“So she has gone away,” Mike muttered, “and she is sick.  I ain’t no liar and my wife ain’t neither.”

“When will she come back, Captain Mike?” asked Madge in a friendly tone, hoping the title of “captain” would soften the surly sailor.

“She’s not comin’ back,” the man replied impatiently.  “I’ve got to go to my dinner, and I ain’t goin’ to answer no more questions.  Don’t you come foolin’ around this way any more; my old woman don’t like it.  I warn you for your good.”

Phil was tired of deceit.  She knew Mike had not told them the truth.  “Captain Mike,” she demanded coolly, “have you put your daughter in an asylum?  If you have, I think you have been both inhuman and cruel.  Mollie is not crazy.  If you will tell us where she is we will look after her, and she need not bother you any more.”  She raised her dark eyes and gazed defiantly at the angry sailor, who shook his great red fist full in her face.

“You’ll take a man’s own daughter away from him, will you?” he raged.  “What makes you so interested in my gal?  And who told you Moll was shut up with a lot of crazies?  My Moll is going to be married; she has gone away to git her weddin’ clothes.”

He laughed tantalizingly into the girls’ faces as though well pleased with his own joke.

“Mollie married?” Phil exclaimed in horror.  “Why, she——­” Then Phil stopped herself and inquired, with an innocent expression of interest, “Whom did you say Mollie was going to marry?”

“She is going to marry Bill Barnes, a friend of mine,” retorted the sailor sarcastically, his heavy shoulders shaking with savage amusement.  “He ain’t much to look at.  It’s kind of a case of Beauty and the Beast with him and my Moll.  But she’s powerful fond of him.”

“Mike!” a shrill voice screamed from the shanty boat kitchen, “come along in here.”

Mike glared at his questioners, his face set in savage lines.  “Don’t never come here agin,” he growled.  “If you do, I ain’t sayin’ what will happen to you.”  Turning abruptly he strode toward his boat, leaving the girls standing where he had first met them.

There was nothing for Madge and Phil to do but to return once more to their own boat.  “O Madge! it is too dreadful!” exclaimed Phil in a husky voice.  “I understand now what poor Mollie meant.  She said there was one thing she would never do, no matter how cruel her father might he with her.  Of course, she knew they were going to try to force her to marry some frightful looking fisherman.  We simply must try to find her and save her.  It is a wicked shame!”

“Don’t be so wretched, Phil,” comforted Madge, though she felt equally miserable.  “You are right; we must find out how to save poor, pretty Mollie.  I can’t think what we ought to do, just this minute, but we must do our best.  Now I think we shall have to go home and talk things over with Miss Jenny Ann and the girls.  We will come back to-morrow, prepared to make a fight to save Mollie.  Surely she can’t be married by that time.”