They went to the island; they saw Mrs. Kingman: her husband was still sleeping off the effects of his midnight debauch. She told Eugene that Mary had gone--where she knew not. The “strange story” that was circulating at the Port had not yet reached the island. With tearful eyes she narrated to him the events which had transpired in the house when Captain Kingman came home in the middle of the night; that Mary had been driven from her home by the fear of her father’s violence; that even her life was in peril if she remained longer in the house. Eugene was filled with anguish by the story of wrong and violence; and it was some time before he could muster the courage to repeat to her the rumor which was passing through the village. Mrs. Kingman listened patiently to his slow and struggling utterance of the truth so terrible to him. “I shouldn’t wonder, a mite,” said the woman. “Then you think it is true that she has gone off with this man?” asked Eugene. “I shouldn’t be the least surprised. Mr. Buckstone was down here e’en a’most all the time arter that day you were all here.” “Was he?” “That’s what made her father so desp’ate mad with her. He found ’em down on the beach two or three times; and arter that it seemed to me the man was possessed with the sperit of the evil one, and he pestered the poor gal all the time.” “What did you think of Mr. Buckstone yourself?” said Eugene, pierced to the soul by every word the woman spoke. “Well, he was a perlite body. He always looked like a nice sort o’ man to me; but there’s no tellin what a body is by the looks. Cap’n Kingman stuck to’t the man was a raskil; he told me that he had hearn some one said so that knew him in New York.” “Poor Mary!” sighed Eugene. He had already passed from the selfish view of his own loss to an unselfish consideration of the poor girl’s fate. The story was all told. What he had been too blind to see, others had known for a week--that Mary had encouraged the attentions of the artist. With a heart sadder than he had ever known before, he walked down to the boat, where his friend had remained while he went up to the house to make the inquiries. He repeated to Dick all that he had learned. “Poor girl! I pity her, if the fellow is the villain he is represented to me,” said Dick, who, though sometimes sharp in his words and quick in his conclusions, had a heart as warm and tender as that of a woman. Eugene buried his face with his hands, and groaned in bitterness of spirit. To his own grief at the loss of her who seemed to be more to him now than ever before, was added the revolting fact that Mary Kingman had unwittingly thrown herself into the arms of a reckless villain. To have known that she had become the bride of an honest man, would have been tolerable; to feel that she had thrown herself away upon an unprincipled wretch, was insupportable. “What shall I do, Dick?” he exclaimed, unable longer to conceal the tears that flowed down his haggard face.