"How cruelly I have misjudged him!" she thought. "When he was here eager to risk his life for me, my false fancy pictured him at Addie Marchmont's side. And yet it was well I did not know the truth, for it would have been so much harder to look death in the face so long, with this knowledge of his friendship. How strangely he and Addie act when together! But come, that is no affair of mine. Let me be thankful that I have not lost the friend of my childhood." A little later she stood at the boat-house. The door hung by one hinge only, and the large stone lay near with which he had crashed it in. She entered the dusky place as if it had been a temple. Had it not been consecrated by a service of love,--by the costliest offering that can be made,--life? Here he had said he would save her or perish with her; here he had sought to make good his words. She picked up one of the matches he had dropped, and struck it, that she might look into the neglected boat. Never was the utter unseaworthiness of a craft noted with such satisfaction before. "While I vilely thought he would not venture to our aid at all, he strained every nerve to launch this old shell. Thanks to obstinate Burtis, who would not help him." She struck another match, that she might look more closely; then uttered a pitiful cry. "Merciful heaven! is this blood on this rope? It surely is. Now I think of it, he kept his right hand gloved this morning, and offered his left to Mr. Hemstead in salutation. Father and I, in our cruel wrong, did not offer to take his hand. And yet it would seem that he tugged with bleeding hands at these ropes, that he might almost the same as throw away his life for us. "I can scarcely understand it. No brother could do more. He was braver than Mr. Hemstead, for he had a stanch boat, and experienced help, while my old playmate was eager to go alone in this wretched thing that would only have floated him out to deep water where he would drown. "Ah, well, let the future be what it may, one cannot be utterly unhappy who has loved such a man. If he is willing to give his life up for me, I surely can get him to give up his evil, wayward tendencies, and then I must be content." She now began to experience reaction from her strong excitement, and wearily made her way back to the house. Her father met her at the door, and exclaimed, "Why, Alice, where have you been? You look ready to sink!" "I have been to the boat-house, father," she replied, in a low, quick tone; "and I wish you would go there to-morrow, for you will there learn how cruelly we have misjudged Mr. Harcourt." "But, my child, I am troubled about you. You need quiet and rest after all you have passed through"; and he hastily brought her a glass of wine. "I needed more the assurance that my old friend and playmate was not what we thought this morning," she said, with drooping eyes.