of the port-hole, which swung up and down between sea and sky.

“Where I have been,” he said, “women are few and far between. I never cared for any of them—until—until—I saw this picture.”

He tapped his breast lightly.

“Do you think,” he continued, his voice rising louder again, “that I should ever have set out for England if I had not been drawn back by this?”

He tapped his breast again. Then his eyes grew wider and his nostrils distended.

“I suppose,” he cried, with a certain tone of irony in his voice, “that I am a poet. But I am a poet of the open air. Do you think that I care a glass of barbed-wire whisky for all the scented drawing-rooms in the world? I began life, as they call it, in England, when I was young. What do you think I care for polo, for Hurlingham, for a stuffy reception in some great house in town? Nothing—nothing! Give me the open prairie land, the tall, blue grass, the open sky, the joy of the weary body that has ridden hard after cattle all the day!”

He laughed shortly.

“Do you think,” he continued, extending an almost melodramatically gesticulating hand towards the astonished captain, “that there is any soft, silk-bound pillow in Mayfair that could appeal to me when I could sleep under the stars?”

“Heavens!” He reached out his arms and brought them to his sides again with a strenuous motion, all his muscles contracted. “I have learnt,” he cried, “the lesson that life is not only real and earnest, but that life is hard, that life is a battle—a battle to be won!”

His eyes fell upon his strong, sinewy, brown hands, and he clenched his fists.

“I am not going back to England to make pleasure, but to fight—to win the girl of the picture—from you!”

But now, to Westerham's surprise, Melun had turned to sneering. The baronet was a breed of man the captain did not understand; no man that he had as yet been acquainted with loosed his heart in this wild manner. It seemed to him that Westerham was but a romantic child.

But there was no childhood, no romance, in the bitter gaze he lifted his eyes to meet.

“Listen,” said Westerham, quietly, “for a hundred thousand pounds I expect you to place yourself at my disposal. For a hundred thousand pounds I expect not only your services, but the services of all those whom you employ. And the greatest of these services will be silence.

“I am going back to England as Sir Paul Westerham, Baronet, the richest man in the world. Thanks to the prying of the New York reporters I have had to sail on this ship in my own name. I did not wish it, and I have no intention of ever being discovered in London in the same character as I left New York.”

Westerham laughed a little to himself.

“No reporters at the dock-side for me,” he said. “No triumphal entry into London. No account of what I eat and do, and how many hours a night I sleep. I am going back to London to do precisely as I choose.”

Melun was very quiet. He knew he had met a stronger spirit than his own. For all the bleak chilliness of the eyes of the man who talked to him, he knew that he had to deal with the fierceness of a wild animal which feels the cage opening before him, that Westerham was seeking to evade the bars of a social prison.

“In three days' time,” Westerham went on, “we shall be in Liverpool. I shall leave the ship in such a dress that no man will recognise me. I shall go straight to London and put up at Walter's Hotel in the Strand. It is a little place, where not even journalists will look for a millionaire.”

“You forget,” said Melun, “that if you disappear in that manner there will be an awful outcry over your disappearance.”

“That matters nothing,” said Westerham. “Disappear I shall, to pursue my own ends as I choose to follow them. For once I am going to prove that money has the power to hide a man. Do you agree to my bargain?”

Melun nodded his head.

“I agree,” he said, “because I must. The day after you land in Liverpool I will meet you at Walter's.”

“You tell me,” said Westerham, “that you agree. Yet I doubt your word. There is something which I have not yet fathomed. You are still thinking of Lady Kathleen?

“Lie to me if you dare!” he added with brutal emphasis.

“I am not such a fool as to lie to you,” answered Captain Melun. “I am still thinking of the Lady Kathleen.”

“Then you make a vast mistake,” said the baronet.

He rose and opened the door for Melun to pass out.

CHAPTER III
THE GIRL IN THE PARK

On the same night the oily quality departed from the swell. It came on to blow, and blew hard until the Gigantic crossed the Mersey's turgid bar.

It was sufficiently rough to justify a great number of persons remaining in their cabins, but it was hardly sufficiently rough to excuse a two-days' absence of Captain Melun from the poker table.

There were some who were fools enough to grumble at Melun's absence, alleging against him that he sought to rob them of that revenge which they desired to make.

But while the rough weather kept Captain Melun below it brought Sir Paul Westerham on deck. And those maidens whose beauty was weatherproof rejoiced in the fact that the hitherto unattainable baronet now seemed to court friendly advances.

But they, poor little dears, did not know what Captain Melun did—their dreams of endless millions were unspoiled by any knowledge of the little paper which Westerham carried in his breast-pocket.

On the third day, however, there came a complete right-about-face in the conduct of the two men whose personalities had most impressed themselves on the ship's company, for while Melun came on deck looking sullen and morose, the baronet pleaded a slight attack of fever and hid himself in his state-room. Nor indeed, until with all that serenity on the bridge and all that shouting on the quay which goes to the berthing of a great liner, did any of the maidens, clamorous for his presence, look upon Westerham's face again.

The gangway lashed securely to the Gigantic's side, the first to step aboard were the reporters, anxious and eager-eyed, keen on finding the miner who was now a baronet and a millionaire. They proposed to wire his life-story up to London for the benefit of readers beyond number. Hard upon the reporters came the fussy relatives and friends of passengers, and amid the general kissings and hand-shakings on deck no one had much thought for any particular individual beyond himself.

So, without arousing any comment, there stepped from the main entrance to the saloon a tall, spare, clean-shaven man dressed in clerical garb. Even the fact that his face was exceedingly ruddy and that his eyes were of a peculiar sea-green shade aroused no comment.

Carrying a little bag in his hand, the apparently athletic curate swept his way to the head of the gangway, where his fresh and smiling face invited confidence from the reporters who hovered there, nervous lest the baronet should escape them.

One of them lifted his hat, and stepping forward, asked the tall, youthful parson if he had seen Sir Paul Westerham.

The parson smiled and said gravely:

“Yes, I saw him two minutes ago in his state-room.”

There was a stampede on the part of the journalists, and, smiling blandly to himself, Westerham settled his clerical hat firmly on his head and sped down the gangway.

In the days he had spent below decks Westerham