“You know Marmion.”

“Say, wouldn’t it be great if Pointer bolted and you saved her life?  She couldn’t refuse you then.”

Austin laughed.  “That’s not exactly the way I’d care to win her.  However, if Pointer bolted I’d probably get rattled and fall off my own horse.  I don’t like the brutes.  Come on, I’m late.”

“That’s right,” grumbled the other, “leave me here while you make love to the nicest girl in New York.  I’m going down to the office and amputate somebody.”

They descended the single flight to the street, where Austin’s groom was struggling with a huge black.

“It’s coming pretty soft for you brokers,” the doctor growled, as his companion swung himself into the saddle.  “The next time I get a friend I’ll keep him to myself.”

Austin leaned forward with a look of grave anxiety upon his rugged features and said:  “Wish me luck, Doc.  I’m going to ask her to-day.”

“Good for you, old fellow.”  There was great fondness in the younger man’s eyes as he wrung the rider’s hand and waved him adieu, then watched him disappear around the corner.

“She’ll take him,” he mused, half aloud.  “She’s a sensible girl even if all New York has done its best to spoil her.”  He hailed a taxicab and was hurried to his office.

It was perhaps two hours later that he was called on the telephone.

“Hello!  Yes, yes!  What is it?” he cried, irritably.  “Mercy Hospital! What?” The young physician started.  “Hurt, you say?  Run-away?  Go on, quick!” He listened with whitening face, then broke in abruptly:  “Of course he sent for me.  I’ll be right up.”

He slammed the receiver upon its hook and, seizing his hat, bolted out through a waiting-room full of patients.  His car was in readiness, and he called to his chauffeur in such tones that the fellow vaulted to his seat.

“Go up Madison Avenue; there’s less traffic there.  And for God’s sake hurry!”

During two years’ service with New York’s most fashionable physician the driver had never received a command like this, and he opened up his machine.  A policeman warned him at Thirty-third Street and the car slowed down, at which Suydam leaned forward, crying, roughly: 

“To hell with regulations!  There’s a man dying!”

The last word was jerked from him as he was snapped back into his seat.  Regardless of admonitory shouts from patrolmen, the French car sang its growing song, while truck-drivers bellowed curses and pedestrians fled from crossings at the scream of its siren.  A cross-town car blocked them, and the brakes screeched in agony, while Doctor Suydam was well-nigh catapulted into the street; then they were under way again, with the car leaping from speed to speed.  It was the first time the driver had ever dared to disregard those upraised, white-gloved hands, and it filled his joy-riding soul with exultation.  A street repair loomed