Billy was a good safe human creature, with the tang of the soil about him, and no wizard power of making his presence felt when one's back was turned. Emeline kept her gray eyes directed towards him, and talked about his day's work and the trouble of ploughing with oxen. She was delicately and sensitively made, with a beauty which came and went like flame. Her lips were formed in scarlet on a naturally pale face. Billy Wentworth considered her weakly. He preferred the robust arm outlined by Roxy's homespun sleeve. And yet she had a sympathetic knowledge of men which he felt, without being able to describe, as the most delicate flattery. The King of Beaver approached Emeline. She knew she could not escape the interview, and continued tying vines to the cedar palisades while the two young islanders drew joyfully away to another part of the garden. The stable and barn-yard were between garden and cabin. Long variegated fields stretched off in bands. A gate let through the cedar pickets to a pasture where the cows came up to be milked. Bees gathering to their straw domes for the night made a purring hum at the other end of the garden. “I trust you are here to stay,” said Emeline's visitor. “I am never going back to Detroit,” she answered. He understood at once that she had met grief in Detroit, and that it might be other grief than the sort expressed by her black garment. “We will be kind to you here.” Emeline, finishing her task, glanced over her shoulder at him. She did not know how tantalizingly her face, close and clear in skin texture as the petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier woman's rudeness in her became audacious charm. “I like Beaver Island,” she remarked, winding the remaining bits of string into a ball. “‘Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.’” “You mean Gentile man,” said King Strang. “He is vile, but we hope to get rid of him some time.” “By breaking his fish-nets and stealing his sail-boats? Is it true that a Gentile sail-boat was sunk in Lake Galilee and kept hidden there until inquiry ceased, and then was raised, repainted, and launched again, a good Mormon boat?” He linked his hands behind him and smiled at her daring. “How many evil stories you have heard about us! My dear young lady, I could rejoin with truths about our persecutions. Is your uncle Cheeseman a malefactor?” “My uncle Cheeseman is a good man.” “So are all my people. The island, like all young communities, is infested with a class of camp-followers, and every depredation of these fellows is charged to us. But we shall make it a garden—we shall make it a garden.” “Let me train vines over the whipping-post in your garden,” suggested Emeline, turning back the crimson edge of her lip.