ip, but it would be almost like betraying the
cause for which he fought, would it not?"

"Yes, indeed," agreed the doctor, though his heart and not his head
dictated the reply. "May I ask you to tell me your plans for the
future?" he went on.

"Well, when Mr. Baring heard I was going to England, he was good enough
to promise me employment in his London agency as Spanish correspondent.
That will fill in two days a week. The rest I can devote to art. I
paint a little, and draw with sufficient promise to warrant study, I am
told. Anyhow, I am weary of teaching; I prefer to be a pupil."

"I cannot imagine what the young men of Valparaiso were thinking of to
allow a girl like you to slip off in this fashion," said Christobal
with a smile.

"Most of them hold firmly to the belief that a wife's wedding-dress
should be made of gilt-edged scrip."

"Poor material--very poor material out of which to construct wedded
happiness. And as to my young friend, Isobel? She joins her aunt in
London, I hear?"

"That is the present arrangement. She means to have a good time,
especially in Paris. I should like to live in Paris myself. Dear old
smoke-laden London does not appeal so thoroughly to the artist. Yet, I
am content--yes, quite content."

"Then you have gained the best thing in the world," cried the doctor,
throwing out his arms expansively.

The two became good friends as the voyage progressed. Christobal was
exceedingly well informed, and delighted in a thoughtful listener like
Elsie. Isobel, tiring at times of the Count, would join in their
conversation, and display a spasmodic interest in the topics they
discussed. There were only six other passengers, a Baptist missionary
and his wife, three mining engineers, and an English globe-trotter, a
singular being who appeared to have roamed the entire earth, but whose
experiences were summed up in two words--every place he had seen was
either "Fair" or "Rotten."

Even Isobel failed to draw him further, and she said one day, in a
temper, after a spirited attempt to extract some of his stored
impressions: "The man reminds me of one of those dummy books you see
occasionally, bound in calf and labeled 'Gazetteer of the World.' When
you try to open a volume you find that it is made of wood."

So they nicknamed him "Mr. Wood," and Elsie once inadvertently
addressed him by the name.

"What do you think of the weather, Mr. Wood?" she asked him at
breakfast.

He cha