I had very little rest that night, though Mother Mary herself, the sickest of the party, scolded the others for their demands on me, and at last bade me lie down and not mind them. At daylight most of my charges were asleep, and I stole on deck to compose myself and breathe a little fresh air. Lo! There before me lay the land, green and fair, clothed with forest for the most part, but with here and there a clearing. How heavenly it all looked, but I had no time for gazing. There stood the captain, as I thought, with his back to me, looking toward the land. There was no time like the present, and I went quickly up to him. "Captain Mayhew!" said I. The stranger turned, and I saw Andrew Corbet. He looked at me with a bewildered, half-recognizing gaze, and the thought darted into my mind that he did not mean to know me. But it was no time for scruples or maiden shyness. The need was too imminent. "Andrew!" said I. "If ever you loved me or my mother, save me!" "Vevette!" said Andrew, still wondering. "It is Vevette." Then catching me in his arms, he left me no doubt of the state of his heart. He never asked me whether I still loved him, and I don't think it ever occurred to him to doubt it. "Well!" said a voice close by. "I should say, Mr. Corbet, that you had found some one you was kind of glad to see." "Glad is no word," said Andrew, while I released myself, covered with blushes. "But how came you here?" In a very few words, I told him of what had happened. Andrew's brow grew dark, and Captain Mayhew expressed the wish that he had that Frenchman on board. "Will you not contrive to save me?" I said, in conclusion. "I am a Protestant—as much as I ever was. I cannot go to Canada. I only ask a safe asylum. They said I was a French subject because my father was French." "Plague the French!" said Captain Mayhew. "They shan't keep you. Yes, we'll save you somehow. Never fear. But how?" He considered a moment, and then his thin, clever face broke into a smile, and he turned to Andrew: "You say this young lady was promised to you, with the consent of her parents?" "Yes," answered Andrew. "We might have been married before this but for my own hardness and pig-headed jealousies." "You were not to blame," said I. "The fault has been all mine." "Reckon you'll have time to settle that," said the captain. "Well, since all that is so, and you like the young lady and she likes you, why, it appears to me that the best way will be to call the good minister who came over with us, and let him marry you on the spot. Then the lady will be the wife of a British subject, which will make her one herself, I take it; and if old King Lewy don't like it, let him come over himself and see about it." "It would be much the best way, Vevette," said Andrew, turning to me. "It would give me the right to protect you." I faltered something, I know not what.