it _was_ all right! It isn't every day that a
man and his wife get their lives saved in that offhand way! Why! I'm all
_balled up_ every time I think of it!"

"Oh, well; I don't know!" said Waldo, relapsing into embarrassment
again; "I guess it was the horses I thought of as much as anything!"

Dayton was still too sincerely moved to laugh outright at this
unexpected turn, as he would have done in spite of himself under
ordinary circumstances, but he found it a relief to slip back into his
tone of easy banter.

"If that's the case," he said; "would you mind coming back and being
introduced to the horses? They are just behind us, and I think they
ought to have a chance to make their acknowledgments."

The boy, very much aware that he had said the wrong thing, yet
attracted, in spite of himself and his own blunders, to the good-natured
giant, yielded, awkwardly enough, and retraced his steps. They were soon
face to face with the horses, making their way at a slow walk down the
road, driven by the woman whose face Waldo had had a confused glimpse of
in the heat of that fateful encounter.

"This is my wife, Mrs. Dayton," said the big man; "and you are?"

"Waldo Kean."

For the first time in his life the boy had taken his hat off as a matter
of ceremony. He had done so in unconscious imitation of Dayton, who had
lifted his own as he mentioned his wife's name. Waldo Kean did not
perhaps realize that the education he was so ambitious of achieving was
begun then and there.

The shapeless old hat once off, he did not find it easy to put it on
again, and, as Mrs. Dayton leaned forward with extended hand, he stopped
to tuck the battered bundle of felt into his pocket before clasping the
bit of dainty kid she held out to him.

She was already speaking, and, strangely enough, there was something in
her voice which made him think of his mother's as it had sounded just
before it broke into that pathetic little sob.

"There is so little good in talking about what a person feels," she was
saying; "that I'm not going to try." Yes, the little break in the voice
was something he had heard but once in his life before; yet nothing
could have been less like his mother than the expressive young face
bending toward him.

The great half-civilized boy took one look at the face, and all his
self-consciousness vanished.

"I guess anybody 'd like to do you a good turn!" he declared boldly, as
he loosed the small gloved hand from the