st how you're getting along."

"Yes, I'll write," Lucy promised. "But you mustn't worry about me. I'm
not going to get discouraged again, no matter what happens." The train
was coming to a snorting halt and Peggy had time for just one more word.

"Good-by, Jerry. Don't forget."

The girls scrambled aboard, followed by a chorus of good-byes. "What's
this? Old Home week?" asked an interested old gentleman, dropping his
newspaper and crossing the aisle, to get a better view of the crowd on
the platform. And, meanwhile, Amy was tugging at the window, crying
excitedly, "Oh, help me, quick, Peggy, or it'll be too late."

The window yielded to the girls' combined persuasion. Amy's camera
appeared in the opening, and a little click sounded just as the train
began to move. "Oh, I hope it'll be good," cried Amy, whose successes
and failures had been so evenly balanced that her attitude toward each
new effort was one of hopeful uncertainty. "It would be so nice to have
something to remember them by." But Peggy, looking back on the station
platform, was sure that she needed no aid to remembrance, Amy's camera
might be out of focus, and the plate blurred and indistinct, as so often
happened, but the picture of those upturned, friendly faces was printed
upon Peggy's heart, a lasting possession.

"Well, old man!" It was Jack Rynson speaking over Graham's shoulder.
"Guess we might as well start. Come on, Hobo--beg pardon, Hero." And the
dog who had whimperingly watched the train which bore Peggy out of
sight, only restrained by Jack's hand on his collar from rushing in
pursuit, yielded to the inevitable, and followed his new master with the
curious loyalty which does not change, no matter how often its object
changes.

The people were breaking up into groups of twos and threes, and moving
away, but Lucy Haines and Jerry stood motionless, their gaze following
the vanishing speck which was the south-bound train. Then slowly Lucy's
head turned. She had never been friendly with Jerry Morton. She had
shared the disapproval of the community, intensified by her inherent
inability to understand the temperament so unlike her own. Yet all at
once she found herself feeling responsible for him. To be helped means
an obligation to help, at least to unselfish natures.

She went toward Jerry half reluctantly. But when she was near enough to
see that he was swallowing hard, apparently in the effort to remove some
obstruction in his throat which