If I'd had folks I don't guess I'd be north of 'sixty'
now. This place is just the nearest thing to an anchorage I've lit on
yet, but even so I haven't found a right mooring."

"You've no folks--none at all?"

Jessie's moment of passion had passed. All her sympathy had been
suddenly aroused by the man's effort to help her, and his unusual
admission of his own loneliness.

A shadow of the man's usual smile flickered across his features.

"Not a soul," he said. "Not a father, mother, relative or--or wife.
Sounds mean, don't it?" Quite abruptly he laughed outright.

"Oh, I could tell you a dandy story of days and nights of lonesomeness.
I could tell you of a boyhood spent chasing the streets o' nights
looking for a sidewalk to crawl under, or a sheltered corner folks
wouldn't drive me out of. I could tell you of hungry days without a
prospect of better to come, of moments when I guessed the cold waters
of Puget Sound looked warmer than the night ahead of me. I could tell
you of a mighty battle fought out in silence and despair. Of a resolve
to make good by any means open to man. I could tell you of strivings
and failures that 'ud come nigh breaking your heart, and a resolve
unbreakable not to yield. Gee, I've known it all, all the kicks life
can hand a derelict born under an evil influence. Say, I don't even
know who my parents were."

"I never thought--I never knew----"

The girl's words were wrung from her by her feelings. In a moment this
man had appeared to her in a new light. There was no sign of weakness
or self-pity in Murray as he went on. He was smiling as usual, that
smile that always contained something of a mocking irony.

"Pshaw! It don't figger anyway--now. Nothing figgers now but the
determination never to find such days--and nights again. I said I need
to find a real mooring. A mooring such as Allan found when he found
your mother. Well, maybe I shall. I'm hoping that way. But even
there Nature's done all she knows to hand me a blank. I'd like to say
look at me, and see the scurvy trick Nature's handed out my way. But I
won't. Gee, no. Still I'll find that mooring if I have to buy it with
the dollars I mean to wring out of this devil's own country."

Jessie's feelings had been caught and held through sympathy. Sympathy
further urged her. This man had failed to appeal before. A feeling of
gentle pity stirred her.

"Don't say that," she cried, all her ideals outraged by