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Rh temporary overseer, and dismissed the awed crowd with instructions to settle down to work immediately.

"Good man!" said Chester when he heard what had been done. "One way and another, things seem to be petering out on Tao Tao, and at the present moment I don't think I'd recommend my bitterest enemy to buy the place as a going concern, but I will be up and doing soon, and maybe it will be possible to pull things together again."

"You've got to sit tight and get your head mended, before you even remember you're a planter," said Keith good-naturedly.

There were still a hundred things to be done about the house, and Keith attacked the work vehemently, but he was abstracted through it all, and although when Joan offered him a helping hand, he accepted her assistance smilingly enough, it seemed to her that he tried to avoid speech with her. This was not the man to whom she had clung during those precious moments on the beach but a few hours before, she thought. There he had been tempestuous, overwhelming. He had hurt her as he crushed her to him, and she had loved him the more for it. His present behaviour puzzled and wounded her. With a woman's natural longing to share the knowledge of her love with some one, Joan would have flown to Chester, had she not begun to doubt the return of her passion.

Could it be that he had acted purely on the impulse