The porter tried persuasion: "You betta lemme take him, the conducta is wuss'n what I am. He th'owed a couple of dogs out the window trip befo' last." "The brute!" "Oh, yassum, he is a regulah brute. He just loves to hear 'm splosh when they light." Noting the shiver that shook the girl, the porter offered a bit of consolation: "Better lemme have the pore little thing up in the baggage cah. He'll be in charge of a lovely baggage-smasher." "Are you sure he's a nice man?" "Oh, yassum, he's death on trunks, but he's a natural born angel to dogs." "Well, if I must, I must," she sobbed. "Poor little Snoozleums! Can he come back and see me to-morrow?" Marjorie's tears were splashing on the puzzled dog, who nestled close, with a foreboding of disaster. "I reckon p'haps you'd better visit him." "Poor dear little Snoozleums--good night, my little darling. Poor little child--it's the first night he's slept all by his 'ittle lonesome, and----" The porter was growing desperate. He clapped his hands together impatiently and urged: "I think I hear that conducta comin'." The ruse succeeded. Marjorie fairly forced the dog on him. "Quick--hide him--hurry!" she gasped, and sank on the seat completely crushed. "I'll be so lonesome without Snoozleums." Mallory felt called upon to remind her of his presence. "I--I'm here, Marjorie." She looked at him just once--at him, the source of all her troubles--buried her head in her arms, and resumed her grief. Mallory stared at her helplessly, then rose and bent over to whisper: "I'm going to look through the train." "Oh, don't leave me," she pleaded, clinging to him with a dependence that restored his respect. "I must find a clergyman," he whispered. "I'll be back the minute I find one, and I'll bring him with me." [Illustration: MARJORIE FAIRLY FORCED THE DOG ON HIM....] The porter thought he wanted the dog back, and quickened his pace till he reached the corridor, where Mallory overtook him and asked, in an effort at casual indifference, if he had seen anything of a clergyman on board. "Ain't seen nothin' that even looks like one," said the porter. Then he hastened ahead to the baggage car with the squirming Snoozleums, while Mallory followed slowly, going from seat to seat and car to car, subjecting all the males to an inspection that rendered some of them indignant, others of them uneasy. If dear old Doctor Temple could only have known what Mallory was hunting, he would have snatched off the mask, and thrown aside the secular scarlet tie at all costs. But poor Mallory, unable to recognize a clergyman so dyed-in-the-wool as Doctor Temple, sitting in the very next seat--how could he be expected to pick out another in the long and crowded train? All clergymen look alike when they are in convention assembled, but sprinkled through a crowd they are not so easily distinguished.