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Show : & BEEPWATIRS IS BEN AMES WILLIAMS -sg WILLIAMS W.N. U. FEATURES THE STORY SO FAR: Robin Dale, a young artist, goes to Moose Bay to see her fiance, Will McPhail. When Will is accidentally killed, his brother Angus blames Robin. She goes to Angus' fishing fish-ing cruiser to see him. While she Is on board the boat sails, carrying her, Angus, Pat Donohoe and Romeo toward to-ward Labrador. The boat is seized by a man named Jenkins, who Is trying to escape from a government patrol. The boat runs aground and sinks. When Jenkins Jen-kins tries to steal the last of the food there Is a free-for-all fight, and Pat and Mr. Jenkins are both hurt. Romeo escapes es-capes in a passing fishing boat without telling the others. Now continue with the story. longer greatly cared whether she lived or died. Angus came back at dusk, and she slept between 'him and Pat, and when she woke it was broad day and he was gone again. She spoke his name, and Pat said: "He's up on top ma'am, keeping watch, case anyone comes handy by." She did not see Angus till she came close to him. He sat on the shoreward side of the monument, his back against it, his chin on his chest. When she touched him, he roused instantly. "I was resting," he confessed, con-fessed, shamedly. "I went to sleep." She said: "I want to tell you something, some-thing, Angus." He thought she was delirious, held her close, tried to lift her. She shook her head. "No, don't," she said. "I'm all right. Only I'm dying dy-ing of course." She smiled, wrinkling wrin-kling her eyes at him. "Like the apple trees, Angus. I'm dying, don't "Well, my dear, you've a bright eye on you this morning! You're better, bet-ter, I'm thinking." They went along the rugged coast to Corner Brook in a lubberly mo-torboat mo-torboat that smelled most mightily of cod, and it rolled and tossed on the greasy seas and pot-potted at its business in a humdrum way. Pat sat with his leg in splints stretched out before him; and Angus stayed near Pat, and he had no word for Robin at all. Angus scarce spoke all that journey, jour-ney, but Pat talked to her. Pat was an understanding big brute of a man. At Corner Brook he insisted they leave him there till his leg could mend. He said she and Angus An-gus must take the train and catch the boat at Port aux Basques. "Sure and I'm fine, sorr," Pat declared. "I'll let you hear when I'm fit for traVeling again. Now be off and see the young lady safe home." So she and Angus took the train together; and at dusk that evening they stood on the after deck of the Caribou, watching the last lights of Port aux Basques turn yellow and then disappear in fog behind them. Robin had accepted defeat Angus would never change. He would never nev-er love a woman. He would see her "nV - CHAPTER XVII "We might manage something with powder out of the cartridges in the pistol," Angus said. Pat, using Romeo's knife, had managed to split some flakes of dry wood out of the heart of one of the chunks of drift and to prepare fine dry shavings. Angus removed the bullet from one of the shells and mixed powder and l shavings together, and flashed the primer into the mixture. The ex-periment ex-periment succeeded. - ' Angus said abruptly: "We'll have a bigger fire tonight, but we'll need more wood for that. Miss Dale, you and I can go hunt some if you're not too tired." She was sure she was not. They descended the broken rocks slope below the shelter till they came to the shingle bach, exposed at low tide; and they followed it along, salvaging sal-vaging small bits of drift here and there. Angus was able to carry under un-der his arm what little wood they found in their progress around the northern end of the island; but at , last they came upon a real treas- - ure, a spruce bolt four feet long and almost a foot thick. Angus picked it up and turned to face her and his eyes were shining. They were as happy as children over their find. Angus dropped the bolt of pulpwood and went to heave at the stump. "I can carry it," he decided. "I'll get it on my shoulders." shoul-ders." He turned it on end, the roots uppermost, and squatted and chose his hand holds and stood erect with the burden on his back. "I'll come back for the other," he said. She was sure she could carry that. Angus said, already panting: "Don't if it's too heavy." He strode strongly away along the beach. When they came to where that stick of spruce lay, she picked it up in her arms i like a baby and tried to follow him. But the bolt was terribly heavy. Her arms ached as though they were being stretched on the rack, her legs were weak, and her knees almost refused to support her weight. When she came to. the foot of the rubble slope below the shelter, shel-ter, Angus was already halfway up safe on her homeward way; but .that was all. Safe? She thought she would never nev-er be safe and at ease again. She asked: "How did they come to rescue res-cue us, Angus?" "By the time they got Romeo ashore-he was delirious," Angus replied. re-plied. "Something he said started them wondering, and they finally sent a second- boat to the island to check his story." Robin pondered this a moment, then asked: "How can I get to Ri-mouski? Ri-mouski? My car is there." She wore a dress bought in Corner Brook. "I've no clothes, nor money. You had to pay for these things I'm wearing, and you'll have to lend me money for a railroad ticket." "If you write a cheque, the purser will cash it." She stared at him in the darkness, hurt beyond words. Then she turned, and he went with her to find the purser. She asked for a blank cheque, filled it in. With the money in her hands she turned to Angus: "Now, how much was it?" she asked. "Clothes, tickets, everything?" every-thing?" He told her, to the penny. "You're Scotch, aren't you?" she reflected re-flected gravely, and gave him bills and waited for her change. Then she said: "Good night," and went to her cabin and hoped she need not see him again. But in the morning when she appeared, ap-peared, he was waiting at the end of the corridor. "We're in," he said. "We're tied up at the dock, waiting for the immigration men." "Are we?" "Yes!" He spoke almost roughly. He said: "You're safe now. You don't need me any more. You don't owe me anything. You're not dying. dy-ing. You're all right." Robin looked up at him with a sudden beating interest. "Yes," she assented. "Of course I am. Why?" His hand gripped her arm so hard she wished to cry out, but she was not sure whether she felt rapture or pain. He said harshly: "You were crazy, delirious, on the island; but we're both sane now. There's no apple ap-ple tree business in this! I want to marry you!" At his own words perspiration beaded his brow, and his lips were white with fear. He was a little boy. . . . She laughed in flooding happiness. happi-ness. "Heavens to Betsy I" she whispered. whis-pered. "What a blessed man!" THE END She laughed in flooding Happiness. you think? Bearing apples is their way .of loving, isn't it? Angus, I love you." He lifted her, stood erect She wondered how he could. "How can you still be strong?" she whispered. He bore her down toward the shelter. shel-ter. "Do you love me?" she asked quietly. He said: "Hush! We'll be all right." So she knew that some things could never change; yet when he brought her back" to the cave under the ledge,' she made him hold her till she fell hard asleep in his arms. Robin knew nothing after that till she woke between rough sheets, with something warm and delicious trickling trick-ling down her throat. She tried to call Angus, and her closed eyes filled, and tears welled out between her lashes, and someone said tenderly: ten-derly: "There, poor lamb!" Robin wanted to be comforted and petted and tended, so she cried a little more, and a woman with rough hands was kind to her, and she slept for hours or days, and woke to a room full of sunshine, and the woman wom-an said: She had not till then seen Pat 1 ' Donohoe, busy at some strange task on the slope below the shelter. On his knees, he was building a rock pile, long and narrow, laying each boulder with care. When she came up to him she asked: "What are you doing, Pat?" He looked at her gravely, without replying; but his silence answered her question, and her eyes filled. She went on hurriedly, looked past Angus An-gus into the shelter. Mr. Jenkins was not there. They had a fire presently in the , mouth of the shelter, with a crevice at the top of the barrier to let the smoke circulate. She and Pat stayed there, drying their clothes, drying the seaweed that served as their mattress, revelling in the delicious scalding warmth of the flames, choking chok-ing in the smoke. Angus had departed de-parted again to see what he could find. She was asleep when he returned re-turned with another log and some smaller stuff; and looking up at him she realized that he had grown terribly terri-bly thin. His eyes were sunken, as though the flesh back of them was gone. She was full of a great com- passion, a rich tenderness. She wished to take him in her arms. He dropped his burden and stepped over their fire into the shelter, and began to fumble in his pockets. "Brought our supper," he said triumphantly. tri-umphantly. He produced handfuls of diminutive, snail-like shellfish. "The seaweed's full of them," he said. "We'll live high." She watched him carefully break the snail shells, collecting the tiny bits of flesh on a flat rock. He tilted tilt-ed the slab to face the fire, and the snails shrivelled and charred in i the reflected heat. Robin thought ' the odor of them delicious; but they proved thin and watery, containing no real sustenance. The bit of food served only to awaken hunger pangs that had begun to dull. They allowed the fire to go out. "We've none too much wood," Angus An-gus said, "and we'll have to keep some for a signal fire when it clears." He left them presently to go tirelessly questing around the island is-land that was their prison, and Pat slept, and Robin thought wearily that the sun would never . shine again. The wind, without ever rising ris-ing to gale force, yet persisted out of the northeast; it spat rain at them; it brought a sprinkle of sleet or snow on an occasional colder gust. Life slipped out of her that afternoon. Till now she had been hungry and cold; but also she had wished to live, had fought to live. Now she no |