ad against
his shoulder, loosened her coat about her throat, and chafed her cold
hands, drawing the robes closely about her slender shoulders, but she
lay there white and without a sign, of life. He thought he never had
seen anything so ghastly white as her face.

The driver came around and offered a bottle of brandy. They forced a few
drops between her teeth, and after a moment there came a faint flutter
of her eyelids. She came to herself for just an instant, looked about
her, realized her sorrow once more, and dropped off into oblivion again.

"She's in a bad way!" murmured the driver, looking worried. "I guess
we'd better get her somewheres. I don't want to have no responsibility.
My chief's gone back to the city, and the other man's gone across the to
West Side. I reckon we'd better go on and stop at some hospital if she
don't come to pretty soon."

The driver vanished and the carriage started at a rapid pace. Courtland
sat supporting his silent charge in growing alarm, alternately chafing
her hands and trying to force more brandy between her set lips. He was
relieved when at last the carriage stopped again and he recognized the
stone buildings of one of the city's great hospitals.

CHAPTER IX

When Courtland got back to the university the afternoon examination had
been in progress almost half an hour. With a brief explanation to the
professor, he settled to his belated work regardless of Bill Ward's
anxious glances from the back of the room and Pat's lifted eyebrows from
the other side. He knew he had yet to meet those three beloved
antagonists. He seemed to have progressed through eons of experience
since he talked with them last night. The intricate questions of the
examination on political science over which he was trying faithfully to
work seemed paltry beside the great facts of life and death.

He had remained at the hospital until the girl came out of her long
swoon and the doctor said she was better, but the thought of her white
face was continually before him. When he closed his eyes for a moment to
think how to phrase some answer in his paper he would see that still,
beautiful face as it lay on his shoulder in the carriage. It had filled
him with awe to think that he, a stranger, was her only friend in that
great city, and she might be dying! Somehow he could not cast her off as
a common stranger.

He had arranged that she should be placed in a small private room at a
moderate cost, and pa