the rail
in the rain looking out at the blinking signal lights on both sides of
the river. The ship for the first time had abandoned its policy of
darkness and the decks were bathed in light.

Overhead the yardarm blinkers were signaling, and directly over Sara
Lee's head a great white searchlight swept the water ahead. The wind
was blowing a gale, and the red and green lights of the pilot boat swung
in great arcs that seemed to touch the waves on either side.

Sara Lee stood beside Mr. Travers, for companionship only. He had
preserved a typically British aloofness during the voyage, and he had
never spoken to her. But there was something forlorn in Sara Lee that
night as she clutched her hat with both hands and stared out at the
shore lights. And if he had been silent during the voyage he had not
been deaf. So he knew why almost every woman on the ship was making
the voyage; but he knew nothing about Sara Lee.

"Bad night," said Mr. Travers.

"I was wondering what they are trying to do with that little boat."

Mr. Travers concealed the surprise of a man who was making his
seventy-second voyage.

"That's the pilot boat," he explained. "We are picking up a pilot."

"But," marveled Sara Lee rather breathlessly, "have we come all the way
without any pilot?"

He explained that to her, and showed her a few moments later how the
pilot came with incredible rapidity up the swaying rope ladder and over
the side.

To be honest, he had been watching for the pilot boat, not to see what
to Sara Lee was the thrilling progress of the pilot up the ladder, but
to get the newspapers he would bring on with him. It is perhaps
explanatory of the way things went for Sara Lee from that time on that
he quite forgot his newspapers.

The chairs were gone from the decks, preparatory to the morning landing,
so they walked about and Sara Lee at last told him her story--the
ladies of the Methodist Church, and the one hundred dollars a month she
was to have, outside of her traveling expenses, to found and keep going
a soup kitchen behind the lines.

"A hundred dollars a month," he said. "That's twenty pounds. Humph!
Good God!"

But this last was under his breath.

Then she told him of Mabel Andrews' letter, and at last read it to him.
He listened attentively. "Of course," she said when she had put the
letter back into her bag, "I can't feed a lot, even with soup. But if I
only help a few, it's worth doing, isn't it?"

"Very much w