Since Mollie’s return to the shanty boat she had made no further outcry.  She did not seem to know what was going on.  The vacant, hopeless look had come over her face.  The fright and ill treatment of the day before had completely subdued her.  She seemed to have forgotten everything.

All night long she had lain awake in her miserable berth in the dirty shanty boat.  She lay still, with her eyes closed, until the breathing of her family told her they were fast asleep.  Then she crept out on the deck of the boat.  She sat for hours without moving, her wonderful blue eyes, with the empty look in them, staring out over the silent waters.  She was waiting, wistful and patient, for something to come to save her.  When the dawn broke, and a rosy light bathed the bay and the sky, she rose, went quietly into the cabin and lay down in her berth again.  She stayed there while the family ate their breakfast.  She made no resistance when her step-mother came toward her, grinning maliciously, and bearing a coarse white cotton dress, which she called “Moll’s wedding gown.”

Mollie let the woman put the dress on her.  She even combed her own sun-colored hair; and, for the first time in her life, she knotted it on her head, instead of letting it stream in ragged, unkempt ends over her shoulders.  A loose lock of hair over Mollie’s low forehead covered the ugly scar that was her one disfigurement.  She was so startlingly lovely that her stupid step-mother stared at her in a kind of bewildered amazement.  Mollie was pale and worn, and painfully thin, yet nothing could spoil the wonderful color of her hair and eyes, nor take away the peculiar grace of her figure.  Her expression was dull and listless.  Even so Mollie looked like a lily transplanted to some field of dank weeds, but growing tall and sweet amid their ugliness.

Mike looked at his daughter curiously when her step-mother dragged her out before him.  Brutal as he was, a change passed over his face.  He glanced over the water to see if Bill’s boat were approaching.  “I ain’t never understood how things has turned out,” he muttered to himself.  “If Mollie wasn’t foolish, I wouldn’t let Bill have her.  She is a pretty thing, and she looks like a lady.  That’s what makes it so all-fired queer.”

Mollie sank down on the bench that ran around the deck of the shanty boat.  She dropped her head in her hands.  What she was thinking, or whether she was thinking at all, no one could know or tell.  She heard a boat coming through the water, then a cry from her father.  If she believed the hour had arrived for her marriage, she gave no sign.  She did not raise her head when Mike Muldoon cried out savagely.

Captain Mike went ashore.  He stood with his heavy arms folded, smoking and scowling.

Judge Hilliard stepped up to Captain Mike.  Two police officers accompanied him.  Madge and Phil were directly behind their new friend.  They did not like to call to Mollie, but they wished she would look up at them.