The north shore had approached still nearer,--so near that her strong eyes could see bonfires on the beach, and children feeding the flames, and cottages behind, lighted up by the flickering brilliance. "Where are you going?" she asked. "I don't know. Wherever you say. Somewhere where there's a clergyman who will marry us?" "Yes. And we must make some definite plan." "You make the plan." "I will try. As for me, I'd like to go on like this for days, driven by the warm wind between ocean and sky, and with no one but you,--no one but you." She repeated the words in a tone just loud enough for him to hear. "You love me, then?" "Love you? Do I not prove it?" he asked. "Yes, yes," she cried, in that intense tone which seems the voice of passion itself; "and as for me--oh, I will also prove to you how happy you make me." A short time after Lawrence rose; he trimmed the sail. He looked at his watch; it was ten o'clock. The breeze was abating, and he succeeded in keeping the match-flame ablaze as he examined the dial. "If the wind holds on at all," he said, "we can make Salem, or some of those towns." "Why not Boston?" asked Prudence, who deftly helped her companion with the sail, or steered while he worked. He glanced towards her. They had lighted a lantern and fastened it in the bows. Its rays fell on the girl's face. It was radiantly, excitedly pale; the soft luminousness of it might make a man forget many things. "And the _Scythia_ sails to-morrow," she said. She spoke after thought; she feared her words would hurt, but she had already roughly arranged her plan. It was the _Scythia_ in which Lawrence had engaged passage for himself and wife. Prudence knew that he grew white, that he shut his lips tightly; but she also felt sure that the plan would soon present itself to him as the most feasible. Lawrence would go abroad with his wife; only his wife would not be Carolyn Ffolliott, but Prudence Ffolliott. In that case all arrangements were already perfected. How could she have done better if she had known Rodney was coming down to the boat that night? She was striving with all her powers to think clearly and to the point. She turned towards her companion and looked at him pleadingly, gently, and yet with power. Her face showed love, utter love; and it was that love which he could not resist. "Let it be the _Scythia_," he said, shortly. Then, with tender violence, "Prudence, do you guess how I must love you? Do you guess what you must be to me? Good heavens! I don't know myself!" Before the girl could reply, in a lull of the decreasing wind, some indefinite, curious sound was heard in the bit of a cabin. Lawrence started nervously. "What can that be?" he asked, sharply. "Rodney," she said, persuasively, "don't let's be superstitious. That must be Devil." "That crow? Is he on board?"