l. The craft crossed the strip of radiance and vanished
round the point, after which Mrs. Kinnaird flashed a keen glance at
her companion. He sat still, and his face, on which the moonlight
fell, was almost expressionless, but Mrs. Kinnaird fancied he had
noticed as much as she had, and that he had possibly grasped its
significance. In case he had not done the latter, she felt it her duty
to make the matter clear to him.

"I suppose that is Ida in the canoe," she said.

"It seems quite likely," replied her companion. "It couldn't have been
your daughter, because she went along the beach not long ago with the
major, and I don't think there's another young lady in the vicinity."

"Then the other must be--the packer."

The pause and the slight change of inflection as she said "the packer"
had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once
labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal
to bear on that account. He was not particularly vindictive, but he
remembered it.

"Yes, it's Weston," he said, and his companion felt herself corrected;
but she was, at least where Major Kinnaird was not concerned, in her
quiet way a persistent woman. Besides, Miss Stirling, who was going
with her to England, would some day come into considerable
possessions, and she had a son who found it singularly difficult to
live on the allowance his father made him.

"Is it altogether advisable that she should go out with him?" she
asked.

Stirling smiled somewhat dryly, for there was a vein of combativeness
in him, and she had stirred it.

"You mean, is it safe? Well, I guess she's quite as safe as she would
be with me or the major."

"Major Kinnaird was a flag officer of a rather famous yacht club,"
said the lady, who, while she fancied that her companion meant to
avoid the issue, could not let this pass. She was, however, mistaken
in one respect, for Stirling usually was much more ready to plunge
into a controversy than to back out of it.

"Well," he said reflectively, "the other man has earned his living
handling sail and people, which is quite a different thing."

Then he leaned toward her, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Madam," he added, "wouldn't you better tell me exactly what you
meant?"

Mrs. Kinnaird had a certain courage, and she was endeavoring to do her
duty as she understood it.

"That packer," she said, "is rather a good-looking man, and girls of
Ida's age are sometimes a trifl