with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a
grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy
bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the
day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint
capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a
comfortable support. "Good night, my world," would say Mrs. Conant
every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very
happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy
in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And
it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that
nothing could sever.

One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered
La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was
their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o'clock tea.

When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was
the _Pajaro_, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.

The _Pajaro_ put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing
shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the
shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a
mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain
and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward
the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to
strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of
the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to
strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever,
H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten
feet away.