his track with rage.

"You coward! You traitor! Who was there to capture you, and wring
anything from you? Tell me, before I knock you down!"

Travers pushed back his coat sleeves and held out his wrists. Each was
ringed with purplish bands, and swollen. Then he related his experience
in detail, and ended by delivering, word for word, the message which
Glenning had sent. As Marston listened his rage rose up and choked him.
At the conclusion of the recital he was wild, and moved about threshing
the air with his fists. When he at length came to a standstill his face
was the colour of ashes, and he was shaking from the violence of his
emotion.

"He said that, did he? The upstart! He'll shoot me, will he? He's going
to tell me what to do, and what not to do! I'll attend to him! He'd
better have stayed where he came from."

Then, muttering to himself as was his wont when enraged, he wheeled and
went towards the house, leaving Travers to look out for himself.

The landlord of the Union House did not tarry long. He had done a thing
which yesterday he would not have believed himself capable of doing. Now
he went slowly down to the yard gate, wondering at his bravery, got
into a wornout road-cart which he had borrowed in town from a country
friend, and began his return trip.

* * * * *

When Glenning had dispatched a hasty breakfast he sought the clerk in
the hotel office and told him to have his bill ready some time that
forenoon. That worthy at once evinced a loquacious interest in the new
doctor's affairs, and would fain have inquired his departing guest's
plans for the future, but John merely replied that he had no intention
of leaving town, and went up to his room. Here he was soon joined by Tom
Dillard, who came in wearing the most dejected air possible, tendered a
perfunctory good morning to John's hearty greeting, and sank upon the
edge of the bed, his round, soft face wofully elongated.

"Sick this morning, Dillard?" queried Glenning, busy with the damaged
clothes which still lay on the chair. "I'd as lieve have you for my
first patient as anybody."

Dillard sighed, and shook his head dolorously.

"Not exactly sick, and not exactly well," he replied, "but it's precious
little sleeping I did last night."

"Indigestion?"

"No; worry."

Glenning, briskly wielding a clothes brush, glanced at Dillard. He was
evidently in the depths of despair, and had most likely come for
conso