what?” the old man queried, as she hesitated and glanced shyly up at him, a tinge of color coming into her cheeks.

13

“Unless it is God’s will,” she answered, reverently.

A sneer curled her companion’s lip at this reply; but the sweet eyes looking up into his seemed to touch some tender memory, for it quickly died, and he repressed the skeptical words to which he was about to give utterance.

But she felt it, nevertheless, and, with a grave look and serious tone, she asked:

“Don’t you believe that God rules the storm, and that He will take care of us?”

“My experience all through life has been that I have had to take care of myself,” he returned, with some bitterness.

“And I have been taught to trust ‘our Heavenly Father.’ I think one would hardly have much faith in one’s self at such a time as this,” the little maiden said, with a look of awe and an involuntary shudder, as another wave broke over them.

The man by her side felt the gentle rebuke, but he evaded it by saying:

“I think no harm will come to us. I have crossed the Atlantic many times; I have sailed upon other oceans, and have been in storms equal to, if not worse, than this. I do not fear the elements much in one of these well-built boats. There is only one thing at sea that I really feel afraid of.”

“And what is that?”

“Fire.”

He felt the thrill of fear that went vibrating through her whole frame as he uttered the dread word, and appeared to regret having added to her apprehension, for he continued, reassuringly:

“But an accident of that kind rarely happens nowadays, and where everything is so carefully conducted as on these large steamers. There, sit close beside me,” he went on, as still 14another thundering mass of water swept over them; “lean against me—so. I will keep my arm about you, and you will be safer than sitting by yourself. But how does it happen that you are traveling alone?”

14

“My father and mother are dead,” she answered, with the same appealing look that had touched him before, while her lips quivered over the sad sentence. “I had no friends in England, and so I am going to live with a 

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