etreat from all quarters of the globe, and he cut out everything
relating to his subject. His library was a dusty room lined all around
with brown-paper pockets, which were labelled with the names of colonies
and counties.

"It will take us two generations to do it, my boy, but we'll alter the
history of England."

At fifty he was iron-gray, and had a head like a big owl.

Meanwhile the object of these grand preparations, the offspring of that
loveless union, had a personality all his own. It seemed as if he had
been built for a big man every way, and Nature had been arrested in the
making of him. When people looked at his head they felt he ought to have
been a giant, but he was far from rivalling the children of Anak. When
they listened to his conversation they thought he might turn out to be a
creature of genius, but perhaps he was only a man of powerful moods. The
best strength of body and mind seemed to have gone into his heart. It may
be that the sorrowful unrest of his mother and her smothered passion had
left their red stream in John Storm's soul.

When he was a boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale
of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the
streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst
into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the
path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a
gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life of the
offender.

On coming to the Isle of Man he noticed as often as he went to church
that a little curly red-headed girl kept staring at him from the vicar's
pew. He was a man of two-and-twenty, but the child's eyes tormented him.
At any time of day or night he could call up a vision of their gleaming
brightness. Then his father sent him to Canada to watch the establishment
of the Dominion, and when he came back he brought a Canadian canoe and an
American yacht, and certain democratic opinions.

The first time he sailed the yacht in Manx waters he sighted a disabled
boat and rescued two children. One of them was the girl of the vicar's
pew, grown taller and more winsome. She nestled up to him when he lifted
her into the yacht, and, without knowing why, he kept his arms about her.

After that he called his yacht the _Gloria_, in imitation of her name,
and sometimes took the girl out on the sea. Notwithstanding the
difference of the years between them, the