the ninth day out from port, grief, born of leaving friends and childhood scenes had vanished from the faces of the other voyagers, and, under the influence of a moderately smooth sea and splendid, sparkling weather, their thoughts were busy with the new shores to which the voyagers were journeying, with expectations of great days.  But on his face no glow of pleasant anticipation ever shone.  The old man’s eyes were always turned toward that dear Germany which, first, he had been forced to leave for London, and now was, by the stern necessities of life, obliged to go still further from.  Rarely, since the voyage had begun, had he, when on deck, raised his gaze from the great vessel’s churning wake, which stretched, he liked to think, straight back toward Germany, save when his daughter spoke to him and roused him, for a moment, from his black depression.  It was as if that thread of foam was the one thing, brief, evanescent, futile, though it was, which bound him, now, to the only land he cared for.  His face was that of one who passes into final exile.  Only when his eyes were on his daughter’s did the expression of suppressed grief and despondency go from them for a moment; but when they looked at her they lighted brilliantly with love.

He had found adjustment to his crude surroundings with the utmost difficulty.  Poor he had been in London, but his work had been among musicians, and even cheap musicians have in them something better, finer, higher than the majority of human cattle in the steerage of this ship could show.  He felt uncomfortably misplaced.

This had been apparent from the start to his most interested observer—­the handsome youth of the first cabin, whose glances sometimes made the daughter’s eyes dodge and evade.  It added to that young man’s growing conviction that the aged man and beautiful young girl were not at all of the same class as their enforced associates upon the steerage-deck.

He remarked upon this to the second officer of the ship, who was highly flattered by his notice and anxious to give ear.  He, too, had given some attention to the old man and his daughter and agreed with Vanderlyn about their great superiority to their surroundings.

He would have agreed with Vanderlyn in almost anything, that second officer, for every year he met and talked with some few thousand passengers who said it was the longer voyage which had tempted them to the old Rochester, while rarely was he in the least convinced by what they said.  With the Vanderlyns, who did not say it, he thought that it was truth.  Money they obviously had in plenty, and, inasmuch as they were, therefore, such pronounced exceptions to the rule, he spent what time with them he could.  They were prosperous and yet they sailed by that slow ship, therefore they loved the sea.  Of this he was convinced—­and in his firm conviction was entirely wrong.