any other hand than her
own to turn the knob of the door.

"Why, Mr. Breen!"

"Yes, Miss Ruth," Jack answered, lifting his hat, an unrestrained
gladness at the sight of her beauty and freshness illumining his face.
"I have come to report for duty to your father."

"But you cannot see him. You must report to me," she laughed gayly, her
heart brimming over now that he was before her again. "Father was going
to send for you to-day, but the doctor would not let him. Hush! he
musn't hear us."

"He would not let me go out either, but as I am tired to death of being
cooped up in my room, I broke jail. Can't I see him?" he continued in
a lower key. He had his coat off and had hung it on the rack, she
following him into the sitting-room, absorbing every inch of his strong,
well-knit body from his short-cropped hair where the bandages had been
wound, down to the sprained wrist which was still in splints. She noted,
too, with a little choke in her throat, the shadows under the cheek
bones and the thinness of the nose. She could see plainly how he had
suffered.

"I am sorry you cannot see father." She was too moved to say more. "He
still has one degree of fever."

"I have two degrees myself," Jack laughed softly,--"one records how
anxious I was to get out of my cell and the other how eager I was to get
here. And now I suppose I can't stay."

"Oh, yes, you can stay if you will keep as still as a mouse so father
can't hear you," she whispered, a note of joy woven in her tones.

She was leading him to the sofa as she spoke. He placed a cushion for
her, and took his place beside her, resting his injured hand, which was
in a sling, on the arm. He was still weak and shaking.

"Daddy is still in his room," she rattled on nervously, "but he may be
out and prowling about the upstairs hall any minute. He has a heap of
things to talk over with you--he told me so last night--and if he knew
you were here nothing would stop him. Wait till I shut the door. And now
tell me about yourself," she continued in a louder voice, regaining her
seat. "You have had a dreadful time, I hear--it was the wrist, wasn't
it?" She felt she was beginning badly; although conscious of her nervous
joy and her desire to conceal it, somehow it seemed hard for her to say
the right thing.

"Oh, I reckon it was everything, Miss Ruth, but it's all over now." He
was not nervous. He was in an ecstasy. His eyes were drinking in the
round of her throat and the waves