"All right. But I guess th' law won't hurt me none. I'm in my rights. There's the door, mister." "I refuse to go without her!" Barnes sighed. He was on land a man of peace, but there was a limit to his patience. He seized Braine by the shoulders and hustled him out of the house. "Bring your proofs, mister, an' nothin' more'll be said; but till y' bring 'em, keep away from this cottage." And, simple-minded sailor that he was, he thought this settled the matter. That night he kept his ears open for unusual sounds, but he merely wasted his night's rest. Quite naturally, he reckoned that the stranger would make his attempt at night. Indeed, he made it in broad daylight, with Barnes not a hundred yards away, calking a dory whose seams had sprung a leak. Braine had Florence upon the chartered yacht before the old man realized what had happened. He never saw Florence again; but one day, months later, he read all about her in a newspaper. Florence fought; but she was weak, and so the conquest was easy. Braine was kind enough, now that he had her safe. He talked to her, but she merely stared at the receding coast. [Illustration: FLORENCE FOUGHT BUT SHE WAS WEAK AND SO THE CONQUEST WAS EASY] "All right; don't talk if you don't want to. Here," to one of the men, "take her to the cabin and keep her there. But don't you touch her. I'll break you if you do. Put her in the cabin and guard the door; at least keep an eye on it. She may take it into her head to jump overboard." Even the temporarily demented are not without a species of cunning. Florence had never seen Braine till he appeared at the Barnes cottage. Yet she revolted at the touch of his hand. On the second day out toward New York she found a box of matches and blithely set fire to her cabin, walked out into the corridor and thence to the deck. When the fire was discovered it had gained too much headway to be stopped. The yacht was doomed. They put off in the boats and for half a day drifted helplessly. Fate has everything mapped out like a game of chess. You move a pawn, and bang goes your bishop, or your knight, or your king; or she lets you almost win a game, and then checkmates you. But there is one thing to be said in her favor--rail at her how we will, she is always giving odds to the innocent. Mike Bannock was in the pilothouse, looking over his charts, when the lookout in the crow's nest sang out: "Two boats adrift off the port bow, sir!" And Bannock, who was a first-class sailor, although a rough one, shouted down the tube to the engine room. The freighter came to a halt in about ten minutes. The castaways saw that they had been noted, and pulled gallantly at the oars.