The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-03-22

both were faint from hunger. AIter u long time Helen returned and sat down. The two looked at each other in silence. They tried to eat, but could not. After half an hour of this Penfold lifted him. self by his crutch and crawIed out to see the blaze.
 There was none. All was dark.
 He turned to look at Helen. T have not lighted it at all,' she said. She hid her blushing face in her hands, and then suddenly fled from him like the wind.
 The vessel that had thus been allowed to pass in She darkness was indeed the 1 Sprlngbok, passing close to the island. through quite by chance. She had been cruising more than four months without finding anything to arouse hope, and she | was then steering for higher latitude, intending to call at Easter island.
 Had Helen even imagined that her | father was on board searching for her, 1 she would have lit the bonfire at once. | But Penfold. whose reasoning she had l come to believe blindly. had said that | Arthur Wardlaw was on board. Confront | ed with the issue between the two. her ! heart spoke in manner not to be gain I said. All conventions fell away. She knew that she loved this man of her island dearly, and she tried no longer to hide it from herself or him.
 As for him-now that she was content
 to spend her days there, the island was
 PdfdulS6 -lIueeu, WlLH lue sun SiIlliiHS
 down on 1t and the ocean smiling up, the
 world forgetting; by the world forgot"
 But the Springbok steaming north with
 her disheartened crew, fell in presently
 with a sea gypsy, half pirate, half trader,
 who haunted the South American coast
 in his disreputable craft He had run
 far up from his usual course to find the
 Springbok, of whose quest he knew; for
 duck had flown aboard his schooner
 and he had found a message tied to it's
 leg.
 The Springbok ran northward 400 miles
 along the 1OSd degree. 90 min, drifting
 by night. Then she ran south 500 miles.
 On the eighth day, a sailor cried Land
 ho!''p Three hours later their eyes saw
 the giant inscriptions on the reef.
 Before that sun set. the Springbok was on her way home to England, with Helen Rolleston abroad-but without the Rev. John Hazel. That man had told General Rolleston and Helen the story of his trial Helen had thrown her arms around him and vowed that she would not leave him. but Robert Penfold had insisted that she must not marry a convict.
 'Go to England," said he, "and win back my honorable name for me. Sift the whole story. And promise me not to
 marry Arthur Wardlaw till you have re- versed that lying sentence that blasted
 me. shall wait here, alone." T, too, pledge my hand to help,' said the general. You are noble fellow On her arrival in England Helen told Arthur Wardlaw honestly that she loved Penfold. Overcome as he was by the in- formation, he refused to give her up and held her to her plighted word. Then she told him that she could not marry him
 until she had cleared Penfolds name He assented with apparent eagerness and ex- l plained his inability to appear at the trial with what seemed convincing reasons l But in his cunning he overreacned him. i self.
 | He calculated that the best way to pre- l vent her from setting dangerous investi- 1 gations on foot was to supply her with | all the documents that she might want l Therefore he went so far as even to have printer set up accounts of the trial that looked exactly as if they were clippings from newspapers of the time. In thess forged clippings of course, Penfold's case was set forth in the worst aspect. His plans were excellent, but something happened that he could not foresee. Helen met the counsel who had prosecuted Pen- fold for the Grown. With quick decision she confided her story to him. Charmed no less by her beauty than by
 the romance, the keen lawyer took up her cause with real interest He told Helen that Penfold's counsel had made sad error in not insisting on postponement till Wardlaw could attend as witness. 1 There was something mysterious about the thing" said he, though my side of the case was clear enough"
 The next day he sent to her Burt. the Scotland Yard detective who had worked up the case and arrested the clergyman. The detective. far from feeling malice. mad conceived a great respect for the hard hitting ability of his prisoner, and
 was willing to do all in his power. Chance Artb
 helped him before 24 hours were over He had not been on the case a day when he found that Helen was being shadowed
 by spies. He followed them and discov-
 cred that they reported to wardlaw That simple discovery not only rendered useless all the deception with which
 Arthur Wardiaw had surrounded Helen during the three months since her ar-
 rival in England but 1t turned those very
 deceptions into instruments for his de-
 lection. The same handwriting expert
 who had sworn in favor of Penfold at his trial discovered at once that the clippings were forgeries.
 Still, even with Wardlaw thus un-
 masked they seemed far from discovering who had forged the note. They were at a standstill, while the expert compared the
 fac-simile of the forged note which he
 had made at the time with signature after
 signature without stumbling on clue, til one night sunburned stranger came to him, laid before him letter written to Helen Rolieston and signed Arthur Wardlaw," and asked him to compare the two.
 That is the forger.' cried the expert The stranger was Robert Penfold. He had spent weeks of misery on the island after he had seen the last of the
 ship that bore Helen away. He had wan
 dered from place to place where she had been won't to sit. At last he found a
 letter in her cave-Arthur Wardlaw's let
 ter to her. First he had tossed 1t out of his sight Then, with the Jealousy of
 man madly in love, be had looked at 1t again. Suddenly the signature stood out
 before his eyes as if in letters of fire. There came to him the blinding realiza-
 tion his false friend was the forger! With that conviction, tearing away the doubt and puzzle of years, there came the
 next realization, which might have come sooner to one less generous and more
 suspicious In that moment he felt sure that the Proserpine had been scuttled at Arthur Wardaw's orders-and there re-
 mained only the task of discovering the reason.
 Robert Penfold decided on a desperate venture. He rushed to the cutter and fitted her out for a long voyage. He lashed strips of buoyant, cork-like wood to her sides and laid in great stock Of provisions
 He also put in enough gems and gold to