The ruddy dawn that flushed along the edge of the east illuminated a vast, waiting multitude. For its twelve miles of twisted length, the narrow ribbon of the Cup course was walled in on either side by the massed people and uncounted hundreds of automobiles. The neighboring States, the great cities of New York and Jersey, the countrysides far and near had emptied their motor-car enthusiasts and sport lovers into this strip of Long Island, for to-day. Laughing, eating picnic breakfasts, laying wagers and preparing score-cards, the crowd swayed tiptoe on the keen edge of expectancy; while up and down the course drove and pushed the hurrying hundreds who had not yet found satisfactory place.

As the dawn brightened into full, golden October day, the crush became greater, the haste and anticipation more intense. When a spluttering roar announced one of the arriving racers, the press would open, cheering, to leave his car passage and close in behind him with boisterous comment and criticism.

"That was the six Atlanta, Louis driving, wasn't it, Dick?"

"Rub your eyes, you're asleep yet—that was the Mercury, Rose up. Can't you tell a peach from a lemon? Quit shoving, there!"

"Bet you ten a foreign car wins."

"Take you. It'll be the Bluette or the Mercury. Get back, here comes another. They start in twenty minutes."

Opposite the grand-stand the excitement was greatest, but most orderly. Around the row of repair pits men ran in and out, hovering about their cars with solicitous final attentions and eager encouragement to the smiling drivers. The first machine was already at the starting-line, ready as an arrow on the cord, its pilot smoking a cigarette and chatting indolently with the official starter.

"I drew second for you, last night," Gerard reminded his driver, leaning against the Mercury to look up at him. "Of course, you have your numbers on. You will have to get into line in a moment; don't you want to get out and move about, first? You are going to have six or seven hours' grind."

"I'm rested best right here," responded Corrie placidly. He nestled himself more snugly into his seat and proceeded to fasten on the mask and hood that quenched his blond youth into kinship of blank identity with every other driver on the course. "The crowd is pretty thick; I hope they get the people off."

"The police are clearing the way, now. Corrie——"

The thunderous voice of the car from the next camp interrupted speech as it went past them.

"Good luck, Rosie! I'll leave your rear wheels alone," shouted its driver. "By-by, Allan."

"If he's worried bad about his, I'll lend him a safety-pin from my shirtwaist," drawled Rupert, lounging up, hooking his own mask. "I ain't muck-raking, but he broke his rear axle at Indianapolis, last month, and lost two wheels."

"Corrie," Gerard pursued, "you are to bring yourself back safely. I do not want any victories at the price of your wreck. Remember that I am responsible for your being at this work, and remember Flavia."

"If I wreck my car there won't be any victory," Corrie practically returned. "Besides, I have got Rupert with me to be looked after; if I were making a speed dash by myself I might take a chance or two. You never let me out alone. It's all right. They are signalling."

Rupert sprang into his seat like a rubber ball, bracing one small legging-clad foot for support; not the least of a racing mechanician's arts being that of clinging at all times to his reeling post of duty. Gerard held out his hand for Corrie's parting clasp, then exchanged a warm grip with Rupert. Between the driver and mechanician who were to play the perilous game side by side, there passed no such friendly touch. Gerard never looked at the watching violet-blue eyes of the third man during that farewell ceremony.

"Take care of yourselves," he bade.

"It's a nice morning for a ramble," observed Rupert. "Don't worry, love, we'll be in to tea."

The Mercury Titan rolled into place in the line of flaming, panting machines. The driver of the first car threw away his cigarette and sat up. There was a pause while the group of officials poised, watches in hand, the people rose, then the starter leaned forward and the first car sprang from the line.

Amid the gay tumult of music and cheers, Corrie waited the half-minute interval, his eyes on the counting official, his hand on the lever, until the starter's hearty clap fell on his shoulder with the word:

"Go!"

With an explosive roar the Mercury shot across the line and rushed, gathering speed in long leaps, down the white course. Under the first arched bridge, out of sight it flashed, followed by an answering roar from the countless throats of those between whose dense ranks it sped.

Gerard moved back a few paces. He had become rather pale and grave; his gaze remained fixed on the distant arch through which the Mercury had vanished, nor did he turn to watch the sending away of the other nineteen racers.

The touch laid on his sleeve was feather-light.

"I could not stay away," pleaded Flavia, beside him. "May I watch Corrie with you, Allan?"

He wheeled eagerly, catching her retreating hand before it escaped from his arm.

"I know why Corrie calls you 'Other Fellow,'" he welcomed. "It is because you always know the right thing to do."

They looked at each other in the morning brightness, revelling in the fresh wonder of mutual possession.

"This is hurting you," she grieved. "I saw you before you did me, when the cars started—you were thinking that last year you yourself would have been there."

He checked her with the warm brilliance of his smile.

"Not of myself," he denied. "If there was anything to regret, do you think I could remember it since I have you? No, I was thinking that Corrie is barely twenty, that I had trained him and sent him out there in that machine in defiance of his father's wish—in fact, I believe I had an attack of remorseful panic."

"You did it for Corrie," she gave swift comfort. "Can you suppose that papa and I do not understand that? You could have found drivers already skilled, for your car; instead you troubled to take him and make him what he is now. He is so different from the desperate boy we left, Allan. Whatever happens out there to-day, you have done the best for Corrie."

The feverish activity of the camps was swirling around them. Gerard gently drew the young girl to the place where his private roadster waited, somewhat aside from the centre of action, and put her in the scarlet-cushioned seat. After her paced Corrie's dog and took its place beside her in stately guardianship.

"You can see everything here, and it is not so rough for you," he explained. "Flavia, a year ago I bought this, when I bought the yellow roses on the night before my last drive. Will you let me take off your little glove and put it on your finger, now?"

Her lashes sparkling wet, Flavia bent to him, and in the face of crowds and camps Gerard set his ring on her hand.

Men were leaning over railings, holding ready watches open. At the repair pit next but one to the Mercury's, the mechanics and men in charge had drawn together in whispering groups.

"Car coming!" the word passed suddenly from lip to lip.

On the summit of the white hill a mile distant, a red signal flag went up. A dark shape darted up over the rise, glanced with incredible swiftness down the incline, disappearing momentarily behind the packed angle, then again shot into view and sped past the grand-stand like a humming projectile; the driver a fixed statue of concentration on the road before him, the mechanician half-turned in his seat to watch for cars behind.

The place burst into uproar.

"Number two! Number two first!"

"Mercury leads!"

Horns were blown, handkerchiefs waved, the applause breaking out anew as a second car rushed past in hot pursuit of the flying Mercury.

"Three! Number three!"

"Oh you Bluette!"

"Here comes another—get back!"

Flavia stooped from her seat.

"Allan, that was Corrie—where is the car that started before him?"

"Tire trouble, perhaps. You are trembling, dear! Let my chauffeur take you home and wait quietly there until I bring Corrie to you after the race."

She shook her head.

"No, please no. Here I can see him each lap and know he is safe so far. Let me stay."

Two cars thundered past, struggling desperately for place. The noise of the excited people overwhelmed all conversation and left the two lovers silent. From time to time a telephone bell jingled across the tumult, blue-uniformed messengers hurried here and there. But when the last of twenty cars had passed, the twenty-first not appearing, there fell a lull and men settled back to wait for the second lap.

Five minutes passed, ten. The red flags went up again; two speeding shapes topped the rise and plunged out of sight.

"Two and three!"

"The Bluette—no—Mercury leads still!"

Excitement flared high as the two racers reappeared. But as they swept down the straight stretch, the mechanician of the Mercury raised his arms above his head in warning, the car slackened speed and drew to the side of the course. As the Bluette machine fled past him, Corrie brought his car to a halt opposite the judges' stand, leaning toward the official who sprang to his side.

"The America's off the second bridge—send the ambulance to the road below," he called, his ringing voice penetrating bell-clear through the heavier sounds.

Before his grim message was fairly comprehended, he had slammed into a gear and was off to regain the sacrificed moment.

There was a brief flurry in the official stand. One man seized the telephone while another went slowly to the lost car's camp. From lip to lip the news went.

"Harry was married last week," observed an oil-smeared mechanic, touching his cap to Gerard in going by. "I guess there's no show after that tumble; Rose might as well have saved his time."

"There is more than one prize in a contest," Gerard disagreed, meeting Flavia's awed eyes. "Corrie Rose may win better than a gold cup."

"Corrie——?" she faltered.

"Corrie has given his leading place and one of his hoarded fragments of time—these races are won or lost by scant minutes—for the bare chance that his report might send aid to the injured men a little sooner than if that task were left to the frightened witnesses of the disaster."

Flavia's small head lifted proudly, bright color flashed into the countenance whose loving faith had never failed Corrie in his hours of disgrace.

"I wish papa had seen," she longed wistfully. And after a moment: "You yourself have done the same; he told me so, once. Now you have taught him to do what you never can do any more, poor Allan."

A curious expression crossed Gerard's mobile face; hesitation and doubt blended with a luminous radiance shining from some inward thought that leaped up like a clear flame. He moved as if to speak impulsively, but Flavia had turned to watch the approach of a rushing car, and he remained silent.

In the next hour, the Mercury passed the grand-stand five times; sometimes alone, sometimes the quarry of a coursing group of speed-hounds whose flaming breath was close behind, sometimes itself curving around some slower rival amid the wave-like succession of cheers. The bulletin-board showed Corrie running in third place when he passed for the sixth time, with Rupert stretched along the edge of the car to relieve his cramped limbs in an ease that suggested imminent death by falling.

The seventh time the Mercury did not come around. Gerard, who had been in front, returned to Flavia with his steadying reassurance.

"Tire trouble, no doubt," he told her. "He is due to have some; his luck has been astonishing in escaping it so far. He is driving to win; no car ever held the lead from start to finish."

Flavia folded her hands in her lap, not trusting herself far enough to reply. Gerard studied his watch in silent calculation, as the minutes ticked past.

"It must have been two tires," he at last hazarded. "When one blows out while actually on a turn, the other is almost certain to follow. Of course, they might have engine trouble."

A French car rolled up to its repair pit, stopped, and suddenly burst into flames. There was a wild scramble among its force of attendants, a rush with fire extinguishers and pails of sand. Before the danger was realized, it had ended and the mechanics were at work upon the choked pipe which had sent the car to its camp.

"Oh!" gasped the young girl, rising.

Gerard stopped her, pointing to the white hill. The roar of an approaching car filled the air; as Flavia looked, the Mercury shot past, running faultlessly, but carrying two spare tires where she had started with four.

"They will be in, next lap," Gerard predicted. "Rupert won't want to run with only two extra tires on board, and I don't think Corrie will overrule him."

He went forward to give some directions to prepare for the flying visit, Flavia watching. She made no demand for attention, no betrayal of feminine timidity to hamper this man's world into which she had been brought. Men looked curiously at the delicate, serious girl who sat so quietly in the Mercury camp, but gradually the information crept out that she was Rose's sister and Gerard's fiancÉe, so that wonder became merely admiration.

True to expectation, the Mercury halted before her repair pit, on the next circuit.

"Cases," commanded Rupert, tersely, out of his seat before the stop. "Move quick! Who's nailed fast now?"

The slur was undeserved; the waiting tires were flung on and secured by hurrying hands.

"Drink it," Gerard ordered, thrusting a cup at Corrie, as that young driver leaned wearily back. "I don't care whether you want it or not."

"It's the people," Corrie explained, his blue eyes seeking Gerard's across the goggles. "I don't mind anything else. They're over the course so you can't see ahead. Jim hit a woman, on the back stretch, as we passed."

He put the heavy china cup to his lips, but dropped it with a crash to seize his levers as Rupert bounded in beside him.

"Have the people cleared off," he petitioned over his shoulder, while sending his car forward.

Gerard went to the judges' stand.

Corrie Rose was not the first or only driver to complain of the packed course. The Mercury had scarcely departed when the Marathon car came in, its experienced and steel-fibred pilot on the brink of nervous breakdown.

"I won't drive if the mob isn't put off the road," he defied his manager. "I've killed a woman back there—do you hear? A woman! There are women and kids right against the wheels on the worst turns. Get 'em off!"

The Marathon force flocked around him in consternation, while his manager ran to the judges and the owner of the car implored and adjured the recalcitrant driver to go on without further loss of time. But it was Gerard who saved the situation for his rival.

"It's all right, Jim," he called across, issuing from the official stand and comprehending the deadlock at sight. "You only broke her leg—a telephone report came. Go on; everyone's with you, man!"

The Marathon's mechanician, wise in knowledge of his pilot, at this juncture leaned over and thrust between Jim's lips a lighted cigar.

"Buck up! We're losin'," he urged roughly.

The driver's teeth sullenly clamped shut upon the strong tobacco; he slammed viciously into a gear and hurled his machine down the course before the startled camp realized its victory. The stop had lasted exactly three minutes, but it cost the Marathon its hope of the race.

The morning advanced, gaining in sun-gilt beauty. In the next hour four racers were taken from the contest, three by mechanical difficulties, one as the result of an accident that sent both driver and mechanician to the hospital. The Mercury continued to run steadily and evenly, keeping a consistent pace.

"How much longer?" Flavia anxiously questioned, once. "Do you think everything can stay right to the very end, Allan?"

Gerard laid his warm left hand over her cold one, as it rested on the cushions, his loving eyes caressing her.

"Two hours more, my Flavia. Most surely I believe everything can stay right; why not? Remember Corrie delights in this. He is happier now than when he is what we call at rest. If," again that singular expression of blended shadow and inward illumination rose over his face, "if I were to be made myself and wholly cured, it would not change Corrie's position in Corrie's eyes. I cannot help him there in that hard part, but I have given him a way to forget for a while."

Her soft mouth bent grievedly; Flavia's attention was effectually distracted from contemplation of her brother's bodily peril.

Gerard turned aside. He had heard the reports arrive of one accident after another, he saw driver after driver come in gray-lipped and savage under the strain of racing on the crowded path, and he knew what Flavia did not—that this was proving the most disastrous affair ever held on the Cup course.

"I don't mind risking my own neck, I'm used to that," gritted an old-time comrade to Gerard, during a pause for refilling tanks. "It's the people under foot; —— them! Haven't they any sense? Jim's Marathon hit a man, ten minutes ago; he's still driving, half crazy, because he can't stop. Damn the country police!"

"Rose——?"

"Rose is changing tires at the Westbury turn. I'm off."

That bit of news spared a bad quarter-hour to the two who loved Corrie.

Gerard was at the front of the camp, watching for his car, when he felt a hand lain on his shoulder.

"Some racer just went off the turnpike into the ditch," Mr. Rose's subdued tones informed him. "Where's Corrie?"

"Safe; changing tires on this side of the turnpike," Gerard gave quick assurance. "It's not he. But this has been a bad day; I'm not surprised that you couldn't keep away from here."

"I couldn't keep away," Mr. Rose assented heavily. He drew out his handkerchief and passed it across his forehead, damp under the line of reddish-gray hair, pushing open his overcoat with the abrupt gesture that was also a habit of his son's. "I've had a hell of an hour where I was, Gerard. This morning I got a letter from my niece, Isabel. It seems she is married and her husband made her write it."

The two men looked fully at each other; some quality in Thomas Rose's expression communicated its white reflection to Gerard's changing face.

"He never did it—Corrie, I mean. Gerard, Isabel Rose threw the wrench that struck you and wrecked your car, last year. He's been shielding her. God, how I've ground it into the boy!"

There was a tall pile of spare tires beside them; on it Gerard put his hand, steadying himself against the shock that was less of surprise than of poignant self-reproach for his own failure to divine this open riddle. In that moment of final understanding, he knew that he had seen the pitiful truth rise to the surface of Corrie's blue eyes a hundred times, and had left its appeal to die out, unanswered.

Far down the course a ripple of cheering started, running nearer in a wave of gathering volume. Out around the curve swooped a gray streak, fled toward the camps, was opposite, and past. The Mercury was unleashed and hunting down its lost lead in the fastest speed of the day.

Mr. Rose brought his eyes from following its flight to meet Gerard's gaze.

"You remember how Isabel nagged him to take her around the race course in his pink machine," he reminded. "I forbade it and thought no more about the thing. Well, she got him alone—you know, I guess, that he was wild with boy's near-love for her and would have let her drag the heart out of his body—and she got his promise to take her around once. She worked the plan all out; Corrie started without his mechanician, and she waited for him a mile down the course, dressed in her riding-habit and wearing a man's cap and motor-mask. She figured that no one would notice her much on the road and Corrie could drop her off after making the circuit, just before he reached the camps, so that he would come in alone as he started and no one would be the wiser. They were just a couple of fool kids on a kid lark."

A yellow car roared to a stop beside them, interrupting clamorously. From his seat its mechanician fell rather than stepped.

"He smashed his wrist cranking her," the driver raged. "Someone else—quick!"

A blue-clad factory mechanic flung himself into the vacant place, bare-headed, without coat or mask.

"Here's my chance!" he exulted. "Go on, I'm it."

The car leaped out, no second wasted in parley. Men gathered up the injured mechanician and hurried him away. Mr. Rose looked on as if at a stage scene which did not interest him, and dully resumed his narrative.

"It worked all right, Gerard, until they met you on the back stretch and you challenged Corrie to race. He didn't want to, with her along, but she devilled him to go on, and he did. I can guess it went to his head, having her beside him. When you began cutting Corrie off so he couldn't pass by, he caught the joke right enough. She says he was laughing when he began to pitch odd screws and bolts at your car—he was never angry for a moment, just playing, as you were. But she was all excited over losing; when she saw he had both hands busy and you were forcing them back again, she snatched something out of the open box Corrie had got the bolts from and threw it at you, herself. She didn't know what she had thrown or done, until she saw you fall stunned across your steering-wheel and your car plunge off the road."

"I might have known," said Gerard, and turned his face to the course he did not see.

"You might have known!" flared Mr. Rose. "What was the matter with me? Hadn't I lived with Corwin B. Rose since he was born and never had seen him cheat or play foul, win or lose? He was straight, always. I should have known when he wouldn't talk—he never was afraid to speak out and take his licking. Oh yes, I belong to the brutal common people and Corrie wasn't brought up by moral suasion; he had more than one flogging before he was fourteen and we called him a man. And he never lied to dodge one. I went back on him; he never did on me."

The gay tumult of the tensely-strung multitude was in their ears, the band-music crashed blatant aid to the excitement. With a humming purr and rush the Mercury car shot past again, followed by the long roll of applause.

"We're leading by a minute and a half," one of Gerard's men triumphed, running past on some errand. "Oh you Rosie!"

"He stopped his machine as soon as he could, and put Isabel out," Mr. Rose continued sombrely. "She says herself that she was scared sick and begged him to save her. I can guess that part. Anyhow, he told her to go home and say nothing, that he would take care of her. He did. If it hadn't been for your protecting him, that morning, he might have ended in State's prison. I don't suppose she would ever have cleared him if she hadn't fallen in love with one of those Southerners she has been visiting, and blurted out the truth when he proposed, the other day. He put her in a buggy, drove over to the nearest clergyman, and married her then and there; then gave her paper and pen and made her write the whole story to me. He is a gentleman; he'd stand with her for whatever she had done, but he would not stand for her leaving Corrie to bear her blame. I'll make it up to him, yet!"

"Does Flavia know?" Gerard asked.

"I gave her Isabel's letter on the way across to you."

Flavia was sitting in the car with her wet handkerchief clasped in her folded hands, her veils drawn across the hushed beauty of her face. As Gerard came up, she bent to him.

"Corrie," she breathed. "Corrie, to do this! I am proud and glad and humbled. How could he, how could he?"

"He has more courage than I," Gerard gravely acknowledged. "I could not have done it. A superb folly, unjust to himself and us. He might safely have confided in his father or me and have trusted Isabel to our care."

"Allan, she had his promise to tell no one and she held him to it. She was ill and hysterical with terrified shame; Isabel never could endure to be found at fault even in little things. She was not bad or wicked, but just a coward."

"She found strength enough to watch Corrie under torture week after week," he retorted, his golden-brown eyes hardening to agate. "If I had been killed under my car, Flavia, do you realize that Rupert would have brought your brother face to face with the electric chair? And Corrie would have shut his lips and endured it all. Don't ask me to pity Isabel Rose—I've lived this year with her victim."

Trembling under the control forced on herself, Flavia slipped her hand into his.

"I know, Allan, I know. Yet she did suffer to see his suffering. In her letter, she says that Corrie came to her at dawn, the last morning we were all at home, and called her out into the empty hall to beseech her for permission to tell you. He had not been to bed that night, at all. She never afterward forgot his desperate, worn face and that memory finally drove her to confession. But she refused him. He did break down then, and flashed out at her that he must and would tell you the truth, when he left her. Of course he did not do so. Allan, she declares that he then told you, that she knows it because you wrote to her that evening about your accident and said you would take care of Corrie whatever happened."

"I!"

"Your letter to me. She had been insane with dread all day, believing Corrie would fulfil his threat to tell you his innocence, and when Rupert came she saw only that idea confirmed. She knew of no relations between you and me. She thought only of herself."

Gerard looked at her, having no words; presently he sat down on the edge of the car at her feet, and they continued silent, hand in hand. Mr. Rose had found a camp-chair in the shadow of a wall, and sat watching the race in grim quiescence.

When the last hour of the contest was reached, it was noted that the Mercury car had suddenly slackened its pace. The difference in speed was not great; the car was running faultlessly, but keeping a slower gait. The men in the Mercury camp clustered together, waiting and discussing.

The car came around on the next lap with the condition hardly improved. Rupert was neither watching behind nor busied with his usual duties, but sat erect in his seat with one arm around Corrie's shoulders, apparently talking in the driver's ear, head bent to head. Neither glanced toward the row of repair pits or the grand-stand, as they passed between and on out of view. Gerard's brows contracted sharply; he uttered an excuse to Flavia and went front.

"Morton's giving out, too," the manager of the next camp imparted confidentially, joining him. "The road-bed is rotten, the men say. Ten feet of it caved in at one turn. Too bad!"

"Rose had no sleep last night," Gerard briefly excused his driver.

"God, how I've ground it into the boy," Corrie's father had said; and Gerard could have echoed the cry, looking back at what he had meant for kindness.

The moments dragged, the next scant quarter-hour stretched long. But at last the Mercury's vibrant voice rolled down the white road, approaching. Up to her camp the car sped, and stopped.

Before the halt was effected, Rupert had snatched off the driver's suffocating mask, leaning over him.

"Oil, gas," he demanded generally. "Jump for those tanks, quick. Here, Rose——"

His white, fatigue-drawn face bared to the fresh wind, Corrie tried to speak, but instead let his head fall forward on his arm as it rested upon the steering-wheel.

"Rose, you low-down quitter, you punk chauffeuse!" Rupert stormed at him. "You going to chuck up a won race? You mollycoddle——Water, you fellows—can't you even wait on a real man? Here, Rose, you ain't anything but a fake!"

He carefully splashed the water over the boyish forehead, streaks of grime trickling over them both.

"Fill the tanks," Corrie gasped, lying passive under the rough treatment. "I'm ready to go on—tell me when."

Gerard was beside the car.

"Corrie," he began.

Rupert unexpectedly flamed out at him across the prostrate figure:

"Let him alone! He ain't a Sandow and the driving's hell. He's going on, I tell you. Here, Rose, get some class into you, what?"

But Gerard had a better tonic than cold water or stinging abuse. He silenced the mechanician with a glance and laid his hand on Corrie's arm.

"Corrie, your cousin has told us the truth," he said. "We know, now, who caused the wreck of my car last year."

Corrie started so violently as to overturn the jug in Rupert's hand and send its contents over them both, his avid blue eyes flashed wide to Gerard.

"Isabel——?"

"Isabel has told us that your companion threw the wrench that struck me, and why you bore the charge. You stand cleared."

Corrie slowly drew himself erect in his seat, brushing the water from his eyes and pushing back his wet clusters of fair hair. It was not so much color as vital life that flowed into his face, mechanically he reached for his mask.

"Thanks," he answered. "I can drive, now."

"Tanks full," shouted a score of voices.

Men scattered from around the car's wheels in expectation of the start, Gerard stepped back. But Corrie turned in his seat and held out his hand to the speechless Rupert.

"You heard—now do it," he required.

Still dumb, the mechanician dragged off his glove and gave for the race's finish the hand-clasp that he had denied for its start.

The Mercury sprang from her camp with a roar of unloosed power and speed-lust. Car and driver splendid mates, they fled in pulsating vigor down their white path where the sun was shining.

During the rest of the hour, people stood up in seats and automobiles, watching the Mercury Titan. Not before had they witnessed driving like that, never again could the driver himself equal that inspired flight.

Just sixty-nine seconds ahead of his nearest rival, Corrie Rose brought his car across the line. As he halted the Mercury before the judges, the people burst out over the course and overwhelmed the victors. Music, clicking cameras, cheers and congratulations—the current of gayety swirled around the winning racer. The first to grasp Corrie's hand was the official starter who had sent him out six hours before, the second was the driver of the barely-defeated Marathon. After that, there was no record possible.

It was some time before Corrie and Rupert could be rescued from the enthusiastic press of admirers. When at last the Mercury came over to its own camp, Gerard was first able to bring Flavia to her brother.

Stiff, weary and dishevelled, Corrie descended from his car, tripping impatiently over the flowers someone had placed in it. There was a perfunctory quality in the tenderness with which he kissed Flavia, as there had been a restive haste in his acceptance of his present ovation. Now, he turned his candid eyes full to Gerard's, baring his inmost need to the one who always understood.

"I want my father," said Corrie Rose.

Very lovingly Gerard put his arm around the slim shoulders and drew his master-driver to a tent behind the repair pit, there left him to enter alone and went back to Flavia.

"I put twelve ham sandwiches and my will in the locker, there," he found Rupert sweetly explaining to the young girl. "I guessed I'd have use for one or the other by this time. And I guess I guessed right. Oh, no—I'll be able to take my regular nourishment just the same, when we get back; this won't count. I," he sent Gerard a glance of saturnine intelligence, "I've got myself all tired out here lately trying to keep on disliking Rose."

"Allan, have you thought that we are going home?" Flavia asked, lifting her happy face to her lover, as he stood over her. "Home; papa and Corrie, and you and I, who were so far apart."

"I have thought that you would put on that lace frock you wore the last evening I saw you there, only this time you will come where I can touch you. Shall I tell you what you looked like that night? You were a golden rose in a sheath of snow, quite out of reach. And you played your dainty music so calmly and smoothly, while I was on fire and seeing rose-color as I listened to your father's stories. I was like poor Cyrano de Bergerac: I had gazed so long at your sun-bright little head that when I looked away my dazzled eyes still saw gold."

Her red mouth dimpled into soft mischief and daring.

"Shall I tell you what I saw while I was playing, Allan? I watched you under my eyelashes—this way—and I wondered whether anyone else ever looked quite so nice even from behind, and, and what it would be like to touch your crinkly hair with one's finger."

"Do it now!"

She declined with an eloquent gesture. Around their enclosure the vast crowds were streaming back to New York, the course was filled from edge to edge with a solid procession of homing automobiles of every type and age. Amid noise and congestion and merriment, Long Island's guests were trouping out.

But comparative quietness had descended upon the row of pits when, half an hour later, Mr. Rose and Corrie strolled casually up to join the other two members of the party.

"I don't know how long you propose to stay here," observed the senior, tolerantly. "Lenoir is waiting with the limousine, and it strikes us it's about time to start for home."

"Chilly wind blowing, too," Corrie suggested, his hands in the pockets of his long gray motor-coat. "Fancy Lenoir lugging this old coat of mine around in the car, Other Fellow, until now. It's a wonder the butterflies haven't eaten it—moths, I mean."

Gerard and Flavia exchanged a glance of infinitely tender comprehension of these two.

"I want to show you all something, first," Gerard detained them. "We don't want to take any worries home that we can leave here. Give me that ball of tape you put in your pocket this morning, Corrie."

Astonished, Corrie obeyed.

"Hello, Rupert!" Gerard sent his clear voice across to where that black-eyed mechanician leaned against the Mercury Titan, a hundred feet away. "Catch!"

Rupert promptly turned. The improvised ball in his fingers, Gerard slowly raised both arms above his head in the old graceful gesture, his brilliant amber eyes smiling at his companions, then launched the sphere straight to its goal.

It was not Flavia who found overtaxed nerves give way.

"Gerard! Gerard!" Corrie's cry rang out; he sank down on a camp-chair and covered his face.

Alarmed and remorseful, Gerard sprang to him.

"Corrie—don't take it like that! It is all right; I've been fighting for this ten months under a French surgeon's orders."

"You never told me. Oh, Gerard, Gerard!"

"I did not want to tell you until I was sure the cure was real and permanent. And I was not sure until I met the surgeon in New York, yesterday."

"You could have told me last night. I might have been killed to-day and never have known."

Gerard exchanged with Mr. Rose a glance of very sad understanding, a mutual acknowledgment of mutual error.

"Would you have driven the Mercury to-day against your father's wish, if you had known that I should be able to drive my own car next year? I think not. If you were to be taken from me and this life, I wanted you to take with you the memory of this race instead of the humiliation of a withdrawal. And I believed that I was dealing with an unsteadied boy who needed the sharp tonic of work and danger—ah, Corrie, forgive me!—instead of the strongest man in endurance I ever knew. But I would tell no one else until I did you, although," he turned to the radiant girl, "although it was hard not to hold out both hands to Flavia."

She put her hands in both his, then, and felt them close on hers for all time.

"Rupert knew," Corrie presently divined, as the unsurprised mechanician lounged toward them.

"Yes, Rupert knew," Gerard confirmed. "He helped me go through the treatment each day. One reason I did not tell you what we were doing, was that the process was not very pleasant, and it used to leave me rather upset and sick for a while—you caught me too soon after it that morning you signed the contracts. Don't wince; you had nothing to do with my smash."

"But I blamed myself, always!" Corrie stood up, thrusting his hands into his pockets and squaring his shoulders with the sturdy responsibility so easily read now. "I had no business to take Isabel there, and I put the mischief into her head by pitching bolts at you. She couldn't tell it was in fun. I—I would rather have known you'd get well, Gerard, than have known I was cleared."

"Didn't it ever occur to you, Corrie, to blame us, when we were so ready to convict you and pass judgment?" countered Gerard.

Checked, Corrie surveyed the three with the ingenuous astonishment of a new point of view.

"Blame you people?" he marvelled. "Why, when I thought what a low brute you had every right to believe I was, I used to feel like thanking you for staying in the same room with me. I—Well, I guess it's time to go home, isn't it? I'll leave you to start."

"Leave us?" exclaimed Flavia.

"You'll make a line for that limousine right now, Corwin B.," pronounced Mr. Rose, with the familiar easy mastery that was a caress.

His son laughingly shook his fair head.

"No, thanks, sir. I'm going to drive the Mercury Titan home and put it in the garage. Unless," he looked over his shoulder, "unless Rupert is afraid to trust himself to ride with a punk chauffeuse and a no-class fake?"

"I ain't real nervous to-day," drawled the mechanician graciously. "Nor I ain't supposing but what you're entitled to a chauffeur's license, Rose."