s so steadily fixed upon cash-books and ledgers.

But Randall, as, with the habit of an old voyager, he already falls to
pacing the deck, is too much engrossed with his own thoughts to pay
much heed to these things. Only, as he passes a group of Germans, and
the familiar accents of the sweet, homely tongue fall on his ear, he
pauses, and lingers near.

The darkness gathers, the breeze freshens, the waves come tumbling out
of the east, and the motion of the ship increases as she rears upward
to meet them. The groups on deck are thinning out fast as the
passengers go below to enjoy the fearsome novelty of the first night
at sea, and to compose themselves to sleep as it were in the hollow of
God's hand. But long into the night Randall's cigar still marks his
pacing up and down as he ponders, with alternations of tender, hopeful
glow and sad foreboding the chances of his quest. Will he find her?

It is necessary to go back a little. When Randall reached America on
his return from Germany, he immediately began to sow his wild oats,
and gave his whole mind to it. Answering Ida's letters got to be a
bore, and he gradually ceased doing it. Then came a few sad reproaches
from her, and their correspondence ceased. Meanwhile, having had his
youthful fling, he settled down as a steady young man of business. One
day he was surprised to observe that he had of late insensibly fallen
into the habit of thinking a good deal in a pensive sort of way about
Ida and those German days. The notion occurred to him that he would
hunt up her picture, which he hadn't thought of in five years. With
misty eyes and crowding memories he pored over it, and a wave of
regretful, yearning tenderness filled his breast.

Late one night after long search he found among his papers a bundle of
her old letters already growing yellow. Being exceedingly rusty in his
German, he had to study them out word by word. That night, till the
sky grew gray in the east, he sat there turning the pages of the
dictionary with wet eyes and glowing face, and selecting definitions
by the test of the heart. He found that some of these letters he had
never before taken the pains to read through. In the bitterness of his
indignation he cursed the fool who had thrown away a love so loyal and
priceless.

All this time he had been thinking of Ida as if dead, so far off in
another world did those days seem. It was with extraordinary effect
that the idea finally flashed upon him tha