light little craft was soon well in the water, swaying to and fro as
though with impatience to be gone. The girl sprang to her seat,
discarding his eagerly proffered assistance, and, taking both oars,
laid them in their respective rowlocks, and seemed about to start,
when she paused and asked abruptly--

"Are you a sailor?"

He smiled. "Not I! Do I remind you of one?"

"You are strong, and you manage a boat as though you were accustomed
to the work. Also you look as if you had been at sea."

"Rightly guessed!" he replied, still smiling; "I certainly HAVE been
at sea; I have been coasting all about your lovely land. My yacht
went across to Seiland this afternoon."

She regarded him more intently, and observed, with the critical eye
of a woman, the refined taste displayed in his dress, from the very
cut of his loose travelling coat, to the luxurious rug of fine fox-
shins, that lay so carelessly cast on the shore at a little distance
from him. Then she gave a gesture of hauteur and half-contempt.

"You have a yacht? Oh! then you are a gentleman. You do nothing for
your living?"

"Nothing, indeed!" and he shrugged his shoulders with a mingled air
of weariness and self-pity, "except one thing--I live!"

"Is that hard work?" she inquired wonderingly.