ington. "It's a true story for all that. Only, I
say, don't talk of it before the others; let's keep our own counsel--"

"No poachers allowed on the Sun-Angel Manor!" interrupted Lorimer
gravely. Philip went on without heeding him.

"I'll question Valdemar Svensen after breakfast. He knows everybody
about here. Come and have a smoke on deck when I give you the sign, and
we'll cross-examine him."

Lorimer still looked incredulous. "What's the good of it?" he inquired
languidly. "Even if it's all true you had much better leave this
goddess, or whatever you call her, alone, especially if she has any mad
connections. What do _you_ want with her?"

"Nothing!" declared Errington, though hiss color heightened. "Nothing, I
assure you! It's just a matter of curiosity with me. I should like to
know who she is--that's all! The affair won't go any further."

"How do you know?" and Lorimer began to brush his stiff curly hair with
a sort of vicious vigor. "How can you tell? I'm not a spiritualist, nor
any sort of a humbug at all, I hope, but I sometimes indulge in
presentiments. Before we started on this cruise, I was haunted by that
dismal old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens--"

'The King's daughter of Norroway
'Tis thou maun bring her hame!'

"And here you have found her, or so it appears. What's to come of it, I
wonder?"

"Nothing's to come of it; nothing _will_ come of it!" laughed Philip.
"As I told you, she said she was a peasant. There's the breakfast-bell!
Make haste, old boy, I'm as hungry as a hunter!"

And he left his friend to finish dressing, and entered the saloon, where
he greeted his two other companions, Alec, or, as he was oftener called,
Sandy Macfarlane, and Pierre Duprez; the former an Oxford student,--the
latter a young fellow whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and with
whom he had kept up a constant and friendly intercourse. A greater
contrast than these two presented could scarcely be imagined. Macfarlane
was tall and ungainly, with large loose joints that seemed to protrude
angularly out of him in every direction,--Duprez was short, slight and
wiry, with a dapper and by no means ungraceful figure. The one had
formal _gauche_ manners, a never-to-be-eradicated Glasgow accent, and a
slow, infinitely tedious method of expressing himself,--the other was
full of restless movement and pantomimic gesture, and being proud of his
English, plunged into that language recklessly, making it curiously