hough mute, he nevertheless understood. At Kingston he took her on a
drive through the town, and bought post cards for her to send back to
Jose and Rosendo. It consoled her immeasurably when he glowingly
recounted the pleasure her loved ones would experience on receiving
these cards; and thereafter the girl daily devoted hours to the
preparation of additional ones to be posted in New York.

The lifting of the fog was the signal for a race among the stalled
craft to gain the harbor entrance. The enforced retention of the
vessels in the bay had resulted in much confusion in docking, and the
_Joachim_ was assigned to a pier not her own. The captain grumbled,
but had no choice. At the pier opposite there docked a huge liner from
Havre; and the two boats poured their swarming human freight into the
same shed. When the gang plank dropped, Harris took charge of Carmen,
while Reed and his wife preceded them ashore, the latter giving a
little scream of delight as she spied her sister and some friends with
a profusion of flowers awaiting her on the pier. She rushed joyfully
into their arms, while Reed hastened to his equipage with a customs
officer.

But as Harris and the bewildered Carmen pushed into the great crowd in
the shed, the absent-minded man suddenly remembered that he had left a
bundle of Panama hats underneath his bunk. Dropping the girl's hand,
the impetuous fellow tore back up the gang plank and dived into the
boat.

For a moment Carmen, stood in confusion, bracing herself against
the swarming multitude, and clinging tenaciously to the small,
paper-wrapped bundle which she carried. Her first impulse was to
follow Harris. But the eager, belated crowd almost swept her off her
feet, and she turned again, drifting slowly with it toward the
distant exit. As she moved uncertainly, struggling the while to
prevent being crushed against the wall, she felt some one grasp her
hand.

"Oh, here you are!" sounded a gentle voice close to her ear. "Well,
how fortunate! We thought we had lost you! Come, they are waiting for
us up ahead."

Carmen looked up at the speaker. It was a woman, comely of feature,
and strikingly well dressed. The girl thought her beautiful. The
anxious fears of a moment before vanished. "Is he up there--Mr. Reed?"
she asked quickly.

"He? Oh, yes--Mr. Reed and the others are waiting for us. They sent me
back to find you. The automobiles came for you all; but I presume the
others have gone by this ti