fit to crawl into the cab?"

"Did I see it? I did that. If iver they meet man to man, him and
Jerry, it'll be wan grand little fight."

"Jerry's the best rough-and-tumble fighter on the island."

"Wan av the best. I wouldn't put him first till after him and this guy
had met alone in a locked room. S'long, Mike."

"S'long, Tim. No report on this rough-house, mind yuh."

"Sure, Mike."

CHAPTER IX

BEATRICE UP STAGE

If you vision Clay as a man of battles and violent deaths you don't see
him as he saw himself. He was a peaceful citizen from the law-abiding
West. It was not until he had been flung into the whirlpool of New
York that violent and melodramatic mishaps befell this innocent. The
Wild East had trapped him into weird adventure foreign to his nature.

This was the version of himself that he conceived to be true and the
one he tried to interpret to Bee Whitford when he emerged from the
hospital after two days of seclusion and presented himself before her.

It was characteristic of Beatrice that when she looked at his battered
face she asked no questions and made no exclamations. After the first
startled glance one might have thought from her expression that he
habitually wore one black eye, one swollen lip, one cauliflower ear,
and a strip of gauze across his check.

The dark-lashed eyes lifted from him to take on a business-like
directness. She rang for the man.

"Have the runabout brought round at once, Stevens. I'll drive myself,"
she gave orders.

With the light ease that looked silken strong she swept the car into
the Park. Neither she nor Clay talked. Both of them knew that an
explanation of his appearance was due her and in the meantime neither
cared to fence with small talk. He watched without appearing to do so
the slender girl in white at the wheel. Her motions delighted him.
There was a very winning charm in the softly curving contours of her
face, in that flowerlike and precious quality in her personality which
lay back of her boyish comradeship.

She drew up to look at some pond lilies, and they talked about them for
a moment, after which her direct eyes questioned him frankly.

He painted with a light brush the picture of his adventure into
Bohemia. The details he filled in whimsically, in the picturesque
phraseology of the West. Up stage on his canvas was the figure of the
poet in velveteens. That Son of the Stars he did full justice. Jerry
Durand and Kitty