“I wish mother was here!” he said. “She’d know just to say and how to say it.”

“She’s too far away; leastways, I suppose she is,” said the barkeeper.

“I know it,” whispered the wounded man; “an’ yet a woman—­”

Baggs looked inquiringly, appealingly about him, but seemed unable to finish his sentence.  His glance finally rested upon Brownie, a man as characteristic as himself, but at times displaying rather more heart than was common among Enders.  Brownie obeyed the summons, and stooped beside Baggs.  The bystanders noticed that there followed some whispering, at times shame-faced, and then in the agony of earnestness on the part of Baggs, and replied to by Brownie with averted face and eyes gazing into nowhere.

Finally Brownie arose with an un-Ender-like decision, and left the saloon.  No one else said much, but there seemed to circulate an impression that Baggs was consuming more time than was customary at the End.

Very different was the scene in Mrs. Wader’s parlor; instead of a dying man surrounded by uncouth beings, there stood a beautiful woman, radiant with health and animation; while about her stood a throng of well-dressed gentlemen, some of them handsome, all of them smart, and each one craving a smile, a word, or a look.  Suddenly the pompous voice of General Wader arose: 

“Most astonishing thing I ever heard of,” said he.  “An Ender has the impudence to ask to see Miss Fewne!”

“An Ender?” exclaimed the lady, her pretty lips parting with surprise.

“Yes, and he declares you could not have the heart to say no, if you knew his story.”

“Is it possible, Miss Fewne,” asked one admirer, “that your cruelty can have driven any one to have become an Ender?”

Mabel’s eyes seemed to glance inward, and she made no reply.  She honestly believed she had never knowingly encouraged a man to become her victim; yet she had heard of men doing very silly things when they thought themselves disappointed in love.  She cast a look of timid inquiry at her host.

“Oh, perfectly safe, if you like,” said the general.  “The fellow is at the door, and several of our guests are in the hall.”

Miss Fewne looked serious, and hurried to the door.  She saw a man in shabby clothing and with unkempt beard and hair, yet with a not unpleasing expression.

“Madame,” said he, “I’m a loafer, but I’ve been a gentleman, and I know better than to intrude without a good cause.  The cause is a dying man.  He’s as rough and worthless as I am, but all the roughness has gone out of him, just now, and he’s thinking about his mother and a sweetheart he used to have.  He wants some one to pray for him—­some one as unlike himself and his associates as possible.  He cried for his mother—­then he whispered to me that he had seen, here in Smithton, a lady that looked like an angel—­seen her driving only to-day.  He meant you.  He isn’t pretty; but, when a dying man says a lady is an angel, he means what he says.”