_Seamew_
heartily.

"I appreciate your kindness." Her eyes twinkled. For a moment he
caught a glimpse of what Sheila Macklin must have been before
tragedy had come into her life. "You are a good, kind man, Captain
Latham."

"You just look on me as though I were your brother," he said
sturdily. "You are not going to be alone any more, not really. If
you had had friends before, when it happened, somebody to speak for
you, I am sure nothing like what did happen to you could have
happened."

"I come of respectable people," she said quietly. "But they are all
dead. I was an orphan before I came to Boston. The friends I had in
the little inland town I came from would not have understood. They
did not approve of my coming to the city at all. Oh, I wish I had
not come!"

"And now you ought not to stay here. Should you?"

"What can I do? I must support myself. I cannot go back. I could not
explain those two years. Yet I am always expecting somebody to make
inquiry for Sheila Macklin. And then I cannot conceal my story
longer."

He nodded thoughtfully. It seemed that, once she had opened the dam
of speech, she was glad to talk about herself and her trouble.

"I do hate the city. I have been so unhappy here. If I were only a
man I would start right out into the country. I would tramp until I
found a place to work. You don't know what it means to be a girl,
Captain Latham, and be in trouble."

"I guess all city girls aren't alike after all," he said with a
short laugh. Then he looked at her keenly again. "Do you know what
sort of an errand brought me up into the city from T-Wharf to-day?"

"What errand? I cannot imagine."

"There are two old people down on the Cape that I am much interested
in. They live near my home."

He told her quietly, yet with earnestness, about Cap'n Ira and
Prudence. He described their home and their need of some young
person to live with them, somebody who would not only help them, but
who would love to help them. Then he related, perhaps rather tartly,
his experience with Ida May Bostwick.

"What a foolish girl!" she breathed. "And she would not accept a
chance like that?"

"Lucky for Cap'n Ira and for Aunt Prue that she won't take up with
their offer," he said grimly. "But I dread taking back word to them
about her. It will be hard to make them understand. And then, they
need the help a good girl could give them."

"Captain Latham, if I only had a chance like that!" she exclaimed.
"