With absolute gravity little Eve Edgarton kept right on staring at
him. "I don't know whether I should ever specially like you--or not,
Mr. Barton," she drawled. "But you are certainly very beautiful!"

"Oh, I say!" cried Barton wretchedly. With a really desperate effort
he struggled almost to his feet, tottered for an instant, and then
came sagging down to the soft earth again--a great, sprawling,
spineless heap, at little Eve Edgarton's feet.

Unflinchingly, as if her wrists were built of steel wires, the girl
jumped up and pulled and tugged and yanked his almost dead weight into
a sitting posture again.

"My! But you're chock-full of lightning!" she commiserated with him.

Out of the utter rage and mortification of his helplessness Barton
could almost have cursed her for her sympathy. Then suddenly, without
warning, a little gasp of sheer tenderness escaped him.

"Eve Edgarton," he stammered, "you're--a--brick! You--you must have
been invented just for the sole purpose of saving people's lives. Oh,
you've saved mine all right!" he acknowledged soberly. "And all this
black, blasted night you've nursed me--and fed me--and jollied
me--without a whimper about yourself--without--a--" Impulsively he
reached out his numb-palmed hand to her, and her own hand came so cold
to it that it might have been the caress of one ghost to another. "Eve
Edgarton," he reiterated, "I tell you--you're a brick! And I'm a
fool--and a slob--and a mutt-head--even when I'm not chock-full of
lightning, as you call it! But if there's ever anything I can do for