r own
business, after having promised M'riar that they would never let her
be sent back; that they would come and take her from the pen tomorrow.
Neither had the least idea of a way in which to make this possible,
but both swore in their hearts that it should be accomplished.

"Ach!" said Anna, "if only he had traveled in the third class, too! He
then would have been with us and would never have permitted it."

"But who, mine liebschen?"

Anna, realizing what she had been saying, colored vividly, but never
in her life had she deceived her father, hidden anything from him, or
in the slightest way evaded with him, so she summoned courage and said
softly: "Why, the--the young gentleman."

"What gentleman?"

"The one on the ship who sprang down when that wicked man caught me to
dance with him."

Herr Kreutzer slowly nodded, seeing no significance in her quick
thought of Vanderlyn, save that the thought was rare good sense. Being
an American, the young man naturally would have been better able to
explain the matter to the officers, and, had the matter been enough
explained, he thought, they could not, possibly, have had the heart to
hold the child. "Ach, yes," said he. "If he was here! He certainly
would know."

Luck, that day, as usually in his wealth-smoothed life, was with young
Vanderlyn, for, just as Anna and her father were regretting that he
was not there, lo, he appeared! It had been through his bull-dog
persistence that the elder Vanderlyn had won the wealth which son and
wife were spending now, since he had passed on to a shore where wealth
of gold may not be freighted. That same bull-dog persistence had the
son applied to the momentous problem which confronted him. Not only
had he won his difficult mother over to a friendly interest in the
lovely German girl who had so utterly enthralled him, but he had made
her eager to keep track of her, see more of her. Thus had he readily
been freed from the small services which a mother might expect of her
grown son on landing day; not only freed, but urged to go upon the
search for which his heart craved avidly.

He had had some difficulty in obtaining, quickly, an official permit
to repair to Ellis Island, but an opened pocketbook had solved it, in
due course of time, and, now, here he was, trying to "frame up," as he
expressed it to himself, "some really fair reason for having followed
these whom he was seeking."

The excitement of poor M'riar's sad predicament