m the little upper room, in which
he was hastily changing his clothing. "I shall be back whenever my
ship comes in, which will probably be in a week, or it may take a few
days longer. There's a wreck, you know, and I am going to save the
pieces. But I'll be down directly."

"A wrack!" gasped Mrs. Trefethen, "and 'im in hit! Save us! but 'twill
be worse than down shaft. Shaft be dry land, anyway, but they awful
sea that rageth like a lion seeking whom it may devour. Oh, Maister
Peril!"

"Yes, coming!"

The young man was just then making a hasty transfer of the contents of
his pockets, besides cramming into those of his working-suit several
articles that he imagined might prove useful. At that moment an
impatient whistle from the timber train that would take him to the
landing warned him that he had no more time to spare, and, snatching
his hat, he sprang down the stairway.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Trefethen!" he cried. "Tell Miss Nelly she sha'n't be
turned out of her own room any longer, and tell her--But never mind;
only tell her that I will have something important to say to her when
I come back. Give her my love, and--" Here his words were cut short by
another shrill whistle from the waiting train; and Peveril ran from
the house, shouting back "Good-bye!" as he went, and leaving the good
woman gasping with the breathless flurry of his departure.

When Nelly Trefethen reached home a half-hour later she received such
a confused account of what had just happened as caused her rosy cheeks
to take on a deeper color and filled her with a strange agitation. Mr.
Peril had gone to be a sailor, and would come back very shortly as
captain of a ship. Perhaps it would be a splendid, great steamer, such
as she had seen lying at the Marquette ore docks. He had left his
love for her; he would have something of the greatest importance to
say the next time he saw her; and she was not to be turned out of her
room again. What could he mean by that, and what a very strange thing
it was for a young man to say? Since he had said it to her mother,
though, it must have meant--Oh dear! how she wished she had not gone
out that morning, and what an endless time a whole week seemed!

At length, anxious to escape from her mother's torrent of words, and
to be alone with her own thoughts, the blushing girl fled up-stairs on
the pretence of putting Mr. Peril's room in order.

The very first thing she spied on entering the room, about which his
belo