ow are the shoes?" asked the Gutter Pup solicitously.

"Tight as mischief," said Dink, with a wry face.

"Walk on your heels."

Stover, with a last deprecating glance, opened the door and departed,
amid cheers from the contributing committee.

When he arrived at the Lodge the dusky waitress who opened the door
started back, as he dropped his hat, and sniffed the air. He went into
the parlor, spoiling his carefully-planned entrance by tripping over
the rug.

"Heavens!" said Tough, "what a smell of witch-hazel. Why, it's Dink.
What have you been doing?"

Stover felt the temperature rise to boiling.

"We had a bit of a shindy," he said desperately, trying to give it a
tragic accent, "and I bumped my head."

"Well, you look like a skinned rat," said Tough to put him thoroughly
at his ease.

The angel, however, came to his rescue with solicitous inquiries and
with such a heavenly look that Stover only regretted that he could not
appear completely done up in bandages.

They went in to dinner, where Dink was so overwhelmed by the vision
of Miss McCarty in all her transcendent charms that the effort of
swallowing became a painful physical operation.

Afterward, Tough and his mother went over to Foundation House for a
visit with the Doctor, and Dink found himself actually alone,
escorting Miss McCarty about the grounds in the favoring dusk of the
fast-closing twilight.

"Let's go toward the Green House," she said. "Will you take my cloak?"

The cloak settled the perplexing question of the hands. He wondered
uneasily why she chose that particular direction.

"Are you sure you want to go there?" he said.

"Quite," she said. "I want to see the exact spot where the historic
fight took place."

Stover moved uneasily.

"Dear me, what's the matter?"

"I never go there. I hate the place."

"Why?"

"I was miserable there," said Dink abruptly. "Hasn't Tough told you
about it?"

"Tell me yourself," said the angelic voice.

Stover felt on the instant the most overpowering desire to confide his
whole life's history, and being under the influence of a genuine
emotion as well as aided by the obliterating hour, he began straight
forward to relate the story of his months of Coventry in tense,
direct sentences, without pausing to calculate either their vividness
or their effect. Once started, he withheld nothing, neither the agony
of his pride nor the utter hopelessness of that isolation. Once or
twice he hesitated,