expression hidden in the shadow, for the moon was behind him.

"What a useful member of society you are, Stephen," cried Katie
Archdale. "I don't see how we could get on without you."

"I don't think we're getting on with him _very_ fast," remarked a young
gentleman sitting opposite Katie, pointing significantly at a curve of
the shore that they had not drifted out of sight of in the last half
hour.

"At least he has roused us," returned the girl, "for I half believe I
was sleepy before."

"I believe it wholly," answered Stephen, taking his seat beside her
again and looking down into her face teazingly with a cousinly freedom.
But it was not altogether a cousinly regard from which Katie drew back
after a moment, tossing her head coquettishly, and with a heightened
color, glancing past at her friend beyond him, who sat dipping one hand
in the water and looking dreamily at the shore. Stephen Archdale and his
cousin Katie lived within a few miles of each other, and there had
always been constant intercourse between their families. When boy and
girl, Stephen, four years the elder, the two had played together, and
they had grown up, as people said, like brother and sister. But of late
it was rumored that the conduct of young Archdale was more loverlike
than brotherly, and that, if Katie choose, the tie between them would
one day be closer than that of cousinhood. The stranger who sat opposite
Archdale, watching them both in silence, was of the same opinion. He was
rather portly for his age, which could not have been over thirty, and as
he sat in the boat he looked a taller man than he proved to be when on
his feet. His dark-brown beard was full, his eyes, like Archdale's, were