eenish way, dropped into a chair and mopped his forehead.

"Narrow squeak, Anthony!"

"Yes!" Anthony agreed, with some difficulty.

"I was never so scared as that in all my life!" Johnson Boller went on
faintly. "I thought sure I'd have to watch it and--Anthony, it turned me
so sick I could hardly stand on my feet!"

"What did?"

"The idea of seeing you shot down there," Mr. Boller said with a
shudder. "Gad! I could picture the whole thing, Anthony! I could see him
start and look at you both--I swear I could see him pull a gun from his
pocket and shoot! I could see the blood spurting out of your forehead,
Anthony, and hear the chicken screech, and it turned me so infernally
sick----"

"Didn't think of any of my sensations, did you?" Anthony asked
caustically.

"As a matter of fact--no, I didn't!" muttered Johnson Boller, with
another great shiver. "What do your confounded sensations matter,
anyway? This whole affair is your fault, not mine! You deserve whatever
you get--I don't! You've got nobody in the world to worry over you, but
I've got a _wife_, Anthony!"

"You have mentioned it before."

"And I'm likely to mention it again!" said Mr. Boller savagely. "You
know, Anthony, I'm about through with this thing! I'm a nervous man, and
I can stand about so much suffering of my own, but I don't see the idea
of taking on yours as well. And what is more, this thing of introducing
this girl as my wife is----"

"Well? What is it?" Mary herself asked very crisply, appearing in her
disconcertingly and silent fashion.

Johnson Boller smiled feebly.

"It's very flattering in some ways, Miss--Miss Dalton, but for a man
like me, who loves his wife, you know, and all that sort of thing----"

His voice thinned out and died before the decidedly cold light in Mary's
eye. It seemed to Johnson Boller that she had a low opinion of himself;
and when she looked at Anthony he noted that she had a low opinion of
Anthony as well.

"Have you settled it yet!" she snapped.

"The--er--means of getting you out?"

"Is there anything more important?"

"Ah--decidedly not," Anthony said wearily. "Several times, I think,
we've attempted a council of war, and we may as well try it again. There
will be no interruptions this time, I think, and if we all put our minds
to it----"

That was all. As on several other similar occasion, he halted because of
sounds from the doorway. It seemed to Anthony, indeed, that he had heard
Wilkins mut