aking her hands in mine.

"You have expected me, then?" she said, as I drew her gently to the
rail to let the sailors pass.

We stood there, looking into each other's face, in which the four
years that had passed since our last meeting had left their
maturing touch.

"I have been expecting you these two months past," I said, looking
wistfully over the sea. "There has never come a ship from Denmark
but I have boarded her, hoping to see you."

"Well, you see me at last, and am I altered?"

"You are only more beautiful, Thora, more womanly. And so you are
coming back to Pomona to visit us again?"

"No, not to visit you, Halcro. I am homeward bound this time. I am
never going to leave old Orkney again. My schooling is over, and
there is no one left in Copenhagen now to keep me there. I am going
to settle down in some cottage near our dear sea cliffs, where I
can see the ships passing from my garden seat and dream my life
away in pleasant solitude."

"In solitude!" I stammered; then shyly asked:

"Did you not get my last letter, Thora?"

"What! the one in which you told me of Jessie's marriage to Captain
Gordon, and that the dominie had retired from his school, and that
you were promoted to captain, and had called your new boat the
Thora? Yes, certainly, I got it."

"But there was something else I said in it, Thora--something more
important to me than these things you speak of. Did you not read
that part?"

Thora looked meekly down at the white planks of the deck, her
cheeks growing rosy and her breath coming quick. Then turning her
eyes aft towards the steering wheel, she said, crossing the deck:

"Captain Ericson, do you not think you should be attending to the
piloting of this ship?"

"No," I said, following her across to the lee side, where the great
mizzen sail shielded us from the view of others on board. "No; my
mate, Willie Hercus, is looking after that. I am off duty today. I
am here not as pilot; I have come out to welcome you home."

Then, after a long silence, during which we both looked overboard
upon the dancing waves, where the porpoises rolled in play, and the
gulls dipped lightly on balanced wings, I said:

"Thora, you did not answer all my letter when you wrote. You were
not offended, were you, by what I said?"

"I know what you mean, Halcro," she said, resting her hand upon the
rail and turning her eyes full upon me, "I was not offended, or I
should not now be here. I did not answer y