a Japanese paper napkin.

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My sister," he explained. "She gets it on a weddinge."

"Oh, Isadore," cried the flattered teacher; "It's very pretty, isn't it?"

'Teacher-yiss, ma'an," gurgled Isadore. "It's stylish. You could to look on how stands birds on it and flowers. Mine sister she gives it to me, und I gives it to you. I don't need it. She gives me all times something the while she's got such a fond over me. She goes all times on weddinges. Most all her younge lady friends gettin' married; ain't it funny?"

At the fateful word "married,” the uneasy cabinet closed in about Teacher. Their three pairs of eyes clung to her face as Isadore repeated:

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"All gettin' married. Ain't it funny?" 'Well, no, dear," answered Teacher musingly. "You know nearly all young ladies do it."

Patrick took a pin from Teacher's desk and kneeled to tie his shoe-string. When he rose the point of the pin projected half an inch beyond the frayed toe of his shoe, and he was armed. Morris was most evidently losing courage he was indeed trying to steal away when Patrick pressed close beside him and held him to his post.

"Teacher," said Isadore suddenly, as a dreadful thought struck him, "be you a lady or be you a girl?"

And Teacher, being of Hibernian ancestry, answered one question with another:

"Which do you think, Isadore ?"

"Well," Isadore answered, "I don't know be you a forsure lady or be you a forsure girl. You wears your hair so tucked up und your dress so long down like you was a lady, but you laffs und tells us stories like you was a girl. I don't know."

Clearly this was Morris's opening. Patrick pierced his soul with a glance of scorn and simultaneously buried the pin