"Copy my brother!" I said, savagely. "Be a soft-fingered coward like him! To be afraid of my own shadow like him! Copy him! Why he is but a mere woman disgracing the clothes he wears. Had I been a puny thing like him I should have ran away just as he did, and left you to die on yon rocks. And yet you talk of my copying him. Why, he's just a soft-muscled contemptible coward." "I scarcely know which I like less," she cried, "a coward--although I don't admit that your brother is one--or one who boasts of his own bravery and taunts you with his own kind deeds. Roger, do you think because you cannot appreciate your brother's nobleness that it does not exist?" This silenced me. I had been answered. She had championed my brother. She had declared in so many words that she preferred him to me. She regarded what I had done for her as nothing. I found then that my passion had been inflamed by hope, that my jealousy was due to this reason. No sooner did Ruth speak in the way I have described than a dull despair laid hold of my heart, and I was dumb. I could see now that she loved Wilfred, and that she saw nobility in him, which, in her opinion my nature was too poor to see, that the fact of my having saved her life was to her little more than the action of an animal, who acted instinctively without a thought of danger. Well, on the whole I was glad to know the worst. I knew how to act now, I was not upheld by any false hope. "I am glad you have told me this, Ruth," I said quietly. "It is best that I should know. I am afraid I have behaved very rudely! forgive me and you shall have no reason to complain again." She clutched my arm tightly, and seemed about to protest, but I did not allow her to speak. "It was mean and unmanly of me to say what I have," I said, "but I was excited and almost beside myself; let us walk more rapidly towards home." At this Ruth looked at my face as if in surprise, and began to speak. "I hope I have not hurt your feelings, Roger, but I--that is----" "Pray, don't distress yourself, Ruth," I said. "It is well you have spoken and let me see the truth. Perchance I shall be thankful some day that you have spoken. Look, what's that?" I pointed towards the "Devil's Tooth," which we could still see rising clearly against the sky. On its very summit was a small flickering light, and in my fancy I saw a dark form moving among its rugged peaks. "It's a light," said Ruth, as if glad to change the subject; "what can it mean?" "It means death," I said. "Death! I don't understand, Roger." "Whenever any one sees a light on the 'Devil's Tooth' it means death to some one belonging to the man or woman who first saw it," I replied with a shudder. "But that's only a superstition," replied Ruth, "surely you will pay no attention to such stories."