"Oh, Lord, and just at this time, too," said Story. Stover went rapidly towards the hospital. The girl had been operated on immediately, and the situation was of the utmost seriousness. He had been told to come back at nine. When he arrived he found Muriel Stacey already in the waiting-room, her eyes heavy with frightened weeping. He looked at her curiously. All suggestion of the provoking impertinence and the surface allurement was gone. Under his eyes was nothing but an ignorant boor, stupid and hysterical before the awful fact of death. "What's the news?" he asked. "Oh, Mr. Stover, I don't know. I can't get anything out of them," the woman said wildly. "Oh, do you think she's going to die?" "Of course not," he said gruffly. "See here, where's her family?" "I don't know." "Don't they live here?" "They're in Ohio somewhere, I think. I don't know. Ask the doctor, won't you, Mr. Stover? He'll tell you something." He left her, and, making inquiries, was met by a young intern, immaculate and alert, who was quite communicative to Dink Stover of the Yale eleven. "She's had a bad case of it; appendix had already burst. You got her here just in time." "What's the outlook?" "Can't tell. She came out of the anæsthetic all right." He went into a technical discussion of the dangers of blood poisoning, concluding: "Still, I should say her chances were good. It depends a good deal on the resistance. However, I think your friend's family ought to be notified." Stover did not notice the "your friend," nor the look which the doctor gave him. "She's here alone as far as I can find out," he said. "Poor little devil. I'll call round about midnight." "No need," said the doctor briskly, "nothing'll develop before to-morrow." Stover sent the waiting girl home somewhat tranquilized, and, finding a florist's shop open, left an order to be sent in to the patient the first thing in the morning. Then, thoroughly exhausted by his sudden contact with all the nervous fates of the hospital, he walked home and heavily to bed. The next morning as he went to his eating-joint with Regan and Hungerford, the newsboy, who had his papers ready, gave them to him with a hesitating look. All at once Joe Hungerford swore mightily. "Now what's wrong, Joe?" said Regan in surprise. "Nothing," said Hungerford hastily, but almost immediately he stopped, and said in a jerky, worried way: "Say, here's the devil to pay, Dink. I suppose you ought to know about it. Damn the papers." With his finger he indicated a space on the front page of the New York newspaper he was reading. Stover took it, reading it seriously. It was only a paragraph, but it rose from the page as though it were stamped in scarlet. DINK STOVER'S LARK ENDS SERIOUSLY. Below followed in suggestive detail an account of the drive with friends "not exactly in recognized New Haven society," and the sudden seizure of Miss Fanny Le Roy, with an account of his drive back to the hospital.