ap over his shoulders and stood
up as though to pass his cap. But instantly the huge harpist arose and
muttered something to him in a guttural tone. The other sat down and
the big man seized the cap and began to move about the deck to make
such collection as the audience was disposed to give for the music.

Although he had stared so at the unconscious lady's back, the big man
did not go in her direction at first, as the two girls quite expected
him to do. He went around to the other side of the deck after taking
Helen's toll, and so manoeuvred as to come to the end of the lady's
bench and suddenly face her.

"See him watch her, Ruth?" whispered Helen again. "I believe he knows
her."

There was such a sly smile on the fat man's face that he seemed to be
having a joke all to himself; yet his eyebrows were drawn down over his
nose in a scowl. It was not a pleasant expression that he carried on
his countenance to the little lady, before whom he appeared with a
suddenness that would have startled almost anybody. He wheeled around
the end of the settee on which she sat and hissed some word or phrase
in her ear, leaning over to do so.

The little woman sprang up with a smothered shriek. The girls heard
her chatter something, in which the word "_merci_" was plain. She
shrank from the big man; but he was only bowing very low before her,
with the cap held out for a contribution, and his grinning face aside.

"She is French," whispered Helen, excitedly, in Ruth's ear. "And he
spoke in the same language. How frightened she is!"

Indeed, the little lady fumbled in her handbag for something which she
dropped into the insistent cap of the harpist. Then, almost running
along the deck, she whisked into the cabin. She had pulled the veil
over her face again, but as she passed the girls they felt quite sure
that she was sobbing.

The big harpist, with the same unpleasant leer upon his face, rolled
down the deck in her wake, carelessly humming a fragment of the tune he
had just been playing. He had collected all the contributions in his
big hand--a pitiful little collection of nickels and dimes--and he
tossed them into the air and caught them expertly as he joined the
other players. Then all three went aft to repeat their concert.

An hour later the _Lanawaxa_ docked at Portageton. When our young
friends went ashore and walked up the freight-littered wharf, Ruth
suddenly pulled Helen's sleeve.

"Look there! There