The spectators cried aloud in terror as his front wheel rose on the wire mesh in front of them, raced along it for a yard or two, shaved a fence-post, and slipped back upon the track. The machine lurched sickeningly into the hollow of the banking in a last effort to recover its balance. Teddy Rocco’s engine had stopped as he cleared the girl, and his toe was pressed hard into the fork of his front wheel. The braked tire screeched along the track, and when at last he struck the ground, his speed was not more than twenty miles an hour. To the crowd it seemed that he lay just where he had fallen, and they roared aloud in relief, and in admiration of what appeared to be purely consummate pluck and skill. When Teddy recovered his senses, drank out of a flask that Ryan held to his lips, and stared about him, the first thing he saw was a tiny patch of red disappearing over the edge of the track in the arms of the attendants. Behind walked the faded woman he knew as “Aunty,” wringing her hands in utterly justified pessimism. At one entrance a knot of spectators filed sadly out, and among them a frightened woman wept without restraint. Teddy went mad. He wanted to follow the little red patch wherever it might be bound. Restrained from this, he desired greatly the death of Santoni. “I told him them things was dangerous,” he repeated, with the futile insistence of an intoxicated man. When they laid hands on him again, he fainted, and it was then that they had the first opportunity to ascertain that his shoulder was dislocated. With the tenderness of a woman, Ryan picked him up and bore him away. * * * * * During the week before he was due to depart Teddy besieged the hospital in which lay Sadie’s tortured little form, and sent up flowers daily, until at last the nurse assured him that she had been able to see them, and even to hold some of them in her hand. At this he begged and stormed and wept until he was allowed to see her, despite the fact that, as they explained to him in vain, it was not visitors’ day. But when he stood at her bedside, and she smiled wanly up at him out of her bandages, and even put forth a very white little hand for him to shake, a great peace came over him. There was still enough of her, after all, to be worth dressing. “Tough luck, Teddy-Eddy!” she whispered in that deep, small voice of hers. “Just to think I might never hear the band play for the start again, or the engine rip when I turn on the juice--it gives me a lot to worry about. You ought to be glad I didn’t take you at your word that day in the garage when you wanted to lay Ryan out and asked me to marry you. Look at what a fix you’d be in now!” “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” murmured Teddy. “I’d have wanted you just the same.” “Do you mean to say you’d marry a wreck like me, Teddy Rocco? I’m all to pieces; you haven’t a notion how badly I got mashed.”