Chapter 4

HOW A JOURNEY ENDED AT HOPE

To Natalie Gerard the trip down the bay and into the sound that night was a wonderful adventure. She remembered it afterward far more vividly than the shipwreck, which became blurred in retrospect, so that she soon began to think of it as of some half-forgotten nightmare. To begin with, the personality of Murray O'Neil intrigued her more and more. The man was so strong, so sympathetic, and he had such a resistless way of doing things. The stories she had heard of him were romantic, and the superintendent's wife had not allowed them to suffer in the telling. Natalie felt elated that such a remarkable person should exert himself on her behalf. And the journey itself impressed her imagination deeply.

Although it was nine o'clock when they boarded the launch, it was still light. The evening was yellow with the peculiar diffused radiance of high latitudes, lending a certain somberness to their surroundings.

The rushing tide, the ragged rock-teeth which showed through it, the trackless, unending forests that clothed the hills in every direction, awed her a little, yet gave her an unaccustomed feeling of freedom and contentment. The long wait out between the lonely islands, where the tiny cockle-shell rolled strangely, although the sea seemed as level as a floor, held a subtle excitement. Darkness crept down out of the unpeopled gorges and swallowed them up, thrilling her with a sense of mystery.

When midnight came she found that she was ravenously hungry, and she was agreeably surprised when O'Neil produced an elaborate lunch. There were even thermos bottles filled with steaming hot coffee, more delicious, she thought, than anything she had ever before tasted. He called the meal their after-theater party, pretending that they had just come from a Broadway melodrama of shipwreck and peril. The subject led them naturally to talk of New York, and she found he was more familiar with the city than she.

"I usually spend my winters there," he explained.

"Then you have an office in the city?"

"Oh yes. I've maintained a place of business there for years."

"Where is it? On Wall Street?"

"No!" he smiled. "On upper Fifth Avenue. It's situated in the extreme southwest corner of the men's cafe at the Holland House. It consists of a round mahogany table and a leather settee."

"Really!"

"That's where I'm to be found at least four months out of every twelve."

"They told me you built railroads."

"I do--when I'm lucky enough to underbid my competitors. But that isn't always, and railroads aren't built every day."

"Mr. Gordon is building one."

"So I'm told." O'Neil marveled at the trick of fortune which had entangled this girl and her mother in the web of that