attention to the approaching steamer, across the path of which
they were passing. There had been plenty of time to row out of the way
of it, but Nellie in grasping her oar for a quick turn had lost it.
Fortunately the engines had been stopped immediately when the pilot
had seen that they must strike, so that there was no appreciable
underdrag. Biff's head had been grazed slightly, enough to daze him
for an instant, but he held himself up mechanically. Nellie, clogged
by her skirts, could not swim, and as Biff got his bearings he saw her
close by him going down for the second time. Two men sprang from the
lower deck of the steamer, but Biff reached her first, and, his senses
instantly clearing as he caught her, he struck out for the shore.

The three men on shore immediately ran down the bank, and sprang into
the water to help Biff out with his burden. He was pale, but strangely
cool and collected.

"Don't go at it that way!" he called to them savagely, knowing neither
friend nor foe in this emergency. "Get her loosened up someway, can't
you?"

Without waiting on them, Biff ripped a knife from his pocket, opened
it and slit through waist and skirt-band and whatever else intervened,
to her corset, which he opened with big fingers, the sudden deftness
of which was marvelous. Directing them with crisp, sharp commands, he
guided them through the first steps toward resuscitation, and then
began the slow, careful pumping of the arms that should force breath
back into the closed lungs.

For twenty minutes, each of which seemed interminable, Jimmy and Biff
worked, one on either side of her, Biff's face set, cold,
expressionless, until at last there was a flutter of the eyelids, a
cry of distress as the lungs took up their interrupted function, then
the sharp, hissing sound of the intake and outgo of natural, though
labored, breath; then Nellie Platt opened her big, brown eyes and
gazed up into the gray ones of Biff Bates. She faintly smiled; then
Biff did a thing that he had never done before in his mature life. He
suddenly broke down and cried aloud, sobbing in great sobs that shook
him from head to foot and that hurt him, as they tore from his throat,
as the first breath of new life had hurt Nellie Platt; and, seeing and
understanding, she raised up one weak arm and slipped it about his
neck.

It was about a week after this occurrence when Silas Trimmer, coming
back from lunch to attend the annual stock-holders' meeting