and me and the Kid will take you down them stairs, because you look
tired--kind o' peeked and fussed, what with all this funny business going
on----"

"Oh, Steek! Steek!" she sobbed. "Oh, _mon ami_, Steek!"

She began to cry bitterly. Smith picked her up in his arms.

"What you need is sleep," he said very gently.

But she shook her head: she had business to transact on her knees that
night--business with the Mother of God that would take all night long--and
many, many other sleepless nights; and many candles.

She put her left arm around Smith's neck and hid her tear-wet face on his
shoulder. And, as he bore her out of the high tower and descended the
unlighted, interminable stairs of stone, he heard her weeping against his
breast and softly asking intercession in behalf of a dead young man who
had tried to be to her a "Kamerad"--as he understood it--including the
entire gamut, from amorous beast to fiend.

------------------

There was a single candle lighted in the bar of the White Doe. On the
"zinc," side by side, like birds on a rail, sat the two muleteers. In each
big, sunburnt fist was an empty glass; their spurred feet dangled; they
leaned forward where they sat, hunched up over their knees, heads slightly
turned, as though intently listening. A haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the
candle flame.

The drone of an aeroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at
intervals. At last the sound died away under the far stars.

By the smoky candle flame Kid Glenn unfolded and once more read the letter
that kept them there:

--I ought to get to Sainte Lesse somewhere around midnight. Don't
say a word to Maryette.

Jack.

Sticky Smith, reading over his shoulder, slowly rolled another cigarette.

"When Jack comes," he drawled, "it's a-goin' to he'p a lot. That Maryette
girl's plumb done in."

"Sure she's done in," nodded Kid Glenn. "Wouldn't it do in anybody to
shoot up a young man an' then see him step off the top of a skyscraper?"

Smith admitted that he himself had felt "kind er squeamish." He added:
"Gawd, how he spread when he hit them flags! You didn't look at him, did
you, Kid?"

"Naw. Say, d'ya think Maryette has gone to bed?"

"I dunno. When we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek
to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china
virgin on the niche over her bed."

"She oughter be in bed. Yo