face. She'd been about to join Sax, but seeing the two come, didn't like to move, as it was evident they had something to say to her.

Jesse and Jim made a curious team. Jesse flew along on his little trotters, whilst Jim swung in a long, easy cat-stride, three foot and a half to the pace. Jesse always looked kind of tied together loose. Jim was trim as a race-horse—yet not finicky. His spurs rattled on the deck. Take him from boots to scalp-lock, he was a pretty picture of a man.

"Miss Smith," says Jesse, with a bob, "this feller's Jim Holton."

"And very glad that he is, for once in his life," says Jim, sweeping the deck with his hat, and looking compliments.

Mary smiled just enough to make the dimples count. They were best of the dimple family—not fat dimples, but little spots you'd like to own.

She wasn't the girl to take gaiety from a stranger; but, somehow, Jim showed for what he was—a clean heart, if frolicsome.

Mary was a match for him, all right. She made him as deep a bow, gave him a look, and in a mock-earnest way, with her hand on her heart, said:

"Am I to suppose myself the cause of so much joy?"

"You're not to suppose—you're to know," says Jim.

"Well," says Mary, with another flying look at him, "it doesn't seem possible; but the evidence of such very truthful and very blue, blue eyes"—she stopped and looked at the eyes—"is, of course, beyond questioning."

That knocked Jimmy. Underneath his dash, he was a modest fellow, and to have his personal appearance remarked openly rattled him. Mary'd got the war on his territory in two seconds. He looked at her, dumb; until, seeing her holding back her laughter by means of a row of the whitest of teeth set into the most interesting of under lips, he laughed right out and offered his hand.

"I'll simply state in plain English," he says, not wanting to quit whipped, "that you are the best use those eyes have ever been put to."

"That's entirely satisfactory," says Mary. "I'd have a bad disposition not to be contented with that—and, Mr. Holton, here's a friend of mine—Mr. Saxton."

Saxton was the only one who hadn't drawn entertainment out of the previous performance. He and Holton shook hands without 

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