treaming to the deck.

* * * * *

Both liner and transport turned back without Stanley Armstrong, Doric and
Sedgwick sailed unheeded, for the highest surgical authority of the
Department of California had remanded him to quarters at the Palace and
forbidden his return to duty with an unhealed wound. He was sitting up
again, somewhat pallid and not too strong, but with every promise, said
the "medico," of complete recovery within two months. But not a month
would Armstrong wait. The Puebla was to start within the week, and he had
made up his mind. "Go," said he, "I must."

They had been sitting about him, the night this opinion was announced, in
the parlor of the suite of rooms the Primes had taken. Billy Gray had
gone with his father to the club, Shafto had been hanging about in the
agonies of an Englishman's first love, Gov. disappeared a moment and came
back with tickets for the Columbia, bidding Mildred get her hat and
gloves at once, and whispering Shafto that he had a seat for him. As the
little mantel clock struck eight Amy Lawrence, lifting up her eyes from
the book she was trying hard to believe she meant to read, saw that
Armstrong was rising from his easy-chair, and, springing to his side,
laying her white hand on his arm, she faltered, "Oh, please! You know the
stipulation was that you were not to stir."

But then her heart began to flutter uncontrollably. The blood went
surging to her brows, for all of a sudden, as through impulse
irresistible, her hand was seized in his--in both of his, in fact--and
the deep voice that had pleaded at her behest for the cause of Billy Gray
was now, in impetuous flow of words that fell upon her ears like some
strain of thrilling music, pleading at last his own. Ever since that day
in the radiant sunshine of the Park she had learned to look up to him as
a tower of strength, a man of mark among his fellows, a man to be honored
and obeyed. Ever since that night at the Palace, when she saw his glowing
eyes fixed intently upon her, and knew that he was following her every
move, she had begun to realize the depth of his interest in her. Ever
since that day when the China slipped from her moorings, with Witchie
Garrison singling him out for lavish farewell favors, she had wondered
why it so annoyed and stung her. Ever since the day she read the list of
killed and wounded in the first fierce battling with the "Insurrectos"
she knew it wa