st look was a provokingly significant one at the confused and
blushing young lady. Secondly he inspected the Dying Gladiator on the
ice.

"Have you been tilting at this gentleman, Mary?" he asked, in the voice
of a cheerful, friendly fellow. "Why! Hullo. Hooray! It's Wade, Richard
Wade, Dick Wade! Don't look, Miss Mary, while I give him the grips of
all the secret societies we belonged to in College."

Mary, however, did look on, pleased and amused, while Peter plumped down
on the ice, shook his friend's hand, and examined him as if he were fine
crockery, spilt and perhaps shattered.

"It's not a case of trepanning, Dick, my boy?" said he.

"No," said the other. "I tumbled in trying to dodge this lady. The ice
thought my face ought to be scratched, because I had been scratching its
face without mercy. My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired
of secession, and pleading to be let in again."

"Keep some of them out for our sake! We must have you at our commonplace
level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had
the sensation of breaking a man's head. You generally hit lower." Peter
tapped his heart.

"I'm all right now, thanks to my surgeon," says Wade. "Give me a lift,
Peter." He pulled up and clung to his friend.

"You're the vine and I'm the lamppost," Skerrett said. "Mary, do you
know what a pocket-pistol is?"

"I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern
warriors."

"There's one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the butt and a cork at
the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too.
She is restorative."

"Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick?" he continued, as she
skimmed away.

"It would pat a soul under the ribs of Death."

"I venerate that young woman," says Peter. "You see what a beauty she
is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than
rocs' eggs.

"She has a singularly true face," Wade replied, "and that is the main
thing,--the most excellent thing in man or woman."

"Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable."

"You did not do me the honor to present me."

"I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her
initials in cambric on your brow? Not M. T., which wouldn't apply; but
M. D."

"Mary----?"

"Damer."

"I like the name," says Wade, repeating it. "It sounds simple and
thoroughbred."

"Just what she is. One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-br