“Of course you couldn’t!  Me bird has too amazing good sinse to go back when he could be following you,” exulted Freckles, exactly as if he did not realize what the delay had cost him.  Then he lay silently thinking, but presently he asked slowly:  “And so ’twas me Little Chicken that was making you late, Angel?”

“Yes,” said the Angel.

A spasm of fierce pain shook Freckles, and a look of uncertainty crossed his face.

“All summer I’ve been thanking God for the falling of the feather and all the delights it’s brought me,” he muttered, “but this looks as if——­”

He stopped short and raised questioning eyes to McLean.

“I can’t help being Irish, but I can help being superstitious,” he said.  “I mustn’t be laying it to the Almighty, or to me bird, must I?”

“No, dear lad,” said McLean, stroking the brilliant hair.  “The choice lay with you.  You could have stood a rooted dolt like all the remainder of us.  It was through your great love and your high courage that you made the sacrifice.”

“Don’t you be so naming it, sir!” cried Freckles.  “It’s just the reverse.  If I could be giving me body the hundred times over to save hers from this, I’d be doing it and take joy with every pain.”

He turned with a smile of adoring tenderness to the Angel.  She was ghastly white, and her eyes were dull and glazed.  She scarcely seemed to hear or understand what was coming, but she bravely tried to answer that smile.

“Is my forehead covered with dirt?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You did once,” he gasped.

Instantly she laid her lips on his forehead, then on each cheek, and then in a long kiss on his lips.

McLean bent over him.

“Freckles,” he said brokenly, “you will never know how I love you.  You won’t go without saying good-bye to me?”

That word stung the Angel to quick comprehension.  She started as if arousing from sleep.

“Good-bye?” she cried sharply, her eyes widening and the color rushing into her white face.  “Good-bye!  Why, what do you mean?  Who’s saying good-bye?  Where could Freckles go, when he is hurt like this, save to the hospital?  You needn’t say good-bye for that.  Of course, we will all go with him!  You call up the men.  We must start right away.”

“It’s no use, Angel,” said Freckles.  “I’m thinking ivry bone in me breast is smashed.  You’ll have to be letting me go!”

“I will not,” said the Angel flatly.  “It’s no use wasting precious time talking about it.  You are alive.  You are breathing; and no matter how badly your bones are broken, what are great surgeons for but to fix you up and make you well again?  You promise me that you’ll just grit your teeth and hang on when we hurt you, for we must start with you as quickly as it can be done.  I don’t know what has been the matter with me.  Here’s good time wasted already.”

“Oh, Angel!” moaned Freckles, “I can’t!  You don’t know how bad it is.  I’ll die the minute you are for trying to lift me!”