t moment drop her guard. It would be but a
trifle--a fugitive touching of shoulders, perhaps--but it would shake
Martin to his soul.

She would hold their talk to commonplaces, and then, as their hour
ended, would transfix him with a fleeting glance that seemed to bear
more than a message of friendship, and he would stand looking after
her, weak and gasping, with thumping heart.

One evening they stood together on the forecastle head, watching the
setting sun. Sky and sea, to the west, were ablaze for a brief space
with ever-changing gorgeous colors. The sheer beauty of the scene,
added to the disturbing nearness of his heart's wish, forced Martin's
rose-tinted thoughts to speech.

"I see our future there, Ruth," he said, pointing to the rioting sunset
colors. "See--that golden, castle-shaped cloud! We shall live there.
Those orange-and-purple billows surrounding are our broad meadows. It
is the country we are bound for, the land of happiness, and its name
is----"

"Its name is 'dreamland'!" finished Ruth, with a light laugh. "And
never will you arrive at your voyage's end, friend Martin, for
'dreamland' is always over the horizon."

She looked directly into Martin's eyes; the brief dusk was upon them,
and her face was a soft, wavering outline, but her eyes were aglow with
the gleam that set Martin's blood afire. Her eyes seemed to bear a
message from the Ruth that lived below the surface Ruth--from the newly
stirring woman beneath the girlish breast.

It was a challenge, that brief glance. It made Martin catch his
breath. He choked upon the words that tried tumultuously to burst from
his lips.

"Oh, Ruth, let me tell you--" he commenced.

Her laugh interrupted him again, and the eyes he looked into were again
the merry, teasing eyes of his comrade. With her next words she
wilfully misunderstood him and his allusion concerning the sunset.

"Indeed, Martin, that cloud the sunset lightened is shaped nothing like
Fire Mountain, which is a very gloomy looking place, and one I should
not like to take up residence in. And no bright meadows surround
it--only the gray, foggy sea. Hardly a land of happiness. Though,
indeed, if we salvage that treasure, we will have the means, each of
us, to buy the happiness money provides."

"Confound Fire Mountain and its treasure!" exclaimed Martin. "You know
I didn't mean that, Ruth! I was talking figuratively, poetically, the
way Little Billy talks. I meant jus