nd call his name.

Now Paloma was not the kind of girl to scream without cause, and her
cry brought Blaze to the front of the house at a run. But what he saw
there reassured him momentarily; nothing was in sight more alarming
than one of the depot hacks, in the rear seat of which was huddled the
figure of a man. Paloma was flying down the walk toward the gate, and
Phil Strange was waiting on the porch. As Blaze flung himself into view
the latter explained:

"I brought him straight here, Mr. Jones, 'cause I knew you was his best
friend."

"Who? Who is it?"

"Dave Law. He must have came in on the noon train. Anyhow, I found
him--like that." The two men hurried toward the road, side by side.

"What's wrong with him?" Blaze demanded.

"I don't know. He's queer--he's off his bean. I've had a hard time with
him."

Paloma was in the carriage at Dave's side now, and calling his name;
but Law, it seemed, was scarcely conscious. He had slumped together;
his face was vacant, his eyes dull. He was muttering to himself a
queer, delirious jumble of words.

"Oh, Dad! He's sick--sick," Paloma sobbed. "Dave, don't you know us?
You're home, Dave. Everything is--all right now."

"Why, you'd hardly recognize the boy!" Blaze exclaimed; then he added
his appeal to his daughter's. But they could not arouse the sick man
from his coma.

"He asked me to take him to Las Palmas," Strange explained. "Looks to
me like a sunstroke. You'd ought to hear him rave when he gets started."

Paloma turned an agonized face to her father. "Get a doctor, quick,"
she implored; "he frightens me."

But Mrs. Strange had followed, and now she spoke up in a matter-of-fact
tone: "Doctor nothing," she said. "I know more than all the doctors.
Paloma, you go into the house and get a bed ready for him, and you men
lug him in. Come, now, on the run, all of you! I'll show you what to
do." She took instant charge of the situation, and when Dave refused to
leave the carriage and began to fight off his friends, gabbling wildly,
it was she who quieted him. Elbowing Blaze and her husband out of the
way, she loosed the young man's frenzied clutch from the carriage and,
holding his hands in hers, talked to him in such a way that he
gradually relaxed. It was she who helped him out and then supported him
into the house. It was she who got him up-stairs and into bed, and it
was she who finally stilled his babble.

"The poor man is burning up with a fever," she told t