when he was beyond the shy range of their timid glances. When, at the
ship's bow, he gazed over at the sporting dolphins or watched the
water curving gracefully from the black prow, they floated in the sea,
alluringly. If he turned his glance above to watch the fleecy clouds
which were the only vapors in the sky upon this ideal crossing, they
shaped themselves into her profile, the azure of the sky lost by
comparison with that which glowed serene from her great eyes. John
Vanderlyn was really dismayed to find that they were everywhere. He
had not been susceptible, as youths go, in the past; now he found
himself enthralled, spellbound by the appeal of this small German girl
who traveled cheaply in the steerage of a slow ship toward America, a
part of a large company of needy aliens seeking a new home in what
they thought the land of promise.

As the voyage neared its end he saw with some dismay that the old man
had managed to make enemies among the emigrants by his aloofness. The
sea was very smooth, these days, and, under smiling skies the
steerage-deck was swarming. The stewardess announced that but one of
all the seasick passengers, a young English girl, was left in the
infirmary; the only other call for the ship's doctor came from a
mother for her tiny babe of two or three months which had been
stricken with some increasing ailment before they had embarked upon
the ship. The emigrants were making merry daily, from early morning
until nine or ten of evenings; there were few moments when from their
part of the ship some crude music was not rising.

Concertinas, mouth-organs, a badly-mastered violin gave forth their
notes from time to time, their harshness softened by the mingling of
the waves' lap on the vessel's sides. Now and then the first-class
passengers looked down with amused curiosity upon rude dances, the