felt a sharp pang of compunction and pity. The child looked even more pathetic than when seen from above, and the young girl involuntarily stooped in passing, and touched the wan little cheek. Whereupon one of those ineffable smiles which are the birthright of Italians lighted the little face, and the small hand was lifted with so captivating a gesture that Blythe, clasping it in her own, dropped on her knees beside the child.

14

“Is it your little girl?” she asked, looking up into the face of the woman, whose marked unlikeness to the child was answer enough.

“No, no, Signorina,” the woman protested. “She is my little Signorina.”

“And you are taking her to Italy?”

“Si, Signorina; alla bella Italia!”

Then the lips of the little girl parted with a still more radiant smile, and she murmured, “Alla bella Italia!”

A moment later, Blythe and her companion had passed on and up to the forward 15 deck where, climbing a short ladder to the railing of the “crow’s nest,” they dropped lightly down into this most novel of elevators. There was a shrill whistle from the boatswain, the waving of white handkerchiefs where Mrs. Halliday and Mr. DeWitt stood, forward of the wheel-house, to watch the start; then the big windlass began to turn, the rope was “paid out,” and the slow, rather creaky journey up the mast had begun.

15

It was a perfect day for the adventure. The ship was not rolling at all, the little motion to be felt being a gentle tilt from stem to stern which manifested itself at long intervals in the slightest imaginable dip of the prow. And presently the ascent was accomplished, and the “crow’s nest” once more clung in its accustomed place against the mast,—forty feet up in the air, according to Mr. Grey’s reckoning.

As they looked across the great sea the horizon seemed to have receded to an incalculable distance, and the airs that came to them across that broad expanse, unsullied by the faintest trace of man or his 16 works, were purer than are often vouchsafed to mortals. Blythe felt her heart grow big with the sense of space and purity, and this wonderful swift passage through the upper air. Involuntarily she took off her hat to get the full sweep of the breeze upon her forehead.

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Suddenly, a 

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