didn't object to it
at the time--but he did not forget it.

The task of rescue was not easy in that sea and wind, but it was
dexterously done. The steamer approached and kept at a certain distance
on the windward side. A boat was lowered, and a line was brought to the
yacht, which was soon in tow with a stout cable hitched to the steamer's
anchor windlass.

It was all done with much less excitement than appeared from the
telegraphic accounts, and while the party were being towed home the peril
seemed to have been exaggerated, and the affair to look like an ordinary
sea incident. But the skipper said that it was one escape in a hundred.

The captain of the steamer raised his hat gravely in reply to the little
cheer from the yacht, when Carmen and Miss Tavish fluttered their
handkerchiefs towards him. The only chaff from the steamer was roared
out by a fat Boston man, who made a funnel of his hands and shouted, "The
race is not always to the swift."

As soon as Jack stepped ashore he telegraphed to Edith that the yacht had
had an accident in the harbor, but that no one was hurt. When he reached
the hotel he found a letter from Edith of such a tenor that he sent
another despatch, saying that she might expect him at once, leaving the
yacht behind. There was a buzz of excitement in the town, and there were
a hundred rumors, which the sight of the yacht and its passengers landed
in safety scarcely sufficed to allay.

When Jack called at the Tavish cottage to say good-by, both the ladies
were too upset to see him. He took a night train, and as he was whirled
away in the darkness the events of the preceding forty-eight hours seemed
like a dream. Even the voyage up the coast was a little unreal--an
insubstantial episode in life. And the summer city by the sea, with its
gayety and gossip and busy idleness, sank out of sight like a phantom.
He drew his cap over his eyes, and was impatient that the rattling train
did not go faster, for Edith, waiting there in the Golden House, seemed
to stretch out her arms for him to come. Still behind him rose a picture
of that bacchanalian breakfast--the Major and Carmen and Mavick and Miss
Tavish dancing a reel on the sloping deck, then the rising wind, the
reckless daring of the race, and a vision of sudden death. He shuddered
for the first time in a quick realization of how nearly it came to being
all over with life and its pleasures.

XIV

Edith had made no appeal to Jack to c