"I thought only of saving you," he said honestly.

"Then I was quite right; you will never have any regret," she said.

"I wonder, ah, I wonder!" he added sorrowfully. But the girl was sure.

The regret was hers; though he never knew that. It is a lonely life on
the dry plains of Nindobar.






DERELICT

He was very drunk; and because of that Victoria Lindley, barmaid at
O'Fallen's, was angry--not at him but at O'Fallen, who had given him the
liquor.

She knew more about him than any one else. The first time she saw him he
was not sober. She had left the bar-room empty; and when she came back
he was there with others who had dropped in, evidently attracted by his
unusual appearance--he wore an eyeglass--and he had been saying something
whimsically audacious to Dicky Merritt, who, slapping him on the
shoulder, had asked him to have a swizzle.

Dicky Merritt had a ripe sense of humour, and he was the first to grin.
This was followed by loud laughs from others, and these laughs went out