r eyes met. Both were smiling. Then her eyes fell; but she still
smiled.

"Then," she said, "I guess you had better not tell me--unless--"

"Unless?" asked Dan, as she paused.

Slowly she arranged the blankets, while Dan waited for the completion
of the sentence. Then she lay down.

"Good-night," she said.

When she awoke, the sun was rising high. The breeze had died away.
The wheel was deserted. She looked down the stretch of deck, but Dan
was nowhere to be seen. With a fluttering heart she arose and shook
out her skirts, hardly daring to peer into the cabin for fear her
dreadful intimations might prove true.

He was not in the cabin. She called his name in a low voice, but only
the hollow echo resounded from the corridor. In agonized suspense now
she ran out on the deck.

"Dan!" she called with all the power of her lungs, not expecting that
he would hear her now. "Dan Merrithew, have you left me?"

There came an answering hail, and looking toward the bow she saw Dan
clambering out of the forward hatch. His shoes and trousers were
dripping wet. As he ran to her she waited, weeping. He caught her
hands and held them.

"Oh, Dan, Dan!" she cried, "you frightened me so! I thought you had
gone. I thought you were dead. You are not going to leave me again,
are you?"

"Never," said Dan.

Then both started as though the underlying significance of the question
and answer had suddenly dawned upon them. Gently she withdrew her
hands, which Dan did not seek to retain. In conversational tone, he
said:

"I am awfully sorry, Virginia. While you were sleeping, the wind fell,
an hour or two after dawn, and the blue of the water struck me. I
found the Captain's thermometer and lowered it overboard. My best
hopes were realized. We are in the Gulf Stream, Virginia, and moving
northward at about four miles an hour. We are all right now if all
goes well."

"But why were you hiding?" asked the girl.

"I wasn't. I wanted to see if the water had hurt the logwood, so as to
impair its value, and to learn the condition of the hull. You know the
cargo is all that is keeping us afloat. Everything is pretty soggy
down there, but we'll hold together, I guess; and I don't believe the
logwood will suffer a bit. Of course the mahogany is all right. We're
lucky. One schooner in a million has mahogany these days."

She had been gazing at him almost vacantly while he was talking. Now
she smiled beautifully.