“What on earth are you doing here?” she marvelled. “You said you were to be at the Capital till to-morrow. Isn’t it the squunchiest, trickliest day you ever saw? If I hadn’t promised ever and ever so solemnly to go out to Jean’s on the eleven-forty, I’d—”
“Good Lord!”
It was as though all the engines on the C. G. & X. were letting off steam at once. And, with the ejaculation, the cloud of horror was wiped clean from the Fighter’s brain. He was, on the moment, his old self; alive and masterful in every atom of his mighty body.
“Caleb!” the girl was saying, plaintively, as she gazed up at him with her head on one side, “is your hat wished on?”
“I’m sorry I forgot!” he laughed, excitedly, doffing the wet derby with one hand and slapping her vigorously on her little rain-coated shoulder with the other. “I came all the way back to Granite to tell you I’m tickled to death to see you lookin’ so well. An’—an’—to tell you I’m goin’ to beat Blacarda yet!”
“Caleb Conover!” she gasped. “What do you think you are talking about? Are you—”
But Conover had vanished—swallowed up in the recesses of the dark station. Desirée looked after him, round-eyed.
“I sometimes think,” she confided to the silver handle of her umbrella, “that Caleb will never quite grow up!”
CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE
The red-haired man was fighting.