hat were wont
to whistle a signal, and went down the street shuddering. Then after an
impulse in which some good angel of remorse shook his teeth to rouse his
soul, he lifted his face to the sky and would have cried in his heart
for help, but instead he smiled and went on, trying to think of his
speech and resolving mightily to put Laura Nesbit out of his heart
finally for the night. He held himself to his high resolve for four or
five minutes. It is only fair to say that the white clad figure of the
Doctor coming clicking up the street with his cane keeping time to a
merry air that he hummed as he walked distracted the young man. His
first thought was to turn off and avoid the Doctor who came along
swinging his medicine case gayly. But there rushed over Van Dorn a
feeling that he would like to meet the Doctor. He recognized that he
would like to see any one who was near to Her. It was a pleasing
sensation. He coddled it. He was proud of it; he knew what it meant. So
he stopped the preoccupied figure in white, and cried, "Doctor--we're
late to-night!"

"Well, Tom, I've got a right to be! Two more people in Harvey to-night
than were here at five o'clock this afternoon because I am a trifle
behindhand. Girl at your partner's--Joe Calvin's, and a boy down at Dick
Bowman's!" He paused and smiled and added musingly, "And they're as
tickled down at Dick's as though he was heir to a kingdom!"

"And Joe--I suppose--not quite--"

"Oh, Joe, he's still in the barn, I dropped in to tell him it was a
girl. But he won't venture into the house to see the mother before noon
to-morrow! Then he'll go when she's asleep!"

"Dick really isn't more than two jumps ahead of the wolf, is he,
Doctor?"

"Well," grinned the elder man, "maybe a jump-and-a-half or two jumps."

The young man exclaimed, "Say, Doctor! I think it would be a pious act
to make the fellows put up fifty dollars for Dick to-night. I'll just go
down and raid a few poker games and make them do it."

The Doctor stopped him: "Better let me give it to Dick if you get it,
Tom!" Then he added, "Why don't you keep Christian hours, boy? You can't
try that Yengst case to-morrow and be up all night!"

"That's just what I'm out here for, Doctor--to get my head in shape for
the closing speech."

"Well," sniffed the Doctor, "I wish you no bad luck, but I hope you
lose. Yengst is guilty, and you've no business--"

"Doctor," cut in Van Dorn, "there's not a penny in the Yengst ca