what wasn't downright pathetic and unfortunate was romantic and
daring. Rosa was a quiet girl. We didn't quarrel over the matter, but I
could see she was thinking of my brother, a fine figure of a man, by the
way.

"I am quite sure now, after all these years, that it was what we would
call just a passing interest. All women have their sudden romantic
likings for strange men who catch their imaginations. I remember taking
tea one afternoon in the house of a friend on Clapham Common. His
sister, a middle-aged woman, and a friend of hers, middle-aged too,
entertained me until my friend came in. These two women, fat and forty,
could talk of nothing else for some time but a wonderfully nice
'bus-conductor they had spoken to coming back from Richmond. 'Oh, he
_was_ such a nice man!' they said, and then they'd look at each other. I
was younger then and slightly scandalized. Women are queer. I suppose in
a week they'd forgotten his very existence; but at the time, 'Oh, he
_was_ a nice man!' So it was with Rosa. Frank had filled her
imagination, as he always did; but if she had not seen him again it
would have passed like a mist.

"I don't blame her, nor even Frank, now. It was a tragical accident, and
very nearly wrecked my happiness. You may say I ought to have left him
in Buenos Ayres. I thought so at one time; but I believe now it would
have made no difference. We were bound to meet some day. It was fate.

"I saw Rosa home and went back to the ship. The Old Man was going aboard
just as I came to the gangway and asked me to go down and have a drink
in his room. He was very excited about some lottery-tickets he had
bought. Skippers and chiefs go in for these things a good deal. One
captain in that employ won a cool ten thousand dollars in Bahia Blanca.
It was the thing to do. Up in the agent's office the clerks would talk
over the lottery drawings, and each skipper would be anxious to do the
same as the others--you see? Well, my Old Man had bought fifty tickets.
He was full of a system by which he picked them. Every third one, then
every third one again. A mad idea! I thought of my brother waving his
bunch, thought of his picking them up without even looking at the
numbers. I said to the Old Man, 'Cap'n, you haven't a single good
number. I expect the man who's got the lucky one is up in the city now.'
'Why, how do you know?' he said, passing the soda. 'I just feel it,' I
said. He was worried about that. Gamblers have the mos