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70 to communicate, some fresh warning to give Jack; and if she could slip away from Mr. Potzfeldt and pass out to the promenade deck in order to join Jack there—

He had just reached this point in his thoughts when he saw the girl. She had apparently just come from her stateroom, for she was in company with the Red Cross nurse. There was a half-frightened expression on Bessie's pretty, face. Still, who could wonder at such a thing, when people many times her age were looking peaked and white in those critical hours.

The girl was looking in Tom's direction now. He saw her make an involuntary gesture as if gripped by some emotion. Then she started forward—she was heading straight toward the spot where the youth sat, as though bent on speaking to him.

Tom put his magazine down. After all, the story he chanced to be reading was not one half as exciting as the conditions by which he found himself surrounded at that very moment.

"Oh, where is Jack?" asked the girl, as soon as she reached his side. "I hope he has not gone out on that gloomy deck to walk!"

"Just what he did some little time ago," Tom told her, at the same time feeling a sense of coming peril gripping his heart and thrilling his pulses. "But why do you look so anxious, Bessie?"