Then he lifted his voice and spoke aloud, as if to the island: "They'll not trouble you now. What else can I do?" "God bless you for doing what you've done! I'm a fool girl, and I thought I was all alone and I went in swimming, and they came and I hid on the island. And I--I haven't got my things with me!" "Couldn't you get ashore without being seen? These beasts won't look. And I won't look. You can trust me, can't you?" "When you tell me that nobody is looking I'll come ashore." "Nobody is looking now." He heard a splash and sounds as of strong swimming. And he was dying to look. He took out his little automatic and cocked it, and he said to himself: "If you do look, Bob, you get shot." Ten minutes passed. "Are you all right?" he called. "Yes, thank you, all right now. But how can I thank you? I don't want you to see me, if you don't mind. I don't want you to know who I am. But I'm the gratefulest girl that ever lived; and I'm going home now, wiser than when I came, and, listen----" "I'm listening." "I think I'd almost die for you. There!" Mr. Jonstone's hair fairly bristled with emotion. "But am I never to see you, never to know your name?" The answer came from farther off. "Yes, I think so. Some time." "Do you promise that?" Silence--and then: "I _almost_ promise." * * * * * Having assured himself that the drunken men were not dead, Mr. Jonstone sighed like a furnace and started down the mountain. His hand hurt him like the devil, but the pain was first cousin to delight. XXVII The Camp was much concerned to hear of poor Mr. Jonstone's accident. A round stone, he said, had rolled suddenly under his foot and precipitated him down a steep pitch of path. He had put out his hands to save his face and, it seemed, broken a bone in one of them. And at that, the attempted rescue of his face had not been an overwhelming success. It was not until the doctor had come and gone that Mr. Jonstone told his cousin what had really happened. Colonel Meredith was much excited and intrigued by the narrative. "And you've no idea who she was?" he asked. "No, Mel; I've thought that the voice was familiar. I've thought that it wasn't. It was a very well-bred Northern voice--but agitated probably out of its natural intonations. Voices are queer things. A man might not recognize his own mother's voice at a time when he was not expecting to hear it." "Voices," said Colonel Meredith, "are beautiful things. This wasn't a motherly sort of voice, was it?" "But it might be," said Mr. Jonstone gently. "I wonder if they've anything in this place to make a fellow sleep. Bromide isn't much good when you've a sure-enough sharp pain." "You feel mighty uncomfortable, don't you, Bob?" The invalid nodded. He was pale as a sheet, and he could not keep still. He had received considerable physical punishment and his entire nervous system was quivering and jumping.