ried, almost in fear. "You wouldn't."

"I certainly would. I am going to have you, one way or another.
Nobody else shall get you, Sheila. And you can't go far enough or
fast enough to lose me."

"Don't!" she said faintly. "You cannot be in earnest. Do you know
what it means if you and I have any association whatsoever? Oh! I
thought this was all over--that you would not tear open the wound--"

"I don't mean to hurt you, Sheila," he said softly. But he was
smiling. "I have got something to tell you that will, I believe, put
an entirely different complexion on your affairs."

"What--what can you mean?" she burst out. "Oh, tell me!"

"I'll tell you a little of it now. Just enough to keep you from
thinking I am crazy. The rest I will not tell you save in the Balls'
sitting room before Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."

"Tunis!" she murmured with clasped hands.

"Yesterday I spent two hours in the manager's office of Hoskin &
Marl's. They have been looking for you for more than six months.
Naturally, there was no record of you after you left that--that
school when your time was out. They didn't seem to guess you'd have
got work in that Seller's place."

"What do you mean? What did they want me for?" gasped the girl.

"Near as I could find out from the old gentleman who seemed to be in
charge there at the store, they wanted to find you to beg your
pardon. He cried, that manager did. He broke down and cried like a
baby--especially after I had told him a few things that had happened
to you, and some things that might have happened if you hadn't found
such good friends in Cap'n Ira and Prudence. That's right. He was
all broke up."

The girl stood before him, straight as a reed. She rocked with the
pitching of the schooner, but it seemed as though her feet were
glued to the planks. She could not have fallen!

"They--they know--"

"They know they sent to jail the wrong girl. The woman that stole
the goods is dead, and before she died she wrote 'em all about it
from the sanitarium where the firm sent her. They are sending you
papers signed by the judge, the prosecuting attorney, even the
pawnbroker and the store detective, and--and a lot of other folks.
Why, Sheila, you are fully exonerated."

She began suddenly to weep, the great tears raining down her face,
although she still stood erect and kept her gaze fixed upon him.

"Six months! As long as I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we
were making up our plot on that