“We are rowing over to the island,” remarked Lillian graciously.

“How strange!  We were going over there, too, weren’t we, Mr. Bolling?” quizzed Tom.

“Then catch us if you can!” challenged Phyllis.  With a sign to Madge the two girls began rowing their boat through the water with the speed of an arrow.  The first spurt told, for the island was not far away, and the girls’ boat grated on the beach before the boys had time to land.  But Tom and Jack did jump out and run through the water to pull the “Water Witch” ashore, much to Phil’s disgust.

“I really have an errand to do on this island, Miss Morton,” continued Tom, as the party started up the beach.  “I wanted first to ask you if I could bring my mother to call on you and your chaperon this afternoon?  I am awfully anxious to have an all-day sailing party to-morrow.  And I thought perhaps you and your friends and chaperon would go with us?  There is an old fellow over here who takes people out sailing, and I am anxious to have a talk with him.  Don’t think I am such a duffer that I can’t sail a boat myself, but my mother is so nervous about the water that I take a professional sailor along to keep her from worrying.  She has had a great deal to make her nervous,” Tom ended.  “I wonder if you and your friends would mind walking over to the other side of the island with me to see this man?  It is not a long walk.”

The party started off, Phyllis keeping strictly in the background.  Madge walked with Tom and Lillian with Jack, so she felt a little out of it.

“If you don’t mind,” she proposed, after the party had walked a few yards, “I will sit down here on the beach and wait until you come back from your talk with the sailor man.  I will stay right here, so you can find me when you return.”

Phil found herself a comfortable, flat rock, and sat looking idly out over the bay.  Gradually she fell into a little reverie.

A sudden cry of pain roused Phil from her daydream.  Springing to her feet, she rushed down the beach, seeing nothing, but following the direction of the cry.  Rounding a curve of the beach she came upon a dirty, half-tumbled down tent.  In front of it stood a burly man with both hands on the shoulders of a young girl, whom he was shaking violently.  So intent was he upon what he was doing, he did not notice Phil approaching.  She saw him shove the girl inside the tent and close the outside flap.  “Now, stay in there till you git tired of it,” he growled as he turned and walked away.

A sound of low sobbing greeted Phil’s ears as she came up in front of the tent and stood waiting, hardly knowing what to do.  The sobs continued, with a note of pain in them that went straight to Phil’s tender heart.  The sight or sound of physical suffering made a special appeal to her.  It was Phyllis’s secret ambition some day to study medicine, an ambition which she had confided to no one save Madge.  Although the figure she had seen was almost that of a woman, the sobbing sounded like that of a child.  There was no other noise in the tent, so Phil knew the girl was alone.