TEN days before the wedding, they were lying at Manistee, waiting for a load of salt. Bruce had been growing more restless and absent-minded. The fault grew unchecked, because an instinctive fineness in Hunch held back the reproof that would ordinarily have followed slipshod work. But about the time of the Manistee trip, Bruce appeared in a new light. He was growing self-confident and independent. The old meekness was giving place to a certain animal pride.

The last night at Manistee, Bruce went uptown to buy a present for Mamie. He met an old friend on the street and told him of his luck. This called for congratulations, and in the confidence of his new strength Bruce followed his friend through a swinging, green baize door. He returned at eleven o’clock. Hunch was in the cabin, wrestling with his accounts.

Bruce came slowly down the steps and balanced carefully at the bottom.

“Hello, Hunch,” he said, slyly.

Badeau looked up. Bruce walked across the cabin and sat on his bunk, holding his head erect and looking straight before him.

“Where you been?”

“See a fren’.”

Badeau looked at him. Bruce grew so nervous that he forgot his caution.

“What’s matter? What you lookin’ me like that for? You’re fren’ o’ mine, Hunch. Shake han’s, ol’ man. Shake——-”

Badeau struck him without a word. Bruce showed fight, and in a moment they were rolling about the floor. Billy, up forward, heard the noise, and, tiptoeing along the deck in his underclothes, peered down the open gangway. He saw Bruce, his face red with drink and rage, break away from Badeau and seize a knife from the rack on the bulkhead. Badeau sprang forward. The table was jammed into the stove. Then the light went out. There was a fall, then a silence. Billy groped cautiously down the gangway.

“That you, Billy?” came in Badeau’s voice. “Get a match. Guess I smashed him pretty hard.”

As soon as he and Billy could get Bruce undressed and into his bunk, Hunch ran for a doctor. Bruce finally went to sleep with a stitched-up scalp, a purple eye, and a broken’ rib. In the morning they got underway for Liddington, Billy and Hunch doing all the work. Bruce was quiet during the morning, but in the afternoon, and after they reached Liddington, he started several times to blurt out an apology, which Hunch each time cut short. At supper-time, Hunch propped him up with blankets.

“Say, Hunch, I s’pose you ain’t got nothing to say to me.”

“Guess not.”

“Well, say, Hunch, I—got a date with her to-night; I ain’t fit to ever see her again, but—she’ll wonder why I don’t come. Say, you go up there, Hunch. Come on. Tell her I’m sick.”

So Hunch went. And when he sat stiffly in the parlor (in Bruce’s checked tie, for fear that she might recognize the red one), he wished himself miles away, or dead and buried, and he wondered what he could say. But after a while Mamie came in, blushing. His tongue tripped over her name, and they both laughed.

“S’pose you’re s’prised to see me,” he said.

“Why—I don’t know. I’m always glad to see you, Mr. Badeau.”

Hunch blushed.

“Say, Bruce’s sick.”

“Oh—really?”

“Yes—oh, it’s all right. Nothing very bad. He’ll be around in a day or two. But I guess he thought you’d feel bad if you didn’t know why he didn’t show up.”

During the silence that followed Hunch winked at her knowingly, and she blushed again.

“‘Most ready for the wedding,” he said, intending to cover her confusion; but for some reason she grew more distressed. “Let’s see,” he went on, talking rapidly, “it’s coming pretty soon now, ain’t it? Next Friday, eh? Well, say, we’ve got to be at Milwaukee Thursday morning, but I told Bruce we’d get back here Friday afternoon if it took the sticks clean out of the old Dean. And we will, too. Sorry I’ve got to lose Bruce. He’s going in with your old man, ain’t he?”

Already he was beginning to feel at ease. He liked to talk to this girl who looked shyly at him, and who was pleased when he told her of Bruce. This latter fact led him on until he found himself talking enormously about Bruce’s courage and resource and kindness of heart, telling her in Bruce’s name a large part of his own personal history. And at length, when he paused for breath in a glow of falsehood, and saw the light dancing in her eyes, and her eager smile, he felt a thousand times repaid.

It was after a very long stay that he rose to go. She followed him to the door, and stood for the moment on the porch.

“Mr. Badeau,” she said, “Bruce has told me about you; how kind you’ve been to him. And I’ve wanted, to thank you myself. You’ll be our friend, won’t you, after-” she said it bravely-“after we’re married. And you’ll come and see us real often.”

Then she suddenly reached up, far up on her tiptoes, and while he stood looking down, she kissed him on the cheek and fled indoors.