off, that I'll never do--but I promise you you'll have no further
reason to be what you call humiliated, or ashamed. You have my
word for it."

A week later Aintree rode his pony into a railway cutting and
rolled with it to the tracks below, and, if at the time he had
not been extremely drunk, would have been killed. The pony,
being quite sober, broke a leg and was destroyed.

When word of this came to Helen she was too sick at heart to see
Aintree, and by others it was made known to him that on the first
steamer Miss Scott would return North. Aintree knew why she was
going, knew she had lost faith and patience, knew the woman he
loved had broken with him and put him out of her life. Appalled
at this calamity, he proceeded to get drunk in earnest.


The night was very hot and the humidity very heavy, and at Las
Palmas inside the bungalow that served as a police-station the
lamps on either side of the lieutenant's desk burned like tiny
furnaces. Between them, panting in the moist heat and with the
sweat from his forehead and hand dripping upon an otherwise
immaculate report, sat Standish. Two weeks before, the chief had
made him one of his six lieutenants. With the force the promotion
had been most popular.

Since his promotion Standish had been in charge of the police-
station at Las Palmas and daily had seen Aintree as, on his way
down the hill from the barracks to the railroad, the hero of
Batangas passed the door of the station-house. Also, on the