"Bully, ain't it?" exclaimed Jim, not without a tinge of regret for lost joys in his tone. "Excellent!" returned Flint, perjuring himself like a gentleman. "It is better than nothing," Miss Fred answered judicially. "I will send Jim up to the inn with some brandy; Marsden's stuff is rank poison. I had some once this summer when I was ill, and straightway sent off to town for a private supply. If you feel able to exercise, I should advise you to let us put you off at this point, and make a run across country to Marsden's." "I don't know how to thank you," Flint murmured as Jimmy pulled the row-boat up, and the young man prepared to climb in after him. "There is no occasion for thanks. But if you insist on a debit and credit account, please charge it off against the ruin of your fishing-rod." "I am humiliated." "You?" "Yes; I must have been a model of incivility." "No; it was I who was in fault, rushing about the country like a jockey riding down everything in sight." "Who except a fool would have had a fishing-rod trailing half-way across the road?" "Look here," grumbled Jim, "I can't hold this dory bumping against the side of the boat forever--" "Don't be impertinent, Jim. Besides apologies never last long. It is only explanations which take time--" Flint jumped from the gunwale of the sail-boat into the dory, and took the oars. As he headed for shore, he turned his eyes once more to the sail-boat, and the glimpse that he had of its skipper he carried for long after--the vision of her standing there in the stern, against the stretch of blue water, her soft handkerchief of some red stuff knotted about her throat above the gray jacket, her felt hat thrust up in front above the waves of her hair, and her eyes smiling with frank mirthfulness. CHAPTER III OLD FRIENDS "It's an ower-come sooth For age and youth, And it brooks wi' nae denial, That the oldest friends Are the dearest friends, And the new are just on trial." Flint was glad enough on reaching the inn to creep into bed. In spite of his cross-country run he was chilled through. Little shivers ran down his back, and his hands and feet seemed separated by spaces of numbness from the warmth of his body. The brandy arrived, and he swallowed some eagerly; but it had little effect on his chilly apathy. The dinner-bell clanged below. Flint heard it, but he paid no heed to the summons. He had forgotten what it was to desire food. A blur before his eyes, and an iron band about his head, occupied his attention to the exclusion of the outside world. By three o'clock the headache-fiend had entered into full possession, had perched itself in the centre of consciousness, and seemed to Flint's excited nerves to be working its octopus claws in and out among the folds of his brain.