Oh, _how_ Youth crawls up on you! How a tiny girl "almost instantly" shoots up into a tall, charming young woman! _How_ a top-spinning, ball-tossing, racing, shouting boy looms up into a manly young chap in Military School uniform! Gadsby _was_ happy; for, wasn't this a tonic for his spinal column? So His Honor said;-- "Allan, I think Branton Hills will officially aid this stadium plan. I'll put it up to Council." But, Allan Banks, _not_ Kid Banks now, was just so old as to know a thing or two about Council bills; and, out as a solicitor, naturally sought a good showing on donations won, so said;-- "A Council donation will fit in grand, sir; but how about grouchy old Bill Simpk----" "Trot along, Allan." "But how about this stadium? I'm doubting Old B--" "Trot along, Allan." * * * * * What Mary had said was a fact. Norman Antor had not only fought a military war; Norman Antor had also fought an _inward_ war. A war, which fought him with gallon jugs, small phials, spoons, mixing apparatus, and--a stumbling, mumbling _stupor!_ Norman had fought with about two million lads in that military war; but now, with no aid but a strain of good blood, starting way back of his carousing Dad (but, as such traits may, skipping a notch or two, and implanting in this young lad just a grain of its old nobility of mind), was fighting again; and, just as any solitary young chap amongst that two million loyally did his part, just so was this tiny grain now doing _its_ part; fighting valiantly in his brain. It was giving him torturing thoughts in army night-camps, of a darling, loving young girl, a part of his own family, growing up "in a pool of liquor;" thoughts in night-camps of Branton Hills' patrol-wagon trips to jail; and _Darn_ that thought of Virginia! Virginia _drunk_ by his own hand! Ugh!! _Why not chop that stinking hand off?_ And, on coming back to Branton Hills, watching that darling Mary in Salvation Army uniform, tramping, talking, praying for just such low-down "liquor hounds" as----. Oh! It was an awful fight! A long, brain-racking onslaught against a villain shut in by walls of iron! But though Norman Antor's night-camp fights with Norman Antor had "put a big kick" in his wish to "lay off that stuff," just a final blow, just an awful brain-crashing _blast_ was still missing, so that that big right hand might point skyward, to clinch that vow. And that blast was waiting for Norman! To anybody standing around, it wasn't much of a blast; but it _was!_ It was a mighty concussion of T.N.T., coming as Mary, young, loving, praying Mary, said, as his arms unwound from around that frail form:-- "Why, Norman! _Not drunk?_" _God!!_ What flashing, shooting, sizzling sparks shot through his brain!! Up, out, in; all kinds of ways!! _What_ crashing bombs!! And, that first calm night on Old Lady Flanagan's porch; that moonlit night of bliss, with soft, cuddling, snuggling, laughing, crying darling Mary!