ife out of him as he passed under it.

Clearing the intervening obstacles in a hurdler's leap, Griswold raced
aft on the outer edge of the guards and jumped overboard in time to
grapple the drowning man when he was within a few feet of the churning
wheel. The struggle was short but fierce. Griswold got a strangling arm
around the big man's neck and strove to sink with him so that the wheel
might pass over them. He was only partly successful. The mate was
terror-crazed and fought blindly. There was no time for trick or
stratagem, and when the thunder of the wheel roared overhead, Griswold
felt the jar of a blow and the mate's struggles ceased abruptly. A
gasping moment later the worst was over and the rescuer had his head
out; was swimming gallantly in the wake of the steamer, supporting the
unconscious M'Grath and shouting lustily for help.

The help came quickly. The alarm had been promptly given, and the night
pilot was a man for an emergency. Before the little-used yawl could be
lowered, the steamer had swept a wide circle in mid-stream and the
search-light picked up the castaways. From that to placing the _Belle
Julie_ so that the two bits of human flotsam could be hauled in over the
bows was but a skilful hand's-turn of rudder-work, accomplished as
cleverly as if the great steamboat had been a power-driven launch to be
steered by a touch of the tiller.

All this Charlotte saw. She was looking on when the two men were dragged
aboard, the big Irishman still unconscious, and the rescuer in the final
ditch of exhaustion--breathless, sodden, reeling with weariness.

And afterward, when the _Belle Julie's_ prow was once more turned to the
north, Miss Farnham had no thought of stopping at the clerk's office
when she flew back to her state-room with the letter to Mr. Galbraith
hidden in her bosom and clutched tightly as if she were afraid it might
cry out its accusing secret of its own accord.

X

QUICKSANDS

On the morning following the rescue of the mate, Charlotte Farnham awoke
with the conviction that she had been miraculously saved from incurring
the penalties dealt out to those who rush blindly into the thick of
things without due thought and careful consideration.

In the light of a new day it seemed almost incredible that, only a few
hours earlier, she could have been so rash as to assume that there was
no possibility of a mistake; that she had been on the verge of sending a
possibly innocent man t