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gett, and say that it looks as if she was liable to need a couple o' trained nurses, too, I'd say to you that if they's goin' to be many o' these kind o' goin's-on aboard of her she does need a couple of trained nurses."

"Captain," said Cleggett, "you are a humane man—let me shake your hand. You have voiced my very thought!"

Long ago Cleggett had resolved that if Chance or Providence should ever gratify his secret wish to participate in stirring adventures, he would see to it that all his wounded enemies, no matter how many there might be of them, received adequate medical attention. He had often been shocked at the callousness with which so many of the heroes of romance dash blithely into the next adventure—though those whom they have seriously injured lie on all sides of them as thick as autumn leaves—with only the most perfunctory consideration of these victims; sometimes, indeed, with no thought of them at all.

"Something tells me," said Cleggett seriously, "that this intrusion of armed men is only a prelude. I have little doubt of the hostility of Morris's; I am sure that the men who hid in the