duty to the end.

The train bowled on, stopping for no stations. The old man in the
corner was unconscious or asleep; the woman who tended him had stopped
her spiritual ministrations. A child, propped up in one of the rear
seats, had awakened to cry, fallen asleep, awakened and wept again.
She had in her voice a thick, mucous note, which became to Eleanor the
motif in that symphony of misery. Otherwise, no one seemed to be
making sound except the two physicians. Her own doctor came up once,
pressed a syringe again into the bare arm, whispered that it was all
going well.

A whistle came muffled through the fog; they were slowing down. It was
a station; the lights, the clamor of human voices, proved it. Eleanor
looked out of the window. A knot of young men had broken for the
platform; and she could distinguish the black boxes of cameras. There
arose a sharp parley at the rear door; her doctor muttered
"reporters--damn!" and hurried back. Judge Tiffany rose and followed
him. Over her shoulder Eleanor caught the white, intent face of Mark
Heath. "He knows; they have told him," she thought.

Judge Tiffany, his mind on the practical necessities of the case,
still had it in him to admire the control of that good soldier, the
modern reporter. When he told simply what had happened, how the issue
lay balanced between life and death, Mark only said:

"My God!--and me with the story to do!" Then his eye caught Eleanor.

"Did she--has she been nursing him?"

Judge Tiffany glanced at the other reporters, clustered about the
conductor, at the photographers, holding animated wrangle with the
physicians about flashlights.

"Keep her out of your story--you can do that. Say I found him on the
train--put me in--that's a good story enough. Keep my niece out. Keep
the others off. Keep those flashlights muffled!"

Mark hurried forward. One look, a look which contorted his face, he
bent on Bertram. Then he spoke puzzles to Eleanor.

"You're Miss Brown, a camper at Santa Eliza, if anyone asks you--and
when we leave this train you stay by me and do everything I tell
you."

"Very well."

Mark touched Bertram's face with a tenderness almost feminine. "Poor
old man!" he whispered; and he hurried back.

A shock-headed youth accosted him.

"What's up there?" he asked.

"Good story," answered Mark. "I've got it all--don't you fellows
bother. Bertram Chester, old California Varsity tackle, real estate
manager for Northrup and Co., s