So, when next day the Doric sailed, four new names appeared upon the passenger list, and the last men down the stage already "trembling on the rise," were two young fellows in white uniform, who turned as they sprang to the dock and waved their jaunty caps. "Join you in ten days at 'Frisco!" shouted the shorter of the two, gazing upward and backward at the quartette on the promenade deck. "Oh! beg a thousand pardons," he added hastily, as he bumped against some slender object, and, wheeling about to pick up a flimsy white fan, he found himself face to face with Witchie Garrison, kerchief waving, beaming, smiling, throwing kisses innumerable to the party he had so lately left. The hot blood rushed to his forehead, an angry light to his eyes, as she nodded blithely, forbearingly, forgivingly at him. "Dear boy," she cried, in her clear, penetrating treble, "how could you be expected to see any one after leaving--her?" But Gov.'s arm was linked in his at the very instant and led him glowering away, leaving her close to the edge of the crowded dock, smiling sweetness, blessing and bliss upon a silent and unresponsive group, and waving kerchief and kisses to them until, far from shore, the Doric headed out to sea. * * * * * They were nearing home again. Day and night for nearly a week the good ship had borne them steadily onward over a sea of deepest blue, calm and unruffled as the light that shone in Amy's eyes. Hours of each twenty-four Armstrong had been the constant companion, at first of the trio, then of the two--for Mr. Prime had found a kindred spirit in a veteran merchant homeward bound from China--then of one alone; for Miss Prime had found another interest, and favor in the eyes of a young tourist paying his first visit to our shores, and so it happened that before the voyage, all too brief, was half over, Amy Lawrence and Armstrong walked the spacious deck for hours alone or sat in sheltered nooks, gazing out upon the sea. The soft, summer breezes of the first few days had given place to keener, chillier air. The fog ahead told of the close proximity of the Farallones. Heavier wraps had replaced the soft fabrics of the Hawaiian saunterings. But warmth and gladness, coupled with a strange new shyness in his presence, were glowing in her fresh young heart. One day she had said to him: "You have not told me how you came to leave there--just now," and it was a moment before he answered. "That was the surgeons' doing. They sent me back from the front because the wound did not properly heal, and then ordered a sea voyage until it did; but I turn back at once from San Francisco."