He intended, of course, to make every possible attempt to restore her to her home; but, he argued, was it wrong to snatch a few golden hours of happiness in return for his service, and as partial recompense for the lifetime of lonely misery that must be his when the woman he loved had passed out of his life forever?  Billy thought not, and so he tarried on upon “Manhattan Island,” as Barbara had christened it, and he lived in the second finest residence in town upon the opposite side of “Riverside Drive” from the palatial home of Miss Harding.

Nearly two months had passed before Billy’s stock of excuses and delay ran out, and a definite date was set for the commencement of the journey.

“I believe,” Miss Harding had said, “that you do not wish to be rescued at all.  Most of your reasons for postponing the trip have been trivial and ridiculous—­possibly you are afraid of the dangers that may lie before us,” she added, banteringly.

“I’m afraid you’ve hit it off about right,” he replied with a grin.  “I don’t want to be rescued, and I am very much afraid of what lies before—­me.”

“Before you?”

“I’m going to lose you, any way you look at it, and—­ and—­oh, can’t you see that I love you?” he blurted out, despite all his good intentions.

Barbara Harding looked at him for a moment, and then she did the one thing that could have hurt him most—­she laughed.

The color mounted to Billy Byrne’s face, and then he went very white.

The girl started to say something, and at the same instant there came faintly to them from the mainland the sound of hoarse shouting, and of shots.

Byrne turned and started on a run in the direction of the firing, the girl following closely behind.  At the island’s edge he motioned her to stop.

“Wait here, it will be safer,” he said.  “There may be white men there—­those shots sound like it, but again there may not.  I want to find out before they see you, whoever they are.”

The sound of firing had ceased now, but loud yelling was distinctly audible from down the river.  Byrne took a step down the bank toward the water.

“Wait!” whispered the girl.  “Here they come now, we can see them from here in a moment,” and she dragged the mucker down behind a bush.

In silence the two watched the approaching party.

“They’re the Chinks,” announced Byrne, who insisted on using this word to describe the proud and haughty samurai.

“Yes, and there are two white men with them,” whispered Barbara Harding, a note of suppressed excitement in her voice.

“Prisoners,” said Byrne.  “Some of the precious bunch from the Halfmoon doubtless.”

The samurai were moving straight up the edge of the river.  In a few minutes they would pass within a hundred feet of the island.  Billy and the girl crouched low behind their shelter.

“I don’t recognize them,” said the man.