“The best and quickest way to find out is to bring him to and see,” declared the other, kneeling beside the prostrate form and dashing salt water in the white face, then catching up his hands and beginning to chafe them vigorously.
John Dinsmore opened his eyes slowly and gazed into the two anxious faces bending over him.
“Are you ill, old fellow!” they both cried in a breath. “What in the name of goodness has happened that we find you like this?”
His lips opened to say: “A beautiful woman has broken my heart, and I am lying here for the tide to come in to carry me out—to death,” but the words seemed to scorch his lips, he could not utter them. They helped him to his feet, still wondering.
“I was stricken with a pain at my heart,” he said. “I shall be better soon.”
“Let’s hope so, for we have brought the means with us to make you so, if anything on this round earth can. But by the way,” went on one of them, “you do not seem the least surprised to find the two chums, poor as church mice, whom you left behind you in broiling New York, apparently ‘doing’ fashionable Newport, though it is like catching sly old dog Time by the tip of his tail, coming here on the last evening, when the play is about over, and they are just going to ring down the curtain.”
His two companions linked arms with him, one on either side, and drew him along the beach, each waiting for the other to unfold to John Dinsmore the amazing news which had brought them there.
While they hesitated thus you shall learn their identity, reader.
The tall, dark-haired young man on the right was Hazard Ballou, artist; French as to descent, as his name indicated, who was struggling for fame and fortune by painting pictures which nobody seemed to want to buy, and illustrating the joke articles in an evening paper to earn support in the meantime.
His companion was Jerry Gaines, a reporter, that was all, though he did have wonderful ambition and always alluded confidently to the time when he should be the editor of some great New York paper, and when that time arrived, what he should do for the remainder of the trinity, his author and artist friends, who were always ready to share their crust with him when luck went dead against him in being able to gather in good news articles, and getting up acceptable copy. His gains lay all in his name at present, instead of the more practical place—his pocket.