"I will help you to forget," she said, with a glance, "or"--and she drew herself up slightly--"there is yet time to go back. Leander knows it was by accident we were on the _Vireo_. We can take a train from Boston out to Savin Hill, tell them about our accident, and all will be as before. You will return to your old life, and I,--God help me!--I return to mine, in which I must never think of you. It is not too late, Rodney. Choose." As she spoke, Prudence held herself aloof, looking at Lawrence. The crow crept out from behind her and hopped on to her knee, cocking his sharp eye up at Lawrence and making a chuckling noise as it did so. "I have chosen," he answered, in a whisper, "and I would not go back. Do you think I could leave you,--you? No, not though I were to go through even more dishonor to gain you." The crow chuckled again. A dark flush rose to the young man's forehead. "I will throw him into the sea!" he cried, in a smothered voice. But Prudence stroked the bird's head with her finger. "No," she said; "we will send him back to Savin Hill when it is daylight. He will go. And shall I tie a note for Aunt Tishy to his leg?" "No," was the answer. "I don't know yet that I want to send any word. Dear, let us cast the past behind us. Don't let us refer to it. We begin to-night a new life. Oh, surely love will atone, my darling,--my darling!" "If you are only sure you will be happy." She was gazing up at him. "Sure!" A tender fury was in his voice. "Prudence, it is paradise to be with you." So they sat beside each other in the dirty little tug, and murmured the extravagant words which are not half enough extravagant, because no words have ever been made which do much more than hint at any height of emotion, be it what emotion it may. In Boston the two took a carriage at the wharf. Lawrence parted from his companion in the public parlor of a quiet hotel at the South End. He explained briefly how they came to be in such a plight, and the matron of the house furnished Prudence with some garments until her own should be dry. Once in her room, the girl called for pen and ink and paper. "If Rodney will not write to them, I must," she thought. Sitting at the table beneath the gas-jet, Prudence's face showed pallid and weary, but there was an invincible light in her eyes, a crimson on her lips, that spoke of something besides fatigue. The crow was perched on the back of a chair near her. He had drawn one foot up in his feathers and closed his eyes. Prudence held her pen in her hand and looked at Devil. Then she laughed slightly as she said, aloud, "We made an odd group, didn't we, Devil? No wonder the clerk stared. A drenched man and woman and a crow arriving at eleven o'clock at night, with no luggage. "Will you go back to Savin Hill in the morning, Devil? As for me, I will never go back. How could I? And Rodney shall be happy. Oh, yes, he shall be happy; for I love him."