e
who, when some tooth or nail in the enormous monster smote him, could
not bear to stop away long enough to complete his cure, because he was
unable to bear the "awful stillness" of the hospital. Persons of
impregnable nerve-power let us deeper and deeper into the bowels of the
earth, showing us the dragon's brood, and his terrible wife whose
business it is not only to print the newspaper, but to cut its sheets,
and eventually to lay them like eggs, at the rate of thousands a minute:
a most appalling creature she, who so battered my brain with her
accomplishments and the wild cackle she made over them, that weakly I
let Barrie be snatched from me by Donald Douglas.

In the roar and rush and riot I was incapable of caring, though vaguely
I recalled the fact that I had come out with the sole object of annexing
the girl's society. Vaguely too, though only vaguely, I resented the
Douglas method; but I had my revenge almost before I recovered sense
enough to want it. There came, I know not why or how (perhaps one of the
masters decreed it, to strike our ears with the contrast), a sudden
unexpected lull. It was only a comparative lull, and it lasted no more
than a few seconds; but there was time enough to hear Douglas yell into
Barrie's ear, "I must have you for my own."

The next instant he was purple through his soldier-tan. He knew the
dragon and the dragon's wicked wife had betrayed him, as he took
advantage of their domestic clamour to speak in a crowd as though he
were alone with his love in the desert. What Barrie answered, or if she
had breath to answer, none of us could guess, though all, especially the
four Americans, were bursting with anxiety to know. Later, however, when
we went up to the Castle (anything but the Castle, with its thousand
years of history, would have been an anticlimax after that wonderful
dragon cave), Donald Douglas walked meekly with his cousin, leaving
Barrie to Jack Morrison. As for me, I had temporarily lost my
individuality, and with that roar still echoing through my brain,
vibrating through my nerves, I was glad to crawl along, talking to
nobody, and picking up dropped or untied bits of myself as I went. For
the moment, frankly I didn't care how many men proposed to Barrie, or
whether she accepted them all. But afterward, it was different. It
occurred to me that Jack Morrison was not only a handsome and gallant
fellow, but said to be very rich, at least as rich as Somerled, and ten
ye