e means to remove me from the
map----"

"I see," was the reply. "In that case you'll need a partner even worse
than you do now. You can't scare me off that way. Shall I look for you
at ten to-morrow?"

"At ten to the minute," said the rescued plunger; and he went
down-stairs so full of mingled thankfulness and triumph that he mistook
Doctor Farnham's horse for his own at the hitching-post two doors away,
and was about to get into the doctor's buggy before he discovered his
mistake.

XXV

THE BRIDGE OF JEHENNAM

Doctor Farnham had been about to make his daily call upon old Mrs.
Breda, two doors up the street from the Widow Holcomb's, when he had
climbed the stair of literary aspirations to give the convalescent his
dinner bidding.

Griswold had accepted gratefully on the spur of the moment; and it was
not until after Raymer had come and gone that sober second thought began
to point out the risk he would run in meeting Charlotte Farnham face to
face under conditions which would give her the best conceivable
opportunity to recognize him, if recognition were possible.

The more he thought of it, the more he regretted his haste in consenting
to incur the risk. Reflectively weighing the chances for and against, he
made sure that in characterizing the young woman whose life-thread had
been so strangely tangled with his own he had not overrated her
intelligence. Giving heredity its due, with the keen-witted little
physician for her father she could scarcely fail to measure up to the
standard of those whose gifts are apperceptive. For many days she had
had ample opportunity to familiarize herself with all the little
identifying individualities of the deck-hand: reasoning from cause to
effect, it might be assumed that her crushing responsibility had driven
her to make use of it. Having recognized him once, under conditions far
less favorable than those he was about to hazard, was it not more than
probable that she would be able to do it again?

Griswold took a final look at himself in his dressing-case mirror before
going to keep his evening appointment at the doctor's down-town office.
It was comfortably reassuring. So far as he could determine, there was
little in the clean-shaven, square-shouldered, correctly garmented young
fellow who faced him in the mirror to suggest either the bearded outcast
of New Orleans or the unkempt and toil-soddened roustabout of the _Belle
Julie_. If only she had not made him spe