And everybody thinks so."

Slowly and carefully Aintree snapped his fingers.

"And you can tell everybody, from me," he cried, "that's all I care
what they think! And now," he continued, smiling hospitably, "let me
congratulate you on your success as a missionary, and, to show you
there's not a trace of hard feeling, we will have a drink."

Informally Haldane reported back to the commission, and the wife of one
of them must have talked, for it was soon known that a brother officer
had appealed to Aintree to reform, and Aintree had refused to listen.

When she heard this, Grace Carter, the wife of Major Carter, one of the
surgeons at the Ancon Hospital, was greatly perturbed. Aintree was
engaged to be married to Helen Scott, who was her best friend and who
was arriving by the next steamer to spend the winter. When she had
Helen safely under her roof, Mrs. Carter had planned to marry off the
young couple out of hand on the isthmus. But she had begun to wonder if
it would not be better they should delay, or best that they should
never marry.

"The awakening is going to be a terrible blow to Helen," she said to
her husband. "She is so proud of him."

"On the contrary," he protested, "it will be the awakening of
Aintree--if Helen will stand for the way he's acting, she is not the
girl I know. And when he finds she won't, and that he may lose her,
he'll pull up short. He's talked Helen to me night after night until
he's bored me so I could strangle him. He cares more for her than he
does for anything, for the army, or for himself, and that's saying a
great deal. One word from her will be enough."

Helen spoke the word three weeks after she arrived. It had not been
necessary to tell her of the manner in which her lover was
misconducting himself. At various dinners given in their honor he had
made a nuisance of himself; on another occasion, while in uniform, he
had created a scene in the dining-room of the Tivoli under the prying
eyes of three hundred seeing-the-Canal tourists; and one night he had
so badly beaten up a cabman who had laughed at his condition that the
man went to the hospital. Major Carter, largely with money, had healed
the injuries of the cabman, but Helen, who had witnessed the assault,
had suffered an injury that money could not heal.

She sent for Aintree, and at the home of her friend delivered her
ultimatum.

"I hit him because he was offensive to you," said Aintree. "That's why
I hi