o show me he wasn't beaten, he opened
them and smiled. After I'd fully taken in that smile, I wished he had
cried.

The bartender called through the slide that the carriage was waiting. I
carried out Drislane, drove him to my hotel, and called in a doctor.
Between us we gave him a hot bath, salved and plastered him, and put him
to bed.

I turned in on a cot which I had had brought in. Hours after I heard him
groan. I switched on the light and went to him. He was lying on his side
with his head on one arm. His hands were clinched.

After a moment he said: "She is in trouble somewhere." That was another
one of the things he believed in--telepathy.

He may or may not have had it right; but it certainly wasn't going to do
him any good to let him lie there and be torturing himself. "Sh-h--go to
sleep, son. Don't imagine things. You'll find everything will be all
right to-morrow," I said.

"No," he said, "everything will never be all right while he's alive and
I'm alive."

That didn't sound good to me, so I sat down by the bed and began to talk
to him. We talked, I doing the most of it, until past daylight. We
talked of her. "She's all right," he said at last, "I tell you she is.
Even if she didn't like me and did him, it would be only natural. But
she likes me--the best of her likes me better than him, and when she
gets to know him all of her will like me. You'll see."

There were people who used to say Drislane was so innocent as to be a
joke; but after that talk into that wintry dawn I had to salute him. He
had just a little something on all of us who were so much more
worldly-wise. It surely was a great gift he had--to see in every woman
only the shining soul.

IV

No man could say where the word came from, no man could say that he had
seen her himself; but the word was out that Oliver Sickles had boarded
his vessel in the early morning with the red-haired girl of the
Tidewater Cafe in tow.

Nobody on the _Sirius_ ever intended to pass the word to Drislane, but
no crew of a vessel can be whispering for hours without the one man they
don't discuss the mysterious matter with wanting to guess what it is
they are trying to keep from him. Drislane guessed.

I had brought him to the _Sirius_ in a carriage just before she sailed.
Captain Norman had told him to keep to his bunk until the _Sirius_ tied
up to the dock in Boston if he wished, but Drislane did not wish. He
came on deck, still bandaged and battered, o