dashed through the frightened group, yet not
before the alert soldier, with one spring, landed in their midst,
brushing them aside, and then, with one shrieking little maid in his
arms, went down on the icy pavement in the midst of a tangle of lashing
hoofs and struggling, affrighted horses. How he got out he could not
say. A giant policeman was tugging at his shoulder; ready-handed men
were at the horses' heads, and, breathless, he stood erect, conscious of
something wrong in one side, but mainly anxious about the child. She was
picked up, stunned and senseless, and in the white glare of the electric
lamp he recognized the features of Mart Wallen's four-year old Kitty. A
sympathetic crowd had gathered. A young man poked a silk-hatted head
from the carriage-window, and, with a face nearly the color of the Queen
chrysanthemum in the lapel of his coat, besought Parks to hang on to his
horses. A surly voice in the crowd said, "Damn your horses, and you
too! If it hadn't been for this gentleman you'd have killed a dozen of
these kids." Forrest's head was beginning to swim, but he took the limp
little burden on his left shoulder. "Let me have her," he said. "I know
where to take her. Bring a doctor to Mr. Wells's at once, please." And
as he turned away he caught one glimpse of a fair, anxious face peering
out across Mr. Hubbard's elegantly draped shoulder, and found that he
could not raise his hand to his fur cap. "All right, Miss Allison," he
smiled to her reassuringly. "Drive on." And then some one helped him in
to Wells's parlor, and Mrs. Wells came fluttering down, all sympathy and
welcome. Her deft, womanly hands stripped off the cheap hood and coat of
the little sufferer; other friendly, sympathetic souls came in to help;
and then, feeling oddly faint and queer, Forrest quietly stole away.
Closing the glazed hall door behind him, he paused a moment in the
vestibule, finding himself face to face with a slender form at sight of
which even then his heart gave one great bound. Instinctively one arm
was outstretched in longing, in greeting, and then at sight of him the
form recoiled, and, cold as the biting wind that swept his cheek, he
heard the brief sentence, "You have broken your word."

Bowing his head, conscious of rapidly increasing dizziness, raging at
the thought of breaking down before her, yet smarting under the lash of
her undeserved rebuke, he pushed blindly by and went forth into the
night. The street was rocki