An Outcast of the Islands

sign of his cleverness and a load too heavy for him to carry. A run of bad luck at cards, the failure of a small speculation undertaken on his own account, an un

it, to test the sharpness of men's eyesight and the steadfastness of their hearts. For one short, dark and solitary moment he was dismayed, but he had that courage that will not scale heights, yet will wade bravely through the mud-if there be no other road. He applied himself to the task of restitution, and devoted himself to the duty of not being found out. On his thirtieth birthday he had al

cavern of some wild beast. Willems' troubled eyes took in the quick impression of men and things as he came out from the place of his humiliation. He saw the scared expression of the punkah boy; the Chinamen tellers sitting on their heels with unmovable faces turned up blankly towards him while their arrested hands hovered over the little piles of bright guilders ranged on the floor; Mr. Vinck's shoulder-blades with the fl

f circumstances that had driven him into his idiotic indiscretion. Idiotic indiscretion; that is how he defined his guilt to himself. Could there be anything worse from the point of view of his undeniable cleverness?

afternoon. The house was a pretty little structure all doors and windows, surrounded on all sides by the deep verandah supported on slender columns clothed in the green foliage of creepers, which also fringed the overhanging eaves of the high-pitched roof. Slowly, Willems mounted the dozen steps that led to the verandah. He paused at ev

s. Gradually he lost himself in his thoughts, in the endless speculation as to the manner in which she would receive his news-and his orders. In this preoccupation he almost forgot the fear of her presence. No doubt she will cry, she will lament, she will be helpless and frightened and passive as ever. And he would have to drag that limp weight on and on through the darkness of a spoiled life. Horrible! Of course he could not abandon her and the child to certain misery or possible starvation. The wife and the child of Willems. Willems the successful, the smart; Willems the conf . . . . Pah! And what was Willems now? Willems the. . . . He strangled the half-born thought, and cleared his throat to stifle a g

blue bows down the front, stained, and hooked on awry; a torn flounce at the bottom following her like a snake as she moved languidly about, with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards from bow to bow, noticing those that hung only by a thread, but it did not go beyond her chin. He looked

ied her to please Hudig, and the greatness of his sacrifice ought to have made her happy without any further exertion on his part. She had years of glory as Willems' wife, and years of comfort, of loyal care, and of such tenderness as she deserved. He had guarded her carefully from any bodily hurt; and of any other suffering he had no conception. The assertion of his superiority was only another benefit conferred on her. All this was a mat

ome this morning, Joanna?" he a

hem, and he was not the man to break it. The solidity of his principles caused him great satisfaction, but he did not care to look at his wife, for all that. He waited for her to speak. Then he would have to c

mpatiently--"don't stand there in a

ittle face pressed to its mother's shoulder, was sleeping peacefully. The deep silence of the house was not broken, but rather accentuated, by the low mutter of the cockatoo, now very still on its

distinctly, but in a voice t

ed him as if somebody had fired a gun close

hat I am going to starve with you. You are nobody now. You think my mamma and Leonard would let me go away? And with

exclaime

iped your feet on me. I have waited for this. I am not afraid now. I do not want you; do not come near me. Ah-h!"

head of his wife. Why? What had he ever done to her? This was the day of injustice indeed. First Hudig-and now his wife. He felt a terror at this hate that

Willems, in a pier

noise of his wife and child in his own angry accents and ra

ool closet, appeared Leonard, a rusty iron bar in his ha

lems. You are a savage. N

adhouse?" He moved towards the stairs, and Leonard dropped the bar with a c

piracy. Who's that sobbing and groaning in the

ly the crying child in the big chair wal

er who came to defend me from y

ou hung round my neck-before we were m

ile I suffered and said nothing. What has become of your greatness; of our greatness-you were always speaking about? Now I am going to live on the charity of yo

ems, slowly, with a

ild, pressed it to her breast, and, falling into a chair, drummed

were a stone round my neck; you understand. I did not mean to tell you that as long as you lived, but you

et, with wide-open eyes, the child crying querulously in her arms. At the gate he came sudde

s trembled very much, and his voice wavered between high and low tones without any attempt at control on his part. "Restrain your improper viol

ned he was looking at Leonard da Souza rolling in the dust at his feet. He stepped over his prostra

rushed past him with a frightened snarl. He was now in the midst of the Malay quarter whose bamboo houses, hidden in the verdure of their little gardens, were dark and silent. Men, women and children slept in there. Human beings. Would he ever sleep, and where? He felt as if he was the outcast of all mankind, and as he looked hopelessly round, before resuming his weary march, it seemed to him that the world was bigger, the night more vast and more black; but he went on doggedly with his head down as if pushing his way through some thick brambles. Then suddenly he felt planks under his feet and, looking up, saw the red light at the end of the jetty. He walked quite to the e

-shouldered figure-the patient, faded face of the weary man earning bread for the children that waited for him in a dingy home. It was miserable, miserable. But it would never come back. What was there in common between those things and Willems the clever, Wil

e, because he had lost his faith, the faith in his own suc