d a look of self-abnegation on his
strong young face. All at once something sharp seemed to slash through
her soul and hold her with a long quiver of pain and she sat looking
straight ahead staring with a kind of wild frenzy at John Cameron walking
alone at the end of the line.

She remembered him in her youngest school days, the imp of the grammar
school, with a twinkle in his eye and an irrepressible grin on his handsome
face. Nothing had ever daunted him and no punishment had ever stopped his
mischief. He never studied his lessons, yet he always seemed to know enough
to carry him through, and would sometimes burst out with astonishing
knowledge where others failed. But there was always that joke on his lips
and that wide delightful grin that made him the worshipped-afar of all the
little girls. He had dropped a rose on her desk once as he lounged late and
laughing to his seat after recess, apparently unaware that his teacher was
calling him to order. She could feel the thrill of her little childish
heart now as she realized that he had given the rose to her. The next term
she was sent to a private school and saw no more of him save an occasional
glimpse in passing him on the street, but she never had forgotten him; and
now and then she had heard little scraps of news about him. He was working
his way through college. He was on the football team and the baseball team.
She knew vaguely that his father had died and their money was gone, but
beyond that she had no knowledge of him. They had drifted apart. He was not
of her world, and gossip about him seldom came her way. He had long ago
ceased to look at her when they happened to pass on the street. He
doubtless had forgotten her, or thought she had forgotten him. Or, it might
even be that he did not wish to presume upon an acquaintance begun when she
was too young to have a choice of whom should be her friends. But the
memory of that rose had never quite faded from her heart even though she
had been but seven, and always she had looked after him when she chanced to
see him on the street with a kind of admiration and wonder. Now suddenly
she saw him in another light. The laugh was gone from his lips and the
twinkle from his eyes. He looked as he had looked the day he fought Chuck
Woodcock for tying a string across the sidewalk and tripping up the little
girls on the way to school. It came to her like a revelation that he was
going forth now in just such a way to fight the