as shyly returned and met each other's
glances more than several times. She had a slender oval face. Her brown
eyes were beautiful. Her nose was a dream, as was her sweet-lipped,
petulant-hinting mouth. She wore a tam-o'-shanter, and I thought her
brown hair the prettiest shade of brown I had ever seen. And from that
single experience of half an hour I have ever since been convinced of the
reality of love at first sight.

All too soon the aunt and Haydee departed. (This is permissible at any
stage of a Salvation Army meeting.) I was no longer interested in the
meeting, and, after an appropriate interval of a couple of minutes or
less, started to leave with Louis. As we passed out, at the back of the
hall a woman recognised me with her eyes, arose, and followed me. I
shall not describe her. She was of my own kind and friendship of the old
time on the water-front. When Nelson was shot, he had died in her arms,
and she knew me as his one comrade. And she must tell me how Nelson had
died, and I did want to know; so I went with her across the width of life
from dawning boy's love for a brown-haired girl in a tam-o'-shanter back
to the old sad savagery I had known.

And when I had heard the tale, I hurried away to find Louis, fearing that
I had lost my first love with the first glimpse of her. But Louis was
dependable. Her name was--Haydee. He knew where she lived. Each day
she passed the blacksmith's shop where he worked, going to or from the
Lafayette School. Further, he had seen her on occasion with Ruth,
another schoolgirl, and, still further, Nita, who sold us red-hots at the
candy store, was a friend of Ruth. The thing to do was to go around to
the candy store and see if we could get Nita to give a note to Ruth to
give to Haydee. If this could be arranged, all I had to do was write the
note.

And it so happened. And in stolen half-hours of meeting I came to know
all the sweet madness of boy's love and girl's love. So far as it goes
it is not the biggest love in the world, but I do dare to assert that it
is the sweetest. Oh, as I look back on it! Never did girl have more
innocent boy-lover than I who had been so wicked-wise and violent beyond
my years. I didn't know the first thing about girls. I, who had been
hailed Prince of the Oyster Pirates, who could go anywhere in the world
as a man amongst men; who could sail boats, lay aloft in black and storm,
or go into the toughest hang-outs in sai