him;
a blow on the point of the chin sent another sprawling on the sidewalk;
but the last one, who was perhaps the most sober of them all, showed
fight and called to his comrades to come on and get this stranger who
was trying to steal their girl. The language he used made Courtland's
blood boil. He struck the fellow across his foul mouth, and then
clenching with him, went down upon the sidewalk. His antagonist was a
heavier man than he was, but the steady brain and the trained muscles
had the better of it from the first, and in a moment more the drunken
man was choking and limp.

Courtland rose and looked about. The two fellows in the gutter were
struggling to their feet with loud threats, and the fellow on the
sidewalk was staggering toward him. They would be upon the girl again in
a moment. He looked toward her, as she stood trembling a few feet away
from him, too frightened to try to run, not daring to leave her
protector. A street light fell directly upon her white face. It was
Bonnie Brentwood!

With a kick at the man on the ground who was trying to rise, and a lurch
at the man on the sidewalk who was coming toward him that sent him
spinning again, Courtland dived under the clutching hands of the two in
the gutter who couldn't quite make it to get upon the curb again.
Snatching up the girl like a baby, he fled up the street and around the
first corner, and all that cursing, drunken, reeling five came howling
after!

CHAPTER XV

Courtland had run three blocks and turned two corners before he dared
stop and set the girl upon her feet again. He looked anxiously at her
white face and great, frightened eyes. Her lips were trembling and she
was shivering. He tore his overcoat off, wrapped it about her, and
before she could protest caught her up again and ran on another block or
two.

"Oh, you must not!" she cried. "I can walk perfectly well, and I don't
need your coat. Please, please put on your coat and let me walk! You
will take a terrible cold!"

"I can run better without it," he explained, briefly, "and we can get
out of the way of those fellows quicker this way!"

So she lay still in his arms till he put her down again. He looked up
and down either way, hoping to see the familiar red-and-green lights of
a drug-store open late; but none greeted him; all the buildings seemed
to be residences.

Somewhere in the distance he heard the whir of a late trolley. He
glanced at his watch. It was half past