But the blue eyes arrested Brainard, and the young man, stooping over the stretcher, caught a faint whisper:

“You’ll g-g-go?”

“Sure!”

“Gi-gi-give it all to—”

Krutzmacht struggled hard to pronounce a name, but he could not utter the word.

“It’s no use!” the doctor exclaimed. “Tell him to wait until he’s better.”

But Brainard, moved by the sick man’s intense look of mental distress, raised his hand to the doctor and listened. At last the whispered syllable reached his ear:

“M-M-Mel—”

“I tell you it’s no use!” the ambulance doctor p. 18repeated irritably. “They’ll find out at the hospital what he wants done. Come on!”

p. 18

As they bore the stretcher through the narrow door, the agonized expression gave way, and the sick man articulated more distinctly:

“Mel-Melo—”

“Melo-melodrama!” Brainard said. “It’s all right, my friend. Don’t worry—I’ll fix it up for you!”

With astonishing distinctness came back the one word:

“Melody!”

“All right—Melody!”

The sick man would have said more, but the ambulance men bore him swiftly to the waiting vehicle and shoved him in.

“Will you come along?” the doctor asked.

“No. I’ll look in some time to-morrow, probably—St. Joseph’s, isn’t it?”

The sick man’s eyes still rested on Brainard, when the latter poked his head into the dark ambulance. They seemed to glow with a full intelligence, and also with a command, as if they said:

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