us--which
commanded him to return the little Princess by any means he could, his
reward being the fulfillment of his heart's desire.

"And now," he moaned, rocking to and fro, "after seventeen years of
searching, I have won only to lose!"

Truly, I was touched. Tommy turned quickly away and blinked at the
horizon. Yet neither of us knew that all of this time Doloria had been
standing in the companionway door. She now crossed swiftly and sat by
the weeping man, impulsively drawing his grizzled head to her shoulder
as a mother might have comforted a hurt child. But toward me her face
was turned, and I saw that her startled eyes spoke into mine the
entreating message which distracted her--telling me that we must
acknowledge this claim of Monsieur's poor heart before our own could
ever be happy; asking me what to do, since his title to happiness came
first. Yet all that her lips spoke was the trembling whisper:

"Oh, Jack!"

But he, with a new determination, sat quickly upright. The warmth of a
woman's sympathetic arms upon a life that had been without comfort, the
quick intuition that she was pleading for him at a great cost to
herself, stirred the fineness of his nature, and he cried:

"Never! I have lived this long, and this long suffered, enough to know
the irony of that royal barrier! Your aunt and I, dear child, are
passing toward the shadows of life, while you and my boy Jack are just
starting out. Your happiness shall not be cindered upon a false altar--I
swear it!"

"Good old boy," Tommy murmured. "Do you mean that, honest?"

"_Pardieu_, have I not sworn it?"

"And you wouldn't try to muddy the water again if I confessed that our
Marine Law was a hocus-pocus?"

"What is that hocus-pocus?"

"A no-such-a-thing."

"_Sacre bleu_! I see! Pipes and iron safes and hocus-pocus! But I do not
care!" He turned to Doloria and, taking one of her hands, said: "You,
_mon ami_, shall find your heart's best desire. It is I who say it!--I,
who have the authority!" The way he clung to that authority was really
pathetic.

"It occurs to me, Monsieur," Tommy crossed and looked down at them--and
I saw that Doloria read in his eyes the sadness of one who must remain
outside while others pass through to happiness--"that you, too, can find
your heart's best desire. Jack and our sweet Princess will be leaving
for Azuria as soon as passports are procurable. Now, the day they
arrive, you might be moseying about the railroad sta