, pretty face flushed faintly; the meaning of his question
was palpable.

"Ye-es," she hesitated; "I expect I'll be coming to-morrow."

"That's all right, then," said Goodwin cheerfully. "An' I'll be
along, too."

The elderly woman whom she had left at the missioner's summons was
hovering patiently. Goodwin held out his hand.

"Good night, Miss James," he said.

She gave him her hand, and he took it within his own, enveloping its
pale slenderness in his rope-roughened palm. He held it just long
enough to make her raise her eyes and meet his; then he released her,
and, avoiding the anti-climax of a further talk with the missioner,
passed out of the hall to the dark and sparsely peopled street.

At a small saloon whose lights spilled themselves across his path, he
got himself a glass of beer; he was feeling just such a thirst as a
man knows after nervous and exacting labor. The blond, white-jacketed
barman glanced at him curiously, marking perhaps something distraught
and rapt in his demeanor. Goodwin, ignoring him, took his beer and
leaned an elbow on the bar, looking round the place.

A couple of Germans were playing a game at a table near the door. A
man in the dumb-solemn stage of drunkenness stood regarding his empty
glass with owlish fixity. It was all consistent with a certain manner
and degree of life; it was commonplace, established in the order of
things. In the same order were the dreary street without, and the
Etna, loading at her wharf for the return voyage to San Francisco.
Their boundaries were the limits of lives; one had but to cross them,
to adventure beyond them, and all the world was different. A dozen
steps had taken him from the sidewalk into the mission hall and the
soft-glowing wonder of the girl; another dozen steps had replaced him
on the sidewalk. It almost seemed as if a man might choose what world
he would live in.

"Feelin' bad?" queried the barman softly; he could no longer contain
his curiosity.

"Me!" exclaimed Goodwin. "No!"

"Well," said the barman apologetically Goodwin was a big and
dangerous-looking young man "you're lookin' mighty queer, anyway."
And he proceeded to wipe the bar industriously.

The Etna had left San Francisco with a crew of fourteen men before
the mast, of whom twelve had been "Dutchmen." On her arrival in New
York, these twelve had deserted forthwith, forfeiting the pay due to
them rather than face the return voyage under the Etna's officers.
There re