nd he got sick from studying too much. None of the rest of us ever
fell ill of that trouble; but he did, and he was so poor he didn't
want to let any one know about it, for fear he would be obliged to
send for a doctor. It was found out though; and one day a doctor and
nurse turned up at the fellow's room,--said they'd been asked not to
say who sent them; but they stayed and pulled him through. He never
knew who his benefactor was; but I did, and you may judge of my
surprise, when the fellow got about, to see Flint cut him on the
street.

"'What in thunder did you do that for?' I asked, for I was dumfounded
to see him do it.

"'Because the fellow is a cad, and would be taking all sorts of
advantages. Better ignore the acquaintance at the start.'

"'Then why did you do what you did for him?'

"'I don't know, I'm sure!' Flint answered.

"That's just the sort of fellow Flint is. He may seem crusty, but in
any emergency he is a man to tie to."

"If life were a series of emergencies," said Winifred, reflectively,
"Mr. Flint would be invaluable; but in every-day existence, one does
not quite know what to do with him."

"I can put up with a great deal," said Ben Bradford, "from a chap like
that, who shows real sand and pluck when a crisis comes. I mean to
tell Mr. Flint to-morrow that I think he's a daisy, and go down on my
marrow bones for the things I have thought and said about him before."

"I wouldn't, if I were you, Ben," observed Winifred, with an amused
smile; "for I doubt if Mr. Flint has ever had the dimmest idea that
you have not been thinking well of him all along."

CHAPTER X

FLYING POINT

"We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more."

Far up the pond, at no great distance from the spot where "The
Aquidneck" had met her untimely and ignominious end, Flying Point
thrust out its tongue of land into the rippling water, which stole in
and out between its tiny coves so gently that scarcely a murmur could
be heard, except when a northeaster lashed the pond into a mimic sea;
and then the teapot tempest was so outdone by the giant waves outside
the bar, that it passed unnoticed, like the fury of a child beside the
rage of a grown man.

The Point took its name from the flights of ducks which passed over it
in vast numbers in the spring and autumn, their dark, irregular
squadrons black against the intense blue of sea and sky. Its l