d Guenn with a grin--"I was glad to see
you bowl him over. He's just a bit too impressed with his money. Fished
all over the shop for an invitation to Guenn Oaks, and when he couldn't
get it, wanted to buy the place. Bounder! Then you'll come?"

"Yes. I'll be delighted to."

"Jove! I'm forgetting my mission. Are you going to obey the imperial
summons?"

"Can't possibly," said the Tyro, "I'm very ill. Tell her, will you?"

Lord Guenn nodded. "Perhaps one of you will condescend to let me in
presently on all these plots and counterplots," he remarked as he walked
away.

Left to himself the Tyro floated away on cloudy imaginings of gold and
rose-color. A week--a whole week--with Little Miss Grouch; a week of
freedom on good, solid land, beyond the tyranny of captains, the
espionage of self-appointed chaperons, and the interference of countless
surrounding ninnies; a week on every day of which he could watch the
play of light and color in the face which had not been absent from his
thoughts one minute since--

_Thump!_ It was as if a huge fist had thrust up out of the ocean's
depths and jolted the Clan Macgregor in the ribs. Several minor impacts
jarred beneath his feet. Then the engines stopped, and the great hulk
began to swing slowly to starboard in the still water.

Excited talk broke out. Questions to which nobody made reply filled the
air. An officer hurried past.

"No. No damage done," he cried back mechanically over his shoulder.

Presently the engine resumed work. The rhythm appeared to the Tyro to
drag. Dr. Alderson came along.

"Nothing at all," he said with the _sang-froid_ of the experienced
traveler. "Some little hitch in the machinery."

"Do you notice that there's a slant to the deck?" asked the Tyro in a
low voice.

"Yes. Keep it to yourself. Most people won't notice it." And he walked
on, stopping to chat with an acquaintance here and there, and doing his
unofficial part to diffuse confidence.

One idea seized and possessed the Tyro. If that gently tilted deck meant
danger, his place was on the farther side of the ship. Quite casually,
to avoid any suggestion of haste, he wandered around.

Little Miss Grouch was sitting in her chair, alone and quiet. As the
Tyro slipped, soft-footed, into the shelter of a shadow, he saw her
stretch her hand out to a box of candy. She selected a round sweet, and
dropped it on the deck. It rolled slowly into the scuppers. Again she
tried the experiment, with