s. Galland, taking the steps as fast as she could, brought
up the rear. Through the gateway in the garden wall could be seen the
shoulders of a young officer, a streak of red coursing down his cheek,
rising from the wreck. An inarticulate sob of relief broke from Marta's
throat, followed by quick gasps of breath. Captain Arthur Lanstron was
looking into the startled eyes of a young girl that seemed to reflect
his own emotions of the moment after having shared those he had in the
air.

"I flew! I flew clear over the range, at any rate!" he said. "And I'm
alive. I managed to hold her so she missed the wall and made an easy
bump."

Marta smiled in the reaction from terror at his idea of an easy bump,
while he was examining the damage to his person. He got one foot free of
the wreck and that leg was all right. She shared his elation. Then he
found that the other was uninjured, just as she cried in distress:

"But your hand--oh, your hand!"

His left hand hung limp from the wrist, cut, mashed, and bleeding. Its
nerves numbed, he had not as yet felt any pain from the injury. Now he
regarded it in a kind of awakening stare of realization of a deformity
to come.

"Wool-gathering again!" he muttered to himself crossly.

Then, seeing that she had turned white, he thrust the disgusting thing
behind his back and twinged with the movement. The pain was arriving.

"It must be bandaged! I have a handkerchief!" she begged. "I'm not
going to faint or anything like that!"

"Only bruised--and it's the left. I am glad it was not the right," he
replied. Westerling arrived and joined Marta in offers of assistance
just as they heard the prolonged honk of an automobile demanding the
right of way at top speed in the direction of the pass.

"Thank you, but they're coming for me," said Lanstron to Westerling as
he glanced up the road.

Westerling was looking at the wreck. Lanstron, who recognized him as an
officer, though in mufti, kicked a bit of the torn cloth over some
apparatus to hide it. At this Westerling smiled faintly. Then Lanstron
saluted as officer to officer might salute across the white posts,
giving his name and receiving in return Westeling's.

They made a contrast, these two men, the colonel of the Grays, swart and
sturdy, his physical vitality so evident, and the captain of the Browns,
some seven or eight years the junior, bareheaded, in dishevelled fatigue
uniform, his lips twitching, his slender body quivering wit