The gentleman stepped backward and laid down the package which he had held under his arm, and advancing toward me with outstretched hands, and with tears starting to his eyes, he exclaimed:
"And this man, then, to whom I owe so much, is Mr. Craig!"
"Owe me!" I said. "It is to you that we owe our very lives, and our escape from death in mid-ocean."
"Do not speak of it," he said, shaking his head, with a sorrowful expression on his face. "You owe me nothing. I would to Heaven it were not so! But we will not talk of that now. And this is Mrs. Craig," he continued, taking Ruth by the hand, "the fair lady whose nuptials were celebrated in my house. And Mrs. Lecks, and Mrs. Aleshine." As he spoke he shook hands with each. "How I have longed to meet you! I have thought of you every day since I returned to my island and discovered that you had been—I wish I could say—my guests. And where is the reverend gentleman? and the three mariners? I hope that nothing has befallen them!"
"Alas!—for three of them at least," ejaculated Mrs. Aleshine; "they have left us, but they are all right. And now, sir, if you could tell us what relation you are to Emily, and what Lucille—"
"Barb'ry!" cried Mrs. Lecks, making a dash toward her friend, "can't you give the man a minute to breathe? Don't you see he's so dumflustered that he hardly knows who he is himself! If them two women was to sink down dead with hunger and hard slidin' right afore your very eyes while you was askin' what relation they was to each other and to him, it would no more'n serve you right! We'd better be seem' if anythin' 's the matter with 'em, and what we can do for 'em."
At this moment the younger of Mr. Dusante's ladies quickly stepped forward. "Oh, Mrs. Craig, Mrs. Lecks, and Mrs. Aleshine!" she exclaimed, "I'm just dying to know all about you!"
"And which, contrariwise," cried Mrs. Aleshine, "is the same with us, exactly."
"And of all places in the world," continued the young lady, "that we should meet here!"
No one could have been more desirous than I was to know all about these Dusantes, and to discuss the strange manner of our meeting; but I saw that Ruth was looking very pale and faint, and that the elder Dusante lady had sat down again upon the ground as though obliged to do so by sheer exhaustion, and I therefore hailed with a double delight the interruption of further explanations by the appearance of two men on horseback who came galloping toward us.