class="pnext">"You're hurt, sir?" said the steward.

"Only scratched! Water and linen is all I want."

Bannon brought it as directed, and having given the simple necessaries to the lady, Britton dived below to reappear some minutes later in yachting trousers, shirt and shoes, with his left sleeve rolled up to the shoulder and his duck coat on his other arm. He had washed the knife-wound while in his bath-room, but it bled afresh, and the lady hastened to staunch it.

Trascott assisted her by the use of much cold water. When the flow of blood was stopped, she called into requisition some healing ointment which Bannon had brought on his own authority and then bound the limb neatly with linen. There was something exquisite in the sensation for Britton. The soft touch of her fingers, the near fragrance of her person and the electric glow of awakened sympathy combined to influence him and awake strange thrills to which he was not at all subject.

She felt the throb of his pulse as she held his wrist down to straighten the bandage, and the knowledge of its origin flushed her cheek. An instant she looked up at him inquiringly, almost with the spirit of challenge, but her lashes drooped under the tensity of his glance.

Virility was Britton's most salient attribute. When the man in him was stirred, it moved strongly, and the proximity of so fair a vision would have excited a less impressionable person, one with less of Britton's youthful and unbounded faith in women!

The steward disappeared about his business. Trascott and Ainsworth loitered away. Britton and the woman were left alone with that magnetic bond of touch binding them. With the man, the impression lasted for many a day! A new, uncurbed power was loosed within him, and the woman felt the trend of its might. It thrilled and awed at the same time. She shifted her hands to a final arrangement of the bandage.

"I think it will do," she murmured in a confused way.

Britton shook himself out of a wild dream, slowly fastened his shirt-sleeve and donned his coat.

"We will go below," he said, taking her arm and guiding her down the companionway. The stewardess met them in the passage and led the way to the stateroom she had prepared, disappearing therein.

"Good-night," she said, extending both hands. "I haven't found much opportunity to thank you. To-morrow I shall tell you more."

Britton took her fingers, and the mad blood leaped in his veins again.

"To-morrow," he cried gladly. "Ah! yes, there are many to-morrows, for you stay at Algiers."

"Many to-morrows!" she exclaimed with a happy laugh, as she turned into the stateroom. "That is a sweet way of putting it. Many to-morrows!–I like that idea."

CHAPTER II.

"It's hell,–isn't it, Trascott?" asked Ainsworth, dismally.

"My dear fellow," protested the shocked curate, "such liberty of expression, to put it mildly–"

"Fudge!" interrupted his friend. "You divines all agree as to the existence of an infernal region. Why shouldn't I introduce a comparison if I choose? If you don't like its rugged exterior you can at least appreciate the sentiment. It's hell–isn't it?"

"Well, well, it's decidedly unpleasant," grumbled Trascott.

"It's a bally shame!" said the lawyer, tritely. "Britton takes us away on his uncle's yacht for a cruise of the African shore of the Mediterranean. Witness our cruise! We get as far as Algiers and there his two long-suffering comrades have to stagnate while he plays the gallant to a blonde will-o'-the-wisp whom he made a show of rescuing. He found her maid, installed her at the Hotel de ––, attended to her remittances from England in her stranded position and played the modern hero role to a triple curtain call–which he is certainly getting!"

"Of course the yacht had to be repaired," put in Trascott, as if it was his kindly duty to find some extenuation.

"Of course!" echoed Ainsworth sarcastically, waving a hand to where the Mottisfont, quite intact, rode proudly at anchor.

The two men were standing on the harbor piers above the landing-stages, and they had a good view of the vessel. Behind them the capital of Algeria rose precipitously up the sides of an immense hill a mile in length at the base by five hundred feet in height. The foot of the picturesque city was the sprawling sea; the head was the Casbah, the ancient fortress of the Deys. Up on the hill reposed the old or high town with its quaint Moorish edifices, while sloping below to the rim of the port lay the lower, new, or French town filled with government buildings, squares and streets, together with lines of warehouses and wharves, dotted here and there by mosques that looked strangely out of place amid the European architecture.

Blocked out against the harbor water from their conspicuous stand, the two friends were very dissimilar in appearance. Ainsworth's was the short, squat figure, Trascott's the tall, lanky one. The lawyer, in spite of the disadvantage of height, probably weighed more than the curate. His stockily-built body filled out his gray tweeds, while the black garments of Trascott hung loosely on his hollow frame. A gray cap of the same material as his suit was jauntily perched on the lawyer's head, but his companion wore the familiar and inevitable round, dark hat.

Still, if Trascott's form lost dignity beside Ainsworth's, that dignity was more than regained when it came to a comparison of faces. The lawyer had a gray-eyed, regular countenance, smooth and unmarked by any dissipation, but it lacked the shading that beautified his friend's. The curate's features, though more rugged in casting, had the high lights of earnestness glowing in his brown eyes, the deeper tones of endeavor blending in the moulding of the chin, while the shadows of responsibility rested in the firm curve of his lips.

Cyril Ainsworth, with his unchanging mask of precision, was the keen, well-oiled machine which cut straight to the core of things in the performance of its work. Bertrand Trascott was the living actor of a great belief, the exponent of a mighty drama calculated to uplift and regenerate his fellow-beings. Each had his part in the work of the present-day world, and, strange to say, men loved the machine-like precision of Ainsworth almost as well as the generous heart of Trascott.

The lawyer again called the curate's attention to the yacht with another motion of his hand.

"The yacht had to be repaired," he snapped. "It took three days to splice the timbers and rivet the plates. We should then have proceeded with our cruise. There was no impediment, for the steamship company settled the damages in full. Yet here we have been for two weeks–and so has the woman! At this rate we may be here for two months–and so may the woman!"

They sat down upon the piers for their after-supper smoke, having fared sumptuously on board the Mottisfont, in an effort to reconcile themselves to the inertia under which they chafed. The soft dusk began to glide in from the sea and enfold the dark wharves in misty