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Come along and get into a kilt, man. What's a fellow by the name of Grant doing at home when there's a war on? Wouldn't you like to go over and smash the Germans, now?" Gavin looked at him dumbly. It was as if a lost soul were being asked if it would like to enter Paradise. "Well, what's keeping you?" asked the Major impatiently. "I I can't leave the farm and my Aunts," he stammered.

Then it came to a stop, against an outcrop of coral, with a force that put its sensitive bulb permanently out of business. But, during that brief circular roll of the light, Gavin Brice caught the most fleeting glimpse of the sight that had caused Claire to cry out and shrink back against him.

Scarce waiting for Brice to finish speaking, the butler broke again into that monkey-like chatter of appeal and fright. Gavin silenced him with a threatening gesture, and renewed his own harangue. But, after perhaps a minute of it, he saw the uselessness of trying to put manhood or pluck into the groveling little Oriental. And he lost his own temper. "Here!" he growled, to Standish.

Why, Roke, over at the Key, is said to be the only man who ever outwrestled him! And Roke has the strength of a gorilla." Gavin Brice smiled grimly to himself in the darkness, as he recalled his own test of prowess with Roke. "I don't think he'll hurt me overmuch," said he. "I thank you, just the same. It makes me very happy to know you aren't " "Mr. Brice!" she cried, in desperation.

There are those who say that women cannot love each other, but it is not true. Woman is not undeveloped man, but something better, and Gavin and the doctor knew it as they saw Nanny clinging to her protector. When the gypsy turned with flashing eyes to the two men she might have been a mother guarding her child. "How dare you!" she cried, stamping her foot; and they quaked like malefactors.

"If you can't remember," countered Gavin. "you can hardly expect me to. I live in New York. I have lived there or thereabouts for a number of years. I was overseas stationed at Bordeaux and then at Brest for a few months in 1918. As a boy I lived on my father's farm in northern New York State, near Manlius. That's the best answer I can give you.

"But, see," she cried, brightening, "look at this ring. Do you know its value?" She held up her finger, but the stone would not live in the dull light. "I see it is gold," the doctor said cautiously, and she smiled at the ignorance that made him look only at the frame. "Certainly, it is gold," said Gavin, equally stupid. "Mercy on us!" Nanny cried; "I believe it's what they call a diamond."

I have been trying hard to recall the surname of the boy to whom my heart first flowed out in a real affection, but memory fails me. He was a schoolfellow of mine, and I guess that he may have been of Scottish parentage, because his Christian name was Gavin.

Yet he found himself looking at her elder brother with a certain reluctant friendliness, on her account. Suddenly, the grin was wiped from his face, and he was tense from head to foot. Standish, on his way homeward, was strolling past a clump of dwarf shrubbery. And, idly watching him, Gavin could have sworn that one end of the shrubbery moved. Then, he was no longer in doubt.

She was filled with dismay at the contrast Gavin Grant had presented to him that night. It did not dawn upon Christina's mind that Gavin would as soon have raised his hand to Auntie Elspie as to defend himself against poor old Piper Lauchie. Tilly had whispered that Gavin was scared, and the other girls, with Joanna's able assistance, emphasised the shameful fact.