listen."

Something of her father's stern decisiveness of character was in
Kathleen Pierce.

"Don't be a fool!" she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the
child away from her. "Start the car, Esme."

The woman began to shriek. A crowd gathered. O'Farrell providentially
appeared from around a corner. "Grab her, you," she directed O'Farrell.

The politician hesitated. "What's the game?" he began. Then he caught
sight of Esme. "Oh, it's you, Miss Elliot. Sure. Hi! Can it!" he
shouted, fending off the distracted mother. "They'll take the kid to the
hospital. See? You go along quiet, now."

Speeding beyond all laws, but under protection of their red cross, they
all but ran down Dr. Merritt and stopped to take him in. He confirmed
Esme's diagnosis.

"It'll be touch and go whether we save him," said he.

Esme carried the stricken child into the hospital ward. The two
volunteers waited outside for word. In an hour it came. The boy would
probably live, thanks to their promptitude.

"But you ought not to be picking up chance infants around the district,"
he protested. "It isn't safe."

"Oh, we belong to the St. Bernard tribe," retorted Miss Pierce. "We
take 'em as we find 'em. Hugh, come and lunch with us."

The grayish young man looked at her wistfully. "Haven't time," he said.

"No: I didn't suppose you'd step aside from the thorny path, even to
eat," she retorted; and Esme, hearing the new tone under the flippant
words, knew that all was well with the girl, and envied her with a great
and gentle envy.

CHAPTER XXXIV

VOX POPULI

These were the days when Hal Surtaine worked with a sense of wild
freedom from all personal bonds. He had definitely broken with his
father. He had challenged every interest in Worthington from which there
was anything to expect commercially. He had peremptorily banished Esme
Elliot from his heart and his hopes, though she still forced entrance to
his thoughts and would not be denied, there, the precarious rights of an
undesired guest. He was now simply and solely a journalist with a mind
single to his purpose, to go down fighting the best fight there was in
him. Defeat, he believed, was practically certain. He would make it a
defeat of which no man need be ashamed.

The handling of the epidemic news, Hal left to his colleagues, devoting
his own pen to a vigorous defense of the "Clarion's" position and
assertion of its policy, in the editorial columns. Concealment a