r, after growing his spurs, looking for his
first fight.

"Aye, an' for one I'm wishin' he'd be findin' it," continued Hennessy.
"He's bided peaceful an' patient till there is no virtue left in him. Ye
can make believe women be civilized if ye like, but I'm knowin' that a
woman's sure to go to the man that fights the hardest to get her, same as
it was in the savage day o' the world. An' there's nothing that sets a
man right quicker with himself than a good fight, tongues or fists."

At that moment Peter would have gladly chosen either or both if fate could
only have furnished him with a legitimate combatant. But a man cannot
fight gossipy old ladies or jealous, petty-minded nurses, or a doctor whom
he has never met and whose transgressions he cannot swear to. And yet
Peter wanted to double up his fists and pitch into the whole community; he
felt himself all brute and yearned for wholesale slaughter.

Peter had come to the sanitarium in the beginning to be cured of a
temporal malady, only to rise from his bed stricken with an eternal one.
He had fallen desperately in love with Sheila O'Leary as only a man of
Peter's sort can fall in love, once and for all time. Moreover, he
believed in her as a man believes in the best and purest that is likely to
come into his life. On the day of his convalescing, when she had been
transferred from his case to another, he had sworn that he would not stir
foot from the old San until he had won her. He had kept his word for four
months. He would have been content to keep it for four more--or for four
years, for that matter--had everything not turned suddenly topsy-turvy
and sent his world of hopes crashing down about him.

For four months he had shared as much of Sheila's life and work as she
would allow. He had let himself drift into the role of a comfortable and
sympathetic companion whenever her hours for recreation gave him a chance.
His love had grown as his admiration and understanding of her had grown,
until she had come to seem as necessary a part of his life as the air he
breathed. Then he had been able to smile whimsically at those gossipy
tales. What if she had been suspended and sent away from the sanitarium?
What if she had broken through some of the tight-laced rules with which
all institutions of this kind hedge in their nurses? Sheila's proclivity
for breaking rules was a byword among the many who loved her, and the head
of the institution, the superintendent of nurses,