w.

"Runs smooth at the present writing," said Watson.

"Clair chann'l ef noth'n' else," responded Ned. The allusion was neither
to boat nor stream but to a certain opportuneness of things, whose
obviousness to them, looking down, was mainly what kept Ramsey standing.
While she stood beside the two empty chairs cross-questioning Hugh with
a fresh show of her maturer mildness and he stood inwardly taking back
his late farewell to sweet companionship and softly answering in his
incongruous pomp of voice with a new tenderness, and while the worn-out
mother gradually let her full weight sink on the tired slave, this
obvious propitiousness was embarrassingly increased by the two weary
ones falling asleep.

True, the clearness of channel--this channel in the upper air--was not
absolute, but its obstacles nettled mostly the pilots. To Ramsey, even
to Hugh, obstacles were almost welcome, as enabling them to show to a
prying world that nothing beyond the grayest commonplace was occurring
between them. One such interruption was the upcoming and passing of Mrs.
Gilmore and the physician to the sick-room and the cub pilot's parting
with them to join the younger pair. The boy found Hugh confessing that
he should not know exactly how to word Phyllis's "free papers" but
adding that the first clerk would be pleased to make them out at once if
Ramsey's eagerness so dictated. It did, and presently the modest
intruder was hurrying away on a double errand: to bear this confidential
request to the clerk and then to seek the Brothers Ambrosia and with
them and the two under-clerks arrange for the evening performance, the
giving of which, however, Ramsey insisted, must depend on the captain's
condition when evening should come.

"Wish it were here now," she said as they watched the messenger go.
"Don't you?"

"I could," he replied, "but it will be here soon enough."

The conversation which followed remained in their memory through years
of separation.

She spoke again in her new tone: "You think your father will get well,
don't you?"

"No, Ramsey."

At those words her heart did two things at once: stopped on the first,
rebounded on the second. But it fell again as he added: "I fear I must
lose my father to-night."

She stood mute, looking into his eyes and pondering every light and
shadow of the severe young face that to her seemed so imperially unlike
all others. "He's great," she said in her heart. "And he loves with his
great