rs' missions are used to late-comers and
early-goers and it was not long before the simple service came to a
close and the meeting began to break up. Goodwin took his cap and
rose, watching the tall girl as she went forward to join a couple of
older women. The black-coated man came down from the platform and
made his way toward Goodwin, amiable intentions visibly alight in his
whiskered face.

"Haven't seen you here before," he said at Goodwin's elbow. "What
ship d'you belong to?"

Goodwin, recalled to himself, looked down into the kindly, narrow
face of the missioner. He himself was tall, a long-limbed young man,
with a serious, darkly tanned face in which the blue of the eyes
showed up strongly; and in his bearing and the fashion of his address
there was a touch of that arrogance which men acquire who earn their
bread at the hourly hazard of their lives.

"Oh, I just dropped in," he said awkwardly. "I belong to th' Etna,
lyin' in the dock down yonder."

The missioner smiled and nodded.

"Etna, eh? Ah, yes. Somebody was tellin' me about the Etna. A hard
ship that's what you call her, eh?"

Goodwin nodded, and considered the face upturned toward his own
innocent, benevolent, middle-aged, worn, too, with hopes and
disappointments, yet unscarred by such bitter knowledge as men gained
early aboard the Etna.

"We call her the 'Hell-packet,'" he answered seriously.

The missioner nodded, and his smile, though it flickered, survived.

"It's an ugly name," he said; "but maybe she deserves it. An' so you
saw our door open and just stepped in? It's always open in the
evenin's and on Sundays, an' we'll always be glad to see you. Now,
I'd like to make you acquainted with one of our young ladies, so's
you won't feel you're a stranger, eh? An' then maybe you'll come
again."

"Oh, I dunno" began Goodwin, fidgeting.

But the missioner was already beckoning with a black-sleeved arm.
His pale elderly face seemed to shine.

Goodwin turned, looked to see whom he summoned, and forthwith dropped
his cap, so that he was bent double to pick it up when the young
lady, the tall girl who had offered him the hymn-book, arrived. He
came upright again face to face with her, abandoned by his faculties,
a mere sop of embarrassment before the softness of her eyes and the
smile of her lips.

The missioner's official voice brayed between them benevolently.
Goodwin had a momentary sense that there was a sort of indecency in
thus trumpe