"Hello!" he exclaimed, in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"I want to speak to you."
"Now, Letty," he protested, when she had drawn him aside, "haven't you been through enough for one day? Run back to the Countess' camp where I left you."
"Don't drink any more," she implored, with an agony of dread in her face.
Kirby's bleak countenance set itself in stony lines. "I've got to," said he. "I'm cold—frozen to the quick. I need something to warm me up."
Letty could smell the whisky on his breath, she could see a new light in his eyes and already she sensed rather than observed a subtle change in his demeanor.
"Oh, dad!" she quavered; then she bowed her head weakly upon his arm and her shoulders shook.
Kirby laid a gentle hand upon her, then exclaimed, in surprise: "Why, kid, you're still wet! Got those same clothes on, haven't you?" He raised his voice to the men he had just left. "Want to see the gamest girl in the world? Well, here she is. You saw how she took her medicine to-day? Now listen to this: she's wet through, but she came looking for her old dad—afraid he'd get into trouble!"
Disregarding the crowd and the appreciative murmur her father's praise evoked, Rouletta begged, in a low, earnest voice: "Please, dear, come away. Please—you know why. Come away—won't you—for my sake?"
Kirby stirred uneasily. "I tell you I'm cold," he muttered, but stopped short, staring. "Yes, and I see Danny. I see him as he went overboard. Drowned! I'll never get him out of my sight. I can't seem to understand that he's gone, but—everything's gone, for that matter. Everything!"