hon was fought about twenty miles from Athens
between the Greeks and invading Persians nearly five hundred years
before Christ."

"Ah, yes, to be sure!" she murmured, indifferently, her eyes looking
over the sea.

Pats, who was sitting in front of his two companions, regarded her in
surprise. As she finished speaking, he turned away his head, but still
watching her from the corners of his eyes. Her own glance, with an
amused expression, went at once to his face, as he anticipated. He
laughed aloud in a frank, boyish way as their eyes met. "I knew you had
some sinister motive in that speech. You almost fooled me."

And she smiled as she retorted, "I was merely trying to please you. You
say you are averse to intelligence in a woman."

"Well, I take it all back. I am averse to nothing in a woman, except
absence."

Father Burke took all this in, and he disapproved. Captain Boyd was by
no means the sort of man he would have selected for companion to this
maiden. The young man's appreciation of the lady herself was too honest
and too evident. It bore, to the observant priest, suspicious
resemblance to a tender passion unskilfully concealed. Perilous food for
a yearning spirit! Of course she was heavenly minded, and spiritual to
the last degree, at present; but she was mortal. And the soul of a girl
like Elinor Marshall was too precious an object to be thrown away on a
single individual--above all, on a Protestant. Was it not already the
property of The Church? And then, there was little consolation in the
knowledge that she was to be in constant intercourse with this man for a
week, and during that time beyond all priestly influence.

* * * * *

The _Maid of the North_, until she passed Deer Island, bore a
cheerful band of passengers. Then, in the open sea, she turned her nose
a little more to the north, and while riding the waves as merrily as
ever, she did it with a greater variety of motion. And this variety of
motion, a complex, unhallowed shifting of the deck, first sidewise down,
then lengthwise up, then all together and further down--with a
nauseating quiver--was emphasized by zephyrs from the engine-room and
kitchen--zephyrs redolent with oil and cooking and bilge water. All
these, in time, began to trifle with the interiors of certain
passengers, and to paralyze their mirth.

Among early victims was Mr. Appleton Marshall. After storing his mind
with the financial n