the safety
of steamer and cargo.

True, Leo, with the instincts of an artist, had stood for hours on the
deck, partially sheltered by a smoke-stack, to study wave motions and the
ever-changing effects of the ocean. Never before had he known its
sublimity. When the sea was wildest and the deck was wave-swept, he in
his safe retreat made sketches of waves and their combinations which he
hoped sometime to reproduce on canvas. At other times, conscious of storm
dangers in mid-ocean, Leo's conscience troubled him. For a year he had
been much in love with a pretty Italian girl, daughter of an official,
long in the service of the Italian government at the port of New York.

Rosie Ricci was fifteen years old when she first met Leo. Dressed in
white, she entered an exhibition of water colors on W. 10th street with
her mother one May morning, as Leo had finished hanging a delicate marine
view sketched down the Narrows.

Glances only between Leo and Rosie were exchanged, but each formed the
resolution sometime, if possible, to know the other. Rosie's father had
died when she was only fourteen years old, and existence for Mrs. Ricci
and her little family had been a struggle. For the last year, a happy
change had come in their condition. A letter had been received from a
rich senator by Mrs. Ricci, which was couched in the tenderest language.
The senator explained in his letter that at a musicale, given on Fifth
Avenue, he had heard a Rosie Ricci sing a simple song that revived
memories of an early day. This fact, coupled with Rosie's charming
simplicity and vivacity of manner, fixed her name in his mind; later he
was reading the _New York Tribune_, and the name Ricci arrested his
attention.

The item mentioned the death of Raphael Ricci, ex-consul, and the
senator's object in writing was to inquire further as to the facts. Did
he leave a competency? If not, would the family receive such assistance
as would enable the daughter, if Rosie Ricci was her daughter, to obtain
a further musical education?

The senator's letter dropped from the mother's hands; she was overcome
with the good news. Rosie picked it up saying, "Mother dear, what is the
matter? What terrible news does it contain?"

"Not bad news, child! possibly good news; a letter from a stranger who
offers aid in our distress, a letter from one holding a high position.
I wonder what it all means? Has the senator been prompted by the spirit
of your anxious father, or is