"Father!" exclaimed Moya. "You know there is danger. Often, things have
happened!"

"Why, what could happen?" asked Christine, with wide eyes.

"Many things very interesting could happen," the colonel boasted
cheerfully. "That is the object of the trip. You want things to happen. It
is the emergency that makes the man--sifts him, and takes the chaff out of
him."

"Take the chaff out of Banks Bowen," Moya imprudently struck in, "and what
would you have left?" She had met Banks Bowen in New York.

"Tut, tut!" said the colonel. "Silence, or a good word for the
absent--same as the"--The colonel stopped short.

"You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!"
Christine's face turned red.

"Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, I
beg your pardon; this is only for argument."

"I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are chaff!"
Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her speech.

"You need not go fancying things, Moya," she cried, in answer to a
quizzical look. "As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so high!"

"You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady, and