Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

"What right have you to breathe such a word when you're married to me?"

"But I'm not used to being married yet," pleaded Eva. "And I forgot, this once."

"It's once and for all," said Adam, "You'll never be to me what you were before. Is it the English-Canadian way to bring up women to kiss every comer?"

"I didn't kiss anybody but Louis Satanette," maintained Eva, "and I didn't really want to kiss him"

"Never mind," said Adam. "Don't trouble your butterfly soul about it." And he turned away and walked toward the tent.

"I'll not love you if you say such awful things to me," she flashed after him.

"Ye can't take the breeks off a Hielandman," he replied, facing about, "Ye never loved me. Not as I loved you. And it's no loss I've met, if I could but think it."

"Oh, Adam!" Now she ran forward and caught him around the waist. "Don't be so hard with me. I know I am very bad, but I didn't mean to be."

Some faint perception of that coarse fibre within her was breaking with horror through her face. She held to his hands after he had separated her from his person and held her off.

"All that you do still has its effect on me," said the man, gazing sternly at her. "I love ye; but I despise myself for loving ye. This morn I adored ye with reverence; this night you're as a bit o' that earth."

Eva let go his hands and sat down on the ground. As he made his preparations in the tent he could not help seeing with compassion how abjectly her figure drooped. All its flexible proud lines, were suddenly gone. She was dazed by his treatment and by the light in which he put her trifling. She sat motionless until Adam came out with one of the cots in his arms.

"I'm to sleep upon the hill in the pine woods to-night," said he. "Go into the tent, and I'll fasten the flaps. You shan't be scared by anything."

"Let me get in the boat and leave the island, if you can't breathe the same air with me," said Eva. staggering up.

"No, I can't breathe the same air with ye to-night, but ye'll go into the tent," said Adam, with authority.

"I'll not stay there," she rebelled. "I'll follow you. You don't know what may be on this island."

"There can be nothing worse than what I've seen," said Adam; "and that's done all the hairm it can do."

"Oh, Adam, are we both crazy?" the small creature burst out, weeping as if her heart would break. "Don't go away and leave me so. I am not real bad in my heart, I know I am not; and if you would be a little patient with me and help me, I shall get over my silly ways. There is something in me, you can depend upon, if I did do that foolish thing. And my mother didn't live long enough to train me, Adam; remember that. Won't you please kiss me? My heart is breaking."

He put down the cot and took her by the shoulders, trembling as he did so from head to foot:

"My wife, I belaive what you say. I'd give all the days remaining to me if I could strain ye against my breast with the feeling I had this morn. But there comes that sight. I never shall see the hill again, I never shall see a spot of this island again, without seeing your mouth kissing another man. Go into the tent. God knows I'd die before hairm should come to you. But not to-night can I stay beside you. Or kiss you."

He carried her into the tent and put her on her bed. She had made all the night-preparations herself, placing the pillows on both cots and turning back the sun-sweetened blankets.

Adam left her sobbing, buttoned the tent-flaps outside, and placed a barricade of kettles and pans which could not be touched without disturbing him on the hill. Then, taking up his own bed, he marched off through the ferns, edging his burden among dense boughs as he ascended.

When he had made the joints of his couch creak with many uneasy turnings, had clinched at leaves, and started up to return to the tent, only to check himself in the act as often as he started, he lost consciousness in uneasy dreams rather than fell asleep.

He was smothering, and yet could not open his lips to gasp for a breath of air. Then he was drowning: he gulped in vast sheets of water upon his lungs. An alarm sounded from Eva's barricade. He heard the pans and kettles clanging and her own voice in screams which pierced him, yet he could not move. A nightmare of heat enveloped him; the smothering element pouring upon his lungs was not water, but smoke; and he knew if no effort of will could move his body to her rescue he must be perishing himself.

After these brief sensations his existence was as blank as the empty void outside the worlds, until his ears began to throb like drums, and he felt water, like the tears he had shed in the morning, running all over his face. Eva held him in her arms, and alternately kissed his head and drenched it from the lake.

Moreover, he was in the boat, outside the bay, and their island glowed like a furnace before his dazzled eyes.

Those pine woods where he had gone to sleep were roaring up toward heaven in a column of fire. The tent was burning, all its interior illuminated until every object showed its minutest lines. He thought he saw some of Eva's dark hairs in an upturned hair-brush on the wash-stand.

Fire ran along the cliff-edge and dropped hissing brands into the lake. Old moss logs and pine-trees dry as tinder sent out sickening heat. The light ran like a flash up the tree over their stove, and in an instant its crown was wavering with flames. The grass itself caught here and there, and in whatever direction the eye turned, new fires as instantaneously sprang out to meet it.

Stumps blazed up like lighted altars, or like huge gas-jets suddenly turned on. Adam saw one log lying endwise downhill, one side of which was crumbling into coals of fierce and tremulous heat, while from the other side still sprung unsinged a delicate tuft of ferns.

The smoke was driving straight upward in a quivering current, and in Lake Magog's depths another island seemed to be on fire.

Sublime as the sight was, all these details impressed themselves on the man in an instant, and he turned his face directly up toward the woman.

"Darling, your face looks blistered," said Adam.

"It feels blistered," replied Eva. "I'll put some water on it, now that you've caught your breath again. I thought I could not get you out from those burning trees."

"But you dragged me down the hill?"

"Yes, and then dipped you in the lake and pushed off with you in the boat. I don't know how I did it. But here we are together."

Adam bathed her face carefully himself, and held her tight in his arms. The unspeakable love of which he had dreamed, and the heat of the burning island, seemed welding them together without other sign than the fact.

Not a word was sighed out for forgiveness on either side. They held each other and floated back into the lake. Adam took an oar and occasionally paddled, without wholly releasing his hold of Eva.

"Don't you remember our fish's nest?" she whispered beside his neck. "I wonder if the slim little silver thing is swimming around over the gravel hollow, frightened by all this glare? I hope those overhanging bushes won't catch fire and drop coals on her; for she's a silly thing,—she might not want to dart out in deep water and lose her unhatched family."

Adam smiled into his wife's eyes. He was quite singed, but did not know it.

"Ay, burn," he spoke out exultantly, apostrophizing the island. "Burn up our first home and all. It's worth it. We're the other side o' the world of fire now. We've passed through it, and are afloat on the sea of glass."

    M. H. CATHERWOOD.

PROBATION

Full slow to part with her best gifts is Fate:
The choicest fruitage comes not with the spring,
But still for summer's mellowing touch must wait,
For storms and tears that seasoned excellence bring;
And Love doth fix his joyfullest estate
In hearts that have been hushed 'neath Sorrow's brooding wing.
Youth sues to Fame: she coldly answers, "Toil!"
He sighs for Nature's treasures: with reserve
Responds the goddess, "Woo them from the soil."
Then fervently he cries, "Thee will I serve,—
Thee only, blissful Love." With proud recoil
The heavenly boy replies, "To serve me well—deserve."

    FLORENCE EARLE COATES.

THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST