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CROSS PURPOSES
241

"What luck for us if he'd gone, after all!" Miss Macdougal cried as they alighted. "Was I not the doubting, faithless one—and I knew all the while I should have trusted the good honest eyes of him. Eh, no! Here he is, and all!"

Mark, who had not much more than finished his story, sprang up as she entered. He looked incredulously from Ping-Pong in her arms to Alan behind her. He leaned upon the table beside him, speechless. The administrative official hastily consulted the telegram.

"My word!" he ejaculated in awed tones, "If it isn't the rest of 'em!"

"Mok! Mok!" squeaked Ping-Pong. It was the nearest she had ever come to an attempt at the name of her rescuer. He stared at her absently.

"It's too much for me," he muttered, "too much!"

"It's strange, now," Miss Macdougal agreed vigorously, "strange enough. A city of a million inhabitants isn't a place you'd think likely to be running into the two ends of an adventure in one day. It was fate, now, Mr. Mark, giving me a chance to square myself with