"I am!" returned Peabody. He added sharply: "I must." "Good-by," said Miss Forbes. As he ran up the steps to the station of the elevated, it seemed to Peabody that the tone of her "good-by" had been most unpleasant. It was severe, disapproving. It had a final, fateful sound. He was conscious of a feeling of self-dissatisfaction. In not seeing the political importance of his not being mixed up with this accident, Winthrop had been peculiarly obtuse, and Beatrice, unsympathetic. Until he had cast his vote for Reform, he felt distinctly ill-used. For a moment Beatrice Forbes sat in the car motionless, staring unseeingly at the iron steps by which Peabody had disappeared. For a few moments her brows were tightly drawn. Then, having apparently quickly arrived at some conclusion, she opened the door of the car and pushed into the crowd. Winthrop received her most rudely. "You mustn't come here!" he cried. "I thought," she stammered, "you might want some one?" "I told--" began Winthrop, and then stopped, and added--"to take you away. Where is he?" Miss Forbes flushed slightly. "He's gone," she said. In trying not to look at Winthrop, she saw the fallen figure, motionless against the pillar, and with an exclamation, bent fearfully toward it. "Can I do anything?" she asked. The crowd gave way for her, and with curious pleased faces, closed in again eagerly. She afforded them a new interest. A young man in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was kneeling beside the mud-stained figure, and a police officer was standing over both. The ambulance surgeon touched lightly the matted hair from which the blood escaped, stuck his finger in the eye of the prostrate man, and then with his open hand slapped him across the face. "Oh!" gasped Miss Forbes. The young doctor heard her, and looking up, scowled reprovingly. Seeing she was a rarely beautiful young woman, he scowled less severely; and then deliberately and expertly, again slapped Mr. Jerry Gaylor on the cheek. He watched the white mark made by his hand upon the purple skin, until the blood struggled slowly back to it, and then rose. He ignored every one but the police officer. "There's nothing the matter with HIM," he said. "He's dead drunk." The words came to Winthrop with such abrupt relief, bearing so tremendous a burden of gratitude, that his heart seemed to fail him. In his suddenly regained happiness, he unconsciously laughed. "Are you sure?" he asked eagerly. "I thought I'd killed him." The surgeon looked at Winthrop coldly. "When they're like that," he explained with authority, "you can't hurt 'em if you throw them off the Times Building." He condescended to recognize the crowd. "You know where this man lives?" Voices answered that Mr. Gaylor lived at the corner, over the saloon. The voices showed a lack of sympathy. Old man Gaylor dead was a novelty; old man Gaylor drunk was not. The doctor's prescription was simple and direct.