for elevation on one of the ship’s quoit buckets to preach, but with this the Captain was reluctantly compelled to interfere on behalf of the whist-players inside.  In the evening after dinner she established herself in a sheltered corner and sang.  Her recovered voice lifted itself with infinite pathetic sweetness in songs about the poverty of the world and the riches of Heaven.  The notes mingled with the churning of the screw and fell in the darkness beyond the ship’s lights abroad upon the sea.  The other passengers listened aloof.  The Coromandel was crowded, but you could have drawn a wide circle round her chair.  On the morning of the fourth day out—­she had not felt quite well enough for adventures before—­she found her way to the second-class saloon, being no doubt fully justified of her conscience in abandoning the first to the flippancies of its preference.

In the second-class end the tone was certainly more like that of Plymouth.  Laura had a grateful sense of this in coming, almost at once, upon a little group gathered together for praise and prayer, of which four or five persons of both sexes, labelled “S.  A.,” naturally formed the centre.  They were not only praying and praising without discouragement, they had attracted several other people who had brought their chairs into near and friendly relation, and even joined sometimes in the chorus of the hymns.  There was a woman in mourning who cried a good deal—­her tears seemed to refresh the salvationists and inspired them to louder and more cheerful efforts.  There was a man in a wide, soft felt hat with the malaria of the Terai in the hollows under his eyes; there was a Church Missionary with an air of charity and forbearance, and the bushy-eyed colonel of a native regiment, looking vigilant against ridicule, with his wife, whose round, red little face continually waxed and waned in a smile of true contentment.  It was not till later that Laura came to know them all so very well, but her eye rested on them one after another with approval as she drew near.  Without pausing in his chant—­it happened to be one of triumph—­without even looking at her, the leader indicated an empty chair.  It was his own chair.  “Colonel Markin, S. A.,” was printed in black letters on its striped canvas back; Laura noticed that.

After it was over, the little gathering, Colonel Markin specially distinguished her.  He did it delicately.  “I hope you won’t mind my expressin’ my thanks for the help you gave us in the singin’,” he said.  “Such a voice I’ve seldom had the pleasure to join with.  May I ask where you got it trained?”

He was a narrow-chested man with longish sandy hair and thin features.  His eyes were large, blue, and protruding, his forehead very high and white.  There was a pinkness about the root of his nose and a scanty yellow moustache upon his upper lip, while his chin was partly hidden by a beard equally scanty and even more yellow.  He had extremely long white hands:  one could not help observing them as they clasped his book of devotion.