the back of the middle seat and dropping at his
side. The magnetic fingers again touched his; he felt her warm breath on
his neck as she bent toward him.

"It's nothing," he said, hastily, more agitated by the treatment than
the wound.

"Give me your flask," she responded, without heeding. A stinging
sensation as she bathed the edges of the cut with the spirit brought him
back to common sense again. "There," she said, skillfully extemporizing
a bandage from her handkerchief and a compress from his cravat. "Now,
button your coat over your chest, so, and don't take cold." She insisted
upon buttoning it for him; greater even than the feminine delight in a
man's strength is the ministration to his weakness. Yet, when this was
finished, she drew a little away from him in some embarrassment--an
embarrassment she wondered at, as his skin was finer, his touch gentler,
his clothes cleaner, and--not to put too fine a point upon it--he
exhaled an atmosphere much sweeter than belonged to most of the men her
boyish habits had brought her in contact with--not excepting her own
father. Later she even exempted her mother from the possession of this
divine effluence. After a moment she asked, suddenly, "What are you
going to do with Hornsby?"

Cass had not thought of him. His short-lived rage was past with the
occasion that provoked it. Without any fear of his adversary he would
have been content and quite willing to meet him no more. He only said,
"That will depend upon him."

"Oh, you won't hear from him again," said she, confidently, "but you
really ought to get up a little more muscle. You've no more than a
girl." She stopped, a little confused.

"What shall I do with your handkerchief?" asked the uneasy Cass, anxious
to change the subject.

"Oh, keep it, if you want to, only don't show it to everybody as you did
that ring you found." Seeing signs of distress in his face, she added:
"Of course that was all nonsense. If you had cared so much for the ring
you couldn't have talked about it, or shown it. Could you?"

It relieved him to think that this might be true; he certainly had not
looked at it in that light before.

"But did you really find it?" she asked, with sudden gravity. "Really,
now?"

"Yes."

"And there was no real May in the case?"

"Not that I know of," laughed Cass, secretly pleased.

But Miss Porter, after eying him critically for a moment jumped up and
climbed back again to her seat. "Perhaps you had