It was not the wail of a weak nature vainly summoning the Lost to return. Rather it was the sharp, fierce call of the officer who by sheer force of accepted rulership rallies his stricken men. Sublimely imperious, backed by a will of chilled steel and by a mentality that had never been successfully balked, the Fighter’s voice resounded again and again in that harsh, domineering order: “_Dey! Come back!_” Calling upon his seemingly dead love to re-enter the frail flesh she was even now quitting, Conover threw into his appeal all the vast strength that was his and the immeasurably enforced power of his despair and adoration. He held the white hands gripped tight to his chest; his face close to the silent girl’s; his light eyes blazing into hers; his every faculty bent with superhuman pressure upon drawing an answering sign from the lifeless form. “It is madness!” muttered the doctor; infected nevertheless by the dominant magnetism that played about the Fighter and that vibrated through every tone of his imperative voice. “It is madness. She is dead, or--” Conover did not heed nor hear. He had no consciousness for anything save this supreme battle of his whole life. Vaguely he knew that the innate mastership within him which for years had subdued strong men to his will had been as nothing to the nameless power that love was now enabling him to put forth. From the threshold of death,--yes, from the grave itself,--she should come at his call; this little, silent wisp of humanity that meant life and heaven to him. The red-haired man was fighting. He had always been fighting. But the fiercest of his campaigns had hitherto been as child’s play by comparison with this contest with the Unknown. Once again he was “taking the Kingdom of Heaven by violence!” This time literally. The mad whim had possessed him through no conscious volition of his own; and he had acted upon it without reflection. He was matching his mortal power against the Infinite. He was doing what Science knew could not be done; what the most hysterical spiritualist had never claimed power to achieve. He was trying, by force of personality and sheer desire, to check the flight of a soul upon the Borderland. And over and over again his voice swelled, untiring, through the room, in that one all-compelling demand:--a demand that held no note of entreaty, nor of aught else save utter, fierce domination. “_Dey! Come back!_” The doctor, scared, irresolute, slipped from the room. This type of mania was outside his experience. In time it would wear itself out. In the meanwhile, his nerves could not endure the sound of that ceaseless calling; the sight of the tense, furiously masterful face. * * * * * It was two hours later that Dr. Colfax, the first of the summoned New York specialists, arrived. Jack Hawarden met him at the entrance of the hotel and briefly explained the case.