The arm behind him raised him with the steady strength of iron muscles,
and a hand pressed his chest. But the coughing did not cease. It was the
anguished strife of wounded Nature to assert her damaged authority; the
wild, last effort to clutch and hold fast the elusive torch that,
flickering in the midst of darkness, is called life--the one priceless
possession of our little mortal treasury.

And while he coughed and fought with the demon of suffocation Derrick
was strongly aware of the eyes that watched him, burning like two
brilliant blue points out of the darkness. Wonderful eyes! Steady,
strong, unflinching. The eyes of a friend--a true friend--not such an
one as Carlyon--Carlyon who had failed him.

A thick, unexplored darkness fell upon Derrick as he thought of
Carlyon's desertion; and he forgot at length to wonder at the
strangeness of the night.

II

A BROKEN FRIENDSHIP

By and bye, when the light dawned in his eyes, Derrick began to dream of
many strange things.

But he came back at last out of the shadows, weak and faint and weary.
And then he found that he was in hospital and had been there for weeks.

The discovery was rather staggering. Somehow he had never quite rid
himself of the impression that he was still lying on the great, rocky
boulder where the Secret Service man had so magically scattered his
enemies. But as life and full consciousness returned to him he became
aware that this had for weeks been no more than a fevered illusion.

When he was at length fairly out of danger he was dispatched southwards
on the first stage of the homeward journey.

He sailed for Home with his resentment against Carlyon yet strong upon
him. He had no parents. In his reckless young days, during the last
three years of his minority, Carlyon had been this boy's guardian. But
Derrick had been his own master for nearly four years, and the conscious
joy of independence was yet dear to his heart. He had no settled home of
his own, but he had plenty of money. And that, after all, was the
essential thing.

He had been brought up with the daughter of a clergyman in whose home he
had lived all his early life. The two had grown up together in close
companionship. They had been comrades all their lives.

Only of recent years, at the end of an uneventful college career, had
Derrick awakened to the astounding fact that Averil Eversley, his little
playmate, was a maiden sweet and comely whom he wanted badly for