"jing, you gave me a scare, dan!" said freddy, drawing a long breath of relief. "i thought you had dropped overboard."

"overboard!" scoffed dan. "you must think i'm a ninny. and you have been sleeping sure! got to keep this sort of thing up all summer?"

"oh, no, no!" said freddy; "only for a few days,--until i get real well and strong; though brother bart will keep fussing over me, i know. golly, i wish we had uncle tom along with us!"

"all right, is he?" asked dan.

"great!" replied freddy, emphatically. "doesn't baby you a bit; lets you row and swim and dive when you go off with him. most as good as a real father."

"just as good, i guess," amended dan.

"no," said freddy, shaking his head. "you see, he has other work--preaching and saying mass and giving missions--where i don't come in. he has to leave me at saint andrew's because he hasn't any home. it must be just fine to have a home that isn't a school,--a sort of cosy little place, with cushioned chairs, and curtains, and a fire that you can see, and a kitchen where you can roast nuts and apples and smell gingerbread baking, and a big dog that would be your very own. but you can't have a home like that when you have a priest uncle like mine."

"no, you can't," agreed dan, his thoughts turning to aunt winnie and her blue teapot, and the little rooms that, despite all the pinch and poverty, she had made home.

"and christmas," went on freddy, both young speakers being quite oblivious of the big stranger who had seated himself on a camp stool in the shelter of the projecting cabin, and, with folded arms resting on the deck rail, was apparently studying the distant horizon,--"i'd like to have one real right christmas before i get too big for it."

"seems to me you have a pretty good time as it is," remarked dan: "new skates and sled, and five dollars pocket money. there wasn't a fellow at the school of your age had any more."

"that's so," said freddy; "but they went home. a fellow doesn't want pocket money when he goes home. dick fenton had only sixty cents; i lent him fifteen more to get a card-case for his mother. but he had christmas all right, you bet: a tree that went to the ceiling (he helped to cut it down himself); all the house 'woodsy' with wreaths and berries and fires,--real fires where you could pop corn and roast apples. he lives in the country, you see, where money doesn't count; for you can't buy a real christmas; it has to be homemade," said freddy, with a little sigh. "so i'll never have one, i know."

then the great gong sounded again to announce supper; and both boys bounded away to find the rest of their crowd, leaving the big stranger still seated in the gathering darkness, looking out to sea. as the boyish footsteps died into silence, he bowed his head upon his hands, and his breast heaved with a long, shuddering breath as if some dull, slumbering pain had wakened into life again. then, in fierce self-mastery, he rose, stretched his tall form to its full height, and, ascending to the upper deck, began to pace its dimming length with the stern, swift tread of one whose life is a restless, joyless march through a desert land.

meanwhile brother bart and his boys had begun to feel the roll of the sea, and to realize that supper had been a mistake. jim and dud had retired to their staterooms, with unpleasant memories of minnie foster's chocolates, and the firm conviction that they never wanted to see a candy box again. brother bart was ministering to a very white-faced "laddie," and thanking heaven he was in the state of grace and prepared for the worst.

"the lord's will be done, but i don't think any of us will live to see the morning. there must have been some poison in the food, to take us all suddint like this."

"oh, no, brother bart!" gasped freddy, faintly. "i've been this way before. we're all just--just seasick, brother bart--dead seasick."

even dan had a few qualms,--just enough to send him, with the sturdy sense of his rough kind, out into the widest sweep of briny air within his reach. he made for a flight of stairs that led up into some swaying, starlit region where there were no other sufferers, and flung himself upon a pile of life-preservers that served as a pillow for his dizzy head. sickness of any sort was altogether new to dan, and he felt it would be some relief to groan out his present misery unheard. but the glow of a cigar, whose owner was pacing the deck, suddenly glimmered above his head, and the big man in corduroy nearly stumbled over him.

"hello!" he said. "down and out, my boy? here, take a swig of this!" and he handed out a silver-mounted flask.

"no," said dan, faintly, "--can't. i've taken the pledge."

"pooh! don't be a fool, boy, when you're sick!"

"wouldn't touch it if i were dying," said dan. "i'm getting better now, anyhow. my, but i felt queer for a while! it is so hot and stuffy below. no more packing in on a shelf for me. i'll stick it out here until morning."

"and the others,--the little chap who was with you?" the stranger asked hastily. "is he--he sick, too?"

"freddy neville? yes, dead sick; but brother bart is looking out for him. brother bart is a regular old softy about freddy. he took him when he was a little kid and keeps babying him yet."

"he is good to him, you mean?" asked the other, eagerly.

"good? well, i suppose you'd call it good. i couldn't stand any such fussing. why, when fred got a tumble in the gym the other day the old man almost had a fit!"

"a tumble,--a fall; did it hurt him much?" there was a strange sharpness in the questioner's voice.

"pooh, no!" said dan. "just knocked him out a little. but we were all getting into trouble at saint andrew's, for vacation there is pretty slow; so father regan has sent us off to the seashore for the summer?"

"the seashore? where?"

"some queer place called killykinick," answered dan, who was now able to sit up and be sociable.

"killykinick?" repeated his companion, in a startled tone. "did you say you were going to killykinick?"

"yes," answered dan. "freddy's uncle or cousin or somebody died a while ago and left him a place there. freddy has a lot of houses and money and things all his own. it's lucky he has. he isn't the kind to rough it and tough it for himself. not that he hasn't plenty of grit," went on freddy's chum, hastily. "he's as plucky a little chap as i ever saw. but he's been used to having life soft and easy. he is the 'big bug' sort. (i ain't.) so i'm glad he has money enough to make things smooth at the start, though his no-'count father did skip off and leave him when he was only five years old."

"his father left him?" repeated dan's companion. "why?"

"don't know," answered dan. "just naturally a 'quitter,' i guess. lots of menfolks are. want a free foot and no bother. but to shake a nice little chap like freddy i call a dirty, mean trick, don't you?"

"there might be reasons," was the hesitating rejoinder.

"what reason?" asked dan, gruffly. "there ain't any sort of reason why a father shouldn't stick to his job. i hate a 'quitter,' anyhow," concluded dan, decisively.

"wait until you are twenty years older before you say that, my boy!" was the answer. "perhaps then you will know what quitting costs and means. but you're an old chum for that little boy. i saw him with you down below. how is it that you're such friends?"

and then dan, being of a communicative nature, and seeing no cause for reserve, told his new acquaintance all about the scholarship that had introduced him into spheres of birth and breeding to which he frankly confessed he could make no claim.

"i'm not freddy's sort, i know; but he took to me somehow,--i can't tell why."

yet as dan went on with his simple, honest story, his listener, who, world-wise and world-weary as he was, knew something of the boyish nature that turns instinctively to what is strong and true and good, felt he could tell why freddy took to this rough diamond of a chum.

dan, in his turn, learned that his new acquaintance was called john wirt; that he was off on a vacation trip, hunting and fishing wherever there was promise of good sport; that he had travelled abroad for several years,--had been to china, japan, india, egypt; had hunted lions and elephants, seen the midnight sun, crossed siberian steppes and african deserts. from a geographical standpoint, mr. wirt's story seemed an open and extensive map, but biographically it was a blank. of his personal history, past, present or future, he said nothing. altogether, dan and his new acquaintance had a pleasant hour on the open deck beneath the stars, and made friends rapidly.

"i wish you were going our way," said dan, regretfully, as his companion announced that he was to get off at the first point they touched. "brother bart is going to granny us all, i know. if we had a real strong man like you around, he wouldn't scare so easily. and there is fine fishing about killykinick, they say."

"so i have heard." the stranger had risen now, and stood, a tall shadow dimly outlined above dan. "i--i--perhaps i'll drop in upon you. isn't it time for you to turn in now?"

"no," answered dan,--"not into that packing box below. i'm up here for the night."

"and i'm off before morning, so it's good-bye and good luck to you!"

and, with a friendly nod, mr. john wirt strode away down the darkened deck, leaving dan to fling himself back upon his life-preservers, and wonder how, when, or where he had seen their new acquaintance before,--not at saint andrew's; for mr. wirt had been abroad, as he had said, ever since dan entered the college; not at milligans' or pete patterson's, or anywhere about his old home. perhaps he had blacked his shoes or sold him a newspaper in some half-forgotten past; for surely there was something in his tone, his glance, his friendly smile that dan knew.

he felt quite well now. all the dizziness and nausea had vanished, and he was his own strong, sturdy self again. the roll and swap of the boat were only the rock of a giant cradle; the surge of the sea, a deep-toned lullaby soothing him to pleasant dreams; and the sky! dan had never seen such a midnight sky. he lay, with his head pillowed in his clasped hands, looking up at the starry splendor above him with a wonder akin to awe. the great, blue vault arching above him blazed with light from a myriad stars, that his books had told him were worlds greater than this on whose wide waters he was tossing now,--worlds whose history the wisest of men could never know,--worlds, thousands and millions of them, moving in shining order by "rule and law."

"rule and law,"--it was the lesson that seemed to face dan everywhere,--down in those black depths he had penetrated to-day, where valve and lever and gauge held roaring fire and hissing steam, with all their fierce force, to submission and service; in the polished mechanism whose steady throb he could feel pulsing beneath him like a giant heart; in the radiant sky where worlds beyond worlds swept on their mysterious way--obeying.

with half-formed thoughts like these stirring vaguely in his mind, dan was dropping off into pleasant sleep, when he was roused by the sound of voices and the glimmering of a ship's lantern.

"i think you will find your boy here, sir."

it was mr. john wirt, who, with the aid of a friendly deck hand, was guiding a pale, tottering, very sick brother bart to dan's side.

"who wants me?" asked the half-wakened dan, springing to his feet.

"dan dolan! ye young rapscallion!" burst out brother bart, almost sobbing in his relief. "it's down at the bottom of the black sea i thought ye were. i've been tramping this boat, with this good man holding me up (for i'm too sick to stand), this half hour. down wid ye now below stairs with the rest, where i can keep an eye on ye. come down, i say!"