Doctor Blair saw them and came swinging up to make the old men welcome. Then Doctor Leslie sighted them and came forward in delighted amazement, and Captain Jimmie spied them from the wheel house and called out joyfully, "Hoots, toots, Angus! And is that you, Peter Lad?" And the Ancient Mariner left off smoking, and, pouring out a stream of Gaelic above the roar of the pipes, came right out on the wharf to make sure his eyes had not deceived him. Roderick guided the two to seats up on the deck near to the captain's pilot house, finding the way thither a veritable triumphal procession. The crowds were still coming down Main Street; nervous mothers with babies bouncing wildly in their little buggies, embarrassed fathers with great sagging baskets and hysterical children with their newly starched attire already wildly rumpled. Roderick scanned each new group eagerly, wondering if Helen Murray would come. He had seen little of her since his return. A long illness following the critical operation had kept him at home, and when at last he was able to go out again and take up his work he found that gossip had it that Miss Murray, the pretty girl who taught in the East Ward school had had a young man to visit her. Miss Annabel had been quite excited over him, for he was very handsome and was a successful surgeon, and Miss Armstrong had pronounced him a splendid match for any girl. Roderick had been spared a visit from Dick Wells, and had wondered that the young man had not kept his promise. He had longed and yet dreaded to see him. He had been able to learn nothing about the visit except what gossip said, and to-day he was full of hope and fear, as he watched. His fears were stronger, but he was young and he could not keep from hoping. The _Inverness_, as every one in Algonquin knew, gave ample warning of her leave-taking. At exactly half-an-hour before the hour set for sailing, she always blew one long blast from her whistle. At fifteen minutes to the hour she blew two shorter toots, and just on the eve of departure three blasts loud and sharp. This final warning, which Doctor Blair had profanely named the last trump, had been sounded, and Roderick began to look anxious for she had not yet appeared nor Mrs. Adams either. But he had gone sailing on picnics via the _Inverness_ too many times to be seriously alarmed. The door of the little wheel-house where the captain had now taken his stand, commanded a view of Main Street rising up from the water, and no native of Algonquin could do him the injustice to suppose that he would sail away while any one was waving to him from the hill.