deceit. She knew Mike had not told them the truth.
"Captain Mike," she demanded coolly, "have you put your daughter in an
asylum? If you have, I think you have been both inhuman and cruel.
Mollie is not crazy. If you will tell us where she is we will look
after her, and she need not bother you any more." She raised her dark
eyes and gazed defiantly at the angry sailor, who shook his great red
fist full in her face.

"You'll take a man's own daughter away from him, will you?" he raged.
"What makes you so interested in my gal? And who told you Moll was
shut up with a lot of crazies? My Moll is going to be married; she has
gone away to git her weddin' clothes."

He laughed tantalizingly into the girls' faces as though well pleased
with his own joke.

"Mollie married?" Phil exclaimed in horror. "Why, she----" Then Phil
stopped herself and inquired, with an innocent expression of interest,
"Whom did you say Mollie was going to marry?"

"She is going to marry Bill Barnes, a friend of mine," retorted the
sailor sarcastically, his heavy shoulders shaking with savage
amusement. "He ain't much to look at. It's kind of a case of Beauty
and the Beast with him and my Moll. But she's powerful fond of him."

"Mike!" a shrill voice screamed from the shanty boat kitchen, "come
along in here."

Mike glared at his questioners, his face set in savage lines. "Don't
never come here agin," he growled. "If you do, I ain't sayin' what
will happen to you." Turning abruptly he strode toward his boat,
leaving the girls standing where he had first met them.

There was nothing for Madge and Phil to do but to return once more to
their own boat. "O Madge! it is too dreadful!" exclaimed Phil in a
husky voice. "I understand now what poor Mollie meant. She said there
was one thing she would never do, no matter how cruel her father might
he with her. Of course, she knew they were going to try to force her
to marry some frightful looking fisherman. We simply must try to find
her and save her. It is a wicked shame!"

"Don't be so wretched, Phil," comforted Madge, though she felt equally
miserable. "You are right; we must find out how to save poor, pretty
Mollie. I can't think what we ought to do, just this minute, but we
must do our best. Now I think we shall have to go home and talk things
over with Miss Jenny Ann and the girls. We will come back to-morrow,
prepared to make a fight to save Mollie. Surely she can't be marr