The terror which the menace of violent death had held for her now seemed a pallid, weak thing, beside the heart-stopping emotion which the New Yorker’s mocking, amused voice uttering her real name called into being. Her head jerked instinctively from the comfort of his arm. Squirming away from him, under the sodden blanket of canvas, she curled into a tight little ball of agony, her face cupped in her hands. “So that’s why you bothered me so!” she cried, her voice muffled by her fingers. “You’re a detective! You knew all the time! You were going to take me to jail! Oh, you—Oh! David, David!”

“Listen, you little idiot!” Van’s voice came sharply, bereft of its mocking note for once. “I’m not a detective! Good heavens! Do I look like one? I’ve always understood that they have enormous feet and wear derbies and talk out of the corner of their mouths.” Mockery was creeping back. “Did you think that a poor little tyke like you was worth sending to New York for a detective to bay at your heels like a bloodhound? I merely overheard the little Betsy’s keen penetration of your disguise. And I took the trouble to inquire casually of the governor this evening just who—if anybody—Sally Ford might be—”

“Then you gave me away—David and me!” she accused him, shuddering with sobs.

“Not at all. How it does pain me for you to persist in misunderstanding me! I gave nothing away—absolutely nothing! I merely found out that David Nash and Sally Ford are fugitives from justice, wanted on rather serious charges. After making the acquaintance of ‘Princess Lalla,’ I might add that I don’t believe a word of the silly story. Besides, I have your own word for it—” and he laughed—“that you are ‘not that kind of a girl.’ As a matter-of-fact—oh! We’re about to be rescued, Sally Ford! I hear the ‘heave-ho’ of stalwart black boys. And the storm is over except for a gentle, lady-like rain.”

It was not till he mentioned the blessed fact that Sally realized that the storm was indeed over. The only sound, besides the shouts of the “white hopes” engaging in raising the collapsed tent, was the patter of rain upon the canvas which still weighted down her small cold body, as wet as if she had been swimming.

Struggling to a sitting position under the already moving mass of canvas, the New Yorker cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted: “Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!” In an aside to Sally he chuckled: “What does one shout under the circumstances—or rather, under the canvas of a collapsed tent?”

Sally managed a weak little laugh. “One shouts, ‘Hey, rube!’” she told him.

And his stentorian “Hey, rube!” struggled up through layers of dripping canvas, bringing speedy relief for the submerged “rube” and performer. When at last the tent was raised, Sally walked out, Van’s arm still about her shivering, soaked body, to find apparently the entire carnival force huddled in the rain to welcome her, drawn by that fateful cry of “Hey, rube!”

Jan, the giant, was there, sad-eyed but smiling, “Pitty Sing” perched on one of his shoulders, Noko, the male midget, on the other. “The girl nobody can lift” was there, too, her right arm in splints; a deep gash down her pale cheek; Eddie Cobb, who, they told her as they chorused their welcome, had been crying like a baby as he searched for her through the wreck of the carnival, was clasping a drenched Kewpie doll to his breast, apparently the sole survivor of his gambling wheel stock.

Pop and Mrs. Bybee were there, Mrs. Bybee clad only in a black sateen petticoat and a red sweater. And in spite of his heavy loss from the fury of the storm Pop was smiling, his bright blue eyes twinkling a welcome. But—but—Sally’s eyes roved from face to face, confidently at first, grateful for their friendliness, then widening with alarm. For David was not there.

“Where’s David?” she cried, then, her voice growing shrill and frantic, she screamed at them: “Where’s David? Tell me! He’s hurt—dead? Tell me!” She broke away from Van, ran to Pop Bybee and tugged with her little blue-white hands washed free of their brown make-up, at his wet coat.

“Reckon he’s safe and sound in the privilege car,” Bybee reassured her, but his blue eyes avoided hers, pityingly, she thought.

“Was anyone killed in the storm? Tell me!” she insisted, her bluish lips twisting into a piteous loop of pain.

“We can’t find Nita nowhere,” Babe, the fat girl, blurted out, her eyes wide with childish love of excitement. “We thought she was buried under a tent but they’ve got all the tents up now and she ain’t nowhere.”

Nita—and David. Nita—David—missing. For she did not believe for an instant that Pop Bybee was telling her the truth.

“It seems to me,” Van interrupted nonchalantly, “that dry clothes are indicated for Princess Lalla. May I escort you to your tent?” and he bowed with mocking ceremony before her.

“He saved my life,” Sally acknowledged suddenly, half-angrily, for she resented with childish unreasonableness the fact that it had been this mocking, insolent stranger, this “rube” from New York, not David, who had saved her.

An hour later when she was uneasily asleep in her berth in the show train, whose sleeping cars had been pressed into service in lieu of the soaked cots in the dress tent, a sudden uproar—hoarse voices shouting and cursing—shocked her into consciousness. Broken sentences flung out by angry men, Pop Bybee’s voice easily distinguished among them, told her what had happened:

“Every damn cent gone!—Pay roll gone!—Safe cracked!—Told you you was a fool to take in them two hoboes that was already wanted by the police. That Dave guy’s beat it—made a clean-up—”

“Everybody tumble out! Pop Bybee wants us all in the privilege car,” a carnival employe shouted, running down the sleeping car and pausing only to thrust a hand into each berth, like a Pullman porter awakening its passengers.

But Sally was already dressing, getting her dress on backward and sobbing with futile rage at the time lost in reversing it. When she was scrambling out of her upper berth, a tiny hand reached out of the lower and tugged at her foot.

“Don’t forget me, Sally,” the midget commanded sharply. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t take on so! You’ll make yourself sick, crying like that. Of course your David didn’t rob the safe. I’m all dressed.”

Sally parted the green curtains and stretched out her arms for the midget, who was so short that she could stand upright upon her bed without her head touching the rounded support of the upper berth. Little Miss Tanner ran into Sally’s arms and clambered to her shoulder.

“It’s that Nita.” She nodded her miniature head emphatically. “I always did have my suspicions about her. Always turning white as a sheet when a policeman hove into sight.”

“But David’s missing, too,” Sally sobbed, as she hurried down the aisle which was becoming choked with frowsy-headed women in all stages of dress and undress. “Of course he didn’t do it—”

“Hurry up, everybody! Don’t take time to primp, girls!” a man bawled at them from the door.

They found most of the men employes and performers of the carnival already assembled with the Bybees in the privilege car. Pop Bybee’s usually lobster-colored face was as white as putty, but his arm was gallantly about his wife’s shoulder. Mrs. Bybee still wore the black sateen petticoat and red sweater in which she had hurried from the show train to the carnival immediately after the storm. Her reddened eyes showed that she had been crying bitterly, but as the carnival family crowded into the privilege car she searched each face with fury and suspicion.

“Come here to me, Sally Ford!” she shrilled, when Sally entered the car with “Pitty Sing” riding on her shoulder.

“Now, honey, go easy!” Pop Bybee cautioned her futilely. “Better let me do the talking—”

“You shut up!” his wife commanded angrily. “Sally, you knew where I kept the money! You saw the safe! Oh, I was a fool, all right, but I wanted to show that I trusted you! Huh! Thought I’d wronged you by accusing you of taking presents from my husband! Tell him you saw the safe! Tell him!” And she seized Sally’s wrist and shook her so that the midget had to cling tightly to the girl’s neck to keep from being catapulted to the floor.

“Yes, Mrs. Bybee,” Sally answered, her voice almost dying in her throat with fright. “I saw the safe. But I didn’t tell anybody—”

“You’re a liar!” Mrs. Bybee screamed. “You told that David boy that very night! Sneaked off and went walking with him and cooked up this robbery so you two could make your get-away. Thought it was a grand way to get out of the state so the cops couldn’t pinch you, didn’t you?” she repeated, beside herself with anger, her fingers clamped like a vise on Sally’s wrist.

“Oh, please!” Sally moaned, writhing with a pain of which she was scarcely conscious, so great was her fear and bewilderment at this unexpected charge.

“Sally certainly didn’t go with him,” Pop Bybee interposed reasonably.

“Sure she didn’t!” his wife shrilled with angry triumph. “She couldn’t! She couldn’t! She was buried under the tent! If it hadn’t been for the storm she wouldn’t be here now, working on your sympathies with them dying-calf eyes of hers—”

“Better let me handle this, honey,” Pop Bybee interrupted again, this time more firmly. “Turn the child loose. Ain’t a bit of use breaking her arm. Now, folks, I might as well tell you all just what happened, and then try to get to the bottom of this matter. When the worst of the storm was over Mrs. Bybee left the show train to look for me, to see if I was hurt or if she could do anything for anyone who was. She hadn’t been out of the stateroom all evening till then—not since she’d put some money into the safe right after supper. She found the boy Dave starting out to look for Sally, and she ordered him to stay on the train to keep an eye on it, in case tramps or crooks tried to board it. There wasn’t anybody else on the train. That right, Mother?”

He turned to Mrs. Bybee, who nodded angrily.

“She told him she’d look after Sally, but he’d have to stand guard on the train. She didn’t say anything to him about the safe—just told him to patrol the train while she was gone. The safe is under a seat in our stateroom, and far as we knew, nobody knew where it was, except Sally here, who happened to come into the stateroom when my wife was counting a day’s receipts.”

“Please, Mr. Bybee,” Sally interrupted, memory struggling with the panic in her brain. “Someone else did know! Nita knew! When I left the stateroom that last day in Stanton I saw Nita disappearing into the women’s dressing room, and I thought she’d been listening. She—”

“Hold on a minute!” Bybee cut in sternly. “How do you know she’d been listening? Any proof?”

“Yes, sir!” Sally cried eagerly. “Mrs. Bybee had been telling me that she’d found out that Ford isn’t my real name, that the woman I always thought was my mother wasn’t really my mother at all. She said she guessed I—that my mother was ashamed I’d ever been born. And that same day Nita called me a—a bad name that means—” She could not go on. Sobs began to shake her small body again and her face was scarlet with shame.

“That’s right!” Gus, the barker, edged toward Bybee through the crowd. “I found Sally lighting into Nita for calling her that name. And Nita didn’t deny she’d done it. Reckon that proves she was eavesdropping, all right. And if she was listening in, too, she was probably peeping in, too, or heard Mrs. Bybee talking about the safe. Was the door open, ma’am?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Bybee snapped. “Yes, it may have been. It was awful hot. And I didn’t know anybody was on the train.”

“It was open a little way,” Sally cried. “I remember distinctly. Because I worried about whether Nita had overheard what Mrs. Bybee had been telling me. And there’s something else—something that happened that night, when David and I were walking.” Memory of that blessed hour in the moonlight brought tears to her eyes, but she dashed them away with the wrist which bore the marks of Mrs. Bybee’s rage.

“What was it, Sally?” Pop Bybee asked gently. “All we want is to get at the truth of this thing. Don’t be afraid to speak up.”

“I hate being a tattle-tale,” Sally whimpered. “I never told on anyone in all my life! But David and I were sitting under a tree, not talking, when we suddenly heard Nita’s voice. She couldn’t see us for the tree, but we peeped around the trunk of it and we saw Nita and a man walking awfully close together, and Nita was talking. We just heard a few words. She said: ‘No monkey business now, Steve. If you double-cross me I’ll cut your heart out! Fifty-fifty or nothing—’”

Unconsciously her voice had mimicked Nita’s, so that to the startled carnival family it seemed that Nita, the Hula dancer, had appeared suddenly in the car.

“Sounds like Nita, all right.” Gus, the barker, nodded with satisfaction. “‘Steve,’ huh? Who the devil is this Steve?”

“What did he look like, Sally?” Bybee asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered, her big blue eyes imploring him to believe her. “We couldn’t see their faces. We just recognized Nita’s voice and her yellow hair that looked almost white in the moonlight. He wasn’t tall, not any taller than Nita, and I guess he wasn’t very big either, because they were so close together that they looked almost like one person. We didn’t hear the man say a word. Nita was doing all the talking—”

“Nita would!” a voice from the crowd growled. “Reckon I can tell you something about this, Pop. I was just ready to ballyhoo the last performance of the ‘girlie’ show when Nita come slouching up to me, pulling a long face and a song-and-dance about being knocked out with the heat. Bessie had fainted at the last show and I thought Nita might really be all in, so I told her she could cut the last performance and go to the dress tent. I never seen hair nor hide of her again, and—” he paused significantly, “I don’t reckon I ever will.”

“No, I reckon you won’t, not unless the cops nab her,” Mrs. Bybee cut in bitterly. “I always said she was a snake in the grass! And that David, too! Them goody-goody kind ain’t ever worth the powder and lead it’d take to blow out their brains! I told you, Winfield Bybee, that there was something phony about that hussy and Dave! ’Tain’t like a star performer like Nita thought she was to trail around after a cook’s helper, like she done with Dave. They didn’t pull the wool over my eyes, even if they did double-cross the kid here—if they did double-cross her! Mind you, Bybee, I ain’t saying I believe a word she’s been saying! She knew where the safe was, and she tipped off the boy.

“I ain’t forgot they was both wanted by the police when they joined up with us! As I said before, if it hadn’t been that she was buried under the freak tent, she’d have skipped with Nita and Dave. You roped Nita in on your little scheme, didn’t you, because she’d had more experience cracking safes than you or the boy? That’s right, ain’t it?” the old lady demanded fiercely of Sally.

Sally shrank from her in horror, but the midget, still perched on her shoulder, patted her cheeks reassuringly. “No, no! I didn’t even tell David where the safe was! I didn’t! David didn’t do it! He couldn’t! David’s good! He’s the best man in the world!”

“Then where is he?” Mrs. Bybee screamed. “Why did he blow? I left him to guard the train, didn’t I? And he ain’t here, is he? He wasn’t here when we got back from the carnival lot after the tents was raised. If he’s so damned good, why did he blow with Nita and this Steve you’ve made up out of your head?”

“Now, now, Mother,” Pop Bybee soothed her, but his eyes were troubled and suspicious. “Reckon we’d better notify the police, folks. I hate to call in the law. I’ve always said I was the law of this outfit, but I suppose if I’ve been harboring thieves I’ll have to get the help of the law to track ’em down. Ben, you and Chuck beat it down the tracks to the police station and give ’em a description of Nita and Dave and this Steve person, as much as Sally’s been able to tell us anyway—”

“Please, Mr. Bybee!” Sally ran to the showman and seized both his hands in hers. “Please don’t set the police on David! I know he’s innocent! There’s some reason why he isn’t here—a good reason! But he didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. I know that! But if you tell the police he’s been with the carnival they’ll find him somehow and put him in jail on those other charges—and me, too! It doesn’t matter about me, but I couldn’t live if David was put in jail on my account! Oh, please! You’ve been so good to us!” And she went suddenly on her knees to him, her face upraised in an agony of appeal.

Pop Bybee looked down upon Sally’s agonized face with troubled indecision in his bright blue eyes. He tried to lift her to her feet, but her arms were locked about his knees. The midget had scrambled from Sally’s shoulder to the floor of the car and as Bybee hesitated, her tiny fists beat upon his right leg for attention.

“You’re not going to break your promise to Sally, are you, Mr. Bybee?” the tiny voice piped shrilly. “You told her and the boy you’d protect them. She’s told you the truth. Don’t you know truth when you hear it? I always knew Nita was a crook. She never saw a policeman or a constable or a sheriff without turning white as a ghost. She joined up with the carnival just to learn the lay of the land and tip off her accomplice—this Steve person—where to find the money. That’s why she was spying on Mrs. Bybee that day in Stanton. Listen to me!”

“I’m listening, Miss Tanner,” Pop Bybee acknowledged wearily. “And I swear I don’t know what to say or do. If they get clear away with that money the show’ll be stranded. Every cent I had in the world was in that safe. Reckon I was a fool to carry it with me, but I never trusted a bank, and it was more convenient, having it right with me. Tomorrow’s payday, too, and all of you are in the same boat with me.”

“Listen, boss, let’s take a vote on it.” Gus, the barker, spoke up suddenly and loudly. “Now me—I believe the kid here is telling the truth. No college boy could crack a safe like that. It was a professional job, or I’m a liar! Of course Nita may have tolled the boy off with her and this Steve, since she was so crazy about him, but we ain’t got no proof she did, and as Sally says, if you sick the cops on the boy, the jig will be up with her as well as the boy. Another thing, Dave may be laying in the bushes somewhere with a bullet—”

“Oh!” Sally screamed, as the full significance of Gus’ words burst upon her. She fainted then, her little body slumping into a heap at Bybee’s feet, her head striking one of his big shoes and resting there.

When she regained consciousness she was lying in the lower berth which had belonged to Nita, and the midget was kneeling on the pillow beside her head, dabbing her face with a handkerchief soaked in aromatic spirits of ammonia. Mazie and Sue, two of the dancers in the “girlie” show, sat on the edge of the berth, their cold-creamed faces almost beautiful with anxiety and sympathy.

“What’s the matter? Is it time to get up?” Sally asked dazedly. “What are you doing, Betty?”

The midget answered in her tiny, brisk voice: “I’m bathing your face with ammonia which Mrs. Bybee sent. It should be cologne, and this ammonia will probably dry your skin something dreadful, but it was the only thing we could get. You fainted, you know.”

“Oh, I remember!” Sally moaned, her head beginning to thresh from side to side on the pillow. “Have they found David? I know he’s been hurt!”

“They’re looking for him,” the midget assured her briskly. “Mr. Bybee took a vote on whether he was to notify the police about David’s being gone, as well as Nita, and the vote was ‘No!’ That ought to make you feel happier!”

“Oh, it does!” Sally began to cry softly. “You have all been so kind, so kind! You said Mrs. Bybee sent the ammonia?” she asked wistfully.

“She certainly did, and she’s in the kitchen of the privilege car right now, making you some hot tea. She won’t say she’s sorry, probably, but she’ll try to make it up to you. She’s like that—always flying off the handle and suspicious of everybody, but she’s got a heart as big as Babe, the fat girl.”

“And so have you!” Sally told her brokenly, taking both of the tiny hands into one of hers and laying them softly against her lips.

“Ain’t love grand?” Mazie sighed deeply. “If it had been my sweetie, I’d a-fell for that line of Ma Bybee’s about him running off with Nita, but you sure stuck by him! I was in love like that once, when I was a kid. I married him, too, and he run off with the albino girl and took my grouch bag with him. Every damn cent I had! But it sure was sweet before we was married and he was nuts about me.”

“Aw, let the kid alone!” Sue slipped from the edge of the berth and yawned widely. “Gawd, I’m sleepy! If the cops don’t catch that Hula hussy I’m going out looking for her myself, and when I get through with her she’ll never shake another grass skirt! C’mon, Mazie. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and we’ve got eighteen shows ahead of us.”

“Maybe!” Mazie yawned. “If Pop wasn’t stringing us, we’ll be stranded in this burg. G’night, Sally. G’night, Midge. And say, Sally, even if this Dave boy has blowed and left you flat, you won’t have no trouble copping off another sweetie. Gus was telling us about that New York rube that’s trailing you. Hook up with him and you’ll wear diamonds. Believe me, kid, they ain’t none of ’em worth losing sleep over when you’ve got eighteen shows a day ahead of you. G’night.”

When they had gone the midget yanked the green curtains together with comical fierceness, then crawled under the top of the sheet that covered Sally.

“I’m going to sleep here with you, Sally,” she said. “I don’t take up much room.”

And the woman who was old enough to be Sally’s mother curled her 29-inch body in the curve of Sally’s right arm and laid her tiny cheek, as soft and wrinkled as a worn kid glove, in the hollow of Sally’s firm young neck.

But long after the midget was asleep, Sally lay wide-eyed and tense in the dark, her mind a welter of fears and love and doubt. She had pleaded passionately with Pop Bybee for David, fiercely shoving to the dark depths of her mind even the memory of the jealousy which Nita had fiendishly aroused in her heart. But now that she had saved him temporarily by convincing Bybee that the boy could not have taken part in the robbery, doubt began to insinuate its ugly body upward from those dark depths where she had buried it.

Did he really love her—a pathetic, immature girl from an orphanage, a girl who had been nothing but a responsibility and a source of dire trouble to him since he had first met and championed her on the Carson farm?

Her old feeling of inferiority rose like nausea in her throat. Life in an orphanage is not calculated to give a girl faith in her own beauty and charm. No one, until David’s teasing eyes had rested on her, had thought her beautiful.

Had he been only sorry for her, glad of an opportunity to “blow,” to get out of the state where he was wanted on two serious charges? Was he dismayed, too, by the fact that moonlight had tricked him into telling her that he loved her, thus adding the responsibility of her future to the burden of protecting her in this hectic present?

Then a sweeter, saner memory clamored for attention. She heard again his fond, husky voice caressing her, his “Dear little Sally!” And involuntarily her mouth pursed in memory of his kiss, that kiss that had left her giddy with delight.

How unfailingly kind and sweet he had been since that first day, when he had strode into her life, with the sun on his chestnut hair and the glory of the sun in his eyes. He had not failed her once, but she was failing him now, by doubting him, by picturing him as a fugitive in the dark, fleeing with a pair of criminals who had robbed the man whose kindness had protected him from the law.

Why, she must be crazy to think for a moment that David could do a thing like that! No one in the world was as good and kind and honorable as David.

But where was he? Mrs. Bybee had left him to guard the train. Not for a moment could she believe that he had failed in his trust. Painfully, Sally tried to visualize the dreadful thing that had happened. David alone, patrolling the train, his eyes sharp for intruders. Then—the sudden appearance of Nita and the man, Steve, weighted down with the contents of the safe they had robbed. For Sally knew that the robbery must have taken place before David caught his first glimpse of the crooks. Otherwise the safe would be intact now, even if David’s dead body had been found as silent witness that he had fulfilled his trust.

Her mind shuddered away from that imagined picture, went back to the painful reconstruction of what must have taken place. David had seen them, had given chase. Of course! Otherwise he would be here now. Was he still pursuing them, or was he lying somewhere near the road, wounded, his splendid young body ignominiously flung into a cornfield?

She could bear no more, could no longer lie safe in her berth while David needed her somewhere. Very carefully, for all her haste, she lifted the tiny body that nestled against her side and laid it tenderly upon the pillow, which was big enough to serve as a mattress for the midget. Then, sobbing soundlessly, she groped for her shoes in the little green hammock swung across the windows; found them, put them on, slipped to the edge of the berth. She was profoundly thankful that the girls had not undressed her after she had fainted.

When she reached the car in which Mr. and Mrs. Bybee occupied a stateroom she saw the showman and his wife through the open door, talking to two strangers whom she guessed to be plainclothes policemen from police headquarters of Capital City. The two men were evidently about to leave, nodding impatiently that they understood, when Sally appeared, like a frightened, pale little ghost in green-and-white striped gingham.

She forgot that she was without make-up, that the police were looking for her as well as for the criminals who had robbed the safe. But Pop Bybee had not forgotten. Still talking with the plainclothes detectives, he motioned to her violently behind his back. She turned and forced herself to walk slowly and sedately toward the other end of the car as the detectives made their farewells and their brusque promises of “quick action.”

When the men had left the car Bybee’s voice summoned her in a husky stage whisper, calling her “Lalla,” so that the detectives, if they were listening, should not identify her with the girl who had run away from the orphanage in the company of a man wanted on a charge of assault with the intent to kill.

“Are you crazy?” Bybee demanded hoarsely when she had come running to the stateroom. “Them was dicks! Policemen, understand? They mighta nabbed you. What are you doing up? Get back to bed and try to sleep.”

“Have you found David?” she quavered, brushing aside his anxiety for her.

“Not a sign of him.” Bybee shook his head. “But I didn’t spill the beans to the dicks. I’d given you my word, and Winfield Bybee’s word is as good as his bond.”

“I’m going to look for David,” she announced simply, but her blazing eyes dared him to try to prevent her. “He’s hurt somewhere—or killed. I’m going to find him.”

And before the astonished man or his wife could stretch out a hand to detain her she was gone. When she dropped from the platform of the car she heard the retreating roar of the police car. Instinct turned her in the opposite direction, away from the city, down the railroad tracks leading into the open country.

She did not know and would not have cared that Mr. and Mrs. Bybee were following her, Mrs. Bybee muttering disgustedly but refusing to let Sally search alone for the boy in whom she had such implicit faith.

Dawn was breaking, pale and wan, in a sky that was shamelessly cloudless and serene after the violence of last night’s storm, when, over a slight hill, a man’s figure loomed suddenly, then seemed to drag with unbearable weariness as it plodded toward the show train.

“David!” Sally shrieked. “David!”

She began to run, her ankles turning against clots of cinders, but her arms outstretched, a glory greater than that of the dawn in her face.

Before she reached him Sally almost fainted with horror, for in the pale light of the dawn she saw that David’s shirt about his left shoulder was soaked with blood. But his uninjured right arm was stretched out in urgent invitation, and his voice was hailing her gaily, in spite of his terrible weakness and fatigue.

“Dear little Sally!” he cried huskily, as his right arm swept her against his breast. “Why aren’t you in bed, darling? But I’m glad you’re not! I’ve been able to keep plodding on in the hope of seeing you. Did you think I’d run away and left you? Poor little Sally!” he crooned over her, for she was crying, her frantic hands playing over his face, her eyes devouring him through her tears.

“But you’re hurt, David!” she moaned. “I knew you were hurt! I told them so! I was looking for you. I knew you hadn’t run away.”

“And she made us believe you hadn’t, too,” Pop Bybee panted, having reached them on a run, dragging his wife behind him. “What happened, Dave boy? Had a mix-up with the dirty crooks, did you?”

“Winfield Bybee, you are a fool!” Mrs. Bybee gasped, breathless from running. “Let the poor boy get his breath first. Here! Put your arm about him and let him lean on you. Sally, you run back to the train and get help. This boy’s all done up and he’s going to have that shoulder dressed before he’s pestered to death with questions.”

“I can walk,” David panted, his breath whistling across his ashen lips. “I don’t want Sally out of my sight. I—would—give up—then. Nothing much—the matter. Just a—bullet—in my shoulder. Be all right—in a—day or two.”

“Please don’t try to talk, darling,” Sally begged, rubbing her cheek against his right hand and wetting it with tears.

“Lean on me and take it easy,” Pop Bybee urged, his voice husky with unashamed emotion. “And don’t talk any more till we get you into a berth. God! But I’m glad to see you, Dave boy! I’d made up my mind I’d never trust another man if you’d thrown me down. But Sally didn’t doubt you a minute. Kept me from telling the police that you had disappeared with the crooks.”

“Thanks,” David gasped, leaning heavily on the showman. “I was scared sick—the police—had found—Sally. Knew there was—bound to be—an awful row.”

He fainted then, his splendid young body crumpling suddenly to the cinders of the railroad track. Somehow the three of them managed to get him to the show train and into the Bybees’ stateroom, where Gus, the barker, who had graduated from a medical school before the germ of wanderlust had infected him, dressed the wounded shoulder.

“The bullet went clear through the fleshy part of the arm at the shoulder,” Gus told them, as he washed his hands in the stateroom’s basin. “No bones touched at all. Just a flesh wound. Of course he’s lost a lot of blood and he’ll be pretty shaky for a few days, but no real harm done. You can turn off the faucet, Sally. Save them tears for a big tragedy—like ground glass in your cold cream, or something like that. Want a real doctor to give that shoulder the once-over, Pop?” he asked, turning to Bybee, who had not left David’s side.

It was David, opening his eyes dazedly just then, who answered: “No other doctor, please. I’m a fugitive from justice, remember. If I could have some coffee now I think I could tell you what happened, Mr. Bybee.”

A dozen eager voices outside the stateroom door offered to get the coffee from the privilege car, and within a few minutes Sally was kneeling before David, holding a cup of steaming black coffee to his lips.

As many of the carnival family as could crowd into the small space of the car aisle pressed against the open door of the stateroom to hear his story. Jan the Holland giant, who was too tall to stand upright in the car, was invited into the stateroom, where he sat between Pop Bybee and Mrs. Bybee, “Pitty Sing” in the crook of one of his arms, Noko, the Hawaiian midget, in the other. Sally still knelt beside David, holding his right hand tightly in both of hers and laying her lips upon it when his story moved her unbearably.

“I suppose Mrs. Bybee has told you that I was leaving the show train to go to the carnival grounds to see if anything had happened to Sally. I’d have gone sooner, but the storm was so violent that I knew I’d not have a chance to get there. Mrs. Bybee said she was going to the lot and would look after Sally for me, but she wanted me to stay on the train, or near it, to patrol it. She didn’t tell me there was a lot of money in her stateroom, or I’d have stationed myself in there.”

“You see,” Sally interrupted eagerly. “I told you I hadn’t said a word to him about the safe.”

“Safe?” David glanced down at her, puzzled. “So this Steve crook cracked a safe to get the money, did he? I didn’t know—didn’t have time to find out.”

“And I told you it was a man named Steve!” Sally reminded them joyously, raising David’s cold hand to her lips. “They thought I was making it all up, Dave, but they believed me after a while.”

“I suppose Sally has told you that we saw Nita and some man walking in the moonlight that last night we were in Stanton,” David addressed Pop Bybee. “We heard her call him Steve, and say something about what she’d do to him if he double-crossed her. I should have told you then, Mr. Bybee, but I didn’t have an idea Nita was planning to rob the outfit, and anyway—” he blushed, his eyes twinkling fondly at Sally—“by morning I’d forgotten all about it. I couldn’t think of anything but—but Sally. You see we’d just told each other that night that—that—well, sir, that we loved each other and—”

“Anybody else in the whole outfit could have told you that,” Bybee chuckled. “It’s all right, Dave. Carnival folks usually mind their own business and spend damn little time toting tales.”

“I’m glad you’re not blaming me,” David said gratefully. “Well, sir, I was walking up and down the tracks, just wild to get away and see if anything had happened to Sally, when suddenly I heard a soft thud, like somebody jumping to the ground on the other side of the train. I crossed over as quick as I could, but by that time they were running down the side of the train pretty far ahead of me. It was Nita and a man. They must have been hidden on the train, waiting their chance, when the storm broke—were there when Mrs. Bybee left.

“I suppose they hadn’t counted on any such luck; had probably intended to overpower her before you got back, sir, and the storm saved them the trouble.”

“I’d have give them a run for the money,” Mrs. Bybee retorted grimly, her skinny old hand knotting into a menacing fist.

“That’s just what I did,” David grinned rather whitely at her. “I yelled at them to stop, because I had an idea they’d been up to something, since they’d jumped off this car, and I knew Nita had no business on the train, since all you people were sleeping on the lot.

“They were carrying a couple of suitcases that looked suspiciously heavy to me. It flashed over me that Mrs. Bybee, being treasurer of the outfit, must have left a lot of money in her stateroom, and that Nita and this Steve chap had been planning to rob her when Sally and I heard them talking the other night. I started after them, still yelling for them to stop, and Steve turned and fired at me. He missed me, lucky for me, and I kept right on.

“About a hundred yards beyond the end of the train they climbed into a car that was parked on the road that runs alongside the tracks and after telling me goodby with another bullet that missed me, too, Steve had the car started. I was about to give up and start toward Capital City to notify the police when I noticed there was a handcar on the tracks, just where this spur joins the main line.

“I threw the switch and in a minute I had the handcar on the main line and was pumping along after them. The state road parallels the railroad track for about five or six miles, you know, and I could make nearly as good time in my handcar as they could in their flivver, for it’s a down grade nearly all the way.” He paused, his eyes closing wearily as if every muscle in his body ached with the memory of that terrible ride in the dead of night.

“Better rest awhile, Dave,” Pop Bybee suggested gently, bending over the boy to wipe the cold drops of sweat from his forehead.

“No, I’ll get it over with,” David protested weakly. “There’s not much more to tell. They couldn’t see me—had no idea I was trailing them in the handcar. But I could keep them in sight because of their headlights. I guess they’d have got away, though, if a freight train hadn’t come along just then and blocked the road. They were just reaching the grade crossing where the state road cuts the railroad tracks when this freight came charging down on us—”

“But you, David!” Sally shuddered, bowing her head on his hand, the fingers of which curled upward weakly to cup her face. “You were on the track. Did the train hit you? Oh!”

“Of course not!” David grinned at her. “I’m here, and I wouldn’t have been if the engine had hit the handcar when I was on it. But I’m afraid the railroad company is minus one handcar this morning. The cowcatcher of the freight engine scooped it up and tossed it aside as if it had been a baby’s go-cart, but I’d already jumped and was tumbling down the bank into a nice bed of wildflowers.

“Pretty wet after the storm, so I didn’t go to sleep. I’d jumped to the other side of the tracks and was hidden from Steve’s car while the freight train rolled on. They didn’t stop to hold a post-mortem over the handcar. Probably figured a tramp had been bumming a free ride on it and had got his, and good enough for him.

“When the train had passed I was waiting by the road for Steve’s car. I guess he was pretty badly surprised when I hopped upon the running board and grabbed the steering wheel and swerved the car into a ditch, nearly turning it over. I don’t remember much of what happened then, what with Nita screeching and Steve swearing and popping his gun at me. But somehow I managed to get his revolver—didn’t know I’d been shot at first—and dragged him out of the car.

“It must have been a pretty good fight, for Nita decided to beat it before it was finished. She started off with one of the suitcases but it was too heavy and she dropped it in the road and lit out. If Nita could dance as well as she can run,” David interrupted himself to grin at Bybee, “she’d be a real loss to the outfit.”

“Well, Dave, even if Steve did get away with the money, my hat’s off to you, boy,” and he reached for the hand which Sally was still cuddling jealously.

“Who’s telling this?” David demanded, with just a touch of boyish bravado, which made Sally love him better than ever. “He didn’t get away. I’m afraid he won’t be good for much for a long time. Nita should have stayed to look.”

“The money, Dave!” Mrs. Bybee screamed. “You didn’t save the money, did you, Dave? Where are you, Winfield Bybee? I’m giving you fair warning! If he saved that money, I’m going to faint dead away!”

“Then I reckon I’d better not tell you that I did save the money,” David grinned at her. “I surely hate to see you faint, ma’am. It isn’t so pleasant.”

“Dave, you answer me this minute!” the old lady commanded, shaking a skinny finger in his face. “Do you know the outfit’ll be stranded if those two crooks did get away with the money? Every cent we had in the world was in that safe! You oughta be ashamed of yourself, teasing an old woman!”

“I did save the money, if that’s what they had in the suitcases, Mrs. Bybee,” David answered more seriously.

“Then where is it? What have you done with it? Left it lying in the road?” the showman’s wife screeched, her eyes wild in her gray, wrinkled face.

“Now, now, Mother,” Bybee soothed her. “If he did, he shan’t be blamed. How could you expect him to walk six or seven miles with two heavy suitcases and his shoulder shot through?”

Sally lifted her face from David’s caressing hand and glared at Mrs. Bybee. “Of course he didn’t leave it lying in the road! After risking his life to save it for you? David is the cleverest and bravest man in the world! Don’t you know that yet?”

Her eyes dropped then to David’s face, softened and glowed with such a divine light of love that the boy’s head jerked impulsively upward from the pillow. “Where did you hide it, David darling?”

“Dear little Sally!” he murmured, as he fell back, overcome with dizziness. “She guessed it, sir,” he said drowsily, turning his head with an effort to face Bybee. “I knew I couldn’t carry it far, so I hid it. The Steve chap was knocked out cold—I suppose they’ll have another charge of ‘assault with intent to kill’ against me now—so I knew he couldn’t see what I was doing.

“I took the two suitcases across the road, holding them in one hand, because by that time my shoulder was bleeding so I was afraid to strain it. There’s a farm right at the end of the road. I struck a match and read the name on the mail box nailed to a post on the road. The name’s Randall—C. J. Randall, R. F. D. 2. You oughtn’t to have any trouble finding the place.

“There wasn’t any moon, but the stars were so bright after the storm that I could just make out a barn about a hundred yards from the road. I cut across the cornfield and managed to reach the barn. There wasn’t a sound, not even a dog barking, lucky for me, for if I’d been caught with the suitcases I’d have had a fine time explaining how I happened to get them and what I was doing with them. But I had to take that chance.”

“Even if the police had caught you with them, I’d never have believed that you robbed Pop Bybee,” Sally assured him, tears slurring her voice, but her eyes shining with pride.

“If you’d seen me robbing the safe, you wouldn’t have believed it,” David said softly, his free arm drawing her down to the berth so that he could kiss her.

There was a rustle of whispering, a giggle or two from the audience crammed into the corridor outside the door. But David and Sally did not mind. The kiss was none the shorter or sweeter because it was witnessed by the carnival family.

“Well, sir,” David went on after that unashamed kiss, which had left Sally trembling and radiant, “I got the suitcases into the barn and up a ladder to the hayloft. You’ll find them buried under the hay, unless the Randall horses have made a meal off them by this time.”

“Glory be to the Lord!” Mrs. Bybee screamed, pounding her husband on the back. “The show’ll go on, Winfield! And what are you standing there for? Hustle right out after them suitcases or I’ll go myself! You’ve got to go yourself, or that farmer Randall will take a pot shot at anybody that goes meddling around his barn.”

“All right, Mother, all right!” Bybee protested. “I’ll handle it. Don’t worry. But I want to thank Dave here for what he’s done for the outfit. Dave—” he began, lifting his voice as if he intended to make an oration.

“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Bybee,” David blushed vividly. “We’ll just call it square. You didn’t turn me over to the police last night, and you’ve taken Sally and me in and given us work and protected us—”

“I’m going to do more than that, by golly!” Bybee shouted. “I’m going to the district attorney of this burg and tell him the whole yarn! I’ll get them charges against you and Sally quashed in less time than it takes to say it! You’re a hero, boy, and by golly, I feel like charging admission for the rubes to look at you! The biggest and bravest hero in captivity! Yes, sir! How’s that for a spiel, Gus?” he shouted to the barker.

“Dave don’t seem to think it’s so grand!” Gus chuckled. “Look at him! A body’d thing he’d been socked in the eye instead of slapped on the back!”

It was true. David was looking so white and sick and his eyes were so filled with embarrassment and distress that Sally was in tears again.

“What’s the matter, Dave?” Bybee asked in bewilderment. “I thought you and the kid would be tickled to death to get a clean bill of health from the cops. What’s wrong?”

David struggled upon the elbow of his right arm, his white face twitching with a spasm of pain. “I’d be glad to be free of those charges, Mr. Bybee, but I guess we’d better let them stand for a while. I might get off all right, but—it’s Sally. You see, sir, she’s not of age, and the state would make her go back to the orphanage. The law in this state makes her answerable to the orphanage till she’s eighteen, and it would kill her to go back. I couldn’t bear it, either, Mr. Bybee. Sally and I belong together, and we’re going to be married when this trouble blows over.” Although he was blushing furiously, his voice was strong and clear, his eyes unwavering as they met the bright, frowning blue eyes of Pop Bybee.

“But man alive,” Pop protested, and it was noticeable to both Sally and David that he did not call him “boy” after David’s declaration of his intentions toward Sally. “We can’t simply hush this whole thing up! You did follow the crooks and take the money away from them! I’ve got to notify the police that the swag has been recovered.”

“Can’t you tell them it was all a mistake and call off the case?” David pleaded earnestly.

“And let that Hula-hussy get off Scot-free?” Bybee hooted. “No, siree! She ain’t a member of this family no more, and she’ll have to pay for double-crossing me! I was good to that girl! Staked her to cakes and clothes when she joined up, whining she didn’t have a cent to her name! Stringing me all along! Just joined up to learn the lay of the land!

“Besides, we’ve already put the case in the hands of the police and they’ve seen the safe for themselves. The sergeant said it was a professional job, all right, as neat a safe-cracking trick as he’d ever seen turned. I couldn’t hush it up if I wanted to.”

“I’ll do what I can for Sally, lie like a gentleman for her, say she never joined up with us, we don’t know where she is—anything you like, but I’m afraid you’re bound to be the hero of Capital City before you’re twenty-four hours older. Too bad, son, but I don’t see how it can be helped,” he twinkled.

“I don’t care a rap about being a hero,” David snapped. “The only thing in God’s world I care about is Sally Ford. Listen, Mr. Bybee, tell the police that one of the other boys chased the crooks and took the money away from them. Let Eddie Cobb be the hero! Eddie’d like that, wouldn’t you, Eddie?” he sang out to the freckle-faced youngster who was looking on, goggle-eyed, among the crowd that jammed the door of the stateroom.

“Aw, Dave!” Eddie protested, flushing brightly under his freckles.

“Sure you would like it!” David laughed feebly, sinking back to his pillows. “Listen, Mr. Bybee: this is Eddie Cobb’s home town. He was raised in the orphanage, like Sally. He’d get a great kick out of being a hero to the kids at the Home. He can go with you to get the suitcases, after you’ve sent for the police to go along with you.

“I’ll lie low, Eddie can tell the story I’ve told you, and the cops will never be the wiser. I can give him a pretty good description of Steve. I had plenty of chances to study his face after I’d knocked him out. I imagine he’s beat it in his car by this time, if he was able to drive; otherwise you’ll find him in the road just as I told you. Of course he’d know it wasn’t Eddie that fought with him, but the police wouldn’t have any reason to doubt Eddie’s word.”

“But Nita may have told him about you and me!” Sally cried. “Oh, David, don’t bother about me! Take your chance while you have it to be cleared of those terrible charges! I—I’ll go back to the Home and—and wait for you. I could stand it—somehow—if I knew you were back in college, a—a hero, and working for both of us. Please, David! Think of yourself, not me!”

“No.” David shook his head stubbornly. “This little thing I’ve done wouldn’t get you out of trouble. They might clap you into the reformatory, as a juvenile delinquent. We can’t take a chance on that! Besides, you’ve had enough of the orphanage. We stick together, darling, and that’s that! May I have another cup of coffee, if it isn’t too much trouble?”

“You’re both a pair of fools, so crazy in love with each other that you can’t see straight!” Mrs. Bybee scolded, as she blew her nose violently. “But I’d like to see Winfield Bybee try to do anything you don’t want him to! Far as I’m concerned, you can have anything I’ve got and welcome to it!”

Of course there was nothing then for Pop Bybee to do but to adopt David’s plan. The boy was transferred to a lower berth, where he was safely hidden until after the detectives had arrived and departed with Pop Bybee, Eddie and Gus, the barker.

Eddie, in his zeal for playing his part well, had torn his shirt, bruised his knuckles, scraped dirt on his arms, rolled in mud, and done everything else to make up for the part.

For the rest of the day Eddie strutted about in the limelight of publicity. Newspaper photographers and reporters arrived within a few minutes after the detectives had phoned headquarters that the suitcases filled with silver and bills had been found in the hayloft; and when Eddie returned with the showman and the barker, he was prevailed upon to pose bashfully for his pictures.

The newspaper reporters commented admirably on the “boy hero’s” admirable modesty and diffidence in the big front-page stories that they wrote about the carnival robbery, and Eddie’s freckled face, grinning bashfully from the center of the pages, confirmed every word written about him.

His kewpie doll booth at the carnival that afternoon and evening was mobbed by his admirers, and before the day was ended Eddie almost believed that he had routed two famous criminals and saved a small fortune for his employer.

Sally was permitted to stay with David during the afternoon, but Bybee apologetically asked her to go on for the evening performances, since a record-breaking crowd had turned out, drawn partly by the fine weather that followed the storm, but largely by the front page publicity which the robbery had won for the show.