Thurso and she were standing on the top deck together when they were arriving, on a morning of crystalline brightness. The land was white with snow, but the air was windless, and she felt that even the town which has the credit or discredit of possessing the vilest climate yet discovered in the world had its beautiful days. Higher and higher, as they drew near, rose the abominable, many-storied buildings, and from the pale blue of the winter sky they passed into the region of grey smoke which overhung the town. From the lonely and splendid places of the untenanted seas they slid into more populous waters. Stately liners were leaving for Eastern ports, and from the beautiful desert of the ocean they passed into the jostling waterways, full of broad-beamed ferry-steamers, and the hootings of innumerable syrens. Yet, somehow, her heart welcomed it all. She felt the stimulus of keen air and the intense throbbing activity which the town exhaled, that atmosphere of continuous, unremitting effort which makes all other places seem dronish and lazy. But it did not strike Thurso thus. "It is damnable! it is hell!" he said. Maud scarcely attended to him. "Oh, I rather like it," she said. The huge bulk of their ship, helpless in these narrow waters as some spent whale, sidled up to her berth, towed, as if by microscopical harpooners' boats, by two or three tiny, bustling tugs; and on the quay Maud saw a figure she knew, tall and serene and smiling, with no greatcoat on in spite of the chilliness of the morning, and for that moment she forgot Thurso and his troubles, and her heart leaped lightly to him across the narrowing space of water that separated them. That was unconscious, unpremeditated, and on the moment conscious thought came back, and she thought, not of herself and him, but only of him and Thurso. He was there, the man who had flicked across the ocean the message that he "would cure him." And she turned to her brother. "Look! there is Mr. Cochrane," she said, "and he sees us. How kind of him to have come down to meet the ship." * * * * * It was yet a long time before they were berthed, and the landing-bridges put in place, and Maud did not know how his heart, too, had leaped when he saw them standing on the deck. To him, also, had come, as to her, that first unpremeditated leap, when it was to her that he leaped. Then with his conscious self he saw her brother, him whom he longed to save from mortal error. But the flame of human love, in spite of himself, had been the first to blaze. Then they met, all three. CHAPTER IV.