p,
and approached the door.

For a moment his heart beat in a wild desire, a desire to take her in
his arms as she stood so close and so quiet beside him, smiling
wistfully and a little sadly; and unaccountably she seemed to droop and
become small and limp and pitifully helpless in the face of him and of
all mankind.

"Good night, Mr. Moore, and thank you so--much," she murmured. "And I
do hope you will forgive me for being a--a thief."

He thought that she was on the point of kissing him, and his eyes swam
and became of a slightly deeper and more silky blue than a moment
before. But she faltered back, while the faintest suggestion of a sigh
came from her lips.

In the next instant, as the door closed quietly behind him, Peter was
mighty glad that neither he nor she had yielded to impulse. He was
not, in the light of the literal version, the owner of a wholly
untarnished record, for he had given in to weakness, as most men do
give into weakness.

But he was above temptation now, not because temptation was put behind
him, but because he had had the strength to resist; and it was his
full, deep desire to hold himself until that girl, far across the
Pacific, who inspired the finest and best in him, should bear the name
he bore.

It was a splendid thing, that feeling. It gave him courage and
confidence, and took him quite light-heartedly, with head erect and
shoulders back, out of the dreariest of his moments.

So, quick in a new and buoyant mood, Peter joggled the key in the lock
of his stateroom door, slipped in, and was before long dreaming of a
cottage built for two, of springtime in California, albeit snoring
almost loud enough to drown out the throb of the _Persian Gulf's_ old
but still useful engines.

CHAPTER VII

Because of the fatigue which possessed his every muscle, fatigue
springing from the arduous, the trying hours now past, Peter the Brazen
was sleeping the slumber of the worthy, when, at a somewhat later hour
in the night, some time before dawn crept out of the China Sea, a
figure, lean and gray, flitted past his stateroom on the narrow orlop
deck, peered in the darkened port-hole, and passed on.

Awakened by an instinct developed to a remarkable degree by his
training of the past few months, Peter established himself upon one
elbow and looked and listened, wondering what sounds might be abroad
other than the peaceful churn of the engine.

Quite as intuitively he slipped his hand u