don't mind admitting that I'm tired--all in. I could sleep on a row of
porcupines."

* * * * *

Stampa was buried in the grave that held his daughter's remains.
Spencer purchased the space for a suitable monument, and the
inscription does not fail to record the fact that one of the men who
first conquered the Matterhorn had paid tribute to the mountains by
meeting his death on Corvatsch.

The American went many times to visit Bower at the Roseg inn. He found
his erstwhile rival resigned to the vagaries of fortune. The doctors
summoned from St. Moritz deemed his case so serious that they brought
a specialist from Paris, and the great surgeon announced that the
millionaire's leg would be saved; but there must remain a permanent
stiffness.

"I know what that means," said Bower, with a wry smile. "It is a
legacy from Stampa. That is really rather funny, considering that the
joke is against myself. By the way, did I tell you I gave Millicent
Jaques a check for five thousand pounds to stop her tongue?"

"I guessed the check, but couldn't guess the amount."

"She wrote last week, threatening all sorts of terrible things because
I withheld payment. You will remember that when you and I placed on
record our mutual opinion of each other, we agreed at any rate that it
was a mean thing on her part to give away our poor Helen to the
harpies in the hotel. So I telegraphed at once to my bankers, and Miss
Millicent didn't make good, as you would put it. Now she promises to
'expose' me. Humorous, isn't it?"

"I think you ought to marry her," said Spencer, with that immobile
look of his.

"Perhaps I may, one of these days. But first she must learn to behave
herself. A nice girl, Millicent. She would look decorative, sitting
beside an invalid in a carriage. Yes, I'll think of it. Meanwhile, I
shall chaff her about the five thousand and see how she takes it."

Millicent behaved. Helen saw that she did.

On a day in September, after a wedding that was attended by as many
people as could be crowded into the little English church at Maloja,
Mr. and Mrs. Charles K. Spencer drove over the pass and down the Vale
of Bregaglia en route to Como, Milan, and Venice. At the wedding
breakfast, when Mrs. de la Vere officiated as hostess, the Rev. Philip
Hare amused the guests by stating that he had taken pains to discover
what the initial "K" represented in his American friend's name.

"His second name is K