tion:--

"No, sir."

"Why not?" said Jarman mechanically.

The girl sidled up against the cabin, keeping her eyes fixed on Jarman
with a certain youthful shrewdness.

"Oh, you know!" she said.

"I really do not. Tell me why."

She drew herself up against the wall a little proudly, though still
youthfully, with her hands behind her.

"I ain't that kind of girl," she said simply.

The blood rushed to Jarman's checks. Dissipated and abandoned as his
life had been, small respecter of women as he was, he was shocked and
shamed. Knowing too, as he did, how absorbed he was in other things, he
was indignant, because not guilty.

"Do as you please, then," he said shortly, and reentered the cabin. But
the next moment he saw his error in betraying an irritation that was
open to misconstruction. He came out again, scarcely looking at the
girl, who was lounging away.

"Do you want me to explain to you how the thing works?" he said
indifferently. "I can't show you unless a ship comes in."

The girl's eyes brightened softly as she turned to him.

"Do tell me," she said, with an anticipatory smile and flash of white
teeth. "Won't you?"

She certainly was very pretty and simple, in spite of her late speech.
Jarman briefly explained to her the movements of the semaphore arms and
their different significance. She listened with her capped head a little
on one side like an attentive bird, and her arms unconsciously imitating
the signs. Certainly, for all that she SPOKE like an American, her
gesticulation was Italian.

"And then," she said triumphantly when he paused, "when the sailors see
that sign up they know they are coming in the harbor."

Jarman smiled, as he had not smiled since he had been there. He
corrected this mistake of her eager haste to show her intelligence, and,
taking the telescope, pointed out the other semaphore,--a thin black
outline on a distant inland hill. He then explained how HIS signs were
repeated by that instrument to San Francisco.

"My! Why, I always allowed that was only the cross stuck up in the Lone
Mountain Cemetery," she said.

"You are a Catholic?"

"I reckon."

"And you are an Italian?"

"Father is, but mother was a 'Merikan, same as me. Mother's dead."

"And your father is the fisherman yonder?"

"Yes,--but," with a look of pride, "he's got the biggest boat of any."

"And only you and your family are ashore here?"

"Yes, and sometimes Mark." She laughed an odd little laug