berths. Don’t anybody shoot! You, professor, look after that fellow on the floor.” He was obeyed; instinctively, the master of the hour is obeyed. The porter came forward and helped the New Englander bind the prostrate outlaw, with two silk handkerchiefs and a pair of pajamas, guard mount[67] being supplied by three men in very startling costumes; and a kind of seraglio audience behind the curtains of the berth being enacted by all the women in the car, only excepting Aunt Rebecca and Miss Smith. Aunt Rebecca, in her admirable traveling costume of a soft gray silk wrapper, looked as undisturbed as if midnight alarms were an every-night feature of journeys. Miss Smith’s black hair was loosely knotted; and her face looked pale, while her dark eyes shone. They all heard the colonel’s revolver; they all saw the two men who had met him at the car door spring off the platform into the dark. The robbers had horses waiting. The colonel got one shot; he saw the man fall over his horse’s neck; but the horse galloped on; and the night, beyond the little splash of light, swallowed them completely. [67] After the conductor and the engineer had both consulted him, and the express messenger had appeared, armed to the teeth, a little too late for the fray, but not too late for lucid argument, Winter made his way back to the car. Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie; she was holding the watch, which had played so important a part in the battle, up under the electric light to examine an inscription. The loose black sleeves of her[68] blouse fell back, revealing her arms; they were white and softly rounded. She looked up; and the soldier felt the sudden rush of an emotion that he had not known for years; it caught at his throat almost like an invisible hand. [68] “Well, Archie,” he said foolishly, “good for jiu-jitsu!” Archie flushed up to his eyes. “Why didn’t you obey orders, young man, and hold up your hands?” said Colonel Rupert Winter. “You’re as bad as poor Haley, who is nearly weeping that he had no chance, but only broke away from Mrs. Haley in time to see the robbers make off.” “I—I did at first; but I got so mad I forgot,” stammered Archie happily. “Afterward you were my superior officer and I had to do what you said.” All the while he chaffed the boy, he was watching for that beautiful look in Janet Smith’s eyes; and wondering when he could get her off by herself to brag to her of the
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