had lost his bearings, had missed the door, and now rising, drawing his clinging burden with him, he felt for the wall. A soft-fringed substance met his hand, a garment, and then another; then he knew he had entered a closet. He had noted it the preceding afternoon, chiefly because the door was open and her clothes were hanging there. It set in the wall, he remembered, between the bed and the diningroom door. He found the closet exit by reaching out with his foot, and, passing out, made his way along the wall to the right.

There he found, as he expected, the angle of the wall, and then the door leading out. He knew his way now. Preparing for a swift dash through the two remaining rooms to the window by which he had entered, he shifted one hand to the girl's knees, and slung her over his back like a sack of meal. Then, as he crossed the threshold, the whirring and rattling, which had gone on with ever-increasing force, broke in shrill crescendo; there came a frightful roar, and the door leading from the dining-room into the hall was blown in, together with a portion of the wall, while the flames, mushrooming into the apartment, interposed to his further course an impassable barrier. The viewless dark was lighted now with a blood-red light, and the heat bit at the fireman's face and singed his eyebrows.

Clearly, the rear of the apartment was cut off. He turned, retracing his steps. A puff of flame followed, and seared the back of his hand. On the floor his foot encountered a blanket; this he picked up and flung over the girl's head. As he entered the smaller bedroom, desperately plunging ahead now, the bed took fire, adding the deadly fumes of burning hair to the throttling smoke. So at length he reached the front-room window, where he knew there were no fire-escapes, but hoped to find a ladder within reach.

But there were none there. Laying the girl on the floor, he leaned out over the street and called. The extension-ladder, he could see, was against the other corner of the building, while that of another. truck was against the middle of it. There would not be time to move either of them. There came an answering call from the street, and the pale finger of a search-light swept to his face. He could see men run

ning to a hook and ladder, but now he knew they would be too late, even if there were ladders tall enough to reach him, for the fire had entered the room, was in fact licking up the furniture at his very heels; it was impossible for him to remain there longer. Placing the girl once more upon his shoulder, he made his way out on the window-ledge. There, balancing himself upon the precarious footing, he closed the window and then, swaying for a moment, caught a piece of copper facing, and thus sustained himself. With the pouring smoke thus shut off, he caught his first breath of fresh air, and he drank of it deeply, for it freshened him and gave him new strength.

The blanket had fallen from the girl's head, and now hearing her moan, he knew for the first time since fleeing before that sheet of flame that she was alive. Below, they had thrown a ladder from a truck, and were running with it to the curb; but as they reached it, the flames belched forth from the lower story windows and enveloped it. With a rush and roar the flames blew out Mechler's window. A groan went up from those in the street as he edged his way to the very end of the coping. He must fall soon or jump, and firemen gathered underneath with a lifenet, which they knew, at that height, would serve but little more effectively to break the fall than a spider's web.

The fire was at his legs, his boots melting; but seeing no hope, he grimly shut his teeth, with a resolve not to let go the girl, whatever happened. And then as the fire set his trousers to smoldering, there came a sharp cry from overhead. Looking up, a noose-end of a rope touched his head, and he saw two shadowy forms leaning over the cornice of the roof above. Quickly as thought he shifted his arm. which supported the girl, so that he could pull her from his shoulder into the hollow of his arm, and then, releasing his hand from the copper facing, seized the noose and, reeling on the edge of the sill, passed it over his right shoulder and under his left arm. With a cry of warning, he abandoned his balance and fell outward into space.

As the man and woman hung dangling over the sidewalk sixty feet below, the men above strained on the rope. But there were only two of them, and their

strength was not sufficient to overcome the resistance of weight. Upward went the fireman and his burden about two feet; then they slid back. From the street even the search-light, as though unwilling further to define the tragedy, shifted from the suspended fireman and the woman he had tried to save. A voice came from overhead. "Drop her! Drop her!" But Mechler shook his head. No, he No, he would not drop her. Something innate prevented any thought of that. A tongue of flame reached outward, bit at the rope, and then disappeared. A picture of the crushed and lifeless form huddled upon the sidewalk, which he had stepped over as he had entered the building, came to him, but as to a man whose mind was proof against realizing all its horror. He turned his head, glancing about to find some way to prolong a losing fight. An exclamation shot from his lips.

The window before which they hung was - outside the extreme corner of the house. Just beyond, perhaps five feet away, was a window of the adjoining buildingsafety, if it could be reached. But how? Oh, he must reach it! Then he could win out, could lick the fire, could hand death itself a wallop. Suddenly, swaying, turning, twisting, he thrust out his foot and kicked the side of the wall. This, as he expected, caused him to swing slightly toward the other building. He moved his body from the hips to accelerate the swing, and then, returning, kicked the wall again, this time a mighty blow, which sent the hanging couple swaying almost up to the neighboring sill. He shouted to the girl to release her hold upon him, but she groaned, and clung the tighter. Again he shouted, and then as her fingers closed the more desperately, he poised his fist a few inches from her jaw, and let her have it without mercy and without compunction. Molly Gleason! With a sigh she relaxed in his arm, and then as with pendulum swing they rose to the window, he thrust her through sash and all, so that she fell into the room, while he, on the next swing, followed her, and a sigh came up from the street below.

As he tumbled into the room, the tenants were already putting the girl, slightly, but not seriously, cut by the glass, into a bed. She was conscious now, but weeping hysterically. He came to the bed and

stood for a moment looking at her, mechanically releasing the rope from about his shoulder. Something seemed to have snapped in his brain. Through him was surging all the thrill of dramatic action. in the last few minutes, the sheer joy of deadly danger overcome, set at naught. It was as though his nature had sustained some powerful reaction; and indeed, it had. And in the process Molly Gleason was translated from what she had been into what she now was-the weak and hysterical object of an act which was all in all to Mechler not because of the personal element or the details involved, but because of the outlet it afforded for something of which his nature demanded relief, and always would demand relief as long as strength and youth were his, to the exclusion of everything else, just as Molly Gleason had long ago recognized.

So now when an occupant of the room, an overwrought young woman, uttered a cry and attempted to kiss him, he pushed her roughly away, and returned his gaze to the figure on the bed. Her arms were outstretched now.

"Tom, Tom," she cried, "I knew you would save me!”

Tom! Mechler wheeled swiftly about and left the room, striding down the stairs until he emerged into the rear yard, and found Cullen, trembling, sobbing, half dazed. So this was what love did for a man! Mechler shivered. He walked up to the policeman and slapped him on the back.

"Molly's all right, Tom," he said gruffly. "She 's up in the front room on the top floor." He paused as the man stared at him, and then added more kindly: "She thinks you saved her. Go up to her. I'll never put her wise."

So saying, he strode through the hallway to the front sidewalk, and here he met his captain.

"My God! Jack," he cried, extending his hand. "That was some nerve! Who was the woman?"

"I don't know," growled Mechler.

"And," added the captain, apologetically, "I was just going to ask Flint to shift you because I thought you had a yellow streak!"

"Cap," replied the fireman, solemnly, "you would n't know a yellow streak if you saw one."

THE

HE prison chaplain almost wept as he stood upon the station platform to bid the departing convict good-by. He was a young, enthusiastic chaplain, with a pale, domed forehead and earnest blue eyes, and "Buck" Thorne, erstwhile gambler and man about town, was his first

convert.

"You'll write often, Buck, old fellow," he admonished. The chaplain had been trained at Northfield, where men learn to put aside foolish dignity and to meet the erring with a hand-clasp. "And you'll remember your promise."

Buck laughed happily. A bitter winter wind, full of fine snow, was biting his prison-bleached cheeks and stirring the blood riotously beneath the pallor. "Sure, Mr. Irving, I'll remember," he answered. "I gave that promise of my own accord. And I'll keep it. No more brace games for mine!"

The chaplain's face grew radiant. "You see, Buck," he argued, "if you had n't been running a brace game, the man would never have attacked you; consequently you would never have done time for killing him. The district attorney told me that the jury went against you just because you were giving the man such a deal."

raw

Buck shrugged his shoulders. The district attorney had been a friend of his and had offered him up, Buck believed, as a sacrifice to a reform movement which chanced to be sweeping the town. "I only shot in self-defense, Mr. Irving," he said dryly. "You would do the same."

From the distance came the shriek of the approaching train. The chaplain looked furtively about him. He was a timid young man, and his methods would probably have been decried even in North

field as faulty; but his heart was pure gold.

"You know your model, Buck,” he said gently. "Follow Him and do your best, even if you have to gamble for a living. And you'll find pretty soon you'll give up gambling altogether. That 's what I am praying for."

"Give up gambling!" Buck's astonishment was sincere. "How is a man to make an honest living? No, I have n't promised that, Mr. Irving. What I did promise was to gamble fair.”

"All right," agreed the chaplain, cordially. "That is the first step on the road. You will find yourself taking others. No man can really play fair and not be, in a way, religious. That's the way it strikes me. And Rome was n't built in a day. Hope you are not cold in this storm."

Thorne laughed. His fur-lined overcoat contrasted luxuriously with the chaplain's thin and threadbare one. Buck had always been a fastidious dresser, and, despite the years in prison, still carried himself with an air of distinction. “My heart is warm, you know," he said.

The chaplain grew more serious as the train rolled in: "You'll do your best, Buck, I am sure," he whispered. "If you must play, play fair. And help those that need help."

He caught the gambler's hand and shook it heartily. "Don't mind my sermon, Buck, old man," he ended earnestly; "but do your best to help some one else. That is the way the fruits of conversion show in a man-help some one."

"I sure will," cried Buck as earnestly, his foot on the car-step. He waved his hand in farewell, the chaplain waved his warmly in response, and the train began

to beat its way into the heart of the storm.

As a change from surroundings of chilly stone, the warm, redplush interior of the car struck Buck as a pleasing change. He removed his gloves, and slowly and caressingly passed his hand over the plush of the seat. It was very good to be there, he reflected; good to watch the houses on each hand slipping past in the snow-drifts and feel the old prison life vanishing into the distance. And then, as though Fate wished to throw

the prison past into his face again, the door opened and "Shifty" Bellews entered the

car.

The man was good to look at in a dark, saturnine sort of way. His black eyes were marvelously fine, unless one chanced to note the wavering quality that had given Shifty his nickname. But the man himself filled Buck with disgust.

To begin with, he was a sneak thief, which, to Buck's mind, was a mean, petty rôle to play in the big game of life. Ordinarily Buck scorned such little "pikers," but in prison a man cannot be too fastidious, and for nearly two years Shifty had lockstepped with Buck.

The initiated say that to lockstep with a man even for one week is to learn more about his real disposition than is possible by ordinary observation in years. Buck, who had viewed Shifty from this vantageground, inclined to the opinion that not half the beauties of Shifty's character had ever been told. Then, there was the question of Shifty's wife.

It was this aspect of Shifty's career that made Buck glare savagely at him as he entered the car. Shifty was a "quitter," and Buck hated a quitter. Shifty's deserted wife had come to the chaplain the week before, a baby in her arms, another clinging to her skirts. Shifty, she said, had vanished. Yet here was Shifty, in a stylish Melton overcoat, swaggering through the car as though he were a gov

ernment commissioner investigating the line.

Involuntarily Buck straightened in his chair as Shifty came down the aisle: he would tell the fellow some wholesome truths. But the expected opportunity did not arise, for Shifty apparently changed his mind rather suddenly, and, facing about, left the car by the door through which he had entered.

Buck sat staring after him with lively curiosity. He had not the slightest doubt that the man had seen him, and had purposely retreated. Evidently he had his own reasons for wishing to be alone. But Buck was in too happy a frame of mind to bother long about him; besides, he felt he ought to be doing something in his own special line of business. So presently he dismissed Shifty Bellews from his mind. and made his way to the smoking-car.

The snow, which earlier in the day had been fine, white powder, was now falling in feathery flakes that hid the country-side from sight. The smoking-car windows revealed a savage, white turmoil, against which the interior of the car took on an inviting look of peace.

Buck sat down, flung back his fur-lined. coat, and lit a mild cigar, the parting gift of his friend the chaplain. He puffed once or twice in blissful contentment, then glanced about the car in search of business opportunities.

The only other occupants, two smartly

dressed young men with a certain university air that Buck knew well, were engaged in a game of cards. "Poker!" thought Buck, delightedly, his fingers tingling.

Presently, as Buck's genial smiles and fur-lined coat began to permeate the atmosphere, he found himself invited to join in the game. The two college men, who were specializing in sociology, had instinctively recognized in Buck a worthy object of study.

"Nothing very high, I hope," he remarked as he came forward.

"Dollar limit," explained the smaller of the two, a snappy, black-eyed man of about twenty-two, with a marvelous pink waistcoat. "We can't lose enough at that to make it interesting."

"Can't you?" asked Buck, innocently. And sitting down, he proceeded to play a game of poker that had as much resemblance to the game the young men knew as chess has to marbles. As he played, he seemed rejuvenated. It was as though the bits of colored pasteboard had magic in their touch. His discard was an intuition, his betting mathematically correct, his gains were continuous.

"I'm enjoying it. You play a lucky game," he added, turning to Buck.

"Lucky!" cried Buck, his serene, blue eyes opening wide with amazement. "I don't see the luck."

The two men looked at him curiously. They were young men, Buck reflected, the kind the chaplain was always talking about, and Buck suddenly felt sorry for them. The inefficiency of a college education, which allows a man to dabble with cards without teaching him the science of the game, struck home to him. He was about to volunteer some remarks on the theory and practice of poker, when Shifty entered the car.

Buck never looked up from his cards. Shifty came forward, hesitated, and beat a hasty retreat, while Thorne scanned his hand meditatively. There was a little flaw in Shifty's gait which he himself sometimes forgot, but which Buck remembered-a flaw occasioned by an impromptu drop from a second-story window when in pursuit of his vocation.

"Who is that?" asked Buck as the door closed.

"Funny-looking chap, is n't he?" responded Bobby. "Got a stunning girl with him, though-brown eyes, cold-cream cheeks, and all that sort of thing.'

Buck straightened up perceptibly. "Sister,

maybe," he conjectured. The older of the two friends shook his head. "A runaway match," he explained.

Bobby nodded confirmation. "We two sat in the seat opposite for a while, and we could n't help hearing the whole thing. The girl slipped away from her mother at the station and took an earlier train. The girl got a telegram while we sat there. Mama 's sorry for the mistake, and is coming on the next train. Romantic? Well, I guess."

Presently the taller of the two men, a blue-eyed, athletic-looking chap, smiled whimsically at his companion. "Losing fast enough to make it interesting, Bobby?"

"Well, rather," said Bobby, cheerfully.

Buck called for cards mechanically. "We are half an hour ahead of the next train," he said.