"I am all right for the present, Mr. Devlin. And I think I'll wait a day or so before writing the folks." "You told me when we met on the ship that you were anxious to give your father a lift. It made a great hit with me. What about that?" "I guess I was like General Quesada's parrot, I talked too much," confessed Walter. "I shall be lucky if I can take care of myself." Devlin was silent for a moment. Then he bade the patient farewell with words of rough and hearty encouragement and departed from the ward, a big, masterful man with a hard fist and a soft heart. As he walked across the hospital grounds he repeated under his breath: "He aimed to give his father a lift. The pluck of him! 'Tis a pity that more men on the Isthmus are not thinking about the old folks at home. 'Tis a safe bet that his father needs a lift. The lad looked very solemn about it." He turned into the hospital superintendent's office and asked a clerk for Walter Goodwin's home address, which the rules required to be recorded. Then he made a détour to the Ancon post-office, smiled craftily, and demanded a money-order application blank. Separating several bills from a wad crumpled in his trousers pocket, he reflected: "He would fly off the handle if I suggested anything like this, being a most independent young rooster. But I used to have a daddy of my own. I'll say nothing about it till the lad gets a job. Then he can square it." Thereupon he wrote to Mr. Horatio Goodwin as follows: DEAR SIR: Your son will be unable to attend to his affairs for a few days, so I am sending the enclosed amount which had been advanced against his salary account. Yours truly, JOHN DEVLIN. P. S.--He is in the Ancon Hospital, a bit mussed up but nothing serious. He will write soon. "There! I may be guilty of committing something or other under false pretences, but I feel a whole lot easier in my mind," quoth the steam-shovel man. Next morning that bland dynamite expert, Naughton, came to the hospital to show Walter that his friends in Cristobal had not forgotten him. "What about the base-ball practice?" demanded the patient. "Have you found another pitcher?" "No. We haven't given you up as a total loss." "Does Major Glendinning know I have been put out of commission?" Walter's voice was very anxious. Naughton smiled broadly. "Yes. I saw him just after your message came to Harrison yesterday afternoon. There is no finer man on the Isthmus than the major, but he is a trifle unreasonable at times. He was so upset at the notion of playing Culebra without you that he got peevish and blamed me for letting you wander into that landslide. And then he sailed into you for being too slow to get out of the way of it." "Then he will have nothing more to do with me," was Walter's mournful conclusion.