From the top of the narrow staircase to the foot, and he had lived a year's torment! At the foot, however, he was startled out of his reverie. Joe Drummond stood there waiting for him, his blue eyes recklessly alight. “You--you dog!” said Joe. There were people in the hotel parlor. Le Moyne took the frenzied boy by the elbow and led him past the door to the empty porch. “Now,” he said, “if you will keep your voice down, I'll listen to what you have to say.” “You know what I've got to say.” This failing to draw from K. Le Moyne anything but his steady glance, Joe jerked his arm free, and clenched his fist. “What did you bring her out here for?” “I do not know that I owe you any explanation, but I am willing to give you one. I brought her out here for a trolley ride and a picnic luncheon. Incidentally we brought the ground squirrel out and set him free.” He was sorry for the boy. Life not having been all beer and skittles to him, he knew that Joe was suffering, and was marvelously patient with him. “Where is she now?” “She had the misfortune to fall in the river. She is upstairs.” And, seeing the light of unbelief in Joe's eyes: “If you care to make a tour of investigation, you will find that I am entirely truthful. In the laundry a maid--” “She is engaged to me”--doggedly. “Everybody in the neighborhood knows it; and yet you bring her out here for a picnic! It's--it's damned rotten treatment.” His fist had unclenched. Before K. Le Moyne's eyes his own fell. He felt suddenly young and futile; his just rage turned to blustering in his ears. “Now, be honest with yourself. Is there really an engagement?” “Yes,” doggedly. “Even in that case, isn't it rather arrogant to say that--that the young lady in question can accept no ordinary friendly attentions from another man?” Utter astonishment left Joe almost speechless. The Street, of course, regarded an engagement as a setting aside of the affianced couple, an isolation of two, than which marriage itself was not more a solitude a deux. After a moment:-- “I don't know where you came from,” he said, “but around here decent men cut out when a girl's engaged.” “I see!” “What's more, what do we know about you? Who are you, anyhow? I've looked you up. Even at your office they don't know anything. You may be all right, but how do I know it? And, even if you are, renting a room in the Page house doesn't entitle you to interfere with the family. You get her into trouble and I'll kill you!” It took courage, that speech, with K. Le Moyne towering five inches above him and growing a little white about the lips. “Are you going to say all these things to Sidney?” “Does she allow you to call her Sidney?” “Are you?” “I am. And I am going to find out why you were upstairs just now.” Perhaps never in his twenty-two years had young Drummond been so near a thrashing. Fury that he was ashamed of shook Le Moyne. For very fear of himself, he thrust his hands in the pockets of his Norfolk coat.