the benefit of the
passengers and all else on board, the semblance of accident, and the
attempt at rescue; and, besides, as far as the captain was concerned,
was it not the great Laparde, the most famous of his passengers, who
was involved--whose name was to be preserved from infamy and dishonour?
He shrugged his shoulders. What story had that clever brain of Myrna's
devised to fit the case? Had she _seen_ the accident itself?

"Who is it? ... Who is it?" cried the passengers above him. "How did
it happen? ... Who is it? ... Who is it?..."

And then a voice above the others, breathless with importance:

"It was Jean Laparde! He was up on the deck above with Mr. and Miss
Bliss. He dropped his cigarette-holder, it rolled across the deck and
went outside the rail, where the boats are, you know, and the ship
lurched as he stooped to pick it up, and--"

"And so, you see, Marie-Louise," completed Jean to himself, in
whimsical wistfulness, "and so, you see, Marie-Louise, that Jean
Laparde is dead."

-- XII --

AT THE "GATEWAY"

What confusion, what noise, what bewilderment--tugs pulling and
snorting as they warped the great liner into her berth; orders shouted;
the cries of passengers leaning from the upper decks to the knot of
people gathered on the pier below; and, distant, like the muffled roll
of a drum, the roar from the city streets!

Marie-Louise clasped at her little bundle of clothing timidly. For
hours she had stood there on the crowded steerage deck; for hours she
had strained her eyes toward the land, and then at the mighty city
unfolding itself as the liner steamed up the harbour. And she had
gazed long, too, at that majestic, towering figure on the little island
that had evoked such strange emotions from all these people around
her--a figure whose fame must be very great, for of these, who could
not read or write, who were ignorant and poor, who came from so many,
many lands, none, it seemed, even to the little children, but knew and
reached out their arms to it, some laughing in hysteria, and some with
tears, but all with the one word upon their lips that neither dialect
nor tongue confused--liberty!

It was that they had come for, these Czechs of Moravia, these
Croatians, these Slovenes from the Austrian provinces of Carinthia and
Styria, these Lithuanians and Magyars; it was that, too, that had
brought these Jews from a score of lands where the blessed cross that
Father Anton had taug