ince his departure. Yet Jack needed attention. The doctor had just
pulled him out of one fainting spell only to have him collapse again
when his coat was taken off, and the bandages were loosened. He was
suffering greatly and was by no means out of danger.

If for the next hour or two there was anything to be done at
MacFarlane's, Peter was ready to do it, but this accomplished, he would
shoulder his bag and camp out for the night beside the boy's bed. He had
come, indeed, to tell Felicia so, and he meant to sleep there whatever
her protests. He was preparing himself for her objections, when she
reentered the room.

"How is young Breen?" Miss Felicia asked in a whisper, closing the door
behind her. She had put Ruth to bed, where she had again given way to an
uncontrollable fit of weeping.

"Pretty weak. The doctor is with him now."

"What did the fool get up for?" She did not mean to surrender too
quickly about Jack despite his heroism--not to Peter, at any rate. Then,
again, she half suspected that Ruth's tears were equally divided between
the rescuer and the rescued.

"He couldn't help it, I suppose," answered Peter, with a gleam in his
eyes--"he was born that way."

"Born! What stuff, Peter--no man of any common-sense would have--"

"I quite agree with you, my dear--no man except a gentleman. There is
no telling what one of that kind might do under such circumstances." And
with a wave of his hand and a twinkle in his merry scotch-terrier eyes,
the old fellow disappeared below the handrail.

Miss Felicia leaned over the banisters:

"Peter, PETER," she called after him, "where are you going?"

"To stay all night with Jack."

"Well, that's the most sensible thing I have heard of yet. Will you take
him a message from me?"

Peter looked up: "Yes, Felicia, what is it?"

"Give him my love."

CHAPTER XVI

Miss Felicia kept her promise to Ruth. Before that young woman, indeed,
tired out with anxiety, had opened her beautiful eyes the next morning
and pushed back her beautiful hair from her beautiful face--and it was
still beautiful, despite all the storms it had met and weathered, the
energetic, old lady had presented herself at the front door of Mrs.
Hicks's Boarding Hotel (it was but a step from MacFarlane's) and had
sent her name to the young man in the third floor back.

A stout person, with a head of adjustable hair held in place by a
band of black velvet skewered by a gold pin, the whole surm