But all he knew was that his skull was a beehive in an uproar, and that one lobe of his brain was struggling to swarm off. His legs and arms felt as if they belonged to another man, and a very limp one at that. A ton of cast-iron seemed to be pressing his eyelids down, and a trickle of redhot metal flowed from his cut forehead.

"I shall have to scream," thought the lady, after an instant of anxious waiting, "if he does not revive. I cannot leave for help."

him to go

Not a prude, you see. A prude would have had cheap scruples about compromising herself by taking a man in her arms. Not a vulgar person, who would have required the stranger to be properly recommended by somebody who came over in the Mayflower, before she helped him. Not a feeble-minded damsel, who, if she had not fainted, would have fled away, gasping and in tears. No timidity or prudery or underbred doubts about this thorough creature. She knew she was in her right womanly place, and she meant to stay there.

But she began to need help, possibly a lancet, possibly a pocket-pistol, possibly hot blankets, possibly somebody to knead these lifeless lungs and pommel this flaccid body, until circulation was restored.

Just as she was making up her mind to scream, Wade stirred. He began to tingle as if a familiar of the Inquisition were slapping him all over with fine-toothed currycombs. He became half conscious of a woman supporting him. Jo a stammering and intoxicated voice he murmured,

"Who ran to catch me when I fell,

And kissed the place to make it well?
My-"

He opened his eyes. It was not his mother; for she was long since deceased. Nor was this non-mother kissing the place.

In fact, abashed at the blind eyes suddenly unclosing se

near her, she was on the point of letting her burden drop. When dead men come to life in such a position, and begin to talk about "kissing the place," young ladies, however independent of conventions, may well grow uneasy.

But the stranger, though alive, was evidently in a molluscous, invertebrate condition. He could not sustain himself. She still held him up, a little more at arm's-length, and all at once the reaction from extreme anxiety brought a gush of tears to her eyes.

"Don't cry," says Wade, vaguely, and still only half conscious. "I promise never to do so again."

At this, said with a childlike earnestness, the lady smiled. "Don't scalp me," Wade continued, in the same tone. "Squaws never scalp."

He raised his hand to his bleeding forehead.

She laughed outright at his queer plaintive tone and the new class he had placed her in.

Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade fully to himself. She perceived that his look was transferring her from the order of scalping squaws to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of the highest civilization, not smeared with vermilion, but blushing celestial rosy.

"Thank you," said Wade. "I can sit up now without assistance." And he regretted profoundly that good breed ing obliged him to say so.

She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice, - posture of the Dying Gladiator. She made an effort to be cool and distant as usual; but it would not do. This weak mighty man still interested her. It was still her business to be strength to him.

He made a feeble attempt to wipe away the drops of blood from his forehead with his handkerchief.

"Let me be your surgeon!" said she.

She produced her own folded handkerchief, — M. D. were the initials in the corner,—and neatly and tenderly tur baned him.

Wade submitted with delight to this treatment. A tumble with such trimmings was luxury indeed.

"Who would not break his head," he thought, "to have these delicate fingers plying about him, and this pure, noble face so close to his? What a queenly indifferent manner she has! What a calm brow! What honest eyes! What

a firm nose!

nant mouth!

What equable cheeks!

Not a bit afraid of me!

a gentleman and will not presume."

What a grand indig

She feels that I am

"There!" said she, drawing back. "Is that comfortable?"

66

Luxury!" he ejaculated with fervor.

"I am afraid I am to blame for your terrible fall.”

"No, my own clumsiness and that oar-blade are in fault."

"If you feel well enough to be left alone, I will skate off and call my friends."

"Please do not leave me quite yet!" says Wade, entirely satisfied with the tête-à-tête.

"Ah! here comes Mr. Skerrett round the Point!" she said, and sprang up, looking a little guilty.

CHAPTER IX.

LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE.

PETER SKERRETT came sailing round the purple rocks of his Point, skating like a man who has been in the South of Europe for two winters.

He was decidedly Anglicized in his whiskers, coat, and shoes. Otherwise he in all respects repeated his well-known ancestor, Skerrett of the Revolution; whose two portraits — 1. A ruddy hero in regimentals, in Gilbert Stuart's early brandy and-water manner; 2. A rosy sage in senatorials, in Stuart's later claret-and-water manner-hang in his descendant's dining-room.

Peter's first look was a provokingly significant one at the confused and blushing young lady. Secondly, he inspected the Dying Gladiator on the ice.

"Have you been tilting at this gentleman, Mary?" he asked, in the voice of a cheerful, friendly fellow. "Why! Hullo. Hooray! It's Wade, Richard Wade, Dick Wade! Don't look, Miss Mary, while I give him the grips of all the secret societies we belonged to in college."

Mary, however, did look on, pleased and amused, while Peter plumped down on the ice, shook his friend's hand, and examined him as if he were fine crockery, spilt and perhaps shattered.

"It's not a case of trepanning, Dick, my boy?" said he. "No," said the other. "I tumbled in trying to dodge this lady. The ice thought my face ought to be scratched, because I had been scratching its face without mercy. My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired of secession, and pleading to be let in again."

"Keep some of them out for our sake! We must have you at our commonplace level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had the sensation of breaking a man's head. You generally hit lower." Peter tapped

his heart.

"I'm all right now, thanks to my surgeon," says Wade. "Give me a lift, Peter." He pulled up and clung to his friend.

"You're the vine and I'm the lamp-post," Skerrett said. Mary, do you know what a pocket-pistol is?"

"I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern warriors."

"There's one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the but and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off, now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too. She is restorative."

"Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick?" he continued, as she skimmed away.

"You see

"It would put a soul under the ribs of Death." "I venerate that young woman," says Peter. what a beauty she is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than rocs' eggs."

"She has a singularly true face," Wade replied, "and that is the main thing, the most excellent thing in man or woman."

"Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable.”

"You did not do me the honor to present me."

"I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her initials in cambric on your brow? Not M. T., which would n't apply; but M. D."

"Mary-?"

"Damer."

"I like the name," says Wade, repeating it. "It sounds simple and thorough-bred."

"Just what she is. One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent."

"Nine?"

"Is that too many? Three, then. That's one in ten millions. The exact proportion of Poets, Painters, Orators, Statesmen, and all other Great Artists. Well, three or nine, Mary Damer is one of them. She never saw fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation. You must find out for yourself how much genius she has and has not. But I will say this, that I think of puns two a minute faster when I'm with her. Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm in a woman."

Wade laughed. "You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except apropos of punning."

"Come up and dine, and we 'll fire away personal his.