plant of the Western Castings Company, Chet Ball, glancing down
from his dizzy perch atop an electric-light pole, espied Miss Anastasia
Rourke going to work. He didn't know her name or anything about her,
except that she was pretty. You could see that from a distance even
more remote than Chet's. But you couldn't know that Stasia was a lady
not to be trifled with. We know her name was Rourke, but he didn't.

So then: "Hoo-hoo!" he had called. "Hello, sweetheart! Wait for me
and I'll be down."

Stasia Rourke had lifted her face to where he perched so high above the
streets. Her cheeks were five shades pinker than was their wont, which
would make them border on the red.

"You big ape, you!" she called, in her clear, crisp voice. "If you had
your foot on the ground you wouldn't dast call to a decent girl like
that. If you were down here I'd slap the face of you. You know you're
safe up there."

The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Chet Ball's sturdy legs
were twinkling down the pole. His spurred heels dug into the soft pine
of the pole with little ripe, tearing sounds. He walked up to Stasia
and stood squarely in front of her, six feet of brawn and brazen nerve.
One ruddy cheek he presented to her astonished gaze. "Hello,
sweetheart," he said. And waited. The Rourke girl hesitated just a
second. All the Irish heart in her was melting at the boyish impudence
of the man before her. Then she lifted one hand and slapped his smooth
cheek. It was a ringing slap. You saw the four marks of her fingers
upon his face. Chet straightened, his blue eyes bluer. Stasia looked
up at him, her eyes wide. Then down at her own hand, as if it belonged
to somebody else. Her hand came up to her own face. She burst into
tears, turned, and ran. And as she ran, and as she wept, she saw that
Chet was still standing there, looking after her.

Next morning, when Stasia Rourke went by to work, Chet Ball was
standing at the foot of the pole, waiting.

They were to have been married that next June. But that next June Chet
Ball, perched perilously on the branch of a tree in a small woodsy spot
somewhere in France, was one reason why the American artillery in that
same woodsy spot was getting such a deadly range on the enemy. Chet's
costume was so devised that even through field glasses (made in
Germany) you couldn't tell where tree left off and Chet began.

Then, quite suddenly, the Germans got the range. The tre