such evident good faith that his opponent deemed it
best to forget that matter, vaguely suspecting that he had encountered
a "professional."

A more fearsome opponent bore down upon the depressed scion of all the
Smiths, late that afternoon. Mrs. Charlton Denyse maneuvered him into a
curve of the rail, and there held him with her glittering eye.

"I beg your pardon." This, pitched on a flat and haughty level of
vocality, was her method of opening the conversation.

The Tyro sought refuge in the example of classic lore. "You haven't
offended me," he said, patterning his response upon the White Queen.
"Perhaps you're going to," he added apprehensively.

"I am going to talk to you for your own good," was the chill retort.

"Oh, Lord! That's worse."

"Do you see that ship?" The Denyse hand pointed, rigid as a bar, to the
south, where the Tyro discerned a thin smudge of smoke.

"I see something."

"That is the Nantasket."

"At this distance I can't deny it," murmured the Tyro.

"Which left New York two days behind us, and is now overhauling us,
owing to our accident."

He received this news with a bow.

"On board her is Henry Clay Wayne," she continued weightily.

"Congratulations on your remarkable keenness of vision!" exclaimed the
Tyro.

"Don't be an imbecile," said the lady, "I didn't see him. I learned by
wireless."

"Rather a specialty of yours, wireless, isn't it?" he queried.

She shot an edged look at him, but his expression was innocence itself.
"He will reach England before us."

"Then you don't think he'll board us and make us all walk the plank?"
asked the Tyro in an apparent agony of relief.

"Don't get flip--" cried the exasperated lady--"pant," she added barely
in time--"with me. Mr. Wayne will be in England waiting for you."

"Anyway, he can't eat me," the Tyro comforted himself. "Shall I hide in
the stoke-hole? Shall I disguise myself as a rat and go ashore in the
cargo? What do you advise?"

"I advise you to keep away from Miss Wayne."

"Yes. You did that before. At present I'm doing so."

"Then continue."

"I shall, until we reach solid earth."

"There my responsibility will cease. Mr. Wayne will know how to protect
his daughter from upstart fortune-hunters."

The Tyro regarded her with an unruffled brow. "Never hunted a fortune in
my life. A modest competence is the extent of my ambition, and I've
attained that, thanking you for your kind interest."

"In the necktie and