that wouldn't quail before two angry old men—and a jealous young one. You can see, I suppose, that Horace is there, too.

"Damn them!" he broke out passionately after a minute's silence. "It's a free country, and you and I are not children. They chase us as if we were pirates. For two pins I'd give them a pirate's welcome. I tell you, Bessie, my promise to be meek and mild is not worth much if they take a high hand with me. I can take their measure, all three of them."

"But you must not," the girl insisted. "You've promised. We can't help ourselves by violence. It would break my heart."

"They'll do that fast enough, once they get you home," he answered gloomily.

The girl's lips quivered. She sat looking back at the cutter half a cable astern. The westerly had failed them. The spreading canvas of the yacht was already blanketing the little sloop, stealing what little wind filled her sail. And as the sloop's way slackened the other slid down upon her, a purl of water at her forefoot, her wide mainsail bellying out in a snowy curve.

There were three men in her. The helmsman was a patriarch, his head showing white, a full white beard descending from his chin, a fierce-visaged, vigorous old man. Near him stood a man of middle age, a ruddy-faced man in whose dark blue eyes a flame burned as he eyed the two in the sloop. The third was younger still,—a short, sturdy fellow in flannels, tending the mainsheet with a frowning glance.

The man in the sloop held his course.

"Damn you, MacRae; lay to, or I'll run you down," the patriarch at the cutter's wheel shouted, when a boat's length separated the two craft.

MacRae's lips moved slightly, but no sound issued therefrom. Leaning on the tiller, he let the sloop run. So for a minute the boats sailed, the white yacht edging up on the sloop until it seemed as if her broaded-off boom would rake and foul the other. But when at last she drew fully abreast the two men sheeted mainsail and jib flat while the white-headed helmsman threw her over so that the yacht drove in on the sloop and the two younger men grappled MacRae's coaming with boat hooks, and side by side they came slowly up into the wind.

MacRae made no move, said nothing, only regarded the three with sober intensity. They, for their part, wasted no breath on him.

"Elizabeth, get in here," the girl's father commanded.

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