Frank Merriwell's Trust; Or, Never Say Die
Date: 2020-07-14T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adventure stories; Dime novels; Popular literature; Merriwell; Frank (Fictitious character) -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: Frank Merriwell's Trust; Or, Never Say Die

Author: Burt L. Standish

Release date: July 14, 2020 [eBook #62639]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANK MERRIWELL'S TRUST; OR, NEVER SAY DIE ***

BOOKS FOR YOUNG MEN
MERRIWELL SERIES
Stories of Frank and Dick Merriwell
PRICE, FIFTEEN CENTS
Fascinating Stories of Athletics

A half million enthusiastic followers of the Merriwell brothers will attest the unfailing interest and wholesomeness of these adventures of two lads of high ideals, who play fair with themselves, as well as with the rest of the world.

These stories are rich in fun and thrills in all branches of sports and athletics. They are extremely high in moral tone, and cannot fail to be of immense benefit to every boy who reads them.

They have the splendid quality of firing a boy’s ambition to become a good athlete, in order that he may develop into a strong, vigorous right-thinking man.

ALL TITLES ALWAYS IN PRINT

1—Frank Merriwell’s School Days       By Burt L. Standish

2—Frank Merriwell’s Chums       By Burt L. Standish

3—Frank Merriwell’s Foes       By Burt L. Standish

4—Frank Merriwell’s Trip West       By Burt L. Standish

5—Frank Merriwell Down South       By Burt L. Standish

6—Frank Merriwell’s Bravery       By Burt L. Standish

7—Frank Merriwell’s Hunting Tour       By Burt L. Standish

8—Frank Merriwell in Europe       By Burt L. Standish

9—Frank Merriwell at Yale       By Burt L. Standish

10—Frank Merriwell’s Sports Afield       By Burt L. Standish

11—Frank Merriwell’s Races       By Burt L. Standish

12—Frank Merriwell’s Party       By Burt L. Standish

13—Frank Merriwell’s Bicycle Tour       By Burt L. Standish

14—Frank Merriwell’s Courage       By Burt L. Standish

15—Frank Merriwell’s Daring       By Burt L. Standish

16—Frank Merriwell’s Alarm       By Burt L. Standish

17—Frank Merriwell’s Athletes       By Burt L. Standish

18—Frank Merriwell’s Skill       By Burt L. Standish

19—Frank Merriwell’s Champions       By Burt L. Standish

20—Frank Merriwell’s Return to Yale       By Burt L. Standish

21—Frank Merriwell’s Secret       By Burt L. Standish

22—Frank Merriwell’s Danger       By Burt L. Standish

23—Frank Merriwell’s Loyalty       By Burt L. Standish

24—Frank Merriwell in Camp       By Burt L. Standish

25—Frank Merriwell’s Vacation       By Burt L. Standish

26—Frank Merriwell’s Cruise       By Burt L. Standish

27—Frank Merriwell’s Chase       By Burt L. Standish

28—Frank Merriwell in Maine       By Burt L. Standish

29—Frank Merriwell’s Struggle       By Burt L. Standish

30—Frank Merriwell’s First Job       By Burt L. Standish

31—Frank Merriwell’s Opportunity       By Burt L. Standish

32—Frank Merriwell’s Hard Luck       By Burt L. Standish

33—Frank Merriwell’s Protégé       By Burt L. Standish

34—Frank Merriwell on the Road       By Burt L. Standish

35—Frank Merriwell’s Own Company       By Burt L. Standish

36—Frank Merriwell’s Fame       By Burt L. Standish

37—Frank Merriwell’s College Chums       By Burt L. Standish

38—Frank Merriwell’s Problem       By Burt L. Standish

39—Frank Merriwell’s Fortune       By Burt L. Standish

40—Frank Merriwell’s New Comedian       By Burt L. Standish

41—Frank Merriwell’s Prosperity       By Burt L. Standish

42—Frank Merriwell’s Stage Hit       By Burt L. Standish

43—Frank Merriwell’s Great Scheme       By Burt L. Standish

44—Frank Merriwell in England       By Burt L. Standish

45—Frank Merriwell on the Boulevards       By Burt L. Standish

46—Frank Merriwell’s Duel       By Burt L. Standish

47—Frank Merriwell’s Double Shot       By Burt L. Standish

48—Frank Merriwell’s Baseball Victories       By Burt L. Standish

49—Frank Merriwell’s Confidence       By Burt L. Standish

50—Frank Merriwell’s Auto       By Burt L. Standish

51—Frank Merriwell’s Fun       By Burt L. Standish

52—Frank Merriwell’s Generosity       By Burt L. Standish

53—Frank Merriwell’s Tricks       By Burt L. Standish

54—Frank Merriwell’s Temptation       By Burt L. Standish

55—Frank Merriwell on Top       By Burt L. Standish

56—Frank Merriwell’s Luck       By Burt L. Standish

57—Frank Merriwell’s Mascot       By Burt L. Standish

58—Frank Merriwell’s Reward       By Burt L. Standish

59—Frank Merriwell’s Phantom       By Burt L. Standish

60—Frank Merriwell’s Faith       By Burt L. Standish

61—Frank Merriwell’s Victories       By Burt L. Standish

62—Frank Merriwell’s Iron Nerve       By Burt L. Standish

63—Frank Merriwell in Kentucky       By Burt L. Standish

64—Frank Merriwell’s Power       By Burt L. Standish

65—Frank Merriwell’s Shrewdness       By Burt L. Standish

In order that there may be no confusion, we desire to say that the books listed below will be issued during the respective months in New York City and vicinity. They may not reach the readers at a distance promptly, on account of delays in transportation.

To Be Published in July, 1923.

66—Frank Merriwell’s Set Back        By Burt L. Standish

67—Frank Merriwell’s Search        By Burt L. Standish

Frank Merriwell’s Trust

OR,
NEVER SAY DIE
BY
BURT L. STANDISH
Author of the famous Merriwell Stories.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1901
By STREET & SMITH
Frank Merriwell’s Trust

(Printed in the United States of America)

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.

FRANK MERRIWELL’S TRUST.

CHAPTER I.

JACK DIAMOND’S FRIENDS.

“Jack Diamond—am I dreaming?”

Frank Merriwell uttered the exclamation. He was in front of the Hoffman House, in New York. Three young men in evening dress had just left the hotel, and were about to enter a cab that had drawn up to the curb for them. Frank stared in astonishment at one of them. He was a slender, clean-cut, handsome fellow.

“Jack Diamond!” he repeated; “can it be? Why, I supposed he was in London!”

One of the men, his silk hat thrust recklessly back on his curly yellow hair, was speaking to the driver. The other, with a mustache black as midnight, was holding the door open for the third to enter the cab. Frank sprang forward.

“Diamond!” he called, “is that you?”

The youth who was already half-way into the cab drew back and turned round.

“Who is it?” he asked, his voice sounding a trifle thick and unnatural.

Frank was before him. It was eleven o’clock at night, but the bright lights of Broadway made it almost like day.

“Merriwell!” exclaimed the young fellow in the evening suit and opera-coat. “Is that you?”

“Sure as you live!” cried Frank, with outstretched hand. “But I thought I was dreaming. I wasn’t sure it was you.”

Their hands met, while Diamond’s two companions looked on in silence, as if not quite pleased.

“Man alive!” came from Frank, “I thought you on the other side of the pond. What does this mean?”

“It means that I’m back here,” said Jack. “But I supposed you in New Haven. How do you happen to be here?”

“Various things have combined to keep me here since I came down from college. The story is too long for me to tell now, but I’ve had some rather interesting adventures.”

“Well, old man, I’m right glad to see you again. Let me introduce my friends. Mr. Herrick, Mr. Merriwell; Mr. Madison, Mr. Merriwell.”

Herrick was the older of the two, and the possessor of the black mustache. Madison had a smooth, almost boyish face, with a head of curly yellow hair. Frank took an instant dislike to Herrick, who had the air of a rounder. Madison seemed more like a rather gay young fellow, although there was a dissipated look on his face and his eyes met Frank’s with an effort.

Frank could see that these men had been drinking, although Herrick gave little evidence of it. The latter shook hands politely, simply repeating Frank’s name; but Madison grasped Merry’s hand, crying:

“Glad to know you, Mr. Merriwell. Glad to know anybody who is Jack Diamond’s friend. Let’s have a drink.”

“Steady, Billy,” warned Herrick, in a low tone. “Don’t slop over, my boy.”

“Oh, to blazes with that!” returned Madison, laughing. “What do we care? We’re out for a time, and we don’t give a rap who knows it. Let’s all go in and take a drink.”

“We haven’t time,” asserted the man with the black mustache, looking at his watch.

“Time! Great Scott! we’ve got all the time there is! Don’t anybody own any of my time till ten o’clock to-morrow.”

“And I’ve got time to burn,” asserted Diamond, his voice again sounding thick. “I think I need another drink. Fact is, I know I need it. Let’s have it.”

“All right, if you will have it,” said Herrick, as if giving in with great reluctance. “But I think you’ve taken enough for the present.”

Frank thought Jack had taken altogether too much. He was surprised and distressed to find his college comrade in such a condition.

“See here, Jack,” he said, taking Diamond’s arm, “you had better drop this. You’re on a spree, and you must stop drinking at once.”

“My dear boy,” said Diamond, with a reckless laugh, “I’ve been on it for a week now, and I’ve just begun.”

To Merry’s surprise, the Virginian did not show the least sign of shame. This was all the more astonishing, as Jack was ever proud and sensitive, and had never seemed to be a drinker.

“Something has happened to start him off this way,” Merriwell instantly decided. “He is in a reckless mood.”

“I have to return to college in the morning, old man,” he said persuasively. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time. Come round to my room in the Fifth Avenue and let’s have a talk.”

“Excuse me,” Herrick spoke up. “Mr. Diamond has an important engagement.”

“That’s right, Merry,” agreed Jack, at once. “Just come along with me. I’ll show you the town to-night.”

“Yes, we can take Mr. Merriwell along,” said Herrick.

“Of course we can,” cried Madison. “The more the merrier. But it won’t be our fault if he gets scratched with the tiger’s claws.”

“No danger of that,” asserted Diamond. “He never fools with the tiger.”

Herrick seemed disappointed. “Is that so? Then I’m afraid he won’t find it very interesting to come along.”

“Yes, he will,” declared Jack. “Besides, he has always been a mascot to me, and I need one just now.”

Frank’s ears were wide open, and he fancied he understood the meaning of this talk, in which case he was more than ever alarmed for Diamond.

“If I could get him away and have a talk with him,” thought Frank, “I’d soon be able to learn the truth.”

But the Southerner was “out for a racket,” and Frank soon saw it would be useless to try to induce him to go quietly to a room in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“We’re fooling away lots of time here,” said Herrick impatiently. “We’ve hired this cab, too.”

“Well, I can pay!” cried Diamond sharply. “Don’t let that worry you, Charley.”

“That’s the stuff!” declared Madison. “Now will you be good? Come on, I want that drink. Bring Mr. Merriwell along, Jack. We’ll fill him to the chin.”

“You’ll have a hard time to do that,” asserted Diamond, as he permitted Madison to pull him across the sidewalk, at the same time clinging fast to Frank’s arm.

“Why?” asked the yellow-haired chap. “Is he a tank?”

“No; he’s a total abstainer.”

Herrick was heard to mutter something beneath his breath.

“Total fiddlesticks!” gurgled Madison. “Then he’d better get out of New York right away. If he doesn’t, they’ll have him on exhibition.”

“Of course he will take one drink with us,” said Herrick persuasively. “One never hurt anybody, and he’ll consent to take a drink with an old friend like you, Jack.”

“Tell me if he does!” said Diamond. “It will be soft stuff.”

“Soft stuff is good only for soft persons,” declared the man with the black mustache, as they entered the hotel and approached the bar. “I hope he isn’t in that class.”

Merriwell’s dislike for the man was growing, and he had noted with surprise and dismay that both of these men spoke to the Virginian in a most familiar manner, addressing him as Jack.

“He’s in bad company,” Merry decided.

They lined up at the polished bar.

“Oh, gimme a highball!” chirped Madison, his silk hat on the back of his head. “What are you absorbing, gentlemen?”

“I’ll take a little whisky,” said Herrick.

Frank was watching Diamond, and now Jack said to the barkeeper:

“I want a mint julep, Ned; you know how to put ’em together.”

“And our friend Mr. Merriwell,” spoke Herrick, placing a hand on Frank’s shoulder, “will he have a mixed drink, or will he take his straight, with me?”

“I told you he didn’t drink!” Diamond somewhat petulantly cried. “What’s the use to keep asking him, Charley?”

“But I have decided to take a drink this time,” said Frank, causing the Virginian to nearly collapse. “Barkeeper, I’ll take a gin.”

Frank had decided that Jack Diamond was in danger. He could not understand how the Virginian happened to be in New York, and in such a condition. No more could he understand the familiar friendship of Diamond and his two companions. Jack was not a fellow to pick up friends anywhere, and get on “first-name terms” with them in short order.

Ordinarily, Merriwell’s influence over Diamond was complete, but now he had failed in his attempt to take the Southerner from these companions and carry him away to a place where he could be brought round to reason. Having failed thus, Merry quickly decided to stay with Jack and see what was going on. He knew he would be an object of suspicion to Herrick and Madison unless they fancied he was drinking with them, and in order to divert their attention he agreed to take a drink.

But Frank had no intention of swallowing a drop of liquor. He had chosen gin because, in past experiences, he had discovered that, being the color of water, it was easy to make companions believe the gin had been taken when, in fact, the water “chaser” was the only thing swallowed.

“Hoo—yee!” whooped Madison, in delight, slapping Diamond on the shoulder. “There goes your total abstainer, Jack! He’s going to take his medicine like a little man.”

The Southerner looked at Frank in half-intoxicated reproach.

“Don’t do it, Merry!” he exclaimed huskily. “You’re too good a man to meddle with booze. Don’t do it!”

“Well, you’re a dandy to be giving advice!” shouted Madison. “Oh, quit your kidding and corral your mint julep!”

“Please be good enough to quit that, sah!” said Diamond, with a touch of his original Southern accent. “I am talking to my particular friend, and I’ll thank you not to interfere, sah.”

“Oh, thunder!” gasped Madison. “All right; didn’t suppose you were so touchy to-night, Jack, old sport. It’s all right; talk to him all you want to. I won’t come into the game.”

The Virginian bowed gravely, and again turned to Frank, who had poured some gin in a glass and received a chaser of water from the barkeeper.

“We are old friends, Merriwell,” said Diamond, still with the same air of polite intoxication, “and I’d do anything for you. You know it. You’re the best all-round man in Yale—the best man that ever entered the college. You have no vices. You are clean from your toes to the tip-ends of your hair. You’ve never poisoned yourself with tobacco or drink or high living of any sort. You’ve always taken the very best of care of your body and your mind. Now, don’t tell me you are going to spoil it all by making a fool of yourself and drinking gin!”

“That’s right,” muttered Madison, with a chuckle, unable to keep still longer. “For the love of goodness, drink something besides gin! Have a highball with me.”

“Please, sah—please!” frowned Jack, with a gentle gesture of his right hand, turning his eyes toward the irrepressible chap with the yellow hair.

“Shut up, Billy!” advised Herrick. “Let Jack talk to his friend. Of course, the man will take a drink just the same after Jack has wasted his breath, but that’s none of your business.”

Frank felt like hitting the sneering fellow. He was tempted to shove back the stuff onto the bar, and inform Herrick that he had made a mistake. Then he told himself that by so doing he might throw away his chance of learning the real meaning of Diamond’s actions and condition, and he simply pretended that he did not hear the man’s words.

“You’re a nice fellow to talk to me, Jack!” laughed Frank.

“That’s all right, Merry,” asserted Diamond unsteadily, his fine face flushed and his eyes gleaming redly. “It’s different with me.”

“I fail to see it. You are a gentleman, and the son of a gentleman.”

“Thank you, Merriwell; I hope, sah, that I am. But my father could take his medicine, and he always remained a gentleman. It doesn’t make so much difference about me. The fact is, it doesn’t make any difference what becomes of me now. I am up against it, and I’m going to play this streak through to the end.”

More than ever was Frank alarmed, for now he saw that Diamond was in a desperate mood, and, being in such a condition, the hot-blooded Virginian would not easily listen to reason.

Merry knew it would do little good to argue with Jack just then, for argument with a man under the influence of drink is generally a waste of words and the height of folly.

“I’d like to know why it doesn’t make any difference what happens to you,” Frank smiled. “It makes a difference to me. You are my friend.”

“True, true!” said Jack, with deep feeling. “And you are mine. That’s why I do not want to see you take that drink. If you ever get started fooling with the cursed stuff, Merriwell, you can’t tell where you’ll stop. I know you’ve got a stiff backbone, but drink has drowned many a fine man. It would be the first thing to overthrow you, so you hadn’t better fool with it. Come, now, old chum, make it something soft, and let it go at that.”

Herrick laughed harshly.

“We’re a long time getting round to that little drink, Jack,” he put in. “I’m getting awfully dry.”

“Dry!” croaked Madison. “Why, my throat is parched. Come on, Jack, break away and let’s irrigate.”

“Go ahead, gentlemen, and drink,” said the Southerner. “You annoy me.”

“Drink!” squawked Madison. “Without you? Not if I crack open with thirst! I’ll never be guilty of it!”

Frank had a hope that he could shame Diamond so that he would stop then and there.

“Come on!” he cried, taking up a glass in each hand. “We’re with them, Jack, and I’m with you till morning! Just you go ahead, and see if I don’t chase you.”

“One last appeal,” insisted Diamond earnestly. “You don’t know where you’ll stop if you begin it, Merry.”

“No more did you.”

“Well, you see the shape I’m in. Been this way for a week. Just take me as a horrible example, old man.”

“You seem to be having a good time.”

“All on the surface, my boy.”

“What makes you keep it up?”

“Have to.”

“Why?”

“So I won’t stop to think. I don’t want to think, Merriwell, and I won’t do anything else the minute I get sober.”

“What has happened? Tell me, Jack.”

“Not now. Good Lord! it drives me to drink! I’ve got to take this stuff, Merry! I’m afraid I’m getting sober.”

“Here we go!” chirped Madison. “Everybody drink. Here’s happy days.”

Diamond’s hand shook as he lifted his glass. His flushed face showed lines of care and dissipation. Merriwell’s heart was filled with pity and sorrow at the spectacle.

“I’ll save him from his own folly!” Frank vowed. “But I must seem to play into the hands of these fellows, in order to find out just what they are doing with him.”

Then he dashed off the contents of one of the glasses, which contained nothing but water, pretended to drink as a “chaser” from the other, but did not swallow a drop, and so deceived them all.

“Too bad!” Diamond almost sobbed, thinking Frank had taken the gin. “Suppose it’s all my fault. Been better for you, Merry, if you’d never known me.”

“Oh, say! don’t talk that stuff! It’s all right! Why, a fellow’s got to have a time once in his life!”

“That’s the talk!” nodded Herrick, evidently well pleased.

But Diamond shook his head sadly, at the same time pulling from his pocket a huge roll of bills, stripping off a twenty and flinging it on the bar.

“This is on me, Jack,” said Madison mildly.

“I’m paying the bills to-night, gentlemen,” asserted the Virginian, with dignity. “I insist.”

Merry decided that they were perfectly willing that Jack should pay. He could not help wondering at the amount of money in Diamond’s possession, but the sight of it gave him a conviction.

“They have seen his roll, and they are looking to bleed him. Now I stick by him for sure.”

“Come, gentlemen,” urged Herrick; “that cab is still waiting outside.”

“Let it wait, sah,” returned Diamond. “We’re going to have another drink.”

And have another they did.

CHAPTER II

THE GAMBLER’S VICTIM.

“Now,” said Madison, “let’s away to the lair of the tiger.”

To the surprise of all, Herrick showed reluctance. He held back and made a show of embarrassment.

“What is the matter, Charley?” asked Diamond, in surprise. “I thought you were in a hurry.”

“But we’ve added another to our party,” said the man with the dark mustache, in a guarded tone, looking slantwise at Merry.

“Well, he’s all right,” declared Jack indignantly, his face flushed and his breath heavy with the fumes of liquor.

“You know Dick is mighty particular.”

“What is it, gentlemen?” demanded Frank, stepping forward. “If I am in anybody’s way——”

“Not at all,” Herrick hastened to say; “but we were going to a certain place where the proprietor is very particular about his guests. Every man who enters there must be vouched for.”

“Well, I can vouch for Merriwell,” asserted the Virginian.

“Yes, but you are not very well known there. You’ve visited the place only once, you know.”

Jack was indignant.

“I’m a Diamond, of Virginia,” he said. “My word will go anywhere. When I say Frank Merriwell is all right, that goes.”

Herrick smiled.

“I have no doubt but you are right in most cases, but this is different. You see, you have had little to do with men like Canfield. You have no standing in his class.”

“Well, perhaps I ought to thank God for that,” muttered the Southerner. “But I’ve introduced you to my friend, and I give you my word he’s all right. You have the run of that place, and you can make it right there.”

“Yes; but you know I am held responsible if anything unpleasant happens.”

Frank had leaned against the rail of the bar. Herrick drew Diamond aside, and at this moment one of the barkeepers touched Merry on the elbow, saying in a low tone:

“Are you Frank Merriwell, of Yale, the athlete I’ve read so much about in the papers?”

“I presume I am the same,” answered Merry.

“Then I want to give you a tip, but don’t ever let out that I did so. Look out for yourself to-night if you chase that gang and keep your money in your pocket. That’s all.”

“Thank you,” nodded Merry quietly. “I’ll take your advice.”

“Don’t drink too much.”

“No danger. You threw out the gin I called for both times; I drank the water.”

The barkeeper looked surprised.

“Well,” he gasped, “I didn’t tumble to that. I guess you’re all right.”

“Oh, all right, all right,” Herrick was saying. “That’s all I ask. I don’t want to put myself in a hole with Dick, you know. He’s a white man.”

Then they came over to Merry and he was urged to come along. Frank pretended to hang back a little.

“I’m not in the habit of forcing my company onto anybody,” he said. “If I’m in the way, all you have to do is——”

“That’s all right,” quickly asserted the man with the black mustache. “I have to be careful, and so I wanted a square assurance from Jack. He says you are on the dead level, and I’m to stand for you at Can’s.”

Herrick passed his arm through that of Merriwell and the four proceeded out to the street, where the patient cabman still waited. Frank felt like shaking the black-mustached fellow off, but refrained from doing so.

Madison plunged into the cab with a whooping laugh, dragging Diamond after him, robbing Jack for the time of some of his dignity. Herrick politely held the door while Frank got in, coming last himself. The door slammed, and away went the cab.

Herrick offered cigars. Madison took one and Diamond followed suit. Merry was on the verge of refusing, but changed his mind and accepted one. Then Herrick struck a match and held it solicitously for Merry to start his cigar.

“I think I’ll take a dry smoke,” said Frank. “Anyhow, I’ll not light up now.”

“Hold steady!” cried Madison, plunging the end of his weed into the flame and beginning to puff at it.

Diamond also lighted his cigar, and Herrick joined them, observing:

“You’ll find the smoke rather thick, Mr. Merriwell, if you don’t fire up.”

They were on Fifth Avenue, rolling northward. The theaters were out, and cabs and hansoms were thick on the avenue, taking home those who had visited the different playhouses. Their gleaming yellow lamps flitted hither and thither, blinking and vanishing and blinking into view again like huge fireflies. Pedestrians were plentiful. The night was clear and cool, with millions of white stars scattered over the blue vault of the sky. Madison began to sing.

“Stop it!” commanded Herrick.

“I’m offended,” declared the yellow-haired youth. “You are very rude, Charley. I want to warble; I long to warble; I must warble! There is a pent-up warble within me, and I must let it forth. I long to sing some sad, sweet thing like ‘Down Went McGinty,’ or ‘Little Annie Rooney.’”

“If you get into this condition so early, you’ll be in nice shape to buck the tiger,” said Herrick. “My boy, I’m afraid you are loaded.”

“Base calumny! I could drink as much more and bob up serenely at ten to-morrow. But I’m happy. Better let me be happy now. I was feeling sore enough the last time after I visited Dick’s. Hope my luck’ll change to-night.”

All at once it dawned on Frank of whom they were speaking of. He had thought the name of Dick Canfield familiar, and now he remembered hearing something of the history of the man who was known as proprietor of the biggest gambling-house in New York.

So they were on their way to a gambling-den! Now Frank knew he had made no mistake in thinking Jack Diamond in danger, and he was glad he had decided to accompany the party.

Merry had sized Herrick up as a sharp, but he was not sure about Madison. Either the latter was a clerk of some sort, or he was playing a part, and playing it well. But, without doubt, the Virginian was the chief game of the wolf that evening, for he had revealed that he possessed plenty of money.

Madison chattered on as they rolled northward along New York’s most fashionable thoroughfare. Diamond smoked steadily, but nervously, while Herrick was calm and sedate.

They turned into a side street and then halted almost immediately. Apparently they had stopped in front of a respectable private house in a most respectable portion of the city.

“Here we are,” said Herrick, and he was the first to leap out to the sidewalk, holding the door open for the others. Madison followed, then came Frank, and Jack got out last. Herrick was preparing to pay the driver.

“Excuse me, Charley,” put in the Virginian. “I think I informed you a while ago that I am paying to-night. I’ll settle this, and the man who bothers has to fight me at sunrise.”

Then he settled and they followed Herrick up the steps. The building might have been taken for the home of a retired banker, or the abode of a family physician in good standing.

They passed the first door, but a second, of oak and heavy enough to withstand a battering-ram, confronted them. Herrick pushed a button and they waited.

Across the heavy oaken door there was an opening, barred by a grill of ironwork that covered the entire paneling.

When Herrick pushed the button, a buzzer sounded somewhere inside the house. There was a moment more of waiting. Then the panel opened noiselessly, and a heavy-faced man, with a dark, drooping mustache, looked at them.

The light in the vestibule fell full on Herrick’s face, the man having thrust back his silk hat.

Clink!—the panel closed. Snap!—the door opened.

Herrick walked in at their head, and they followed. The heavy-faced man who had opened the door said:

“Hello, Charley,” and Herrick returned, “Good evening, Mike.”

The door closed behind them, and they had crossed the portal of one of the most palatial gambling-houses in New York.

At the pressure of the button the buzzer within had sounded its warning, as the deadly diamond-back rattler of the Bad Lands sounds a warning before striking its victim.

Frank had heard that Dick Canfield’s place was in every way different from others of its sort; he had heard that there was nothing about it suggestive of commonness and vulgarity. That buzzer was a disappointment to him. In his rovings round the world, fate had led him once or twice to the doors of gambling-dens, and in every instance the pressure of a button had been followed by the sound of the buzzer within. This was true at the door of Dick Canfield’s, in the aristocratic neighborhood close to Fifth Avenue, and it was also true at the doors of cheap dens which flourished on Sixth Avenue.

Herrick led the way to a reception-room at the right of the entrance. The door of this room was flanked by heavy porphyry columns, and the room was a marvel of decorative art. A fireplace of exquisite design faced the door. It was a fine, big, open fireplace, handsomely carved and supported by onyx columns.

This room had the appearance of an upholstered and decorated cell. The windows were masked and the doors sunk into the walls. Overhead were handsome bronze chandeliers, fitted with incandescent lights, each gleaming coil hidden and softened by ground-glass bulbs. Under foot was a carpet of texture so deep and velvety that one’s footfalls were perfectly noiseless. Here their top-coats and hats were taken.

As Herrick led them into this reception-room and paused for Frank to admire its impressive beauty, three men came down the stairs from the gaming-rooms above. All were dressed in evening clothes. Two of them had faces that told of dissipated lives. The third was a youth with clear, clean-cut features, but now pale as death, while in his eyes gleamed a wild light of despair.

The three men paused a moment before going out. One of them was coolly drawing on his gloves, but he kept his eyes on the lad with the marble face and glaring eyes. The other man also watched the youth, whose lips were beginning to tremble, and he suddenly said:

“Don’t welch, Harry! Keep a stiff backbone! Be a man!”

The youth turned on him fiercely, his somewhat weak chin quivering.

“That’s all right for you to say!” he spoke, in a shaking voice—a voice that struck straight to Frank Merriwell’s heart. “What do you care for me now! You brought me here, and——”

“You wanted to come. Don’t squeal like a sick baby!”

“You brought me here,” repeated the youth, “and I’ve lost a fortune in this accursed place! I’m ruined! It’s worse than that! I’m a criminal, for I’ve gambled away thousands that did not belong to me! It will kill my poor mother!”

It was the remorseful cry of a weak, heart-sick youth who realized when too late the folly of his acts.

Frank quietly took a step nearer the three.

“I never thought you a welcher!” exclaimed the man, giving the pale-faced lad a look of reproach. “I did think you had nerve.”

“Nerve! Bah! It’s the fool who has nerve to sit at a gambling-table and play away money he does not own! Nerve! That is a false appearance, assumed to make other men regard you with admiration. But what does it amount to when a man has made a criminal of himself? What does it amount to when he knows the hand of the law will be outstretched to grasp him and drag him to a prison cell? What does it amount to when he knows that the result of his madness and folly will be the shameful death of his poor old mother, who has been so proud of him—who believed him good, and true, and honest? Don’t talk to me about welching! What is the difference now if I do squeal? I’m done for!”

Frank saw a shaking hand fumble at a pocket, and he stood ready to make a spring.

“This cursed place has ruined me, just as it has ruined hundreds before!” the youth went on. “It is run under police and political protection! Some of my money, some that I took without permit and lost here to-night, will be paid into the hands of men elected to offices of trust by the people. But for the silence of those men, this place could not run.”

“You’re ratty, Harry; come out of it. Let’s get out into the air. You need it to brace you up.”

“Hold on!” cried the lad, drawing back and flinging off their hands. “Don’t touch me! I’m not going yet! What is my life to me now! I may be able to call attention to this place and force public opinion to close it. Perhaps in that way I’ll save some other poor fool who might be lured here to his destruction. The disgrace will force Canfield to close! The notoriety will shut his doors. When I leave this place I’ll be carried out—feet first!”

His hand came from his pocket with a jerk, and he placed a shining revolver at his head, leaping backward to escape their hands. In another moment he would have fallen dead or dying, but Frank had suspected his design, and was on the watch for that move. The youth sprang back into Merry’s arms, and the hand of the young Yale athlete closed on the revolver.

The nerve-broken young gambler was like a helpless child in the hands of Merriwell. With ease Frank took away the deadly revolver.

When the two men would have clutched the would-be suicide, Frank waved them back with the gleaming weapon, supporting the panting lad on his shoulder.

“Hands off!” he cried, his voice clear and steady, yet not loud. “Aren’t you satisfied with what you have brought the poor devil to? You shall not touch him!”

“Give me that revolver!” pleaded the shaking youth, reaching out for it.

“Wait a minute,” said Merry. “I want to talk to you.”

Then, half-leading, half-supporting the miserable boy, he crossed the room to a cushioned seat by the fireplace. The two men looked on, uncertain as to what course they should pursue.

“You have made a terrible blunder,” said Frank, as he sat beside the white-faced lad, a hand on his shoulder; “but you cannot undo it by taking your own life.”

“At least, I can escape the consequences, the shame, the disgrace!”

“And prove yourself a coward. You spoke of your mother. Will she be left in poverty by this act of yours?”

“No; she has the income of property that will take care of her. But the shame will kill her!”

“Do you think it will be any less if you were to take your own life? Do you think the blow would be less severe to her?”

“No, no; but——”

“Then it is only because you fear to face the consequences of your act that you wish to die?”

“I can’t face it—I can’t! I’ve gambled away ten thousand dollars that do not belong to me! That means prison!”

“And you cannot restore one cent?”

“Would to God I could!” sobbed the youth, from the depths of his heart.

“If you could, you would?”

“Yes, yes, yes! I’d slave like a dog to pay that money back! I’d do anything! I’d work to the day of my death! But who would believe me if I said so?”

“I believe you,” declared Frank Merriwell, in a way that gave the other a strange thrill.

“But you—what can you do? You are a stranger to me.”

“Yes, I am a stranger to you; but by the eternal Heavens! I am not going to see a human life go to wreck on the rocks if I can help it!”

“How can you help it?”

“I may find a way. What is your name?”

“Harry Collins.”

“Well, Collins, how long do you think it will be before it is discovered that you have taken this money?”

“It may be discovered to-morrow; it may not be discovered for a week.”

Frank took a card-case from his pocket, removed a card and wrote on the back of it with a lead-pencil.

“There is my address,” he said. “Come to me to-morrow at one o’clock.”

“But you—you—what will you do? You can’t do——”

“I hope to be able to save you from the consequences of your folly. I have asked you only a few questions about yourself, because I do not wish to pry into your private affairs. For your mother’s sake, and in the hope that you have learned the lesson of your folly, I am going to do all I can for you.”

The youth shook his head.

“It’s a trick!” he said. “It’s a trick to get me out of this place. I’ll not find you when I call.”

Frank flushed.

“Perhaps I should not blame you for thinking so,” he said kindly. “Please read the name on that card.”

“I see it—‘Frank Merriwell.’”

“Perhaps you read in the papers some time ago about Charles Conrad Merriwell, who was called the American Monte Cristo?”

“Yes, yes! Why, you——”

“I am his son. My father has plenty of money, and, if I can communicate with him, I believe he will loan you ten thousand dollars.”

The youth gasped.

“Loan—me—ten—thousand—dollars?”

“Yes; at least, I shall ask him to do so, stating your case plainly. I am confident he will not refuse me. With the money you are to make square your debt, and then you must go to work to pay back to my father every dollar of it. He will demand that.”

The overjoyed lad would have fallen on his knees before Frank; he tried to kiss Frank’s hands, while the tears rained from his eyes.

“God bless you!” he sobbed. “I know you will save me, Frank Merriwell! And I swear to pay back every cent!”

Merry lifted him to his feet.

“Now, go,” he said. “Get out of this place, and keep away from all places like it. Come to me at the time set, and I’ll be waiting for you. Steer clear of those two men over there. Quit them at once, and never have anything to do with their like again.”

“I will! I will! But do not fail me, Frank Merriwell! My life depends on it! My mother’s life——”

“There, there! Say no more, but come to me to-morrow. Don’t doubt for an instant that I’ll meet you. I surely will. Good night.”

Merry had walked across that noiseless carpet, his arm about the unfortunate youth. The two men started toward the door, as if to join the lad, but Frank gave them a look that stopped them in their tracks.

At the door Frank gave the misguided lad his hand.

“I know,” breathed Collins—“I know by the grip of your hand that you are true! I know you will save me! Thank God!”

Then he left Dick Canfield’s to return no more.

Frank turned to his companions, quietly saying:

“Come, gentlemen, let’s take a look at the tiger.”

CHAPTER III

GILDED VICE.

They ascended a staircase that turned at right angles upon itself. This led to the gaming-rooms above. A fretted partition concealed it from the doorway, and until one had ascended to its crest he had no intimation of the play that was going on. The top being reached, however, there could be heard the busy clatter of the ivory ball speeding about the wheel and the rattle of ivory chips.

When the gaming-room was entered Frank’s keen eyes took in the general appearance of the place, and a glance showed him that it was furnished for gambling alone. There were the roulette-tables, double-banked, with the wheel in the center. Against the walls were the tables for faro. Chairs for the players, the dealers, and the croupiers were the only furnishings on the floor.

A collection of quiet, well-dressed men were playing at the various tables. They were polite and gentle in their movements, quiet of speech and apparently engaged in an occupation to which they were well accustomed and familiar.

It was the air of Canfield’s place. Every one entering there was supposed to act like a gentleman and to betray little emotion, no matter what his losings or his winnings might be.

And the play was high. Canfield was too impatient to bother with men who bet five or ten dollars. He cared nothing for small fry, but his lines were out constantly for big fish. The white checks cost a dollar each in that room.

The mural decorations of the room prevailed in Pompeiian red, and all about were panelings and other furnishings of a wood corresponding to unstained mahogany.

In this room hung an excellent example of the painter’s art, for Canfield was a connoisseur in fine paintings and rare prints, about which he would gladly talk by the hour. The handsome painting in the gambling-room he called a “Simmons.”

When they reached the gambling-room Herrick motioned toward a rear apartment, saying:

“Let’s have something to eat before we begin playing, gentlemen. I am hungry.”

“And I’ve got a terrible thirst on me,” murmured Madison, who had been strangely quiet and subdued since the appearance of the desperate and despairing youth in the reception-room. Frank saw Madison’s face was pale, and there was a look of dread in his eyes. All his rollicking manner had departed from him.

“He’s in trouble,” thought Merry; “and the sight of the other fellow has given him a start. I don’t think he stands in with Herrick.”

They moved toward the dining-room at the rear of the gambling-apartment. This room Frank found to be in keeping with the rest of the place. The paneling was handsomely carved, and the napery on the table was the best that could be procured. Beneath the softened lights, cut glass gleamed like diamonds. Overhead it was tastefully decorated in bronzed leather.

Herrick led the way, and they were shown to a table by polite waiters, who placed the chairs for them.

Frank looked at the menu in surprise, for he saw quickly that it compared in its range with the very best places of the city. There were all sorts of salads, cold salmon and cold roast meats. A bird, a bit of game, or a cutlet might be ordered.

The wine-list seemed to include everything choice and extravagant.

“Order what you like, gentlemen,” said Herrick. “Everything is free here to Canfield’s customers.”

“Do you mean to say there is no charge for this?” asked Merry, not a little surprised.

“No charge at all,” assured the man with the dark mustache.

They gave their orders, which were soon filled by the attentive servants. Herrick took pains to order plenty of wine; but, to his surprise, he suddenly found that Frank Merriwell would not drink.

Frank had a reason, for now it would not be easy for him to lead his companions into believing he had drunk the same as the others. They did not know that he had not touched a drop, and he had accomplished his purpose in keeping close to Jack Diamond and watching Herrick.

It was useless for Herrick to urge; Frank could not be moved.

“That’s right, Merriwell!” exclaimed the Virginian. “You keep sober and let me do the drinking for both of us.”

Madison, too, hastened to put away a bottle of wine, and the color began to come back to his face.

“Didn’t know I had so little nerve,” he said. “Been cold ever since that chap pulled the gun and tried to blow the top of his head off.”

“Oh, hang a welcher!” sneered Herrick. “His squealing made me sick! But it’s lucky Mr. Merriwell grabbed him just as he did. Canfield ought to thank him for that.”

“I ask no thanks from Canfield,” said Frank coldly.

“Don’t talk about it!” implored Madison.

Herrick was cool, but it became plain that his declaration that he was hungry had not been true, for he ate only a few mouthfuls. Frank ate more, but Diamond seemed in a hurry to get back to the gaming-room. Madison was strangely troubled, sometimes flushing, only to pale again.

“Curse it!” Madison finally cried. “Why did that fellow come down there and make a scene with his pistol!”

“Forget it,” laughed Herrick.

“That’s all right to say, but it isn’t easy to do. I’m a fool! I’ll be in the same way that chap is if I don’t look out!”

“Nonsense! Luck was against you the last time, Billy, but you are almost always a winner.”

“I believe my luck has turned. But I’m in the hole.”

“Got to find your money where you lost it, my boy,” purred the tempter.

“That’s right!” exclaimed Madison, rising. “Come on, gentlemen; let’s go out there and see if fortune will smile on us to-night.”

They left the dining-room, returning to the apartment where quiet, well-dressed men were gambling.

“What shall it be, jack?” asked Madison. “Will we go against the roulette wheel, or try faro a whirl? I leave it to you.”

“I lost two thousand at the faro-table last night,” said the Virginian. “I am going back to the same table.”

“I’m with you,” laughed Madison.

Diamond seated himself at the table, feeling for his money. He did not find it at once, and he continued to search through other pockets. At length, he rose, saying:

“I believe I have lost my money!”

He was very quiet and cool about it.

“What’s that?” asked Herrick, who had also taken a seat at the table. “How could you have lost it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You had it at the Hoffman House?”

“Yes.”

“He had it just outside the door here,” said Madison, “after he paid the cabman there.”

“I did that from loose money in my trousers pocket,” said the Southerner. “I am not certain the rest of my money was with me then. But I remember putting it in my pocket at the hotel.”

“My money is all right,” said Madison.

Herrick was looking at Frank in a very suspicious manner, but Merry was watching Jack. Diamond again went through his pockets, but with no better result.

“It’s gone!” he declared, with forced calmness. “It’s plain I shall not be able to play here to-night.”

“I can let you have some money on your paper, old man,” said Herrick.

“No; I think I’ll not take it. I’ve dropped enough to-night. There was about five thousand dollars in that roll.”

The Southerner was keeping his nerve in an admirable manner.

“How do you suppose you lost it, Jack?” asked Frank, with anxiety expressed on his face.

“I haven’t the least idea,” confessed Diamond.

“Perhaps it was lost in the cab. Do you know the driver?”

“The cab-driver is all right,” said Herrick. “It wasn’t lost in there, unless——”

“Well, it will do no harm to look for it without delay,” said Frank. “Come, Mr. Madison, will you go with us?”

Madison looked surprised, doubtful, hesitating. He did not seem able to make up his mind at once.

“You have your chance to get square to-night, Billy,” said Herrick. “Mr. Merriwell can help Jack look for his money. We’re here; let’s play the game.”

Merriwell touched Madison on the shoulder.

“You had better come with us,” he said.

“Get out!” hissed Herrick, scowling. “What are you trying to do, Merriwell? Let him alone, will you!”

“You see, Mr. Madison, that your friend is very anxious for you to play. Perhaps he has a reason. You know there are ‘stools’ for places like these.”

Herrick jumped up and thrust himself between Merry and Madison.

“Look here!” he panted; “if you mean to insinuate that I am a ‘stool,’ you’re a liar!”

Then, quick as a flash, the young Yale athlete grasped him by the collar, lifted him, gave him a whirl and swept the faro-table clean with his body.

As Herrick dropped off at the other end of the table, Merriwell quietly grasped Madison’s arm, speaking calmly:

“Take the advice of one who would be your friend; play no more in this place. Remember the young fellow who tried to blow a hole in his head, a short time ago.”

Madison turned pale.

Men had leaped up as Charley Herrick was flung across the faro-table. Servants rushed forward. Frowning faces surrounded Frank Merriwell. Somebody said:

“Put him out!”

Herrick jumped up and started for Frank, but three men held him off, speaking to him in a warning way. Other men attempted to take hold of Frank.

“Be kind enough to keep your hands off!” spoke Frank quietly, clearly, distinctly, his eyes flashing and the hot color flaming in his cheeks. “If you want a nasty row, just grab me. If you will have it quiet, keep off!”

There was something in his manner that held them off for a moment. Herrick tried to break away.

“If I could get hold of him, I’d break the young pup in two!” he snarled.

“I’ll be pleased to give you an opportunity to try that trick, sir, anywhere outside of this house. I do not care to get into trouble here, for I’d not have it known for any amount of money that I visited such a place.”

Frank spoke quietly, but his meaning could not be misunderstood. He seemed to regard with pity the victims of the gambler who were looking on.

“Who are you, that you are so particular about your reputation?” somebody asked.

“He’s Frank Merriwell, of Yale, and I’m his friend, gentlemen!” declared Diamond, at Frank’s side.

“Here comes Canfield!”

They parted to permit the serene, calm, well-dressed man to advance. His immobile face was inscrutable. He bowed slightly to Frank, speaking in a gentle, gentlemanly voice:

“I am sorry, Mr. Merriwell, that you should have any trouble with a patron of my house. I do not like to have such disturbances here.”

Frank looked at the keeper of the gambling-house. Canfield was interesting to him.

“The fellow brought it on himself,” said Merry. “I had no intention of making a disturbance, for I have partaken of your hospitality, though I have left none of my money here. I think you made a mistake, Mr. Canfield, in having any dealings with a man of his caliber. He is altogether too eager for his percentage.”

Canfield’s face did not change, though it seemed that a shade of color rose to his cheeks.

“Your insinuation is unpleasant, Mr. Merriwell,” he spoke, in the same restrained voice.

“Because it strikes home, I presume. But I am not going to make a scene here, Canfield. I am sorry for you, but you are not nearly as much to blame as the wolves who hold office in this city and take your hush-money, for which they give you protection. Some day they will hear the outcry of the indignant people; they will find they are cornered; they will realize that they can protect you no longer with safety to themselves, and then they will stand back and let the hand of outraged virtue fall on you. In your extremity you need not look for aid to those men in high places—those men whose pockets you have lined with gold. They will turn their faces from you; they will not know you. You will suffer; they will hold the offices they have betrayed. They will say, ‘We have cleaned the city!’ but as long as the blind people permit such harpies to retain their positions of trust and go unpunished, vice will still flourish.”

Frank stopped suddenly, and then said:

“Excuse the lecture! I didn’t mean to do it, Canfield; it was an accident, I assure you!”

The faintest smile curled the gambler’s lips.

“Never mind,” he said. “I see Harvard will have to hustle in her next debate with Yale. Without doubt you have shot off lots of truth, Mr. Merriwell; but you are damaging my business. Would you mind going out quietly, without further demonstration?”

Frank could not help admiring the fellow.

“I’ll go.”

“Thank you,” bowed the gambler. “The man at the door will be notified not to admit you again, so you can save time by not taking the trouble to call.”

“And you might have spared your breath, for there was not the least danger that I would ever again present myself at your door.”

“Still, I wish you to understand that I have no feelings against you. In fact, having read about you in the papers, I learned to admire you some time ago. If we were to meet elsewhere, I’d take pleasure in chatting with you a while. Good night, Mr. Merriwell.”

“Good night, sir,” said Frank, slipping his arm through Diamond’s and turning away.

A hand gripped Merry’s other arm.

“Hold on!” panted a voice. “Don’t leave me! I’m going with you! I’m done for if I don’t get out of here now!”

It was Billy Madison, pale as a ghost, but determined to escape from the snare which had already tangled his wayward feet.

“Good!” said Frank, with keen satisfaction. “Come on!”

The flushed men in evening dress stepped back before them, and they walked from the room, descended the stairs, were helped on with their top-coats, and left the house.

CHAPTER IV

THE OPEN HAND.

Madison took in a deep breath when they were outside. Frank felt the fellow’s arm trembling.

“Perhaps I was a fool!” he said huskily. “Mr. Merriwell, I’m in a bad box!”

“How?” Merry asked.

“I’ve dropped considerable money in that place.”

“Too bad!”

“And I hoped to get it back.”

“Your chance of doing so was small.”

“I know; but there was a chance. Now there is none. And, by Heaven! I must get that money back!”

He stopped on the sidewalk.

“I’m going back!” he declared. “I must do it, Merriwell! I must win that money back!”

“You’ll lose more, Madison.”

“I must take the chance, for I might win. You don’t know—you don’t understand. I must win that money back!”

Frank fancied he did understand.

“Don’t forget Collins,” he warned. “Madison, if you are in need of a small sum, it may be that we can fix it, somehow.”

The darkness hid the flush that rushed to Billy Madison’s face.

“I couldn’t get what I need any other way than to win it where I lost it,” he declared huskily.

Then Frank knew that Madison was in a desperate strait, and he pitied the fellow.

“You shall not go back into that shark’s hole to-night,” he asserted, keeping hold of Billy’s arm. “We’ll talk it over. How much are you behind, man?”

“Nearly a thousand dollars,” answered the yellow-haired youth, all his false buoyancy gone now.

“No more than that?” asked Frank, with apparent relief.

“It’s as bad as ten times the sum. I can’t make it up.”

“Can you give any security?”

“My word, and I don’t know a man on earth who will take it for that amount.”

“I will.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“Why, will you let me have the money?”

“If you will make me a promise.”

“What promise?”

They were walking down Fifth Avenue. Frank called a cab before answering Madison.

“To the Fifth Avenue Hotel,” he said, as they got in.

“No; the Hoffman House,” said Diamond. “We are going to look for my money there.”

“We’ll go to the Fifth Avenue first,” said Frank quietly.

Both Madison and Diamond were feeling quite different from a short time before as they rolled up that splendid street. Madison was anxious, and he could not wait for Merriwell to explain.

“What promise do you require?” he asked huskily.

“I know absolutely nothing about you, Mr. Madison,” said Merry; “and I do not mean to ask embarrassing questions. I do not know your occupation, or anything of that sort. You may hold a position of trust where you are permitted to handle large sums of money.”

Madison choked, but did not speak.

“Never mind that,” Merry went on. “You have squandered a sum of money that puts you in a bad place, and you feel that you must get that money back. Something tells me that you are a square man—that you are a man of your word.”

“Thank you,” gasped Madison huskily.

“I have a small bank-account on which I can draw. I will let you have any sum up to a thousand on your agreement to pay as much as possible monthly. But you must make the promise I ask.”

“I can pay you twenty-five dollars a month—yes, I might pay fifty by squeezing. I’ll do it—I’ll pay fifty.”

“Twenty-five is sufficient. I shall ask no interest. All I want is my money back.”

“You shall have it—every penny!”

“But you must make the promise and keep it.”

“What is the promise?”

“Never to gamble again as long as you live!” came impressively from Frank’s lips. “Do you give me that promise?”

“Yes;” cried Madison, without hesitation. “And, by Heaven! I’ll keep it!”

Frank grasped his hand.

“Good boy!” he said, in a tone of earnest satisfaction that impressed the yellow-haired youth strangely. “You will have to cut your friend Charley Herrick in order to keep that promise.”

“I shall cut all my friends of that set, Mr. Merriwell—I swear it! I have learned my lesson this night. That poor fellow who wanted to blow his brains out—ah! that turned my blood to water! It showed me the road I was traveling. I felt that I might stand in his place before the night was over!”

“And so you might had you stayed there to gamble. Had you won to-night, you would have come back. Some night you would have lost everything. That would have been the end.”

Madison shuddered.

“I know you have saved me, Frank Merriwell!” he said. “But who are you? Are you some good angel who goes round saving foolish fellows from the results of their folly?”

“Not exactly!”

“And how can you he sure you’ll ever get back one dollar of the money you have offered to loan me?

“I am sure because I believe in you.”

“But you may be deceived. You know that. You may not get the money back. How dare you take the other risk?”

“I dare not take the other risk!”

“Why—what do you mean?”

“If I did not take this risk I know what the result would be. If I did not let you have the money, I know you would go straight the downward road to destruction. I consider a human life and a human soul worth more than a paltry thousand.”

Billy Madison was dazed, for he had not believed there was in all the world one person like Frank Merriwell. Such unhesitating and unselfish generosity astounded and bewildered him.

“You must be very rich!” he said.

“I am not,” answered Frank. “Every dollar I own in this world I have made myself. The money I shall let you have is the royalty paid me by a theatrical manager who is handling a play I wrote.”

“But your father—the richest man in America?”

“Has never given me a dollar of money. I have no doubt that he would if I needed it; but I’ve never been forced to ask him for it.”

Madison’s wonder and admiration for this Yale man grew.

“It’s wonderful!” he muttered. “I don’t quite understand it.”

“I know some persons would call me easy,” said Frank; “but I’d rather be called that than think that I had the opportunity to save a single soul from destruction, and let it pass.”

“That’s Merriwell!” thought Diamond. “He’s the only man I ever knew who was not afraid of being sized up as a soft mark. He had rather everybody would think him a mark than do a thing he fancies is wrong. If this world had a few more Merriwells in it, it would be a better place.”

Diamond was right. The fear of being regarded as “soft” makes moral cowards of the most of us. We hesitate to extend a helping hand to a brother in distress for fear the world will look on, laugh, and dub us “silly.” And repeated refusals to offer aid renders us callous and hard and unfeeling, so that we give little heed to distress and do not seem to care when we see a human soul, like a disabled vessel, drifting down the stream of life to the cataract of destruction. “It’s none of our business,” we say, and let it go. It is our business—it is your business, my business, everybody’s business! It is our duty to stretch forth a hand to succor and save the unfortunate creature if it is in our power to do so.

Twice this eventful night the hand of Frank Merriwell had been stretched out, each time to men who were strangers to him, for Madison, like Collins, could not be regarded as anything more.

The cab rolled down to Broadway and the hotel was reached. They got out and Frank paid the driver.

Straight to Merriwell’s room they went, and there Frank wrote for William A. Madison a check for nine hundred and seventy-five dollars, which the curly-haired chap said would be enough to put him straight before the world.

Madison was grateful, but Frank cut short his thanks, saying:

“The future will talk far better than any words you can say now. I am willing to wait to see what it will say. Go straight home, my boy. When you wish to send me money, forward it to New Haven. You may also give me an address, where I may write to you.”

Madison pulled out his card-case at once, took a card and wrote upon it.

“Here is my address,” he said. “Anything you wish to know about me I will answer. You may find out by inquiry if I tell you the truth.”

Frank waved a hand lightly.

“I do not wish to ask questions. Had I intended to do so, I should have begun in the first place. But look out for Herrick. Remember my warning. When you meet him, you do not know him.”

“Never again!” vowed Madison.

Then he shook hands with Frank and Jack and left them.

“I believe you’ll receive that money back, Merriwell,” said the Virginian; “but you are taking a risk that few fellows would dare run.”

“And I could not have rested for a week if I hadn’t taken it,” declared Frank.

“Well,” said Diamond, “now that you have fixed him all right, perhaps you will go with me to look for the money I have lost.”

“No,” spoke Frank, “there is no need of it.”

The Southerner stared at him in amazement.

“No need of it?” he cried. “Why not? It’s the last ready money I have in my possession—or the last I had, for it’s gone now. Am I of less consequence than Billy Madison?”

“Not at all, my dear boy; but there is no need to search for your lost money.”

“No need?” repeated Jack. “Why not?”

“Because I have it here,” asserted Frank quietly, drawing a big roll of bills from his pocket and extending them to Jack.

“Am I dreaming?” gasped the Virginian, as he took the roll of bills and dropped limply on a chair, staring at it in a wondering, bewildered way.

Frank sat down, smiling.

“If you will run the money over,” he said, “I think you’ll find it’s all there.”

“But—but—how did it come here?” gurgled Jack. “I—I thought——”

“That it was lost.”

“Yes; and you—you——”

“Had it all the time,” finished Merry, still smiling quietly.

“But why—when——”

“I took it because I did not wish you to blow it in to-night at Dick Canfield’s.”

“You—you took it—when?”

“As we rolled up Fifth Avenue in the cab.”

“How did you take it, man?”

“You sat beside me. I had noted the roll, and observed the pocket in which you placed it.”

A light was beginning to break on Diamond.

“You confounded pickpocket!” he exploded, in mingled indignation, amusement, and relief. “That was a fine trick to play on a friend, sah! Now, wasn’t it, sah?”

“Yes,” nodded Merry, “under the circumstances, I regard it as a very clever piece of business.”

“How did you dare, sah?” fumed Jack, uncertain whether to be angry or delighted. “Why did you do it, Mr. Merriwell?”

“To save you from being robbed.”

“Robbed?”

“Yes.”

“When? Where?”

“In that gambling-den. The chances were against you, and you were bound to lose there if you played long enough. It is always so, for men do not run such places for charity.”

The Virginian sat quite still and looked at Frank in silence for some time. At last he rose, stepped over, and stretched out his hand.

“You are the same generous, far-seeing Merry as of old!” he exclaimed, the flush in his cheeks.

Frank grasped that hand, and they stood face to face.

“Jack,” he said, “I knew something was wrong the moment I saw you in company with those men. As soon as I discovered you were on a spree, I determined to stay with you and learn what was doing. I did not drink with you in the Hoffman House. I took the water, and the barkeeper flung out the gin that I had pretended to taste as a chaser.”

Diamond nodded.

“Just like you!” he said. “But what made you do it?”

“I wished to stay with you, and I had to quiet the suspicions of Herrick. Had I refused to drink, Herrick would not have taken me to Canfield’s. I wanted to make sure of that fellow.”

“I begin to think that he is a confounded scoundrel!”

“That is mild,” smiled Frank. “He is much worse than that. If I were to express my real opinion of him I should be compelled to use profanity, and I do not swear.”

“I have no doubt but you are right,” said Jack, sitting down. “By Jove! I’m feeling bad! I must have a cocktail.”

“Jack—no more.”

“Oh, what’s the use——”

“No more!” declared Frank. “You are going to stop now.”

Diamond looked into Merriwell’s eyes, and was conquered.

“I suppose I’ll have to do as you say,” he groaned rather resentfully; “but you might let me taper off.”

“The only way to taper off at anything is to quit at once,” asserted Merry. “The toper who attempts to taper off never succeeds. The man who has not mind enough to quit a bad habit instantly and at once never can quit. The fellow who confesses that he cannot quit without tapering off confesses that he is weak, wavering, a creature to be pitied—a poor thing who will never make a success at anything he may undertake. Jack, I know you are going to feel bad if you stop short, but the only way to do it is to stop. Brace up, shut your teeth, and take the consequences of your own folly.”

The Southerner nodded, his face gloomy, but beginning to show resolution.

“Oh, I’ll have an awful head to-morrow!” he muttered.

“You must go to bed,” said Frank, “and try to get some sleep.”

“Blamed if I believe I can sleep!”

“Then fight it out, and never give up. In the morning take a cold shower, and then get some exercise in the open air. Do not take a cab, but go out and walk, walk, walk. Rest, exercise, cold baths, and plenty of fresh air will bring you round to your old self, my boy.”

“If you had been with me——” murmured Jack dolefully.

“This would not have happened,” nodded Merry.

“But you could not have prevented her from throwing me down.”

“So she threw you down?” said Merry, who all along had suspected what ailed Diamond.

“Yes. She is a heartless, beautiful—angel!”

Merriwell knew he was speaking of Juliet Reynolds, the handsome English girl who had captured his heart.

“Merry,” said Diamond, his face lighting for a moment, “she is the fairest creature the sun shines upon! But she has black hair and eyes; so have I. That is fatal. I have known we could never be happy together. I told you the reasons in London, before we went out to Henley that time. I did not mean to go, and I should have remained away. I became her slave at Henley, and I can never love another woman. Oh, but those were happy days on that house-boat, Merriwell! It makes me thrill to think of them—and of her.”

“I agree with you, Jack. As a rule, opposites should marry; but you know there are exceptions to all rules.”

“There is no exception in this case. You remember that I told you of my mother’s warning. She knew, and she feared that what has happened might happen. I should have heeded that warning and kept away from Juliet Reynolds. I meant to keep away, but when she turned up in this country last summer, I fell under her spell again.”

“And I supposed everything was all right when you followed her to London.”

“I thought so, too; but I was wrong. For a time there was no cloud to hide the sun in our blue sky. Not even London fog could baffle it. But there came a change. I saw her smile on another. Merriwell, it gave me such a feeling down in my heart that I was ill. I wanted to kill him! Then came our quarrel. She pretended to be very indignant; I accused her. She grew white to the lips. Then and there she told me that from that time we were to be strangers. I declared that nothing could suit me better, and we parted. An hour after I was willing to throw myself at her feet and beg forgiveness.

“The following day I went back and tried to see her. She would not receive me. I went there time after time, and was turned away. I haunted the place, like a fool that I am, and she avoided me. One day I tried to speak with her as she was entering her carriage for a drive. She sprang in quickly, spoke to the driver, and left me on the curb. Another time I met her on Rotten Row. I was mounted, and so was she. I placed my horse across her path. She bent forward and struck it a cut with her whip, causing it to bolt with me. When I got the animal under control, she was gone. At last I realized it was no use and that I had lost her forever. When next I saw her she was at the play, and beside her in the box was the man at whom she had smiled. Then I left the theater and tried to drown my sorrow in the flowing bowl. I have kept it up ever since.”

“And you have found that the flowing bowl simply served to make you forget for a little while.”

“Right. Whenever I sobered up a little I remembered, and I felt worse than ever. That will be the way after this bout, old man. To-morrow I shall be ready to blow the roof of my head off.”

“But you are not ass enough to do anything like that?” asserted Frank.

“I hope not,” said Jack.

“You must have made a strike to have so much boodle with you.”

“An old aunt—a dear old soul—died and left me half her fortune. There were no restrictions. I was at liberty to do as I liked with it, and I have made a hole in it.”

Frank was glad he had stumbled on Jack Diamond that night, and he had resolved to stick by the Virginian till certain the misguided fellow was straightened out and again his old self. The hand that had been outstretched to succor falling strangers should hold tight to this youth who was wavering on the brink of a frightful abyss.

“Jack,” said Merry, “you shall not ruin your life for a woman. You may have been too hasty in quarreling with her——”

“I was—I know it now! I knew it an hour after the quarrel. But she would not see me, and all my letters to her came back unopened. I could not put myself right in her eyes.”

“She is very proud.”

“So am I! There are no prouder people in all Virginia than the Diamonds; but I was willing to humble myself before that girl, to confess that I was wrong, and to ask her forgiveness.”

“Having failed, your pride should keep you from going to the dogs. It is the weak man who gives up and goes to the dogs because a girl refuses him or casts him over.”

After a while Jack said:

“I believe you are right, Merriwell; yes, I know you are right. You’re always right.”

Merry was well satisfied with the turn of affairs.

“Then you promise me now and here that you will straighten out and be a man?”

“I promise.”

“And you will have nothing more to do with Herrick?”

A sudden cloud came to Diamond’s face.

“As soon as the McGilvay bout is over I will shake Herrick,” he promised.

“The McGilvay bout—what’s that?”

“A prize-fight. It is called a sparring exhibition, but it is to be a fight to the finish.”

“Well, how does that connect you with Herrick?”

“Herrick’s friends have an unknown who is to meet Pete McGilvay.”

“Well?”

“The unknown is said to be a middle-weight wonder, but is not a professional.”

“Go on.”

“Odds of two to one have been offered on McGilvay.”

“Yes?”

“Herrick was confident that the Unknown would have an easy thing with Pete.”

“And you bet on the Unknown?”

“Exactly.”

Frank took a breath.

“How much?”

“Five thousand dollars,” answered Jack quietly.

Frank looked grim and worried, shaking his head a bit.

Diamond observed this, and asked:

“You think—just what?”

“I am afraid you are in a trap, old man, to be frank about it.”

“I may be,” nodded the Virginian, “for I have trusted to Herrick’s word. I see now that I was a fool to trust the fellow in anything.”

“These fights, you know, are seldom on the level. In almost every case they are fixed in advance. Prize-fighters, like many politicians, may be bought easily if you have plenty of dough. Some of the recent fights in this city have been the most open cases of robbery ever recorded. Every square sport—and there are a few square men who call themselves sports—is disgusted with the rottenness of the affairs here. The man who puts his money on one of these bouts without knowing just how the land lays is taking a leap in the dark, with everything in favor of a terrible jolt when he strikes.”

“But I supposed I knew; I thought Herrick on the level.”

“And the chances are that you have put your foot in it. Is there no way to hedge?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I might find somebody to put money on the Unknown if I offered odds enough.”

“It would be taking a desperate chance. When does the fight take place?”

“To-morrow night.”

“Well, it’s no use to worry over it to-night, Diamond. To-morrow we’ll see what can be done. You are to stop here with me.”

“But——”

“There are no buts about it. Just get out of your clothes and turn in.”

The Virginian made no further protest, and thirty minutes later he was sleeping heavily in Frank’s bed.

Merry came over to the bed, and stood there looking down at Jack.

“Poor boy!” he murmured. “It was great luck that I ran on you just when I did, for you were already well entangled in the snare. I must save you and put you on the right road again.”

Then he quietly left the room and descended to send a telegram to his father, addressing it to Charleston, South Carolina, and asking for ten thousand dollars.

For the first time in his life Merry had brought himself to make such an application to his father. And now it was not for his own sake, but for the unfortunate boy, Harry Collins.

Having seen that the message was despatched without delay, Frank returned to his room and turned in for the night, having seen that Jack was still asleep.

Diamond slept late the following morning, but Merry was up early, as usual, took a cold plunge, a rub-down, and some brisk exercise before awakening Jack.

The Virginian was dejected enough when he opened his eyes to the morning light. He had a splitting headache, while his mouth was dry as a chip, and there seemed to be a coat of fur on his tongue.

“Merriwell,” he said solemnly, “a man is a thundering fool to drink!”

“It’s a good thing you’ve found that out,” smiled Frank. “But you want to remember it. Lots of men find it out, but they have a way of forgetting quickly.”

“I think this will do me very well,” declared Jack.

“Wouldn’t you like a big drink of whisky?” Merry asked.

“Not on your life!” cried Diamond, with a look of repugnance.

“Then you are all right. When a fellow gets so he feels that he must have a drink the first thing in the morning he is on the road to a drunkard’s grave. I’m glad to hear you say you do not want anything.”

“But I do want something,” groaned Jack.

“What is it?” Frank asked, in apprehension.

“I want to drink about a barrel of good cold water. I’d like to be backed up to a watering-trough.”

Frank rang for ice-water at once. When the boy brought it, Jack seized the pitcher and came near drinking its entire contents without pausing to take breath.

“Now I have a good tub of ice-cold water waiting for you,” said Frank.

“Great Scott!” gasped the Southerner, in horror. “I can take a cold bath when I am feeling all right, but I don’t believe I have the nerve for it this morning, old man. You’ll have to let me off.”

“It can’t be done. You must take your medicine, my boy. It’s just what you need.”

“Have you no mercy, Merriwell?”

“Not in a case like this. You do not deserve mercy.”

With many protests, Jack was dragged out of bed and compelled to take a plunge in the icy water of the bath. After the rub-down he felt a little better, but he was ready to gulp down another pitcher of ice-water, which he easily accomplished before getting dressed.

“You’re a hard doctor, Merry,” he said, with a rueful grin; “but hanged if I don’t believe you will effect a cure.”

He did not want any breakfast, but Frank would not let him off till he had taken a glass of milk in which an egg had been beaten.

“Now,” said Merriwell, “for a good brisk walk in the open air.”

“Wait till I get a cigar,” said Diamond.

“Not much!” exclaimed Frank. “How much good will a cigar do you? How much good will a walk do you if you are making a smoke-stack of yourself? When a man goes out to take exercise in the open air he should keep tobacco out of his mouth. As he walks and smokes, the fumes of tobacco get into his lungs and taint the pure air that should be filling their every cell. Thus he robs himself of the beneficial effect he might receive from his walk.”

“All right, all right,” muttered Jack feebly. “Don’t lecture! I won’t smoke. But you’re not going to walk far, are you?”

“Not very.”

“About how far?”

“Five miles.”

Diamond protested; he was in no condition to stand it. His protests were unavailing; Merry said he must stand it.

So they set out, and Frank set the pace, which soon brought the color into Diamond’s pale cheeks. North-ward along Broadway they strode until the park was reached, and then Frank gave his companion a merry chase through the park, coming out at last on Fifth Avenue, by way of which they returned to the hotel.

Jack was pretty tired when they got back there, but he confessed that he was beginning to feel better.

Now Frank sought to find out if there had come a reply to the message he had sent his father. On inquiry, he was informed that Mr. Charles Merriwell had sailed from Charleston on the steam-yacht Petrel early the previous day.

“Sailed for what place?” asked Frank.

But that they could not tell him, only knowing that the gentleman had sailed and the message to him had not been delivered into his hands.

Frank looked troubled. After a little meditation, he sent other messages, in the hope of finding out his father’s destination.

“I need his money now if I am going to save Collins,” Merry thought. “I have not enough money of my own—not half enough. If I cannot reach father, I’m afraid Collins will be in a bad scrape.”

Languid and weary, Jack Diamond was resting when Frank went up to the room.

“Haven’t even energy enough to go to my own hotel,” he said. “You pumped it all out of me this morning.”

“But you’ll find it will come back in time. Why, man, can’t you see what the life you were leading was bringing you to? Here you are without life or ambition, exhausted, listless, languid—you who used to be full of fire and spirit and go. Do you like it?”

“It would be easy to put some fire into me now.”

“How?”

“Let me have a few drinks.”

“False fire—fire that burns out both body and soul. That fire has utterly destroyed many a fine fellow. The only way to be sure it will not enfold you in its consuming grasp is to keep away from it. The chap who plays with it is taking chances.”

“That’s so,” Jack nodded. “I know it well enough; you don’t have to tell me. Still, I think it may prove to be a good thing for me that you ran across me last night.”

The Virginian was willing to give Merry credit for everything due.

Frank paced the floor.

“How long are you going to stay in New York?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know. Yesterday I meant to leave this morning, but now—well, I cannot leave before to-morrow. I have to meet Collins at noon to-day, and I wish to hear something from my father. Jack, how much ready money have you?”

“What’s left in that roll you saved for me last night, about five thousand.”

“Not enough.”

“You want money?”

“Must have it.”

“What for?”

“Never mind; but I must have it.”

Diamond had not heard Merriwell’s talk with Harry Collins, and he did not know Frank was determined to give the boy a lift by letting him have such a large sum.

“You may have every dollar I’ve got,” said Diamond quickly.

“It will do me no more good than ten dollars would. I must have ten thousand. I expect to reach my father some time to-day, and I can get it from him.”

Jack was curious to know why Merry wished for such a large sum, but he knew better than to ask. If Frank meant for anybody else to know, he would tell.

“I’ve got to go to my hotel,” said the Southerner, rising. “I’ll settle and come back here to stop to-night, so that we may be together.”

“Do,” said Frank. “We must stick together while we are in this town.”

“Expect I’ll be likely to strike Herrick watching for me.”

Frank looked startled.

“If you do——”

“Don’t worry, Merry; I’m done. I pull up right here.”

“Stick to it, Jack. If you see Herrick, cut him cold.”

“You forget that the fellow has an interest in the Unknown. He might throw me down by fixing the fight and buying the Unknown off.”

“He’ll throw you down, anyhow. The Unknown is booked to lose that fight.”

Jack paled, and his lips were pressed together.

“Well, I’m out five thousand dollars if that is true,” he said. “I’m paying well for my foolishness.”

“Get back as soon as you can,” urged Frank, “and we’ll take lunch together. We can talk the matter over. It’s a shame to lose so much money—to be robbed of it! For you are being robbed, Jack!”

“Haven’t a doubt of that now; but what can I do?”

“You can knock Herrick down; but perhaps you had better wait till you are sure the game is lost.”

Diamond left, and Frank, not a little perplexed and troubled, waited for Collins to appear.

CHAPTER V

FRANK’S SURPRISING PROPOSAL.

Promptly at the time set Harry Collins was on hand. Frank had him brought up to the room and received him there.

Collins was pale and downcast, his whole appearance being one of extreme anxiety. Merriwell took the lad’s hand, studying him closely.

“Naturally honest, but young and susceptible,” Frank mentally decided. “If he escapes from this pitfall, he may make an upright man and a good citizen.”

He had feared that by daylight Collins might prove a disappointment to him. He had feared that on their second meeting he might feel that the chance of risking so much money to save the fellow was too desperate. Now he was satisfied, and he did not regret what had passed his lips the previous night.

“But the money—how was he to get it?”

Collins looked at him anxiously.

“Sit down,” invited Frank, “and let’s talk this matter over.”

The youth showed signs of apprehension, but accepted a chair.

“How much money must you have? What is the very smallest amount?” asked Frank.

The unfortunate boy blushed with shame.

“I need fully ten thousand dollars,” he said.

“You must hold a position of great trust?”

“I do. When my father died I was given a place in the bank of which he had been president for many years. I advanced rapidly, till now I am paying-teller.”

Merry had fancied the youth must be employed in a bank.

“And you have misappropriated funds?”

Collins’ face became crimson.

“That is a mild way of stating it,” he said huskily. “You are right. I have squandered the money trying to make more. It is gone, and I know I am on the very verge of ruin. I know discovery is certain within a day or two, at most. It is liable to come any time, and I feel that I am living over a deadly mine. It is terrible!”

The lad’s face had turned white as death as he thought of his peril, and Merry’s sympathy was again awakened to the fullest.

“I took desperate chances last night,” Collins went on, “hoping to make a strike in that cursed place and win back enough to set myself right at the bank. I failed, and but for you I should have blown my brains out there. I have clung to your promise to help me, but it seems too good to be true. I cannot understand how a stranger can do such a thing.

“As I have thought it over this forenoon I have turned hot and cold by turns. First I would be buoyed with hope, and then my heart sank in despair as I realized the impossibility of receiving aid in such a manner. I have feared that you simply gave me the promise in order to keep me from killing myself at the time. I have been in terror lest you would not be here when I called. And now I am shaking with the apprehension that somehow I misunderstood you. Did you offer me the money, Mr. Merriwell? For mercy’s sake say you did, and that you have it ready for me!”

Collins seemed on the point of flinging himself on his knees before Frank.

“Steady, my boy,” said Merry, with a reassuring smile. “I agreed to let you have the money.”

A cry of joy broke from the pale lips of the youth.

“And you have it—here?”

“Not now—not yet.”

“But great heavens! the danger—I have told you of the danger! I must have the money right away—if at all. My mother——”

“I am doing everything I can to get it. Unfortunately, it is far more money than I have of my own. I have sent messages to my father, but he sailed on my steam-yacht yesterday. The moment I can reach him I can make arrangements that will bring the money into my hands in a hurry.”

“And that may be too late!” groaned Collins.

Frank hurried to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Keep up your courage,” said Merry. “I’ll do everything I can. You are not lost till the truth is discovered. Even then, if such a thing should happen, you might fix it by restoring every dollar taken.”

“But the shame—I could not live through it! I could not face those men who have trusted me!”

The youth broke down, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed. Frank longed to possess the money at that moment, but it was not at hand. He talked reassuringly to Collins, who braced up after a little, wiping the tears from his eyes and looking more ashamed than ever.

“I’m a poor, weak thing!” he exclaimed in strong self-contempt. “How you must despise me!”

Merry did not despise him, but was thrilling with sympathy and pity for him. He convinced Collins of this after a time, and then the unfortunate lad told the complete story of how he had obtained the money and kept the knowledge from the other bank officials. He told Frank the name of the bank, holding back nothing.

When the tale was finished, Frank was somewhat pale himself, for he saw that Collins was truly in constant danger of discovery. Indeed, the wonder was that exposure had not already overtaken him.

“Come to me here this afternoon immediately after the closing of the bank,” directed Frank.

“Will you have the money then? Do you think you will?”

“I hope to, but I cannot be sure. I shall do everything possible to obtain it. You will come?”

“Oh, yes. I will do anything as long as there is the least hope. I shall pray that you get the money—for my mother’s sake!”

When Collins had departed, Merriwell paced the floor for some time, his face wearing a look of deep thought and anxiety.

“If there were any honest way of getting possession of that money!” he muttered.

Diamond came back, and found Frank thus.

“Well,” Jack cried, “I’ve seen Herrick, and now I know you were right.”

“Eh?” said Merry, as if not quite comprehending. “About what?”

“That prize-fight business.”

“A put-up job?”

“Not a question about it.”

“What is the new development?”

“Herrick advises me to hedge.”

“Why?”

“He says the Unknown is ill and out of condition.”

“Well, how about hedging?”

“The thing has leaked, and bets cannot be made at any odds.”

“You are in a trap.”

“That’s right,” nodded Jack gloomily.

“I suspected it,” said Frank. “If the Unknown is not in condition, why not call the fight off?”

“Herrick claims that it has been tried, and that McGilvay will not agree.”

Again Frank walked the floor.

“It’s enough to drive a fellow to drink again!” said the Southerner despairingly. “I hate to be bled in this way.”

Frank said nothing, for he did not hear a word. He was walking up and down, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the carpet. Of a sudden, he uttered an exclamation, stopped short, jerked his hands out of his pockets, and smote his clenched right fist into his open left palm.

“It might work!” he cried.

“What?” asked Jack, rousing up and showing some interest.

Frank strode over, grasped Diamond by the shoulder, jerked him to his feet, and cried:

“Take me to that fellow Herrick! Don’t lose any time about it, either!”

“What—what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try to save that money for you.”

“How can you do that?”

“Never mind. If I do save it—if I fix it so you win this bet, will you loan me the amount you win?”

“Great Scott! If you fix it so I win, you will save me the money I have wagered. That’s all I ask, Merriwell. You may have every blamed dollar of the winnings to do with as you like.”

“Ten thousand!” exclaimed Frank. “Just what I need! Take me to Herrick!”

They found Herrick at the Hoffman House, and Herrick was surprised when Merriwell met him with a show of cordiality.

“Mr. Herrick,” said Frank, “Diamond tells me that your Unknown is not in condition and may lose the bout to-night.”

“That’s right,” nodded Herrick. “He’s as good as licked now. I’ve warned Jack to hedge.”

“You don’t want to see Diamond lose that money?”

“Well, I guess not!” exclaimed the man with the dark mustache, making a show of sincerity. “Jack is my friend.”

“This Unknown is entered simply as an unknown?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you put another man in his place? Why do you fight him when it is a sure thing that he must be whipped?”

“I don’t know of another man who will fill the bill. He must be a middleweight amateur, and I do not know of a man in New York or within reach who can stand a show with Pete McGilvay.”

“Perhaps I know of such a man.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

Herrick looked startled.

“I don’t believe it, begging your pardon, Mr. Merriwell. But who is the man?”

“I am.”

Herrick’s jaw dropped; after a moment he looked amused, but attempted to hide a smile.

“Really, Mr. Merriwell,” he said, “I think you underestimate McGilvay’s fighting-ability. He is a wonder. I believe that he will some day stand a show of carrying off the championship of this country.”

Diamond had been astounded by Frank’s proposition. His hand fell suddenly on Merry’s arm, but Frank motioned for him to be silent.

“That is all right,” said the young Yale athlete; “but I am pretty clever with my hands, and I feel sure I can make a better showing than an Unknown who is on the sick-list. You profess to be Jack Diamond’s friend, and Jack has a wad of cold cash bet on your Unknown at your recommendation. I know he will be satisfied to lose it if I am permitted to take the place of this Unknown. In that way you will be showing that your professions of friendship are more than empty words.”

Herrick wavered. In his heart he believed that this smooth-faced, conceited youth would prove a snap for McGilvay—he had no doubt of it. There was not the least danger that the accomplished bruiser would meet his match in a mere college lad. If he refused to permit Merriwell to take the place of the Unknown, it would seem that he was determined to give Diamond no show. If he permitted this, it must seem that he was willing for Jack to win out if possible. That would set him right with Diamond, who was a bird worth plucking.

“If you really think there is a show, Mr. Merriwell——”

“You’ll do it?” nodded Frank. “Good! I will be on hand and prepared to go into the ring.”

“I’ll bring my influence to bear,” Herrick hastened to say. “You know I am not the only one interested. I’ll do what I can.”

CHAPTER VI

THE UNKNOWN WINS.

The Thor Athletic Club was packed to suffocation. Tier upon tier rose the mass of humanity on every side of the platform. There was a perfect babel of voices. The preliminary bouts had been “pulled off” after the usual manner, and the audience was waiting eagerly for the final event of the evening, a ten-round contest between Peter McGilvay and an Unknown.

“Who is this Unknown?” asked a stout, fat-faced man.

“Some say it’s Bob Emerson, of Brooklyn,” answered a gray-mustached gentleman in evening dress.

“Bob Emerson couldn’t stand up t’ree roun’s in front o’ McGil,” asserted a bullet-headed fellow. “Spot Herrick’s not fool enough ter back dat sort of a duffer.”

“Wot’s der matter wid yer, Denny?” contemptuously exclaimed another. “D’yer t’ink Herrick’s in dis on der level? W’y, I’ll bet me spuds he’s backin’ Pete.”

Suddenly the master of ceremonies entered the roped arena and enjoined silence by a gesture, after which he announced the final event of the evening.

As he retired from the platform there was a shout of welcome, and McGilvay, followed by his seconds, came on. The prize-fighter had a thick neck and huge, bunchy shoulders. His legs were not properly developed, and his appearance was anything but graceful. He bowed to the crowd, and then retreated to his corner.

All eyes were strained to catch a glimpse of the Unknown. There was a pause, and then he came on.

There were muttered exclamations of admiration, for never had a handsomer youth stepped into the squared circle. Chest, shoulders, arms, legs—every part of his body seemed perfectly proportioned. He had a fine, shapely head set upon a beautiful neck, which swelled gently at the base. His every movement was graceful and confident. About his waist was a sash of Yale blue.

McGilvay’s colors were green.

The seconds were professionals, and they had been astounded when Frank Merriwell stripped before them. In street-clothes he had not foretold his magnificent build.

“Who is he?”

That question buzzed everywhere, but no one seemed to know him.

There were the usual preparations.

“He’s handsome, but he’ll be meat for McGilvay.”

That was the general opinion.

The gong sounded its warning. Everything was ready. The men met in the center of the platform and shook hands. A moment later they were on guard, and then the fight began.

For a moment the men sparred and circled round each other. Then the professional rushed in. The amateur was away. He had avoided the rush with ease.

The professional followed the youth, who was smiling beneath the white glare of the arc-lights. He tried to rush Frank, but again he was baffled.

The amateur whirled and came back. Flash-flash went his white fists. He had struck twice, but the wearer of the green managed to avoid both blows.

McGilvay countered, and there was lively work in the center of the ring. At the end the amateur retreated again, hotly followed by his antagonist.

“Gil is rushing him,” flew from lip to lip. “He means to make it short.”

Neither man had been harmed. The professional did his best to corner his foe, but he was too slow. He counted on getting in a terrible blow with one of those hamlike fists.

Time passed swiftly, and the end of the round came with the amateur still running away and the professional pursuing, trying to corner him.

“He’s afraid of Pete,” was the universal decision. “He is clever on his feet, but Pete will corner him pretty soon, and end it with one punch.”

The professional sat in his corner and laughed. He felt certain that it was an easy thing.

“W’y, I kin do dat kid wid one t’ump!” he declared. “He’s scared ter deat’ now.”

“Stand up to him,” advised Frank’s second. “You’ll make the crowd sick running erway.”

Frank said nothing.

Clang! sounded the gong. The men were up and advancing. They met again. They were at it once more.

Again the green rushed the blue; again the blue retreated. It seemed to be the same old story over again.

“Oh, this is a sprinting-match!” cried somebody, in disgust.

Flash!—out shot a clean, muscular arm. Crack!—the blow sounded almost like a pistol-shot.

The professional had grown incautious and given his foe an opening. It had been accepted, and the blow sent Pete McGilvay clean across the ring, to fall like a log of wood.

“Ah!” shouted the astounded spectators, as they rose to their feet as one man.

The Unknown could strike a blow like the kick of a mule. This was the first surprise.

But McGilvay’s head was hard, and he got up before the referee could count him out.

He was amazed, and he had learned something. In the future he would be more cautious. But now the amateur came at him.

“He’s lost his head!” declared an old sport. “He thinks he can end it right here because he got in one blow. Now Pete will do him.”

But Pete wabbled, and the Unknown punished him severely. Blood began to flow, but the amateur had not been harmed in the least. The breast of the professional was heaving.

“By heavens! Pete is getting the worst of it!”

The man who uttered the words could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes. It seemed impossible. But that handsome, stern-faced youth with the flashing eyes gave his antagonist not a moment to rest. The tables were turned, and the aggressor of a few moments before was making a poor defense.

The white arms of the amateur whipped the air; his hard fists pounded the ribs, neck, and jaw of the professional. McGilvay tried to counter, but he was bewildered. That first terrible blow had left his head singing and a wavering blackness before his eyes.

The seconds looked on in amazement. They were praying for the end of the round to come soon. It must come soon to save McGilvay.

Now the crowd was wildly excited. Amazed by the turn of affairs, the whirlwind style of fighting of the stranger threw them into tumultuous admiration.

“Look at that! He got Pete on the jaw! That was a heart-blow! He’s cutting Pete all up!”

The sound of the blows was plainly heard.

Suddenly McGilvay wavered, dropped his arms at his side, and seemed to lurch forward to meet the terrible fist that struck him fairly on the point of the jaw. He was hurled half-way through the ropes.

Then, amid the greatest uproar, the referee slowly counted the professional out.

Frank Merriwell, the “Unknown,” had won the fight, and by doing so had saved Jack Diamond’s money and won ten thousand with it.

Jack Diamond, literally overflowing with admiration and delight, had promptly turned his winnings over to Frank.

“It’s your money, every dollar of it,” he said. “Do what you like with it. Merry, you are a Twentieth Century marvel!”

“How is Herrick?” asked Frank.

“The sorest man I ever saw,” laughed Jack. “He had plenty of good money on McGilvay. I’ll bet the biggest part of what I won came from his pocket.”

“Then I’ll see if I cannot do some good with the stuff,” said Merry.

An hour later, in his room, he handed the money to Harry Collins, whose emotion choked him so that he could not utter his thanks or express his gratitude.

“Not a word now,” said Merry. “My boy, to get that money and save you I did something no man could lead me to do for myself. Use it to save yourself—and your mother. Perhaps it was more for the sake of your mother, whom I never saw, that I did it, than it was for yours. My mother is—dead!”

CHAPTER VII

FRANK EXPLAINS THE SITUATION.

“I have seen that face before,” declared Frank.

“I thought I had at first glance,” confessed Jack Diamond. “That’s why I stopped and stared. She must have thought me a chump.”

The two friends were at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. They had been sauntering along, when the attention of both was attracted by a strangely handsome face in the passing throng. A pair of midnight eyes flashed them one swift glance as the girl hurried on. Jack stopped in his tracks.

“Merriwell,” he said after a moment, “you can’t guess of whom she reminded me?”

“I shall not try to guess.”

“Juliet,” said Jack.

“She does look something like her. She has a fine figure. I am sure I have seen her before.”

“What made it seem more like Juliet,” muttered the Virginian, “was that she appeared startled by the sight of one or both of us.”

“I was startled,” confessed Frank, gazing after the retreating figure, “for it seemed to be the face of somebody I knew.”

The girl had been swallowed up in the throng on the south side of the street.

“She was like Juliet,” murmured Jack; “though not so handsome.”

“She was quite as handsome as Juliet Reynolds,” Frank thought, but he did not speak the words aloud. Instead, he said: “Let’s turn back, Jack. I’d like to get another glimpse of her.”

“You?” exclaimed the Virginian, in surprise. “Why, I thought Elsie——”

“There are a few things you do not know, old chum,” said Merry, forcing a smile, which was not quite free from regret and pain.

They had turned about.

“But Elsie Bellwood is in love with you, Merriwell,” Diamond insisted. “I know it, old man.”

“You think you do; but you have been abroad for some time, and things have happened while you were away.”

Jack was astonished.

“Why,” he breathed wonderingly, “you don’t mean to say—to say———— What do you mean, anyhow?”

“That it’s all off between Elsie and your humble servant.”

“Impossible!”

“True, just the same.”

“I can’t believe it now. You are joking, Frank!”

“Do you think I would joke about a thing like that?”

“Forgive me, Merry; I know you would not. You never boasted of your ‘affairs of the heart.’ You were not that kind. And you might have boasted truthfully, for all the girls seemed to get smashed on you. You never talked of such things.”

“And I did not mean to speak of this, but you——”

“I know—I brought it up. Pardon me, old man, I don’t like to seem curious about such things, but I can’t understand it. Do you mind telling me what has happened? If you do, all right—don’t say a word.”

“I couldn’t tell everything if I tried, Jack, so I won’t try. But there have been strange developments. Hodge saved Elsie from a burning steamer off the coast of Georgia. Rather, he attempted to save her, and they were shut in together by the flames so it seemed that neither could escape. Then and there the love for her that he had kept hidden in his heart—hidden even from himself—burst forth, and he told her everything. After that they were able to escape.”

Frank paused. He had not explained that it was he who had rescued Bart and Elsie from certain death.

“Hodge?” muttered Diamond. “That fellow? And he has——”

“He acted the man,” asserted Merry instantly.

“How?”

“By standing face to face with me and telling me everything. He would have withdrawn, though I know he is passionately in love with Elsie. With a word I could have sent him away from her, for he is as loyal a friend as man ever had. He would sacrifice himself for me. But why should I ask that of him?”

“Because it is your right!” declared Diamond earnestly. “Elsie knew you first—cared for you first. Hodge has no right to come between you.”

“That is one way of looking at it. There are other ways. I have never spoken plainly to her—that is, I have never made a definite and outspoken proposal. How could she be sure that I ever would? Why should she feel bound to me in any way, save by the tie of friendship, which has not been broken by anything that has taken place? There was no reason, Jack. You can see that.”

“Well, looking at it that way, perhaps you are right; but——”

“There are no ‘buts’ about it, my dear boy. It is hard, common sense. I had no real claim on Elsie, and I could not feel wronged if she were to marry Hodge to-morrow.”

“Hodge knew; confound him! He——”

“Even he could not be sure I cared more for Elsie than for Inza Burrage. You must remember that both of these girls have been very dear friends to me.”

“Well, the confounded cad should have waited till he was sure which you preferred! Hang it, Merriwell! I resent it that any one of your friends dared step between you and——”

“That’s where you are wrong, Jack. You do not pause to think of the circumstances. You must remember that they were on a burning steamer and facing what seemed certain death for both of them. For years Hodge had cared for Elsie deep down in his heart, but had smothered the passion and had even made himself believe it did not exist. The peril, his brave attempt to save her, their hopelessness, all led to the uprising of his love, so that at last he could no longer blind himself. He did not think he was betraying me, for death could not be avoided. He would not have been human had he kept silent then.”

“Perhaps you are right,” admitted the Virginian reluctantly. “But you know I’ve never fancied the fellow particularly. It does not seem right for him to win Elsie, and I do not believe he will make her happy. Think of his passionate disposition, his reckless ways——”

“And think of her moderation and gentleness. She will soften and change him. Her influence over him will be of the very best. I believe he will stand ready to lay down his very life for her. I am sure he will do everything in his power to make her happy. That is—if she ever accepts him.”

“Then she hasn’t——”

“Not yet.”

“Frank, she still——”

“She says she will never marry.”

“Frank, she still cares more for you than anybody living! All girls say they are going to be old maids. It gets to be a silly habit with them.”

“Elsie is not a silly girl.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that; you know what I meant. But how about Inza Burrage—she remains true to you?”

“As a friend. She has been nothing more for a long time.”

“I know she’s a proud, jealous girl, and——”

“Don’t say a word against her, Jack!”

“What do you take me for? There was a time that I did not know which girl you cared for most.”

A strange, inscrutable smile flitted over Frank Merriwell’s fine face. Perhaps there had been a time when he was not sure in his own heart which he cared for most.

“But,” Jack went on, “I reasoned it all out, and I knew at last that you preferred Elsie.”

Did he know? He might have thought so, but what man knows all the secrets of another’s heart?

“I saw that you were fond of Inza, proud to be her friend, ready to fight for her to the last gasp, ready to do anything for her sake, but you did not love her.”

Had the Virginian read Frank’s heart better than Frank himself?

“Then,” Jack went on, as they turned up Broadway, “in my estimation, Elsie was better adapted for you in every way. It doesn’t seem right that Hodge should come between you, and I will not believe she really cares for him.”

“About that I am not certain, but my faith in him is absolute. I know he would make any true, womanly girl a most devoted husband—that is, a girl he really and truly loved.”

“Perhaps so, but there is a reckless streak in him, and something might send him to the dogs at any time.”

“Just so,” nodded Merry. “Knowing that, I was not the fellow to revile him and cause him to do something rash. It is to be a fair and open show, with no underhand methods.”

“Oh, well, you’ll win—you can’t help it. When she knows the truth she will turn to you. She cannot blame you for not tying yourself down by a regular engagement till after you leave college.”

They had come to one of the handsomest flower-stores on Broadway. Of a sudden, Frank touched Jack’s arm, calling the Virginian’s attention to a girl who was gazing at the handsome display in the window.

“There she is again!” said Merry.

“The same girl we saw back there,” breathed Jack. “Even now she looks something like Juliet.”

“I know her,” asserted Frank. “But I can’t think of her name at this minute. I feel certain I have seen her under far different circumstances and far from this city.”

“Well, I don’t think I ever saw her before,” confessed Diamond.

“I’m going to speak to her,” said Merry. “I shall puzzle over her identity if I do not, and I am absolutely certain I know her.”

He advanced to the window, lifted his hat gracefully, saying:

“I beg your pardon, but I think we have met before.”

Jack was standing a few feet away. The girl gave a little cry of alarm. Her cheeks a moment before had been flushed with a clear, healthy tint, but they turned very pale, and there was a gleam of fear in her eyes as she shrank from Merriwell.

The Yale man was astonished by this show of fear, for it was too intense, he fancied, to be that of a refined and timid girl, frightened by a stranger’s address.

Besides that, there was something in the rose-color natural to the rounded cheeks of the girl, something in her confident and graceful carriage, something in her easy and assured manner which seemed to indicate that she would not fear a strange man.

Although she was well dressed, her clothes being of expensive material, Merriwell’s discerning eyes discovered that her style was not the style of New York, and already he had decided that she was from some other place. This girl seemed more like a native of Boston than New York.

“You have no reason to fear me,” said Frank, in his most reassuring manner. “But I am sure you will recognize me if you stop to think a moment. If you assure me that you do not recognize me, I’ll leave you at once.”

Gradually the color was returning to her face, which, although refined, had a sort of wild beauty about it that was suggestive of woods and hills and outdoor life. She looked at Frank in surprise, but there came a quick flash of recognition.

“Why—why!” she gasped, and the sound of her voice seemed to stir echoing memories within him, “is it—are you—Frank Merriwell?”

He had made no mistake; she knew him.

“Yes,” he said; “but even now I cannot——”

A man dashed past Jack Diamond and went straight at Frank, who did not see him. Without a word, he struck Merry a blow that caused him to stagger and nearly fall. Then he clutched the girl by the wrist, his face contorted, as he hissed:

“So he is another one of them? How many are there?”

She gave a cry and tried to fling him off. Diamond had leaped forward, but Frank recovered and turned before the Virginian could interfere.

Merry saw the girl make a vain attempt to release herself from the grasp of the man, who was a tall, rugged, athletic-looking fellow about twenty-five years of age. Merry did not hesitate a single instant. He quickly snatched the girl from the man’s grasp, swinging her behind him, saying:

“I will protect you.”

The fellow gave an exclamation of fury and sprang toward Frank. Merriwell dodged the fierce blow delivered at his face, and his fist struck the man fairly on the chin, hurling him backward to the pavement. The assailant fell heavily to the hard stones and lay there, stunned for the time.

“That was a clever blow, Merriwell,” observed Diamond, his eyes flashing and his cheeks glowing. “Very much like the one that did McGilvay.”

Frank stepped forward and stood looking down at the man, who had the appearance of a countryman.

“I hope he is not severely injured,” said Merry. “He met my blow, which made it all the heavier.”

“Don’t worry about the dog,” advised Diamond, with a glance of contempt toward the fallen man.

“He must know the lady,” said Frank, turning about to speak to her.

She was gone. Both Frank and Jack stared in surprise. She had taken advantage of the first opportunity to get away. The Virginian whistled a little.

“Slipped away,” he said. “Which way did she go, I wonder?”

Frank could not tell, but several pedestrians had paused, and a crowd was gathering, one of whom declared the girl had entered a cab which carried her up Broadway. Merriwell looked disappointed.

“She knew my name, and I did not find out who she is,” he muttered. “I’m sorry about that.”

The fallen man was recovering. He opened his eyes and looked around, seeming greatly bewildered. Then he saw Frank and struggled to one elbow, glaring at the calm youth, who quietly waited for him to rise.

“You’re one of them!” muttered the fellow, his eyes full of hatred for Merry. “I’ll never forget you!”

“I am sorry I had to strike you that blow,” Merry confessed; “but you came at me like a mad bull, and I was forced to defend myself.”

“It ain’t the blow,” said the man. “I don’t care anything about that; but you shall pay for the wrong you have done her.”

“I think you must be a trifle daffy, my man. What are you talking about?”

“You know well enough, blame yer! I don’t want to talk about it—here; but I swear you shall pay dearly for it.”

He rose to his feet, and, for a moment, it seemed that he contemplated renewing his attack on Merry, at whom he stared in anger and bewilderment.

“I don’t see how you ever struck such a blow,” he finally confessed. “But next time it will be my turn to strike—for her sake!”

Then he walked away, turning into Twenty-fifth Street and going toward Sixth Avenue.

“What do you make of it, anyhow?” asked Diamond.

“I don’t know just what to make of it,” acknowledged Frank, with a frown on his handsome face. “It’s very unpleasant, and I am completely puzzled.”

The men who had gathered about were staring at them, and they moved away after the man with whom Merry had had the encounter.

“If I could recall the name of that girl, I’d feel better,” Frank declared. “I don’t remember when I’ve ever forgotten a name before this. But I cannot even remember under what circumstances we previously met, though I am certain there was something very striking about it. It is possible I may never have known her name, and still——”

“Still, she knew yours.”

“Yes.”

“The man—do you remember him?”

Merry shook his head.

“I looked at him closely, and I’m sure I never saw him before. He is an utter stranger to me.”

“And he seemed to blame you for something—what was it? He seemed somehow to connect you with the girl.”

“I know it, and that is part of the mystery, Jack. As a rule, I enjoy mysteries, but there is something unpleasant in this one, and I do not like it much. If it had not been for the crowd and the public place, I’d made an attempt to get something out of him. But I could not do it there.”

“We might follow——”

“A good idea,” nodded Frank, as they turned into Twenty-fifth Street. “Let’s see if we cannot overtake him.”

But the man, like the girl, had vanished.

CHAPTER VIII

FRANK FINDS HIMSELF PURSUED.

Frank Merriwell had been detained in New York far longer than he intended when he left New Haven, and even now he felt a reluctance to go back, though it seemed that an unseen power was drawing him.

He had been able to rescue Inza from great peril, he had protected her father from probable arrest, had been in time to hold back Jack Diamond from a reckless plunge into dissipation caused by the coldness of Juliet Reynolds, and had saved young Collins, a stranger, from disgrace and suicide.

Now it seemed that his mission in New York must be completed. Now he could return to college for the final months he was to spend there. He thought of his old home that had been lost to him through the folly of his guardian, Professor Scotch, and he was seized by a desire to revisit it.

“If I had a little more time, I’d do so,” he decided. “But I can’t do it now. I wonder who owns the old place. My money is gone, and I could not buy it back now.”

Merriwell had not yet been able to communicate with his father.

“He could buy back the old place,” thought Merry, “and he would do so if I asked him. It would be a fine home for us, and we both feel the need of a home. I’ll suggest the idea to him.”

These thoughts of home brought strange fancies to him. He remembered that he had once dreamed of sitting at his own fireside, with another who was to be his companion for life. He had looked up from the paper he was reading, and in his vision, his dream, he had gazed at the sweet face of his wife, the face of———— Was it Elsie, or Inza?

But now those dreams were to be his no more! Inza had decided that Merry was not for her, and she had turned to the handsome, fair-haired freshman giant, Dick Starbright. Elsie, fully believing that Frank cared more for Inza than for her, had found in Bart Hodge a passionate admirer. But not even Bart’s words of love had drawn a confession from her lips, and she would only say that she had resolved never to marry.

But Frank remained true to his friendship for these girls. Inza, proud, beautiful, brave, was still very dear to him, and he was ready to do anything in his power for her. Elsie—she still held a corner in his heart, and her blue eyes haunted his dreams.

Elsie was far away in Florida, but Inza, with her father, was now in Brooklyn.

“I must see her once more before I return to college,” decided Merry.

And thus it happened that, late that afternoon, he took a Broadway car, getting off at City Hall Park, and crossed to the entrance to the Bridge.

Merry paused at the loop where the cars from Brooklyn swing in fast and thick during the rush-hours. He was looking for a certain car as he stood there near the many tracks. Gongs were clanging, newsboys shouting, people rushing hither and thither, and there was more or less confusion all about. Above, the bridge-cars rumbled and the Third Avenue elevated added to the uproar.

Of a sudden, as Frank stood there, somebody gave him a savage thrust.

Clang! clang! clang! sounded the gong of a car that was swinging round the loop.

There was a shriek from a woman who saw Frank hurled fairly in front of the car. The motorman tried to stop the car as quickly as possible, but he would have been too late had Merry fallen helpless in front of the trucks.

Frank had been flung forward headlong, with his right side toward the track. His hands went down, but they flung him back to his feet as if he had been made of wire springs. The car was right upon him, but like a flash he made a long leap that took him fairly beyond the track and out of the way.

“Somebody tried to do me!” he thought, as he darted round the rear end of the car, to discover who had pushed him.

“Where is the man?” he cried, as he dashed back to the spot where he had stood.

“There!” cried the woman who had uttered the shriek, pointing. “There he goes!”

A man was sprinting across the tracks, darting between the moving cars, flinging people aside when they blocked his path.

Merry sprang after the fellow, who vanished behind a car. A policeman clutched and held Frank, demanding:

“Pwhat are yez doin’, man? Be ye crazy? Shtand still, or, begorra, Oi’ll fan yez wid me shtick!”

It was useless to try to explain. By the time Merry had made the officer understand, the murderous wretch was safely out of the way.

Only a glimpse had Frank obtained of the fleeing figure of his would-be murderer, but he was satisfied that it must be the man who had assaulted him on Broadway.

“He must be a revengeful dog,” thought Merry. “He came near getting me under those wheels, too. I’ll have to be on my guard. If he is so determined, he’ll not be satisfied to let it drop now.”

Merry took a car for Brooklyn, but he might have spared himself the trouble, for, thinking he had already returned to New Haven, Inza and her father had departed without communicating with him.

The failure to see Inza proved a severe disappointment to Merry, and he resolved to walk off the feeling that had attacked him. Therefore, instead of taking a car, he walked to the Bridge.

It was beginning to get dark, and lights were gleaming from the thousands of windows in the tall buildings across the river when Merry sauntered out on to the promenade.

The wind was not strong enough to be disagreeable, but he felt the cold out there on the Bridge, and the crisp air gave him a sensation of pleasure and briskness which he desired.

All at once he remembered that the last time he had walked on this bridge Elsie was with him, and she had saved him from being flung over in front of a car by her bravery in fighting the men who had set upon him. Thoughts of this thrilled him through and through.

“Dear little Elsie!” he murmured, pausing and looking about. “I would you were with me now! You do not know it, but you are just as brave as the bravest. There are times when you shrink from danger, appalled by the thought of it, but always, at the supreme moment, your bravery overcomes your timidness and you are bold as a lioness at bay.”

This was true, and this Frank knew was the highest type of courage. The person who never feels fear is brave, but his bravery is not nearly as praiseworthy as that of the one who is frightened, but overcomes his fears by force of will. The first has mere physical courage, but the second is almost certain to possess both moral and physical courage.

Elsie was of the latter class. That she was timid at times cannot be denied, and that she shrank from danger must be confessed; but it is just as true that she could conquer her timidity and shrinking, and compel herself to face peril with steady nerves. There must be, however, some powerful cause to lead her to this point.

Frank paused near the spot where the encounter with the men had taken place. As he did so, he became convinced that a muffled figure was following him. This muffled figure had turned to the other side of the promenade.

All at once, quick as a flash, Merry whirled and darted across, his hand falling on the man’s shoulder.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but can you tell me———— Hello! I thought so!”

For he had obtained a fair look at the man’s face, and he saw it was that of his assailant on Broadway.

This person glared at Frank, hatred filling his eyes.

“So you are following me about!” said Merriwell resentfully. “Well, it’s becoming rather tiresome. Bought an overcoat since chasing me over to Brooklyn, I see. I suppose you fancied that would be disguise enough to fool me. Now, wait a minute; I have a question to ask you. What the dickens do you want of me?”

“I want—your life!” was the panting retort. “And I mean to have it!”

Then the pursuer grappled with Merry.

Once before Frank had fought for his life near that spot, but then he had been attacked by two men. Both of those men, however, had been scarcely less dangerous than this one, who fought with fury and possessed astonishing strength.

“Steady, fellow!” cried Frank, trying to hold the man off. “Are you a raving maniac? Why do you wish to kill me?”

“You know!”

“I do not know.”

“For her sake!”

“That’s where you’re daffy,” declared Merry, getting a hold that enabled him to baffle the efforts of the man for a time. “Why should you attack me for her sake?”

“Because you deserve death!”

Frank was not obtaining much light, and he grew disgusted and angry with the man.

“I believe you’re a raving maniac!” he exclaimed. “Who is this girl, anyhow?”

“You know.”

“I know her face, but I have forgotten her name.”

“Bah! It will do you no good to lie!”

The fellow did his best to hurl Merry against the iron rail and pin him there.

“Look here, man,” said Frank, exasperated, “I want you to tell me that girl’s name. If you do that, I shall be satisfied.”

“She may have given you a false name. If so, all the better for her. Your stories and your sneers about her may not do her so much harm.”

Now Merry was more than ever satisfied that he had a maniac to deal with, and he kept constantly on his guard for any sudden move.

“Man alive!” he said, “I’ve never told any stories about the girl. I’ve never even known her well enough to sneer about her!”

“It’ll do you no good to lie now!” panted the man. “You are one of them! She told me about them? She met them in Boston, and they all wanted to make love to her. Her father was an old fool to let her go to Boston, but she would have her way and go. To take music-lessons, she said; but I know she took other lessons there. You were one of her instructors, and you whispered lying words of love to her. For those words you shall pay!”

With a quick wrench he had Frank against the rail, but Merry recovered and held him off, even though the man’s muscles were magnificent. Fortunately, the fellow was baffled by the muffling folds of the great coat which he wore, and for that reason Frank was able to handle him easier.

“Where does she live?” asked Merry; but the question seemed to enrage his assailant more than ever.

Passing pedestrians had been attracted by the struggling men, but not one of them offered to interfere. Now, however, arose the cry:

“Here comes a Bridge cop!”

“Good!” said Merry, with satisfaction. “I’ll turn this gentleman over to him.”

Immediately ceasing his attack on Frank, the fellow made a twisting wrench and broke away. But when he turned to run toward the end of the Bridge he saw a uniformed officer coming toward him on the jump. Then he whirled back, but Frank Merriwell blocked his path.

In sudden desperation, determined not to be captured, the man leaped upon the parapet and prepared to spring down to the track along which the trolley-cars passed below.

Several who witnessed this desperate act also saw a car coming right at hand, and shouted for him not to jump, thinking he would fall directly before it.

Frank sprang forward, to clutch the man’s long coat, but, with a cry of defiance that sounded almost maniacal the fellow leaped. He struck fairly on the top of the passing car, which carried him away, crouching there and shaking his fist at Frank.

“A madman beyond a doubt!” Frank exclaimed.

The fellow had escaped, for the officer would not do anything until he had questioned Frank and learned the meaning of what had happened. By that time it was too late.

When Merry finally resumed his walk over the Bridge his mind was in a state of wonderment. He was much dissatisfied with himself for permitting the man to escape, but he had fancied the fellow fairly penned between himself and the officer, never anticipating the desperate expedient to which the stranger resorted.

Merriwell had again seen the face of the man fairly, and more than before was he certain he had not been acquainted with the fellow in the past. Of course, man and girl were connected somehow, and from the wild words of the desperate stranger Frank inferred that he was in love with her.

That the man also believed Merriwell had somehow done the girl an injury was also certain. He had spoken of Boston, and that set Merry to thinking of the girls he had known there, but try as he might, he could not remember that he had ever met this one there.

“This business is becoming altogether too perplexing,” he confessed to himself, as he swung along on his way over the great bridge. “If I had plenty of time, I might make an attempt to solve it, but I doubt if I’d feel repaid for my pains if I did so. I must go back to New Haven to-morrow. Inza has left, and there is no real reason why I should linger longer. Still, it is a nuisance to have to leave before I find out the name of that girl and just why the man is so anxious to kill me. If I had held him, the truth might have been forced from him.”

He was not molested again during the walk, and he felt that adventures enough for one day had befallen him.

Leaving the Bridge at the New York end, he crossed to Broadway, and was on the point of taking a car, crowded though it was, when a hansom cab without a fare came along. He hailed it, and a minute later he was seated inside, jolting northward.

North-bound cars were packed, and the sidewalks were lined with pedestrians hurrying homeward from their places of business. The cool air fanned Frank’s glowing face and filled his lungs in a grateful way.

This was New York, and to himself Merry confessed that it was the place of places. He had traveled much, had visited hundreds of cities in both hemispheres, had been pleased and fascinated by many other places, but there was something about this great city that attracted him more than any and all others combined. It was a city of rush and roar, of toil and tumult, of poverty and wealth, of squallor and extravagance; it was not a place of peace and gentle pleasures, such as old men enjoy; but in every way it was such a city as fascinated the strong and determined youth who was confident of his prowess and not afraid to meet a hundred rivals all striving for the very goal he sought and desired.

Frank knew this great city had swamped and overwhelmed thousands of ambitious lads who came rushing to it fresh from the country, spurred by ambition and lured by visions of triumphs and glories. He knew there was that in New York which must tempt the weak and wavering, and lead them to disappointment and failure. But he also knew that the steadfast and bold, who possessed ability above the average of their fellow men, could here find opportunities rarely met with elsewhere. If they grasped the opportunity at the right moment, held fast without faltering or doubting themselves for a moment, the reward they longed for must be theirs in the end.

Frank thought of the time soon coming when he would have to face the world and make his way in some business or profession, for, even though his father was a rich man, he was not the kind of youth to be content to live on inherited wealth and be a nobody in the great workaday world.

Thinking thus, the trip up Broadway seemed short indeed. Twenty-third Street was congested where Fifth Avenue and Broadway cross, but the hansom-driver plunged into the mass without hesitation. As a rule, hansom-drivers are most skilled in working their ways through such jams, and there might have been no trouble in this instance but that the horse of another cab, passing in the opposite direction, suddenly bolted, and there was a collision.

In a twinkling, the cab containing Merriwell was overturned, and Frank was thrown out. He struck so heavily that he was stunned, though he knew men picked him up and carried him to the sidewalk, where they put him down.

Then he heard a cry, felt his head lifted, and, as through a dreamy haze, he saw a beautiful face bending over him—the face of the mysterious girl.

CHAPTER IX

THE GIRL FROM FAR AWAY.

It was like a dream to Frank, and he looked up at that face, which was now filled with an expression of agony, as the girl’s lips moved, and he heard her whisper:

“My hero! my hero! Did I save you from the powder-keg only to see you killed like this?”

It was still a dream, but these words suddenly changed the scene, and he was transported to the depths of a deep forest, far away in Maine, close to the Canadian border. He saw himself helpless and bound fast to a keg of powder in a deserted hut, while two brutal men hurried out by the open door, one of them pausing and turning back long enough to say:

“In one minute the fuse’ll reach the powder! Good-by!”

Behind him he heard a spluttering, hissing sound, while over his shoulder rose a mass of smoke. He could turn his head and see the burning end of a lighted fuse that ran down into the keg.

Those men had tied him there and lighted that fuse, their intention being to blow him into eternity. He knew their murderous purpose would be accomplished the moment the fire reached the powder.

Outside, the forest was dark and grim, but he could see the sunshine sifting through the trees, and to his ears came the chattering bark of a squirrel. Life was very sweet to him, a mere boy on the brink of eternity, but he could make no move to save himself.

He tried to reach the fuse with his teeth, but in vain, and his horror was unspeakable as he saw the gleaming speck of fire swiftly eating its way along the smoking fuse. Even now, in his dream of that time, the feeling of horror again seized upon him and benumbed his entire body.

There alone, far from his comrades and the friends he loved, was he to meet such a terrible death?

A prayer rose to his lips, for he knew that in a few more moments no human hand could save him.

“God help me!” he breathed.

But he did not cry aloud and shriek, for he believed himself far from human beings who could hear and render aid, and he would not give his enemies the satisfaction of hearing him express fear. If die he must, he would die bravely.

Then, outside the window, sounded a footstep. Then, at the broken window, appeared the face of this girl. Instantly she seemed to understand his peril. In her hand she had a revolver. There was no time to run round the corner and enter the hut, for now the burning end of the fuse protruded hardly more than an inch from the hole in the keg. And so, quick as a flash, she had lifted the revolver and fired into that room.

That shot saved Frank’s life, for the bullet cut the fuse and the burning end died out and did no harm.

Then she came running into the hut and released him with a few swift slashes of a gleaming knife.

He was weak and numb, but her strong hands lifted him to his feet and she urged him from the hut, telling him that the shot must be heard by the two men, one of whom was her own father, while the other was a despised suitor for her hand.

She had brought a rifle, his own, which she put into his hands. As he grasped it strength came back to him, and he knew that he owed his life to this strange girl of the woods, whose father was a smuggler, and one of the worst men in the business.

As they emerged from the hut the two were seen coming toward the hut at a run. They saw Frank come out, and one of them lifted a revolver and fired at him.

The girl had seen the movement, and, with a cry of warning and in an attempt to keep the man from shooting, she sprang before Merry. A moment later she fell into his arms, wounded by a bullet from her father’s pistol.

With an awful cry of rage, Merry had returned the shot, breaking the man’s wrist. Then he had vowed to drop both men if they advanced another step, and that had stopped them.

He had feared the girl was dead, but she recovered, declaring the wound of no consequence. Then she had breathlessly urged him to get away, saying those men would surely kill him if he did not. He had consented only when he knew that she had been hurt too much for him to take her along. The best he could do was to leave her to the care of the men, for her father loved her in his way, ruffian though he was.

In that moment of their parting she had clung to him. He had made her promise to write him and tell him just how much she was hurt. Then he said:

“It seems cowardly to leave you this way.”

“You must!” she panted. “Good-by! I don’t know—perhaps—you may never see me again alive. You won’t think worse of me—will you—if I ask you to—to kiss——”

She had been unable to say more, and she stopped, her cheeks flushed with shame.

What sort of fellow would he have been had he refused this request of the girl who had saved his life!

He pressed his lips to hers, and she whispered:

“You are my hero, Frank! Good-by!”

And so he left her. As he hurried along the dim old wood road he heard her ordering one of the men to drop his rifle, vowing she would shoot him if he did not.

This adventure had been one of the most thrilling of Frank’s eventful life, and often he had wondered if Hilda Dugan had died from the wound received at her own father’s hands. If she had not, why had she failed to write to him, as she promised?

But now he knew Hilda Dugan was not dead, for it was she who knelt there on the cold pavement and lifted his head to her lap, while all the scenes of this thrilling adventure rushed through his mind in a moment.

“Frank!” she whispered huskily, “are you badly hurt—are you killed?”

Then he stirred and struggled to sit up.

“I don’t think I’m hurt much,” he said. “The fall stunned me, that’s all.”

A crowd had gathered about, and both Frank and the girl were lifted to their feet. Hands were brushing Merriwell’s clothes, but he paid no heed, turning to the girl, who now seemed on the point of taking to flight.

“Hilda—Miss Dugan,” he said earnestly, “please don’t run away! You have no cause to be afraid of me.”

She was blushing with confusion and shame.

“Oh, what have I done!” she whispered, thinking how she had flung herself on her knees and lifted his head before this crowd.

Two policemen were near. One asked Frank if he hadn’t better go to a hospital and should he send in a call for an ambulance?

“No, no!” exclaimed Merry. “Don’t do it, officer! I am all right—not a bone broken, and scarcely an abrasion. Move these staring people along, and then we’ll get away from here as soon as possible.”

Then, as the two policemen scattered the crowd, Frank spoke to the girl.

“You have done nothing unladylike, Miss Dugan.”

“What will you think of me?” she gasped.

“What I have always thought—that you are one of the bravest girls I ever met. You saved my life once. Did you think I could forget that?”

“I did not know.”

“But you forgot to keep your promise—you never wrote me a line.”

“I could not! When I thought it all over, I was so ashamed of myself that I resolved never to write to you, and I thought we could never meet again.”

“You had no cause to be ashamed.”

“Yes, I had. I was so bold! I saw it all afterward, and I knew how I must look in your eyes.”

“You saw it in a wrong light, Miss Dugan. I never thought of you as bold. Indeed, I have thought of you in quite a different light.”

“Truly?”

“On my word of honor.”

“I believe you!” she joyously exclaimed. “Nothing could make me doubt you.”

“Come,” said Frank; “the officer has scattered the crowd. I see my cabby is being taken away in an ambulance. Poor fellow! And the one who ran us down escaped. Well, you and I will take another cab to escape from the curious eyes that are watching us.”

Frank was himself again. He called a cab, assisted Hilda to enter, said “Up Broadway,” and was quickly beside her.

Frank’s head was still humming, and he was badly shaken up. Had he not been an athlete in the finest possible condition it is probable he would have been injured far more severely; but the fellow who can quickly recover after being tackled while at full run on the football-field and hurled heavily to the frozen ground is not easily knocked out by any kind of fall.

It is true that the man who keeps himself in the very best physical condition can withstand shocks and injuries that would surely maim or kill weak and flabby persons. This explains why time after time Frank was able to endure without serious or permanent injury things which must have wrecked and ruined a weakling.

He had helped Hilda into a hansom, and now he was seated beside her. He glanced at her, and his eyes told him she was even more attractive than when he had seen her far away in the wilds of northern Maine. Often since that meeting he had wondered if she would have appeared so pretty to his eyes had he seen her first in a city, and now his question was answered.

Outdoor life had developed her till her body was graceful, supple, athletic, and yet she was not coarse, for she had brains in that finely shaped head, and she had known enough to use them to advantage. She had been educated in a city school, but even then she had not been satisfied till her father sent her to Boston, where she attended the Conservatory of Music and came forth one of the most brilliant pupils.

In the home of old Enos Dugan on that lonely island of Grand Lake was a handsome rosewood piano of the very best make, and the music old Dugan’s daughter could conjure from the instrument was the wonder and comment from Vanceborough to Houlton. She could play wild dance tunes that set the feet of all hearers to shuffling, or she could draw from the polished box sad, sweet melodies which brought the unbidden tear welling to the eye. Then, again, she could make the piano thunder and roar with the wild music of Wagner till all the forest rumbled and boomed and shuddered with the sound. Again, her fingers tinkled over the ivory keys, and the piano laughed and sang like a dancing brook in the June sunshine, drawing the birds and the squirrels to the open window, where they listened in wonder and admiration.

Few and ill-favored were the men freely permitted to visit the Dugan home, but they sat and wondered to see Hilda’s white fingers fluttering over the keys so fast that the eye could scarcely follow their swift movements. To them it was a marvel they never understood.

Hilda’s fame spread afar, but the sturdy youths of the region were brave indeed if they ventured near Dugan’s island. Even the officers were afraid of the man, and though he was reputed to be a smuggler, they generally kept as far from him as possible.

When Frank had first seen Hilda on board the little steamer that plied on the lake, she was in company with a ministerial-looking man by the name of Jones. This individual pretended that he was earnestly seeking to spread the “holy light” in dark places, but Jones it was who aided Dugan in capturing Frank, and Merry found that the pretended minister was nothing more than one of the old smuggler’s chosen allies in crime.

It was reported that Hilda Dugan was to marry this man, but Merry had seen that his attentions were decidedly unpleasant to her.

Sitting beside her in the cab, Frank fancied that her face was a trifle thinner and more refined than when he had seen her last. He had sometimes wondered in thinking of her if she had remained pretty or if time had hardened and turned her into a woman of the wilds. Now he realized that there was something in this girl that had battled with and conquered the commoner part of her nature.

For, as true as Enos Dugan was her father, there must be a coarse strain in her. Merry wondered what sort of woman her mother could have been, and he caught himself fancying her a sweet, gentle, delicate creature who had been driven to an early grave by the wickedness of her brutal husband.

But even Merry had not seen all the sides of Dugan’s nature, for the man, apparently a perfect ruffian, could be as gentle and tender as a baby toward one he loved, and he had loved both his wife and his daughter. For long years he had kept the truth from his wife, leading her to believe him an honest trader, but one day, when an officer came to arrest Dugan, the truth came out. The officer escaped with his life because Mrs. Dugan begged her husband not to stain his hands with blood; but from that time she shrank from him in terror, and within a year she died. The shock of her horrible discovery that she was the wife of a criminal killed her; at least, the men of the woods said so.

Then, having buried his wife, Dugan disappeared with his baby daughter. Years after he returned, and Hilda grew to budding girlhood near Vanceborough, where she once attended school. Later, when the officers became too troublesome and old Enos retired to the island far up the lake, where his cabin was built so that one-half of it stood in Maine and the other half in New Brunswick, the girl was sent away to school.

Hilda’s return created a sensation, for she wore stylish clothes and she was the prettiest girl ever seen in that region. The young men talked of her, but the fear of old Enos kept them at a distance.

As she sat beside Frank in the hansom cab her eyes were downcast and she showed signs of painful embarrassment that was entirely foreign to her usual self-possession.

“We have escaped before the reporters could get hold of us, Miss Dugan,” smiled Frank, “so we may keep our names out of the papers. That was one object of my haste. Now, if you will tell me where you wish to go, I’ll give further instructions to the driver.”

She hesitated.

“Never mind,” she said, still showing embarrassment. “It will be better, perhaps, if you do not know where I am living.”

Her words gave him a painful shock. Why should she wish to conceal from him where she was living? The question brought all sorts of frightful possibilities to his mind, but he tried to thrust them away. True, it seemed most remarkable that she should be here in New York, so far from her home, and the words of the stranger who had twice attacked him began to sound again in his ears. He had been accused of doing her a wrong of some sort, and did that mean——

“I’m afraid you do not understand,” she went on, beholding the look of bewilderment on his face. “I hope you will not think it very strange, but there is a reason why I do not wish you to know where I am stopping.”

“Very well,” he said. “That is your privilege, Miss Dugan, but I fear you have no confidence in me.”

“Oh, yes, I have!” she quickly cried.

“Then——”

“I don’t know! I can’t tell you everything. But—father is dead, and I am here.”

Enos Dugan, the smuggler, was dead! What had his life of lawlessness availed him? Had he been able by his unlawful operations to get together a fortune that placed this girl in comfortable circumstances?

Again she seemed to read his thoughts, for she added:

“He died poor. At least, that is the way it seemed.”

“I am sorry,” said Merry sincerely, “for your sake. Was his death sudden?”

“Yes,” she nodded painfully; “he was shot by revenue officers.”

This confession cost her an effort, but she went on:

“He had no time to tell me if he had anything saved or hidden away. I have thought that he had, but I cannot be sure. If he did, some one else got it all.”

“Who?”

“You know the man. His name is Jones.”

“Yes, I know the man,” said Merry grimly. “His name will be Mud if I ever get another good chance at him. I’ve often wondered if—if you——”

“Had married him? No! no! no! I have fought against it ever since. Father tried time after time to compel me to, but I could get the best of him, for, no matter what else he was, he did care for me. He really thought Huck Jones would make me a good husband, and that was why he wished me to have the man. Father had lived a life that made him see everything in a wrong light.

“He sneered at honest men, for he said they were like cowering curs that did not dare fling themselves at the throat of their brutal master, the law. Therefore he admired Jones because he would not be restrained by the law. If my father had saved anything, that man Jones was the only one who knew where it was hidden. After father’s death, finding myself alone in the world and poor, I was in a desperate strait. Then Jones forced his attentions upon me. He was not the only one. But I could not marry any of them, and—I am here!”

What had brought her to New York? What could a poor girl like her do in that wicked, heartless city, where often a pretty face is a curse and the purest heart falters, faints, and falls before the gnawing wolf of hunger.

CHAPTER X

AN UNCONVENTIONAL GIRL.

Frank remembered that the people of Vanceborough had told him that Hilda Dugan was rather wild and wayward. He also remembered that when he first met her, there was something about her that had not quite pleased him, even while it attracted him. Even then he had decided that there was something in the make-up of this girl against which she would have to keep constant guard, else it would lead her into folly.

He could see that she had suffered, and something told him that even now she was in trouble which preyed upon her mind. Then he thought of the desperate fellow who had followed her and attacked him.

“I was sure I knew you when I saw you first near Sixth Avenue,” he declared. “Yet I could not recall your name. As a rule, I remember names perfectly. In this case, however, the only time we ever met was up there in Maine, and seeing you here, I was unable to think where and when our meeting had taken place. It is not so very strange, for the surroundings here are somewhat different from what they were in Maine.”

“Still,” she asserted, “I knew you the moment my eyes rested on your face.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you did not pause.”

“No.”

“You did not bow.”

“No.”

“You hurried on without a sign of recognition.”

His manner was an accusation, and she bowed her head, as if ashamed of what she had done.

“It is plain,” said Merry gently, “that, for some reason, you did not wish me to recognize you. What that reason was I will not ask, for it is none of my business.”

She made a feeble gesture of protest.

“I was so startled—so astonished. I did not think of seeing you here, and it was a shock. Yet—I knew you instantly!”

She spoke the final words in a tone of triumph, and he almost fancied she was reproving him for his failure to remember her name.

“How could I forget?” she went on, her voice trembling a little. “You have not changed—only—you’re a little older and—and—handsomer! There—I’ve said it! I suppose it was bold and unladylike, but it would come out.”

Merry was compelled to laugh.

“Miss Dugan,” he said, yet not after the manner of the common flatterer, “you have given me the very reason why I did not remember you. You are older and—handsomer. When I met you I thought you were—I won’t tell you what I did think, for it will sound like a silly attempt to flatter.”

“I’m glad you did not say it!” she exclaimed. “I know I’m not homely. Frank of me to say so, isn’t it? But I do not believe in false modesty, Mr. Merriwell, and I have sense enough to know what my mirror tells me. Now, that is unconventional, you must confess.”

It was, in truth, and something about it charmed and attracted him as he had been charmed and attracted by this girl the first time he saw her. She was not merely an ordinary girl who did the same things and said the same things as other girls. She had ways of her own which made her seem original and attractive and fascinating. To himself Frank confessed that she possessed a most dangerous power of fascination if she but knew how to wield it.

“Rather unconventional,” he acknowledged, laughing. “But you have not explained why you failed to bow to me when you recognized me on the street.”

“Perhaps I cannot explain, for it may be that I do not quite know myself.”

This was strange, and Frank feared she was trying to evade the point by an adroit turn.

“And you will not permit me to take you home?”

“I have no real home in New York; I’m simply stopping here for the time.”

“You will not allow me to take you to your stopping-place?”

“I think you had better not, Mr. Merriwell.”

“It is for you to choose; but there is much we might talk about, and——”

“Yes, yes—but—no—I will not!”

She had seemed to waver for a moment. Frank’s thoughts flew swiftly. They were approaching Forty-second Street.

“Then, if you will not do that,” he said, “here is Shanley’s, just ahead, and we can go in there.”

“Oh, I am not dressed for it!”

“You are dressed all right, Miss Dugan. It is early yet, and the swells will not be out for some time. I hardly think we shall provoke ridicule by our dress. Will you come?”

“Oh, I’ve thought I’d like to go there, but I’ve never had a proper escort, and——”

“Can you make that excuse now?”

“I didn’t mean that, but—but—what will you think?”

It was rather remarkable for her to care what anybody thought, as Frank realized, even though he had known so little of her; therefore her fear lest he should think badly of her was a decided compliment to him, for it told that she wished to stand well in his eyes, at least.

“Miss Dugan, under the circumstances, I see no reason why we should be extremely conventional and proper. We’ll stop at Shanley’s.”

He signaled to the driver, who opened the little trap-door in the top of the hansom and looked down, whereupon Frank told him where to stop.

Merry assisted Hilda to alight, paid the driver and escorted her into the brightly lighted restaurant. A colored man opened the door for them, bowing as they passed in. They paused before entering the dining-room for a boy to brush from Frank’s clothes some dust still clinging there.

Merry chose to sit in a retired corner where they would not be prominent, yet where they could command a good view of the room. Hilda had asked him not to take a table near the front windows. She seemed to fear that some one might observe and recognize her from the street.

Frank wondered if she could be thinking of the desperate fellow who had twice assaulted him.

As they entered the brilliantly lighted room and followed the waiter who preceded them to a table, Frank suddenly caught a full-length reflection of his companion in a mirror. All in a twinkling he knew she was wondrously beautiful and striking in appearance. Before that he had known she was pretty, even beautiful, but not till that moment had he realized the full extent of her beauty. She had a carriage that was graceful and queenly, a figure that Venus herself might envy, a finely shaped head, an abundance of dark hair and a complexion that all the arts of make-up could not imitate.

Frank saw some of the people at the tables turn to look at Hilda, the men admiringly, the women not without a show of envy.

When they were seated they fell to chatting again.

“It’s all so strange,” said the girl. “My last memory of you is as I saw you walking down that old wood road and vanishing into the forest. I thought it probable we might never meet again.”

“This world is very small, after all,” he said. “They say no one realizes this so well as a person who has done a wrong act and tries to get away somewhere where no one will know about it or ever hear that it happened.”

Again he fancied that she showed signs of confusion and distress, and he wondered if he had touched upon an unpleasant point. He hastened to continue:

“Our first meeting was under most singular circumstances. You remember how your little dog fell overboard from the steamer. You cried out for Jones to jump for it, and, when he hesitated, you sprang in yourself.”

“I remember,” she laughed, showing her fine teeth, surrounded by those curving red lips. “I also remember that Huck Jones did not jump in and get himself wet even then.”

“No; he seemed afraid to spoil his ministerial clothes.”

“The hypocrite! But some one else sprang into the water and swam to me. Then—if I am right—after telling myself that that person should speak to me first, I—I spoke to him! Isn’t that a humiliating confession to make?”

“Your memory is excellent, Miss Dugan,” smiled Merry. “I am sure I could not tell which one of us spoke first.”

“I did. I asked you why you jumped in after me, and you said you did it in order to assist me. Then you complimented me on my swimming. But it was a struggle to keep up till the steamer stopped and sent back a boat for us.”

“If I remember correctly, you did not seem to mind it at all.”

“I think I did not let you know. You told me it was very foolish for me to jump in after my dog. Then you asked how the dog happened to fall overboard.”

She stopped and gazed at him with suppressed laughter twinkling from her splendid black eyes, and it was his turn to flush.

“I remember that,” he confessed; “and I also remember that you coolly told me the dog had not fallen, overboard—that you had thrown him over.”

She continued to laugh silently.

“You were convinced that ‘Elder’ Jones would not jump in after him, and you wished to discover if I would be the one to take the plunge. I am willing to confess that the dog might not have proved sufficient inducement, but I could not resist the temptation after I saw you plunge into the water.”

Of a sudden the laughter died from her face and eyes.

“I suppose it was a very reprehensible thing to do. I presume it was extremely unladylike, and all that. It was by doing such things that I came to have many unpleasant stories told about me. Just because I would not fold my hands and be like other girls—soft, sappy, shy, shrinking, and silly—people decided that I must be bad and fell to talking about me. Now I will leave it to you, how else was I to make your acquaintance? Perhaps I had no right to wish to become acquainted with you, but I did wish to, and I am not ashamed to own it.

“There was no one on that boat to introduce us. If I waited till the trip was over, it was almost certain you would go your way, I would go mine, and we’d never meet again. If I smiled and flirted with you openly you would become disgusted and avoid me. Something about you made me feel sure of that. I made up my mind that I’d find a way to become acquainted with you—a way that would not make me seem bold and forward. I found it. I threw my dog over, screamed, and jumped after him. I had not misjudged you, for you leaped after me almost immediately. But then, while we were in the water, I was conscience-stricken and confessed the whole trick, which was a most foolish thing to do.”

Her frankness fascinated and delighted him. From the first there had been something about this girl that contrasted strongly with ordinary girls, interesting Merry not a little.

“I’m glad you threw the dog over,” he declared, with a laugh.

“Even though it came so near costing you your life?”

“It did not. I was following your father, any way, and should have fallen into his trap just the same. Perhaps if you had not met me thus, if I had not gone to your rescue, you would not have felt enough interest in me to watch your father and Jones and be on hand to save my life. So, you see, I should be very thankful that you tossed your dog into the lake that day.”

“Then,” said she seriously, “if you feel that way about it, I, too, am glad I did it.”

“If you had not, it is not likely we would be sitting here this evening.”

“But in one way, I fear, my meeting with you was a bad thing.”

“Indeed? In what way?”

“Just the same as my education may have been a bad thing. It put false ideas into my head. What am I but the daughter of Enos Dugan, the smuggler! I can never be anything else, yet I have entertained aspirations and ambitions. I can never be a lady, for who would accept me as such, knowing all about my parentage? If I had not received an education, if I had been kept at home in the backwoods, if I had never seen you, I might have married one of the many honest fellows who sought to win me—I might have settled down and been content as the wife of a Maine farmer. Now such a thing can never be. I have refused them all. I have dreamed false dreams, and disappointment must be my punishment. Sometimes I rebel against fate. Sometimes I am desperate, and I’ve even thought of—suicide!”

She whispered the last word, and he saw in her deep, dark eyes a look of despair that stabbed him keenly.

“You must not think such things, Miss Dugan!” he quickly exclaimed. “It is not true that your situation is so terrible because of your father.”

“Yes it is!” she declared, almost fiercely. “You know it is, Frank Merriwell! Would you—would you want to—to marry a girl like me?”

She looked at him defiantly, as if she knew he would not.

“Miss Dugan,” he said, “if I really and truly loved you, if I knew you were a good, true girl, I’d marry you even though your father were a red-handed pirate!”

There was no doubt but he meant it. Her bosom heaved, and she gave him a look he never forgot.

“I believe you,” she murmured softly. “It is just as I have ever thought of you, and that is why you have been my hero since the day we first met.”

CHAPTER XI

HUCK JONES.

This sort of talk had become far too sentimental to suit Merry, and he was relieved when the waiter brought their orders. Over the oysters and soup he chatted as brightly as he could, seeking to divert her mind, but though she smiled at his bright sayings and jokes, he could see she was still thinking of other things. Giving up trying to amuse her that way, he suddenly asked:

“Miss Dugan, do you mind telling me how you happened to be here in New York? I do not wish to seem inquisitive, but——”

“Perhaps you hadn’t better ask,” she said.

“Of course you need not tell, but it seems strange that you are so far from Maine. Are you alone in the city?”

“At present—yes.”

“You came here alone?”

“Yes.”

“When will you return to Maine?”

“Never, I hope!” she almost fiercely exclaimed. “Why should I go back there? My father is dead, and I have no home now. Back there I am still known as the daughter of old Dugan, the smuggler. Here I am not known at all. I can be anything I please.”

Even as she said this a look of anxiety came to her face, and she added:

“That is, I might be if poor Tom Stevens had not somehow traced me here.”

“Tom Stevens?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he?”

“I fear he is a lunatic.”

“Do you mean the man who attacked me on Broadway this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“What is the matter with him? Who is he? and where did he come from?”

“He was a schoolmaster in the town of Danforth, up in Maine.”

“You knew him well?”

“Yes, I met him in Danforth. He fell in love with me. I never gave him encouragement, Mr. Merriwell. That is, I never encouraged him after I found how crazy he was about me. I am afraid I smiled on him a little at first, and flirted with him, thinking I was doing no harm. But I soon found out that I had made a mistake, for he began to write to me, and his letters were full of love. I answered one of them, and told him frankly that I did not care for him, but that seemed to make him all the more determined to have me.

“He dared my father’s wrath and came to the island to see me. He tried to plead with me, but I told him plainly I could never be anything to him save a friend. Even then he would not give me up, and he swore to win me. After that he haunted the lake, having given up his school. In the fall some Boston sportsmen came down and camped in the woods on the mainland opposite the island. Father acted as guide for them, and they came to the cabin. I played for them on the piano, and they sang the latest songs. They were afraid of father, and not one of them ventured to be impolite or familiar, but Tom Stevens became insanely jealous, and he actually attacked two of them one day.

“For all that they were two to his one, he gave them a severe beating and vowed he would kill them if they did not go away immediately. They considered him a madman, and they did not stay much longer. I think he always believed I had met them in Boston while taking music-lessons, and invited them to come down and see me. After that Tom was worse than ever, roaming the woods day after day with his gun. I saw him often standing on some point of the mainland and watching the island, and I became afraid of him. Father swore he would shoot the poor fellow, but I made him promise not to do him harm. Now you understand all about Tom Stevens.”

Frank nodded.

“And I think you are right in fancying him daffy, Miss Dugan. He must believe me one of the Boston sportsmen, and he is determined to kill me.”

Then he told her all about his two encounters with Stevens on Brooklyn Bridge.

“He’s surely crazy as a loon!” she exclaimed. “You must be on your guard, Frank—Mr. Merriwell. Don’t let him harm you. Have him locked up.”

“I may do so more for your sake than for my own, as he must annoy you greatly.”

“He has frightened me once or twice. I was frightened to-day when he flew at you on Broadway. When I saw you had struck him down, I hastened away.”

“Yes, you ran away from me. That was strange. I do not think I understand your action even now.”

“Perhaps I do not quite understand it myself. I have tried to explain why I did not speak in the first place.”

“But you have not been entirely frank with me, Miss Dugan,” he asserted. “You have not told me everything. I know you have a right to be reserved, but I am your friend, and you say you are alone in this great city. You must need a protector. You have not told me how you happened to come here, or if you are seeking work. You say your father left you no money. What can you do here?”

Frank was astounded to see her dark eyes fill with tears.

“I am going to explain just why I am in New York and how I came to be here. I told you that father persisted to the last in trying to force me to marry that man Jones, and I also told you that I suspected my father left money which fell into the hands of Jones. After father died that man——”

She stopped with a little gasp, her face turned very pale, and she sat rigid in her chair, staring with fear-filled eyes at a man who was advancing hastily across the room toward the table.

That man was—Jones!

Frank recognized the fellow at once as the smug-faced rascal whom he had first seen in the guise of a country parson in company with Hilda Dugan on the little lake steamer far away in Maine.

There was a look of triumph and exultation on the face of the man, whose eyes were fastened upon Hilda Dugan as he rapidly approached the table. She shrank back and seemed about to utter a cry of fear, which, however, she repressed.

Merry started to rise quickly and step between her and Jones, but she caught him by the arm, whispering:

“Sit still! He has found me, but he will not dare touch me. Don’t make a scene, please!”

Scenes were quite as offensive to Merry as they could be to her, and so he remained seated, though on the alert and ready to defend her instantly if necessary.

Jones, dressed from head to heels in black, came up to the table and stopped, never taking his eyes off the girl.

“So I have found you at last, have I, Miss Dugan?” he said in a low tone, as he coolly sat down at the table. “A nice trick you played me, but it was foolish of you to think you could lose me so easily.”

“Pardon me, sir,” said Frank, “I will not permit you to address a lady in my company in such an insulting manner. If you do not retire at once and cease to annoy her, I’ll call an officer, and have you arrested.”

Jones actually smiled.

“I hardly think you will,” he said sneeringly.

Frank longed to knock him down.

“I swear I will!” he said, ready to keep his word.

“If you do,” said Jones easily, “she will spend to-night in a cell.”

The girl shuddered, and shrank away. Merry was startled and set back, all at once struck by the fear that this girl had done something criminal, else how dared the man speak in such a manner.

“If she has,” thought Frank, “she will stop me.” And he turned as if to call a waiter and ask for an officer.

Again Hilda clutched his arm, panting:

“Please don’t do it. It will do no good!”

Jones stood by, triumphant, smiling, sneering.

“Why don’t you call an officer, sir?” he asked.

“I ought to, you miserable whelp!” muttered Merry, baffled. “I ought to call one and demand that you be arrested for an attempt to murder me in the Maine woods three years ago.”

This gave the man a start, and he stared at Merry in astonishment.

“You?” he said. “Why, who the dickens are you? Hanged if I don’t believe you are the chap Dugan planned to blow up with powder! Yes, you are!”

“Right! And you are the miserable dog who aided him in that little piece of work. I am very sorry we met here. Had it been elsewhere, it would have given me great satisfaction to thrash you till you begged like a cur at my feet!”

Jones showed his teeth.

“That might not prove such an easy thing to do,” he snarled, in a low tone. “So she fled to you, did she? And I suppose she is blowing you to this feed off the boodle? Well, I’ve found her, and now she’ll have to give it up! I’ve fooled with her for the last time. If she won’t marry me, she can go; but first she must give me my doll.”

Frank wondered if he had understood correctly. What could the man want of a doll? Was it slang of some sort?

The girl sat staring at Jones, as if in doubt about what she would do. Frank longed to aid her in some way, but her fears had made him hesitate about moving.

“Where is it?” hissed Jones, fixing her with his eyes. “Give it to me! If you do that I’ll leave you and trouble you no more. I shall be glad to get rid of you, for you cannot be trusted.”

She leaned forward.

“You deceived me—or tried to,” she declared accusingly. “You told me there were nothing but private papers hidden in her.”

“So you have investigated?” he returned. “I knew it! It belongs to me—every bit of it!”

“I do not believe it.”

“I swear it does!”

“Even so, you are a criminal whom I might turn over to the officers.”

“And you would turn yourself over to them at the same time, for you are my accomplice.”

This talk was very puzzling to Merriwell, who wondered what it could all be about.

“We are attracting attention,” said the girl. “Go away. I will meet you to-morrow at ten o’clock.”

“Don’t think me such a fool! I’ll never leave you again for a single moment till that doll is in my hands.”

The girl’s dark eyes flashed.

“You may have to,” she said.

“Oh, not much! You can’t slip me, for I know you now, and I’ll never trust you again.”

She began to tap her foot, while he stood there, cool and triumphant, grinning down upon her.

“Where is the money my father left?” she demanded, still in a repressed voice, in order not to attract attention. “When you give me that you shall have your old doll and its contents.”

“He left nothing.”

“I know better!”

“Very well. It is folly to argue with a woman who has made up her mind in advance. I will not contradict you.”

“I want that money.”

“I have no objections; want it as much as you like.”

“You knew where it was hidden.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

“That is news to me.”

“While he was alive you dared not touch it, for you knew he would hunt you down and kill you if you did. He had confidence in you, and so when he died he left you to turn the money over to me. Not one dollar of it have you ever given me.”

“You have been dreaming dreams. But, perhaps, if you obeyed your father and married me some of your dreams would have come true.”

“That’s enough!” she said. “That is a confession that there was money! You shall not rob me! When you give it to me you shall have your doll.”

He remained calm and self-confident.

“It is not a confession. There was no money, but I might have given you some of my own, for I did care for you once, till I discovered how treacherous you could be.”

Frank felt more than ever like shaking the man, but was forced to remain quiet and listen to his insolence.

“Don’t talk to me of treachery!” breathed the girl, her face crimson once more. “Why, I have understood you from the first, and I knew you for just what you are—a two-faced scoundrel and a craven! You fawned at the feet of my father, tempted many times to rob him of his ill-gotten gains, yet prevented from doing so by the picture of him upon your track, gun in hand. When he died, your fears ended, and you did not hesitate to break your oath to him and rob his child. You are a scoundrel all the way through! There is not one manly streak in you!”

Still she had kept her voice down, but now Frank had observed that the manner of the speakers and their earnest tones were causing curious eyes to be turned in that direction. Had the restaurant been well filled such a conversation must have been impossible without others to overhear it.

Jones laughed shortly.

“More of your dreams, young woman. It is useless to argue. All I want is my property, and then I will leave you to this gallant youth, of whom you have raved ever since the day he jumped into the water for you on Grand Lake. Perhaps he will marry you, as you have hoped, but I have my doubts.”

It was with the greatest difficulty that Merry refrained from leaping up and knocking the wretch down at once.

“If the opportunity comes,” said Frank, looking Jones in the face, “I shall make you beg the lady’s pardon for your insults.”

Jones made a motion as if to snap his fingers, but refrained from doing so.

“Better not try it when the opportunity comes,” he advised. “You know the occupation in which I have been engaged for some years, and it has been my habit to carry a gun or knife where it will always be easy to draw. I promise you to return your blows with bullets or cold steel.”

“The threat of a coward!” said Frank. “But I am looking for the opportunity just the same. If you pull a pistol or knife on me, it will give me all the better excuse to thrash you within an inch of your life.”

Now, Merriwell knew Hilda Dugan must have talked of him often. Frank also knew she had entertained wild hopes of meeting him again, and this sneering creature beside the table had betrayed that she must have sometimes told him she would never marry anybody but a youth like the Yale man.

Hilda was covered with mortification, knowing full well that Merry must understand—must comprehend the secret love she had carried in her heart ever since that day on Grand Lake three years before.

“Let’s go!” she entreated, beginning to tremble all over. “I am afraid I cannot stand it longer. I shall make a scene of some sort.”

“And the dinner is spoiled already,” said Merry, motioning to a waiter. “We’ll go.”

“And I’ll go with you!” muttered Jones.

Merry paid the check, assisted Hilda to don her coat, quietly tipped the waiter who aided him into his, and turned with the girl to leave the restaurant.

Curious eyes followed them as they passed out.

Jones was at their heels.

CHAPTER XII

THE SECRET OF THE DOLL.

As they were passing out to the sidewalk Hilda’s hand fell on Frank’s arm and her voice whispered in his ear:

“What can we do? He is close behind. If you turn on him, he will meet you with knife or pistol. It will be in the papers to-morrow. The whole truth will come out, and I shall be arrested.”

He saw that she, usually so brave, was in great terror of something, and he did not believe her fear was inspired entirely by Jones.

What caused it?

Had this girl committed a crime of some sort that caused her to fear the relentless hand of the law?

Even so, he pitied her. Even so, he would stand by her and try to aid her. What better could be expected of the daughter of Enos Dugan, the smuggler! She had been brought up in an atmosphere of lawlessness; had been taught as a little child that the law was an oppressor and that it was not wrong to defy and defeat it.

No matter what happened to her, she should not lack for a friend. She had dreamed heroic things of this youth at her side, and he would not disappoint her in the supreme moment.

But Frank was uncertain of the proper course to pursue. He did not doubt that she had spoken the truth in warning him that the man close behind would be ready to meet him with a deadly weapon the moment they reached the sidewalk. Not only that, but Merry had no heart for a street fight while accompanied by a woman.

How otherwise was Jones to be shaken? He would cling to them like a leech. Frank was turning this over in his mind as they passed out by the door and descended the steps to the sidewalk.

The moment the sidewalk was reached Jones stepped forward till he was at the other side of Hilda, saying:

“We will all take a cab to the place where you are stopping. There you can quietly hand the doll over to me. I give you my promise to depart quietly and never trouble you again in case my property has been returned to me in full. You will be free of me forever, and that is what you have paid——”

At that moment, with a snarling cry, a man who had been lingering in front of Shanley’s launched himself on Jones, whom he clutched by the throat.

Frank had seen the figure dart forward and spring, and he swung Hilda out of the way of harm.

“You!” cried the assailant, as he grasped Jones’ throat. “You are the worst one of them all! You would ruin her body and soul! But your time has come!”

“It’s Tom Stevens!” gasped Hilda.

It was the maniac who had twice attacked Merry, and he was handling Jones roughly just then.

“Let go, you fool!” gasped the man who had been attacked.

Then he twisted about and grappled with the other. A moment later both were sprawling on the paving. Frank saw his opportunity. Grasping Hilda’s arm, he quietly said:

“Come!”

He hurried her straight to the nearest empty hansom.

“Down Seventh Avenue in a hurry!” he said to the driver, as he sprang in after Hilda.

As the hansom turned they caught a glimpse of one of the combatants, who dragged himself from the other and ran toward them shouting. The whip of the driver cracked, the horse leaped forward, and they were away, the cool wind whistling into their faces.

“A piece of luck,” said Frank. “If that fellow had not jumped on Jones just then, I know not how we would have given him the slip.”

“Have we?” asked Hilda, still agitated.

“I think so.”

“Are you sure?”

Merriwell tried to look back. Then he rattled the little trap-door in the roof of the cab till the driver opened it and looked down.

“Look out, driver,” said Frank, “that we are not followed. Look back and tell me if you think any one tries it.”

A moment later the driver called down:

“I believe somebody is coming after us in a hansom.”

“Jones!” cried Hilda, clinging to Frank’s arm.

“Dodge that hansom, driver,” said Frank, “and I will give you ten dollars!”

“I’ll try it, sir.”

Into Fortieth Street they whirled, the horse flying along. Down Eighth Avenue they sped for a distance, and then again they turned to the west. Down Ninth Avenue cut the hansom for a single block, and then it doubled back to Eighth.

At every turn Frank and Hilda had been able to look back and see the cab in pursuit, which held after them persistently. That is, at every turn until the double back toward Eighth Avenue. When that was made the other cab had not yet turned the corner into Ninth.

“You are getting away from him, driver!” shouted Frank, having thrust up the little door; but the wheels were rumbling over the rough paving so it is doubtful if the man above heard or understood.

Back to Eighth they went, and the driver promptly turned up the avenue. But he wheeled to the west again at the next corner and was once more driving toward Ninth. Frank laughed with satisfaction.

“We struck the right man,” he said.

“What do you mean?” questioned the girl.

“This fellow must have done some dodging before, for he knows all the tricks, and he can double on his own tracks in the most artistic manner. He will earn his tenner, all right.”

“Then do you think we’ll give Jones the slip?”

“I think we have done so already.”

At Ninth they turned northward and proceeded three or four blocks, when the cab rounded a corner into a side street and the driver called down that he had lost the fellow.

“And earned your money handsomely,” declared Merry. “You shall get the coin.”

“Where will you go now, sir?”

Merry consulted Hilda.

“I shall permit you to take me home now,” she said. “I am going to tell you all the story and ask your advice, for I am in sore need of it.”

She told him the street and number, which he gave to the driver, who took them to the destination. Merriwell paid the driver the ten dollars in addition to his regular charge, and the hansom rolled away.

“Here is where I have been hiding,” said the girl. “I have taken pains to slip out and in when I fancied I would not be observed by any one who might be looking for me. I did not like to let you come here, Mr. Merriwell, but circumstances compelled me to do so.”

“You know I stand ready to aid you, Miss Dugan, in any possible way.”

They were on the steps, and she seemed hesitating over something.

“Oh!” she finally exclaimed, “I wish I had a friend here!”

“You have; I am your friend.”

“I do not mean that. I wish I had a friend in this, house—a girl friend. But even then, I could not trust the secret to her. It is for your ears alone. Mr. Merriwell, you will understand better when you hear my story and see what I have to show you. To make everything clear to you, I must show you the doll.”

Again the doll!

“I am willing to look at it,” he said, with a laugh.

“It is in my room,” she said, with sudden determination. “You must come there to see it.”

She had a key in her hand, and now she unlocked the door. Frank followed her into the house. A dim light burned in the hall. But from above came the sound of children at play.

They ascended the stairs. A door was standing slightly open, and the children’s voices came from that room. Hilda’s room was on the same floor. Frank stood outside the door until she had entered and lighted the gas. Then he came in, and she asked him to leave the door standing open. The room was small and rather poorly furnished.

“If there had been any other way, I would not have asked you here,” she again declared.

She gave him a chair and he sat down. From the distant room came the sound of the romping children, shouting to each other as they played.

Hilda’s trunk was in the room. She unlocked it and took something out. When she turned to Frank she held in her hands a handsome wax doll, which had been carefully and expensively dressed.

“Here,” she said, noting the wonder in his face, “is what has caused all the trouble.”

All along he had fancied it might not really be a doll, but now he saw it was. She smiled as she heard him whistle softly to himself.

“Isn’t she handsome?” asked the girl.

“Very pretty,” he acknowledged, his wonder increasing.

“Oh, I think she is perfectly lovely!” Hilda declared, caressing the doll.

“Great Scott!” thought Frank. “Is the girl daffy, too?”

“I’ve always admired dolls,” Hilda explained. “When I was a little girl I had no doll save an old rag one, but I loved it and petted it and talked to it, for it was my only companion during many a long, weary day.”

She sat down facing Frank and continued:

“As I grew older my love for dolls seemed to grow with me, instead of lessening. In Vanceborough, I had seen some dolls with china heads, and to my eyes they were the most beautiful things in all the world. When father brought one home to me I was filled with joy too deep for words. But the china head was broken one day, and it nearly broke my heart at the same time. I had heard of large wax dolls that closed their eyes when put to sleep and said ‘ma-ma’ when squeezed, but such stories seemed far too marvelous to be true.

“However, when I went away to school I saw one of them, and then I could never be satisfied till I had one for my very own. Of course I got it, and I kept it many years, dressing and undressing it, talking to it, telling it all my little secrets and having it to keep me from loneliness there on that dreary island. Maybe you can see, living as I did without other companions, that it was not strange that my love for dolls clung to me as I grew to be a young woman. When I went to Boston I took my doll and had it with me in my room, though I was careful not to let people know much about it, for I had begun to be ashamed.

“But Huck Jones, who was my father’s companion during so many years, came to know all about my fondness for dolls. He knew it clung to me even after I was a girl in long dresses. Sometimes he laughed at me and tried to tease me about it, but I had a temper and I soon convinced him that he had better keep still.

“After father died Jones made arrangements to go abroad. He did so, but all the while he led me to believe there was something coming to me when he returned. I had refused to marry him, but I still hoped against hope that he might relent and turn over to me a part of the money I felt confident my father had left.

“He wrote to me several times while he was on the other side. At last he wrote that he was coming back by the way of Canada, asking me to meet him in Montreal. His letter was most ingenious, for he promised to reveal to me something I wished to know very much, and he added that he had purchased the handsomest doll he could find in all Europe, which he was bringing to me.

“I met him as appointed. He had the doll, which he gave me, but he refused to tell me the secret till we met again in Boston, for he declared he had some business that would delay him a few days, while I was to go on to Boston the following day. It seems that he had met a lady with two charming children who would be on the same train with me, and he urged me to permit the oldest girl, who was nine, to hold the doll as much as she liked on the way to Boston. But I was to take the doll when the time came for us to leave the train and care for it till he met me at the Adams House. If the doll was in my hands and all right he would tell me the secret then.

“Well, I followed his directions. Everything went well, but I kept thinking over his curious directions. As we crossed into the United States the little girl was sleeping with my doll hugged to her heart. She cried a little when she had to give it up as Boston was reached.

“That night in my room at the Adams House I learned the secret of the doll—the secret Jones was to reveal to me when we met. I also learned that I had committed a crime. This doll looks pretty and expensive, does it not? Well, Mr. Merriwell, I’ll wager you can’t guess how much it is worth.”

Frank shrugged his shoulders.

“Ten dollars, perhaps,” he said.

“Ten thousand, if a cent!” declared Hilda Dugan.

He wondered if she could be in her right mind.

“I knew you would stare!” she laughed excitedly, her face flushed and her hands trembling. “But you will stare still more when I show you the secret of the doll. Look!”

She opened the doll’s dress, exposing the body, and then, as she touched a hidden spring, a coverlike lid flew upward.

The doll lay on its back across Hilda’s knees, and a cry broke from Frank as he stared at it, for he saw that its body was literally stuffed with glittering diamonds!

CHAPTER XIII

HILDA GETS HER RIGHTS.

“Can they be real?” gasped Merry, amazed.

“Of course they are!” cried the girl. “And I helped smuggle them into the United States. Don’t you see through the trick now? I didn’t know till after it was all over. Before I was a smuggler’s daughter, now I am a smuggler! Do you wonder that I have been afraid? Do you wonder that I have hidden myself away?”

“But Jones——”

“When I realized what I had done, what he had led me to do, I lost no time in packing and hastening from Boston. I took the doll with me, you may be sure, for I knew, as I know now, that its precious contents were purchased with my father’s money and really belong to me.”

“Then you are rich!” exclaimed Merriwell, still fascinated by the glitter of the diamonds.

She wrung her hands.

“No, no!” she cried. “For though these diamonds belong to me, how can I prove it?”

Frank realized all the difficulties of her position and he was somewhat bewildered himself, not finding a ready answer.

“I have brought you here to advise me,” she went on. “You must tell me what to do. I will not give these diamonds up to Jones. Yet I cannot keep them. If I turn them over to the authorities, it is not likely I’ll ever see them again, for am I not the daughter of a smuggler? Who will believe my story?”

Frank sat there in silence for a few moments.

“It is the only thing you can do, Miss Dugan,” he said, at last. “I will go with you to the custom-house. The question will be solved there. We cannot solve it ourselves.”

She seemed to hesitate, but he talked to her calmly, and soon convinced her that it was the only way.

“I will take your advice,” she said, at last. “At least, Jones shall not have these gems.”

She closed the opening and hid the precious stones from view. The doll was wrapped in a cloak, and they prepared to leave the house, for Frank advised immediate action.

As they descended the steps to the sidewalk, a man who had been lurking near rushed upon Merry. Tossing the bundle to Hilda, Frank turned to meet the fellow, who cried:

“I have finished one of the devils to-night with his own knife, and now I’ll finish you before you complete your work of destruction!”

It was Tom Stevens. Frank barely avoided the fellow’s rush, and Stevens caught his foot somehow, plunging headlong against the stone steps as he fell. He lay still.

“He’s hurt!” cried Hilda.

“Stunned, probably,” said Frank. “We’ll send an officer to care for him. Let’s lose no time.”

So, leaving him there, they looked for an officer, whom they soon found and told him that a man had fallen and injured himself.

Then they went on to the custom-house, carrying their precious burden.

Jack Diamond had fancied Merriwell was with Inza. He was not a little surprised when Frank appeared and told his story.

The following morning the newspapers told how Hilda Dugan had brought the doll and its valuable contents to the custom-house, where she had turned it over to the officers. Her complete story was included, but it ended with the information that the smuggler, Jones, was dying in the hospital, having been attacked in front of Shanley’s and stabbed by an unknown man.

In an obscure corner of the paper was an item about a strange man who had been picked up on the steps of a house, having a fractured skull. He, also, was in the hospital, and it was not thought he would recover. This man was Tom Stevens.

Jones did not last through the day, but before he passed away Hilda stood beside him, and he confessed that the money with which he had purchased the diamonds on the other side of the ocean had belonged to her father and been left for her.

This confession of the dying man was taken down by a stenographer, written out in full, signed by Jones, and sworn to before witnesses.

At Frank’s advice, Hilda had secured the services of an able lawyer, and he was present when the confession was made. He congratulated her when it was over and the paper was in his possession.

“This fixes it very nicely,” he declared. “You will obtain your rights now, Miss Dugan. Of course, the duty on the diamonds must be paid, but the Government will be unable to hold them, for you were innocent of any intent to do wrong, and you set yourself right by turning over the diamonds to the authorities. I am informed there was over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of stones, so you are a rich girl.”

“And all because I took the advice of Frank Merriwell,” said she. “If I had not, it would not have come out so well.”

In the hospital she found Tom Stevens and saw that everything possible was done for him. He did not know her, but he told her of a beautiful girl far away in Maine whom he loved, but who cared nothing for him. Her eyes were red from unshed tears when she left him.

That evening Frank called on Hilda. He brought Jack Diamond along, and the Virginian was afterward forced to confess that the girl from Maine was as charming in her manners and conversation as she had appeared when he first saw her on Twenty-third Street.

“Yes,” Jack told himself, “she is much like Juliet, only she lacks a certain refinement Juliet possesses.”

At the same time Frank was thinking:

“How much like Inza she is! I don’t think I ever noticed it before; but she lacks a certain subtle charm that Inza possesses—something that seems to belong to Inza alone.”

And Hilda was thinking:

“Jack Diamond is handsome, but he cannot compare with Frank Merriwell. Frank is the handsomest fellow in all the world, and in the future, as in the past, he’ll always be my hero.”

CHAPTER XIV

FRANK’S INFLUENCE.

“Drop it!”

Crash!

The command had come like a pistol-shot. The glass fell instantly, smashing on the polished bar, over which flowed the amber-hued liquid.

“Merriwell?”

Dick Starbright, pale as snow, turned as he gasped the name.

“Starbright!”

There was a world of surprise and reproach in Frank’s voice.

Dick Starbright, standing at the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, had lifted the glass of whisky to his lips when Frank stepped into the room and uttered the sharp command. The big Yale freshman dropped his glass as if it had suddenly burned his fingers.

Frank came forward, his eyes fastened steadily on Dick, who leaned against the bar weakly, his pallor giving place to a flush of shame.

“This is a surprise,” said Merry.

“Rather!” choked Dick.

“I thought you were in New Haven.”

“I’m not.”

“That is plain. But what are you doing here?”

“I was on the point of taking a drink,” said Starbright, endeavoring to regain his composure, “when the sound of your voice caused me to let the glass slip from my fingers. Bartender, give me another glass. I’ll pay for the one I broke.”

The man behind the bar, who had been picking up the pieces of glass and wiping the liquid from the polished wood, immediately sat out another glass and the bottle of whisky.

“What’s yours, sir?” he asked, looking at Merriwell.

But Frank simply shook his head, standing quite still and watching Dick Starbright, who, with a show of recklessness, proceeded to pour another glass of whisky. But Dick’s hand was not quite steady, and there was a look of shame on his face. However, having been detected in the act, it was plain that he meant to brazen it out.

“I know it’s useless to ask you to join me,” he said to Frank, but without permitting his eyes to meet the pair that were regarding him steadily with a gaze of mingled sorrow and reproach.

“What has happened to my friends?” thought Frank. “Here’s Starbright following in Diamond’s footsteps. I caught Jack just in time to pull him up with a round turn, and now I’ve got another job on my hands.”

With a pretense of defiant carelessness, the big Andover man lifted the glass. Frank’s hand fell on his arm.

“Wait a minute, Dick,” he urged gently. “How many drinks have you taken before this?”

“Not any,” was the answer that gave Merry a sensation of great relief, for he knew that one drink was enough to set the fire raging in Starbright’s veins and make him mad for more.

“That being the case,” said Frank, in a quiet tone, “let’s talk this matter over a little before you take the first one.”

“It’s no use, Merriwell,” asserted the big, blond freshman. “I know what you mean to say, but I’ve got to take this drink.”

Now he gave Frank a defiant look, but his eyes drooped almost instantly.

“You must be in a bad way if you feel like that,” said Merry, still in that calm, unagitated manner.

“The devil is in me!” confessed Starbright. “He is calling for whisky, and I’m going to give him enough to drown him. Ha, ha, ha!”

Merriwell did not remember ever having seen Dick in such a reckless and desperate mood. There was a wild light in the eyes of the freshman, and his air was that of one who cares not a snap what may happen, and would not turn one step out of his path to avoid meeting death itself.

Frank knew there was a cause for all this. He knew something had brought Starbright down here to New York and thrown him into this exceedingly reckless mood, and he wished to discover without delay what that something could be.

“It will take a lot of whisky to drown the devil,” said Frank. “I don’t think there is enough distilled in the world to accomplish that feat. Men have been trying to drown the old fellow in whisky ever since the secret of manufacturing the stuff was first learned, and he has thrived on it and grown stronger every year. In fact, the devil likes whisky just as a child likes milk. To tell the truth, I believe whisky was an invention of the devil, to begin with, and I know that more than anything else it has served him as a snare for the unwary feet of foolish human beings who fancy they can master it. But I’m not here to deliver a temperance lecture, Starbright. I happened to look into this place in search of Diamond, and I saw you. My boy, let me pay for that stuff, but do not drink it now. Come up to my room, and we’ll have a little talk. After that is over, if you are determined to drink, I’ll not oppose you.”

But Dick shook his head.

“I know all that you would say, Merry,” he declared. “It’s all true. The stuff is my one temptation and my curse. If I take this drink, I may go straight to the dogs, but what of that! It will help me to forget that I have been fooled by a pair of black eyes, and that I betrayed the best friend a chap ever had. Down it goes!”

Frank would not release the arm of the reckless freshman.

“Not yet,” he said firmly. “You shall not take that stuff till I know why you are so determined to drink it.”

“Because I am a fool and a traitor!”

“We’re all fools in one way or another, but traitors we are not.”

“You know I’m a sneak, Frank Merriwell!” hoarsely said Dick. “I don’t see how you can still entertain one friendly feeling toward me. If I received what I deserve at your hands, they’d take me away from here in an ambulance!”

“If you had not told me that no liquor had passed your lips, I should think you jagged already,” asserted Frank. “You are talking like a few mixed drinks.”

“I’m talking just what I think. My eyes are open at last.”

“Well, if getting your eyes open has this effect on you, it will be a good idea to shut them again.”

“Not much! I have been fooled twice, and it’s going to be a long time before I’m deceived again in the same way. Let me go, Frank. I want this drink, and I must have it!”

Frank knew that Dick would barely swallow the first drink when he would want another. Then another, and another would follow, till the freshman was howling drunk.

Drink had been the curse that finally conquered old Captain Starbright, Dick’s father, and it seemed that the craving for liquor had been inherited by the son. But Dick fought against the desire, and fancied he had overcome it until the time when his enemies at college succeeded in drugging him and getting him started on a carousal just before a football-game.

Frank Merriwell had found Starbright in Rupert Chickering’s room and rescued him, locking him up and watching over him while he grew sober, though the “doped” lad had raved and prayed and begged for whisky. From that time Dick had found it more difficult to keep in restraint his desire for drink, but never until Merriwell discovered him at the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel had he yielded to the tempter.

Under ordinary circumstances, the mere sound of Merriwell’s voice had been quite enough to cause Starbright to resist temptation, but now a remarkable change had come over him, and he seemed determined to drink even though it was right before Frank’s eyes, and in defiance of his entreaties.

Merriwell knew from this that the case was desperate, but he was determined to keep the freshman from accomplishing his purpose.

The barkeeper looked on in evident displeasure at Frank’s interference.

“Why don’t you let him alone, young fellow?” he growled, glaring at Merry. “He’s old enough to know his own business.”

Frank turned his eyes and gave the barkeeper a single steady look, as he grimly said:

“And you are old enough to mind your own business. He is my friend.”

The barkeeper gurgled in his throat, plainly longing to come over the bar and attack Merry, yet fearing to do so lest he lose his position.

Frank again turned to Dick.

“My boy, for your own sake, you can’t afford to touch that stuff.”

“Bah!” laughed Starbright. “What do I care about myself!”

“Your career at college——”

“Is liable to come to an end mighty soon.”

“You should think of your friends.”

“A man who will treat his best friend the way I treated you can’t be appealed to in that way,” said Starbright almost sullenly.

“But your mother, Dick—surely she has seen sorrow enough. For her sake!”

The freshman turned pale again, and his hand shook. He put the glass of whisky down.

“I won’t drink it—now,” he huskily declared, as he flung some money on the bar and turned away. “I tried not to think of her. I must get out of here, Merriwell!”

Frank had conquered, and he walked from the room with his arm passed through that of the big Andover man. He took Starbright up to his room. Diamond was not there, and thus they found themselves alone.

“Sit down,” Frank invited, but Dick began to pace the floor like a wild beast in a cage. His eyes were gleaming and the expression on his face was one Frank had never seen there before.

“I can’t sit down!” he said. “I must do something. I feel like smashing something!”

“If you feel that way now, how would you have felt after getting a few drinks inside you?”

“I’d been pretty sure to raise Cain. It’s likely I’d brought up in a police-station.”

“You must tell me what it’s all about,” said Merry. “You know I can be trusted, for I am your friend.”

The big, handsome freshman whirled about in the middle of the room, flinging out his hand in a gesture of remonstrance.

“There is no reason why you should be my friend!” he declared. “You did everything you could for me when I first came to Yale. Even though I was a mere freshman and you so far above me, you showed me such kindness that they came to call me your protégé. I was proud of it, and I felt that you were the finest fellow in the whole world. I wrote to my mother and brother telling them all about you, and what you had done for me. I swore I was willing to serve you, even to the cost of my life. I believed it then, but after that, fooled, enchanted, fascinated, and maddened by a pair of black eyes, I played the traitor to you! Now, why should you remain my friend? I don’t know of a reason!”

Frank walked up to Dick, placing his hands on the freshman’s shoulders and gazing straight into his blue, eyes.

“My dear boy,” he said, “some things happen in this world despite ourselves. I know what you mean now, but perhaps you fancy you did me a greater wrong than was truly the case.”

“No; I did not do you a wrong!” was Dick’s surprising statement. “I believe I did you a good turn; but, at the same time, it was a piece of unfairness and treachery, for I knew you had cared for Inza Burrage—I knew I had no right to come between you and her.”

“You are strangely contradictory, Starbright. If you did not do me a wrong, if what you did was a good thing for me, why should I not remain your friend? Why should I feel resentment toward you?”

“Because you do not know—yet. I know, for I have seen with my own eyes. Oh, she is the handsomest girl in all the world, Merriwell, but she is just as false and fickle as she is handsome!”

Frank looked graver than ever.

“You are excited and hasty, else you would not make such a charge against her, Starbright!” he declared.

“Excited I may be, but I am not hasty. I have a reason, Merriwell, you may be sure of that. I don’t wish to get rid of any of the blame, but if she were not fickle, why did she so readily turn from you to me?”

“Because she felt certain that between us there could never be a tie stronger than mere friendship.”

“Why did she feel certain of that? Merriwell, are you saying this just to make me feel less like a sneak?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure?” asked Dick, with great eagerness. “It would be like you to treat a fellow generous in that way. How do you know Inza felt as you say?”

“She had told me so!”

“When?”

“Almost two years ago.”

Starbright seemed more surprised than ever.

“I can hardly believe it! Why, all the fellows thought her struck on you! You seemed to be the only one she cared for.”

“We were the best of friends, my boy; but it is the truth that Inza herself told me we could never be anything but friends. I do not say this to soothe your feelings, but because I do not wish you to regard yourself or Inza in a wrong light. She had a right to like you, Dick, and I don’t wonder that she did. You are——”

The freshman stopped Merry with a savage gesture.

“Don’t talk that way!” he cried. “Wait till you know everything! When and where was it that she told you this?”

“It was one year ago last summer, on the veranda of the little hotel in the town of Maplewood, where I was managing a baseball-team. The season had closed, and the time of separation had come. Inza had been spending a few weeks in Maplewood. On the evening before the final game we were together on the veranda, and, during the course of our talk, she frankly and plainly told me that she had outgrown her first foolish infatuation for me, and that in the future we were to be nothing more than the best of friends.”

Dick Starbright drew a deep breath, and then stepped back and dropped heavily on a chair.

“You—you’re sure you are not saying this just to—to make me feel less like a—like a miserable scoundrel?” he begged huskily.

“Surely not. Frank Merriwell is not in the habit of lying outright, even for the sake of his friends. So you see your supposed treachery toward me was nothing of the sort. More than that, you see Inza had a right to prefer you, and it was none of my business.”

“I—I wondered that you did not feel like shooting me,” said Dick, trying to force a smile, but making a sorry failure of it. “Now I understand.”

“Is it thoughts like these that have made you reckless and driven you to the verge of drink, my boy?”

Starbright shook his head.

“They were not all,” he asserted. “There is another reason. I will confess that I was tortured with jealousy after leaving you at the Grand Central and starting for New Haven. I knew, or I thought I knew, that you were going back to see Inza. You had shipped me off, to get rid of me, so you could have a clear field. I told myself that, and it made me furious at first. I continued to be tortured by such thoughts after reaching college. I could not study, sleep, train, or do anything. I was in a frightful condition. Worse than everything was the thought that you were with Inza and I had no right to interfere. I could not endure it, and I soon decided to come back here and set myself right with you. I saw it was the only thing that would enable me to rest with an easy conscience. That is what brought me to New York, and now you know why I am here.”

Starbright seemed relieved.

“My dear boy,” laughed Frank sympathetically, “you have been giving yourself no end of unnecessary worry and trouble. But now you know it was all right.”

“Perhaps it would have been better if I had remained in New Haven,” said Dick, still looking gloomy, greatly to Frank’s wonderment. “Then I should not have learned the truth concerning her, even though I continued to think myself a scoundrel.”

“What do you mean?” asked Merry, puzzled by the freshman’s words and manner.

“I don’t like to tell you, Merriwell. I’m not going to tell you. But I’m done with her! She can’t play fast and loose with me! I’m glad you stopped me from taking that drink, for I’d been sure to make a fool of myself, but I am done with Miss Burrage forever!”

He had risen, and now he was pacing the floor again, his blue eyes flashing and his fair face pale with the emotion that possessed him.

“Are you daffy, Starbright?” exclaimed Merriwell, beginning to lose patience. “You have fancied there was a reason why you should not care for Inza; and now, when you find there is no such reason, you declare you will have nothing more to do with her.”

“But there is a reason, Merriwell! Don’t let’s talk of it. It makes my blood boil!”

Frank caught hold of his companion and brought him to a halt.

“Look here,” he said sternly; “you’ll have to talk of it, for I am going to know what you mean. I believe Inza thinks a great deal of you, and I do not believe you have a right to speak of her in such a manner.”

Merry was astounded when the big freshman whirled on him like a raging lion.

“You don’t know!” burst from Dick’s lips. “You have seen nothing but her fine qualities. You have not observed the other side of her character. She’s a flirt! She takes delight in deceiving men! I believe she has deceived you, just as she did me! Oh, yes! she’s handsome, but she’s fickle. I know what I’m talking about, Merriwell! Don’t try to stop me! I know you’ll say I’m crazy, but I’m not! I have seen something with my own eyes that settles everything between that girl and myself! I am done with her, Frank Merriwell—done with her forever!”

Then Frank gripped the gigantic Andover man, and, despite Starbright’s remarkable strength, quickly sat him down on a chair.

“See here!” exploded Frank, a look in his eyes that the other had never seen there before, “do you know, man, that you have stepped over the limit? How dare you talk to me in such a way of Inza Burrage? I have known her since she was a girl in short dresses, and she is as pure as the stars. Man, you cannot speak of her thus before me! You are my friend—at least, you have been. I will not listen to such words from the lips of anybody. She is not treacherous, and she does not take delight in deceiving men.”

Dick Starbright was appalled by the terrible earnestness of Frank Merriwell. He sat there, staring up at Merry in wonderment, while in his heart he was saying:

“You told me you did not care for her, but you love her—you love her! I see it now! You may not know it, Merriwell, but you love her!”

He gave himself a slight shake, as if flinging off a spell.

“All right,” he said huskily. “I am willing that you should think so.”

But his manner of saying this made Frank more furious than ever. His face hardened and his grip on Starbright’s shoulders was like iron.

“By Heaven!” he said harshly; “you shall think so! You shall say so with your own lips! You shall take back everything you have thought and said of her that was not in praise of her. I swear it!”

It is possible that for a single moment Starbright thought of opposing Merriwell with physical force, but the inclination passed swiftly, and he sat there in silence, a look of defiance on his almost boyish face.

“Go ahead!” he muttered. “I know what I’ve seen!”

“Now you must tell me what you mean by that, man. There can be nothing held in reserve now, Starbright—tell everything! It is the only way.”

“All right; but I did not mean to tell—you force it from me.”

“But be careful!” warned Merry. “I shall investigate. Make no charge you cannot back up.”

“It’s not much of a story. When I landed at the Grand Central, I saw Inza there. She did not see me. She was there to meet some one. The one she met was a handsome young man about your age, Merriwell. She ran to him with outstretched hands, and he caught her in his arms. I stood transfixed, and I heard her call him ‘dear Walter!’ Oh, I heard it, Merriwell! He kissed her, and she kissed him again and again! It was love she showed in her face and eyes and in her voice. It was love in her kisses! I was turned to stone when I saw it. I watched them leave the station, enter a cab, and depart. Then I awoke. But I was half-mad, and a little while after that you found me at the bar of this hotel.”

CHAPTER XV

HAPPY JACK.

Frank’s face was very pale, but in his eyes still burned the strange fire that had startled and quelled Starbright. He straightened up and stood looking down steadily at Dick, for some moments remaining silent. At last he said:

“Are you sure you have not been drinking?”

“Dead sure of it,” asserted the freshman quickly. “I known what I saw and heard, Merriwell. Now, what do you think?”

He seemed to fancy Merry must cave in, but Frank quietly said:

“Just what I thought before.”

“Why, she——”

“She is perfectly square and upright. She has deceived nobody. She never deceived me in all her life, and I refuse to believe any wrong of her. I have perfect and absolute confidence in Inza Burrage.”

Again Starbright inwardly exclaimed:

“You love her—you love her! If you did not, you would not have such perfect confidence in her. Perfect love gives perfect confidence. You cannot fool me, Merriwell.”

Frank turned and paced the floor slowly, seemingly buried in deep thought.

“Walter?” he muttered, as if asking himself a question. And then over and over he repeated, “Walter, Walter?”

“That was the name,” said Dick. “And he was a tall, handsome fellow, with dark hair and eyes. He looked as if he had been much exposed to the weather, for his face was brown. Who is he, Merriwell? Who does she know by the name of Walter?”

Frank shook his head.

“I can’t say,” he confessed.

“Then it is somebody of whom she has never told you,” said Dick, as if this aided in proving her deceit. “Why didn’t she tell you about him if you were such firm friends?”

“I don’t know.”

The freshman half-fancied Merriwell was weakening.

“What if you had seen what I saw?” he cried. “Would you not have doubted?”

“No!” said Frank instantly. “Nothing could make me doubt Inza!”

Starbright fell back, breathing heavily.

“She has fooled him completely!” he whispered. “It is my duty to open his eyes, for he loves her. And I—she can never be the same to me again!”

“Why didn’t you speak to them?” asked Frank, having paused to face Dick. “Why didn’t you make yourself known?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was too thunderstruck to do anything. When they left the station arm in arm, I followed slowly, and saw them get into the cab. As the cab started off I sprang forward, but it was too late.”

“Well, you may depend on it,” said Frank, “that Inza can explain everything.”

“You do not doubt her now?”

“Not the least, for I know her.”

“You must know where she is stopping. It will be easy to find out if she can explain.”

“But I do not know where she is stopping. I cannot spend the time just now to tell you everything that happened after you left for New Haven, but it became necessary for her and her father to leave the hotel in Brooklyn and go out on Long Island. They did so, but returned very soon. Day before yesterday I went over to see them, but found they had left Brooklyn once more, and I did not learn whither they had gone. So, you see, I do not know where to find Inza.”

“Nor do I.”

“Then it is plain that we will have to let the matter rest a while. You will say nothing about it to any one, Starbright?”

“Little danger of that.”

“You will let liquor alone?”

“I will.”

“I am certain that everything will be cleared up in time, and Inza must never know how you doubted her. I would not have her know it for worlds, for she likes you, Dick, and it would hurt her more than you can dream.”

Starbright felt rebuked, but Merriwell’s words did not alter his conviction that Inza was fickle, and had deceived them both.

Only a short time before Dick had been played with and thrown over by Rosalind Thornton. Before that time he was a big-hearted, trusting boy; but his treatment in that case had awakened his suspicions and shattered his absolute and unswerving faith in all girls. Now he fancied he knew them very well, and his knowledge was not of the kind to lead him to trust them.

Despite his physical perfections, despite his wonderful feats of strength and skill, Starbright was still a very callow youth, greatly given to sudden impressions, and there was much for him to learn before he could develop into a steady, level-headed man. He was to be taught by experience that it is always very foolish, and sometimes decidedly dangerous, to jump at conclusions without clue and careful investigation of all cases.

There was a step at the door, which swung open to admit Jack Diamond, who sauntered in, dressed in the swellest possible manner and carrying a cane.

“Hello!” exclaimed the Virginian, pausing. “Didn’t know you had a caller, Merriwell. Am I intruding?”

“Of course not,” said Frank. “You know Starbright, Jack.”

“Starbright—of course! Why, how are you, Starbright? Glad to see you, my boy.”

Jack shook hands heartily with Dick.

“I thought you were on the other side,” said the freshman, trying to appear cool and composed.

“That’s where I would be if I were not a fool,” declared Jack, forcing a short laugh.

Frank gave the Southerner a quick look, observing that Jack’s face was flushed and his eyes filled with a light of joy.

“What’s happened, old man?” asked Merry. “You look as if you had heard good news.”

“So I have.”

“Mind telling?”

“I guess not. I made an ass of myself, Merriwell, and I’ve just found it out. To-day I received a letter from Juliet.”

“Really?”

“Yes; here it is.”

Diamond triumphantly drew it from a pocket near his heart.

“I’ll not let you read it,” he said, laughing, “for I think any man a cad who permits his friends to peruse his love-letters.”

“Then it is a love-letter?” cried Frank.

Jack nodded happily.

“Decidedly so!” he said. “In it Juliet has shown me what a great big chump I am. The man was her cousin, whom she had not seen for some time, as he had been in India. She was offended by my manner and words, and would not explain. That’s spirit for you, Merry! By Jove, I like it! Isn’t she like Inza! When I continued to be a duffer she grew more and more angry, which was perfectly natural. She was determined to punish me by letting me think she meant never to speak to me again. But she did not think I would jump out of London in such a hurry, and she was appalled when she learned I had gone. Ha, ha!

“Well, she kept still just as long as she could, and then she wrote me this letter. She says she tried hard not to write it, and that she was determined to burn it after it was written; but she posted it instead of burning it, and now all the clouds are cleared away. I’ve just written a long reply, asking her forgiveness and begging permission to resume my suit. Gentlemen, I’m going back to London, and I’ll marry that girl just as soon as she’ll have me! I’m going to hurry up about it, too, before I make a fool of myself again and lose her for good.”

“Old man, I congratulate you!” cried Frank, as he grasped Jack’s hand. “But let this be a warning to you never again to entertain doubts of her without positive, absolute, and incontrovertible proof.”

As Merry said this he looked at Starbright, who flushed slightly and turned away.

Diamond was happy indeed. From the depths he had been lifted to the heights, and he felt that he was a very lucky fellow. He freely expressed himself to that effect.

“It’s more than I deserve,” he declared. “She would have treated me right if she’d refused ever again to have anything to do with me. I don’t know how I am going to set myself right in her eyes, and I shall feel guilty when I meet her. Merry, you must be the best man when we are married.”

“If it is possible, it will be a great pleasure,” smiled Frank.

“Oh, you’ll have to make it possible. But for you I’d never met her, you know. You have brought me all my good fortune, just the same as you bring good fortune to every one of your friends.”

Starbright had resumed his seat. There was a look of bitterness on his handsome, boyish face, but the happy Virginian did not observe it. Frank, however, could read Dick’s thoughts, and he knew the freshman had told himself that the Inza matter could not turn out after the manner of the misunderstanding between Jack and Juliet.

To Merry it seemed that this reconciliation between the Virginian and the English girl had happened at just the right time to serve as an object-lesson. Diamond had been foolishly jealous, had not trusted Juliet, and now he realized the full extent of his folly.

“Boys!” cried Jack, “I’ll blow you to dinner to-night! Why, I want to do something to make others happy, I am so happy myself! Where’ll we go—Del’s?”

Starbright shook his head.

“I can’t go,” he said. “I’m in training, you know, and it won’t do.”

“Training!” cried Diamond. “What, this early? Yes, I remember. But how happens it you are here?”

Dick did not feel like making an explanation just then.

“Business—er—business, you know,” he faltered.

“Well, a square feed will do you good, now that you are away from the training-table. Oh, that training-table! It gives every man a great appetite.”

But Starbright had no appetite.

“We’ll let you blow us at another time, Jack,” smiled Frank. “I don’t feel like stuffing myself to-night.”

“You never feel like stuffing yourself,” said the Virginian resentfully. “Ever since I can remember, you have been eating coarse bread, dodging pastry, eschewing pork and veal, and living like a dyspeptic.”

“With the result that I am as little like a dyspeptic as a man can possibly be. I eat coarse bread because there is little nutriment in white bread—all the important food-elements having been removed with the bran. The man who bolts his food is digging his own grave.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Diamond. “A lecture on diet by the great expert, Frank Merriwell! Look at him! Behold him! He is a perfect man, and all because he never ate improper food. Go thou and do likewise.”

Frank laughed a little.

“You are putting it pretty strong,” he said. “Merely eating the proper food will not make any man an athlete or give him perfect health. He must conform to other rules and regulations; he must take proper exercise, and he must not disregard the natural laws of health. A fellow who fancies he can indulge in excesses and retain his health is fooling himself in the worst way.”

“My dear fellow,” smiled Jack, “down in my country we are hospitable. We fling open our doors and invite our friends. Tables are loaded with the fat of the land, and every guest is supposed to take hold and eat his fill. You would find yourself out of order down there, with your rules and regulations.”

“Not at all. I should eat with the others, but I’d take care to eat slowly and not overload myself. That’s all. I have no use for cranks, but a man may stick to what he knows is right, and avoid what he knows is wrong, without giving anybody the right to dub him a crank.”

“Oh, I suppose that’s so, Merry. We all know you’re all right. But not every fellow can take care of himself and build himself up as you have done, though I reckon you were cut out for an athlete at the start.”

“That’s where you suppose wrong. I was a weak boy, with poor health and an imperfect body. When I realized that such was the case, I set about trying to find out what to do to build myself up. It was slow work at first, for sometimes I went wrong. Even after I got on the right track my progress was so slow that it was disheartening. Sometimes I fancied I was not advancing at all; but I stuck to it and won out in the end.”

“Well, we’re willing to give you all the credit you deserve,” said Jack; “but when a fellow has a stomach like an ostrich, what’s the use of dieting? When one can eat any old thing without having it hurt him, why should he deprive himself of the things he likes, and settle down on a coarse-food diet?”

“When a chap is growing, he demands more food than when he arrives at maturity, but that food should be of the nature best calculated to make a perfect man of him. I am certain that it would be a better thing for the boys of this country if they were aware of this.”

Starbright was paying little attention to Merry’s words, for his thoughts were all of a dark-eyed, beautiful girl whom he believed fickle and false.

Merriwell had seemed to welcome the opportunity to talk of something far removed from the subject of his conversation with the freshman. However, he noted the moody look on the unusually good-natured face of Dick, and he rattled on with his talk to prevent Diamond from observing and commenting.

“Why don’t you start out lecturing to the boys and young men of the country, Merry?” smiled Jack. “I know they would turn out in multitudes to hear you speak, and I think you might do much good.”

“Perhaps you are right,” acknowledged Frank. “A man might spend his time in a less profitable manner.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE MAN INZA MET.

Starbright was moody. Nothing seemed to arouse him from the dispirited, downcast state into which he had fallen. Being a big, strong fellow, in robust health, such an atmosphere was strange to him. Frank could not remember having seen the fellow just like that but once before, and that was when he was recovering from the spell of dissipation into which he had been thrown by the drug given him by his enemies.

Diamond had never seen Dick in a gloomy mood, and he was surprised by it. He tried to rally the freshman, saying he must be in love; but Starbright simply frowned and shook his head.

Dick was thinking of Inza as she had appeared to him once, and as she appeared to him now.

“They’re all alike!” he thought bitterly. “Rosalind was like Inza in many ways, and she threw me over for Dade Morgan. When she found out what a scoundrel Morgan was she tried to make up with me, but I was not quite so big a chump as she imagined. I think Inza is even worse than Rose, for she has deceived Frank right along. He is so honest and square himself that he never suspects others of deception. It’s useless to try to convince him, for he believes in that girl implicitly.

“I’m sorry for him, but it’s plain he is desperately in love with her, even though he may not really know it. Why, I fancy he’d marry her to-morrow if she’d have him! That being the case, he is in danger, for she is liable to decide at any minute that she’ll have him. If she should, she’d find a way to let him know it and to lead him into a proposal. How is that to be prevented? The only way is to convince him beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is a treacherous, heartless flirt. But how can I convince him? I must find a way. I will.”

Starbright still seemed to feel that he had done Merriwell a wrong, and this added to his sense of duty toward the youth who had befriended him when he first came to college. Having become convinced that Merry would be led into a snare in case he ever married Inza, Dick determined to find a way to prove to Frank that the dark-eyed, haughty girl was unworthy of him.

“I must do it, even though it makes him despise me,” mentally decided the big Andover man. “It will be nothing more than an act of pure friendship.”

Jack Diamond’s story of his mistake had made not the slightest impression upon Starbright. Frank had hoped it would open the youth’s eyes to the folly of jumping at conclusions, but it had not, for Dick, like old Captain Starbright, his father, was hard-headed and set, once having formed an opinion.

A man of this character is almost always successful in life if he gets started on the right track, for he will stick and hang like a bulldog until he wins; but give him a wrong start, let him bend his energies in the wrong direction, and he will persist in a bull-headed way in carrying out plans that any one and every one else can see are certain to bring disaster upon him.

The bulldog determination and stick-to-it-iveness is all right if it is properly combined with reasoning ability. But the person who says he is right because he thinks so, and refuses to listen to reason or argument, is certain sooner or later to butt his head against a stone and knock out what few obstinate brains he possesses. There are men so constituted that they persist in declaring they are right, in the face of positive evidence to the contrary. Sometimes they shut their eyes so they may not see the evidence. This sort of bulldog persistency is simply “foolishness.”

Frank knew Dick was brooding over the affair, and he thought a walk in the open air might do the big freshman good. Thus, after they had eaten, during which Jack and Merry seemed in a very agreeable mood, not a little to Dick’s wonderment, Merriwell proposed a walk.

Diamond, however, stated that he had many letters to write and thought he had better be about them at once.

“I’ll have to run down home for a day or two before going across,” he said. “I shall leave you to-morrow, Merriwell. To-night I shall spend in getting things straightened out here.”

So Frank and Dick left the hotel together. They made a handsome “pair” as they strolled along the street—shoulder to shoulder. Starbright was larger, but he was not a whit more finely developed, and there was a certain air of confidence and assurance about Merriwell that was not possessed by the big fellow. At a glance a discerning person could see that Frank was the natural leader and a born commander of men.

They walked up Broadway, attracting considerable attention and causing more than one head to be turned that the owner might follow them with his or her eyes.

“Things have conspired to hold me here in New York long after I had thought of returning to college,” said Merry; “but I’m going back with you to-morrow, Starbright.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Dick listlessly.

“Your voice did not sound as if you were very glad.”

“Nevertheless, I am, Frank. All the fellows will be delighted. Why, things are at loose ends there. Everybody is wondering what keeps you away.”

“Are they?”

“Yes. The baseball men are worried to death, and there is a general air of suspense and dread over the place.”

Frank laughed. “I fear you are making it too strong, Starbright. Yale got along all right before I came, and I am sure she will continue to do so when I’m gone.”

“But you know what happened when you were away—you know how she slumped the year you were out of college.”

“The same thing might have happened had I been there.”

“Nobody believes it. All point to the fact that you straightened things out in a hurry when you came back.”

“That is giving me too much credit.”

“Nobody thinks so. Yale never in her history had such a football-team as she did last season. Not once was she defeated. Harvard had the best team she ever put onto the field, yet Yale beat her. I say Yale, but I mean Merriwell, for it is certain Harvard would have won that game had you not risen from a sickbed and appeared on the field at the critical moment in the last half. You won the game for us, Merriwell, by the most remarkable play ever seen on a football-field, jumping clean over the head of a tackler. What other man could have done that?”

Starbright was beginning to forget Inza, and life and animation were coming back to him.

“It was a very lucky trick,” said Merry, with no show of false modesty.

“Lucky! It was astounding, and the strange thing is that not a single newspaper report described it. All reports say you dodged Fulton, the Harvard tackler, when in truth you dodged him by jumping over him as he flung himself forward to grasp you about the body. I think that was a clean case of robbing you of the credit that was your due.”

Again Frank laughed.

“Who cares as long as Yale won!” he cried.

“Everybody cares at Yale. I tell you, Merriwell, you’ll find you are the thing when you get back there! You had enemies once, but they’re all in the soup now. Not even the Chickering set dares breathe a word against you in public, for they know it would mean tar and feathers. You’ll find the professors ready to take off their hats to you. And everybody is kicking because this is your last term at the old college.”

“My boy, you make me afraid to go back there; but I hope it is not as bad as you say, for I couldn’t stand it. I don’t want anybody bowing down to me. I’m just plain Frank Merriwell, and nothing more.”

“Which means that to-day you are the greatest and best-known young man in this country. Oh, I’m not putting it on too thick! Can you wonder that Yale dreads to lose you? Can you wonder that your absence has produced no end of worry?”

Frank knew Starbright was sincere. He had entertained a feeling of resentment toward the freshman because of his suspicions concerning Inza; but now Merry realized once more that Dick was scarcely anything but a big, impressionable boy, and must be regarded as such.

“I shall be sorry to leave without seeing Inza or hearing anything about her,” admitted Frank.

Instantly the cloud returned to Starbright’s face.

“Inza!” he muttered bitterly.

They had reached Thirty-third Street.

“Let’s walk down Sixth Avenue,” said Merry, and they turned that way, leaving Broadway, glowing with thousands of electric lights, behind.

Over their heads rumbled the elevated trains, beneath the trestles of which ran the surface trolleys. The avenue looked dark and dingy in comparison with “Beautiful Broadway,” for at night the portion of Broadway between Twenty-third and Forty-second Streets is really fascinating and attractive.

On Broadway the greater part of the pedestrians had been well dressed and fashionable in appearance. Barely had they turned into Sixth Avenue when the general appearance of the people changed.

Dick suddenly clutched Frank’s arm with a crushing grip.

“Look!” he excitedly breathed, seeming to quiver from head to feet. “There he is!”

He pointed to a bearded man who had paused to look at the chronometer in the window of a jeweler’s small shop, having in hand his own watch, which he was setting to correspond with the correct time.

“Who is it?” asked Frank quietly.

“The man Inza met at the Grand Central!” hissed Starbright. “The one she called Walter! That is the man!”

CHAPTER XVII

INZA’S STRANGE ACTIONS.

“Sure?” questioned Merry guardedly. “Don’t make a mistake, my boy.”

“Dead sure!” asserted Dick excitedly.

The man wore a full beard, dark and wavy. Despite this beard, Merry could see he was a young man. His clothes were of dark material and fitted him loosely, but there was nothing slouchy in his appearance. Instead of that, his general air was that of a person who was rather particular about his appearance. The “misfit” of the clothing was suggestive of London. His overcoat was very loose, but it was of fine material. He wore a soft black hat set squarely on his head.

“Have you ever seen him before?” questioned Dick. “Do you know him?”

“I do not seem to remember him,” confessed Merry.

“He’s a stranger to you! She never told you anything about him. You see! And you trusted her!”

Frank felt like rebuking Starbright, but at this moment the man turned away, and walked briskly down the avenue.

“We’ll follow him,” decided Merry quietly.

“Yes!” panted Dick. “He may take us to her! Then you can demand an explanation!”

“Don’t think I shall make such a fool of myself, my dear fellow. If she saw fit to make an explanation, I might listen; but I have no right to make any demands on her, and I shall not be an ass.”

“Well, I have a right!”

“I hardly think so.”

“But I have! Why not?”

“Because you do not trust her, Starbright. When you cease to trust Inza, you forfeited your rights to demand anything of her.”

Dick gasped.

“What are you talking about? If I still trusted her, there would be no need for me to ask her to explain.”

“Exactly,” nodded Merry. “As you do not, you have no right to ask her. That puts you out of it. I hope she is not badly smitten with you, my boy, for I hardly think you deserve to win her.”

This was plain talk, and it struck home. Starbright felt the wound rankle in his heart, and again he bitterly resolved to convince Merry that Inza Burrage was not all she had been fancied to be.

The man in advance was moving briskly. Frank and Dick kept a certain distance behind him.

“You’ll find out!” said the freshman. “Don’t take your eyes off him! You’ll find you have been fooled by her!”

“Enough of that!” commanded Frank sharply. “I will listen to no more of it! If it were not that I wish to convince you of your shameful mistake, I’d not take the trouble to follow this man, for I trust her fully and completely.”

Starbright was silenced.

The stranger kept straight down Sixth Avenue till Twenty-third Street was reached. As he approached that corner, a handsome, well-dressed girl came quickly toward him.

It was Inza, who, apparently, had been waiting for him there.

“There she is!” panted Starbright.

“Silence!” ordered Frank.

She ran up and grasped the stranger by the arm, and they plainly heard her say:

“Oh, Walter, I’m so glad you’ve come! Three men have followed me all the way from the house and persisted in speaking to me. They hung around and annoyed me when I paused here, where you promised to meet me.”

The man uttered an exclamation of anger.

“Where are the whelps?” he demanded.

“There they are!” said Inza, pointing at a trio of men who looked like sports and fighters. An instant later the stranger had walked straight up to the men, and then——

Smack! smack! smack!

Swift as thought, he slapped the faces of each one of them.

“Perhaps that will teach you to mind your own business and let a lady alone, even though she may not be accompanied by an escort!” he cried.

The men were astounded by this treatment, but they recovered quickly, and the leader—a big fellow with a heavy black mustache—made a jump and delivered a swinging blow at Inza’s companion, growling:

“Take that, you big stiff!”

But the stranger skilfully parried the blow, and gave the fellow one on the chin that sent him staggering.

The others, however, set on him both together, and both hit him, one succeeding in tripping him at the same time, which sent him to the sidewalk. Instantly one of the young ruffians lifted a foot to give the fallen man a kick.

About that time Frank Merriwell got into action, followed closely by Dick Starbright. Merriwell’s fist crashed on the jaw of the fellow who was on the point of kicking Inza’s protector. Down the man went, dropping like a log.

Starbright grasped the other fellow by the neck and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat.

The one who had been struck by the stranger had recovered by this time, and he aimed a vicious blow at the freshman.

Dick would have been hit fairly under the ear, but Merriwell was too quick, and the man with the black mustache was sent staggering with a thrust.

Then Starbright flung his man aside and turned to see if his assistance was needed. He found Frank assisting the fallen stranger to rise.

The fellow with the black mustache saw Frank stoop, and he aimed a vicious kick at Merry’s face, springing forward to deliver it.

Starbright’s heavy hand caught this chap by the neck, and then the big freshman drove the toe of his foot into the fellow’s back, fairly lifting him from the ground.

The astounded ruffian uttered a shout of rage and pain.

“You’re a great kicker,” said Dick. “How do you like some of your own medicine?”

He had not released his hold, and he proceeded to lift the fellow again, using his right foot this time.

“Ow!” howled the bewildered and amazed masher. “Ow! Don’t! Ow! You—ugh!”

Dick used his left foot, and again the fellow howled.

“Help, help!” roared the ruffian.

“Calm yourself,” advised Starbright. “I do not need help. I am able to attend to your case without assistance.”

Then, he repeated with the right foot, and the kick seemed to raise the man two feet from the sidewalk.

“You’re killing me!” groaned the masher, trying to twist round, but finding himself helpless in the grasp of the Andover giant.

“Not at all,” said Dick. “I intend to only about half-kill you. That will be enough to teach you a wholesome lesson.”

And then he kicked with both feet in quick succession, and did not cease till the demoralized masher was limp and helpless. Then Dick held him up, steadied him on his feet, and grimly said:

“I’ll give you two minutes to get out of sight. Steady! If you don’t hustle away, I may take a notion to overhaul you and kick you some more. I have enjoyed kicking you very much.”

The fellow staggered away when Dick released him.

Turning, Starbright found that Merriwell had easily handled the other two fellows and put them to flight.

“The opportunity was just what I’ve wanted,” muttered Dick. “I’ve been longing to kick somebody for several hours.”

Of course, this encounter had attracted attention, but its sudden termination without police interference seemed to disappoint the crowd, which began to melt away in short order.

Inza had stood aside while Merriwell and Starbright disposed of the three men, but now she came forward and spoke to them, although seeming not a little astonished and distressed.

“I’m so glad you were on hand to help us!” she said. “If I’d been a man, I think I should have enjoyed taking part in that!”

“I think I owe the gentlemen thanks,” said the stranger. “They were too many for me, and it’s lucky somebody happened along to help me out. I must say you disposed of them very finely.”

Starbright was scowling at the stranger, but Frank laughed quietly.

“I assure you,” said Merry, “we enjoyed the pleasure.”

“But Frank, Dick,” said Inza, plainly bewildered, “I thought you both in New Haven.”

“As you see, we are not.”

“But how does it happen?”

“I was detained in the city,” Merry explained, “and Dick ran down to—to see me and to take me back.”

“Why doesn’t she introduce her bearded friend?” Starbright was asking himself.

Frank wondered a little over this, but fancied Inza had forgotten in her excitement caused by the encounter.

“Well, it’s a great surprise,” said Inza. “I thought you both many miles away.”

“Haven’t a doubt of it,” thought Dick.

“We expect to return to New Haven to-morrow,” said Frank.

The stranger was silent now, having stepped back a little. He stood looking at Frank in a rather peculiar and penetrating manner.

“To-morrow?” repeated Inza, her embarrassment seeming to increase, as she looked from Frank and Dick to the strange man.

The latter shook his head slightly. With his eyes wide open for every move, Merry saw this, and knew it was a signal to Inza.

“Yes,” nodded Merry. “I called at your hotel in Brooklyn to see you, but found you were gone.”

“Yes, we—we left there after we supposed you had returned to New Haven. We’re stopping in New York for a few days.”

“Near here?” inquired Merry, with deferential politeness.

“Yes—quite near.”

Again Inza looked toward the man in the background, and again Merry saw the stranger shake his head a trifle.

“We’re going to leave the city very soon,” Inza hurried on, as if anxious to say something, but finding herself quite at a loss for words. “I’m truly glad to see you both. Oh, Dick! what a horrid scowl you have on your face!”

“Have I?” murmured Starbright, bowing.

“Why, you big boy! don’t you see it does not disturb Frank at all? I’m sorry I—I can’t invite you to call; but you—you are go—going away so soon—you know—of course——”

Usually Inza was quite self-possessed, but now she floundered badly.

“We might be able to stay longer, Miss Burrage, if——”

“Miss Burrage, indeed!” cried Inza resentfully. “Why do you call me that, Dick? Why are you so formal? You’re not a bit like yourself.”

“And I fancy you are not just like your usual self,” Dick returned.

“Why, of course—of course, I—I was flustered by that horrid affair. A street-fight! But it could not be helped, and the men had insulted me.”

“The scoundrels!” exclaimed Frank, rousing again at the thought of it. “They got off altogether too easily!”

The stranger had turned and walked away a short distance. Seeing this, Inza, who appeared more perplexed and distressed than ever, said:

“I must go! I’ll see you both at New Haven during the Easter holidays, for I expect to be there then.”

Starbright was glaring after the stranger, and did not seem to hear her words. Merry, however, was giving her the closest attention, and he quickly said:

“That’s right, Inza—do come. Everybody will be delighted to see ‘the Mascot of the Crew.’”

She held out her gloved hand.

“And you?”

“You know how pleased I’ll be,” he said, taking her hand.

She gave his fingers a little pressure, while she tried to smile into his eyes.

“I know,” she murmured; “but—there was a time——”

What did she mean? She stopped short, forced a laugh, said “good-by,” and turned to Dick.

“Good-by, Dick,” she said, offering her hand. “I hope you make the ball-team this spring.”

He actually seemed to hesitate about accepting her hand, but it was only for a fraction of a second. Then he bent low over her fingers, his hat lifted, murmuring something polite—but frigid.

Inza hastened to the stranger, took his arm, and accompanied him westward along Twenty-third Street.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MYSTERIOUS LITTLE STICK.

“Well,” said Starbright grimly, “what do you think about it now?”

“Just what I thought before,” answered Frank calmly.

Dick seemed astonished.

“Impossible!” he exclaimed. “Why, Merriwell, didn’t you see how confused she was? And she did not introduce him! She was all broken up about it.”

“For which I was very sorry.”

“Well, hanged if I can understand you, Merriwell! It must be plain to you now that she has fooled us both.”

“Nothing of the kind is plain to me, Starbright. I have known Inza Burrage a long time, and I trust her fully.”

Dick flung out one hand in a gesture of despair.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see,” he said. “Talk about obstinacy! Why, Merriwell, you cannot explain her actions! Everything demanded that she introduce the man, and yet she did not. What have you to say to that?”

“Simply that there must have been some good reason why she did not.”

“And when she spoke about our calling, and I said we might call, she was more confused than ever. She did not wish us to call, and you know it.”

“I think you are right about that.”

“Why didn’t she wish it?”

“You know as well as I.”

“Did she act natural?”

“No.”

“Aren’t appearances against her?”

“They seem to be,” Merry was forced to confess.

“And still you have confidence in her?”

“I trust her fully, Starbright. That girl has been my friend and I have been hers ever since we first met in Fardale. I have saved her life on more than one occasion. In return she watched beside me when I was raving and delirious with a fever that threatened to end all in this world for me. It was her care that brought me back to life and health. And then, when I—forced to earn my living by daily labor—when I had no work and no money, she got work for me.

“When people who regarded a day-laborer as something far beneath them refused to recognize me, she found a way to compel them to do so. Starbright, that girl has been to me the best friend a man could have! Do you think I would doubt her now? I trust her as fully as I would trust my own mother, were she living! She has a reason for anything she has done, and a good reason it will prove to be. I am willing to wait until she explains. If she does not see fit to explain, I shall still believe in her!”

Dick Starbright was silenced at last. He wondered at the great faith of Frank Merriwell, and again he told himself:

“He loves her! There is no longer a doubt of it. And love is blind! It is useless to make a further attempt to open his eyes.”

Then, after a little, he spoke aloud:

“You may be right, Merriwell—I hope you are. Nothing could give me greater satisfaction than to know you had made no mistake. That’s all I can say.”

“Then we will say no more about her. Do you understand? Do not speak to me again of her, Starbright!”

Inza and her mysterious escort had disappeared along the street as Frank and Dick turned to leave the corner. Then Merry stooped and picked up something lying on the sidewalk.

It proved to be a peculiar little black stick, about five inches long, having strange characters, like hieroglyphics, upon it.

“What is it?” asked Dick.

“Hanged if I know!” confessed Merry, gazing at it curiously. “It’s a queer thing, anyhow.”

“Those characters look like Chinese writing,” said Starbright.

“Something,” nodded Frank.

They gazed with increasing curiosity at the little black stick.

“Well, I’m going to keep it,” said Frank, as he dropped it into his pocket. “It is a curiosity, at least.”

They walked eastward to Broadway, neither of them having much to say. Near the Fifth Avenue Hotel they paused at a lighted window, and Frank took the stick from his pocket to examine it again. Standing there, he turned it over and over, feeling a strange sensation of mystery settling upon him.

“Starbright,” he said, “I’d give something to know just what sort of a find I’ve made.”

“I don’t think it will ever prove very profitable,” said Dick.

Two men were passing at that moment. They were dressed in ordinary clothes, but beneath their hats were coiled queues, for they were Chinamen.

One of them espied the stick in Frank’s hand. He seized the other, held him fast, and pointed. Both stared in great excitement. Then they darted forward with catlike footsteps.

It happened that Starbright saw them in time, and he knocked aside the yellow hand that was outstretched to grasp the mysterious stick.

“Look out, Frank!”

The other fellow tried to snatch the stick, but Dick’s warning cry had put Merry on his guard.

“No, you don’t!” said Frank, springing back.

“Glivee tlo me!” chattered the Celestial, his face betraying the greatest excitement and eagerness.

“Get out!” returned Merry. “Why should I give it to you?”

“I wantee it! I wantee it! Give tlo me!”

“Yah, yah!” chattered the other. “Yah, yah!”

He danced in great excitement.

“I don’t understand that kind of talk,” Merry confessed. “Chinese is not one of my accomplishments.”

“Glivee tlo me!” commanded the other, his hand still outstretched.

“Is it yours?” asked Merry.

The Chinaman nodded madly.

“It b’longee tlo me,” he asserted.

“Where did you lose it?”

“Yah, yah!” chattered the other again.

“Where did you lose it?” persisted Merry.

“Me no lemembal,” said the one who spoke pidgin-English. “Me lostee it. Glivee tlo me!”

“Not unless you can satisfy me that it belongs to you,” asserted Frank obstinately, for he had conceived a desire to retain possession of that curious stick. “If I knew it belonged to you, I’d give it up in a minute.”

Again the Chinaman nodded as if his neck worked on hinges.

“B’longee tlo me,” he asserted. “Glivee klick! Melican mlan gitee into double if no glivee klick.”

“Yah, yah, yah!” parroted the other, still dancing.

Frank put the stick into his pocket.

“I think I’ll keep it a while longer,” he said. “I am stopping here at this hotel. If you wish to find me to-morrow, come round early and show this card.”

He offered his card to the one who could talk some English. The other gave a howl and chattered something that sounded like a command.

A moment later both Chinamen made movements as if to draw weapons from beneath their coats.

“Look out for them, Merry!” burst from the freshman. “They cut sometimes!”

He sprang upon one of the Celestials, and Frank grasped the other.

“Bounce them!” shouted Dick.

Biff! biff!—two kicks, two howls, and two Chinamen went flying toward the gutter.

“Let’s retire before we get into further trouble,” suggested Frank laughingly. “This is getting altogether too swift for me.”

They turned to enter the hotel, but the Chinamen had picked themselves out of the gutter, and came running across the wide walk.

The two Yale men turned, expecting a furious attack; but, instead, the Celestials threw themselves on their knees and bowed down at the feet of Frank, jabbering strangely.

“Well, of all the queer things that ever happened, this takes the first money!” gasped Starbright, staring in astonishment at the prostrated Chinamen.

The heathens were bowing low, now and then pressing their foreheads to the cold flagging of the walk, while they chanted in a strange, chattering monotone.

“I’m in it!” laughed Frank. “I think I must be a Joss.”

“Oh, gleat Melican mlan,” sobbed the one who could speak English, “glivee up to us an’ we pay heepee mluch.”

“Hello!” whistled Frank. “Now the thing has a money-value! What do you think of that, Dick?”

“It’s marvelous!” asserted the Andover man. “I don’t know what to think of it.”

It was a very queer adventure, and Merry found something fascinating about it, for it was mystifying.

The Chinaman who could make himself understood continued to implore Frank to give up the stick, increasing his offers of money with bewildering swiftness.

“Glivee tlo hundal dollal—thlee—floa—fivee!” he declared. “Pay quickee! Glivee up.”

“Well, it seems that I’ve found a prize,” said Frank. “Five hundred dollars for a little black stick? You are crazy, John! Get up and stop that business of wiping your face on the sidewalk.”

“Will glivee?”

Now, five hundred dollars was an object, but Frank was willing to give the stick up for nothing the moment he was convinced that it belonged to either of these men. If it did not belong to them, there must be something very remarkable about it to cause them to offer five hundred dollars for it.

“I don’t believe the heathen has that much money to his name,” said Dick.

“Yes, yes!” asserted the Chinaman eagerly, straightening up, but remaining on his knees. “Glot monee. Look!”

He exhibited a wad of bank-notes and bills.

The actions of the Chinamen had attracted attention, and Frank felt like getting away.

“I don’t want your money,” he said. “Come to me to-morrow and bring my card. I’ll see you then, and, if you can convince me that the stick belongs to you, you shall have it.”

But the Chinamen seemed filled with terror at his desire to leave them.

“We glo now! We keepee with you,” they said.

“Not to-night,” came firmly from Frank. “Come, Dick.”

But when they entered the lobby of the hotel, the Chinamen followed like two dogs. Not relishing this, Frank called attention to them, and they were promptly compelled to leave the place.

“There,” said Dick, with a breath of relief, when the Chinamen were gone. “I’m glad to get rid of them. What in the name of all that is wonderful do you suppose they wanted of that queer little stick? I believe that one of them would have paid the five hundred for it.”

“I believe he would have paid more,” said Frank. “He went up to five hundred with a rush. It would have been scarcely less surprising had he offered five thousand.”

“And I was sure at one time that they were going to draw weapons on us. I believe they did mean to do so.”

“If so, they quickly changed their minds. Let’s go up to the room and see if Diamond is there. We can look the stick over, and see what can be made of it.”

Diamond was not in Frank’s room. When they had removed their overcoats, Frank produced the remarkable stick, and they began to inspect it. Merry fancied there might be a hidden spring that would cause it to fly open and reveal a secret of some sort, but a search failed to show that there was anything of the kind connected with the stick. Indeed, the stick appeared to be nothing more than a simple piece of solid black wood, upon which were some very strange characters.

While they were engaged in examining it there came a knock on the door. On opening the door, Merry saw a hotel-boy, behind whom stood the stranger who had accompanied Inza.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Merriwell,” said this man; “but I took the liberty to come right up with the boy. You have something that belongs to me.”

“I have?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“That!”

The man had stepped forward and was pointing at the little black stick in Frank’s hand. Starbright uttered a smothered exclamation.

“I’m in luck to find it,” said the stranger, passing the boy and entering the room. “I congratulate myself.”

“This?” muttered Frank—“this yours?”

“It is. I presume you must have picked it up on the sidewalk near where the encounter with those mashers took place?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I lost it there.”

“You dropped it?”

“I did. But I did not discover the loss till some time later. When I did so, I turned about and ran back to that corner. You had gone.”

“Then what?”

“I searched all around for it, but could not find it.”

“After that?”

“I tried to find you. I hastened along Twenty-third Street, and I was in luck. After turning into Broadway I saw you.”

“The Chinamen——”

“Were doing their best to get you to give up the stick. If you had shown an inclination to do so, I was determined to step forward and object, even though it would place my life in the greatest peril.”

“Place your life in peril? How?”

The bell-boy had disappeared, and Frank closed the door, which the stranger left open on entering.

“The life of any American, or any man not a Chinaman and a member of a strange secret order, is in constant peril if that stick remains in his possession,” asserted the stranger seriously.

The mystery was growing deeper.

“Then my life must be in peril?” questioned Frank.

“It is.”

“And this stick is somehow connected with a Chinese secret society?”

“Exactly. It was stolen three years ago from a temple in the very heart of China. Since then members of the order, which is the largest and most powerful in the whole world, have searched for it everywhere. It somehow fell into the hands of an Englishman whom I had the good fortune to befriend. He lost every dollar he possessed at Monte Carlo and blew out his brains. Before doing the latter trick, however, he gave me the stick, telling me its real value, and I have treasured it highly ever since. It was in my pocket when the encounter took place on that corner, and somehow it fell out.”

“I have no doubt that it belongs to you, sir,” said Frank, “and, therefore, I shall take pleasure in restoring it to you. But why did those two Chinamen make such efforts to obtain it?”

“They must be members of the society.”

“That is something I do not fully understand at the present time, but the high priests of the society are sorcerers and magicians of the highest degree, and with that stick they somehow work out their most difficult feats of magic. Without it they are powerless to do the mightiest things.”

“I am beginning to understand how a superstitious Chinese society might come to set a great value on the thing, but I fail to see why it should be of any remarkable value to an American or an Englishman.”

The stranger smiled a mysterious smile.

“Some Englishmen and some Americans are superstitious,” he said. “The man who owned this stick formerly was a gambler. When it came into his possession he was down on his luck. While he possessed it he made a fortune. Money rolled in on him. Everything seemed to come his way.”

“But fortune turned against him at last and he lost all.”

“Yes.”

“Did not that cure him of his superstition?”

“Hardly. He carried it to death. He claimed that he lost because at the proper time he failed to do the proper thing in connection with the stick.”

“But why did he kill himself? With such a marvelous talisman in his possession, he should have believed himself able to regain all he had lost.”

“Not all. Money he might have regained, and he knew it, but not his wife. When he lost his wealth he lost her, also. She was young and beautiful, but heartless. She loved a man for what he could give her. When my friend lost his last dollar over the table, he had her near him. He looked into her eyes, and saw anger and disgust there. He knew she hated and despised him for losing his money. He also knew she had been greatly admired by the Prince of Monaco.

“Then he resolved to make one last stand. He spoke to the prince, called him aside, offered to stake his wife against a sum equal to one hundred thousand dollars. The prince quietly accepted. The cast was made, and again my friend lost. Perhaps that was the real reason why he put a bullet in his head. Before he died he gave me this stick, and told me all about it—that is, he told me all he knew about it. Not everything can be known by a person outside the mysterious order to which it belongs. I have heard that not everything can be known in the order, save to a very few high priests. But every member of the order is sworn to protect and guard the stick with his life, and they believe a failure to do so means ever-lasting torture for the one who fails.”

“That explains the queer actions of the two Chinamen,” said Merry.

“And makes me dead sure they were reaching for weapons when their hands went under their coats,” nodded Starbright.

“I was watching their every move,” asserted the stranger. “I feared they would attack you with knives, and I was ready to chip in if they did.”

“But if they did not——”

“I preferred keeping in the background, for I did not care to have those Chinamen discover I was the real owner of the stick.”

“But you are not the real owner!” exclaimed Starbright. “It does not belong to you at all! You have acknowledged that!”

The stranger looked surprised, and then frowned darkly.

“If I am not the rightful owner, there is no rightful owner in this country. I am an American, and I lost that stick. I presume you will give it to me, Mr. Merriwell?”

“It seems to me that it is Frank’s duty to return it to the society from which it was stolen in the first place,” said Dick grimly.

The stranger looked startled, but there came to his face an expression of sudden savage determination.

“I hope Mr. Merriwell will not agree with you,” he said instantly. “I have proved that I lost it, and——”

“You have confessed that it was stolen, in the first place.”

“Well?”

“A receiver of stolen goods——”

“Be careful, sir!”

Frank saw that Dick was willing to get into trouble with the stranger—that he was seeking it. It is probable that the stranger understood this, also.

“You are going a little too far, Starbright,” said Merry sharply. “This gentleman has satisfied me that he lost the stick. Whether it rightfully belongs to him or not is not a question for me to decide. I know no members of the secret society——”

“The two Chinamen.”

“May or may not be members. It is possible they are enemies of the society.”

“That is true,” nodded the stranger, “though it is not likely.”

“If enemies of the society,” pursued Frank, “they might wish to get hold of the stick in order to obtain a power over the rightful owners.”

“Even if they are members of the society,” said the stranger, “that is not a reason why Mr. Merriwell should return the stick to them.”

“Why not?”

“Because that society stands for all that is bad in China. It has ever been opposed to Christianity, and is the persecutor of Christian missionaries. It was at the head of the late Boxer rising. It did its best—or its worst—to kill every missionary in China. The destruction of this society, which lives and thrives on all that is superstitious, magical, heathenish, and degrading, would aid in the advancement of Christianity in China more than any other thing possibly could. Without the aid of this little black stick their head men cannot work their most powerful charms or perform their most amazing feats of black magic. Now, decide whether the stick should be returned to them or not.”

“If not,” muttered Starbright, “it should be destroyed.”

“And the man who destroyed it would forever have a hideous shadow hanging over him, as such an act would doom him to strangulation by some member of the society, and every member is sworn to know no rest till the guilty one is found and punished. The persistence with which these men follow up such a hunt is terrifying. They are like bloodhounds on the scent.”

“You have said quite enough,” laughed Frank. “Had you not said half as much, I should have returned the stick to you. I have no fancy to be harassed and hunted by a lot of Chinese thugs. Here, sir, is the stick.”

The stranger bowed low and expressed his thanks as he received the mysterious little article from Merry’s hand.

“But now,” he said, as he slipped it into his bosom, “it will be well for you to be on your guard, Mr. Merriwell.”

“What do you mean?”

“The stick has been seen in your possession.”

“Well?”

“You will be hunted and dogged by men determined to obtain it from you.”

“Whew! Then I am not getting rid of the hoodoo when I give it up to you?”

“No.”

“But I shall tell them I have given it up.”

“To whom?” smiled the stranger, in a mysterious way. “You do not know my name. You do not know where to find me. You do not know anything about me. You see——”

“Then why don’t you give your name?” cried Starbright.

“Because I do not wish to—because this trail must be broken here. I do not wish to be hunted by those cursed Chinese cutthroats!”

“Was that the reason why you did not give your name when we first met a short time ago?”

“Perhaps so; perhaps not.”

“It was not!” roared Dick. “I know the reason, and I——”

“Stop!” commanded Frank, his eyes flashing. “You are forgetting yourself, Starbright!”

The big Andover man stood glaring at the stranger, who was quite unmoved. Dick’s eyes were gleaming, and he seemed to long to attack the possessor of the mystic stick then and there.

“Your friend is excitable, Mr. Merriwell,” said the unknown. “Why should he care to know my name?”

“Oh, I have a reason!” asserted Starbright.

“And I have a reason for declining to give it—just now. Some time, perhaps, I may choose to make myself known to Frank Merriwell.”

Merry felt convinced that he had seen this man before—that he knew the man. In vain, however, he tried to remember when and where they had met.

“Don’t bother about it,” said the other, as if he surmised that Frank was trying to recall him. “It’s of no consequence, and you may be mistaken.”

Merry shook his head.

“I know I have seen you some time,” he said unswervingly.

A faint smile seemed to hide itself in the stranger’s beard.

“Still I assure you it is of no consequence.”

“But it’s very perplexing. I have a way of remembering faces perfectly.”

“But you cannot see much of my face.”

“That’s so! The beard hides it! If it were not for that beard I might recognize you.”

“Possibly. If I shave the beard, I may come round to see you. Just now I have to leave you, for I have an appointment that must be kept. This night the little stick may pass from my hands forever.”

“You—you will get rid of it?”

“If I get my price.”

“Who wants it?”

“A certain half-crazy doctor who dabbles in things occult and investigates everything mysterious. He is believed to be a wizard and sorcerer by many who have seen him work his strange incantations. But the man has located diamond-mines, found buried treasure, and is wonderfully wealthy. Thus his black art has paid him in a certain way, though some claim he has sold himself to the devil to obtain his ends. He wants this stick. He found out about it a number of years ago, and once he nearly lost his life in an attempt to steal it from the temple where it was kept. It is possible the thing was stolen afterward at his instigation, but failed to reach his hands.”

“He knows you have it?”

“I have communicated with him, making the claim. He has promised to investigate. If I can convince him that I speak the truth, he will pay me liberally for it. Liberally means that he will give up a fortune just to get the stick into his hands, for he fancies it will enable him to explore all the dark things he has hitherto found impregnable.”

“Well, if I were you,” said Frank, “I should lose no time in getting to him and making a trade.”

“I think I shall not. It is most fortunate for me that you found the stick to-night. I am indebted to you, and if I can pay the——”

Merry cut him short with a gesture.

“Don’t speak of pay! I’m glad to get rid of the thing!”

The stranger laughed and retreated toward the door.

“Perhaps I shall be,” he said. “Good night.”

He opened the door and turned to go out. Then he leaped backward, for just outside the door stood a tall Chinaman!

CHAPTER XIX

FRANK’S FAITH UNSHAKEN.

Before Merriwell or Starbright could make a move, the stranger leaped forward again, his hand having plunged into a pocket and come out. He gave it a flirt, and something struck the Chinaman fairly in the eyes.

With a cry of pain, the Celestial clapped his hands to his eyes and reeled backward. Quick as a flash, the stranger shot past him and was gone.

This had happened so swiftly that Merriwell and Starbright could do nothing. When they rushed out of the room the stranger had vanished and the Chinaman was groaning and jabbering with pain.

“What’s the matter?” asked Frank. “What did he do?”

“Puttee out eyles! Yi! yi! Oh, glivee watal quickee! Oh! oh!”

They dragged the Chinaman into the room and Merry soon had some water on his face.

“Red pepper!” cried Frank, as he detected the powder on the clothes of the Chinaman. “That man threw it in his eyes!”

“Yi! yi! yi!” yelled the Celestial. “Oh, eyles burnee likee led-hot fial! Oh, pooal John go to die velly quickee! Hi-yi!”

The yells of the frightened fellow soon brought people to investigate, and Merry explained what had happened.

The Chinaman belonged in the kitchen. How he came to be on that floor was a mystery, and he would not tell. All he seemed able to do was to howl with pain.

When the Celestial had been removed and the excitement was over, Merry flung himself on a chair, laughing outright.

“I fail to see what you are laughing about,” cried Starbright, who was striding up and down the floor.

“Well, if things to laugh about have not happened this night, they never did!” declared Frank.

“Then you see things in quite a different light from what I do.”

“It all depends on the mood a man is in how he looks at things, my boy,” said Merry. “In certain moods a tragedy may seem like a comedy.”

“Look here, Merriwell,” said Dick, stopping where he could face Frank squarely. “I want to know what you think about this matter now.”

“What matter?”

“This Inza Burrage business.”

Frank stopped laughing.

“Do you think just the same thing that you did?” persisted Dick. “Have you not changed your mind in the least?”

“Why, I have seen nothing to cause me to change my mind.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

“Not even after this fellow came here and refused to state his name or make any explanation?”

“Not even after that.”

“Well, you are queerly constructed. You trust her still?”

“Fully!”

“Do you think that man just the sort of a companion for Inza?”

“I don’t know.”

“He is a comrade of gamblers, the possessor of stolen property, a creature without a name!”

Frank was silent.

“Perhaps,” Dick went on, “he is a gambler himself. It is likely he may be, else why should he have a friend who was a gambler?”

Still Merry did not speak.

“It would not surprise me to learn that he is an escaped convict or a criminal wanted for some great offense.”

Merry’s lips tightened.

“How do you know he is not, Frank?” Dick demanded.

“Because he was with Inza!” Frank exclaimed. “That is quite enough to satisfy me, Starbright. I would trust her with my life, and nothing can shake my confidence in her.”

“Nothing?”

“No! It is useless to talk!”

“You would refuse to believe if I placed proof before you!”

“You’ll never be able to place such proofs before me.”

“We’ll see! That creature with his sorcerer’s stick has aroused me. I swear I’ll not leave New York till I find out his name and all about him!”

Dick was in earnest.

“When you find out, if you do, you may discover that you made a fool of yourself,” said Merry quietly, as he rose. “I think he told about all he knew concerning the mystic stick. I also think the Chinaman outside the door was listening to what passed in here. That being the case, it’s likely he belongs to the secret order. His companions notified him, and he was trying to keep track of the stick. If so, it is pretty certain he knows it has passed from my hands to another, and will so report it. I am glad of that, for I do not care to be tracked about by a lot of crazy Chinks who may take a notion at any time to knife a man in the back.”

Starbright scarcely seemed to hear Merriwell’s words. He had turned now and was pacing the floor, a dark look on his face.

After watching his companion a few moments, Merry sat down at the little table and began to write some letters.

When Jack Diamond came in it was nearly eleven o’clock, and both Dick and Frank were there, Starbright having taken a room in the hotel.

Diamond was in a gay humor, though he retained his air of politeness and dignity. He told stories and cracked jokes, being joined by Merry, who did not seem to have a care in the world.

“Everything is attended to,” Jack asserted. “To-morrow I shall slip down to old Virginia. Gentlemen, that is the State for you! It’s an honor to have been born in Virginia and of good parents. I am not sure I’ve always been an honor to my parents or to my State, but I mean to be in the future.”

Frank smiled.

“I see you are feeling like yourself once more, Jack,” he said.

“But our mutual friend Starbright seems off his feed,” observed the Southerner. “What ails him?”

There was a knock on the door, and Frank cried:

“Come in.”

A boy entered with a card, which he gave to Merry. When he saw the name on it, Frank leaped to his feet, uttering an exclamation of surprise.

“Inza?” he gasped. “Here at this hour! What does it mean?”

Then, turning to the boy, he inquired:

“Who accompanied the lady?”

“She is alone,” was the surprising answer. “She came in a cab and asked to see you without a moment’s delay.”

“Something is wrong!” declared Frank, getting his hat and overcoat. Then he hastened down to the ladies’ parlor, where Inza was waiting for him.

Inza was pale and somewhat agitated when Frank reached her.

“What is it, Inza?” Merry asked.

“Oh, Frank!” she said, “I am afraid something terrible has happened to—to Walter!”

“Walter?”

“Yes; you know—he is——”

“The gentleman who was with you?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think anything has happened to him?”

“After he came here and found you had picked up the stick he returned to the house with it in his possession. Then he told me he was going to see that crazy doctor about the stick, and he promised to return by ten o’clock. It is now long past eleven, and he has not returned. I knew it would not do to let father know about it. Father had retired for the night, so I slipped out of the house without his knowledge, and here I am. I came to you because I thought you would know what to do.”

Her words had conjured strange, gruesome visions before Merriwell’s vision. Frank had heard from the man’s lips the story that revealed the peril of any one who might possess the little black stick. Was it not possible that, for all of his trick in dodging the Chinaman at the door, he had been tracked down by members of the secret order and slain? Was it not possible the stranger might be dead somewhere in the dark streets of New York with the strangler’s cord about his neck?

Inza saw Merry’s lips tighten and she gave a little cry of fear.

“You are afraid!” she said, clutching Frank’s arm. “Oh, why did he ever meddle with that terrible thing! What if he has been killed!”

A pain shot through Frank’s heart, for her words and her agitation plainly showed that she loved the stranger. Could it be possible that Starbright was right?

“No! no!” Merry cried in his heart. “I will not believe it yet—I will not!”

“You must help me save him, if we can!” panted Inza. “I know the address of the crazy doctor, and we will go there. Perhaps he is there! Perhaps we shall find him unharmed!”

More than ever did she betray that she loved this mysterious man, and Frank could not hold back the words which forced themselves from his lips:

“You care for him very much—you love him?”

“Yes! yes! yes!” she cried. “And you must help me find and save him, Frank!”

Starbright was right! The face of Frank Merriwell was pale as death, and he stood for a moment like a man turned to stone. With a great effort he flung off the spell that seemed to have seized upon him.

“I’ll help you!” he promised. “Inza, I—I’ll do—anything—for you!”

As they left the parlor they found Jack Diamond and Dick Starbright waiting outside.

“Is there anything we can do?” asked the Virginian.

“Yes,” said Frank instantly; “you can come along, both of you, for you may be needed. Is the cab at the door, Inza?”

“Yes.”

Two minutes later all four were in that cab, and soon it was rattling swiftly toward a street and number Inza had given.

As they rolled along Frank explained to Diamond and Starbright what had brought Inza to the hotel. Diamond had known nothing of the affair till now, and it was necessary to make an explanation to him. This took up most of the time until the cab had rumbled down into a dingy and dirty street not far from Bleecker. At last it turned a corner and stopped.

As the door was opened and Frank jumped out there came a sudden cry of fire and out from a dark doorway plunged two figures. They were Chinamen, and they fled across the street. Near at hand was a Chinese laundry. From somewhere over the laundry came the muffled cries of fire.

“This is the place!” panted Inza, pointing. “See—there is the doctor’s sign! His office is up there somewhere! Ah! Look! look! It’s all afire inside! Walter—he is in there! Save him! save him!”

Behind the curtains which had been drawn at the upper windows there was a hideous red glare.

“Fire!” shouted Diamond.

“Come on!” rang out Frank’s voice. “Take care of her, somebody! The other one come with me!”

Merry had decided that the doctor’s office must be on the first floor above the laundry, but there he found himself in a dark corridor and he could not seem to tell from what direction the cries came. He paused a moment to try to locate them, and then felt his way forward with his hands.

“Where are you?” he shouted, at the top of his voice.

Smoke was beginning to creep into the corridor. Then he saw a gleam of light through a crack, and, a moment later, he found a door. From beyond that door came the cries.

Merry tried to open it, but it was locked. Then he backed off and flung his shoulder against it with all the force he could muster. There was a splintering crash, and he reeled headlong into the room where the fire was raging.

The place was filled with smoke, through which the flames looked yellow and tigerish. Immediately Merry dropped on his knees to get beneath the mass of smoke, which filled the room.

“Help!”

Through the haze he saw two forms stretched prostrate on the floor, and he crawled toward them.

“He is there!” he told himself. “She loves him!”

Two men lay on the floor, bound hand and foot. One had been struck over the head and was bleeding and unconscious. The other did not seem to be injured, and he it was who had uttered the cries.

It was the man Inza called “Walter.” Without doubt the other man was the crazy doctor.

“You!” cried Frank, looking into the eyes of the man. “She brought me here to rescue you!”

“Well, you’re just in time, Merriwell,” said the other. “You’ll have to hustle to do the little job, for that fire is spreading nicely.”

Frank was appalled by one mad thought which clutched him. He might rescue the old doctor and leave this fellow for the time. Of course, if he got out safely with the doctor he could come back for the other man. Why should he not do this? He was in no way bound to save the fellow whom Inza loved.

Yes he was! He had given her his word, and Frank Merriwell never broke his word, no matter what the result.

Then Merry caught up the stranger and staggered to his feet, starting for the door, which was not easy to find again. He succeeded, however, and ran full into Starbright, who had followed him.

“Here, Dick!” cried Merry, coughing and choking. “This is the man we came to save, but there is another in here. You take this chap and I’ll go back for the other.”

Starbright relieved Merry of his burden, but he cried:

“Be careful, Merriwell! Be sure to get out of that place! This old building is a tinder-box, and it is going to burn flat in a hurry!”

Merriwell had not waited to listen, but he groped his way back to the spot where the unconscious man lay on the floor.

“What if I do not get out!” he thought, as he lifted the limp body. “I have saved him for her, and she will be happy!”

But he found his way out and staggered down the stairs, being met by Diamond, who had found his way into the place to follow and help Frank get out.

“Well, this is what I call being in the nick of time!” observed the Virginian, with satisfaction. “I hope you’ve not left anybody behind?”

“Not unless there were families in the place.”

“There are none,” assured Jack. “Man told me outside. Upper part is used by some kind of a medicine company.”

When they reached the street they found a fire-engine had just arrived on the scene.

Inza was discovered bending over the stranger, who seemed pretty well used up. As they drew near they saw Starbright standing a few feet away, staring at Inza, a strange look of shame on his face. And they heard Inza sobbing:

“Oh, Walter, my brother! I thought you could not escape!”

“Her brother!” gasped Frank, astounded. “Why, it’s Walter Burrage, who disappeared years ago and was supposed dead. I knew the fellow at Fardale!”

In a moment everything was explained, save the strange manner in which Inza had declined to introduce Walter to Frank and Starbright, and the man’s own reticence in regard to his name.

Starbright came over to Frank.

“He’s her brother!” he said. “Merriwell, I’m going to shoot myself! There will be one fool less in the world!”

Of course Starbright did not shoot himself, but he was thoroughly ashamed. But Inza never knew from the lips of Frank Merriwell that the handsome freshman had ever suspected her.

Walter Burrage had entered the army after leaving Fardale, and had become entangled in an affair that threatened to send one of the higher officers to prison for a long term. Burrage was in full possession of evidence that would have brought about this result, therefore he was implicated, disgraced, and given a chance to escape, being compelled to promise that he would never return to the United States.

The disgrace had affected Bernard Burrage so that he gave out the impression that his son was dead, and Walter was never mentioned by either himself or Inza.

But Walter broke his pledge and came to the United States to find the old doctor who would pay a high price for the queer stick. He made his father and sister promise not to let anybody know his true name.

Walter had been tracked by members of the secret order, and while he was negotiating with the doctor the trailers came in upon them, captured them both, secured the stick, bound them, set fire to the place, and fled.

The old doctor died in the hospital the following day from the wound on his head, given him when he was struck down by the Chinamen.

CHAPTER XX

STARBRIGHT SPEAKS OUT.

Frank Merriwell and Dick Starbright sat alone in Merry’s room in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was long past midnight, and, despite the exciting adventures of the last few hours, Jack Diamond had retired in an adjoining room and was already wrapped in the arms of slumber.

In the morning, Frank and Dick expected to start for New Haven and Yale, but this had not prevented them from remaining up to talk over the strange happenings of the day. The freshman was eager to talk, and Merry gave him an opportunity.

There was a burden on Starbright’s mind, and the big, open-hearted youth felt that it would be impossible for him to sleep till he had freed himself of the load.

Having slipped to the door of the adjoining room and closed it quietly, Dick came back and stood before Frank, who looked at him questioningly.

“Merry,” said the big freshman, “I am not worthy of her!”

“You mean——”

“Inza.”

“I thought——”

“I know I am not worthy of her, for I doubted her.”

There was a look of shame on the face of the big fellow that touched Merry deeply, yet, believing Dick was entitled to feel shame, Frank did not speak.

“At first I doubted you,” the Andover man went on. “I had no right to do that, for it was I who came between you and Inza.”

Merriwell made a gesture of protest.

“Don’t stop me!” pleaded Dick. “I know what I am saying. I also know that I never really won a place in her heart. I may have aroused her admiration by something I did, and she liked me; but that was all, and I know she did not love me.”

“How do you know?”

“I can’t tell you just now; but I know it now—there isn’t a doubt about it.”

But Frank could not feel so sure, and he shook his head.

“If you were anybody but yourself you would see it, too,” asserted Starbright earnestly. “She loves you, Frank—she has always loved you. I know that!”

“Oh, my dear boy, you are quite wrong!” quickly cried Frank. “She has told me with her own lips that her affection for me was merely that which a sister might feel for a very dear brother.”

“And did you think she would tell you anything else unless you were the first to speak?” demanded Dick. “You are astute and far-seeing, Merry, but in this matter you have been blind as a bat. She is proud. Do you think she’d let you know how much she cared for you, thinking as she did that you cared more for another? Of course she would tell you she could never be anything but a sister to you.”

Dick smiled in a dry way, but that smile gave him pain of which Frank knew nothing, for the big, handsome blond athlete had been deeply smitten by the dark eyes of Inza Burrage, and the sacrifice he was making now was costing him the effort of his life.

Dick Starbright possessed physical courage, as he had often demonstrated; but, caring for Inza as he did, it now took great moral courage for him to abandon his last hope of ever winning her.

But he had become convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was unworthy of Inza, and that Frank was the worthy one. More than that, he believed that Frank, without being entirely aware of it himself, loved Inza.

On top of this came the conviction that Inza had loved Frank all along, though her pride had caused her to try to hide the secret in her heart, being satisfied that Merry cared more for Elsie. Having fought against her liking for Frank, it was but natural that Inza should, to aid her in her struggle, turn to some other youth whom she admired.

Circumstances had made the other one Dick Starbright. Satisfied that she would be doing the right thing toward Frank and Elsie by appearing to care for another than Merry, Inza’s conscience had not troubled her in the least.

She had not been false and fickle; she was true to her convictions of right. Never had she given Starbright a reason to be certain that she cared for him in any other way than as a friend. Indeed, she had told him that was the only way she cared for him or ever could care for him.

But Dick, like any man thus encouraged, had hoped for something more. His jealousy had been aroused when Frank remained behind in New York. Tortured by the thought that Merriwell was with Inza, he had finally rushed back to the city.

Then came the adventures which opened his eyes, convinced him that Frank truly loved Inza and was worthy of her, and led him to resolve to withdraw from the field at once.

Inza knew nothing of Starbright’s doubts concerning her, but from the lips of her brother she learned that he owed his life to Frank Merriwell, who had groped through flame and smoke to find him helpless in the burning building and bear him forth.

And now Starbright, having seen himself in his true light, and having discovered Frank’s secret, made a noble resolve to take himself out of the way without delay. This had led him to remain up long after Jack Diamond retired, seeking an opportunity to talk privately with Merry.

Dick’s words gave Merriwell a shock. Could it be true the freshman was right? Could it be true Inza had loved him all along, but had sought to hide her love from his eyes? Further, was it true that he had loved Inza—that he still loved her?

As he asked himself these questions, he felt a strange sensation creeping over him, thrilling him from his head to his feet with the same old emotion he had experienced one moonlight night in dear old Fardale, as he leaned over the gate in front of Inza’s home and kissed her for the first time.

Was it love stirring and reawakening within his heart?

Frank sat like one under a spell, a rapt look of pleasure on his handsome face as he seemed to live over again that happy hour of a moonlight night in Fardale, far away. He saw Inza as she looked then, leaning on the gate, the white moonlight showing the sweet, girlish outline of her high-bred oval face, and he remembered the look he saw within her dark eyes just before he impulsively pressed his lips to hers.

That kiss—the memory of it had been with him always! Sometimes it seemed that he had tried to forget, but still it clung to him. In times of peril it sustained him and gave him hope; in times of distress it soothed him and gave him comfort. When his life hung in the balance, as it had more than once, and it seemed that there was no hope, the memory of that kiss over the gate had kept the spark of hope alive in his heart, had caused him to continue the battle, had kept him from ever giving up.

Now it seemed that for the first time he fully realized this. Now for the first time he understood that in moments of frightful peril, when there seemed absolutely not a ray of hope, he had hoped on and had not given up because he thought of Inza—because he must see her again.

The thought struck home to him with convincing force. Through all the years since they plighted their love in the moonlight at Fardale he had loved her. Through all the years since then her influence had been over him, making him better, stronger, nobler. She had been his guardian angel, saving him scores of times from deadly perils. Her love, her influence, her spirit had hovered near, even though the width of the world separated them.

No wonder Frank Merriwell sat there like one entranced, wondering that he had never realized this before, bitterly condemning himself for his blindness.

His face must have expressed much, for Starbright was silenced and turned quietly away, leaving Frank to meditate on this wonderful thing which had dawned upon him like a glorious light in a dark place.

The love of Inza had been pure and noble and uplifting. He had felt it thus, and to it he owed much that he had become. Now, at this late hour, after all that had happened, he knew it was for Inza he had striven and struggled. For her he had worked to make himself physically and mentally great. For her he had labored night and day to conquer all things, surmount all obstacles, reach the loftiest heights.

What a revelation it was! He saw how her influence had uplifted him above the level of common men and had placed him on a pinnacle where those below looked up at him in wonder and admiration.

For truly in his short life no other man had ever reached the height of absolute manhood and popularity attained by Frank Merriwell. Not that others had not equaled him, but never had their names and fame spread abroad like his. From one end of the United States to the other, from East to West, the name Frank Merriwell was a synonym of all that was noble and grand and desirable in a manly way.

Men spoke of him as “the representative American youth,” and boys everywhere tried to pattern after him, live like him and lift themselves high in the scale of manhood as he had done. His example had been a noble one, and it is probable that it had done more good for the boys of the country than that of any other living American. Other men had acquired fame by struggling and battling all their lives; some being great generals, some becoming leaders in grand causes, some occupying the highest office it is in the power of the people to give; but not one of them had ever obtained such universal fame, such absolute admiration, such honor and respect as this beardless youth who had simply worked to perfect himself, to be just and merciful to all, and to uplift his fellows instead of pushing them down.

In most ways this is a beautiful world, but there are many bad things in it, many things to cause suffering, sorrow, and regret. One of the most unpleasant is the constant struggle, the incessant battle for supremacy. In this unceasing battle that is taking place day after day all the wickedness, deceit, treachery, greed, and corruption of human nature is flagrantly exhibited. Men resort to any means to accomplish their ends and exalt themselves above their fellows. They lie, steal, betray, and destroy without compunction and without mercy. That they may mount higher, they pull scores down, trample hundreds beneath their feet. And when they have reached the pinnacle for which they have sacrificed their manhood and destroyed their better nature—they die.

Then, what a grand thing it is to see one who is fighting on in a perfectly fair and honorable way, who refuses to pull a single weak wretch down, who holds out his hands to the faint and faltering and draws them up with him, as he mounts step by step on the joyful journey to the top.

Such a person, if he is human, will find many things to sadden him, for some he has helped will show envy and jealousy when they find they cannot keep pace with him on his upward way. When they have to fall behind they will sneer at and malign him, forgetting often that but for his aid they might have gone to the bottom and been obliterated beneath the merciless feet of the trampling, swaying, striving horde down there. For it is true of human nature that one whom you have helped, one whom you have tried to uplift, will almost always be the first to feel jealousy when he sees you rising above him.

Although this is true, it should deter no one from holding out a helping hand to the needy whenever possible, for he will find that the joy of the action is its own exceeding great reward.

Frank had never hesitated when an opportunity offered to aid a fellow being. He had ever been merciful to the extreme with his enemies. Often he had thus caused those enemies to regard him as weak and yielding, but when they had pressed him to the very verge and he realized that further leniency was worse than folly, they had found him hard as iron.

But he had been rewarded for the course he pursued. The lads who were his firmest friends had once been his enemies, and it seemed that the more they hated him and tried to harm him in the long ago the better they loved him, and the more devoted they were now.

For example, Hodge had once been his most malignant foe, ready to do anything to harm him; but Frank believed he saw in Bart something that did not appear to other eyes, believed the passionate, head-strong youth had in him the making of an admirable man, and he had refused to bring on Bart the punishment and disgrace merited a score of times. At first, Hodge had believed Frank weak and lacking spirit, but slowly his eyes were opened and he finally saw Merry in the true light. Then he realized that his lenient foe was the possessor of moral and physical courage, and was so far his superior in every way that he felt small and miserable and mean and contemptible by contrast. For a time, being proud and obstinate, Bart continued to try to fight on as Frank’s enemy, but he was forced to surrender at last, and he became Merry’s firmest friend, ready in a moment to sacrifice life for him.

One such victory was enough to satisfy and reward Frank for all his defeats. But that one was not all. Strangely enough, nearly all his intimate friends had been won to him in a similar way, his “flock” being made up mainly of those who had once been his bitter enemies, among whom were Diamond, Browning, and Badger. Harry Rattleton alone had been his true and constant friend from their first meeting, and often Frank wondered if Rattleton’s affection for him was as deep and sincere as that of the others.

And now, thinking of all that he had done, Frank could see that he had been urged on by a strange, subtle influence that remained always with him—the influence of the dark-eyed girl who had given him her maiden kiss of love over the gate that moonlight night in Fardale. It is true that man seldom makes much of himself, seldom mounts to great heights unless behind him is the influence of a woman. He may without woman’s influence become a miser, a Shylock, a money magnate, and a wrecker of human lives; but he seldom becomes noble, honored, loved, and cherished in the hearts of his fellow men unless behind him is the influence of a good, true woman urging him on to the splendid deeds which uplift him.

At times Merry had seemed to realize the presence of that subtle influence, and then had risen vague visions of the many girls he had known, with Elsie and Inza the most prominent. Elsie, by her gentle ways, had crept into his heart, and, for a time, it had seemed that she had excluded Inza. Not that she had meant to do such a thing, for Elsie Bellwood, sweet, gentle, loving, would have died rather than wrong the girl who had been her friend. But Elsie was human, and all who are human make mistakes. Inza was no less human, and her spirit and pride had led her into blunders as great—perhaps greater—than those of Elsie. Was that a reason why Frank should not love her? Rather, was it not a reason why he should love her more?

It seemed that his love had been pent-up and suppressed all these years; but now, in a single moment, Dick Starbright, by a few simple words, had torn away the dam, and it came rolling down upon Frank’s heart in a tide that was overwhelming and irresistible. He felt himself seized and swept away with the released tide, against which it was useless to battle.

“It’s true!” he told himself, in sudden joy. “I do love her!”

But Elsie!

He felt a sudden chill run over him, and it seemed that his heart stood still. What of her? He was forced to confess to himself that for a long time he had fancied he cared more for sweet, gentle Elsie than for Inza.

And had he not given Elsie reason to believe such was the case? Had he not placed himself in an awkward position, a position from which he could not manfully withdraw?

No wonder he was chilled! No wonder his heart seemed to stop beating! No wonder he sat there like one turned to stone, the expression of happiness having left his face and the light of joy vanished from his eyes.

Frank groaned aloud, causing Starbright to start and turn slightly. If Dick had meant to speak he was checked by a single gesture Frank made, and he settled back once more to let the tortured youth fight out the battle with himself and solve the problem if he could.

Merry rose and paced the floor, seemingly having forgotten Dick entirely. His aspect plainly indicated that a terrible tumult stirred his soul, but his teeth were set, his jaws squared, and no further sound came from his closed lips.

Starbright had seen him look somewhat like this before in times of severe trial, but never quite so awe-inspiring and intense. Not even in the mighty contest against Harvard on the gridiron had such an expression rested in Frank’s face.

His mind was running over the past, and he was weighing every word and act in the balance, feeling that the deciding hour of his life had come. He might have sought to put it off had he been weak and faltering; he might have resolved to wait and let circumstances work out the solution; but, instead, he set himself to weigh everything carefully and decide what was the thing he must do. He would cut out his course for the future and try to follow it to the end.

To do this he was compelled to compare his emotions toward the two girls, for whom he had cared so much. His feelings toward Elsie were those of deep tenderness, and the thought of her awoke all the gentler side of his nature. He had felt her tremble in his arms in a time of frightful peril, had felt her cling about his neck, confident that he could save her, and the memory of her quivering form, her soft, round, clinging arms, thrilled him with the same old emotion he had mistaken as love.

Was it love?

He knew now that always and ever she would have a place in his heart, which she had won there by her sweet disposition and her gentle, self-sacrificing ways, but—did he love her?

Then he thought of Inza, and he was carried away by the rush of feelings that came upon him, so that, in a twinkling, all thought of Elsie had been banished, and he was unable to compare this surging emotion with the gentle feeling of tenderness he had entertained toward the other girl.

This was love! Instantly in his heart was established the conviction, which, however, did not give him immediate satisfaction and relief.

Elsie had trusted him. Would he not be betraying her if he turned back to this girl who had been his first—and he now knew—his only true love?

Then, like a flash, came thoughts of some events that had happened on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, not many weeks before. He remembered how, when he was on the very verge of speaking out to Elsie herself, she had told him there was another who had a claim upon her. He thought of the encounter with Hodge that had followed and of their talk alone on the beach. At that time, having been led into a false conception of his regard toward Elsie, Frank openly told Bart he loved her and regarded Inza with a feeling of friendly affection. In return, Bart had unburdened his own heart, explaining how he had been led to reveal to Elsie his passion for her—a passion he had meant to suppress and hold in check. Thus they, the dearest of friends, stood revealed to each other as rivals for the same girl.

Rivals—yes! Enemies—no! For had they not spoken freely and then clasped hands, swearing that whatever happened they would remain true to each other!

Having thought about this, Frank fell to pondering on Elsie’s words and actions at the time and later. As he pondered, the conviction grew upon him that, beyond a doubt, she had discovered that she did not love him as intensely as she imagined. Possibly she had been carried away by the burning passion of Bart’s love for her.

But, ever faithful and true, having learned that Inza seemingly cared for Starbright, Elsie had resolved on a course of self-sacrifice which she fancied would be the only honorable course she could pursue. She would crush back any rising passion in her heart, she would not permit herself to care for Hodge, and she would not marry Frank. She would remain single!

Frank knew well enough how many girls say in joking mood that they will never marry, but something had convinced him that Elsie was in sober earnest, having made that resolve when she decided that it was the only course for her to pursue.

Such being the case, it was probable that when she found Frank no longer held a fancied claim upon her she would give up to the dictation of her heart and surrender to Hodge, which would bring untold happiness to the dark-eyed lad.

Having reached this point, Frank came over and sat down, a sigh of relief escaping him.

“Well?” said Starbright inquiringly.

“I hope it is well,” said Frank. “I can talk no more about it to-night. Let’s go to bed.”

But, somehow, Dick was satisfied.

CHAPTER XXI

FRANK AND INZA.

All night Frank dreamed of Inza. In the morning he received a brief message from her. Her father had been taken ill again and was convinced that he could not withstand the attack. He was pleading to see Fardale again before he died, and Inza and her brother had resolved to take him back there if he could endure the journey. She could not leave him, but would not Frank and Dick come to her that she might thank them for having saved her brother?

Walter wanted to see them, also.

Dick at once declined to go, but told Frank that he must go. At first, Merry urged Starbright to come along, but the big fellow shook his head, saying:

“No, Frank; it would be folly for me to go there—much better for me to stay away. You must understand that. I must keep away from her.”

It was useless to urge him to go, so Frank gave it up. They saw Diamond off first, as Jack made an early start. He was in a royal good humor.

“You must come across for the occasion when it comes off, Merry,” he smiled, speaking of his marriage to Juliet Reynolds. “You know you are to be the best man.”

“I can’t promise absolutely, old fellow,” said Frank; “but I’ll come if I can. We can’t be sure of the future.”

“All I know is that I owe everything to you, for I might have blown in my last dollar gambling if you had not pulled me up with a round turn. Had I done so, my conscience would not have permitted me to accept Juliet’s invitation to come back. I should have regarded myself as entirely unworthy. Merriwell, I can never repay you for what you have done!”

“You have already.”

“How?”

“With your smiling face, your happiness, the change that has come over you. It’s enough!”

They shook hands like brothers, and then parted. Many things were to happen before they met again.

Frank and Starbright had intended returning to New Haven by an early train, but Dick decided to wait, now that Merry was to call on Inza.

Merriwell found Inza in a family hotel near the park. She had been waiting for him, and at first she did not seem to notice that Starbright had not accompanied him.

“I was afraid you could not come,” she confessed, as she gave him her hand and looked into his eyes. “And I have so much to thank you for!”

“Don’t thank me, Inza! You know I would do anything for you—anything in my power!”

“Would you?”

“Haven’t I proved it many times?”

“Yes, yes! And last night you were the one my mind turned to when I felt sure Walter was in trouble and danger. He says he owes his life to you. You must let him thank you. He is with father now.”

“It seems so strange that you have a brother. I can hardly realize it.”

“Hush! It is not known here that he is my brother. He is supposed to be my cousin. You know it is dangerous for him to be in this country. He might be arrested.”

“I’ll take care not to let the cat out of the bag. I had thought him dead so long that I never dreamed he could be a bearded man like that. I remember him only as a slight, dark-eyed stripling at Fardale.”

Fardale! The mention of that magic word seemed to give them both a thrill, bringing to them a rush of delightful memories. Her cheeks flushed and her bosom heaved, while a soft sigh escaped her lips.

How beautiful she was! Frank had ever regarded her as the handsomest girl he knew, but at this moment, with the remembrance of those old, sweet days stirring within her heart she seemed far more lovely than ever before.

He was seized by a sudden desire to clasp her to his heart at that moment and declare the passion which had been reawakened within his soul; but he realized that such a sudden action might baffle his purpose, and with a mighty effort he held himself in restraint.

“I have been thinking of those days in Fardale,” she said softly.

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“So have I.”

She lifted her eyes, and the look she saw in his face surprised her not a little. It was the old, old look of admiration—more than admiration! The moonlight had revealed to her that look the night he kissed her over the gate in front of her home in Fardale.

Then he might not have held himself in check, but she fell back a bit before him, and he fancied her movement was one of repulsion.

Something told him that it would be a terrible blow if she were to repulse him now. And it was possible she still cared for Starbright—or thought she cared.

“Go slow, Frank Merriwell!” something seemed to whisper in his ear. “You have given this girl every reason to think you cared more for another, now be careful not to make a break that may cause her to doubt your sincerity.”

And so, by his own good sense, he was restrained.

“Why should you be thinking of Fardale?” she asked, her girlish curiosity aroused.

“Why—why, I don’t know, exactly. Something—some talk brought it to my mind.”

She was surprised to note that he, usually so direct and straightforward, seemed rather confused and faltered somewhat.

“Those were happy days,” she murmured softly.

“In truth, they were!” he exclaimed. “We did not dream how happy at the time.”

“Nor did we dream of the strange things to happen in the future. I often think, Frank, that I can never again be quite as happy as I was back there.”

“I have thought the same, Inza.”

“Oh, but you,” she said—“you have everything to make you happy!”

“Have I?”

“To be sure.”

He longed to tell her then that there was one thing he did not possess—one thing that would make him happier than all else. The words rose to his lips. Had he spoken them a direct proposal must have followed. At that moment, however, one of the guests of the house looked into the parlor, which was sufficient to deter him for the time.

Somehow, this repression of his feelings simply seemed to make them more intense, as is usually the case with every one. Now that he feared to speak out, he longed to do so most intensely. He inquired for Mr. Burrage.

“I am truly worried about him,” Inza declared. “These spells of illness are becoming more frequent, and he feels that he may not live long. That is why he was seized by a sudden desire to see Fardale again.”

“Perhaps it will do him good to visit your old home. I hope so.”

“I hope so, too, Frank. If father should die——”

She stopped with such an expression of pain on her face that all the sympathy and pity of his nature stirred.

“Don’t worry, Inza; that will not happen for many years to come.”

“We cannot be sure. I should be left alone in the world.”

“Not alone, for your brother——”

“Hush! He must go away again—must leave the country. If he were recognized and apprehended, the blow would be sure to completely undo father.”

Her trouble and distress affected Frank and compelled him to say:

“You know, Inza, that you may ever depend on me. If anything happens, I shall be ready to help and befriend you.”

“I have no doubt of that, Frank. Somehow, I’ve been wishing you were going back to Fardale with us, if only for a single day.”

His heart leaped at the thought. To be in Fardale with Inza once more! To visit the dear old spots with her! She was watching his face, and she suddenly exclaimed:

“Why don’t you come, Frank? Can’t you? You can go along with us. Please come!”

Her hand was on his arm, and they were alone again. He secured that hand and looked deep into her eyes.

“Do you really wish me to come?”

“Of course I do! It would be splendid! And I’m sure you could give father strength and courage to bear up and withstand the journey.”

A struggle was taking place within his heart, for he knew that already he had remained away from college far longer than he should. He had obtained permission to leave for a time, but surely it had been anticipated that he would return before this.

“Do come with us, Frank!” she urged. “If you wish, you may leave us as soon as we arrive there.”

He could not resist such pleading.

“I’ll do it, Inza!” he exclaimed. “I’ll go back to Fardale with you!”

Frank found Mr. Burrage sitting bolstered in an easy chair, wrapped about with blankets and made easy with pillows. Walter Burrage was with the invalid. He advanced at once, his hand outstretched, and greeted Merry.

“Mr. Merriwell,” he said, “I am glad you have given me this opportunity to thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t speak of that!” urged Frank. “I was glad to be of service, and——”

“You came just in time. The fire was gaining rapidly, and those Chinks had left us perfectly helpless, bound hands and feet. I’ve been to the hospital to see the doctor whom they tapped on the head, and they say there is no chance for him to recover. His skull is fractured. The police are looking for the Chinamen, though they are not informed of all that happened. The Chinese secret society has recovered that infernal little black stick, which I brought to this country to sell to Doctor Dennoval, and I shall never lay eyes on it again. But for the fact that I knew the doctor would pay a large sum for it, I should never have ventured into the United States at this time. Even now I’m afraid my concern with this affair may bring about my recognition.”

“My boy! my boy!” fluttered the invalid. “They have no right to harm you! I am sure you never did anything wrong, and——”

“There, there, father!” came soothingly from the lips of Inza’s bearded brother. “I did not mean to reawaken your fears. It’s all right. I can do better in Australia than in this country, and——”

“But I am an old man, and I should have my only son near me. It is hard to be unjustly separated from him.”

“Frank has agreed to make the journey to Fardale with us,” said Inza. “I invited him.”

“I’m glad he is going along,” murmured the sick man.

“And so am I,” nodded Walter. “We’ll have an opportunity to talk over the old days at the academy. It’ll be good to have a boyhood friend to chat with. I’ve often thought of those days and wondered what had become of Frank Merriwell, who was the leader in every honest sport at the academy.”

“If I can stand it to travel so far,” came wearily from Mr. Burrage. “It was folly for me to leave the old home and wander over the world in search of health. The search has been vain, and I’m going back to die!”

“To get well, you mean,” put in Merry cheerfully. “The atmosphere of the old home will give you new life and courage.”

“Do you think so?” eagerly asked Mr. Burrage.

“Of course it will! Why shouldn’t it? Your old friends will be glad to see you again.”

“That’s true. I believe you are right. The thought of it buoys me up.”

Inza gave Frank a grateful look and soon found an opportunity to whisper to him:

“I knew you could do him good. You always have a way of putting new life and courage into anyone.”

He smiled at her.

“You should hear the wonderful things Inza has been telling me about you, Merriwell,” said Walter. “Why, if she has not been romancing, you are the most wonderful fellow in the whole world.”

“Not that,” declared Merry.

“But you are a wonderful athlete, and your fame has spread over the country. Yale must be proud of you. But it was the only thing to expect from Frank Merriwell, of Fardale. I remember that you were constantly at work building yourself up and trying to become physically perfect. Nor did you spend your whole time at this to the neglect of your studies, but you never wasted time—you were forever doing something.”

“That’s the secret of success,” smiled Merry quietly. “The fellow who wastes his time wastes his chance of success. Prize-fighters have muscular development, but usually little mental development. The perfect man seeks both by giving his body and his mind just the proper amount of work and rest.”

“By Jove!” cried Walter, his eyes flashing; “you should be a teacher of your theories, Merriwell. I believe you could do an immense amount of good in the world.”

“Yes, yes,” murmured the sick man, “I believe so, too. If I had known what to do when I was young, if I had built my body up properly, I’d not be here to-day, a wretched, worn-out invalid. It was ignorance that brought me where I am.”

Frank felt that Mr. Burrage spoke the simple truth. He was a man grown old and broken down before his time—a piece of machinery out of repair. And all because he had not in early life built himself up properly to withstand the strain that came upon him in later years.

This is the great error made by thousands and hundreds of thousands. In their youth they fail to understand the need of building for themselves strong, sound, healthy bodies to help them fight to a successful finish the battles of life. As boys and girls they may feel exuberant, strong, and they fancy that they will “grow” to be what is right and proper. Then it is that they should be told that if they neglect developing themselves they will grow up with their parents’ physical imperfections plainly marked and pronouncedly apparent.

The weak spots will remain weak—they may become weaker. The strong points will not keep the weak parts from giving out and breaking down when a heavy strain is brought upon them. And what good is a perfect, handsome engine with a broken piston-shaft? The engine cannot run till it has a new shaft. Unfortunately, the human engine cannot be repaired thus easily. When a breakdown occurs, the result may mean that the engine stops forever.

“Fardale did much for me,” declared Walter; “but I must confess that I was influenced greatly by your example, Merriwell. I know you did lots of good in that school. And now I have found that boys and young men all over this country are profiting by your example. Everywhere they are beginning to work regularly to make themselves stronger and handsomer and better. It’s a great thing, Merriwell, to know that you are doing this for the youth of the land.”

As of old, Frank was unable to keep the warm color from mounting to his face.

“I fear you are giving me altogether too much credit,” he protested.

“Not if all reports are true. Inza tells me there are ‘Frank Merriwell Athletic Clubs’ everywhere, the members of which are bound together by pledges that compel them to do each day a certain amount of work to make themselves physically perfect.”

“Why, the papers are full of it!” Inza declared. She was sitting beside her father and holding one of his hands. “Hardly a day passes that I do not read something about it.”

“You seem to have brought about a revolution in America, Merriwell,” smiled Walter.

“Well,” said Merry, “it is high time such a revolution took place, for disaster graver than commercial depression and financial panic has begun to threaten us.”

“You mean——”

“Degeneration. It is a fact that Americans are great money-makers, and the struggle for wealth has threatened to put an end to all efforts for health. Already the signs of such decay as has befallen other powerful nations in the past have begun to appear all over this broad land. Men are thin-legged, small-necked, narrow-chested, weak, bespectacled, dwarfed, undeveloped—and yet they seem quite unaware of the fact that they are lacking in the very points that go to make up perfect manhood.”

“You’re right,” nodded Walter. “Go on.”

“Our forefathers lived simpler and plainer lives, and therefore they were better developed, hardier, handsomer. Sometimes we hear that the span of human life has increased in the last decade—that men live longer to-day than formerly. This may be true, but it is because our medical skill is far greater, our homes are more comfortable, and we are less exposed to the things that destroy life. But take this generation and put it back into the conditions that existed sixty years ago and our weaklings would go to the wall by thousands. The time has come when somebody must sound the warning note and bring the young men and the boys of the land to a realizing sense of the danger that threatens.”

“That is sound truth and common sense!” cried Walter, “and you, Frank Merriwell, are just the one to do the work. Why don’t you take it up?”

“I have thought of it,” confessed Merry.

“Oh, what a grand thing that would be!” cried Inza.

“Grand, indeed!” echoed her brother. “Think of devoting a life to the improvement and elevation of humanity! Why don’t you do it, man? The boys of the country will listen to you when you speak, for they already recognize you as the representative and physically perfect young American. You can lecture——”

“That is first-rate, but I have a plan of reaching far more boys and young men than by lecturing.”

“How?”

“Through a book.”

“Splendid!”

Inza clapped her hands.

“That’s it!” she nodded. “You should do it, Frank—you should write a book that will tell the boys just what to do.”

“I think I shall as soon as I find time. Almost any boy may become a wonderful athlete if he knows how to go about it, and where is the boy who does not long to have a splendid, handsome body—who does not desire to be admired and recognized as a leader among his fellows. If the ordinary boy knew just how to go about it, he could accomplish this. If I ever write that book, I’m going to tell the boys just how to do it.”

“Such a book would have been worth millions to me in my younger days,” earnestly declared the invalid. “Had I possessed it I’d not be here now, a broken-down man.”

It was a sad thing to hear him utter those words, and Frank realized their absolute truthfulness. Bernard Burrage had given out long before there was a necessity for such a thing, and now, even if he were to live some years, he must drag along in suffering and pain, punishment for the neglected opportunities of his youth.

Had he built himself up properly years before he might have remained robust and healthy to the end of his days, vigorous in his declining years.

The conversation now turned to other matters, and when Merry left it was with the promise that he would be on hand when they were ready to start for Fardale.

So Starbright returned alone to Yale.

CHAPTER XXII

THE YOUNG SOLDIER.

“Inza Burrage—is it possible?”

Inza started and looked up.

The speaker, a straight, finely formed youth, had paused by her seat on the train. As there was no Pullman car on the train that ran to Fardale, Mr. Burrage had been made as comfortable as possible with cushions and was sitting opposite Inza, who was riding backward.

The one who uttered the words recorded wore a uniform of the regular army, but he was scarcely more than a boy in years, though he had a light-brown mustache. His face was bronzed by exposure to all sorts of weather.

“I can’t be mistaken,” he said, looking down at her. “This must be Miss Burrage?”

There was something faintly familiar about him, and yet she did not know him.

“I am Miss Burrage,” she acknowledged; “but you have the advantage, sir.”

He laughed.

“Is it possible I have changed so much?” he said, offering his hand in a manner that betokened the utmost confidence. “Look at me closely, Miss Burrage.”

She permitted him to take her hand, but still she failed to recognize him. This seemed to amuse him still more. In truth, she was somewhat agitated by the sight of the uniform he wore, for Walter was on that train, having gone forward to the smoker, Merry accompanying him.

“You knew me in Fardale,” he asserted. “I’ve been wondering if I’d meet any old friends there.”

Then he looked closely at the invalid, and again lifted his hat, saying:

“Mr. Burrage, I think?”

“Yes, yes,” huskily murmured the sick man, who also was alarmed by the appearance of the uniform. “Though, like my daughter, I fail to recognize you, sir.”

“That is not so very strange on your part,” said the young soldier, as he coolly seated himself on the arm of Mr. Burrage’s seat; “but it is a trifle surprising that Miss Burrage should fail to recognize me.”

“You attended the military academy at Fardale?” questioned the girl.

“I had that pleasure. Old Gunn hauled me over the coals many a time, and Scotch used to make me toe the mark. By the way, I hear that Professor Scotch is dead.”

“It is true.”

“Too bad! He was quite a jolly old boy, as we could raise hob with him. Haven’t you recalled my name yet, Miss Burrage?”

“No,” she reluctantly confessed.

“Why, I was a particular chum to your brother at the academy.”

Mr. Burrage stirred nervously.

“You were Walter’s friend?” said Inza.

“Correct. We entered the army together. Too bad Walter got into that muss. I’ve been stationed in the Philippines. Home on furlough. Suppose I’ll have to go back. Beastly country in some respects. No pretty women there, and women make or mar any country.”

There was something about the air of the fellow that did not please Inza.

“Well, I see it’s no use for you to try to guess,” he rattled on. “I’m Swift—Roy Swift. Now you remember me?”

Still she did not remember at first, but after a time she recalled Swift, whom she had known but slightly among many other cadets at the academy.

“It’s strange you should forget me so completely,” he said. “I could never forget you.”

He spoke the words in a very significant manner, bending on her such a meaning look that the blood rushed to her face.

“I remember the day I first saw you at a picnic in old Snodd’s grove,” he went on. “I’ve always remembered you just as you looked then. I thought you the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Since then it——”

“You must have seen thousands of pretty girls,” she broke in, trying to turn his conversation. “Have you had many adventures in the Philippines?”

“I have seen more than thousands,” he declared; “but never one of them all as pretty as you were that day, Miss Burrage. This is not flattery; it is the sincere truth. I have thought of you millions of times, and you have ever come to me as a truly representative American girl.”

“Thank you,” she said, not exactly pleased by his bold words of praise. “I’m sure you are altogether too complimentary.”

“Oh, not at all! I know a pretty girl when I see one! I tell you plenty of pretty girls have flung themselves at me, but I’m still single, you see. In every case, I could not help comparing the girl with one I had first seen at the picnic in Snodd’s grove, and, as a result, none of them caught me.”

He laughed and twirled his mustache, his pose being one calculated to arouse admiration. Evidently Roy Swift had lost none of his conceit since the old days at Fardale, when he regarded himself as “strictly the proper thing.”

Inza was displeased. She felt like immediately showing her scorn for this boasting fellow, but something held her in check.

Swift knew her brother. More than that, he knew all about the trouble into which Walter had been drawn, and he might recognize the unfortunate fellow on sight, even though Frank Merriwell had failed to do so, for he knew Walter was not dead, while Merry had been led to so regard him.

Such being the case, it was far better to be careful not to arouse the resentment of a fellow who might have it in his power to injure Walter. So Inza bit her lips and remained silent.

“I’ve been trying to get off on furlough for some time,” Swift went on; “but it has been very difficult. When I did get away, after visiting my people, I continued to think of the friends in general whom I had known in Fardale—and of you in particular. Then I determined to visit the old place. That’s how I came to be on this train. I presume you have been away from home on a visit of some sort.”

“We do not live in Fardale now.”

“Ah, indeed? Then you are going there on a visit?”

“Yes.”

“How fortunate! Truly, it seems that Providence has brought this about. How disappointed I would have been had I gone there and not found you, Miss Burrage!”

“My father has traveled much for his health,” said Inza.

“And, having failed to find it, I’m going back to Fardale to die,” declared the invalid, in a weak voice.

“Oh, not so bad as that, I hope!” cried Swift. “You don’t want to give up that way. The man who gives up and says ‘die’ usually has his way. I knew a fellow in our company who felt that way just before a skirmish. He got it, all right. The little yellow devils soaked him in four different places, and he just lay down and groaned, ‘I knew it was coming!’ Then he croaked. If he hadn’t felt certain he was booked, it’s possible he might be living still.”

“Folly,” declared Bernard Burrage. “His time had come, and he was forewarned. It is true with me. I have had the warning.”

“Please—please don’t talk that way, papa!” begged Inza, the color going out of her face.

“Forgive me, child,” he murmured. “I forgot.” Then he relapsed into silence, and sat looking out of the window at the snow-bound world.

Swift shook his head, but there was a mist in Inza’s eyes and she gazed through a blurring veil at the father she had ever loved, despite his faults.

For Bernard Burrage had not been perfect. Once there had been a time that, with a persistency that seemed a craze, he had done his best to marry his beautiful daughter off to a wealthy man. His false view of life had led him to fancy he was best providing for her if he secured her a rich husband.

Perhaps he was not so much to blame, for he had felt the spirit of these days which has seized upon womanhood. He understood how the woman of to-day loves luxury, ease, show, society, position, and all that, and how thousands of them are ready and willing to sell body and soul for that which they covet.

In the past it was different. Then girls married because they loved, and they were willing to do everything in their power to aid their husbands in the struggle to rise. Then the question was not if the man could support them in the style to which they had become accustomed, but the girl was ready to take him, if she loved him, “for better or worse,” to cast her fortunes with his, to rise with him or to fall with him.

But Bernard Burrage had not looked at marriage in this way, and he did not give his daughter credit for having more heart and soul than that of the average modern girl spoiled by longings for wealth and social position.

In this he had made a great mistake, for Inza Burrage would not have tied herself to any man merely for riches or social standing. And she had baffled his every effort to accomplish his purpose until at last he gave up.

“Often,” said Swift, “I’ve wondered if you were married yet, Miss Burrage.”

“Oh, dear, no!” said she, turning toward the window to brush the mist from her eyes. “I’ve not thought of such a thing.”

“I’m glad you are not,” he declared, in his very meaning manner. “There was a caddish young chap at the academy whom you seemed to care for, but I fancied you would outgrow that.”

She looked at him inquiringly.

“A caddish person whom I seemed to care for?” she questioned. “You can’t mean Bart Hodge?”

“Oh, no!”

“Then I’m sure I can’t conceive whom you do mean. Will you please name him.”

“Why, Frank Merriwell, of course,” smiled the young soldier.

Inza’s eyes flashed.

“I’d like to know for what reason you call him caddish?” she exclaimed, the flaming color leaping to her cheeks and her dark eyes flashing.

“Oh-ho!” murmured Swift, as he saw how he had aroused her.

“I thought you were one of his friends at the academy,” said Inza.

“Never that,” declared the youth with the bronzed face. “I was not an open enemy, but I never liked him.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, for various reasons.”

“Name one.”

“Well, it is not my habit to chase after a fellow that everybody else is chasing.”

“Then the boys at the academy used to chase after Frank Merriwell?”

“Oh, he had a crowd that hung round him and seemed to think he was the proper thing.”

“And that is your only reason for disliking him?”

“Not by any means. But he was an upstart. You must remember that he was below me at the academy, and I graduated some time in advance of him. I never had much to do with him, for upper-classmen do not associate freely with plebes.”

By this time Inza was thoroughly aroused.

“It might have done you unspeakable good if you had associated with him more,” she said.

“In what way?”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” she declared; “and gentlemen always set a good example.”

That did not seem to ruffle Swift in the least. Indeed, her stinging words ran off him as water runs from a duck’s back.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed. “It’s plain you were fooled by the fellow, just the same as many others who did not see much of him.”

That made her long to express herself still more plainly, but Inza was a lady above everything else, and she could hold herself in restraint under certain conditions, for all of her passionate nature.

“I hardly think I was fooled; but I am certain you were deceived, or that you are inclined to maliciously misjudge him. I do hope it is not the latter case.”

“Thanks. I wouldn’t put myself to the trouble to misjudge him, for I do not regard the fellow as worth judging at all.”

That was hard to bear! Had Inza been a man she might have placed her hand on Roy Swift’s collar just then.

“I am sure he made a good record at the academy!”

“But did not graduate.”

“His guardian died.”

“Still, he might have remained in the academy.”

“The provisions of his uncle’s will gave him a better opportunity to secure an education. Professor Scotch was appointed his guardian, and it was arranged that he should travel while being tutored by the professor. He was fitted to enter college.”

“You seem to know all about his affairs, Miss Burrage. It is plain that you did take a very strong interest in him.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Do you think I’d forget one who saved me from the jaws of a mad dog? I saw him fight that dog with nothing but a pocket-knife! From that hour I took an interest in him that has never relaxed, and I am proud of it now.”

“Oh, well, it’s all right,” smiled Swift, in an easy way. “I did not know I was hurting you, else you may be sure I’d not said so much. But, of course, I must continue to think what I like about him.”

“That’s it—you think what you wish to think, not what is the truth about him.”

“Oh, Miss Burrage!”

“I know it!” she persisted, her dark eyes flashing. “Do you imagine that you are showing a liberal spirit, Mr. Swift? Don’t you think you are making yourself seem rather small and mean?”

“Inza!” exclaimed her father restrainingly.

“Don’t be disturbed, papa,” she said, soothingly. “I can take care of this case very well.”

Again Swift laughed.

“By Jove!” he cried; “you are the same spirited girl as of old! I don’t wonder Merriwell was crazy over you!”

How offensive he was! Yet he seemed to fancy he had said something to please her.

“I have said,” she reminded, “that he was always a gentleman. Those who associated much with him imbibed something of his spirit. You should have known him better, Mr. Swift.”

“Oh, well, let’s let him drop,” he urged. “He is of no particular consequence. I’ve heard he’s working all the time to make himself popular in college.”

“He does not have to work to become popular. He is a natural leader, and men flock round him because they cannot help it. He was captain of the eleven last fall, and Yale did not lose a game. It had the greatest football-team ever put on the gridiron.”

“And, of course, he won all the critical games? Ha, ha, ha!”

“He won the most critical game, the one against Harvard. Everybody has given him credit for that.”

“He must be a high-stepper now!”

“He is as modest as ever.”

“Then he’s not very modest, for he was forever putting himself ahead.”

“He never put himself ahead in the world, sir! Others put him there. They recognized his abilities and made him a leader. This spring he is captain of the Yale nine.”

“It’s a wonder that he’s not on the crew, also!”

“He has been on the crew in the past, and he keeps himself in such trim that he can take an oar at any time. If anything happens that he is needed, as has happened in the past, I have no doubt but he will pull with the crew in the great race.”

“A modern marvel, to be sure! Why, he’s the athletic wonder of the age!”

“In some respects he is,” she agreed defiantly. “But he is a gentleman, as well as an athlete. You should meet him again, Mr. Swift; it would do you a world of good.”

By this time he was beginning to feel the sting of her repeated insinuations, and he bit his lips, though continuing to smile.

“I haven’t the least desire to meet the fellow again, Miss Burrage. In fact, I would not turn one step out of my course to do so, though, as a rule, I’m fond of meeting anybody who ever attended Fardale.”

“He must have offended you greatly, sir?”

“Oh, not at all!”

“I presume you are not naturally envious?”

“There was nothing about him that I could envy, Miss Burrage. I found him offensive, that’s all.”

“But you will confess that he was brave?”

“Why should I?”

“The mad-dog affair proved that. Would you have fought that mad beast alone, with a coat wrapped round your arm to protect it from the creature’s jaws, and a jack-knife for your only weapon? Frank Merriwell did that.”

“Because he was too frightened to run away,” laughed Swift. “I heard that at the time, and I believe it was told to me by a fellow who afterward became very chummy with him, Bart Hodge.”

“Hodge hated him at the time, and he would have told anything to injure him. Hodge ran, and I was left to face the dog alone. Frank saw it. He tore off his coat, wrapped it round his left arm, and, with the knife in his hand, fought the dog till Mr. Snodd came and shot the beast.”

“Then he fainted,” laughed the young soldier, with a sneer.

“But not till he had saved us, and his fingers were fastened on the throat of the dog with a regular death-grip, his knife having been lost in the struggle. Oh, I’ll never forget how white and still he was as he lay on the ground!”

She shuddered a little, and Swift laughed again.

“And you’ve been ready to stand up for him ever since, which shows how loyal you are. I admire you for it, Miss Burrage. He should appreciate it, but I suppose he’s like all conceited fellows, and they seldom think much of their best friends. For it is a fact that Merriwell always was conceited.”

“Thank you, sir!” said a quiet voice.

Frank Merriwell was standing near.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE RAILROAD WRECK.

Walter Burrage accompanied Merry, and they had entered the car and approached while Inza was talking with Swift.

“As you have been expressing your mind so very freely concerning me,” said Frank, in a calm, restrained tone, “let me tell you that there are persons in this world who have not sufficient judgment to discern between conceit and self-esteem, and the man who does not possess a certain amount of self-esteem never can win the regard and esteem of his fellow men. Others are not liable to judge you higher than you judge yourself.”

“Which is wisdom straight from the shoulder,” put in Walter Burrage; “And I’ve found the people with the greatest amount of conceit are forever jeering at others for being conceited.”

Swift had straightened up, flinging his shoulders back and assuming a military attitude, everything about him proclaiming self-consciousness and pride in his fine appearance, for he truly was a well-built young man.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, looking at Frank. “I did not know you were within hearing. But it is an old and true saying that ‘listeners seldom hear good of themselves.’”

“Which is an insinuation that I was intentionally eavesdropping, and is on a par with your recent slurring observations concerning me.”

Now Inza was showing her satisfaction, which, however, was not unmingled with apprehension and dread as she glanced from Swift to her brother.

“I’m sure I have a right to my opinion,” said the young soldier, trying to return Merry’s steady, searching look, but finding it no easy task to meet those penetrating eyes.

“But you may find, sir, that it will be better for you not to express your opinions with too much freedom.”

“My tongue is my own, and I shall use it as I choose.”

“Then do not blame it if it gets you into trouble.”

“And many a man has found himself in a peck of trouble by talking too much,” put in Walter Burrage, thinking at the moment of himself and his own misfortune.

Roy Swift seemed to recognize something familiar about Walter’s voice, for he turned and looked searchingly at Inza’s brother. After a moment a light dawned upon him and he showed astonishment.

“Can it be you, Burrage?” he exclaimed. “By Jove! it is. I’m glad to see you, old man! You haven’t forgotten me—Swift?”

He held out his hand to Walter.

“No, I haven’t forgotten you, Swift,” was the reply; “but I don’t care to shake hands with you unless you are ready to take back your words about my friend Frank Merriwell.”

The soldier frowned and looked angry. His first impulse was to tell Burrage to go to a warm climate, but the presence of Inza held him in check. Inza also led him to quickly decide to be conciliatory, and, forcing a laugh, he said:

“Oh, all right, my dear boy! I’m ready to do anything to promote peace and harmony. Perhaps I was hasty, and I’ll swallow the words—just to get a grip on your hand.”

This was scarcely a satisfactory apology, and Walter Burrage might have continued to decline to accept the proffered hand had he not observed the look of anxiety on the beautiful face of his sister and divined its meaning.

“All right, Swift,” he said, permitting the young soldier to grasp his fingers. “I didn’t think you a cad in the old days at the academy, and I don’t wish to think so now.”

“We all have our likes and dislikes,” said Swift significantly. “Now, for instance, Mr. Merriwell never liked me very much, and so why should I like him?”

“If I do not like a man,” said Frank, “it is not my way to sneer about him behind his back. I have a way of saying to his face what I have to say.”

Swift flushed, and it was plain that he longed to make a savage retort, but he did not consider such a course wise just then.

“I am not seeking a quarrel with an old schoolmate,” he declared, “so let’s talk of something else. How in the world do you happen to be here, Walt?”

Ignoring Frank, he turned to Inza’s brother. Inza drew Merry down on the seat beside her father, saying in a low tone:

“I’m sorry Walter came in with you, for I do not trust Roy Swift. A word from him to the ones interested would get Walter into a dreadful scrape. I told Walt it was dangerous for him to accompany us to Fardale, but he did not seem to think so, and he laughed at my fears.”

Frank did his best to reassure her, telling her there was no reason why Swift should wish to injure her brother.

While they were talking thus there came a sudden jarring shock, followed by a frightful crash, and the passengers were hurled from their seats as the car plunged down an embankment.

A part of the train had left the track!

At the first jar Merry had leaped to his feet, the reeling car flung him fairly over the back of a seat. Then came the terrible shock that followed.

For a moment Frank was stunned. He had heard the sound of splintering wood, and for a few moments an awful silence followed.

Then rose the shouts of the injured and the groans of the dying, for the engine and three cars of the train were piled in a splintered, shattered heap in the ditch at the foot of the embankment, and one of the three was the coach occupied by Merriwell and the others.

Frank stirred, and found one leg pinned down. All around him seemed to be débris. He heard the cries of the injured, and the sound chilled his blood.

“Inza!”

That was his first thought.

“Where is she?”

Still pinned fast, he tried to look around in search of her.

There were shrieks for help. He saw a man crushed and silent beneath a heavy mass that had flattened his chest. The horror of it all began to dawn upon him.

Then Frank struggled with sudden desperation to set himself free and find the girl he now knew he loved. He wondered for one moment if his foot and ankle had been crushed, but only for that one moment did he think of himself.

“Inza!” he gasped. “Where are you? I pray she has not been killed—she, my own sweetheart!”

A man with an ax began to smash furiously with it to break a way to freedom. It was Roy Swift, and he seemed frantic with terror. In his furious haste to escape from the wreck he several times came near hitting Frank on the head with the ax.

“Hold on, Swift!” cried Merry. “You can get out there all right in a moment. Just help me get my foot free here, will you?”

The young soldier gave him a look, and then snarled:

“Take care of yourself!”

Then, having made an opening large enough, he dropped the ax and crawled out.

“You cur!” said Frank. “That’s the kind of a man I fancied you were!”

Then he managed to reach the ax, with which he set about freeing his foot. He was forced to work carefully, in order not to injure himself, but he set the foot at liberty very soon.

All this time he had been thinking of Inza, and now he set out to find her. He called her name, crawling and forcing his way through the wrecked car toward the point where he fancied she must be.

A shrieking woman caught hold of him. He saw she, also, was held fast by broken timbers.

“Help me!” implored the woman.

Frank’s clear eyes discovered that there was a way to set her free. Out came his knife, and he quickly cut away a part of her skirt that had held her helpless. Three blows with the ax knocked aside a timber and enabled Merriwell to lift her to her feet. He told her how to find her way out.

Then he continued his search for Inza. His heart sank lower and lower with each moment. Before him seemed an impassable barrier of splintered and broken timbers. Was she beneath that mass?

The thought was enough to sicken him, but his heart did not fail. Selecting a weak point, he began his assault, and soon cleared a space through which he could force his body.

“Inza!”

Was that an answer? No, it was one of the many cries of distress coming from every side. Then the terrible conviction that she must be somewhere beneath that twisted and splintered mass fastened on him again. For once in his life, Frank seemed to lose his head. For once he was not his usual cool, calculating self.

He smote the timbers with the ax, he tore at them with his fingers, he flung his body against them.

“Inza!” he huskily shouted.

Then, almost beneath his feet, he found her!

Down on his knees he went, seeing her pale face dimly, finding her still and senseless.

“Inza, my sweetheart!” he groaned. “Merciful Heaven! is she dead? Have I lost her thus?”

He lifted her beautiful head and kissed her unresponsive lips. He whispered loving words in her ears. He pressed her to his throbbing heart and begged her to give one sign of life.

She had not been crushed beneath the timbers, but had fallen between two of the seats, which had served to protect and shield her. Still, something must have injured her severely, for she was not a girl to faint from fright.

A smell of smoke came to Frank’s nostrils, telling him of a new and frightful peril—fire!

He lifted the unconscious girl and started to escape with her. This he found a difficult thing to do, but with a sort of desperate persistency he kept at it till he had reached the spot where a smashed opening in the side of the car permitted him to crawl forth with Inza to the open air.

The spectacle he beheld was appalling. The cars and engine were piled one upon another in a shattered mass which had already taken fire.

As Merry placed the unconscious girl gently on the ground, calling for a doctor, Inza stirred, moaned, and opened her eyes. Instantly he had her in his arms again. She saw him and recognized him.

“Frank!” she whispered faintly, like the sighing of a distant breeze.

“Inza!” he answered—“Inza, my sweetheart, my love!”

A look of untold happiness appeared on her beautiful face. It had been long, long years since such words passed his lips, but now once more he called her his sweetheart, as he had that night over the gate in Fardale.

And there was far more in his tone than in the mere words. His voice spoke all the deep passion of his nature, and in that moment she knew once more that his heart belonged to her, and to her alone.

She did not realize at once what had happened. She knew some dreadful thing had taken place, but, somehow, she felt that it had restored to her the lover of her girlhood days, and she was happy. His arms were about her—those iron arms which had won many a hard-fought battle for Yale, and that brave heart that had never faltered or known fear in the face of the mightiest obstacle or danger beat against her own.

There was a step close at hand, and a man stopped near them.

“So you got out, Merriwell!” said a voice. “Is that Inza? Is she hurt?”

It was Swift.

One look of scorn Merry gave the fellow, but no word did he speak in reply.

Now the black smoke was rising and the fire was crackling like a joyous fiend. Still, from that fearful wreck came the cries of the poor wretches who were held fast in that trap of death.

“Walter!” cried Inza, realizing at last what had happened. “Where is he?”

“I do not know,” confessed Frank.

“My father?”

Merry shook his head.

“He is in there!” she screamed, sitting upright. “They are both there! Oh, my brother!”

A man with his clothing torn, and one arm hanging helpless at his side, staggered toward him.

“Inza!” he hoarsely shouted, joy in his tone. “I could not find you! I thought you still in there!”

It was Walter Burrage, badly bruised and having a broken arm, but alive and not dangerously hurt. He fell on his knees and clasped his sister’s hand.

“Take her!” said Frank Merriwell hoarsely—“take her, quick!”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going back in there to look for your father!”

“The cars are burning!”

But Frank heeded this not the least. Thrusting Inza upon her brother, he sprang up and turned toward the wreck.

One of the trainmen saw Merry’s movement, saw the grim look of determination on his white face and the glare in his eyes. He grasped Frank, demanding;

“What’re you goin’ to do, young feller? Don’t get crazy!”

Frank grasped the man’s wrists and flung him off, sending him reeling. Then he crouched and plunged headlong through the very opening by which he had escaped from the wreckage.

“Mad as a March hare!” gasped the trainman. “He’ll roast in there, for the whole thing will be a roaring bonfire in less than five minutes! He’s a goner!”

Inza had watched him, and now she was seized by a frightful terror lest he had indeed gone to his death. He had called her sweetheart again as of old! He had held her clasped in his strong arms! She had seen the old love-light in his eyes! And now he was gone!

“Walter,” she sobbed, “he’ll not come back! Look! See the fire! He will be burned to death!”

Perhaps for the first time in her life she was seized by a terrible fear that Frank would fail to accomplish his purpose. Always before, under the most trying circumstances, she had maintained perfect confidence in him, perfect faith that he would triumph in the end and come forth unscathed.

“He was a fool!” declared Roy Swift, who still was near.

“He’s the bravest fellow in the whole world!” declared Inza. “You escaped, but you thought of no one save yourself. He rescued me, and now he has gone back there, risking his own life in an attempt to find and save my father from a frightful death.”

Swift was silent, but he mentally told himself:

“That’s the end of the fellow! He’s gone back into the jaws of the trap, and he’ll never come out! The fire is spreading swiftly.”

“There’s a chance for him, Inza,” Walter declared, wishing to keep her courage up. “But father may have been taken out already. We can’t tell till we investigate.”

She rose to her feet and stood staring at the spot where Frank had vanished, her hands clenched, her face pale as death, her bosom heaving.

“He loves me!” she mentally cried. “I know it now! Oh, why did I let him throw his life away!”

Blacker rolled the smoke against the wintry sky. In the west the sun broke through a bank of clouds and shot a bar of yellow light across the snowy fields.

Was this Frank Merriwell’s funeral-pyre? Was this to be the tragic ending of the most remarkable youth of the New World?

There rose a sudden shout. Men sprang forward to assist some one from the wreck. Then, with his clothes torn, his hands bleeding, but with triumph written on his determined face, Frank Merriwell, of Yale, reappeared.

In his arms he bore Bernard Burrage!

CHAPTER XXIV

“A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.”

There were plenty of old friends in Fardale who were ready and willing to take Bernard Burrage in and do all in their power for him, but Alvin Brander was on hand with a comfortable sleigh to bear Inza’s father from the station when the next train came in over the line from the place of the wreck.

Inza accompanied her father, of course. Frank Merriwell, Roy Swift, and Walter Burrage, the latter with his left arm in a sling, were also on the train, but they decided to stop at the hotel.

Of course, they were heroes to the villagers, who had thousands of questions to ask about the wreck. Not a few of the injured had belonged in Fardale, or were known there, and one among the four killed outright had once lived in the little village. It was a mighty sensation for a town of that size.

Frank was remembered and recognized by many. Some recognized Swift. But no one seemed to know Walter Burrage, who registered at the hotel under a fictitious name.

Mr. Burrage, strange to say, had received very few bodily injuries in the catastrophe; but mentally he had been given a terrible shock, and his condition was regarded as critical. The following morning, however, the inquiring and solicitous villagers learned that he seemed somewhat better.

Walter Burrage tried to avoid Swift, but this he found rather difficult, for the young soldier refused to be dodged. And so, biding his time, Swift caught Walter alone in his room after the latter had visited his father and Inza that morning. The young man in uniform walked right into the room, with an air of easy assurance that was a trifle annoying.

“Good morning, Burrage,” he said loudly.

“If you don’t mind, it will please me for you to call me by the name I have registered under—Burton,” said Walter, in a low tone. “You know I do not care about being recognized here, and I depend on this beard to serve as a disguise.”

“Rather careless of you, to say the least,” declared Swift. “But I’m perfectly willing to call you any old thing you like. It doesn’t matter to me, and I’m your friend, you know.”

“I hope you are.”

“Oh, I am—your particular friend. How is your arm this morning, old man?”

“Well, you may be sure it doesn’t feel pleasant.”

“Sorry. But you were lucky to get off so easy.”

“That’s right,” agreed Walter.

“You have a way of bumping into hard luck, you know,” said Swift, taking a seat and lighting a cigar before offering one to his companion. “Have a smoke?”

Walter declined.

“That little affair which obliterated you from the map of the United States was very unfortunate,” pursued the soldier, without guarding his voice in the least.

“What are you trying to do, man?” demanded Walter, a flush in his cheeks and his eyes flashing. “Are you determined to tell these people here who I am?”

“Not at all. Just carelessness of me. But it would be a bad thing if it got out, wouldn’t it? You’d be nabbed and have to stand trial. They’d be sure to convict you, and you’d get ten or twenty years. I say, Walt, old chum, you’re running a deuce of a risk coming here.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. I know it well enough. But I’ve been hungry for a sight of the old places and of my father, sister, and friends. You don’t know what it is, Swift, to be an outcast, a man without a country. I don’t suppose I’d felt half so bad if I’d thought I might come back any time without fear of anything; but the knowledge of what was hanging over my head the moment I placed my foot on the soil of the United States made me wild to see the land in which I was born, my native land, the land I love!”

“Don’t believe I’d felt that way in your place. I’d felt that I didn’t care a rap for a country where I had been treated in such a shabby manner.”

“Did you ever read Edward Everett Hale’s wonderful story, ‘The Man Without a Country’?”

“Naw! I don’t read stories. They’re such rot!”

“Some are; some are not. The one I speak of seems to me the greatest story ever written, for I am much like the poor wretch in that story. He railed against his native land, cursed it, expressed a wish to never set foot on its shores again. As he was an officer in the regular army, this was regarded as treason. He was tried and condemned to eternal banishment from the United States. He had said that he wished never again to hear the name of his country, and in the decree of his punishment it was directed that never again should he hear it.

“He was sent to sea on a vessel of the American Navy. From the time the shores of the United States vanished from his view until his death, he never saw it more. He was transferred from ship to ship, so that always he was kept in foreign waters. Orders were that no one should ever speak to him of the United States. Further than that, no book, newspaper, or printed matter of any sort bearing any information or telling anything about the United States was permitted to reach his hands.

“He never received a letter from a single friend in his native land. He was in every way ‘a man without a country.’ What was the result? Soon his feelings began to change. He longed to know something about the land of his birth. What was taking place there? It was all unavailing for him to try to find out. His questions remained unanswered, and finally he ceased to ask them. But always in his eyes there was a look of such unspeakable longing as to touch the heart of every one who saw him.

“In the last vessel to which he was transferred he remained a very long time. When he died it was found he had made himself an American flag, which hung where it would be constantly before his eyes in his stateroom. He had drawn as well as he could a map of the United States, that he might remember how broad and grand was the land he had cursed. But since his banishment vast tracts of the West had been added to the country he had lost, so the map really showed that grand land as only about one-fourth as large as it really was.

“Of these changes he knew nothing. Mighty events had taken place, but of them all he remained in absolute ignorance. But his love for his lost country had grown with the years till no man ever loved it more, and each night as he knelt before that hand-made flag, the glorious stars and stripes, he prayed with all his heart and soul for the welfare of the land he would see no more. In his dying moments the weight of his terrible punishment was lifted from him, for one who was with him told him of the stupendous changes that had taken place, of the mighty advances the United States had made in every way, and his eyes filled with joyous tears, while he lifted his thin old hands in thanksgiving to God. And at last he died and was buried at sea, without ever again seeing the shores of the land he had cursed, the land he had grown to love with all his soul. What do you think of that story, Swift?”

“Bah! A ridiculous yarn, devised by the brain of a man who was looking for notoriety.”

“Nothing of the sort! It appealed to me as no other story ever did.”

“Circumstances made it appeal to you. But the ‘hero’ of the yarn was a fool! Think I’d love a country that did such a thing to me? Well, I’d die cursing it!”

“Then something tells me that, even though you wear the uniform of your country now, you have little real love for it in your heart.”

“Oh, I’m not a fool, Burrage! I’m a soldier in the regular army, and haven’t I a chance to see how this country uses her subjects? I think I have! There are lots of poor devils out in those islands who love the States even less than I do.”

Walter’s dislike for the fellow was increasing rapidly.

“I don’t believe it!” he cried. “If it is true, they should swap places with me. How gladly I’d do that! I’d rejoice to take the uniform of a common soldier if I might fight beneath the flag I love. I have felt that I, too, am a man without a country. It is a terrible feeling, Swift! One gets to hankering for the sight of Yankeeland till it seems that he’ll go daffy!”

“Oh, if I’d been treated as you have, I’d go to England and become a naturalized citizen.”

“Which is proof enough that you have no real love for your own land in your heart. That is something I’ll never do. Some day the whole affair in which I took part may be cleared up, and I may be able to come home without sneaking back in disguise. Then how gladly I shall come!”

“All right! We’re not all alike. You’ve been to see your father this morning?”

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“Far better than I expected.”

“He was not hurt in the accident?”

“Not much, although he was badly shaken up.”

“And your sister?”

“She’s quite well.”

“By Jove! I thought she was done for when I saw Merriwell creep out with her! That gave me a terrible jolt! Do you know, Burrage, you have a confoundedly handsome sister?”

“Yes, I know Inza is a beautiful girl,” confessed Walter, though he did not like the manner in which Swift had spoken.

“She’s a peach!” the soldier declared. “I’m dead smashed on her, my boy!”

“Better not be.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think she likes you very well.”

Swift flushed a little, but forced a laugh.

“That’s because I expressed my mind concerning that fellow Merriwell. I didn’t know I was touching her so hard. But for the unpleasantness of the situation, I’d stood by my statements. I never liked him. See here, is Inza in love with that duffer?”

Walter shrugged his shoulders.

“Better not let him hear you speak of him like that. I don’t know whether she is in love with him or not.”

“Well, he’s smashed on her.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, didn’t I hear him talking to her when he knelt beside her after escaping from the wreck. She had not recovered, and he thought she was dead. He gave himself away then.”

“Well, if Frank Merriwell is in love with my sister, I am very glad.”

“But marriage does not always follow love,” said Swift, in a mean, insinuating way.

Walter Burrage whirled on the fellow, his face dark with anger.

“Don’t make any nasty talk like that!” he exclaimed. “I have only one arm, but I won’t stand for it, Swift!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything!” the soldier protested. “But I was led to understand that Merriwell and Inza are not engaged.”

“I do not know whether they are or not. If I did, I might not tell you, for I regard it as none of your business.”

Then Walter walked out of the room and left Swift there.

CHAPTER XXV

SWIFT DECLARES HIS PASSION.

“Oh, I’ll bring you down off your high horse, confound you!” muttered Roy Swift, as he followed Walter Burrage from that room. “If your sister does not lower her high head in short order, I’ll make her do it—or land you behind bars!”

Leaving the hotel, he made his way straight toward the house of Alvin Brander, on the outskirts of the village. There was a brass knocker on the door of the old-fashioned house, and Swift pounded it vigorously. A servant appeared, and Swift pushed right into the hall, saying:

“Tell Miss Burrage that a friend wishes to see her.”

“Will you give me your name?”

“Frank Merriwell.”

He was shown into the stiff old parlor, with its haircloth furniture, picture-album, case of wax flowers, and chromos on the walls. There he seated himself comfortably and waited.

He was not compelled to wait long. On the stair there was a flying footfall and Inza appeared, her face showing her pleasure, while she exclaimed:

“Oh, Frank, I’m so glad you————”

Then, as he rose, she stopped short and stared at him, a look of surprise and consternation on her handsome face.

“Mr. Swift!” she cried, in disappointment.

“Yes,” he laughed. “Quite a joke on you, wasn’t it? Ha, ha, ha!”

She drew herself up proudly, her eyes flashing.

“A joke, sir?”

“Why, yes; you thought you were coming down to see Merriwell. Ha, ha! That was a joke!”

“I must say you have very peculiar ideas of a joke! You gave a false name.”

“Perhaps the servant misunderstood me.”

“No; you gave your name as Frank Merriwell. You knew I was engaged caring for my father, and might not find time to come down. It was a trick!”

“But you could find time to come down for Merriwell?”

“He is a friend—he saved my life and the life of my father yesterday.”

“Which any one else might have done in his place.”

“What did you do?”

“Unfortunately, I was separated from you by the accident, and I could not find you.”

“What did you do when you knew my father was back there in that burning wreckage—when I appealed to somebody to save him?”

“I did not know where to find him.”

“Nor did Mr. Merriwell.”

“I think he did know, else he would not have succeeded so finely.”

“He did not!”

“He has told you that to make the act seem all the braver and grander in your eyes. He knows how to play his cards.”

Her lips curled.

“I’ll not listen to such talk about him! I must return to my father.”

“Wait!”

“I cannot stop, sir. You must excuse me.”

She was going.

“Miss Burrage, your brother is in great peril.”

That stopped her.

“Walter!” she exclaimed. “He is in danger?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say.”

Now she came back a few steps, and he was satisfied.

“What is the danger?” she haltingly asked.

“The danger is that he will be arrested. You know for what. And in case he is arrested he will be tried and condemned. A term of ten or twenty years must follow.”

She had straightened up to hear these words. For a moment she did not speak, and then, in a tone that indicated an effort to self-control, she asked:

“Has he been recognized here in Fardale?”

“Not yet; but one word from any one who knows him will set the law on his track.”

“From any one who knows him? Who is there who would betray him? Is it possible you mean that you——”

He stepped toward her quickly.

“I mean, Miss Burrage, that I love you!” he declared boldly. “Wait—you must listen! Understanding your brother’s peril, you will not refuse to listen!”

She put up a hand to check his advance.

“Mr. Swift,” she panted, “is it possible you are threatening me?”

“Not that! But I am desperately in love with you, Inza, and I was determined to find a way to make you listen to me.”

“Brave man!”

Her words and her look cut him deeply, but he would not be checked.

“I have loved you all the years since I left Fardale. In all my wanderings I have never found another like you, Inza!”

“Call me Miss Burrage, if you please, sir!”

“You can’t hold me in check that way! You do not know Roy Swift, else you would not try. I have seen you again, and I find you far handsomer than you were in the old days. My heart is torn with love, and I have sworn that you shall be mine!”

He was shaking with the intensity of his feelings. In his bronzed cheeks there was a wild flush, while his eyes gleamed with a burning light. Inza was alarmed, but she did not show it.

“You had better withdraw your oath,” she calmly said; “for I shall never be yours. You have fancied something that is quite impossible.”

“You must—you shall!” he cried. “I will not give you up to Frank Merriwell! He shall not have you! Inza, when my grandfather dies I shall be a rich man. I did not have to enter the army. I did that of my own accord. I shall be able to give you anything you want if you will marry me.”

“Mr. Swift, I would not marry you if you had all the wealth of Rockefeller!”

“I swear you shall never marry him! I am desperate, Inza! Think of your brother! With a word, I can send him to prison!”

“And prove yourself a dastard!”

“A man in love will do anything to win the object of his passions. If you would save your brother, you must marry me!”

“You coward!”

She took a step toward him, her hands clenched, and hissed the words through her white teeth. He actually fell back a step before her intense scorn and contempt.

“Then you are willing to see him branded as a criminal—willing to see him suffer? His arrest will be the death-blow of your old father! Think of that! Are you not willing to sacrifice yourself to save both your brother and your father? Have you not that much love for them?”

“You coward!” she repeated, withering scorn in her dark eyes. “If my brother were here now——”

“But he is not! Nor is Frank Merriwell here! You do not know the passion you have awakened in the heart of Roy Swift! If Merriwell were out of the way———— By Heaven! he may be out of the way!”

“Would you——”

“Let him keep away from me! I go armed, and I will not hold myself responsible! If Merriwell were here now——”

“He is!”

Frank himself strode into the room. He had come to the house with young Jim Brander, who had let him in without ringing. In the hall Merry had heard what was passing in the parlor, and there was a terrible look on his face as he strode toward the soldier.

Swift leaped backward, his right hand jerking out a pistol. With a spring, Frank was on him, grasped his wrist and wrenched the weapon from his hand.

“I think you have been drinking this morning, sir,” he cried grimly, as he held the other helpless and turned toward the door. “Jim, fling open the front door.”

Jim Brander, who had been peering into the room, hastened to obey. Merry quickly carried the resisting fellow from the parlor, saying as he did so:

“You have made some very nasty threats, Swift, but you had better think twice before you attempt to carry any of them out. And if you annoy Miss Burrage again, I’ll thrash you till you’ll need a doctor for a week.”

Then, having reached the front door, he proceeded to kick Roy Swift down the steps.

CHAPTER XXVI

HAPPY HEARTS.

Humiliated and infuriated, Roy Swift left, swearing vengeance. As soon as he got back to the hotel, he took to drink. He seemed in a great hurry to fill himself with whisky, and as he grew intoxicated still wilder schemes began to revolve in his head.

“I’ll be even with Merriwell!” he vowed. “He shall not have her! I swear it!”

He was one of the kind that grow desperate as they become intoxicated. In a disgraceful condition, he hunted up Walter, who, as yet, knew nothing of the affair at Brander’s.

“Burrage,” said Swift, “I’m going to marry your sister!”

Walter looked at him a moment, and then said:

“Swift, you are disgustingly drunk. I advise you to get into a room and stay there till you sober off.”

“Don’t need your advice. I’m going to marry your sister. That is business. I swear by everything high and low that I will have her! Frank Merriwell shall not!”

Then he turned and made off.

That afternoon Inza left the house to go to the post-office. Within ten rods of the door she was startled to hear the hoof-beats of a horse behind her. Turning quickly, she saw Roy Swift, mounted on a bay horse, coming straight toward her, his face flushed and his eyes gleaming.

She tried to get out of the way, but she could not avoid him. She thought he meant to run her down and trample her beneath the feet of the horse, but he swerved aside, bent from the saddle, caught her up somehow, and flung her across the horse before him.

Then, in this manner, holding her helpless, the intoxicated fellow went tearing through the village, yelling like a wild Indian.

Frank was with Walter Burrage when Swift passed the hotel. Merry saw him and dashed out to the street. In front of the hotel a horse was hitched, being harnessed into a sleigh.

Out came Merry’s knife, and with wonderful swiftness he cut that horse clear from the sleigh. Onto its back he flung himself, starting in pursuit of the liquor-maddened kidnaper.

It was a wild race through the village and out into the country beyond. From the top of a hill, Fardale Academy and the buildings surrounding it might have been seen, but neither pursued nor pursuer looked in that direction.

Frank found that Swift was drawing away, the horse on which he was mounted being far superior to the animal Merry had appropriated. In vain Frank urged on the horse he bestrode.

Then he saw the intoxicated kidnaper turn from the regular road into a road that led down to a little lake where some ice-cutters had been at work. They had made the road hauling ice to the village, where it was stored. In his delirium, Swift had mistaken this as the main highway.

When Merry reached that point, the bay horse was tearing down toward the lake. Frank pursued now with a hope that something might happen to baffle Swift.

Out onto the ice-covered lake rode the kidnaper. He did not seem to see the spot where the men had been cutting ice, and dashed straight into it. The thin ice crashed through beneath the feet of the horse, and it plunged into the water.

Then Frank Merriwell madly urged his own horse down the hill. When the lake was reached, he flung himself from the animal’s back and dashed to the edge of the opening in the ice.

Inza was clinging to the horse, which was keeping its head above the surface.

Swift had disappeared.

The solid ice ran close to the spot where the horse had plunged through, and Frank soon succeeded in getting hold of Inza and helping her out.

That evening Inza received Frank at Alvin Brander’s. The facts of her last thrilling adventure had been carefully kept from her father, who was resting easily.

Inza herself had been sorely shaken, but her brave spirit kept her up, and her healthy body had made it possible for her to endure it all without being overcome.

Indeed, to Frank it seemed that she looked more charming than ever. She shuddered when she thought of the fate of Roy Swift.

Somehow, Frank was uneasy. He could not seem to bring himself to speak of the things which sought utterance.

“Inza,” he said, “do you think you dare venture out this evening? It is a beautiful night and not very cold.”

“Yes,” she said, “I believe it will make me feel better.”

So, a little later, they were walking together, her gloved hand resting on his arm. The white moon looked down at them and smiled, while the knowing little stars winked wisely at each other.

Frank’s heart was strangely full. Still, something sealed his lips.

“This is our street,” said Inza, as they turned down the old familiar way. “You know we used to live down here a short distance?”

How well he knew it!

“I wish you were living here now, Inza, and that I was a cadet at the academy.”

“Would you like to live the old days over, Frank?”

“Would I? They were the happiest days of my life!”

“And of mine!”

They came to the old home, and paused where they could see it as revealed by the moonlight.

“It needs repairing,” she said sadly. “I hear it is for sale. The people who lived here have moved away, and it is empty.”

A strange fancy came to him.

“I believe I will buy it!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, do!” she cried. “That would be just splendid!”

“Would you like to live here again, Inza?”

“Nothing in this wide world could make me happier!”

“Nothing, Inza?”

Her head drooped. After a moment she murmured:

“Well, I did not mean just that, Frank.”

“Here is the old gate,” he said, drawing her toward it. “Don’t you remember a certain evening years ago when we stood here by the gate?”

“I shall never forget it!” she declared, slipping from him and passing through to the other side. “I was in here and you out there, just as we are now.”

“And it was a beautiful moonlight night, but the trees had leaves on them and cast a shadow here, so the moon could not see what happened that night.”

She laughed, in spite of the fact that her heart was beating very fast.

“Inza,” he went on, “you were my sweetheart then, and now I know I have loved you ever since. Inza, dearest, do you love me? Will you marry me when I leave college?”

The moment had come. She felt herself shaking all over. Her voice was not steady as she asked in a very low tone:

“Are you certain, Frank, that you love me more than any one else in the world—more than Elsie?”

“I have not the least doubt of it. I know now that I have always loved you more than any one in the world.”

“Then I will marry you, Frank!”

There being no baffling leaves on the trees, the delighted old moon this time saw what it had failed to see one moonlight evening over that gate years ago.

THE END.

No. 70 of the Merriwell Series, entitled “Frank Merriwell’s False Friend,” by Burt L. Standish, has a thrilling boat race in which Frank helps his side to victory in spite of the efforts of his false friend to keep him out of the race.

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- Transcriber’s Notes:

- Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

- Typographical errors were silently corrected.

- Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.

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Table of Contents

- Frank Merriwell’s Trust

- CHAPTER I. JACK DIAMOND’S FRIENDS.

- CHAPTER II THE GAMBLER’S VICTIM.

- CHAPTER III GILDED VICE.

- CHAPTER IV THE OPEN HAND.

- CHAPTER V FRANK’S SURPRISING PROPOSAL.

- CHAPTER VI THE UNKNOWN WINS.

- CHAPTER VII FRANK EXPLAINS THE SITUATION.

- CHAPTER VIII FRANK FINDS HIMSELF PURSUED.

- CHAPTER IX THE GIRL FROM FAR AWAY.

- CHAPTER X AN UNCONVENTIONAL GIRL.

- CHAPTER XI HUCK JONES.

- CHAPTER XII THE SECRET OF THE DOLL.

- CHAPTER XIII HILDA GETS HER RIGHTS.

- CHAPTER XIV FRANK’S INFLUENCE.

- CHAPTER XV HAPPY JACK.

- CHAPTER XVI THE MAN INZA MET.

- CHAPTER XVII INZA’S STRANGE ACTIONS.

- CHAPTER XVIII THE MYSTERIOUS LITTLE STICK.

- CHAPTER XIX FRANK’S FAITH UNSHAKEN.

- CHAPTER XX STARBRIGHT SPEAKS OUT.

- CHAPTER XXI FRANK AND INZA.

- CHAPTER XXII THE YOUNG SOLDIER.

- CHAPTER XXIII THE RAILROAD WRECK.

- CHAPTER XXIV “A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.”

- CHAPTER XXV SWIFT DECLARES HIS PASSION.

- CHAPTER XXVI HAPPY HEARTS.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE