waved his hand to Louise and his
father. The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing
the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand.

"I give up! I give up!" he exclaimed. "I said I'd disown him if he
refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter. But 'tain't
really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him. It seems she
had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got
this invitation to her wedding."

Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance. "Of course, I knew you
would see it in the right light in time. But it really has been the
making of Lawford," she said calmly.

"You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King. "I wonder what good
it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted? I'm not
sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you
live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week."

"Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him
softly.

They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat. The patrol had
come in good season. It was not probable that the schooner would hold
together long after she struck the reef.

Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the
wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident
really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts,
whimpered. The men talked in low voices, the women not at all.

Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out
at the distant, laboring craft. Death rode on the gale, and lurked
where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks. The schooner was
doomed.

That might be the _Curlew_ out there--the schooner her father was
aboard--instead of this imperiled vessel. Only the night before she
and her uncle had figured out the _Curlew's_ course homeward-bound from
her last port of call. She might pass in sight of Cardhaven Head and
the lighthouse any day now.

The thought sobered Louise. Clinging to I. Tapp's arm she went nearer
to the spot where the surfmen had brought their gear and boat.

The sea beyond the line of surf--between the strand and the reef--was
foam-streaked and broken, a veritable cauldron of boiling water. The
captain of the life-saving crew shrank from launching the boat into
that wild waste.

If the line could be shot as far as the reef the moment the schooner
struck, a breeches buoy could b