"It's that—kiss!" quivered Daphne.
"Oh, shucks!" relaxed her father. "Forget it! It was a bit rough, I know! But remember—you had no right—at all—to go foraging into a tipsy man's smoking-room!"
"Smoking-room?" gasped Daphne. "Why—why I'd forgotten all about that! The—the kiss, I mean——" her eyes were wide with 85 horror, "the kiss, I mean——" White as a ghost suddenly she lifted to her father's eyes the filmy hem of her gown where in two faint crimson splashes across one corner a man had stenciled the bow of his lips with his own life-blood.
"The deuce!" cried her father, and jumping into his wrapper rang precipitously for the porter.
"The young man who was—who was sick last night the one that had the hemorrhage—what about him?" he demanded of the first white- coated Darky who came running.
"Is—is he dead?" whispered Daphne.
"The young man what had the hemorrhage," confided the Darky, "he done gone leap from the train."
"What?" cried Jaffrey Bretton.
Enraptured by the excitement the Darky ripped his somber face in a white grin from ear to ear.
"He sure did, Sah!" he attested genially. "Back thar jes' as we was leavin' the water tank it was! More'n an hour back I reckon!" With a sudden elongation of his grin that threatened to separate the whole upper part of his face from the lower he 86 rallied himself for his real news. "Was you by any chance, sah," he grinned, "the gentleman what owned the cat-hound in the baggage car?"