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So here he was, on a cold February night, and already nearly at his destination; for now he could make out a light across the marsh, and from dark and infinite distances the east wind bore the solemn rumor of the sea, muttering of wrecks and death along the Atlantic sands beyond the inland sounds.

“Well, Jim,” he said, “I never thought I’d survive this drive, but here we are, and still alive. Are you frozen solid, you poor boy?”

The boy smiled, shyly, in negation, as they drove into the bar of light from the kitchen window and stopped. Marche got down very stiffly. The kitchen door opened at the same moment, and a woman’s figure appeared in the lamplight–a young girl, slender, bare armed, drying her fingers as she came down the steps to offer a small, weather-roughened hand to Marche.

“My brother will show you to your room,” she said. “Supper will be ready in a few minutes.”

So he thanked her and went away with Jim, relieving the boy of the valise and one gun-case, and presently came to the quarters prepared for him. The room was rough, with its unceiled walls of yellow pine, a chair, washstand, bed, and a nail or two for his wardrobe. It had been the affectation of the wealthy men composing the Foam Island Duck Club to exist almost primitively when on the business of duck shooting, in contradistinction to the overfed luxury of other millionaires inhabiting other more luxuriously appointed shooting-boxes along the Chesapeake.

The Foam Island Club went in heavily for simplicity, as far as the two-story shanty of a clubhouse was concerned; but their island was one of the most desirable in the entire region, and their live decoys the most perfectly trained and cared for.

Marche, washing his tingling fingers and visage in icy water, rather wished, for a moment, that the club had installed modern plumbing; but delectable odors from the kitchen put him into better humor, and presently he went off down the creaking and unpainted stairs to warm himself at a big stove until summoned to the table.

He was summoned in a few moments by the same girl who had greeted him; and she also waited on him at table, placing before him in turn his steaming soup, a platter of fried bass and smoking sweet potatoes, then the inevitable broiled canvas-back duck with rice, and finally home-made preserves–wild grapes, exquisitely fragrant in their thin, golden syrup.

Marche was that kind of a friendly young man who is naturally gay-hearted and also a little curious–sometimes to the verge of indiscretion. For his curiosity and inquiring interest in his fellow-men was easily aroused–particularly when they were less fortunately situated than he in a world where it is a favorite fiction that all are created equal. He was, in fact, that particular species of human nuisance known as a humanitarian; but he never dreamed he was a nuisance, and certainly never meant to be.

Warmth and food and the prospects of to-morrow’s shooting, and a slender, low-voiced young girl, made cheerful his recently frost-nipped soul, and he was inclined to expand and become talkative there in the lamplight.

“Has the shooting been pretty good?” he asked pleasantly, plying knife and fork in the service of a raging appetite.

“It has been.”

“What do you think of the prospects for to-morrow?”

“He tells you that he–he is in love with you? With you?” repeated Herold unsteadily.

“Yes. It is true, too.”

“You mean he asked you to marry him!”

“Yes. And I said I would.”

“You love him!”

The man’s pallor frightened her silent. Then he dropped her arms, which he had been clutching, and stood staring at nothing, gnawing at his colorless lips.

The girl watched him with dawning terror and finally ventured to speak. “Dear, what is the matter? Are you displeased with me? Do you think that he is not a man I should care for? You don’t know him, dear. You have only to see him, to speak with him, hear his voice, look into his eyes—-“