these gleams, in
mid-river, shone the nearing boat, her countless lights merged into a
single sheen brokenly repeated in the water beneath her. Hugh came to
the girl's side at a moment when a wood on the point's extreme end
concealed the steamer's approach; but in the next the fleet comer swept
out of hiding, an empress in truth to Ramsey, jewelled, from furnace
doors to texas roof, with many-colored lights as if in coronation robes.

"That is how we look to her," said Hugh.

But his words were lost. With a startled laugh the girl shrank low over
the bell, clutching it as if a whirlwind had struck them, while its
single, majestic peal thundering, "I pass to starboard, hail! farewell!"
drowned speech and mind in its stupendous roar. Mirth, too, was drowned
in awe. And now the vast din ceased, and now the _Empress_, every moment
more resplendent, responded, first with her bell, then with the long,
solemn halloo of her whistle, and presently with huzzas from all her
glittering decks as she passed within a cable's length.

Ramsey gazed entranced. Not until the fading vision had dwindled down
and around the great bend did her tread realize again the quivering
deck, or her sight reawaken to the wonder of the ever coming, parting,
passing flood, its prostrate, phantom shores, and the starry hosts and
illimitable deeps of the sky. Even then she was but half-way back to
earth, unconscious that she had stepped down forward to the captain's
chair and into a group including Hugh and his grandfather, her mother
and youngest brother.

"Oh!" she cried, turning, "it's as if--" and found herself face to face
not with Hugh but his father.

"As if--what?" smilingly asked the boat's master.

"As if," she said more softly, "we'd left one world and were hunting
another."

His smile grew. Her own resented it. "I know what you're thinking," she
said, and glanced away. Her curls twitched, her chin tilted, and she
sent down from it one of those visible waves that ended at her feet, as
if they were the cracker of the whip. When he spoke, her eyes came back
at him sidelong.

"I was thinking only," he rejoined, "that at your age it's always as if
we'd just left one world and were seeking another."

Her eyes--and lashes--were sceptical. "Weren't you going to say it would
seem more so if we should blow up?"

"No," he laughed, "nothing like it."

She began absently to scrutinize his entire dress. It was like the old
man's though without