r, and after I'd watched the
lights crawling on through the dark a spell, just to make conversation I
said I guessed there'd be a bit of weather before long.

"I've noticed," said I, "when there's weather coming on, and the wind in
the northeast, you can hear the orchestra playing aboard of her just
over there. I make it out now. Do you?"

"Yes. Oh--yes--! _I hear it all right!_"

You can imagine I started. It wasn't him, but _her_.
And there was something in the way she said that speech,
sir--something--well--unnatural. Like a hungry animal snapping
at a person's hand.

I turned and looked at her sidewise. She was standing by the railing,
leaning a little outward, the top of her from the waist picked out
bright by the lens behind her. I didn't know what in the world to say,
and yet I had a feeling I ought not to sit there mum.

"I wonder," said I, "what that captain's thinking of, fetching in so
handy to-night. It's no way. I tell you, if 'twasn't for this light,
she'd go to work and pile up on the ledge some thick night----"

She turned at that and stared straight into the lens. I didn't like the
look of her face. Somehow, with its edges cut hard all around and its
two eyes closed down to slits, like a cat's, it made a kind of mask.

"And then," I went on, uneasy enough--"and then where'd all their music
be of a sudden, and their goings-on and their singing----"

"And dancing!" She clipped me off so quick it took my breath.

"D-d-dancing?" said I.

"That's dance-music," said she. She was looking at the boat again.

"How do you know?" I felt I had to keep on talking.

Well, sir--she laughed. I looked at her. She had on a shawl of some
stuff or other that shined in the light; she had it pulled tight around
her with her two hands in front at her breast, and I saw her shoulders
swaying in tune.

"How do I _know_?" she cried. Then she laughed again, the same kind of a
laugh. It was queer, sir, to see her, and to hear her. She turned, as
quick as that, and leaned toward me. "Don't you know how to dance, Ray?"
said she.

"N-no," I managed, and I was going to say "_Aunt Anna_," but the thing
choked in my throat.

I tell you she was looking square at me all the time with her two eyes
and moving with the music as if she didn't know it. By heavens, sir, it
came over me of a sudden that she wasn't so bad-looking, after all. I
guess I must have sounded like a fool.

"You--you see," said I, "she's cleared the ri