The keel has caught among the pebbles, but we can easily move it between us." And, jumping lightly out of her boat, she grasped its edge firmly with her strong white hands, exclaiming gaily, as she did so, "Push!" Thus adjured, he lost no time in complying with her request, and, using his great strength and muscular force to good purpose, the 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.