.

He, smiling fatuously on the curb, saw it carry her off, swaying and
grinding. "Mary," he repeated. "Mary!"

Following his purpose, within the next few days he found himself
employment as one of a gang of riggers at work on a great German
four-masted barque which had been dismasted in a squall off Fire
Island. In the daytime he dealt with spars and gear, such stuff as he
knew familiarly, in the company of men like himself. Each evening
found him, washed and appareled, at the mission, furnishing a
decorous bass undertone to the hymns, looked on with approval by the
missioner and his helpers. Commonly he got himself a seat next to
Miss James; but he could not again contrive a walk with her along the
still street to the lighted corner where she ran to catch her car.
There seemed always to be a pair of voluminous elderly matrons in
attendance upon her, to daunt and chill him. She herself was
unchanged; her soft, beneficent radiance, her elusive, coy charm, all
her maddening quality of delicacy and shrinking beauty, uplifted him
still.

"Say," he always whispered, as he let himself down beside her, "are
we goin' to have a talk tonight?"

And she would shake her averted head hurriedly, and afterwards the
iron-clad matrons would close in on her and make her inaccessible.
And, in the end, he would go off to get a drink in a saloon before
going back to his room, baffled and discontented.

There were three evenings running on which she did not come to the
mission at all. On the fourth Goodwin was there before her. He looked
at her steadily as she came to her place.

"I want to talk to you to-night," he said, varying his formula, as
she sat down.

She gave him a swift, uncertain glance.

"Got to," he added gravely. "It's a case, an' I just got to."

"What about?" she asked, with a touch of resentment that was new in
her.

"I guess you know," he answered quietly, and hitched nearer to her
along the bench to make room for a new-comer who was thrusting in
beside him. He turned perfunctorily to see who it might be. It was
old Noble.

"Friends!" grated the voice of the missioner. "Let us begin by
singing hymn number seventy-nine: 'Pull for the shore, sailor; pull
for the shore!'"

The noise of the harmonium drowned the rustling of hymn-book pages.
Noble's elbow drove against Goodwin's.

"Found ye!" rumbled the old man. "Say, come on out where I can talk
to ye. We're sailin' in the mornin'."

"Hush!" whispered Go