"I beg your pardon for seeming a coward," he apologized huskily.

"I got to thinking about my--m-mother and sisters, and--" Jack winced.

Mother and sisters he had longed for all his life.

"Well, you better be thinking how you'll get out of the scrape you're in," he advised, with a little of Bill Wilson's grimness.

"I'm afraid I'm to blame, in a way; and yet, if I hadn't mixed into the fight, you'd be dead by now.