d hit ter
be godly.'"

Her laughter tinkled back to him, but he had caught the underlying
insistence of her tone, and he remembered what she had said about this
ball: what it meant to her, and what his being there meant too.

"Take young Lochinvar for instance," he went on banteringly yet with a
dubious touch in his voice. "It wasn't the first party of the season
that he came to, was it? And even at the finish he was a little late.
Maybe there was some delay in getting his coat of mail ready."

"Oh," the girl's exclamation was one of quick understanding. She knew
something of Boone's financial pinch, and how he felt it a point of
honour to stretch as far as possible the fund his patron had left him.
"You mean--" she broke off, and the young mountaineer spoke bluntly,

"I mean I haven't a dress suit, and short of stealing one--"

"I understand," she declared, and began talking animatedly of other
things, but when she had rung off Boone sat staring at an open law book
and making nothing of its text. Then he heard a movement at his back and
swung around in his swivel chair, but the next instant he was on his
feet with an exclamation that was an outburst of joy.

There, standing just inside the door, tanned like saddle leather,
somewhat grayer about the temples and sparer of figure than of old, but
with the strong vigour of active months, stood Victor McCalloway.

"I think, my boy," he said, as though he had never been away at all, "we
can run to a dress suit."

CHAPTER XXX

A moment later the two men stood with their hands clasped, and the face
of the younger was aglow with such delight as can come only from a happy
windfall out of the unexpected.

Never had that other face and figure been far from his thoughts. Never
had his ardent hero-worship waned or tarnished. His speculations and
dreams had been haunted by misgivings bred of the fierce chances of war,
chances which might make of the features, into which he now looked
again, only a memory.

New and varied activities in his life had bulwarked him against actual
brooding, and youth is too brightly hopeful to accept grim
possibilities, unproven; but the mists of denied fear had hung
undissolved, and there had been moments when they had thickened and
congealed on the crystal of his thoughts to dark foreboding.

He had not known with what name or rank his beloved preceptor had been
serving over there beyond the Pacific. Many officers had fallen, and