other's?'" Barton
repeated blankly. Then suddenly full comprehension broke upon him,
and, horridly startled and shocked with a brand-new realization of the
tragedy, he fairly blurted out his astonishing information.

"Why--why, it's the--little Edgarton girl!" he hurled like a bombshell
into the surrounding company.

Instantly, with the mystery once removed, a dozen hysterical people
seemed startled into normal activity. No one knew exactly what to do,
but some ran for water and towels, and some ran for the doctor, and
one young woman with astonishing acumen slipped out of her white silk
petticoat and bound it, blue ribbons and all, as best she could,
around Eve Edgarton's poor little gashed head.

[Illustration: Suddenly full comprehension broke upon him and he
fairly blurted out his astonishing information]

"We must carry her up-stairs!" asserted the hotel proprietor.

"I'll carry her!" said Barton quite definitely.

Fantastically the procession started upward--little Eve Edgarton white
as a ghost now in Barton's arms, except for that one persistent
trickle of red from under the loosening edge of her huge Oriental-like
turban of ribbon and petticoat; the hotel proprietor still worrying
eternally how to explain everything; two or three well-intentioned
women babbling inconsequently of other broken heads.

In astonishingly slow response to as violent a knock as they thought
they gave, Eve Edgarton's father came shuffling at last to the door to
greet them. Like one half paralyzed with sleep and perplexity, he
stood staring blankly at them as they filed into his rooms with their
burden.

"Your daughter seems to have bumped her head!" the hotel proprietor
began with professional tact.

In one gasping breath the women started to explain their version of
the accident.

Barton, as dumb as the father, carried the girl directly to the bed
and put her down softly, half lying, half sitting, among the great
pile of night-crumpled pillows. Some one threw a blanket over her. And
above the top edge of that blanket nothing of her showed except the
grotesquely twisted turban, the whole of one white eyelid, the half of
the other, and just that single persistent trickle of red. Raspishly
at that moment the clock on the mantelpiece choked out the hour of
three. Already Dawn was more than half a hint in the sky, and in the
ghastly mixture of real and artificial light the girl's doom looked
already sealed.

Then very suddenl