old and at the same time pitifully young. He was
very quiet and sure of himself.

"Jimsy," said Carter, "I shouldn't have told you, _now_, but I went off
my head."

Jimsy nodded. "The time doesn't matter, Cart'. I just want to ask you
one thing, straight from the shoulder. I've been thinking and thinking
... trying to take it in. Sometimes I seem to get it for a minute, that
Skipper cares for you instead of me, and then it's gone again. All I can
seem to hang on to is that telegram." The painful calm of his face
flickered and broke up for an instant and there was an answering
disturbance in Carter's own. "I keep seeing that ... all the time. But
there's no use talking about it. What I want to ask you is this,
Cart'"--he went on slowly in his hoarse and roughened voice--"you
honestly think Skipper is sticking to me only because she thinks it's
the thing to do? Because she thinks she must keep her word?"

Carter swallowed hard and tried to moisten his aching throat, and he did
not look at his friend.

"Is that what you honestly believe, Cart'?"

Carter brought his eyes back with an effort and his heart contracted.
Jimsy King--_Jimsy King_--the boy he had envied and hated and loved by
turns all these years; Jimsy King, idolized, adored in the old safe
days--the old story book days--

King! King! King!
K-I-N-G, KING!
G-I-N-K, GINK!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
K-I-N-G, King! KING!

The Jimsy King, the young prince who had had everything that all the
wealth of Ali Baba's cave couldn't compass for Carter Van Meter ...
standing here before him now, his face drained of its color and joy,
begging him for a hope. There was a long moment when he hesitated, when
the forces within him fought breathlessly and without quarter, but--long
ago Stephen Lorimer had said of him--"_there's nothing frail about his
disposition ... his will doesn't limp._" He wrenched his gaze away
before he answered, but he answered steadily.

"That is what I believe."

Jimsy was visibly and laboriously working it out. "Then, she's only
sticking to me because she thinks I'm worth saving. If she thought I was
a regular 'Wild King,' if she believed what her mother and a lot of
other people have always believed, she'd let go of me."

"I believe she would," said Carter.

"Then," said Jimsy King, "it's really pretty simple. She's only got to
realize--to _see_--that I'm not worth