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With one impulse Lady Jean and the young officer each snatched a golf-club and sprang to help him. “Keep off!” he cried. “I can hold him. Get a strap; we have to keep him alive to find out– Jean! For God’s sake–“

His heart seemed to stand still. Lady Jean had dropped on her knees by the dog, shielding him from the young officer’s club. “Don’t,” she said; ” he’s not mad! It’s Mrs. Brooke’s dog–Why can’t you see ? The poor brute’s wagging his tail !”

“He is,” said Willy; “hold up, boys! A mad dog doesn’t wag his tail.” He released the tourniquet sufficiently to free a piteous whimper. A second later he lifted his hand off the dog, which wriggled into Lady Jean’s compassionate arms as a voice announced, “That’s not the dog!”

The real mad dog–if mad he were–had been despatched by a single shot from a soldier’s gun, rods away; but a panic-stricken crowd had used the customary judgment of panic, and pursued the wrong dog.

“And now,” wrathfully declared Jabez Rivers to his army cronies, “now that poor boy has probably put his wrist out of whack; and his father coming in on the two o’clock train to see him fight for the cup! And this old fool telegraphed for him to come.”

Nevertheless he kept a semblance of confidence. And he has always liked Dickson because he was so sure Willy would win. He offered to caddy for Willy; but Willy gratefully declined, because it would break Tommy’s heart; Tommy’s mother was coming over to see the game. “He’s a real dead-game sport,” Dickson ended, “and a little thing like a spurious mad dog isn’t going to put him out of the running.”

Nor did it; Cleaves made up one of his missing holes, but he got no farther; and at the sixteenth hole Rivers and a small, keen-eyed, quiet-looking man stood up in a runabout and shouted while the great Cleaves, bewildered but invincibly courteous, shook hands with Willy Butler.

“You wait until he has cleaned up a bit” advised Rivers; “give the boy’s girl a chance first–there they are; she’s talking to him now.”

Mr. Butler knew who she was; she had been pointed out to him before; possibly having watched her carefully through the progress of the game, he knew something else, being a man who came to conclusions quickly, on occasion. He looked at her now; he looked at Rivers; the only words that escaped his lips–in a very small, low voice–were, “Wouldn’t that make a man believe in answers to prayers!”

“Willy’s been going some,” said Rivers. “I don’t know who you’ve up your sleeve for him, but we’ve picked out a winner–a sweet, brave, true-hearted little lady. Don’t you butt in, Hiram.”

“Well, hardly,” said Hiram Butler, “since her father and I picked her out first. But, Jabez, blood will tell; I knew Willy had the makings. Now suppose you and I put the young folks into the machine. They can do their courting on the way.”

It may be presumed that he knew, although they took their own original way to Arcadia. Fifteen minutes later, in the heart of the woods which they had sought because, although much longer to the club-house by that road, Willy needed its cool refreshment; fifteen minutes later the boy was saying, “I had to write the note because I didn’t have a chance to see you. Have you read it?” He looked up tremulously. “I write an awfully blind handwriting always, and to-day, with playing golf and all, it’s worse than ever.”

“You could read it out to me, you know,” said the girl; she pulled the score-card, on which Willy had scribbled, from her sleeve, and both the young heads bent over it. “‘Dear Jean,'” read Willy; then he added, “I hope you don’t think that presumptuous, but being engaged–“