."

"When did you come here--and from where?"

"I come to-day from the Hudson's Bay post at Danger Mountain. I'm Phil
Boldrick's pal."

"Ah," she said again, with a look in her eyes not pleasant to see, "and
what brings you up here in the hills?" Hers was more than an ordinary
curiosity.

"I come to see the Padre who was with Phil--when he left. And the
Padre's a fair square sort, as I reckon him, but melancholy, almighty
melancholy."

"Yes, melancholy, I suppose," she said, "and fair square, as you say.
And what did you say and do?"

"Why, we yarned about Phil, and where I'd get the legacy to-morrow; and
I s'pose I had a strong breeze on the quarter, for I talked as free as
if we'd grubbed out of the same dough-pan since we was kiddies."

"Yes?"

"Yes siree; I don't know how it was, but I got to reelin' off about
Jo--queer, wasn't it? And I told 'em how he went down in the 'Fly
Away', and how the lovely ladies--you remember how we used to call the
whitecaps lovely ladies--fondled him out to sea and on to heaven."

"And what did--the Padre--think of that?"

"Well, he's got a heart, I should say, and that's why Phil cottoned to
him, maybe,--for he looked as if he'd seen ghosts. I guess he'd never
had a craft runnin' 'tween a sand-bar and a ragged coral bank; nor seen
a girl like the 'Fly Away' take a buster in her teeth; nor a man-of-war
come bundlin' down upon a nasty glacis, the captain on the bridge,
engines goin' for all they're worth, every man below battened in,
and every Jack above watchin' the fight between the engines and the
hurricane.... Here she rolls six fathoms from the glacis that'll rip her
copper garments off, and the quiverin' engines pull her back; and she
swings and struggles and trembles between hell in the hurricane and God
A'mighty in the engines; till at last she gets her nose at the neck of
the open sea and crawls out safe and sound.... I guess he'd have more
marble in his cheeks, if he saw likes o' that, Miss Falchion?"

Kilby paused and wiped his forehead.

She had listened calmly. She did not answer his question. She said:
"Kilby, I am staying at the summer hotel up there. Will you call on
me--let me see.... say, to-morrow afternoon?--Some one will tell you the
way, if you do not know it.... Ask for MRS. Falchion, Kilby, not Miss
Falchion.... You will come?"

"Why, yes," he replied, "you can count on me; for I'd like to hear of
things that happened after I left Apia--and how i