"Hello, little girl," he called up.
Philip ignored the friendly greeting. The situation was very cruel. It was bad enough to have to wear these detestable girl's clothes, but to be taunted with femininity by a person he had never in his life seen before—this was rather too much. His mother had cautioned him never to speak to strangers and never upon any account to disclose the secret of his sex—but his mother was now at the other side of the boat and he felt sure he was leaving this man for good. The John A. Paxton was even now drawing in her cable. He looked around him, dropped his voice to a safe pitch, and announced defiantly as the boat pulled off,
"I isn't any girl! I'm a boy!"
"The—devil you are!" the man said, whistling softly, and swung himself over the low rail.
The marine view with Mackinac receding in the west is not so beautiful as the approach from the other side, but it was attractive enough to enlist the close attention of our party as long as there was a green shore in sight.
"Upon my word," said Harcourt at last, looking off to the north, "there is the light-house that tells us we will soon be at our first stopping-place. I'll go down and see what the chances are for dinner."
He came back in a few moments and drew his chair close to Margaret.
"I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but I am afraid there is trouble ahead of us. I have just seen that fellow Smeltzer again.... Yes, down on the lower deck."
Margaret called Philip to her and caught him up with a despairing gesture. "Do you really suppose he is after us?" she asked with dry lips.
"I am afraid he is. I shouldn't have said anything about it if it hadn't been for a word I overheard him say to the captain about his being an officer and authorized to take 'them' into custody when he reached the 'Soo'."