er things. Then he wrote a letter, containing many
good arguments, and pinned it on Felicia's door. He tiptoed downstairs
and out into the night. From the street he could see the faint green
light from his mother's room, where Miss McClough was sitting. He turned
and ran quickly, without stopping to think.

No one was abroad but an occasional policeman, twirling his night-stick.
On the wharves the daylight confusion was dispelled; there was no
clatter of teaming, no sound but the water fingering dank piles, and the
little noises aboard sleeping vessels. But the _Celestine_ was awake.
Lights gleamed aboard her, men were stirring, the great mass of her
canvas blotted half the stars. She was sailing, that night, for Rio de
Janeiro.

Ken slipped into the shadow of a pile-head, waiting his chance. His
heart beat suffocatingly; his hands were very cold. Quietly he stepped
under the gang-plank, swung a leg over it, drew himself aboard, and lay
flat on deck beside the rail of the _Celestine_ in a pool of shade. A
man tripped over him and stumbled back with an oath. The next instant
Ken was hauled up into the light of a lantern.

"Stowaway, eh?" growled a squat man in dungaree. "Chuck him overboard,
Sam, an' let him swim home to his mamma."

In that moment, Ken knew that he could never have sailed with the
_Celestine_, that he would have slipped back to the wharf before she
cast loose her hawsers. He looked around him as if he had just awakened
from sleep-walking and did not know where he found himself. He gazed up
at the gaunt mainmast, black against the green night sky, at the main
topsail, shaking still as the men hauled it taut.

"I'm not a stowaway," he said; "I'm going ashore now."

He walked down the gang-plank with all the dignity he could muster, and
never looked behind him as he left the wharf. He could hear the rattle
of the _Celestine's_ tackle, and the _boom, boom_ of the sails. Once
clear of the docks he ran, blindly.

"Fool!" he whispered. "Oh, what a fool! what a senseless idiot!"

The house was dark as he turned in at the gate. He stopped for an
instant to look at its black bulk, with Orion setting behind the
chimney-pots.

"I was going to leave them--all alone!" he whispered fiercely. "Good
Heavens!"

He removed the letter silently from Felicia's door,--he was reassured by
seeing its white square before he reached it,--and crept to his own
room. There a shadowy figure was curled up on the floor, and