bones began to mend, and bruises to disappear;
and our hero, thoroughly recovered from his accident, as well as greatly
improved in general health, returned to his duties.

But Miles was not a happy man, for day by day he felt more and more
severely that he had put himself in a false position. Besides the
ever-increasing regret for having hastily forsaken home, he had now the
bitter reflection that he had voluntarily thrown away the right to
address Marion Drew as an equal.

During the whole voyage he had scarcely an opportunity of speaking a
word to her. Of course the warm-hearted girl did not forget the
important service that had been rendered to her by the young soldier,
and she took more than one occasion to visit the fore part of the vessel
for the purpose of expressing her gratitude and asking about his health,
after he was able to come on deck; but as her father accompanied her on
these occasions, the conversation was conducted chiefly between him and
the reverend gentleman. Still, it was some comfort to hear her voice
and see her eyes beaming kindly on him.

Once the youth inadvertently expressed his feelings in his look, so that
Marion's eye-lids dropped, and a blush suffused her face, to hide which
she instantly became unreasonably interested in the steam-winch beside
which they were standing, and wanted to understand principles of
engineering which had never troubled her before!

"What _is_ the use of that curious machine?" she asked, turning towards
it quickly.

"W'y, Miss," answered Jack Molloy, who chanced to be sitting on a spare
yard close at hand working a Turk's head on a manrope, "that's the
steam-winch, that is the thing wot we uses w'en we wants to hoist things
out o' the hold, or lower 'em into it."

"Come, Marion, we must not keep our friend from his duties," said Mr
Drew, nodding pleasantly to Miles as he turned away.

The remark was called forth by the fact that Miles had been arrested
while on his way to the galley with a dish of salt pork, and with his
shirt-sleeves, as usual, tucked up!

Only once during the voyage did our hero get the chance of talking with
Marion alone. The opportunity, like most pieces of good fortune, came
unexpectedly. It was on a magnificent night, just after the troop-ship
had left Malta. The sea was perfectly calm, yet affected by that oily
motion which has the effect of breaking a reflected moon into a million
fragments. All nature appeared to be hus