ngside."

She studied without wincing the crouched figure of hostile eye, even
though the costume was not such as she would have selected for a young
man.

"After all, he's only a boy," she murmured. She studied again the intent
face. "And he looks as if he had an abundance of pepper."

She hoped she would be there to nurse them both if anything happened.
She had told Wilbur this, but he had not been encouraging. He seemed to
believe that nothing would happen to either of them.

"Of course we'll be shot at," he admitted, "but like as not they'll miss
us."

Winona sighed and replaced the photograph. Now they would be a couple of
heads clustered with other heads at a car window; smiling, small-town
boys going lightly out to their ordeal. She must hurry and be over!

* * * * *

Wilbur, with his wicker suitcase, paused last to say goodbye to Frank,
the dog. Frank was now a very old dog, having reached a stage of yapping
senility, where he found his sole comfort in following the sun about the
house and dozing in it, sometimes noisily dreaming of past adventures.
These had been exclusively of a sentimental character, for Frank had
never been the fighting dog his first owner had promised he would be. He
was an arch sentimentalist and had followed a career of determined
motherhood, bringing into the world litter after litter of puppies,
exhibiting all the strains then current in Newbern. He had surveyed each
new family with pride--families revealing tinges of setter, Airedale,
Newfoundland, pointer, collie--with the hopeful air of saying that a dog
never knew what he could do until he tried. Now he could only dream of
past conquests, and merely complained when his master roused him.

"I hope you'll be here when I get back--and I hope I'll be here, too,"
said his master, and went on, sauntering up to the station a bit later
as nonchalantly as ever Dave Cowan himself had gone there to begin a
long journey on the six-fifty-eight. Spike Brennon lounged against a
baggage truck. Spike's only token of departure was a small bundle
covered with that day's _Advance_. They waited in silence until the
dingy way train rattled in. Then Sharon Whipple appeared from the
freight room of the station. He affected to be impatient with the
railway company because of a delayed shipment which he took no trouble
to specify definitely, and he affected to be surprised at the sight of
Wilbur and Spike.

"Hello! I