slowly carried his chin to his shoulder, to take a view of the weather astern, and then, fastening his eyes with 'longshore leisureliness upon my face--and I now noticed for the first time that he slightly squinted--he said, 'It's a good job that we fell in with 'ee, Mr. Tregarthen; for if so be as you two had kept all on washing about on that there raft till noon today--and I give ye till noon--ye'd be wanting no man's help nor prayers afterwards. It's agoing to blow.''Yes,' said I, 'there's wind enough in that sky there; in fact it's freshening a bit already, isn't it?' For I now perceived the keener feathering and sharper play upon the waters, and the harder and broader racing of the yeast that was pouring away from either quarter of the lugger. 'There's been a shift of the wind, too, I think,' I added, trying to catch a sight of the dusky interior of a little compass-box that stood on the seat close against Abraham.'Yes, it's drawed norradly,' he answered. 'I ain't sorry, for it's like justifying of me for not setting ye ashore. I _did_ think, when the young lady asked me to steer for England, that I wasn't acting the part of a humane man in refusing of her, and for keeping all on stretching the distance between you and your home. But I reckoned upon the wind drawing ahead for a homeward-bound course, and now it _has_; so that if we was to keep you a week and get ye aboard a steamer at the end of it you'd stand to get home sooner than if we was to down hellum now and start aratching for your coast.''We owe our lives to you,' said I cordially. 'Not likely that we could wish to inconvenience you by causing your lugger to swerve by so much as a foot from her course.'

CHAPTER II.HEADING SOUTH.

Just then Helga rose through the hatch. I caught an expression of admiration in Abraham's face at her floating, graceful manner of passing through the little aperture.

'She might ha' been born and bred in a lugger,' said he to me in a hoarse whisper. 'Whoy, with the werry choicest and elegantest o' females it 'ud be no more 'n an awkward scramble to squeeze through that hole. Has she wings to her feet? I didn't see her use her elbows, did you? And, my precious limbs! how easily she takes them thwarts!' by which he meant her manner of passing over the seats of the boat.

Perhaps now I could find heart to admire the girl's figure. Certainly I had had but small spirit for observation of that kind aboard the raft, and THERE only had her shape been revealed to me; for in the barque no hint was conveyed by her boyish attire of the charms it rudely and heavily concealed. The 

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