ad better mention it to
you, sir."

"Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently. "I don't know
anyone of that name. Some mistake, I suppose, or---- Well, sailors
will be sailors! Thank you, Andrewes, that will do. Good-night--or,
rather, we shall be back in half an hour or so." He turned to Oswyn,
who had been hanging back to avoid any appearance of interest in the
conversation, for corroboration. "You will come back, of course?"

"Rather late, isn't it? I think I had better catch some train before
midnight, if there is one."

"Oh, there are plenty of trains," said Rainham vaguely. "We can
settle that matter later. I can give you a bed here, you know, or a
berth, at any rate."

As they stepped through the narrow opening in the gate, a dark form
sprang forward out of the shadow, and then stopped timidly.

"Oh, Cyril!" cried a woman's plaintive voice. "Cyril! I knew you
were here, and they wouldn't let me---- Ah, my God! it isn't Cyril
after all...!"

The voice--and it struck Rainham that it was not the voice of a
woman of the sort one would expect to encounter in the streets at
that hour--died away in a broken sob, and the girl fell back a step,
almost dropping the child she carried in her arms.

Her evident despair appealed to Rainham's somewhat inconveniently
assertive sensibility.

He hesitated for a moment, glancing from the girl to Oswyn, and
noting that the face, too, had a certain beauty which was not of the
order affected by the women of Blackpool.

"Don't go," he said to Oswyn, who had withdrawn a few paces. "I
won't keep you a moment!"

The baby in the woman's arms set up a feeble wail, and it was borne
in upon Rainham's mind that the unhappy creature with the white face
and pleading dark eyes had been waiting long.

"Didn't my foreman tell you that the--that the gentleman you asked
for is not here?" he inquired gently. "No one here has ever heard of
Mr. Crichton. I'm afraid you have made a mistake.... Hadn't you
better go home? I'm sure it would be best for your child."

"Home?" echoed the girl bitterly. Then, changing her tone, "But I
saw him here with my own eyes!" she pleaded. "I saw him at the
window there not a week ago quite plain, and then they told me he
wasn't here! I'm sure he would see me if he only knew--if he only
knew!"

"He may have been here," suggested Rainham doubtfully. "There are a
great many people here from day to day, and we don't always know
their names. But