st.

"I really have an errand to do on this island, Miss Morton," continued
Tom, as the party started up the beach. "I wanted first to ask you if
I could bring my mother to call on you and your chaperon this
afternoon? I am awfully anxious to have an all-day sailing party
to-morrow. And I thought perhaps you and your friends and chaperon
would go with us? There is an old fellow over here who takes people
out sailing, and I am anxious to have a talk with him. Don't think I
am such a duffer that I can't sail a boat myself, but my mother is so
nervous about the water that I take a professional sailor along to keep
her from worrying. She has had a great deal to make her nervous," Tom
ended. "I wonder if you and your friends would mind walking over to
the other side of the island with me to see this man? It is not a long
walk."

The party started off, Phyllis keeping strictly in the background.
Madge walked with Tom and Lillian with Jack, so she felt a little out
of it.

"If you don't mind," she proposed, after the party had walked a few
yards, "I will sit down here on the beach and wait until you come back
from your talk with the sailor man. I will stay right here, so you can
find me when you return."

Phil found herself a comfortable, flat rock, and sat looking idly out
over the bay. Gradually she fell into a little reverie.

A sudden cry of pain roused Phil from her daydream. Springing to her
feet, she rushed down the beach, seeing nothing, but following the
direction of the cry. Rounding a curve of the beach she came upon a
dirty, half-tumbled down tent. In front of it stood a burly man with
both hands on the shoulders of a young girl, whom he was shaking
violently. So intent was he upon what he was doing, he did not notice
Phil approaching. She saw him shove the girl inside the tent and close
the outside flap. "Now, stay in there till you git tired of it," he
growled as he turned and walked away.

A sound of low sobbing greeted Phil's ears as she came up in front of
the tent and stood waiting, hardly knowing what to do. The sobs
continued, with a note of pain in them that went straight to Phil's
tender heart. The sight or sound of physical suffering made a special
appeal to her. It was Phyllis's secret ambition some day to study
medicine, an ambition which she had confided to no one save Madge.
Although the figure she had seen was almost that of a woman, the
sobbing sounded like that of a chil