him to leave the fire, to-night. I will accompany mademoiselle.'

Pretty Jeannette shrugged her shoulders. 'Mais, monsieur,' she
answered, 'I go over the hill.'

'No, child; not tonight,' I said decidedly. 'The wind is violent, and
the cliff doubly slippery after this ice-storm. Go round through the
village.'

'Of course we shall go through the village,' said our surgeon, in his
calm authoritative way. They started. But in another minute I saw
Jeannette fly by the west window, over the wall and across the snowy
road, like a spirit, disappearing down the steep bank, now slippery
with glare ice. Another minute, and Rodney Prescott followed in her
track.

With bated breath I watched for the reappearance of the two figures on
the white plain, one hundred and fifty feet below; the cliff was
difficult at any time, and now in this ice! The moments seemed very
long, and, alarmed, I was on the point of arousing the garrison, when
I spied the two dark figures on the snowy plain below, now clear in
the moonlight, now lost in the shadow. I watched them for some
distance; then a cloud came, and I lost them entirely.

Rodney did not return, although I sat late before the dying fire.
Thinking over the evening, the idea came to me that perhaps, after
all, he did admire my protegee, and, being a romantic old
woman, I did not repel the fancy; it might go a certain distance
without harm, and an idyl is always charming, doubly so to people cast
away on a desert island. One falls into the habit of studying persons