"Who would ever have thought it?" said he, shoving the boat close in shore. "Of all reunions this is the most extraordinary, the most unlooked for. Jump in, Madame, there is no time to lose: in ten minutes it will rain like a water-spout. Great heavens, you are unaltered after all these years, and you have not a grey hair in your head!" She obeyed mechanically in silence, folding Gustave beneath her shawl, who protested with energy against the embarkation, expressing a strong desire to return to "Old Moley" forthwith. Once more in mid-stream, Picard laid on his oars as if doubtful whether to proceed. "What are you doing with that boy?" he asked. She had recovered her presence of mind, though still confused and bewildered, as after some stunning blow. "You _know_ me, Achille," said she, bending on him the defiant, impracticable gaze he remembered so well. "Whatever happens, wherever we are bound, the child goes with me! Where are you taking us? What is the meaning of it all?" Picard's face was not improved by the diabolical expression that swept over it. "The meaning is this," he answered in a hoarse whisper: "I am helping Captain Vanguard to run away with my own--bah!" he broke off abruptly, "there will be time enough for explanations between here and Windsor bridge: the question is now about the child. He must not go a yard farther--he'll be wet to the skin as it is. There are few things I wouldn't part with to--to--undo the wrongs between you and me; but I cannot, and will not, give up the boy!" She would have been fiercer in all probability, but that Picard, accepting the heavy down-pour, which now commenced, in his thin summer waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, had stripped off his pea-coat, and was wrapping the boy carefully in its folds, without however removing him from his mother's embrace. The little fellow smiled, and tugged playfully at this rugged nurse's whiskers, obviously welcoming the face of a friend, but repeated his request to return to "Old Moley" as speedily as possible. "I mean to have no discussions," said Jin, in tight, concentrated accents that denoted suppressed rage and inflexible resolution. "I never wished to see your face again, and I shall insist presently on knowing why you are here now; but in the mean time I desire to know what right you have to the child." "I like that!" exclaimed Picard with a bitter laugh. "Rather, what right have you? I saved his life!" "I gave him birth!" answered Jin collectedly. "This is the infant you deserted so gallantly and so generously when you left his mother. Enough! He has no claim on you, my precious; you belong solely and exclusively to me!" Picard heeded not. Bending over that little bundle, folded so carefully in his pea-jacket, on its mother's knee, he kissed the soft brow tenderly, gently, almost reverently, while a tear hanging in the man's shaggy whiskers, dropped on the pure delicate cheek of the child.