kind of existence, full of
useless purposes. Fate has driven me into a corner where my odds and
ends of knowledge are actually valuable. Such accidents make men
millionaires."

"Useless purposes!" she repeated. "I can hardly credit that. One uses
such a phrase to describe fussy people, alive with foolish activity.
Your worst enemy would not place you in such a category."

"My worst enemy made the phrase effective at any rate, Miss Deane."

"You mean that he ruined your career?"

"Well--er--yes. I suppose that describes the position with fair
accuracy."

"Was he a very great scoundrel?"

"He was, and is."

Jenks spoke with quiet bitterness. The girl's words had evoked a sudden
flood of recollection. For the moment he did not notice how he had been
trapped into speaking of himself, nor did he see the quiet content on
Iris's face when she elicited the information that his chief foe was a
man. A certain tremulous hesitancy in her manner when she next spoke
might have warned him, but his hungry soul caught only the warm
sympathy of her words, which fell like rain on parched soil.

"You are tired," she said. "Won't you smoke for a little while, and
talk to me?"

He produced his pipe and tobacco, but he used his right hand awkwardly.
It was evident to her alert eyes that the torn quick on his injured
finger was hurting him a great deal. The exciting events of the morning
had caused him temporarily to forget his wound, and the rapid coursing
of the blood through the veins was now causing him agonized throbs.

With a cry of distress she sprang to her feet and insisted upon washing
the wound. Then she tenderly dressed it with a strip of linen well
soaked in brandy, thinking the while, with a sudden rush of color to
her face, that although he could suggest this remedy for her slight
hurt, he gave no thought to his own serious injury. Finally she pounced
upon his pipe and tobacco-box.

"Don't be alarmed," she laughed. "I have often filled my father's pipe
for him. First, you put the tobacco in loosely, taking care not to use
any that is too finely powdered. Then you pack the remainder quite
tightly. But I was nearly forgetting. I haven't blown, through the pipe
to see if it is clean."

She suited the action to the word, using much needless breath in the
operation.

"That is a first-rate pipe," she declared. "My father always said that
a straight stem, with the bowl at a right angle, was the correct shape.
You evi