, I got to be hikin'
back. The next is my entry. I'll look you up after while. So-long!"

He shambled off, and Sandy watched his broad-checked back until it was
lost in the crowd.

That Ricks should have turned up at that critical moment seemed a
wilful prank on the part of fate. Sandy bit his lip and raged
inwardly. He had a wild impulse to rush back to Ruth, seize her hand,
and begin where he had left off. He might have done it, too, had not
the promenade happened to land Dr. Fenton before him at that moment.

The doctor was behaving in a most extraordinary and unmilitary way. He
had stepped out of the ranks, and was performing strange manoeuvers
about a knothole that looked into the courting-box. When he saw Sandy
he opened fire.

"Look at her! Look at her!" he whispered. "Whenever I pass she talks
to Jimmy Reed on this side; but the moment she thinks I'm not looking,
sir, she talks to Nelson on the other! Kilday," he went on, shaking
his finger impressively, "that little girl is as slick as--a blame
Yankee! But she'll not outwit me. I'm going right up there and take
her home."

Sandy laughingly held his arm. It was not the first time the doctor
had confided in him. "No, no, doctor," he said; "I'll be the watch-dog
for ye. Let me go and stay with Annette, and if Carter Nelson gets a
word in her ear, it'll be because I've forgotten how to talk."

"Will you?" asked the doctor, anxiously. "Nelson's a drunkard. I'd
rather see my little girl dead than married to him. But she's wilful,
Kilday; when she was just a baby she'd sit with her little pink toes
curled up for an hour to keep me from putting on her shoes when she
wanted to go barefoot! She's a fighter," he added, with a gruff
chuckle that ended in a sigh, "but she's all I've got."

Sandy gripped him by the hand, then turned the corner into the
courting-box. Instantly his eager eyes sought Ruth, but she did not
look up as he passed.

He unceremoniously took his seat beside Annette, to the indignation of
little Jimmy Reed. It was hard to accept Carter's patronizing
tolerance, but a certain curve to his eyebrows and the turn of his
head served as perpetual reminders of Ruth.

Annette greeted Sandy effusively. She had found Jimmy entirely too
limber a foil to use with any degree of skill, and she knew from past
experience that Sandy and Carter were much better matched. If Sid Gray
had been there also, she would have been quite happy. In Annette's
estimation