As May gazed on the slow procession, her eye was attracted by the emblem on a fireman’s cap—­it was the same—­an anchor and a cross!  That form, it could be no other, the face was turned towards her, it was the stranger fireman!  His very step bespoke the man, as with folded arms and solemn tread he followed in the funeral cortege.

That evening Hal Delancey returned home, his countenance beaming with joy, in strange contrast with the gloom of the day.  “May, he is safe again!” was his first exclamation, “He is a perfect Neptune, Vulcan, master of fire and flood.  Neither the surging eddies of Hurl Gate, nor ghastly flames and crashing beams have been able to overcome him.  How he escaped he scarcely knows, and yet he does not bear a scar.  So skilful, so agile, so brave, so dominant over all dangers, we easily might fancy him one of the old heathen deities!”

The next day there was to be some public literary exercise at the university, to which the alderman’s family had been invited.  May remembered Hal’s once saying that he saw the fireman disappear somewhere around that venerable building, so an early hour found her seated at her father’s side in the solemn-looking chapel, watching the arrival of the spectators, but more particularly the entrance of the students.  The exercises commenced, still May had discovered no face resembling the fireman of her dreams.  Several essays were pronounced with ease and grace, and the alderman took a fitting occasion to make a complimentary remark to one of the officers of the institution who was seated near him.  “Exactly, exactly,” echoed the professor, “but wait until young Sherwood speaks!”

Marion Sherwood was called, and there arose from among the heavy folds of the curtain that had almost entirely concealed him, a student who advanced with the dignity of a Jupiter and the grace of an Apollo.  Duty was his theme.  The words flowed in a resistless torrent from his lips.  Every thought breathed beauty and sublimity, every gesture was the “poetry of motion.”  More than once did the entranced May Edgerton catch the dark eyes of the orator fixed with an almost scrutinizing gaze upon her face.  The walls rang with applause as he resumed his seat; bouquets were showered at his feet by beauty’s hand, the excited students called out “Sherwood, Sherwood!” he had surpassed himself.  May scarcely heard a word that followed.  She was delighted to find that she had not deceived herself, that in intellectual strength he equalled the promise of his daring.

At the close of the exercises Marion Sherwood would have hastened away, but the chancellor detained him.  “Alderman Edgerton desires an introduction to you, sir,” deliberately remarked the chancellor.  Marion bowed.  The alderman, after the first greeting, caught his hand.  “I cannot be deceived, sir; you are the gallant youth who so nobly rescued my daughter from a terrible death.”  Again Marion bowed, hesitatingly, striving to withdraw his