at's absurd, Jim."

"Well, you'll see. An' as for me, I feel as sure as God's above us
guidin' us through the mazes of the night, I'll never live to make the
trip back. I've got a hunch. Old Jim's on his last stampede."

He sighed, then said sharply:

"Did you see that feller that passed us?"

It was Mosher, the gambler and ex-preacher.

"That man's a skunk, a renegade sky-pilot. I'm keepin' tabs on that man.
Maybe him an' me's got a score to settle one of them days. Maybe."

He went off abruptly, leaving me to ponder long over his gloomy words.

We were now three days out. The weather was fine, and nearly every one
was on deck in the sunshine. Even Bullhammer, Marks and Mosher had
deserted the card-room for a time. The Bank clerk and the Wood-carver
talked earnestly, planned and dreamed. The Professor was busy expounding
a theory of the gold origin to a party of young men from Minnesota.
Silent and watchful the athletic Mervin smoked his big cigar, while,
patient and imperturbable, the iron Hewson chewed stolidly. The twins
were playing checkers. The Winklesteins were making themselves solid
with the music-hall clique. In and out among the different groups darted
the Prodigal, as volatile as a society reporter at a church bazaar. And
besides these, always alone, austerely aloof as if framed in a picture
by themselves, a picture of dignity and sweetness, were the Jewish maid
and her aged grandfather.

Although he was my room-mate I had seen but little of him. He was abed
before I retired and I was up and out ere he awoke. For the rest I
avoided the two because of their obvious connection with the
Winklesteins. Surely, thought I, she cannot be mixed up with those two
and be everything that's all right. Yet there was something in the
girl's clear eyes, and in the old man's fine face, that reproached me
for my doubt.

It was while I was thus debating, and covertly studying the pair, that
something occurred.

Bullhammer and Marks were standing by me, and across the deck came the
acridly nasal tones of the dance-hall girls. I saw the libertine eyes of
Bullhammer rove incontinently from one unlovely demirep to another, till
at last they rested on the slender girl standing by the side of her
white-haired grandfather. Appreciatively he licked his lips.

"Say, Monkey, who's the kid with old Whiskers there?"

"Search me, Pete," said Marks; "want a knockdown?"

"Betcher! Seems kind-a standoffish, though, don't she?"