"You are a Frenchman?" she inquired quickly, pushing to my side. The stranger glanced at us, then his great figure quivered as a tree shakes beneath the ax. I could have sworn that a tinge of red leaped into his pale cheeks and that he was gazing at the golden brooch which once more held Ruth's cloak, but he replied slowly and calmly in a musical voice:
"I speak French, mademoiselle, though I may not claim to belong to that nation."
"Who are you?" asked Ruth, "and what are you doing in that little boat?"
"As to my name, that matters not," he replied with a bow that could only have been learned in courts. "I was sailing to the west, and if I might thank your company for saving me from a leaky and all but disabled craft, I would fain do so through you."
Ruth put his words into our own to
