approach the gangplank of the
_Normandy_.

Then, for a moment, at least, he was sure he was going to have his
wish. He spied the one-eyed man coming into view from behind a heap of
freight and approach the boarding-plank. He spoke to the girl and she
halted.

Drew was on the point of darting back to the girl's rescue. But the
seaman's attitude was respectful, and it seemed that what he said was
not offensive. At least, the girl listened attentively, nodded when
the man had finished speaking, and as the latter fell back she tripped
lightly aboard the _Normandy_, and so disappeared.

Drew's curiosity was so great that he might have lingered until the
girl came ashore again, but the one-eyed man was coming up the dock and
the young fellow was cooler now and felt that it would not be the part
of wisdom to have another altercation with the rough looking stranger.
Perhaps, after all, the one-eyed man had merely spoken to the girl to
ask pardon for having previously startled her.

"Well," Drew said to himself, "Peters knows her and can tell me all
about her. Anyhow I know her name and I'll find out where she lives if
I have to search New York from end to end."

For on the envelope that had lain uppermost when he had picked up the
package from the grating of the tender, he had seen the name, "Ruth
Adams." The address had escaped him in that momentary glance, and
although he could have easily repaired the omission while he was
passing back along the steamer's deck, his instincts revolted at
anything that looked like prying.

But there was nothing in his code that forbade his using every
legitimate means of searching her out and securing an introduction in
the way dictated by the approved forms, and he promised himself that
the episode should not end here.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," especially when that breast
is a youthful one, and Allen Drew's thoughts spun a dozen rainbow
visions as he made his way back to the shop whose insistent call he had
for the last hour put aside. He walked automatically and only that
sixth sense peculiar to city dwellers prevented his being run down more
than once. But the objurgations of startled drivers as they brought up
their vehicles with a jerk bothered him not a whit. His physical
presence was on South Street but his real self was on the crowded pier
where he had left Ruth Adams.

Still moving on mechanically, he entered the door of the chandlery
shop, over