e fairy lamps in the gardens back of the houses in
Mayfair, where they are giving dances in your honor, in honor of the
beautiful American bride, whom every one wants to meet. And you will
wear the finest tiara we can get on Bond Street, but no one will look
at it; they will only look at you. And I will feel very miserable and
tease you to come home."

Hope put her hand in his, and he held her finger-tips to his lips for
an instant and closed his other hand upon hers.

"And after that?" asked Hope.

"After that we will go to work again, and take long journeys to Mexico
and Peru or wherever they want me, and I will sit in judgment on the
work other chaps have done. And when we get back to our car at night,
or to the section house, for it will be very rough sometimes,"--Hope
pressed his hand gently in answer,--"I will tell you privately how very
differently your husband would have done it, and you, knowing all about
it, will say that had it been left to me, I would certainly have
accomplished it in a vastly superior manner."

"Well, so you would," said Hope, calmly.

"That's what I said you'd say," laughed Clay. "Dearest," he begged,
"promise me something. Promise me that you are going to be very happy."

Hope raised her eyes and looked up at him in silence, and had the man
in the wheelhouse been watching the stars, as he should have been, no
one but the two foolish young people on the bow of the boat would have
known her answer.

The ship's bell sounded eight times, and Hope moved slightly.

"So late as that," she sighed. "Come. We must be going back."

A great wave struck the ship's side a friendly slap, and the wind
caught up the spray and tossed it in their eyes, and blew a strand of
her hair loose so that it fell across Clay's face, and they laughed
happily together as she drew it back and he took her hand again to
steady her progress across the slanting deck.

As they passed hand in hand out of the shadow into the light from the
wheelhouse, the lookout in the bow counted the strokes of the bell to
himself, and then turned and shouted back his measured cry to the
bridge above them. His voice seemed to be a part of the murmuring sea
and the welcoming winds.

"Listen," said Clay.

"Eight bells," the voice sang from the darkness. "The for'ard light's
shining bright--and all's well."

End of Project Gutenberg's Soldiers of Fortune, by Richard Harding Davis

*** END OF THIS PROJECT