erkins and Mr. Banks in political discussion on the
other side of the deck came faintly. Miss Keene laughed.

"We are a long way from San Francisco yet, and you may think
differently."

"Never!" he said, impulsively.

He had drawn closer to her, as if to emphasize his speech. She cast
a quick glance across the deck towards the two disputants, and drew
herself gently away.

"Do you know," she said suddenly, with a charming smile which robbed
the act of its sting, "I sometimes wonder if I am REALLY going to San
Francisco. I don't know how it is; but, somehow, I never can SEE myself
there."

"I wish you did, for I'M going there," he replied boldly.

Without appearing to notice the significance of his speech, she
continued gravely:

"I have been so strongly impressed with this feeling at times that it
makes me quite superstitious. When we had that terrible storm after we
left Callao, I thought it meant that--that we were all going down, and
we should never be heard of again."

"As long as we all went together," he said, "I don't know that it would
be the worst thing that could happen. I remember that storm, Miss Keene.
And I remember"--He stopped timidly.

"What?" she replied, raising her smiling eyes for the first time to his
earnest face.

"I remember sitting up all night near your state-room, with a cork
jacket and lots of things I'd fixed up for you, and thinking I'd die
before I trusted you alone in the boat to those rascally Lascars of the
crew."

"But how would you have prevented it?" asked Miss Keene, with a
compassionate and half-maternal amusement.

"I don't know exactly," he said, coloring; "but I'd have lashed you to
some spar, or made a raft, and got you ashore on some island."

"And poor Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Brimmer--you'd have left them to the
boats and the Lascars, I suppose?" smiled Miss Keene.

"Oh, somebody would have looked after Mrs. Markham; and Mrs. Brimmer
wouldn't have gone with anybody that wasn't well connected. But what's
the use of talking?" he added ruefully. "Nothing has happened, and
nothing is going to happen. You will see yourself in San Francisco, even
if you don't see ME there. You're going to a rich brother, Miss Keene,
who has friends of his own, and who won't care to know a poor fellow
whom you tolerated on the passage, but who don't move in Mrs. Brimmer's
set, and whom Mr. Banks wouldn't indorse commercially."

"Ah, you don't know my brother, Mr. Brace."

"Nor d