r the shadow of the cuddy glided a rounded white
arm; and a shapely hand caught the child by the sash and drew her back.
The next moment the young man in grey had placed the toy in her hand.

Maurice Frere, descending the poop ladder, had not witnessed this little
incident; on reaching the deck, he saw only the unexplained presence of
the convict uniform.

"Thank you," said a voice, as Rufus Dawes stooped before the pouting
Sylvia.

The convict raised his eyes and saw a young girl of eighteen or nineteen
years of age, tall, and well developed, who, dressed in a loose-sleeved
robe of some white material, was standing in the doorway. She had black
hair, coiled around a narrow and flat head, a small foot, white skin,
well-shaped hands, and large dark eyes, and as she smiled at him, her
scarlet lips showed her white even teeth.

He knew her at once. She was Sarah Purfoy, Mrs. Vickers's maid, but he
never had been so close to her before; and it seemed to him that he was
in the presence of some strange tropical flower, which exhaled a heavy
and intoxicating perfume.

For an instant the two looked at each other, and then Rufus Dawes was
seized from behind by his collar, and flung with a shock upon the deck.

Leaping to his feet, his first impulse was to rush upon his assailant,
but he saw the ready bayonet of the sentry gleam, and he checked himself
with an effort, for his assailant was Mr. Maurice Frere.

"What the devil do you do here?" asked the gentleman with an oath. "You
lazy, skulking hound, what brings you here? If I catch you putting your
foot on the quarter-deck again, I'll give you a week in irons!"

Rufus Dawes, pale with rage and mortification, opened his mouth to
justify himself, but he allowed the words to die on his lips. What was
the use? "Go down below, and remember what I've told you," cried Frere;
and comprehending at once what had occurred, he made a mental minute of
the name of the defaulting sentry.

The convict, wiping the blood from his face, turned on his heel without
a word, and went back through the strong oak door into his den. Frere
leant forward and took the girl's shapely hand with an easy gesture, but
she drew it away, with a flash of her black eyes.

"You coward!" she said.

The stolid soldier close beside them heard it, and his eye twinkled.
Frere bit his thick lips with mortification, as he followed the girl
into the cuddy. Sarah Purfoy, however, taking the astonished Sylvia by