Her weak eyes, tired with the glare of the light and sun, drooped wearily to the ground, and a cry of wonder and dismay broke from her lips.
Directly beneath her window stood a large, tall man in sailor garb gazing up into her face. But it was not the mere proximity of the man that had so startled the young girl. It was the fact that she had recognized in him the son of old Meg, the fortune-teller—a man who had once madly loved her, and from whose unwelcome love she had fled in fear and loathing.
For more than three years Nita had not looked upon the face of Jack Dineheart, and when she saw him gazing up at her with eager eyes, she could not repress a cry of surprise at sight of this ghost from the past.
Jack Dineheart had a bronzed, handsome, sullen face, seamed with the lines of thirty-five years or more, and his big brown eyes snapped with triumph now at the girl's low cry of recognition.
"So it is you, Nita?"
"Yes it is I, Mr. Dineheart," answered the girl, with a sudden wild hope that she might move his heart to pity.
"What are you doing up there behind bolts and bars like a prisoner?" he continued, his heart leaping wildly at sight of the lovely face.
"I am a prisoner," she answered sorrowfully. "Oh, Jack—Mr. Dineheart—do help me to escape, won't you?"
"But I don't understand. Who brought you here? Who is keeping you shut up?"