e cushioned back of the chair struck her a glancing blow
that felled her senseless upon the stairs.

Judge Bording flew after the dastardly barber, who swifter still, was
down the backstairs and out of the house into the darkness before the
Judge could lay hands upon him.

The judge, his daughter, and William Leadbury, bent over the
unconscious form of the page.

"He saved your life," said the judge. "The wood and iron part would
have hit your head."

"His breath is knocked out of him," said Miss Bording.

"He saved my life. I cannot understand his strange devotion. I cannot
understand it," said William Leadbury, the while opening the page's
vest, tearing away his collar, and straining at his shirt, that the
stunned lungs might have play and get to work again. The stiffly
starched shirt resisted his efforts and he reached in under it to
detach the fastenings of the studs that held the bosom together. Back
came his hand as if it had encountered a serpent beneath that shirt
front.

"I begin to understand," he exclaimed, and bending an enigmatical look
upon the startled judge and his daughter, he picked the page up in his
arms with the utmost tenderness, and bore him away.

* * * * *

The pains in Clarissa's body had left her. Indeed, they had all but
gone when on Sunday morning, after a night which had been one of
formless dreams where she had not known whether she slept or waked or
where she was, a frowsy maid had called her from the bed where she lay
beneath a blanket, fully dressed, and told her it was time she was
getting back to the city. Not a sign of William Leadbury as she passed
out of the great silent house. Not a word from him, no inquiry for the
welfare of the little page who had come so nigh dying for him.
Clarissa was too proud to do or say anything to let the frowsy maid
guess that she wondered at this or cared aught for the ungrateful
captain. She steeled her heart against him, but though as the days
went by she succeeded in ceasing to care for one who was so unworthy
of her regard, she could not stifle the poignant regret that he was
thus unworthy.

It had come Friday evening, almost closing time in the great store.
Slowly and heavily, Clarissa was setting her counter in order,
preparing to go to her lodgings and nurse her sick heart until slumber
should give respite from her pain, when there came a messenger from
the dress-making department asking her presence t