And the audience did enjoy the performance. They never saw such a daring, desperate man before. He was playing for reputation and his wife’s love and sympathy. The last jump on the rope was higher and wilder and more daring than any before. When he landed on the rope something gave away, the rope slipped through the pulley so rapidly that Dyke couldn’t grasp any of the stays in his fall. He landed with one leg on a stake and the bone was snapped above the knee. His poor shoulder was also dislocated and his head bruised. The roustabouts picked him up and carried him into the tent, and the crowd jammed closer to see his blood on the ground. A few women had screamed when they saw him fall, and several men groaned, but he was only a showman, and they all went away and soon forgot him. The afternoon performance was just as good, and the clowns were just as funny, as though poor Dyke Dingleman did not lie unconscious at the hospital. In the morning the circus left town, but not before the proprietors of the circus had made arrangements at the hospital for the care of the injured actor. Two weeks after the accident Dyke told his nurse all about his misfortunes and about his wife leaving him. He said he had nothing to live for and might as well die. The nurse was a romantic soul and set about to win Dyke’s wife back to him. She wrote a long letter, telling her husband’s story of hard luck just as he had told it to her, and begged her to come at once to his bed and give him love and hope and sympathy, so that he would have something to live for. There never was a happier set of hospital nurses than there was in that particular hospital when Dyke’s wife came to his bed and threw her loving arms around his wasted body and asked him to forgive her for leaving him when his heart was heavy with sorrow from grieving over Bessie’s death. And then she embraced the nurse who had told Dyke’s story so beautifully and pathetically, and the doctor assured them all that the patient was going to recover rapidly now. He could see signs of health and love of life coming back to the haggard face of the hard-luck showman. The story was written up by the same romantic nurse and sent to a paper, and the whole town was in sympathy with Dyke Dingleman and his wife. Next day when another big circus came to town the nurse wrote the manager, inclosing Dyke’s story, and advised a benefit exhibition. The city turned out and Dyke’s share of the net profits was $300. PLAYING WITH HEARTS He was a cripple, without education or any accomplishments, and it was wrong in Mary Mackey to encourage the boy in falling head over heels in love with her, but she was only a school girl, with a desire for romance and excitement, and Lyndal Mason, with his boyish adoration and loyalty was just what she wanted to make life tolerable. In a way she liked Lyndal, because he was full of romantic and heroic tales of adventure, most of the tales being coined to suit the occasion.