Meanwhile the other felon turned up another beautiful pile of bills in Dr. Temple's pocket. "Not so worse for a parson," he grinned. "You must be one of them Fifth Avenue sky-shaffures." And now Mrs. Temple's gentle eyes and voice filled with tears again: "Oh, don't take that. That's the money for his vacation--after thirty long years. Please don't take that." Her appeals seemed always to find the tender spot of this robber's heart, for he hesitated, and called out: "Shall we overlook the parson's wad, podner?" "Take it, and shut up, you mollycoddle!" was the answer he got, and the vacation funds joined the old gewgaws. And now everybody had been robbed but Marjorie. She happened to be at the center of the line, and both men reached her at the same time: "I seen her first," the first one shouted. "You did not," the other roared. "I tell you I did." "I tell you I did." They glared threateningly at each other, and their revolvers seemed to meet, like two game cocks, beak to beak. The porter voiced the general hope, when he sighed: "Oh, Lawd, if they'd only shoot each other." This brought the rivals to their evil senses, and they swept the line with those terrifying muzzles and that heart-stopping yelp: "Hands up!" Bill said: "You take the east side of her, and I'll take the west." "All right." And they began to snatch away her side-combs, the little gold chain at her throat, the jewelled pin that Mallory had given her as the first token of his love. The young soldier had foreseen this. He had foreseen the wild rage that would unseat his reason when he saw the dirty hands of thieves laid rudely on the sacred body of his beloved. But his soldier-schooling had drilled him to govern his impulses, to play the coward when there was no hope of successful battle, and to strike only when the moment was ripe with perfect opportunity. He had kept telling himself that when the finger of one of these men touched so much as Marjorie's hem, he would be forced to fling himself on the profane miscreant. And he kept telling himself that the moment he did this, the other man would calmly blow a hole through him, and drop him at Marjorie's feet, while the other passengers shrank away in terror. He told himself that, while it might be a fine impulse to leap to her defence, it was a fool impulse to leap off a precipice and leave Marjorie alone among strangers, with a dead man and a scandal, as the only rewards for his impulse. He vowed that he would hold himself in check, and let the robbers take everything, leaving him only the name of coward, provided they left him also the power to defend Marjorie better at another time. And now that he saw the clumsy-handed thugs rifling his sweetheart's jewelry, he felt all that he had foreseen, and his head fought almost in vain against the white fire of his heart. Between them he trembled like a leaf, and the sweat globed on his forehead.