Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/47

33 Helen is Miranda—and luckily there are no Ferdinands"—

Suddenly he stopped, glanced at Archer's broad shoulders and shining head, and then stared into the fire.

"Hm!" he said, his enthusiasm gone. After a silence, his voice was sad again. "Yes, though I am Prospero, I have no magic." And he sighed. "But you shall see my book. No one else has read it, not even Helen."

Stepping to the desk in the corner, he brought over and laid in the lamplight a large book in black leather,—the same into which he had been copying. Archer, looking on over his shoulder, could see in his movements a tremulous pride. On the first page they read the title,—"This Bank and Shoal of Time."

"You see," said the little man, already transformed into the explanatory author, "the title is naturally suggested to one living, as I do, on an island surrounded by the eternal sea. But I must explain that you will find here not so much my own thoughts as those