CHAPTER IX.
AFTER this, Helen Rolleston and Mr.Hazel never spoke.

She walked past him on the deck with cold and haughty contempt.
He quietly submitted to it; and never presumed to say one word to her again.

Only, as his determination was equal to his delicacy, Miss Rolleston found, one day, a paper on her table, containing advice as to the treatment of disordered lungs, expressed with apparent coldness, and backed by a string of medical authorities, quoted _memoriter._ She sent this back directly, indorsed with a line, in pencil, that she would try hard to live, now she had a friend to protect from calumny; but should use her own judgment as to the means.
Yet women will be women.

She had carefully taken a copy of his advice before she cast it out with scorn.
He replied, "Live with whatever motive you please; only live." To this she vouchsafed no answer; nor did this unhappy man trouble her again, until an occasion of a very different kind arose.
One fine night he sat on the deck, with his back against the mainmast, in deep melancholy and listlessness, and fell, at last, into a doze, from which he was wakened by a peculiar sound below.

It was a beautiful and stilly night; all sounds were magnified; and the father of all rats seemed to be gnawing the ship down below.
Hazel's curiosity was excited, and he went softly down the ladder to see what the sound really was.