g that blinded
him. Joe's eyes dwelt absently on the over-turned frame as he stood
there thinking, and the articles on the table were photographed on his
gaze with a pictorial accuracy of detail, yet because of his
abstraction, without meaning of their own.

So mechanically and without at first realizing what he was doing, he
read two outspread sheets of paper: Anne's note and McCalloway's
telegram. Then abruptly the messages became an integral part of his
thought.

Anne Masters, whom Boone loved, was going to marry another man--there
was the key to Boone's wild mood, and Victor McCalloway, his friend, had
gone away!

If it was Anne who had led Boone to the brink of this peril, it was her
duty to lead him back. So ran his elementally simple logic.

"Ef she's decent," declared Joe Gregory tensely to himself, "she kain't
skeercely do no less."

So after Boone had returned and begun packing his bag, Joe made a
plausible excuse and went out to seek a telephone pay-station. Over the
long distance he got Colonel Wallifarro's house, with the amused
assistance of an operator who saw only his rustic gaucherie, and who
missed entirely the simple, almost biblical, dignity of his bearing.

"Miss Anne? No, sir, she isn't here," replied Moses, the negro butler,
and, while Joe's heart sank, that admirable majordomo, recognizing the
long-distance call, secured a connection for the speaker with the
Country Club.

While the wire buzzed distractingly, Joe Gregory stood in the closed
booth and perspired. Outside he watched a travelling salesman who, with
a chewed cigar between stout fingers, bent over the switchboard and
chatted with the blonde operator. Then finally he heard a voice at the
far end. It was a somewhat frightened and faint voice, but even in his
anger he admitted that it held a sweet and gentle cadence.

Perhaps the girl half hoped that this ring which called her from guests
to whom her engagement was being announced carried a twentieth-century
equivalent for the appearance of Lochinvar. Perhaps she only feared bad
news. At all events, she spoke low.

"Miss Masters, I'm Joe Gregory," announced an unfamiliar voice which
held across the wire a straightforward and determined significance. The
name, too, carried its effect, for Anne knew of this man as Boone's most
stalwart disciple. "The thing I've got ter tell ye hain't skeercely
suited ter speech over a telephone, an' yet thar hain't no other way.
Hit's about him,