middle-class tradesman, who, however, seemed to be more interested in
the novelty of his surroundings than in the movements of his daughter
and their departing friend. So it chanced that the consul re-entered
the cabin--ostensibly in search of a missing glove, but really with the
intention of seeing how the passenger was bestowed--just behind them.
But to his great embarrassment he at once perceived that, owing to the
obscurity of the apartment, they had not noticed him, and before he
could withdraw, the man had passed his arm around the young girl's half
stiffened, yet half yielding figure.

"Only one, Ailsa," he pleaded in a slow, serious voice, pathetic from
the very absence of any youthful passion in it; "just one now. It'll be
gey lang before we meet again. Ye'll not refuse me now."

The young girl's lips seemed to murmur some protest that, however, was
lost in the beginning of a long and silent kiss.

The consul slipped out softly. His smile had died away. That
unlooked-for touch of human weakness seemed to purify the stuffy and
evil-reeking cabin, and the recollection of its brutal past to drop with
a deck-load of iniquity behind him to the bottom of the Clyde. It is
to be feared that in his unofficial moments he was inclined to be
sentimental, and it seemed to him that the good ship Skyscraper
henceforward carried an innocent freight not mentioned in her manifest,
and that a gentle, ever-smiling figure, not entered on her books, had
invisibly taken a place at her wheel.

But he was recalled to himself by a slight altercation on deck. The
young girl and the passenger had just returned from the cabin. The
consul, after a discreetly careless pause, had lifted his eyes to the