When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where Van Sweller checks the headlong team.  And then he looks into Amy Ffolliott’s eyes and sees two things—­the possibilities of a happiness he has long sought, and a nascent promise of it.  He is unknown to her; but he stands in her sight illuminated by the hero’s potent glory, she his and he hers by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.

Ay, that is a rich moment.  And it will stir you to find Van Sweller in that fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O’Roon, who is cursing his gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a West Side hotel while Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.

Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott’s voice thrillingly asking the name of her preserver.  If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman’s uniform, has saved the life of palpitating beauty in the park—­where is Mounted Policeman O’Roon, in whose territory the deed is done?  How quickly by a word can the hero reveal himself, thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility and doubling the romance!  But there is his friend!

Van Sweller touches his cap.  “It’s nothing, Miss,” he says, sturdily; “that’s what we are paid for—­to do our duty.”  And away he rides.  But the story does not end there.

As I have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided satisfaction.  Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure.  It was later in the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement.  At noon he went to O’Roon’s room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post, which he at once did.

At about six o’clock in the afternoon Van Sweller fingered his watch, and flashed at me a brief look full of such shrewd cunning that I suspected him at once.

“Time to dress for dinner, old man,” he said, with exaggerated carelessness.

“Very well,” I answered, without giving him a clew to my suspicions; “I will go with you to your rooms and see that you do the thing properly.  I suppose that every author must be a valet to his own hero.”

He affected cheerful acceptance of my somewhat officious proposal to accompany him.  I could see that he was annoyed by it, and that fact fastened deeper in my mind the conviction that he was meditating some act of treachery.

When he had reached his apartments he said to me, with a too patronizing air:  “There are, as you perhaps know, quite a number of little distinguishing touches to be had out of the dressing process.  Some writers rely almost wholly upon them.  I suppose that I am to ring for my man, and that he is to enter noiselessly, with an expressionless countenance.”

“He may enter,” I said, with decision, “and only enter.  Valets do not usually enter a room shouting college songs or with St. Vitus’s dance in their faces; so the contrary may be assumed without fatuous or gratuitous asseveration.”