direction. As she ran she called shrilly: "Jim--Jim!"

Ajax followed. For an instant Thorpe and I were alone, face to face.

"Why did he do it?" he asked.

"Because he thought that Angela had married the wrong man; but she--
didn't."

When I caught Ajax up, Angela was still ahead, running like a mad
creature.

"Jim never took off his boots," said Ajax.

"Nor his coat."

"All the same, the love of life is strong."

"We don't know how far he was from the water; the fall may have killed
him."

"I feel in my bones that he is not dead, and that Angela will find
him."

We pressed on, unwilling to be outstripped by a woman, but sensible
that we were running ourselves to a standstill. The fog was thicker
near the water's edge, and Angela's figure loomed through the mist
like that of a wraith, but we still heard her piteous cry: "Jim--Jim!"

We were nearly spent when we overtook her. She had stopped where the
foam from the breakers lay thick upon the sand.

"Listen!" she said.

We heard nothing but our thumping hearts and the raucous note of some
sea-bird.

"He answered me!" she asserted with conviction. "There!"

Certainly my ears caught a faint cry to the left. We ran on,
forgetting our bruises. Again Angela called, and out of the mist
beyond the breakers came an answering voice. We shouted back and
plunged into the surf. Angela knelt down upon the sand.

Afterwards we admitted that Angela had saved his life, although Jim
could not have fought his way through the breakers without our help.
Indeed, when we got him ashore, I made certain that he was dead. Had
Angela's instinct or intuition failed, had she hesitated for a few
minutes, Jim would have drowned within a few hundred yards of the spot
where the balloon struck. Since, Jim has maintained that he was
sinking when he heard her voice; her faint, attenuated tones infused
strength into his limbs and hope into his heart.

We dined together, and I delivered the president's message in Thorpe's
presence. He shook hands with Jim, and said quietly--

"I am happier to-night than I ever expected to be again."

Bounder or not, he meant it.

Only the other day I received a letter from Angela. She wrote at
length concerning her eldest child, my godson, and she mentioned
incidentally that Jim was now cashier of the San Lorenzo Bank.

XV

MARY

His real name was Quong Wo, but my brother Ajax always called him
Mary, because the boy's round, childis