reins to go. Mrs. Sherwood suddenly laid her hand on his forearm.

"Oh, the poor thing!" she cried, her voice thrilling with compassion.

A young man and a steward were supporting a girl down the gangplank.
Evidently she was very weak and ill. Her face was chalky white, with dark
rings under the eyes, her lips were pale, and she leaned heavily on the
men. Although she could not have heard Mrs. Sherwood's exclamation of pity,
she happened to look up at that instant, revealing a pair of large, dark,
and appealing eyes. Her figure, too, dressed in a plain travelling dress,
strikingly simple but bearing the unmistakable mark of distinction, was
appealing; as were her exquisite, smooth baby skin and the downward
drooping, almost childlike, curves of her lips. The inequalities of the
ribbed gangplank were sufficient to cause her to stumble.

"She is very weak," commented Mrs. Sherwood.

"She is--or would be--remarkably pretty," added Sherwood. "I wonder what
ails her."

Arrived at the foot of the gangplank the young man removed his hat with an
air of perplexity, and looked about him. He was of the rather florid,
always boyish type; and the removal of his hat had revealed a mat of close-
curling brown hair, like a cap over his well-shaped head. The normal
expression of his face was probably quizzically humorous, for already the
little lines of habitual half laughter were sketched about his eyes.

"A plunger," said John Sherwood to himself, out of his knowledge of men;
then as the young man glanced directly toward him, disclosing the colour
and expression of his eyes, "a plunger in something," he amended, revising