d come to the race
with me, Ffrench?"

"Race! You'd race with that arm?"

"Yes. Are you coming with me?"

Shaken and tremulous, Dick passed a damp hand across his forehead.

"I think you're mad to stand talking here. Come to the office, for
heaven's sake. And, I'd be ground up there, if you hadn't caught me,"
he looked toward the jaws sullenly shredding and reshredding a strip
of cloth from his sleeve. "I'll do anything you want."

"Will you?" Lestrange flashed quickly. He flung back his head with the
resolute setting of expression the other knew so well, his eyes
brilliant with a resolve that took no heed of physical discomfort.
"Then give me your word that you'll stick to your work here. That is
my fear; that the change in you is just a mood you'll tire of some
day. I want you to stand up to your work and not drop out
disqualified."

"I will," said Dick, subdued and earnest. "I couldn't help doing
it--your arm--"

Lestrange impatiently dragged out his handkerchief and wound it around
the cut.

"Go on."

"I can't help keeping on; I couldn't go back now. You've got me awake.
No one else ever tried, and I was having a good time. It began with
liking you and thinking of all you did, and feeling funny alongside of
you." He paused, struggling with Anglo-Saxon shyness. "I'm awfully
fond of you, old fellow."

The other's gray eyes warmed and cleared. Smiling, he held out his
left hand.

"It's mutual," he assured. "It isn't playing the game to trap you
while you are upset like this. But I don't believe you'll be sorry.
Come find some one to tie this up for me; I can't have it stiff
to-morrow."

But in spite of his professed haste, Lestrange stopped at the head of
the stairs and went back to recover some small object lying on the
floor beneath a pool of chilling metal. When he rejoined Dick, it was
to linger yet a moment to look back across the teeming room.

"It's worth having, all this," he commented, with the first touch of
sadness the other ever had seen in him. "Don't throw it away,
Ffrench."

There is usually a surgeon within reach of a factory. When Mr. Ffrench
passed out to the cart where Emily waited, he passed Dick and the
village physician entering. The elder gentleman put on his glasses to
survey his nephew's white face.

"An accident?" he inquired.

The casual curiosity was sufficiently exasperating, and Dick's nerves
were badly gone.

"Nothing worth mentioning," he snapped. "Just that I n