As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely watched by the other couple on the beach. There was nothing in this to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since her experience with Aunt Lucretia. Her present environment was so far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed nothing actually could disturb her again. The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well. When they came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead. The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held: "I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled Above the green elms that a cottage was near; And I said, 'if there's peace to be found in the world, A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'" "That is pretty near right, don't you think, Ida May?" "It is, indeed! Oh, it is!" she cried. "And my heart _is_ humble, Tunis. I feel that God has been very good to me--and you," she added softly. "I've been mighty good to myself," he responded. "Ida May, there never was a girl just like you, I guess. Anyway, I never saw such a one. I--I don't know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward." "Tunis!" He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she, blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes. "You understand me, Ida May?" whispered the captain of the _Seamew_ eagerly. "I don't know, fixed as I am, that I've any right to talk to you like this. But--but I can't wait any longer!" She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked up at him again. "Have you thought of what all this may mean, Tunis?" she asked. "You bet I have. I haven't been thinking of much else--not since the first time I saw you." "What? You felt--felt that you could like me that night when we sat on the bench so long on the Common?" "My Godfrey, Ida May!" he exclaimed. "Since that time you slipped on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and I caught you. That's when I first knew that you were the most wonderful girl in the world!" "Oh, Tunis! Do you mean that?" "I certainly do," he said stoutly. "That--that you thought _that_? At very first sight?" "I couldn't get you out of my mind. I went about in a sort of dream. Why, Ida May, when Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue talked so much about wanting that other girl down here, all I could think of was you! I half believed it must be you that they sent me for--until I came face to face with that other girl." Her face dimpled suddenly; her eyes shone. The look she gave him passed through Tunis Latham like an electric shock. He trembled. He would have drawn her closer.