mfortingly promising object of care.

"If we can keep this from assuming the character of true pneumonia,"
said Dr. Aylesbury, "there's no reason why he shouldn't recover."

He had been unconscious and then delirious from the time when he and I
had been picked up there by the railroad-dump, until we were well on our
way home on Kittrick's relief-train. At last he looked about him, and
his eyes rested on Corcoran.

"Hello, Jack!" said he weakly; and as his glance took in Ole, he smiled
and said: "A hellufa notion, you tank, do you? Ole, where's Schwartz?"

Ole twisted and squirmed, but found no words.

"We couldn't find Schwartz," said Kittrick. "He was so cold, he went
right down with the cab."

"I see," said Jim. "It was bitter cold!"

He said no more. I wondered at this, and almost blamed him, even in his
stricken state, for not feeling the peculiar poignancy of our regret for
the loss of Schwartz. And then, his face being turned away, I peeped
over to see if he slept, and saw where his tears had dropped silently on
the piled-up cushions of his couch.

* * * * *

Mrs. Trescott came several times a day to inquire as to Mr. Elkins's
welfare; but Josie not at all. Antonia's carriage stopped often at the
door; and somebody stood always at the telephone, answering the stream
of questions. But when, on that third evening, it became known that the
last "battle in the west" had gone against us, that all our great Round
Table was dissolved, and that Jim's was a sinking and not a rising sun,
public interest suddenly fell off. And the poor fellow whose word but
yesterday might have stood against the world, now lay there fighting for
very life, and few so poor to do him reverence. I had been so proud of
his splendid and dominant strength that this, I think, was the thing
that brought the bitterness of failure most keenly home to me. I could
not feel satisfied with Josie. There were good reasons why she might
have refused to choose between Jim and the man who had ruined him, while
there was danger of her choice itself becoming the occasion of war
between them. But that was over now, and Cornish was victorious.
Gradually the fear grew upon me that we had rated Josie's womanhood
higher than she herself held it, and that Cornish was to win her also.
He had that magnetism which so attracted her as a girl, but that I had
believed incapable of holding her as a woman. And now he had wealt