comfort and
care with which he was now surrounded. He knew now that he had been
sick, very sick and that he was getting better, knew that before long he
would find himself asking questions. Even now his eyes followed Alan
Massey as the latter came and went with an ever more insistent wonderment
though he had not yet the force of will or body to voice that pursuing
question as to why Alan Massey was here apparently taking charge of his
own slow return to health and consciousness.

Meanwhile Alan wired Tony Holiday every day as to his patient's condition
though he wrote not at all and said nothing in his wires of himself.
Letters from Tony were now beginning to arrive, letters full of eager
gratitude and love for Alan and concern for Dick.

And one day Dick's mind got suddenly very clear. He was alone with the
nurse at the time, the sympathetic American one whom he liked better and
was less afraid of than he was of the stolid, inexorable British lady.
And he began to ask questions, many questions and very definite ones. He
knew at last precisely what it was he wanted to know.

He got a good deal of information though by no means all he sought. He
found out that he had been taken desperately ill, that he had been
summarily removed from his lodging place because of the owner's
superstitious dread of contagion into the miserable little thatch
roofed hut in which he had nearly died thanks to the mal-practice of
the rascally, drunken doctor and the ignorant half-breed nurse. He
learned how Alan Massey had suddenly appeared and taken things in his
own hands, discovered that in a nutshell the fact was he owed his life
to the other-man. But why? That was what he had to find out from Alan
Massey himself.

The next day when Alan came in and the nurse went out he asked
his question.

"That is easy," said Alan grimly. "I came on Tony's account."

Dick winced. Of course that was it. Tony had sent Massey. He was here as
her emissary, naturally, no doubt as her accepted lover. It was kind.
Tony was always kind but he wished she had not done it. He did not want
to have his life saved by the man who was going to marry Tony Holiday. He
rather thought he did not want his life saved anyway by anybody. He
wished they hadn't done it.

"I--I am much obliged to you and to Tony," he said a little stiffly. "I
fear it--it was hardly worth the effort." His eyes closed wearily.

"Tony didn't send me though," observed Alan Massey as if he ha