"Very much to the contrary. It was our dinner I came near forgetting," and he dangled the rabbits before her. "You feel better for the fresh water?" "Oh, very much better. And now I am hungry. When does your friend come back?" "Not till evening as a rule. If he can lay hands on what you want he may come sooner to-day." "And you--do you never go out there with him?" "Oh, sometimes. But it doesn't attract me as it does him." "Why then?" "We are differently made, I suppose;--which is perhaps a good thing. He delights in finding things out there. I go out only for necessaries." "What does he find--besides strange old clothes?" "Oh, heaps of things--treasure. There are the cargoes of very many ships out there. They have been accumulating for hundreds of years, I suppose." "And it does not attract you?" "Not in the slightest." "You are, perhaps, rich." "I have enough, and I have my profession,--and little chance apparently of making any use of either." "Ah..." and presently, "As to that, am I wrong then in thinking that if you had not been here I would most likely not have been here either?" and the wind and the sun had whipped a fine colour into her face. "You would, perhaps, not be very far wrong." "I remember it dimly, and in broken bits, like a horrible dream,--the crash, the terrible noise of the waves, the shouting and the screaming. It was the Captain himself who tied me to that mast when everything was going to pieces. And when the waves washed over me, and I felt myself slowly dying, I would have loosed myself if I could, to make an end. It was terrible to be so long of dying. And the cold of the sea!--oh, it was a horror," and she shivered again at the remembrance... "Then I died.... And then--long long afterwards--I found myself coming slowly back to life, and beginning to get warm again, with prickly pains like pins and needles all over me----" "That was your blood beginning to flow again." "----I felt warm hands rubbing me--rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. They must have rubbed for years, and, all the time, I was slowly coming back. They were very warm and soothing. And at last they rubbed me back to life." "What was the name of your ship?" "The 'Ben Lomond,' from Glasgow to New York, and the Captain was John MacDonald. It was a large ship and full of passengers. It is terrible to think of them all gone but me.--Oh, terrible!--terrible!" "Might I ask your name--since we are like to be neighbours for the rest of our lives?" "I am Avice Drummond," she said, with a quick glance at him. "And you?" "Wulfrey Dale." "And the mate?" "Sheumaish Macro,--or Hamish, I'm not sure which." "It is the same. He is a good man?--to be trusted?" "I have no reason to think otherwise, but I have only known him since we landed here. He is chock full of superstition----" "That is the Highlander in him." "A bit hot-blooded too, and apt to boil over." "That is the Spaniard."