And a few blocks north Judith Todd stood in a dark doorway and whispered: “I mustn’t hope for anything. If nothing comes of to-night, I must go on. But, O God, make something come out right for me at last, at last!” And Eddie---- At about this moment Eddie’s mother was rolling a pair of his socks into a neat ball. She sighed unconsciously. “Sometimes it seems to me,” she said, “as if Eddie has never really waked up. I--I can’t express it the way you would, Alice; but as if he was driving himself--dumb, you know.” “Doesn’t he like his job?” “I don’t know. He never says. But sometimes he looks---- And then there’s that Haskins girl. I’m afraid he’s let her push him into being engaged. I wish I knew--he’s so silent lately.... When he was a little boy he used to lie on the floor by the hour, so happy, drawing pictures of ships.” Ships! Alyse had never noticed them, but they lay like a fringe about the tall city, slowly rising and falling with the tide, lying there waiting to be unloosed to the seven seas. But Eddie knew they were there. All the miles of wharves he knew, from Sunday and evening rambles, from noon hours when he went without food to stand looking at some lovely visitor from an unknown port. And now at this moment he was making his way as fast as he could to say farewell to one that had become the very core of his heart. More eagerly, and more swiftly than he ever had made his way to the Haskins girl he travelled toward the North River. Just before he reached the corner beyond which he could look down upon the river he felt his heart grow cold with the fear that sometime during the day she might have slipped out to sea. It seemed to him that if she had gone he could not bear it; and yet he told himself that to-morrow night she would not be there; they had begun to ship her cargo. But when he had rounded the corner, there were her masts against the deep blue of the night sky--five masts, the beauty! He had seen them two weeks before one night when he was leaning over the wall of Riverside Drive, and his heart had leaped. He had made his way down to the wharf alongside which the schooner lay, and stood there studying her, feasting his eyes on her. The tall cliffs of houses towered above her, but she smelled of many cargoes and of the sea. He could imagine her furled canvas slowly shaking out to the breeze, the deck tilting. The mate had come up on deck with his pipe and talked to him over the side. Next evening Eddie was there again, and the mate invited him on board; he talked about the schooner as a man might about a wife whose very faults he loved. And Eddie had asked him questions which had been storing up in his heart since he was a boy. He could talk to this man Jennings, for they had a passion in common. Evening after evening they leaned over the deck rail or sat in the cabin, smoking and talking, and a deep friendliness developed between them.