“It would be safer,” allowed the other, with a smile that surprised the athlete.

“Safer?” he repeated.  “I wasn’t thinking of safety.”

“Think of it,” advised the visitor; “for if you set your grooms on me, they could perhaps throw me out.  But as sure as they did I’d kill you the next time we met.”

Densmore smiled.  “You!” he said contemptuously.  “Kill, eh?  Did you ever kill any one?”

“Yes.”

Under their jet brows Densmore’s eyes took on a peculiar look of intensity.  “A Ledger reporter,” he murmured.  “See here!  Is your name Banneker, by any chance?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the man who cleared out the wharf-gang.”

“Yes.”

Densmore had been born and brought up in a cult to which courage is the basic, inclusive virtue for mankind, as chastity is for womankind.  To his inground prejudice a man who was simply and unaffectedly brave must by that very fact be fine and admirable.  And this man had not only shown an iron nerve, but afterward, in the investigation, which Densmore had followed, he had borne himself with the modesty, discretion, and good taste of the instinctive gentleman.  The poloist was almost pathetically at a loss.  When he spoke again his whole tone and manner had undergone a vital transformation.

“But, good God!” he cried in real distress and bewilderment, “a fellow who could do what you did, stand up to those gun-men in the dark and alone, to be garbaging around asking rotten, prying questions about a man’s sister!  No!  I don’t get it.”

Banneker felt the blood run up into his face, under the sting of the other’s puzzled protest, as it would never have done under open contempt or threat.  A miserable, dull hopelessness possessed him.  “It’s part of the business,” he muttered.

“Then it’s a rotten business,” retorted the horseman.  “Do you have to do this?”

“Somebody has to get the news.”

“News!  Scavenger’s filth.  See here, Banneker, I’m sorry I roughed you about the whip.  But, to ask a man questions about the women of his own family—­No:  I’m damned if I get it.”  He lost himself in thought, and when he spoke again it was as much to himself as to the man on the ground.  “Suppose I did make a frank statement:  you can never trust the papers to get it straight, even if they mean to, which is doubtful.  And there’s Io’s name smeared all over—­Hel-lo!  What’s the matter, now?” For his horse had shied away from an involuntary jerk of Banneker’s muscles, responsive to electrified nerves, so sharply as to disturb the rider’s balance.

“What name did you say?” muttered Banneker, involuntarily.

“Io.  My foster-sister’s nickname.  Irene Welland, she was.  You’re a queer sort of society reporter if you don’t know that.”

“I’m not a society reporter.”

“But you know Mrs. Eyre?”

“Yes; in a way,” returned Banneker, gaining command of himself.  “Officially, you might say.  She was in a railroad wreck that I stage-managed out West.  I was the local agent.”