ook Hal Smith with renewed
laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest
thing on earth.

From the time he ha poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this
bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting
episode after another.

He had come through like the hero in a best-seller. ... Lacking only a
heroine. ... If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama
had gone wrong in that detail. ... So perhaps, after all, it was real
life he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have
a definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life
nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked
by that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.

* * * * *

Smith sat in his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the
inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly
as care dogs the horseman.

He had a fine time, -- save for the horror of the Rock-trail. ... He
shuddered. ... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that
ghastly game. ... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar
lay, ten feet -- twenty -- a hundred deep, perhaps -- in immemorial
slime----

He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping
horror, and wiped his clammy face.

Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and
filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.

Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the
heart of this young man.

He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and
outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely child
-- once Grand Duchess of Esthonia -- then a destitute refugee in silken
rags.

What a day that had been. ... Only one day and one evening. ... And
never had he been so near in love in all his life. ...

That one day and evening had been enough for her to confide in an
American officer her entire life's history. ... Enough for him to pledge
himself to her service while life endured. ... And if emotion had swept
every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and
alarm -- there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees,
reeking with disease, halt frantic from famine and the filthy, rising
flood of war -- if really it all had been merely romantic impulse,
ardour born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had