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t grasp it else. And now it was at an end. They would have to go. Leave this house, leave this island, go far away where he was unknown. To the English Strait-Settlements perhaps. He would find an opening there for his abilities--and juster men to deal with than old Hudig. He laughed bitterly. "You have the money I left at home this morning, Joanna?" he asked. "We will want it all now." As he spoke those words he thought he was a fine fellow. Nothing new that. Still, he surpassed there his own expectations. Hang it all, there are sacred things in life, after all. The marriage tie was one of them, and he was not the man to break it. The solidity of his principles caused him great satisfaction, but he did not care to look at his wife, for all that. He waited for her to speak. Then he would have to console her; tell her not to be a crying fool; to get ready to go. Go where? How? When? He shook his head. They must leave at once; that was the principal thing. He felt a sudden need to hurry up his departure. "Well, Joanna," he said, a little impatiently---"don't stand there in a trance. Do you hear? We must. . . ." He looked up at his wife, and whatever he was going to add remained unspoken. She was staring at him with her big, slanting eyes, that seemed to him twice their natural size. The child, its dirty little face pressed to its mother's shoulder, was sleeping peacefully. The deep silence of the house was not broken, but rather accentuated, by the low mutter of the cockatoo, now very still on its perch. As Willems was looking at Joanna her upper lip was drawn up on one side, giving to her melancholy face a vicious expression altogether new to his experience. He stepped back in his surprise. "Oh! You great man!" she said distinctly, but in a voice that was hardly above a whisper. Those words, and still more her tone, stunned him as if somebody had fired a gun close to his ear. He stared back at her stupidly. "Oh! you great man!" she repeated slowly, glancing right and left as if meditating a sudden escape. "And you