ooner's deck. The child cowered back into
the shadow of the deck-house, her eyes intent again on the listener
leaning out from the quay-door. He could not even see what she had seen;
and if Tom was in talk with anyone inside her own ears caught no sound of
it. Nevertheless her uncle's attitude left no room to doubt that he was
playing the spy, and trying, at least, to listen.

"What name?" asked Hester, dipping her pen.

"What name? Eh, to be sure,"--Tom Trevarthen hesitated for a moment.
"Put down Harriet Sands." She glanced up, and he nodded. "Yes, that'll
do--Harriet Sands, of Runcorn."

"She must have some nearer address than that. Runcorn is a large town, is
it not?"

He pondered, or seemed to ponder. "Then we'll put down 'Sailors' Return
Inn, Quay Street, Runcorn.' That'll find her, as likely as anywhere."

Hester wrote the address and glanced up inquiringly; but his eyes were
fastened on the desk where her hand rested, and on the virgin sheet of
notepaper placed ready for use.

"A public-house? It wanted only that!" she told herself. Aloud she said,
"'My dearest Harriet'--Is that how you begin?"

He appeared to consider this slowly. "I suppose so," he answered at
length, with a shade of disappointment in his voice.

"And next, I suppose, you say, 'This comes hoping to find you well as it
leaves me at present.'"

"Don't 'ee--don't 'ee, co!" he implored her almost with a cry of pain; and
then, scarcely giving her time to be ashamed of her levity, he broke out,
"They tell me you can guess a man's thoughts and write 'em down a'most
before he speaks. Why won't you guess 'em for me? Write to her that when
we parted she was unkind; but be she unkind for ever and ever, in my
thoughts she will be the best woman in the world. Tell her that whatever
she may do amiss, in my eyes she'll last on as the angel God A'mighty
meant her to be, and all because I love her and can't help it. Say that
to her, and say that there's degrees between us never to be crossed, and I
know it, and have never a hope to win level with her; but this once I will
speak and be silent all the rest o' my days. Tell her that there's bars
between us, but the only real one is her own self; that for nothing would
she be beyond my reach but for being the woman she is."

Hester laid down the pen and looked up at him with eyes at once dim and
shining.

"I cannot write this," she said, her lips stammering on the words.
"I am not w