er toe. A married couple drifting
by, obviously players and of the best of their sort, enjoyed the
picture.

"Why, missy!" the nurse softly pleaded, "yo' plumb disgracin' yo'seff!
Stop! Stop!"

"I can't!" whined the girl, between her paroxysms, "till he stops
looking like _that_." But as the youth was merely looking like himself
he saw no reason why he should stop.

To avoid the current the steamer suddenly began to run so close beside
the moored ships that the continuous echo of all her sounds--the flutter
of her great wheels, the seething of waters, the varied activities of
her lower deck--came back and up to the three voyagers with a nearness
and minuteness that startled the girl and drew her glance; but just as
her dancing eyes returned reproachfully to the youth the big bell at her
back pealed its signal for landing and she sprang almost off her feet,
cast herself into the nurse's bosom, and laughed more inexcusably than
ever.

The woman put an arm about her shoulder and drew her a few steps back
along the rail to where four or five others were gathered. The young man
gave all his attention downward across the starboard bow. The engine
bells jingled far below, the wheels stopped, the giant chimneys ceased
their majestic breathing, and the boat came slowly abreast of a ship
standing high out of the water.

V

RAMSEY HAYLE

The flag of Holland floated aft of a deck crowded with a sun-tanned and
oddly clad multitude. The Dutch sailors lowered their fenders between
the ship's side and the boat's guards, lines were made fast, a light
stage was run down from the ship's upper deck to the boat's forecastle,
and in single file, laden with their household goods, the silent aliens
were hurried aboard the _Votaress_ and to their steerage quarters, out
of sight between and behind her engines.

Up on the boiler and hurricane decks her earlier passengers found,
according to their various moods and capacities, much entertainment in
the scene. The girl with the nurse laughed often, of course. Yet her
laugh bore a certain note of sympathy and appreciation which harmonized
out of it all quality that might have hurt or abashed the most diffident
exile. Childlike as she was, it was plain she did not wholly fail to see
into the matter's pathetic depths.

The youth at the derrick post, scrutinizing each immigrant that passed
under his eye, could hear at his back a refined voice making kind
replies to her many questio