do not quite understand, Captain Latham," she repeated in the
same gentle tone.

There was no raillery in her voice now. She was altogether serious.
Her eyes, luminous, yet darkly unfathomable, were held full upon his
face. He felt rather than saw that she was under a mental strain.
The revelation she was about to make throbbed in her voice when she
spoke again.

"You do not quite understand. Sellers gives girls work in his
restaurant who could by no possibility offer proper references,
girls from the Protectory, from homes, as they are called; some,
even, who have served jail sentences. I had been two years in the
St. Andrew's School for Girls when I went to work for Sellers."

CHAPTER IX

A GIRL'S STORY

There was a ringing in Tunis Latham's ears. As you make Paulmouth
Harbor coming from seaward, on a thick day you hear the insistent
tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef. That was the distant, but
incessant sound that the captain of the _Seamew_ seemed to hear as
he sat on that bench on Boston Common beside this strange girl.

Without being a prig, Tunis Latham was undeniably a good man.
Whether he was altogether a wise man was perhaps a subject for
argument. At least, his future conduct must settle that point.

But for the moment, when Sheila Macklin had made her last statement,
it seemed that every atom of thought and all ability to consider
matters logically were drained out of the man's mind. That mind was
perfectly blank. What the girl had said seemed mere sound, sound
without meaning. He could not grasp its significance.

And yet he knew it was tragic. It was something that had made the
girl what she was. It explained all Tunis had been unable heretofore
to understand about Sheila Macklin. That timidity, that whispering
shyness, the shrinking from observation and from any attention, were
all explained. She had suffered persecution and punishment, harsh
and undeserved, that made her recoil from contact with other more
fortunate people. She felt herself outcast, ostracized, and was
unable to defend herself from malign fortune.

Gradually Tunis regained his usual self-control.

If Sheila had said anything following the bare statement that she
had spent two years in the St. Andrew's Reformatory for Women, he
had not comprehended it. Nor could he have told how long he sat
silent on the bench getting control of his voice and of his tongue.
When he did speak he said quite casually:

"And wha