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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Cross Girl
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Commentator: Gouverneur Morris
+
+Posting Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1733]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED CROSS GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
+
+By Richard Harding Davis
+
+With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     Introduction by Gouverneur Morris
+
+     1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+     2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+     3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+     4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+     5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+     6. THE MIND READER
+
+     7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+     8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+     9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                         R. H. D.
+
+     “And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+     unafraid.”
+
+He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and
+so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
+middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
+have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
+brother was Peter Pan.
+
+Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of
+sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites
+against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and
+medicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go
+elephant shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants.
+Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I
+think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman.
+Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said the last word. Do you
+remember the Happy Hunting Ground in “The Bar Sinister”?--“Where nobody
+hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt.”
+
+Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
+sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
+out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of
+them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary
+member of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
+friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was
+another.
+
+To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
+thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better
+than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted
+every corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he
+played a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed,
+or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for
+hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But
+about the other fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes
+of wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the
+invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
+talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the
+slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they
+were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and
+color. With the written word or the spoken word he was the greatest
+recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps,
+that ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners
+and customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
+truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to
+his special articles and to his letters. Read over again the Queen's
+Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through
+Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a
+friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the
+same again.
+
+But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in
+due time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
+
+One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact
+with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a
+good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he
+distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it.
+Men go to him tired and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be
+alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil
+himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect.
+And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but
+from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of
+knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and
+discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the
+scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a
+book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and
+from the receiver there poured into you affection and encouragement.
+
+But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
+temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or
+too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
+invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants
+in the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and
+the baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
+double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
+disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+
+He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid
+of them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much
+he loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,
+unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then
+the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great
+heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite
+bliss, akin to anguish.
+
+One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
+telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that
+little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has
+suffered....
+
+Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed
+to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and
+though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with
+dignity and without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H.
+D. thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm
+the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was
+taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R.
+H. D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they
+wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the
+iris. And then back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
+adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind
+him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a
+gardener who blushed and smiled in the darkness under the Actinidia
+vines.
+
+It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was
+with us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
+dependent upon each other in many ways.
+
+Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
+complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
+needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
+time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
+where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had
+no name. Now it is called “Let's Pretend.”
+
+Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
+built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but
+we pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
+fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
+pretendings, until real troubles went down before them--down and out.
+
+It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
+lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were
+in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or
+two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against
+gray cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It
+never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of
+the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four
+for tennis and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we
+sat in front of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and
+talked until the next morning.
+
+He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure
+not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the
+moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his
+knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good
+Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the
+Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
+sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
+there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day began with
+attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted
+with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a
+loud and joyous singing of ballads.
+
+At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
+marble, gone down the ages as “statue of a young athlete.” He stood
+six feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine
+head carried by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a
+child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He
+was the weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
+tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that
+he could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
+
+The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door
+you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at
+work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a
+stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written
+and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in
+that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure
+to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send
+you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn
+a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half
+column of unsigned print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find time to
+praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged from his room
+at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and
+whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and
+carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters and telegrams.
+
+Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
+dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced
+in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is,
+or ought to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest.
+Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of
+statesmen, laughter and sentiment--to him, at breakfast, these things
+were as important as sausages and thick cream.
+
+Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's
+work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
+conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper,
+he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a
+wistful glance, and hurry to his workroom.
+
+He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
+wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
+and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and
+he didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously
+human, flowed from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of
+corresponding, “The German March Through Brussels,” was probably written
+almost as fast as he could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the
+fastest talker I ever heard), but when it came to fiction he had no
+facility at all. Perhaps I should say that he held in contempt any
+facility that he may have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy
+and Joblike patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all. Every
+phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could think of,
+the fittest in his relentless judgment to survive. Phrases, paragraphs,
+pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He worked
+upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile
+turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description
+from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair
+of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a
+turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of omitting one by one
+those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and after each
+omission he would ask himself: “Does the picture remain?” If it did not,
+he restored the detail which he had just omitted, and experimented with
+the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on, until after Herculean
+labor there remained for the reader one of those swiftly flashed,
+ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which his tales and
+romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+
+But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
+emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
+and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
+writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
+never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he
+has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
+circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
+stand in their present order until--after lunch.
+
+A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
+denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
+him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
+own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
+Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after
+many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
+it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the
+smoke there was in it.
+
+He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
+whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
+toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
+far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
+fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps
+I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a
+will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction
+his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never
+obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
+must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into
+any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the
+heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young
+people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of
+virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not
+furnish examples.
+
+Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
+had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him
+in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get
+your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without
+any trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid
+mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were
+going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram
+from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next
+day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my
+own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
+liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him
+so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.
+
+Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
+he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
+matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter
+that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to
+it.
+
+Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
+their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And
+it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them;
+her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under
+fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away
+upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.
+We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken
+arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two
+hours and a half.
+
+I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give
+more than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space
+at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch
+upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
+Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from
+which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers;
+those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
+quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous
+exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
+He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning
+to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time
+looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue
+is owing in some measure to him.
+
+R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
+peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
+infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
+country to see the matter in the same way.
+
+I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface
+of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which
+was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
+“personal interviews” which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
+important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
+which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--“You can't expect a
+fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain.”
+
+There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
+men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
+men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his work?
+And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be
+sure that I am right.
+
+An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
+Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his
+brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer
+are subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his
+powers of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate,
+too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.
+
+The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
+the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where “Nobody hunts us and
+there is nothing to hunt.”
+
+GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
+
+
+
+Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
+wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills
+above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story,
+and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day
+in October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great
+lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across
+the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+
+Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
+night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he
+was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York
+from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
+already he was a “star” man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+
+“What's the matter with the story?” asked the city editor. “With the
+speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns.”
+
+“Suppose it does!” exclaimed Ward; “anybody can collect type-written
+speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
+any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
+trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men
+in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
+story in that?”
+
+“When I was a reporter,” declared the city editor, “I used to be glad to
+get a day in the country.”
+
+“Because you'd never lived in the country,” returned Sam. “If you'd
+wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
+every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself.”
+
+“Of what?” demanded the city editor. “There's nothing to New York except
+cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the
+sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle
+of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except
+on the women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the
+elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts
+in department stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we
+never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women
+who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a
+Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!”
+
+“How curious!” said Sam. “Now I see why they took you off the street and
+made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
+are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
+they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
+they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
+under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
+are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble.”
+
+The city editor sighed. “How young you are!” he exclaimed. “However,
+to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be
+few women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in
+convalescents--and you do not look like a convalescent.”
+
+Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
+overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
+assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
+him give away a million dollars.
+
+“Aren't you going to get his speech?”, asked Redding, the staff
+photographer.
+
+“Get HIS speech!” said Sam. “They have Pinkertons all over the grounds
+to see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to
+hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the
+first train back to the centre of civilization.”
+
+“There's going to be a fine lunch,” said Redding, “and reporters are
+expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were.”
+
+Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his
+armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his
+clothes and always treated them with courtesy.
+
+“You can have my share,” he said. “I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
+minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have
+a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
+Rochelle.”
+
+He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron
+gates; but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble
+barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform
+of a nursing sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar
+turned down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet.
+A bow of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had
+hair like golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such
+health and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
+
+She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
+as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+
+Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that
+other people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have
+observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out
+that which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says:
+“That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that.” And so
+warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the
+indiscreet utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does
+not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning under
+screaming headlines.
+
+Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
+official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
+swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
+that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
+Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him
+was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would
+have guessed that he observed that--least of all Sister Anne. He stood
+in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
+impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt--as though
+his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
+
+“I am from the REPUBLIC,” he said. “Everybody is so busy here to-day
+that I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,”
+ he added disappointedly, “because it's so well done that people ought
+to know about it.” He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was
+apparent that the ignorance of the public concerning their excellence
+greatly annoyed him.
+
+When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in
+alarm--obviously she was upon the point of instant flight.
+
+“You are a reporter?” she said.
+
+Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
+they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others--only
+reporters know how few--would as soon place themselves in the hands of a
+dentist.
+
+“A reporter from the REPUBLIC,” repeated Sam.
+
+“But why ask ME?” demanded Sister Anne.
+
+Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
+he glanced at her uniform.
+
+“I thought you were at work here,” he said simply. “I beg your pardon.”
+
+He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
+impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+
+“There was no other reason,” persisted Sister Anne. “I mean for speaking
+to me?”
+
+The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
+this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
+hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
+
+“I am sorry,” said Sam. “I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and,
+as you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics
+about the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color.”
+
+Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
+she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly
+he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this
+young woman that at the mere approach of a reporter--even of such a
+nice-looking reporter as himself--she should shake and shudder. “If
+that's what you really want to know,” said Sister Anne doubtfully, “I'll
+try and help you; but,” she added, looking at him as one who issues an
+ultimatum, “you must not say anything about me!”
+
+Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class
+will always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so
+that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young
+woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her?
+Much as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: “The
+Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful
+of all living women.” No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as
+there was nothing to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to
+say nothing. Sister Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled,
+not because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the
+promise amused her. Sam wondered why.
+
+Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of
+the hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about
+one person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
+containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated
+by Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne--only
+to exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
+unselfishness of her nature.
+
+“Do you really scrub the floors?” he demanded--“I mean you
+yourself--down on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing
+brush?”
+
+Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+
+“We do that when we first come here,” she said--“when we are
+probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?”
+
+“And these awful patients,” demanded Sam--“do you wait on them? Do you
+have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?” He
+glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
+annihilate them. “It's not fair!” exclaimed Sam. “It's ridiculous. I'd
+like to choke them!”
+
+“That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents,” said Sister
+Anne.
+
+“You know perfectly well what I mean,” said Sam. “Here are you--if
+you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
+person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
+and cripples.”
+
+“Nor is that quite the way we look at,” said Sister Anne.
+
+“We?” demanded Sam.
+
+Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+
+“I'm not the only nurse here,” she said “There are over forty.”
+
+“You are the only one here,” said Sam, “who is not! That's Just what
+I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
+ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not talking about anybody
+else; I'm talking about you--you are too young! Somehow you are
+different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
+sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds.”
+
+Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Sam stiffly.
+
+“No--pardon me,” said Sister Anne; “but your ideas of the duties of a
+nurse are so quaint.”
+
+“No matter what the duties are,” declared Sam; “You should not be here!”
+
+Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders--as
+delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+
+“One must live,” said Sister Anne.
+
+They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows
+of rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them
+stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated
+herself upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the
+flashing waters of the Sound.
+
+“Yes; that's it,” she repeated softly--“one must live.”
+
+Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
+looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
+occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
+heightened by the fact that “the woman was very fair.” He conceded
+that. He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced
+by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his
+feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her profession, the
+gentlest and most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed
+that this young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish
+sick people.
+
+“If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
+there are other ways of earning a living.”
+
+The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere--and again she
+smiled.
+
+“Now what would you suggest?” she asked. “You see,” she said, “I have no
+one to advise me--no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
+I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so
+I doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own
+work must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living.
+Maybe you could advise me?”
+
+Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his
+salary would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember
+which of the men in the office were married, and whether they were
+those whose salaries were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy
+editors, he knew, was very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was
+married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office to take
+her to the theatre, and often Sam had thought she was extremely well
+dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear
+would be a matter of indifference; but then women did not always look
+at it that way. Sam was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life
+position that his silence had become significant; and to cover his real
+thoughts he said hurriedly:
+
+“Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
+difficult.”
+
+“And manicuring?” suggested Sister Anne.
+
+Sam exclaimed in horror.
+
+“You!” he cried roughly. “For you! Quite impossible!”
+
+“Why for me?” said the girl.
+
+In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
+walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
+see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
+
+“You?” protested Sam. “You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
+are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!” His vehemence
+was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
+gravel walk, his profile toward her--and, unobserved, she could study
+his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
+good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city
+editor, his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes
+full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. “How much do they give you
+a month?” “Forty dollars,” answered Sister Anne. “This is what hurts me
+about it,” said Sam.
+
+“It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
+are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to
+work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However,
+probably you know that better than I do.”
+
+“No; I don't know that,” said Sister Anne.
+
+Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
+statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
+relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
+complete stranger--even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but,
+though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+
+“I think you are working too hard,” he said, smiling happily. “I think
+you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever
+give you a day off?”
+
+“Next Saturday,” said Sister Anne. “Why?”
+
+“Because,” explained Sam, “if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
+going to prescribe a day off for you--a day entirely away from iodoform
+and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and a
+lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh--or cry,
+if you like that better--and then, maybe, some fresh air in the park in
+a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see you
+safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer,” he added hurriedly,
+“I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself and doing
+all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of the
+other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only, honestly,
+I hope you won't!”
+
+The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not
+say so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost
+laughing with happiness.
+
+“I think that would be quite delightful,” said Sister Anne,”--quite
+delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't
+bring another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great
+deal of money. I think we might cut out the taxicab--and walk in the
+park and feed the squirrels.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Sam in disappointment,--“then you know Central Park?”
+
+Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+
+“I once lived near there,” she said.
+
+“In Harlem?”
+
+“Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young,” said Sister
+Anne. “Since then I have always lived in the country or in--other
+places.”
+
+Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+
+“It's so kind of you to consent,” he cried. “Indeed, you are the kindest
+person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
+sick people, and, now I know.”
+
+“It is you who are kind,” protested Sister Anne, “to take pity on me.”
+
+“Pity on you!” laughed Sam. “You can't pity a person who can do more
+with a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now,” he
+demanded in happy anticipation, “where are we to meet?”
+
+“That's it,” said Sister Anne. “Where are we to meet?”
+
+“Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,”
+ said Sam; “and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
+want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh,” exclaimed Sam joyfully, “it
+will be a wonderful day--a wonderful day!”
+
+Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
+wistfully. She held out her hand.
+
+“I must go back to my duties,” she said. “Good-by.”
+
+“Not good-by,” said Sam heartily, “only until Saturday--and my name's
+Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
+name?”
+
+“Sister Anne,” said the girl. “In the nursing order to which I belong we
+have no last names.”
+
+“So,” asked Sam, “I'll call you Sister Anne?”
+
+“No; just Sister,” said the girl.
+
+“Sister!” repeated Sam, “Sister!” He breathed the word rather than spoke
+it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made
+it carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said
+“Sweetheart!” or “Beloved!” “I'll not forget,” said Sam.
+
+Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+
+“Nor I,” she said.
+
+Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
+cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over
+again and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed
+their next meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would
+meet her with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her
+when they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way
+would be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to
+be the most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be
+the slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance--and it should
+cost half his week's salary.
+
+The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he
+had observed that women had strange ideas about clothes--some of them
+thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some
+of them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction
+upon the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He
+was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she
+must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
+conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
+would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
+eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning
+each week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the
+birthday of his life! No, he contradicted--the day he had first met her
+must always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one
+like her and he was sure there never would be one like her. She was
+so entirely superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult--in her
+manner there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her
+simple nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a
+princess in fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged
+her to let him for one day personally conduct her over the great city!
+“You are so kind to take pity on me,” she had said. He thought of many
+clever, pretty speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had
+not thought of them at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in
+front of him.
+
+He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
+beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous
+that one so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry
+living--forty dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her
+sit in the flat where one could look at her; for already he had decided
+that, when they were married, they would live in a flat--probably in
+one overlooking Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several
+attractive suites there at thirty-five dollars a week--or, if she
+preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return
+to the country. In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he
+conceded even that sacrifice.
+
+When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
+at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
+carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
+already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+
+After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
+the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way
+to a waiting motor car and said, “Home!” to the chauffeur. He drove
+her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors
+called the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
+Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on
+the Sound.
+
+There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted
+her noisily.
+
+“I have had a most splendid adventure!” said Sister Anne. “There were
+six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
+programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real
+nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about
+it to keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry
+for me; and....”
+
+One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself
+on knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights
+and prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
+
+“Don't you believe it!” he interrupted. “That man who was talking to you
+was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was
+just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who
+wouldn't know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper.”
+
+Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+
+“He did not know me!” she protested. “It quite upset him that I should
+be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds.”
+
+There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+
+“I told him,” continued Sister Anne, “that I got forty dollars a month,
+and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
+be a manicurist.”
+
+“Oh, Anita!” protested the admiring chorus.
+
+“And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
+manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
+me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
+drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
+park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
+We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
+He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'”
+
+“Oh, Anita!” shrieked the chorus.
+
+Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
+American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
+Anita Flagg, was amused.
+
+“What an awfully jolly rag!” he cried. “And what are you going to do
+about it?”
+
+“Nothing,” said Anita Flagg. “The reporters have been making me
+ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
+And,” she added, “that's all there is to that!”
+
+That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
+Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: “I want to hear
+you call me Sister.”
+
+“Call you what?” exclaimed the young man. “I will tell you,” he
+whispered, “what I'd like to call you!”
+
+“You will not!” interrupted Anita. “Do as I tell you and say Sister
+once. Say it as though you meant it.”
+
+“But I don't mean it,” protested his lordship. “I've said already what
+I....”
+
+“Never mind what you've said already,” commanded Miss Flagg. “I've heard
+that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once.”
+
+His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+
+“Sister!” he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+
+Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
+though she were cold.
+
+“Not a bit like it, Deptford,” she said. “Good-night.”
+
+Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was
+to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
+window looking out toward the great city to the south.
+
+When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that
+young woman to shriek with amazement.
+
+“Anita!” she exclaimed. “You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
+cry?”
+
+It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She
+turned upon the tactless intruder.
+
+“Suppose,” cried Anita fiercely, “a man thought you were worth forty
+dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor
+and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more
+than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
+millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care
+of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
+met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
+do?”
+
+“Why, Anita!” exclaimed Miss Page.
+
+“What would you do?” demanded Anita Flagg. “This is what you'd do: You'd
+go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
+from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love
+me--and love me!”
+
+“And why don't you?” cried Helen Page.
+
+“Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!” cried Anita Flagg. “Because
+I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?”
+
+At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward,
+in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing
+Sam's story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar
+was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine
+ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in
+mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue
+pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk
+and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins
+rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these
+explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no
+more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
+office. “In the name of Mike!” he shouted. “What IS this?”
+
+The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
+impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
+was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
+clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
+came back to earth.
+
+“What's what?” Sam demanded.
+
+At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the
+room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward
+Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was
+late--and it was important.
+
+“What's wrong?” he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
+
+“Read the opening paragraph,” protested Collins. “It's like that for a
+column! It's all about a girl--about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about
+Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story at
+all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
+what it is. And, what's worse,” wailed the copy editor defiantly and
+to the amazement of all, “it's so darned good that you can't touch it.
+You've got to let it go or kill it.”
+
+The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade,
+were racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at
+Collins.
+
+“Is it all like that?”
+
+“There's a column like that!”
+
+“Run it just as it is,” commanded the managing editor. “Use it for your
+introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
+out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
+with pictures.” He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+
+“What's the idea, Ward?” he said. “This is a newspaper--not a magazine!”
+
+The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
+had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
+reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also
+smiled, but unhappily.
+
+“I know it's not news, Sir,” he said; “but that's the way I saw the
+story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the
+governor's staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside,
+this girl right on the job--taking care of the sick and wounded. It
+seemed to me that a million from a man that won't miss a million didn't
+stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I
+wanted to say,” continued Sam stoutly “was that the moving spirit of the
+hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women
+who do the work--the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you
+called 'The Red Cross Girl.'”
+
+Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
+traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
+
+“But it's not news!”
+
+“It's not news,” said Elliott doubtfully; “but it's the kind of story
+that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives
+men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the
+illegitimate sister.'”
+
+It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to
+a girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was
+this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return
+for its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
+business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it
+served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and
+incidentally a million other people, how deeply he honored her; how
+clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant
+Sister Anne, save two people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and
+for him that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real
+incidents of the day; he had described her as she passed through the
+wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the
+little acts of consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
+
+The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
+and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
+her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
+he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
+after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the
+front page was his story, “The Red Cross Girl.” It had the place of
+honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his
+own story was one of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken
+of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform of
+mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of
+the camera. There was no mistaking her for any other living woman;
+but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a
+strange and grotesque legend.
+
+“Daughter of Millionaire Flagg,” it read, “in a New Role, Miss Anita
+Flagg as The Red Cross Girl.”
+
+For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper
+so that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From
+below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting--cable cars jangled, taxis
+hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
+shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A
+girl he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever--worse than
+that had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that
+made no difference, or just as little difference as it would have made
+had Sister Anne really lived and really died.
+
+At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
+party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone
+at the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
+Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the
+table and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press,
+had pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking
+at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
+surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
+fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading “The Red
+Cross Girl”; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent
+slumber, her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks
+the color flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read
+as far as a paragraph beginning, “When Sister Anne walked between them
+those who suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces
+to the rain,” she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+
+“Any man,” cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
+servants, “who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
+and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might
+be like that--if any man would help.”
+
+She gave her attention to the telephone and “Information.” She demanded
+to be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr.
+Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
+
+“I'm tired of being called a good sport,” she protested, “by men who
+aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
+money--as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on
+his shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
+good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint;
+and he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy--and I like being made
+dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!”
+
+
+“Be still!” implored Helen Page. “Any one might think you meant it!” She
+nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
+
+“Ye gods, Parker!” cried Anita Flagg. “Does it take three of you to pour
+a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three
+caught me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the
+telephone and that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!”
+
+The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. “And
+what's more,” Anita hurled after them, “get your bets down quick, for
+after I meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!”
+
+Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
+office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
+happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the
+only person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she
+refused to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, “I'll call him up
+later,” and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for
+all the beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+
+To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
+particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
+opposite the cathedral.
+
+“You're the very man I want,” said Hollworthy joyously--“you've got to
+decide a bet.”
+
+He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+
+“It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
+who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you
+knew. I bet her a theatre party.”
+
+To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had
+even been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he
+had no right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know
+what Sister Anne had meant to him?
+
+“I'm afraid you lose,” he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
+leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+
+“You don't say so!” exclaimed that young man. “Fancy one of you chaps
+being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in--getting up
+a story for the Sunday supplement.”
+
+Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet
+to escape. “And, instead of your fooling her,” exclaimed Holworthy
+incredulously, “she was having fun, with you!”
+
+With difficulty Sam smiled.
+
+“So it would seem,” he said.
+
+“She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!” exclaimed Holworthy
+admiringly. “I thought she was making it up--she must have made some of
+it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
+so is it?”
+
+“Yes, that's so.”
+
+“By Jove!” cried Holworthy--“and that you invited her to see the
+moving-picture shows?”
+
+Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket,
+smiled pleasantly.
+
+“Did she say I said that--or you?” he asked
+
+“She did.”
+
+“Well, then, I must have said it.”
+
+Holworthy roared with amusement.
+
+“And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?”
+
+Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+
+“Yes; I said that too.”
+
+“And I thought she was making it up!” exclaimed Holworthy. “We did
+laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself.”
+
+Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+
+“You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita
+Flagg--just as if she were nobody!”
+
+“I don't think,” said Sam, “that was my idea.” He waved his stick at a
+passing taxi. “I'm late,” he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
+chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
+had made.
+
+An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
+telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
+
+“You're wanted on the 'phone,” he commanded. His voice dropped to an
+awed whisper. “Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!”
+
+The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
+this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
+never met.
+
+“Say you can't find me,” he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
+precipitately.
+
+“The lady says she wants your telephone number--says she must have it.”
+
+“Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules--and hang
+up.”
+
+Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
+informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg--the rich,
+the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
+morning--had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
+thrown down--and thrown hard!
+
+That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
+entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
+whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+
+Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+
+“Ward,” he began abruptly, “I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
+It's on account of that story of this morning.”
+
+Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served
+so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that,
+considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was
+causing him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of
+position did not disturb him. In the last month too many managing
+editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious
+as to the future. So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say
+without resentment:
+
+“Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+
+“I did,” returned Elliott; “I liked it so much that I'm sending you to
+a bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as
+our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work;
+and if you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday.”
+
+After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air.
+He could not believe it was real--that it was actually to him it had
+happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events,
+to come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of
+reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh
+Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and
+the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback
+only to his happiness--there was no one with whom he might divide it.
+He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with
+some one who would understand how much it meant to him, who would really
+care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would
+have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to
+accept them--begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and
+terrifying capital of the world, and start the new life together.
+
+Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
+Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
+because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
+his admiration--and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
+ingenuously he had shown it to her--meant nothing; but because the girl
+he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
+marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
+ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous
+when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a
+hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could
+not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself
+had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
+
+Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
+as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be.
+His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
+impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
+of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that.
+Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and
+flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who
+wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got
+the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and
+said sharp, bitter things that made her appear hard and heartless.
+
+As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
+addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
+Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so--when on arriving at the
+office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
+reading, “Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
+begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg “--he
+was able to reply: “Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
+person, who unfortunately has since died!”'
+
+When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes
+tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned
+miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
+
+“But why does he do it to me?” Her tone was that of the bewildered child
+who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
+without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
+
+Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
+changed into a very angry young woman.
+
+“And what's more,” she announced, “he can't do it to me!”
+
+She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
+it was signed, “Sister Anne.”
+
+In an hour the answer came: “Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
+She is dead.”
+
+Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was
+not in his nature to be rude--certainly not to a woman, especially not
+to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name
+was Anita or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he
+assured himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could
+see in a well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was
+of no interest to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing
+their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that
+she looked upon him as one entirely out of her world--as one with whom
+she could do an unconventional thing and make a good story about it
+later, knowing that it would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+
+He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance.
+And, besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He
+no longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy.
+He was now a man with a responsible position--one who soon would be
+conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage
+by the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
+correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
+as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
+
+Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased
+tickets. And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have
+occupied could not be filled by any other person. It would have been
+sacrilege. At least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through
+dinner, which he ate alone at the same restaurant to which he had
+intended taking her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And
+at the theatre, where there was going forward the most popular of all
+musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the audience, appeared
+wastefully empty, was to him filled with her gracious presence. That
+Sister Anne was not there--that the pretty romance he had woven about
+her had ended in disaster--filled, him with real regret. He was glad he
+was leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing would
+remind him of her. And then he glanced up--and looked straight into her
+eyes!
+
+He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
+Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
+farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
+stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
+full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him.
+There were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
+enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
+the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was
+all in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing
+suit; round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
+curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
+rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee,
+was gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with
+excitement.
+
+When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized
+her, she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her
+the ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
+neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over
+his left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but
+some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the
+stage and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but
+it was a cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly
+sought the stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to
+be laughing; and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile
+exposed pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble
+like those of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard
+smile--and heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
+
+“That's all she cares.” he told himself.
+
+It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did,
+she kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister
+Anne.
+
+For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained
+upon her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly
+and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the'
+darkest recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage
+by a barrier of women's hats.
+
+“Your friend Mr. Ward,” she began abruptly, in a whisper, “is the
+rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the
+other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved
+abominably--like a boor--like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor?
+Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt
+me?”
+
+“Hurt you?” exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. “Don't be
+ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is?
+Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too
+good-looking; and a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him.
+So when one of them laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the
+trouble. I could see that when I was telling him.”
+
+“Telling him!” repeated Miss Flagg--“Telling him what?”
+
+“About what a funny story you made of it,” explained Holworthy. “About
+his having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with
+him.”
+
+Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+
+“Oh!” she said softly. “So-so you told him that, did you? And--what else
+did you tell him?”
+
+“Only what you told us--that he said 'the day could not begin too soon';
+that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands of men
+who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“Did I tell you he said that?” breathed Anita Flagg.
+
+“You know you did,” said Holworthy.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+“I must have been mad!” said the girl.
+
+There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+
+“I'm afraid you are angry,” he ventured.
+
+“Angry!” exclaimed Miss Flagg. “I should say I was angry, but not with
+you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
+let you take me out into the lobby.”
+
+With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage
+and seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had
+destroyed his ideal of a sweet and noble woman--and he was sorry for
+Miss Flagg because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be
+that man did not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and,
+indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his
+friends on the stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he
+would take himself out of the front row, to give him back his money at
+the box office. Sam certainly wished to take himself away; but he did
+not want to admit that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that
+the presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his evening--could, in the
+slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling
+that he was in a false position; that if he were it was his own fault;
+that he had acted like an ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful
+feeling.
+
+When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the
+second act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance
+running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude
+to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
+Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at
+him--whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense;
+again making his advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that
+he flushed indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+
+And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
+figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past
+him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to
+speak--and Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to
+give him time; for, without regarding him in the least, and as though
+to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and
+deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent
+toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile reproaching
+him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him
+gently:
+
+“This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
+enough of it?”
+
+Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or
+of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal--and something else
+that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
+
+For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
+remorsefully.
+
+“It's not Anita Flagg at all,” he said. “It's Sister Anne come back to
+life again!” The girl shook her head.
+
+“No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met
+and I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that
+was before I understood--before I read what you wrote about Sister
+Anne--about the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I
+knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and
+gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
+there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you called me
+Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I
+wanted you to say it.”
+
+She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near that her
+shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
+scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest.
+Half of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with
+the greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky
+youth in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
+
+The young people in the front row did not know they were observed.
+They were alone--as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
+sweeping above the clouds.
+
+“Say it again,” prompted Anita Flagg “Sister.”
+
+“I will not!” returned the young man firmly. “But I'll say this,” he
+whispered: “I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
+the finest woman who has ever lived!”
+
+Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
+at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+
+“I don't know,” she said, “but that sounds just as good.”
+
+When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
+box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper;
+but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
+
+“We can see this act,” she said, “or--my car's in front of the
+theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three. Which
+would you prefer?”
+
+“Don't make me laugh!” said Sam.
+
+As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but
+paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
+
+“There's only one thing,” she said to Sam, “that is making me unhappy;
+and because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am
+leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next
+Wednesday.”
+
+“My business is to gather news,” said Sam, “but in all my life I never
+gathered such good news as that.”
+
+“Good news!” exclaimed Anita.
+
+“Because,” explained Sam, “I am leaving, America--am spending the winter
+in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but that
+is not what makes me unhappy.”
+
+“Tell me,” begged Anita.
+
+“Some day,” said Sam.
+
+The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea--as they
+leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
+
+“This is my unhappiness,” said Sam--and he pointed to a name on the
+passenger list. It was: “The Earl of Deptford, and valet.” “And because
+he is on board!”
+
+Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+
+“He is not on board,” she said. “He changed to another boat.”
+
+Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
+soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.
+
+“Why did he change?” he begged.
+
+Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
+despair.
+
+“Is that all that is worrying you?” she said.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their
+examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This
+may or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But
+whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior
+year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them
+even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have
+been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It
+was the professors who cheated.
+
+At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you
+can score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief
+history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has
+attained it. After graduating he “accepted a position” in an asylum for
+the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where
+he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest
+they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.
+Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.
+
+The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects
+in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an
+average of ninety, you are passed “with honors”; if of seventy-five, you
+pass “with distinction”; if Of fifty, You just “pass.” It is not unlike
+the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The
+whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be
+lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined
+that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would
+see that he passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of
+awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much,
+but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his
+dignified title the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who
+dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater,
+who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting
+Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his
+official resignation.
+
+Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
+president. If he did not actually run after money he went where
+money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who
+possessed it. And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through
+a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose
+to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool,
+or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to
+it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious
+instructor.
+
+He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
+examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
+inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
+
+“That is too bad!” he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
+“Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride,
+and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let
+us hope he will pull through.” For four years every professor had been
+pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.
+They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of
+him forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew
+that of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle
+would hold the blank cartridge.
+
+The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at
+Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of
+those well-known text-books, “The Founders of Islam,” and “The Rise and
+Fall of the Turkish Empire.” This latter work, in five volumes, had
+been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's “Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire.” The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back,
+the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and
+worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always
+possessed a contemporary and news interest.
+
+“Here is a review of the history,” he would say--he always referred to
+it as “the” history--“that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT.”
+
+In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it
+was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
+
+The members of his class who were examined on the “Rise and Fall,” and
+who invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the
+“Fall,” sometimes feelingly as “the.... Fall.” The history began when
+Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to
+Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds
+with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since
+Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.
+When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish
+Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume
+that would cover the last three centuries.
+
+“In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book,” said the chancellor, “I
+think the Russian-Turkish War should be included.”
+
+Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in
+mild reproach. “The war in the Crimea!” he exclaimed. “Why, I was alive
+at the time. I know about it. That is not history.”
+
+Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
+knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
+trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
+Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom “the” history
+certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which
+he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with
+malice toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked “five.”
+
+Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty.
+In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but
+they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single
+point higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five
+completely knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter
+was “found” and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only
+son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private
+college--the son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the
+new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and
+the Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim
+hall of the Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own
+disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-glass window cast upon his
+nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter
+wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he desired laurels he had not won,
+but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to
+be. Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that
+followed made Stillwater history.
+
+“My son is not an ass!” is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
+Doctor Black. “And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
+the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.
+And I'll send my money where I send Peter.”
+
+In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the
+son and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had
+failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say
+that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college
+president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a
+conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He
+lowered his voice.
+
+“There has been contemptible work here,” he whispered--“spite and a mean
+spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I
+find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our
+college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance--Doctor Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary.” This did
+not happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford
+to be too particular.
+
+“I have seen no reason for raising his salary--and there you have the
+explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his
+mark. In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own
+downfall. I have already asked for his resignation.”
+
+Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this
+particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem
+humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than
+that his son was an idiot.
+
+“I don't want the man discharged,” he protested, “just because Peter is
+lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he
+sacrificed my Peter in order to get even....”
+
+“That,” exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, “is exactly what he did!
+Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all
+over America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an
+increase in salary it was really you who refused it--and he struck at
+you through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself
+shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly
+not your brilliant son--look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club
+and foot-ball tour--is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman
+went too far. And he has been justly punished!”
+
+What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor
+told him, and his opinion of the matter as expressed to Peter, differed
+materially.
+
+“They tell me,” he concluded, “that in the fall they will give you
+another examination, and if you pass then, you will get your degree. No
+one will know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the side-door
+like a cold potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that
+when your classmates stood up and got their parchments--the thing they'd
+been working for four years, the only reason for their going to college
+at all--YOU were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you
+don't get your degree next fall that will be my fault. I've supported
+you through college and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you
+deliver them next fall, or you can support yourself.”
+
+“That will be all right,” said Peter humbly; “I'll pass next fall.”
+
+“I'm going to make sure of that,” said Hallowell senior. “To-morrow you
+will take those history books that you did not open, especially Gilman's
+'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you
+will travel for the entire summer with a private tutor....”
+
+Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-ball teams
+over half of the Middle States and daily bullied and browbeat them,
+protested with indignation. “WON'T travel with a private tutor!”
+
+“If I say so,” returned Hallowell senior grimly, “you'll travel with
+a governess and a trained nurse, and wear a strait jacket. And you'll
+continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward.
+And in order that you may know it backward--and forward you will spend
+this summer in Turkey--in Constantinople--until I send you permission to
+come home.”
+
+“Constantinople!” yelled Peter. “In August! Are you serious?”
+
+“Do I look it?” asked Peter's father. He did.
+
+“In Constantinople,” explained Mr. Hallowell senior, “there will be
+nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself
+every minute you will be imbibing history and local color.”
+
+“I'll be imbibing fever,”, returned Peter, “and sunstroke and sudden
+death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you send me to the island
+where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to
+study about Turkey.”
+
+“You do!” said his father.
+
+Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he
+hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving them away to the members
+of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was, and to
+bid him good-by. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him
+were loyally enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments,
+and to that end they planned a mock trial of the “Rise and Fall,” at
+which a packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to
+hang Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with a rope round its neck was
+even then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silver-white
+beard and the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations.
+He did not know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he
+protested that the horse-play of his friends would make him appear a
+bad loser. “It would look, boys,” he said, “as though I couldn't take my
+medicine. Looks like kicking against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman
+fought fair. He gave me just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight
+more of him than do of that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal
+nerve to pretend I scored fifty!”
+
+Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus,
+gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see. Since that
+morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater
+College. They were retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly,
+cutting down unnecessary expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black
+was too intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was
+far too innocent of evil, far too detached from college politics to
+suspect. He would remain a professor emeritus on half pay, but he no
+longer would teach. The college he had served for thirty years-since
+it consisted of two brick buildings and a faculty of ten young men--no
+longer needed him. Even his ivy-covered cottage, in which his wife and
+he had lived for twenty years, in which their one child had died, would
+at the beginning of the next term be required of him. But the college
+would allow him those six months in which to “look round.” So, just
+outside the circle of light from his student lamp, he sat in his study,
+and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of Socrates. He was not
+considering ways and means. They must be faced later. He was considering
+how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What eviction from
+that house would mean to her no one but he understood. Since the day
+their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her
+playroom, bedroom, and nursery had been altered, nothing had been
+touched. To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given
+child was still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living
+presence. When at night the professor and his wife sat at either end
+of the study table, reading by the same lamp, he would see her suddenly
+lift her head, alert and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step
+had sounded, as though from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her.
+And when they would be forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some
+students' boarding-house, though they could take with them their books,
+their furniture, their mutual love and comradeship, they must leave
+behind them the haunting presence of the child, the colored pictures she
+had cut from the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls,
+the rambler roses that with her own hands she had planted and that now
+climbed to her window and each summer peered into her empty room.
+
+Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
+lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
+of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest
+elms, and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer
+succeeded cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the
+heroes of the diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had
+flunked especially for one man who had flunked. But for that man who
+for thirty years in the class room had served the college there were
+no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one student who had best
+reason to remember him. But this recollection Peter had no rancor or
+bitterness and, still anxious lest he should be considered a bad loser,
+he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the
+celebration was at its height and just before train was due to carry
+him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the Gilman cottage
+say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so far only as
+half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which opened
+upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor and
+wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each other,
+the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin, delicate,
+well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her awkward
+unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.
+
+Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
+What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The
+idea that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never
+entered mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was
+something so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to
+offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and,
+avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour
+later the entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and
+with “He's a jolly good fellow” and “He's off to Philippopolis in the
+morn--ing” ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car
+and gazed at the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life.
+And he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the
+students, dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the
+smoking-car fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in
+the cottage stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children
+lost in the streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same
+moment whisper words of courage.
+
+Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
+over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
+not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
+Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In
+the mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly
+forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture
+man through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects
+for the camera.
+
+The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
+newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in
+a moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
+illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
+Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed
+it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor,
+and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks
+very old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the
+entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at
+Therapia.
+
+There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence
+of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
+Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was
+a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington
+in favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was
+afraid his father would consider Therapia “out of bounds.”
+
+
+“He sent me to Constantinople,” explained Peter, “and if he thinks I'm
+not playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and
+he might cut off my allowance.”
+
+In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This
+was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at
+he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his
+letter-of-credit and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own
+against men three times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of
+his father. Only they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot
+evening Peter saw as much of their money scattered over the green table
+as his father had spent over the Hallowell athletic field.
+
+In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile--in the morning
+trying to fill his brain with names of great men who had been a long
+time dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his
+active spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter
+from Charley Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived
+after Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from
+boredom and gave life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip
+intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read:
+“Old man Gilman has got the sack. The chancellor offered him up as a
+sacrifice to your father, and because he was unwise enough to flunk you.
+He is to move out in September. I ran across them last week when I was
+looking for rooms for a Freshman cousin. They were reserving one in the
+same boarding-house. It's a shame, and I know you'll agree. They are a
+fine old couple, and I don't like to think of them herding with Freshmen
+in a shine boardinghouse. Black always was a swine.”
+
+Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+
+“Just learned,” he cabled his father, “Gilman dismissed because flunked
+me consider this outrageous please see he is reinstated.”
+
+The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read:
+“Informed Gilman acted through spite have no authority as you know to
+interfere any act of black.”
+
+Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had
+befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the injustice had been hourly
+increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his
+filial piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but
+little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next cable
+was not conciliatory.
+
+“Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me
+appear contemptible Black is a toady will do as you direct please
+reinstate.”
+
+To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+
+“If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black incident is
+closed.”
+
+“Is it?” said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid
+and explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous cablegram of his
+distinguished contemporary: “Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!”
+
+Peter's paraphrase of this ran: “Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will
+not try for degree.”
+
+The reply was equally emphatic:
+
+“You earn your degree or you earn your own living.”
+
+This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: “Choose
+to earn my own living am leaving Constantinople.”
+
+Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer
+via Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very much, would have
+accompanied him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by
+way of Paris and London.
+
+“You'll get there long before I do,” said Peter, “and as soon as you
+arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor Gilman some
+souvenir of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He
+wouldn't accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to
+be something characteristic of the country, Like a prayer rug, or a
+scimitar, or an illuminated Koran, or...”
+
+Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a
+flat morocco case and opened it. “What's the matter with one of these?”
+ he asked.
+
+In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt.
+To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+
+“That's the Star of the Crescent,” said Peter. “Where did you buy it?”
+
+“Buy it!” exclaimed Stetson. “You don't buy them. The Sultan bestows
+them.”
+
+“I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one,” said Peter.
+
+“I'll bet,” returned Stetson, “I've got something in my pocket that says
+he did.”
+
+He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving
+Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical.
+
+“What does that say when it says it in English?” he asked.
+
+“It says,” translated Stetson, “that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan,
+bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author, lecturer, the Star of
+the Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to
+Turkey.”
+
+Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+
+“Never try to fool the fakirs, my son,” he protested. “I'm a fakir
+myself. What services did you ever....”
+
+“Services rendered,” continued Stetson undisturbed, “in spreading
+throughout the United States a greater knowledge of the customs,
+industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That,” he explained,
+“refers to my--I should say our--moving-picture lecture. I thought
+it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish
+decoration, so I went after this one.”
+
+Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+
+“But did they believe you,” he demanded, “when you told them you were an
+author and educator?”
+
+Stetson closed one eye and grinned. “They believed whatever I paid them
+to believe.”
+
+“If you can get one of those,” cried Peter, “Old man Gilman ought to
+get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest
+history of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a
+real professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the
+five volumes with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?”
+
+“Two hundred dollars in bribes,” said Stetson briskly, “and two months
+of diplomacy.”
+
+“I haven't got two months for diplomacy,” said Peter, “so I'll have to
+increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the decoration for Gilman,
+and you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the
+Crescent, but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know
+what we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever
+bestowed by a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell
+the people often enough that anything is the best they believe you.
+That's the way father sells his hams. You've been a press-agent.
+From now on you're going to be my press-agent--I mean Doctor Gilman's
+press-agent. I pay your salary, but your work is to advertise him and
+the Order of the Crescent. I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at
+Stillwater. He sends out college news to a syndicate and he's the local
+Associated Press man. He's sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my
+best friend, and he'll work the papers as far as you like. Your job is
+to make Stillwater College and Doctor Black and my father believe that
+when they lost Gilman they lost the man who made Stillwater famous.
+And before we get through boosting Gilman, we'll make my father's
+million-dollar gift laboratory look like an insult.”
+
+In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle burned
+fiercely, memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of his strategies
+and tactics in advertising soared before him.
+
+“It's great!” he exclaimed. “I've got your idea and you've got me. And
+you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-agent for politicians,
+actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horse-shows--and I'm the
+best! I was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he
+ran for governor. He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took
+hold of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs.
+Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at Newport, when all she ever saw
+of Newport was Bergers and the Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that
+made the American People believe Russian dancers can dance!”
+
+“It's plain to see you hate yourself,” said 'Peter. “You must not get so
+despondent or you might commit suicide. How much money will you want?”
+
+“How much have you got?”
+
+“All kinds,” said Peter. “Some in a letter-of-credit that my father
+earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker
+from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my
+living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need
+to boost Gilman and the Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman
+Defense, Publicity, and Development Committee, and you will begin by
+introducing me to the man I am to bribe.”
+
+“In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to
+bribe,” exclaimed Stetson; “you just bribe him!”
+
+
+That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made
+their first move in the game of winning for Professor Gilman the Order
+of the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock
+coat and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign
+office and appeared to be “a friend of a friend of a friend” of the
+assistant third secretary.
+
+The five volumes of the “Rise and Fall” were spread before him, and
+Peter demanded to know why so distinguished a scholar as Doctor
+Gilman had not received some recognition from the country he had so
+sympathetically described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and
+promised the matter should be brought at once to the attention of the
+grand vizier.
+
+After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little
+chance of getting within speaking distance of the grand vizier as of the
+ladies of his harem.
+
+“It's like Tammany,” said Stetson; “there are sachems, district leaders,
+and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled to trade or give away a few of
+these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage
+of jobs in the street-cleaning department. This fellow will go to his
+patron, his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he
+will put it up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.
+
+“In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a
+hundred others, without knowing what he is signing; then you cable me,
+and the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way
+that will make Halley's comet look like a wax match.”
+
+The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left
+alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the
+contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He
+had not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an
+itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus
+would receive very different treatment.
+
+Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard and diamond
+rings called with Osman to apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man
+explained--had been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he
+had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class
+that had been given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an honor for
+a savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth
+class would hardly be high enough. The fees, the fat man added, would
+Also be higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference,
+because the fourth class entitled the wearer to a salute from all
+sentries.
+
+“There are few sentries at Stillwater,” said Peter; “but I want the best
+and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class.”
+
+The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the
+embassy. The secretary was considerably annoyed.
+
+“My dear Hallowell,” he protested, “why the devil didn't you tell me you
+wanted a decoration? Of course the State department expressly forbids
+us to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the
+Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at once--but, on two
+conditions: that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it.”
+
+Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat
+demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one of the Gilman Defense
+Committee.
+
+“Doctor Gilman's history,” he said, “must be presented to the Sultan.
+You must have the five volumes rebound in red and green, the colors of
+Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope,” he
+added, “they are not soiled.”
+
+“Not by me,” Peter assured him.
+
+“I will take them myself,” continued Stimson, “to Muley Pasha, the
+minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to present them to his Imperial
+Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he
+won't so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the
+Order of the Crescent of the third class.”
+
+“Going up!” exclaimed Peter. “The third class. That will cost me my
+entire letter-of-credit.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Stimson. “I've saved you from the grafters. It will
+cost you only what you pay to have the books rebound. And the THIRD
+class is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it
+round your neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a
+thousand soldiers.”
+
+“I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers,” said Peter, “and wear it longer
+round my neck What's the matter with our getting the second class or the
+first class?”
+
+At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+
+“The first class,” he explained patiently, “is the Great Grand Cross,
+and is given only to reigning sovereigns. The second is called the Grand
+Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men
+of world-wide fame....”
+
+“What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide fame?” said
+Peter. “He will be some day, when Stetson starts boosting.”
+
+“Some day,” retorted Stimson stiffly, “I may be an ambassador. When I
+am I hope to get the Grand Cross of the Crescent, but not now. I'm
+sorry you're not satisfied,” he added aggrievedly. “No one can get you
+anything higher than the third class, and I may lose my official head
+asking for that.”
+
+“Nothing is too good for old man Gilman,” said Peter, “nor for you.
+You get the third class for him, and I'll have father make you an
+ambassador.”
+
+That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who
+had come from a reception at the Grand vizier's and still wore his
+decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of
+the young prince he regarded with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul
+with wide-eyed awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan,
+and because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation
+in Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming,
+distinguished, courteous to the verge of humility, most cleverly
+cynical, most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won,
+and while doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards
+and the cards held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his
+equal.
+
+In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack,
+Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that nestled behind the lapel of
+Abdul's coat.
+
+“May I ask what that is?” said Peter.
+
+The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and
+then smiled delightedly.
+
+“It is an order,” he said in a quick aside, “bestowed only upon men of
+world-wide fame. I dined to-night,” he explained, “with your charming
+compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson.”
+
+“And Joe told?” said Peter.
+
+The prince nodded. “Joe told,” he repeated; “but it is all arranged.
+Your distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater, will receive the
+Crescent of the third class.”
+
+Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond sunburst.
+
+“Why,” he demanded, “can't some one get him one like that?”
+
+As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then
+thought better of it and smiled.
+
+“There are only two men in all Turkey,” he said, “who could do that.”
+
+“And is the Sultan the other one?” asked Peter. The prince gasped as
+though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold shower, and then laughed
+long and silently.
+
+“You flatter me,” he murmured.
+
+“You know you could if you liked!” whispered Peter stoutly.
+
+Apparently Abdul did not hear him. “I will take one card,” he said.
+
+Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand francs in
+the pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had dropped out. “Will you
+divide?” asked the prince.
+
+“Why should I?” said Peter. “I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or
+call?” The prince called and laid down a full house. Peter showed four
+tens.
+
+“I will deal you one hand, double or quits,” said the prince.
+
+Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+
+“You will pay me double what is on the table,” he said, “or you quit
+owing me nothing.”
+
+The prince nodded.
+
+“Go ahead,” said Peter.
+
+The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held
+a seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours. Hoping to draw another
+king, which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul,
+he threw away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The
+prince showed three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
+
+“I'll make you a sporting proposition,” he murmured. “You owe me a
+hundred and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only
+two men in the empire can give me.”
+
+The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the
+table. But the puzzled glances of the other players showed that to them
+Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+
+The prince smiled cynically.
+
+“For yourself?” he demanded.
+
+“For Doctor Gilman,” said Peter.
+
+“We will cut for deal and one hand will decide,” said the prince. His
+voice dropped to a whisper. “And no one must ever know,” he warned.
+
+Peter also could be cynical.
+
+“Not even the Sultan,” he said.
+
+Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he
+dealt Peter was the better one.
+
+The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY
+announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the
+University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously
+pleased to confer the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crescent.
+
+Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at
+Quarantine. It read: “Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get busy.”
+
+But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had
+been brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince Abdul, although
+pitchforked into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its
+most enthusiastic members.
+
+“For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE,” he declared. “If it
+is worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will
+command that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that
+it be placed in the national library. Moreover, the University of
+Constantinople, the College of Salonica, and the National Historical
+Society have each elected Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed
+him, the Patriarch of Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish
+ambassador in America has been instructed to present the insignia with
+his own hands.”
+
+Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his press-work, and
+to further the idea that all Europe was now clamoring for the “Rise and
+fall,” Peter paid an impecunious but over-educated dragoman to translate
+it into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed out that
+not since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so
+highly honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand
+vizier--who had been requested by Prince Abdul--to request the State
+Department to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from
+such a source was a command and, as desired, the State Department
+wrote as requested by the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered
+congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from Washington by
+Associated Press. This official recognition by the Government and by the
+newspapers was all and more than Stetson wanted. He took off his coat
+and with a megaphone, rather than a pen, told the people of the United
+States who Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross
+was, and why America's greatest historian was not without honor save in
+his own country. Columns of this were paid for and appeared as “patent
+insides,” with a portrait of Doctor Gilman taken from the STILLWATER
+COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination,
+in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western, and Eastern States.
+special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures of the Grand Cross
+followed, and, using Stillwater as his base, Stetson continued to
+flood the country. Young Hines, the local correspondent, acting under
+instructions by cable from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a
+traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer
+of the author of the “Rise and fall.” Stetson, having studied it as a
+student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at the feet of
+the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on the steps
+of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from the
+unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life.
+To this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added
+photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered
+cottage, of his favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian
+at work at his desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife
+on the croquet lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually
+presented. This pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much
+to his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
+Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to
+a Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
+Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag
+a secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
+travelled down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary
+took the local train to Stillwater.
+
+The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the
+ambassador as one of the happiest incidents of his distinguished career.
+Never since he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western
+republic had its barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly
+approaching his own idea of what was his due.
+
+“This ambassador,” Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater,
+who was also the proprietor of its largest department store, “is the
+personal representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right.”
+
+“It's exactly,” added Stetson, “as though the Sultan himself were
+coming.”
+
+“And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater,” continued Hines, “that we
+ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as he comes to pay the
+highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen.”
+
+The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+
+“What'd I better do?” he asked.
+
+“Mr. Stetson here,” Hines pointed out, “has lived in Turkey, and he
+knows what they expect. Maybe he will help us.”
+
+“Will you?” begged the mayor.
+
+“I will,” said Stetson.
+
+Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most
+of the faculty were on their vacations. But there were half a dozen
+professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed
+out to them that the coming honor to one lately of their number
+reflected glory upon the college and upon them, and that they should
+take official action.
+
+It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear
+their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these suggestions, with
+alacrity--partly because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because
+they had never been photographed by a moving-picture machine--they all
+agreed. So it came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and
+dusty stepped off the way-train at Stillwater station he found to
+his delighted amazement a red carpet stretching to a perfectly new
+automobile, a company of the local militia presenting arms, a committee,
+consisting of the mayor in a high hat and white gloves and three
+professors in gowns and colored hoods, and the Stillwater silver
+Cornet Band playing what, after several repetitions, the ambassador was
+graciously pleased to recognize as his national anthem.
+
+The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was
+dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration. Here at last
+were people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the
+mayor helped him into the automobile, and those students who lived
+in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture
+machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But
+inwardly he was ill at ease.
+
+Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
+America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
+honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
+blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost
+on the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
+the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+
+Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki,
+by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous
+liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater
+gathered outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling
+and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
+ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only
+frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor
+Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
+Stillwater shouted, “Speech,” in sudden panic he reached out his hand
+quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
+
+“Now, then, three Long ones!” yelled the cheer leader. “Now, then, 'See
+the Conquering Hero!'” yelled the bandmaster. “Attention! Present arms!”
+ yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
+applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
+his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
+and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
+drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the
+rear of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
+he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to
+the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
+
+Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
+Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater.
+They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might
+inadvertently drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+
+So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to
+supply his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts
+of the great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he
+choked. Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently
+before the public, and never before had her president been so utterly
+and completely ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized
+that even had he been present he could not have shown his face. How
+could he, who had, as every one connected with the college now knew, out
+of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join
+in chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior,
+might not hear of Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of
+anything else. At his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one
+he met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had
+come to his pet college.
+
+“You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,”
+ exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. “Now if I pay a hundred
+thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty
+dollars, but you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in
+half a million dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor
+Gilman's doing as much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns
+Hopkins or as Walter Camp does for Yale.”
+
+Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he
+was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage
+increased. It seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor
+Gilman. The stone he had rejected had become the corner-stone of
+Stillwater. Whenever he opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming:
+“Will no one rid me of this pestilent fellow?” For the “Rise and Fall,”
+ in an edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up
+by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a popular edition was
+on view in the windows of every book-shop; It was offered as a prize to
+subscribers to all the more sedate magazines, and the name and features
+of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a day
+passed but that some new honor, at least so the newspapers stated,
+was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced that he was to be the next
+exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he was to lecture at the
+Sorbonne; that in June he was to receive a degree from Oxford.
+
+A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by
+offering him the chair of history at that seat of learning at a salary
+of five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust
+upon Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson,
+but this offer happened to be genuine.
+
+“Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter
+from the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+
+“We could not be happy away from Stillwater,” he said. “We have only a
+month more in the cottage, but after that we still can walk past it; we
+can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit
+the place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and
+miserable for her, and she would be lonely for us.”
+
+Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave
+Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern college at which
+Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his
+jealousy knew no bounds.
+
+He telegraphed to Black: “Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six
+thousand--offer him whatever he wants, but make him promise for no
+consideration to leave Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought
+any credit to the college if we lose him I'll hold you responsible.”
+
+The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor
+called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble pie that for a week he
+suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care
+for that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished,
+was back in the faculty, and had made only one condition--that he might
+live until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+
+Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history
+examination, which, should he pass it, would give him his degree, he
+found on every side evidences of the “worldwide fame” he himself had
+created. The newsstand at the depot, the book-stores, the drugstores,
+the picture-shops, all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing
+the ivy-covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,
+advertisements of the different editions of “the” history proclaimed
+his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success of his own handiwork,
+approached the ivy-covered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs.
+Gilman welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which
+she always gave courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations,
+and Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle
+courtesy.
+
+The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers
+Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
+
+“I should indeed!” Peter assured him.
+
+“Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell,” said the professor, “that you
+have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five.” In
+real sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great
+astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking
+offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+the precocious act of a beloved child.
+
+“I am afraid,” said Doctor Gilman gently, “that this summer you did not
+work very hard for your degree!”
+
+Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+
+“To tell you the truth, Professor,” he said, “you're right I got working
+for something worth while--and I forgot about the degree.”
+
+
+
+Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
+Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at
+the time military attaché of the German Government with the Russian
+army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
+Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his
+part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the
+ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses
+below us glowing and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+
+Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been
+Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a
+spy.
+
+The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
+correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell
+it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
+
+In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
+have yet to find any one who will believe it.
+
+What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of
+the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of “The Riddle of the Sands” in
+the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford
+attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place,
+the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then
+again, it might not.
+
+As every German knows, “The Riddle of the Sands” is a novel written by a
+very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion
+of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to
+be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and
+despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian
+Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred
+and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of
+Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this
+coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are
+dry, that England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest
+naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it as the spot best adapted
+for such a raid.
+
+What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
+read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and
+under separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: “I suggest your
+Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage,
+and of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms,
+take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want
+ideas?”
+
+What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
+was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford
+went to Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the
+Shakespeare Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the
+robe, Ford was left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors
+and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent
+Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a
+long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by
+trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when
+the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English
+clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a
+spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The
+assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared
+ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, “Does a German uniform
+always affect a Territorial like that?”
+
+The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+
+“It did give me quite a turn,” he said. “It's this talk of invasion, I
+fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along
+the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
+anyway.”
+
+“And, quite right, too!” said Ford.
+
+He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at
+his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play
+truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the
+words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later
+young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
+terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young
+Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's
+friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university.
+After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last “Eights”
+ week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
+undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to
+study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy;
+instead of “wines” he found pleasure in debating clubs where he
+discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes,
+that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His
+undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms
+they declared unjust and without intelligence.
+
+“You're talking rot!” said his dutiful nephew. “Take Phil here, for
+example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
+never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of
+him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as
+yours!”
+
+“Worse!” assented Birrell loyally.
+
+“And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours;
+as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat
+through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a
+man from Balliol?”
+
+“And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!” cried Herbert. “What price that?
+When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen
+guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The
+country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!” challenged
+Herbert. “Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that
+will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
+and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.
+Go on,” he persisted, “And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here
+in town and all of them undergraduates.”
+
+“Give you the idea, yes!” mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. “That's
+just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's
+the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
+theatricals!”
+
+“Is it!” snorted Herbert. “If you want to know what stage fright is,
+just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt
+cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a
+little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!”
+
+Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and
+with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now
+he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly
+about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of
+the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
+departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside
+the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the
+Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of
+Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower
+House was still sitting.
+
+“I'LL give you an idea for a rag,” whispered Ford. “One that is risky,
+that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
+you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?”
+
+Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+
+“Don't mind him,” exclaimed Herbert impatiently. “HE never reads
+anything! Go on!”
+
+“It's the book most talked about,” explained Ford. “And what else is
+most talked about?” He answered his own question. “The landing of the
+Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book
+in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would
+happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just
+where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of
+soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?”
+
+“What would happen?” roared Major Bellew loyally. “The Boy Scouts would
+fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!”
+
+“Shut up!” snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
+“How?” he demanded breathlessly. “How are we to do it? It would take
+hundreds of men.”
+
+“Two men,” corrected Ford, “And a third man to drive the car. I
+thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German
+uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out
+how prepared you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now
+that you wanted a chance to go to jail--”
+
+“What's your plan?” interrupted Birrell.
+
+“We would start just before dawn--” began Ford.
+
+“We?” demanded Herbert. “Are you in this?”
+
+“Am I in it?” cried Ford indignantly. “It's my own private invasion! I'm
+letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be
+any invasion!”
+
+The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
+nodded.
+
+“We accept your services, sir,” said Birrell gravely. “What's your
+plan?”
+
+In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
+slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
+indignation.
+
+“Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?” he demanded. “Do you
+suppose for one minute I will allow--”
+
+His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
+
+“Oh, you go to the devil!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “Come on, Ford,” he
+said. “We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us.”
+
+Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
+miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
+misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and
+on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
+occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
+at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route
+by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
+forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
+chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
+the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
+of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his “Half
+Inch” road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
+
+At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
+numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had
+come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they
+were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent
+head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
+In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even
+more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-master, a leader
+of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his
+station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf
+bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the
+intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
+their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map
+fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked
+it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes
+scrawled roughly in pencil. With an expression that no longer was that
+of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and then slipped
+into the empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
+a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl
+presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It was open so
+that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident
+the tallest of the three strangers was an American.
+
+“What the devil!” he protested; “which of you boys has been playing hob
+with my map?”
+
+For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with
+disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a
+glance, he signified the waiter.
+
+“Oh, that!” exclaimed the younger one. “The Automobile Club asked us
+to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
+petrol.”
+
+The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance,
+he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the
+windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray
+stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret,
+he glanced carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
+eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+
+In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long
+lines of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull
+of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a
+black leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+
+In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+
+“Patience,” he muttered; “patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
+There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight
+for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!”
+
+At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the
+three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear,
+of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
+gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
+way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he
+again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed
+fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
+Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these
+the sea was empty.
+
+By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
+off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
+Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman
+on his rounds, to the driver of the char à banc. He had been a year in
+Cromer and was well known and well liked.
+
+Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand,
+the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees.
+Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding.
+Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding
+path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the
+bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
+But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his
+heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
+
+Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn.
+In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there
+now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a
+kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a
+new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on
+the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl
+drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
+
+“I have been in constant communication,” said the man with the beard.
+“They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly
+from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you
+to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last
+edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final
+advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
+know the moment has come!”
+
+As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens
+where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with
+pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High
+above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had
+served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
+balls.
+
+“A nation of wasters,” muttered the German, “sleeping at their posts.
+They are fiddling while England falls!”
+
+Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
+about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
+around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
+was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
+were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms,
+and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
+Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
+
+“Du bist gefangen!” he announced. “Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
+Leute?” he demanded.
+
+“You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir,” said Mr. Shutliffe, “but I am a trifle
+'ard of 'earing.”
+
+The soldier addressed him in English.
+
+“What is the name of this village?” he demanded.
+
+Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
+recalled its name with difficulty.
+
+“Have you seen any of our people?”
+
+With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
+
+“Go indoors!” commanded the soldier, “And put out all lights, and remain
+indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
+Do you understand?”
+
+“Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly,” stammered Mr. Shutliffe. “May I lock
+in the pigs first, sir?”
+
+One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two
+others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still
+standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he
+should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
+
+The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+
+“That was a fine start!” mocked Herbert. “Of course, you had to pick out
+the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
+better pack up and go home.”
+
+“The village inn is still open,” said Ford. “We'll close It.”
+
+They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles
+on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two
+fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose
+to the occasion.
+
+“Now, then,” she exclaimed briskly, “What way is that to come tumbling
+into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
+fellow, my lad, or--”
+
+The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
+interrupted her sharply.
+
+“We are Germans!” he declared. “This village is captured. You are
+prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
+If you into the street go, we will shoot!”
+
+He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that
+the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one
+shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
+
+“You ass!” muttered the tall German. “Get out!”
+
+As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
+shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
+later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
+
+“That will hold Stiffkey for a while!” said Ford. “Now, back to the
+car.”
+
+But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive
+figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted
+cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
+
+“The constable!” whispered Herbert. “He must see us, but he mustn't
+speak to us.”
+
+For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the
+street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken
+alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes
+later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode
+slowly into Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The
+driver of the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to
+his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
+
+“Mr. Policeman,” he began; “when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
+in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward
+the beach. What's the idea--manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--”
+
+“Yes, sir,” the policeman assured him promptly; “I saw them. It's
+manoeuvres, sir. Territorials.”
+
+“They didn't look like Territorials,” objected the chauffeur. “They
+looked like Germans.”
+
+Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal
+a grin.
+
+“Just Territorials, sir,” he protested soothingly; “skylarking maybe,
+but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em.”
+
+A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+
+“I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's
+serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast
+Guard.”
+
+The constable considered deeply.
+
+“I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard,” he protested;
+“not at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
+gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
+your cards--”
+
+“Ye gods!” cried the man in the rear of the car. “Go on!” he commanded.
+
+As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
+
+“What's the use!” he protested. “You couldn't wake these people with
+dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home.”
+
+“They little know of England who only Stiffkey know,” chanted the
+chauffeur reprovingly. “Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
+live wire!”
+
+Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
+job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
+of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road--and in the
+light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across
+the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was
+followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+
+“Put out that light,” he commanded. “Go to your home and tell no one
+what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot.
+Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road.”
+
+The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed
+his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding
+over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.
+Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear--fear of
+laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
+silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he
+had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably
+informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney,
+sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the
+gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer
+and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
+on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud.
+As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car
+farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained
+to Ford, were intended to give “verisimilitude to an otherwise bald
+and unconvincing narrative.” And the sighing of the bullets gave young
+Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he was not the
+victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his
+feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an hour into the main street of
+Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so
+completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His
+head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager.
+A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer
+pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and then
+closing in his wake.
+
+“Have you seen any--any soldiers?” he demanded.
+
+“German soldiers!” Ford answered. “They tried to catch us, but when I
+saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and--”
+
+“How many--and where?”
+
+“A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
+didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
+better telephone the garrison, and--”
+
+“Thank you!” snapped the elderly gentleman. “I happen to be in command
+of this district. What are your names?”
+
+Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+
+“I've no time for that!” he called. “We've got to warn every coast town
+in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!”
+
+As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+
+“We've got them guessing,” he said. “Now, what we want is a live wire,
+some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
+countryside.”
+
+“Looks ahead there,” said Birrell, “as though it hadn't gone to bed.”
+
+Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
+lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, “trippers”
+ in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to
+witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their
+escorts, shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion
+sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
+
+“What's this tale about Germans?” he demanded jocularly.
+
+“You can see their lights from the beach,” said Ford. “They've landed
+two regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut
+all the wires south.”
+
+The proprietor refused to be “had.”
+
+“Let 'em all come!” he mocked.
+
+“All right,” returned Ford. “Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
+Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
+Germans back! Gangway,” he shouted, and the car shot forward. “We warned
+you,” he called, “And it's up to you to--”
+
+His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
+with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated
+cheer.
+
+Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his
+seat.
+
+“This thing is going to fail!” he cried petulantly. “They don't believe
+us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--in a dozen places.”
+
+“The British mind moves slowly,” said Birrell, the Irishman. “Now, if
+this had happened in my native land--”
+
+He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that
+spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past
+and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their
+head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed
+in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could
+find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death
+were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
+into the night.
+
+“Things are looking up!” said Ford. “Where is our next stop? As I said
+before, what we want is a live one.”
+
+Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+
+“We are next billed to appear,” he said, “about a quarter of a mile from
+here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
+the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his
+life.”
+
+The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
+when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw
+three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat
+helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an anæmic, pale-faced youth
+without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply
+in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+
+In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. “You are a prisoner,” he
+said. “We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
+out!”
+
+As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
+the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument.
+Ford flung his rifle upon it.
+
+“No, you don't!” he growled. “Get out!”
+
+With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
+
+“My pay--my month's pay?” he stammered. “Can I take It?”
+
+The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+
+“Take it and get out,” Ford commanded.
+
+With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
+pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the
+papers inside.
+
+“Quick!” cried Ford.
+
+The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake,
+and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre
+issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders,
+Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the
+window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the
+tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to
+shout: “Don't touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a message
+through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!”
+
+For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his
+heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm
+raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward
+across the table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the
+circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
+
+When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
+shoulder.
+
+“Your last remark,” he said, “was that what we wanted was a live one.”
+
+“Don't mention it!” said Ford. “He jammed that gun half down my throat.
+I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?”
+
+“According to the route we mapped out this afternoon,” said Herbert, “We
+are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse
+and Weybourne, but--”
+
+“Not with me!” exclaimed Birrell fiercely. “Those towns have been tipped
+off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
+death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
+Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
+believe him, and they'll call out the navy.”
+
+Herbert consulted his map.
+
+“There is a Coast Guard,” he said, “stationed just the other side of
+Morston. And,” he added fervently, “let us hope he's lonely.”
+
+They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
+coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars,
+nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped
+out upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon
+fires burning fiercely.
+
+Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+
+“Since seeing those fires,” he explained, “I feel a strange reluctance
+about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard.”
+
+“Coast Guards don't shoot!” mocked Birrell. “They only look at the
+clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able
+to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope.”
+
+The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
+cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
+cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
+showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
+
+“We must pass in single file in front of that light,” whispered Ford,
+“And then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the
+devil!”
+
+“I'm on in that last scene,” growled Herbert.
+
+“Only,” repeated Ford with emphasis, “We must be sure he has seen us.”
+
+Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars,
+many flashes, many bullets.
+
+“He's seen us!” yelled Birrell.
+
+After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier
+fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from
+the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed
+his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he
+proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
+emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to
+sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of
+a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.
+
+After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
+length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
+last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
+painfully.
+
+“What happened to Herbert?” panted Ford.
+
+“I don't know,” gasped Birrell, “When I saw him last he was diving over
+the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?”
+
+“About twenty!” groaned the American, “And, besides being dead, I am
+severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time
+I hit a rock!”
+
+A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
+head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water,
+and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and
+fell into his golf clothes.
+
+“Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform,” he cried, “can have
+mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway.”
+
+The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles
+and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open
+road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris
+tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car,
+turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror
+to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a
+regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the “double.” An
+officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
+
+“I'll have to commandeer this,” he said. “Run back to Cromer. Don't
+crush my men, but go like the devil!”
+
+“We heard firing here,” explained the officer at the Coast Guard
+station. “The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen.
+They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel
+walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,”
+ exclaimed the officer suddenly, “if you are the three gentlemen who
+first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the
+other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names.”
+
+Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
+discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst
+might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably
+were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been
+returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had
+been held up by the Germans.
+
+“You were lucky to escape,” said the officer “And in keeping on to give
+warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
+extremely well.”
+
+Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence.
+With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car
+through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were
+banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+
+“Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!” exclaimed Ford
+admiringly.
+
+“MY regiment!” snorted the officer. “You've passed through five
+regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places.
+They're everywhere!” he cried jubilantly.
+
+“And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires,” exclaimed
+Ford.
+
+“That's what the Germans think,” said the officer. “It's working like
+a clock,” he cried happily. “There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they
+got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a
+wave, on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government
+took over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down
+in London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
+Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
+them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
+eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
+the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
+sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And
+on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast
+alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from
+Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H.
+A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns
+spread out over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They
+thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another
+surprise party!”
+
+On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
+the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
+and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon,
+the clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command
+raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless
+fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The
+night had been turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like
+the eyes of those who had passed through an earthquake, of those who
+looked upon the burning of San Francisco, upon the destruction of
+Messina.
+
+“We were betrayed, general,” whispered the head-waiter.
+
+“We were betrayed, baron,” replied the bearded one.
+
+“But you were in time to warn the flotilla.”
+
+With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+
+“The last message I received over the wireless,” he said, “before I
+destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
+movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And,” added the general, “The
+English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept
+that explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history.
+Return to the hotel,” he commanded, “And in two months you can rejoin
+your regiment.”
+
+On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map
+of Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that
+was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: “Lester Ford, our London
+correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
+warn the English people.”
+
+On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared
+this paragraph:
+
+“The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son
+of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell--both of Balliol College,
+Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
+These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
+infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
+authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
+people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful.”
+
+A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
+
+“Shall we, or shall we not,” asked Herbert, “tell my uncle that we
+three, and we three alone, were the invaders?”
+
+“That's hardly correct,” said Ford, “as we now know there were two
+hundred thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore.”
+
+“I vote we don't tell him,” said Birrell. “Let him think with everybody
+else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon
+and gave the show away. If we talk,” he argued, “We'll get credit for a
+successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
+saved England. I'm content to let it go at that.”
+
+
+
+Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company.
+The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the
+New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the
+little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in
+railroad tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate
+as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these
+different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the
+sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman.
+But David called himself a “demonstrator.” For a short time he even
+succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as
+demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out
+of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly
+because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a
+great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to
+possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather
+is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the
+possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight.
+He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
+existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a doctor
+in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David
+emerged as a Son of Washington.
+
+It was sister Anne, anxious to “get in” as a “Daughter” and wear
+a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary
+ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
+graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a
+person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at
+Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on
+moving to New York, his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not
+affect his record. To enter a society founded on heredity, the important
+thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him,
+David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors.
+He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
+without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find
+himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid
+salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in
+Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of “Neck
+or Nothing” Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a
+man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. David's life had
+lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the
+big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his
+two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+
+The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said,
+“All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+great-great dad ever do for you?”
+
+“Well, for one thing,” said David stiffly, “he fought in the War of the
+Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England;
+he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free
+republic.”
+
+“Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that,” protested Wyckoff,
+“because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about
+it in a book.”
+
+“I am not grudging glory to others,” returned David; “I am only saying I
+am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist.”
+
+Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+frame that folded like a concertina.
+
+“I don't want to be a descendant,” he said; “I'd rather be an ancestor.
+Look at those.” Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with
+the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at
+the children.
+
+“When I'm married,” he stammered, and at the words he blushed, “I hope
+to be an ancestor.”
+
+“If you're thinking of getting married,” said Wyckoff, “you'd better
+hope for a raise in salary.”
+
+The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not
+the grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative
+David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to
+attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to
+erect monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
+joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones;
+to inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those
+present at the annual “banquet” at Delmonico's. In order that when he
+opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society
+his office address.
+
+In these communications he was always addressed as “Dear Compatriot,”
+ and never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift
+him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to
+things uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know
+what an aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an
+aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
+overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
+he would smile and say to himself: “If they knew the meaning of the
+blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
+easily with a word could I crush them!”
+
+But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button.
+They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+liable to give that impression.
+
+When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
+person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss
+Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
+prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
+figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
+something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
+accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
+Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
+when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
+go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
+from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
+
+The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
+great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
+as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
+another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
+to achieve glory for himself.
+
+From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
+person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
+The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
+raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
+of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
+sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
+with awe, touched her imagination.
+
+“You shouldn't be content to just wear a button,” she urged. “If you're
+a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one.”
+
+“I know I'm not worthy of you,” David sighed.
+
+“I don't mean that, and you know I don't,” Emily replied indignantly.
+“It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of
+your grandpa Hiram!”
+
+“But HOW?” complained David. “What chance has a twenty-five dollar a
+week clerk--”
+
+It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of
+Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+
+“If I were a Son of the Revolution,” said Emily, “I'd go to Cuba and
+help free it.”
+
+“Don't talk nonsense,” cried David. “If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I
+know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill.”
+
+“Did Lafayette talk like that?” demanded Emily. “Did he ask what have
+the American rebels ever done for me?”
+
+“If I were in Lafayette's class,” sighed David, “I wouldn't be selling
+automatic punches.”
+
+“There's your trouble,” declared Emily “You lack self-confidence. You're
+too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
+yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
+You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
+the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
+war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!”
+
+Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+
+“Emily,” he said, “you're going to be awfully disappointed in me.”
+
+Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But
+when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+
+“No, I'm not,” she protested; “only I want a husband with a career, and
+one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him.”
+
+“I've often wished you would,” said David.
+
+“Would what? Run your career for you?”
+
+“No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so.”
+
+“Maybe I'd like you better,” said Emily, “if you weren't so darned
+polite.”
+
+A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a
+step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David
+was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted.
+Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She
+did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in
+the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
+that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days--at
+least she did not count them aloud.
+
+David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she
+was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
+ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
+Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
+her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
+the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
+It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
+him.
+
+The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
+to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
+and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons.
+A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
+Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+
+And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
+manner.
+
+On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
+leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute,
+and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
+Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
+Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
+to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
+when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
+dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
+back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
+find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
+In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+
+There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
+he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a
+shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in
+mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
+and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down
+under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train
+or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched
+a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead
+trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was
+not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of
+the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the
+train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
+himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For,
+in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would
+have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his
+companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+
+“I am alone,” he told himself, “on a railroad embankment, entirely
+surrounded by alligators.”
+
+And then he found he was not alone.
+
+In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and
+the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above
+the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of
+a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had
+been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the
+clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou
+broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf
+an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his
+pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the
+company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure.
+He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug,
+something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No
+lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks
+were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from
+her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
+uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to
+the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not
+considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.
+The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who
+means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high
+boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his
+movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily
+excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+
+“Who the devil are you?” demanded the man from the tug. “How'd you get
+here?”
+
+“I walked,” said David.
+
+“Walked?” the man snorted incredulously.
+
+“I took the wrong train,” explained David pleasantly. “They put me off
+about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going
+to wait here for the next train north.”
+
+The little man laughed mockingly.
+
+“Oh, no you're not,” he said. “If you walked here, you can just walk
+away again!” With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+gesture.
+
+“You walk!” he commanded.
+
+“I'll do just as I please about that,” said David.
+
+As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+tug.
+
+“I'll find some one who'll make you walk!” he called. “You WAIT, that's
+all, you WAIT!”
+
+David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
+property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station
+the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he
+judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks
+and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself
+hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any
+other person.
+
+“They're river pirates,” said David to himself, “or smugglers. They're
+certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+of a perfectly harmless stranger?”
+
+Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+
+“I wish that train would come,” he sighed. And instantly? as though in
+answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard
+the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his
+course of action.
+
+The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His
+plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though
+he had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only
+stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his
+arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in
+amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred
+yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
+head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it
+blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear
+of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a
+train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as
+unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly
+tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
+
+“Is the place haunted!” exclaimed David.
+
+He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to
+a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the
+ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls
+and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+
+So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note
+the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little
+man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore
+no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters
+of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his
+right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that
+moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man
+carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest
+man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his
+beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild
+moonlight it flamed like a torch.
+
+“What's your business?” demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+
+“I came here,” began David, “to wait for a train--”
+
+The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+
+“Yes,” he shouted; “this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+wait for a train!”
+
+In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+“Don't you lie to ME!” he bullied. “Do you know who I am? Do you know
+WHO you're up against? I'm--”
+
+The barkeeper person interrupted.
+
+“Never mind who you are,” he said. “We know that. Find out who HE is.”
+
+David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+
+“Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?” he protested. “I'm a
+travelling man--”
+
+“You won't travel any to-night,” mocked the red-haired one. “You've seen
+what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!”
+
+As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
+riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
+
+“Tie him to a tree!” he suggested.
+
+“Better take him on board,” said the barkeeper, “and send him back by
+the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any.”
+
+“What makes you think I want to hurt you?” demanded David. “Who do you
+think I am?”
+
+“We know who you are,” shouted the fiery-headed one. “You're a
+blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+whichever you are you don't get away to-night!”
+
+David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+
+“You have made a very serious mistake,” he said, “and whether you like
+it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!”
+
+Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting
+to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head
+rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance,
+and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
+“Nine--ten--and OUT!”
+
+When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of
+a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf
+cap who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed
+wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw
+that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
+with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side
+the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with
+stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+
+“Sorry to disturb you,” said the youth in the golf cap, “but we drop the
+pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him.”
+
+David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as
+large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+
+“What happened to me?” he demanded.
+
+“You were sort of kidnapped, I guess,” laughed the young man. “It was a
+raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad.”
+
+“But why?” demanded David indignantly. “Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+done? Who were those men who--”
+
+From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
+engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
+
+“Come on,” commanded the young man briskly. “The pilot's going ashore.
+Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as--”
+
+But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws
+an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into
+the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the
+fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
+
+It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby
+hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph
+to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+
+David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open
+sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a
+policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and
+held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by
+the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great
+was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's
+ear.
+
+“That's the revenue cutter!” he shouted. “She's been laying for us for
+three weeks, and now,” he shrieked exultingly, “the old man's going to
+give her a race for it.”
+
+From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting
+beyond his control.
+
+“But how,” he demanded, “how do I get ashore?”
+
+“You don't!”
+
+“When he drops the pilot, don't I--”
+
+“How can he drop the pilot?” yelled the youth. “The pilot's got to stick
+by the boat. So have you.”
+
+David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+face.
+
+“Stick by what boat?” yelled David. “Who are these men? Who are you?
+What boat is this?”
+
+In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down
+his spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
+
+“THE THREE FRIENDS!” shrieked David. “She's a filibuster! She's a
+pirate! Where're we going?
+
+“To Cuba!”
+
+David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+
+“What for?” he shrieked.
+
+The young man regarded him coldly.
+
+“To pick bananas,” he said.
+
+“I won't go to Cuba,” shouted David. “I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--”
+
+David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged.
+Like a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to
+stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did
+not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he
+would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to
+David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots.
+Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish,
+rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the
+waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight
+the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the
+tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the
+slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a
+hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had
+found a congenial spirit, he shouted Joyfully, “She's fired two blanks
+at us!” he cried; “now she's firing cannon-balls!”
+
+“Thank God,” whispered David; “perhaps she'll sink us!”
+
+But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
+as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
+those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries
+of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching
+head, of the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered
+him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull
+consciousness of his position. At such moments he added to his misery by
+speculating upon the other misfortunes that might have befallen him
+on shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and
+married--probably a navy officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett
+and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had
+caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as
+a defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were
+being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
+passed; to David it seemed many ages.
+
+On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
+motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and
+fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought
+him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a
+bowl of smoking soup.
+
+David considered it a doubtful attention.
+
+But he said, “You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+with these pirates?”
+
+The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+
+“They're not pirates, they're patriots,” he said, “and I'm not mixed
+up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+captain.”
+
+“The barkeeper with the derby hat?” said David.
+
+“He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler,” Carr corrected, “and he's the
+greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway,
+and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about
+this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found
+out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story
+either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest,
+and he's promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I
+can write as much about it as I darn please.”
+
+“Then you're a reporter?” said David.
+
+“I'm what we call a cub reporter,” laughed Carr. “You see, I've always
+dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose,
+I can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!”
+
+“And you LIKE this?” groaned David.
+
+“I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are,” said Carr, “but I've a
+stomach like a Harlem goat.” He stooped and lowered his voice. “Now,
+here are two fake filibusters,” he whispered. “The men you read about in
+the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!”
+
+Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+
+“All they ask,” whispered Carr, “is money and advertisement. If they
+knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls
+himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida
+coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is
+a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English
+officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen
+battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the
+red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans.
+The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here
+to work the machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do
+will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring.”
+
+A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
+Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+
+Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
+of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition,
+and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats
+she was preparing to defend herself.
+
+“They've got an automatic gun in that crate,” said Carr, “and they're
+going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+you.”
+
+David shook his head feebly.
+
+“I can't move!” he protested. “I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba.”
+
+For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+unintelligent.
+
+“I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together
+in his life,” he whispered to Carr. “I never did, either, but I've put
+hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work.”
+
+“What's wrong with it?” said Carr.
+
+Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+
+Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+saw it first.
+
+“Land!” he hailed.
+
+The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+rose in a fierce chorus.
+
+“Cuba libre!” they yelled.
+
+The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken
+with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each
+topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like
+columns of marble rose the royal palms.
+
+“You MUST look!” Carr entreated David, “it's just as it is in the
+pictures!
+
+“Then I don't have to look,” groaned David.
+
+The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
+sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore
+of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
+waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
+voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
+patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
+their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition
+of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box
+of shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+
+“In two hours, if we have smooth water,” shouted Lighthouse Harry,
+“we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask,” he cried
+mightily, “is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!”
+
+His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three
+Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal
+questions or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug
+was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she
+raced in pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there
+came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+
+With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell
+into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he
+tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and
+gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship
+was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+
+Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+feet splashed into a wave.
+
+From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+removed from any of the greater emotions.
+
+“It's no use!” he protested. “They can't do! It's not connected!”
+
+“WHAT'S not connected?” yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
+half-dragged him to his feet.
+
+“If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it,” he
+shouted, “or I'll--”
+
+David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on
+the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness
+of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
+through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
+come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
+shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
+more was a sane, sound young man.
+
+With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism.
+He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+
+Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
+his work was good.
+
+They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
+to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
+continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
+feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
+pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.
+
+He shouted with delight.
+
+“I've got it working,” he yelled.
+
+He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
+of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
+tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
+splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
+stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
+distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
+sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
+in volleys.
+
+To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived
+it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
+made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
+box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click
+as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against
+the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
+gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
+flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
+forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
+engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
+unceasingly:
+
+“Cuba libre!” it yelled. “To hell with Spain!” and he found that the
+voice was his own.
+
+The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+
+“And the best of it is,” he exclaimed joyfully, “it's true!”
+
+For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself
+aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun
+served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight
+of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the
+limelight a cub reporter had projected a new “hero,” a ready-made,
+warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
+
+They were seated in the pilot-house, “Jimmy” Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
+and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
+straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished
+reading aloud his account of the engagement.
+
+“You will tell the story just as I have written it,” commanded the proud
+author. “Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind.
+You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
+wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
+That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
+took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
+Bay.”
+
+Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. “You certainty did, Dave,”
+ protested the great man, “I seen you when you done it!”
+
+At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+spread across the map of the United States.
+
+Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower
+Broadway tendered congratulations.
+
+“Of course, it's a great surprise to us,” Burdett and Sons would protest
+and wink heavily. “Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd
+no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him
+go, would we?” Then again they would wink heavily. “I suppose you know,”
+ they would say, “that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene,
+who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'” And
+then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and
+exclaim: “Here's to Cuba libre!”
+
+When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the
+Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and
+all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+
+And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her
+best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as
+Burdett and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+
+She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+“David!” she sobbed, “promise me you'll never, never do it again!”
+
+
+
+Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care
+in the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to the left; if
+it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely
+the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled
+broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved
+his fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over
+Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of
+verandas, from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces.
+Empaled on their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
+languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
+sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been
+a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he
+would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer
+bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders
+most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried
+treasure, the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really
+asking a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+
+Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
+Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
+pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen
+Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the “season” opened; when she
+departed the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of
+stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she
+played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines
+her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded
+youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
+Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with
+the “kids” as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the
+matrons. To each her manner was always as though she were of their age.
+When she met the latter on the beach road, she greeted them riotously
+and joyfully by their maiden names. And the matrons liked it. In
+comparison the deference shown them by the other young women did not so
+strongly appeal.
+
+“When I'm jogging along in my station wagon,” said one of them, “and
+Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were
+twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside
+her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat.
+Why does he never wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or
+because Helen drives so fast he can't keep it on?”
+
+“Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?” asked the new arrival.
+“That might help some.”
+
+“We will never know,” exclaimed the young matron; “he never leaves her.”
+
+This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them
+so many times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf
+together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way
+to look. But they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not
+to see them, Helen shouted at you. She made you feel you had been caught
+doing something indelicate and underhand.
+
+The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young
+Latimer. So many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in that
+inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange
+young man who apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends
+for years had learned they must remain friends, could not hope to escape
+criticism. Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston
+and Harvard, but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at
+both the law and the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully;
+but it was rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that
+he played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as for
+exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey and soda at two in
+the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark: “I find it does
+not tend toward efficiency.” It was a remark that irritated and, to the
+minds of the men at the country clubs, seemed to place him. They liked
+to play polo because they liked to play polo, not because it kept their
+muscles limber and their brains clear.
+
+“Some Western people were telling me,” said one of the matrons, “that he
+wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is very ambitious
+and very selfish.”
+
+“Any man is selfish,” protested one who for years had attempted to marry
+Helen, “who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to
+be a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one
+lose sympathy.”
+
+Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship
+of Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been working overtime and was
+treating himself to his first vacation in years--he was young--he was
+in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either, that
+Helen Page was happy. Those who had known her since she was a child
+could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore
+her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings
+to old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses.
+She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him
+she liked better to be with him than with any one else,--it would have
+been difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer
+colony,--but she explained that that did not mean she would marry him.
+She announced this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She
+announced it in what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly
+that she did not intend to marry for several years.
+
+This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so
+eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep her own. She as
+though she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to
+sea. When, at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer
+had paused to catch his, she shook her head miserably.
+
+“The trouble is,” she complained, “there are so many think the same
+thing!”
+
+“What do they think?” demanded Latimer.
+
+“That they want to marry me.”
+
+Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+
+“I can quite believe that,” he agreed, “but there's this important
+difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE
+you as I do!”
+
+“That's ANOTHER thing they think,” sighed Helen.
+
+“I'm sorry to be so unoriginal,” snapped Latimer.
+
+“PLEASE don't!” pleaded Helen. “I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not
+unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to take it to
+heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable
+a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind
+whether or not she wants to marry him. But when there's so many she just
+stops worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all.”
+
+“ALL!” exclaimed Latimer. “It is incredible that I have undervalued you,
+but may I ask how many there are?”
+
+“I don't know,” sighed Helen miserably. “There seems to be something
+about me that--”
+
+“There is!” interrupted Latimer. “I've noticed it. You don't have to
+tell me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult
+habit to break!”
+
+It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least,
+not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+
+One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on
+which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored
+a forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked
+the sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played
+hide and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this
+place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back
+to a tree and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose
+works he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to
+them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into
+his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and
+mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
+
+But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible
+for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: “Please
+excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider--” and the spell
+was gone.
+
+One day she exclaimed: “Oh!” and Latimer patiently lowered the “Oxford
+Book of Verse,” and asked: “What is it, NOW?”
+
+“I'm so sorry,” Helen said, “but I can't help watching that Chapman boy;
+he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and
+he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday--”
+
+“I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy,” said Latimer, “or in
+what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning
+man myself!”
+
+Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. “Men get over THAT kind of
+drowning,” she said.
+
+“Not THIS kind of man doesn't!” said Latimer. “And don't tell me,” he
+cried indignantly, “that that's ANOTHER thing they all say.”
+
+“If one could only be sure!” sighed Helen. “If one could only be sure
+that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him
+the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that,
+it would help you a lot in making up your mind.”
+
+“There is only one way to find that out,” said Latimer; “that is to
+marry him. I mean, of course,” he corrected hastily, “to marry me.”
+
+One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the
+man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the
+village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their
+hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the
+ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the
+world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind
+caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it
+tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand
+a tiny oar and smiling happily.
+
+“He has a friendly smile,” said Helen; “I think he likes us.”
+
+“He is on guard,” Latimer explained. “I put him there to warn us if
+any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away
+trespassers. Do you understand?” he demanded of the sailorman. “Your
+duty is to protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must
+guard this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You
+never sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She
+wrongs you. It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure
+when I look at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways
+alike. I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I
+never sleep, at least not since I met her.”
+
+From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman
+and frowned.
+
+“It is not a happy simile,” she objected. “For one thing, a sailorman
+has a sweetheart in every port.”
+
+“Wait and see,” said Latimer.
+
+“And,” continued the girl with some asperity, “if there is anything on
+earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less
+CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--”
+
+“Constant?” Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. “You come back here,”
+ he challenged, “months from now, years from now, when the winds have
+beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you
+will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently,
+proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because those who are your slaves, those
+who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if
+you drive them away!”
+
+The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about
+in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs,
+his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one
+blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
+
+When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it
+was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say
+good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to
+say that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think
+that a man such as he believed you were so fine a person, and during the
+coming winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her
+to be, but which, she assured him, she was not.
+
+Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to
+which she said: “Oh, indeed no!” and then, as though he were giving her
+a cue, he said: “Good-by!” But she did not take up his cue, and they
+shook hands. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
+
+“Surely, now that the parting has come,” he assured himself, “she will
+make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total'
+under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me
+through the long winter.”
+
+But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that
+he really forced her to say: “Don't miss your train,” which kind
+consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor,
+indeed, later did she herself recall the remark with satisfaction.
+
+With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine suitor
+attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they had over Latimer
+was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at dinners,
+dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawing-room. Like any sailor
+from the Charlestown Navy Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk
+beside her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch
+dates and initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one
+side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when
+the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were
+beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known
+her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and
+friends in common; they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to
+her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests,
+and he was forced to choose between telling her of his lawsuits and
+his efforts in politics or of his love. To write to her of his affairs
+seemed wasteful and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had
+received what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he
+wrote but seldom, and then only to say: “You know what I send you.” Had
+he known it, his best letters were those he did not send. When in the
+morning mail Helen found his familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand
+out like the face of a friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon
+the letter, read it, and, assured of his love, would go on her way
+rejoicing. But when in the morning there was no letter, she wondered
+why, and all day she wondered why. And the next morning when again
+she was disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and
+speculations concerning him shut out every other interest. He became a
+perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind. And then he
+would spoil it all by writing her that he loved her and that of all the
+women in the world she was the only one. And, reassured upon that point,
+Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.
+
+But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had
+seen him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more gratefully,
+than that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had walked that
+same afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude
+he was first, and there was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she
+was ready to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him.
+But as yet she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she
+was, life was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited
+her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the object
+of each seemed to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day.
+Her nature was such that to make her happy was not difficult. Some of
+her devotees could do it by giving her a dance and letting her invite
+half of Boston, and her kid brother could do it by taking her to
+Cambridge to watch the team at practice.
+
+She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she
+was happy because she loved some one and that particular some one loved
+her. Her being “free” was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she
+thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered
+that, so far from being free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and
+soul.
+
+But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+
+Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch. The
+sun had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen
+upon his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the
+north, he spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan the surrounding
+landscape that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor,
+indeed, did any one attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret
+hiding-place, but the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him
+away. He was always triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing
+rabbits he was a thing of terror. Once, when the air was still, an
+impertinent crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and with
+scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue
+reefer, his red cheeks. But when the wind suddenly drove past them the
+sailorman sprang into action and the crow screamed in alarm and darted
+away. So, alone and with no one to come to his relief, the sailorman
+stood his watch. About him the branches bent with the snow, the icicles
+froze him into immobility, and in the tree-tops strange groanings filled
+him with alarms. But undaunted, month after month, alert and smiling,
+he waited the return of the beautiful lady and of the tall young man who
+had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy eyes.
+
+Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was
+the best thing that could come into his life. But to sit down and lament
+over the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite
+expression, “tend toward efficiency.” He removed from his sight the
+three pictures of her he had cut from illustrated papers, and ceased to
+write to her.
+
+In his last letter he said: “I have told you how it is, and that is how
+it is always going to be. There never has been, there never can be any
+one but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought
+out every week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an
+advertisement of a motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be
+cheapened, to be subjected to slights and silence. If ever you should
+want it, it is yours. It is here waiting. But you must tell me so. I
+have done everything a man can do to make you understand. But you do not
+want me or my love. And my love says to me: 'Don't send me there
+again to have the door shut in my face. Keep me with you to be your
+inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so it shall be.”
+
+When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not
+know how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly she had
+grown very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in
+consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not
+see why the two hundred and forty-nine expected her to keep on doing
+exactly the same things she had been doing with delight for six months,
+and indeed for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer
+was there any pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer
+that she found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not
+arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He
+said that he would always love her, but how could she now know that?
+Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position
+which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to
+escape? Were this true, and she wrote and said all those things that
+were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him
+to her against his will? The love that once he had for her might no
+longer exist, and if, in her turn, she told him she loved him and had
+always loved him, might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel
+it was his duty to pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It
+was intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as day succeeded
+day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very
+unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen
+had none, and for her life became a game of putting little things
+together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make
+up each day. It was a dreary game.
+
+From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his
+own State, he was an “Insurgent” making a fight, the outcome of which
+was expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West.
+When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became
+a national figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next
+governor, promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to
+take him further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place
+even in his thoughts.
+
+At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her
+about her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only
+because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over
+her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence,
+as the leader and exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she
+no longer could pretend to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he
+belonged to all of them.
+
+Older men would say to her: “I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
+is he?”
+
+Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man
+who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or
+halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+
+She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down
+and needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she
+agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent
+her, for she knew wherever she went she must still force herself to
+go on putting one hour on top of another, until she had built up the
+inexorable and necessary twenty-four.
+
+When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning
+unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse the thin spring
+sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task.
+She assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming
+and Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled
+herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is
+a pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer
+had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+
+Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not
+to think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking hours. Should she,
+as it sometimes happened, dream of him--should she imagine they were
+again seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at
+fifty miles an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying
+past, with the wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts
+happiness and content--that would not be breaking her rule. If she
+dreamed of him, she could not be held responsible. She could only be
+grateful.
+
+And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came
+East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with
+a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of
+three cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party
+leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's country. He was due to speak
+in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to
+leave for the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the
+city. He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New
+York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that
+week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting
+cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward
+to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the
+time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more
+direct attacks upon her feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to
+remain until, on the first of May at midnight, he again would pass out
+of her life, maybe forever. No one saw in her going any significance.
+Spring had come, and in preparation for the summer season the house at
+Fair Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of
+some one of the Page family was easily explained.
+
+She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it
+herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if
+it would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the
+memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out
+by those of one summer, by those of one man. The natives greeted her
+joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the
+village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though
+they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she
+had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused
+her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and
+hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in
+the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively
+to his open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The
+golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where
+he always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds
+than to remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where
+the schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon;
+the wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the
+pond into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+
+On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places
+purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way. They no longer
+distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends,
+who had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
+
+But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the opening
+among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea--she could
+not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third day
+when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own
+accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And
+again from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked
+the sea, he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For
+hours, stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same
+branches patiently waiting.
+
+On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one
+enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred
+circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find
+there she could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown
+to her. She saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal.
+No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more
+poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no
+sign of his or of her former presence. Across the open space something
+had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place,
+a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that
+once had been brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She
+had but one desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her
+forever, to remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had
+remembered it, and as now she must always remember It. She turned softly
+on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.
+
+But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of
+wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the
+branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And
+at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a
+violent, joyous tattoo--a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the
+woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged
+wings.
+
+Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes--and beheld the sailorman.
+
+Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy,
+calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down
+at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's
+ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though
+Latimer stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no
+longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that
+brought to her peace, and pride, and happiness.
+
+“So long as I love this beautiful lady,” had been his foolish words,
+“you will guard this place. It is a life sentence!”
+
+With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman
+stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a
+joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her
+hands and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
+
+An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair
+Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between
+his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by
+landing them in jail.
+
+At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark
+places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced
+against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
+beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of
+the one thing that could make his life worth living.
+
+And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat,
+the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at
+peace, his duty well performed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+
+When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
+life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he
+knew. Under the title of “Tales of the Yard” they were collected in book
+form, and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a
+reporter on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of
+which a reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in
+gathering news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines,
+and later in a book under the title of “Tales of the Streets.” They also
+were well received.
+
+Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: “There
+are two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction--men of genius and
+reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way
+that he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe
+something he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a
+way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but
+if I had, that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling
+tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers;
+how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling
+has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how
+each of them feels. He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot
+do it because you are not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at
+college; and now that you are in the newspaper business all your tales
+are only of newspaper work. You merely report what you see. So, if you
+are doomed to write only of what you see, then the best thing for you to
+do is to see as many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life.
+You must progress. You must leave New York, and you had better go to
+London.”
+
+“But on the Republic,” Endicott pointed out, “I get a salary. And in
+London I should have to sweep a crossing.”
+
+“Then,” said the literary editor, “you could write a story about a man
+who swept a crossing.”
+
+It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven
+Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the daughter
+of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one
+winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money,
+and that she possessed so much of it that, unless he could show some
+unusual quality of mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from
+his own point of view at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew
+that no one could love her as he did, that no one so truly wished for
+her happiness, or would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him
+it did not seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was
+not able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or her food, who would
+have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a
+hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in birth and education and
+charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he came from New
+York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen Carey he had with
+him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That was all he possessed in the
+world; and unless the magazines bought his stories there was no prospect
+of his getting any more.
+
+Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was
+easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to entertain
+modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated
+he could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough
+to be able to live there on three sovereigns a day you had first to
+spend so many five-pound notes in getting acquainted with London that
+there were no sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just
+enough money to buy him a second-class passage back to New York, and he
+was as far from Helen as ever.
+
+Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to
+marry. And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that when two
+people truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money
+or not. But when in London, with only a five-pound note, and face to
+face with the actual proposition of asking Helen Carey not only to marry
+him but to support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had
+supposed. He found money was many different things--it was self-respect,
+and proper pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking
+these things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not
+one for whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he
+knew how he loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she loved
+him. She always seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be
+explained in different ways. It might be that what was in her heart for
+him was really a sort of “old home week” feeling; that to her it was a
+relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to
+have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she
+was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking
+slang.
+
+The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a
+friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had sent him cards
+for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And
+Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with
+him in Hyde Park and through the National Galleries; and they had fed
+buns to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They
+thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed.
+Later they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because
+they were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have
+laughed.
+
+On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to bed with
+his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound note to last
+him until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now
+that he loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between
+them was liable to unseat his courage and his self-control. In London
+he could, each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning
+against the iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window.
+But, once on the other side of the ocean, that tender exercise must
+be abandoned. He must even consider her pursued by most attractive
+guardsmen, diplomats, and belted earls. He knew they could not love her
+as he did; he knew they could not love her for the reasons he loved her,
+because the fine and beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped
+they did not seek, and so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few
+thousand dollars, he must remain silent, must put from him the best that
+ever came into his life, must waste the wonderful devotion he longed
+to give, must starve the love that he could never summon for any other
+woman.
+
+On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and completely
+miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and unrefreshed.
+
+And then the miracle came.
+
+Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house
+where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his breakfast. As he
+placed the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though
+Prichard had said: “I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman
+who takes these rooms may not be so open-handed. He never locked up his
+cigars or his whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits
+me, except across the shoulders.”
+
+Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved.
+In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+
+“How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?”
+
+“I wouldn't take such a liberty,” protested Prichard. “Not with any of
+our gentlemen's clothes.”
+
+“How did you know I was talking about clothes,” demanded Philip. “You
+didn't say anything about clothes, did you?”
+
+“No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I--”
+
+“Were you thinking of clothes?”
+
+“Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was,” answered the valet.
+“Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new, I thought...”
+
+“It's mental telepathy,” said Philip.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Prichard.
+
+“You needn't wait,” said Philip.
+
+The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning
+papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged
+into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded
+with people; and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every
+one at whom he looked began to talk aloud. Their lips did not move,
+nor did any sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken
+phrases of thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a
+crowd, snatches of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his
+debts; another of the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to
+his silk hat; another planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over
+a telegram he had but that moment received. To himself he kept repeating
+the words of the telegram--“No need to come, out of danger.” To Philip
+the message came as clearly as though he were reading it from the folded
+slip of paper that the stranger clutched in his hand.
+
+Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might
+consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge from the crowded
+street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some
+unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with
+him, and he was inventing the phrases he seemed to hear, that he was
+attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent.
+But, whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative
+that he should at once get at the meaning of it.
+
+The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of
+stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and directly in
+front of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted.
+Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept
+repeating: “Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or
+a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff?
+Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff
+Mary Queen of Scots would look ridiculous!”
+
+Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed
+she was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had distinguished
+the words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was
+going mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman
+should determine it. He advanced boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+
+“Pardon me,” he said, “but I believe you are waiting for your maid
+Hudson?”
+
+As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in silence.
+
+“I only wish to make sure,” continued Philip, “that you are she for whom
+I have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to be photographed
+in fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?”
+
+“Well?” assented the girl.
+
+“And you telephoned Hudson,” he continued, “to bring you your muff.”
+
+The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+
+“Oh!” she protested; “I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want
+my ruff.”
+
+Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+
+“For the love of Heaven!” he exclaimed in horror; “it's true!”
+
+“What's true?” demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+
+“That I'm a mind reader,” declared Philip. “I've read your mind! I can
+read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking now. You're
+thinking I'm mad!”
+
+The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a
+gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs to the studio.
+Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to
+explain? How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable?
+Besides, the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of
+one, he could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to
+his ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as,
+before that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal,
+he now could look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind. The
+thought was appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a key-hole.
+In his dismay his first idea was to seek medical advice--the best in
+London. He turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There,
+he determined, to the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his
+strange plight. For only as a misfortune did the miracle appear to him.
+But as he made his way through the streets his pace slackened.
+
+Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed
+this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as a madman?
+Might they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his
+liberty? At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of
+the miracle as a “power” had opened a new line of speculation. If this
+strange gift (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently)
+were concealed from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful
+purpose? For, among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not
+he--among all other men the only one able to read the minds of all
+other men--a god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length
+considering the possibilities that lay within him.
+
+It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments.
+If it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends
+avoid him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at
+the mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would
+lead to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might
+easily become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the
+present he had best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+
+As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded
+it with less aversion. He began to consider to what advantage he could
+place it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he
+might learn secrets leading to far-reaching results. To a statesman, to
+a financier, such a gift as he possessed would make him a ruler of men.
+Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how
+could he bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to
+marry Helen Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet
+men who possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions
+to them. And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds
+would tell him the truth.
+
+The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no
+better than reading other people's letters. But, he argued, the dishonor
+in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he
+used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit
+to others, was he not justified in trading on his superior equipment? He
+decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance
+with the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was
+determined to become rich. Did not the end justify the means? Certainly
+an all-wise Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to
+take her away from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them
+for one another, the all-wise Providence had overlooked the fact that
+she was rich and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently
+was now endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic
+and roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift
+that could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of
+Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building
+it in a hurry.
+
+From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady
+Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he
+turned in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the
+corridor of the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and
+fortune, and in reading their minds he might pass the time before
+luncheon with entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing
+Bruton Street trying to discover the principles of conduct that
+threatened to hamper his new power, he had found that in actual
+operation it was quite simple. He learned that his mind, in relation
+to other minds, was like the receiver of a wireless station with an
+unlimited field. For, while the wireless could receive messages only
+from those instruments with which it was attuned, his mind was in key
+with all other minds. To read the thoughts of another, he had only to
+concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut off the thoughts of
+that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts elsewhere. But also
+he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside the range of his
+physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what Helen Carey was
+at that moment thinking, there was no result. But when he asked, “Of
+what is that policeman on the corner thinking?” he was surprised to find
+that that officer of the law was formulating regulations to abolish the
+hobble skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+
+As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great
+distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the person of a
+young gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the
+source from which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a
+pink-cheeked, yellow-haired youth of extremely boyish appearance, and
+dressed as if for the race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish
+face wore an expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was
+gazing at a house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the street.
+And his thoughts were these: “She is the best that ever lived, and I am
+the most ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow
+stucco! Only now, when she has closed its doors to me, do I know how
+happy! If she would give me another chance, never again would I distress
+or deceive her.”
+
+So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile
+of surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front
+of the house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young
+person. She was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of
+haunting beauty and innocence.
+
+“My wife!” exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he
+dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to a four-wheeler, was
+contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+
+With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house
+and disappeared.
+
+The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly.
+He shares the troubles of so many people that to the troubles of other
+people he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the
+family fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter,
+he acted quickly. Hardly had the door closed upon the young lady than
+he had mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he
+could not resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the
+outlawed husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from
+across the back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of
+his general appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to
+alter all of them, was quickly communicated to the American. They were
+thoughts of a nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily
+cut off all connection.
+
+As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly announced:
+
+“Her ladyship is not receiving.”
+
+“Her ladyship will, I think, receive me,” said Philip pleasantly, “when
+you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his lordship.”
+
+From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall there
+issued a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with joy; and in
+the hall the noble lady instantly appeared.
+
+When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought had
+been, “Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!” Philip felt no
+embarrassment whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the
+erring but bitterly repentant husband; inside, her tenderest thoughts
+racing tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy child-wife begging to be
+begged to pardon.
+
+For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good
+manners, it was too easy.
+
+“I do not know you,” said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she
+motioned to the butler to go away. “You must be one of his new friends.”
+ Her tone was one of envy.
+
+“Indeed, I am his newest friend,” Philip assured her; “but I can safely
+say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are all of you!”
+
+The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she shook
+her head.
+
+“They tell me I must not believe him,” she announced. “They tell me--”
+
+“Never mind what they tell you,” commanded Philip. “Listen to ME. He
+loves you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks is the
+chance to tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at
+you, and not believe that he loves you! Let me,” he begged, “bring him
+to you.” He started from her when, remembering the somewhat violent
+thoughts of the youthful husband, he added hastily: “Or perhaps it would
+be better if you called him yourself.”
+
+“Called him!” exclaimed the lady. “He is in Paris-at the races--with
+her!”
+
+“If they tell you that sort of thing,” protested Philip indignantly,
+“you must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is not with her. There
+never was a her!”
+
+He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. “He is there--behind that
+ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell you that not only
+did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never do
+it again.”
+
+The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more
+boldly showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over the scarlet
+geraniums, she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous.
+Philip bolted for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted
+down the steps, the youthful husband, in strides resembling those of an
+ostrich, shot past him. Philip did not cease running until he was well
+out of Berkeley Square. Then, not ill-pleased with the adventure, he
+turned and smiled back at the house of yellow stucco.
+
+“Bless you, my children,” he murmured; “bless you!”
+
+He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter
+entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered around it
+a considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that
+stretched down the steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet
+in June, when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining gently,
+can mean only royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip
+halted. He remembered that for a few days the young King of Asturia and
+the Queen Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen
+the young man who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his
+own kingdom, Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+
+As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of
+those about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of pity for
+the exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross
+street, of pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the
+coachman of the court carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount
+of his Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as
+the warm sunshine.
+
+And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts was
+shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought
+of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was murder.
+
+“When they appear at the doorway,” spoke the brain of the maniac, “I
+shall lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my head. I
+shall crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of
+these people into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVE--a martyr
+to the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!”
+
+Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a
+tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing close to
+the open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized
+him around the waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow.
+Philip's face, appearing over the man's shoulder, stared straight into
+that of the policeman.
+
+“He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!” yelled Philip. “I can hold him
+while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop it!” Philip turned
+upon the crowd. “Run! all of you!” he shouted. “Run like the devil!”
+
+At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young
+and beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that her robes of
+mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.
+
+“Go back, sir!” warned Philip. “He means to kill you!”
+
+At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed
+helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang protectingly
+in front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now
+holding the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head;
+Philip's arms, like a lariat, were wound around his chest; and from his
+pocket the first policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of
+the size of a glass fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved
+his free hand warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no
+one remaining to observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling
+and biting in the grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other
+policeman unhappily holding the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought to
+escape into the Ritz. But the young King broke through the circle of
+attendants and stopped him.
+
+“I must thank you,” said the boy eagerly; “and I wish you to tell me how
+you came to suspect the man's purpose.”
+
+Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of fiction, began
+to improvise fluently.
+
+“To learn their purpose, sir,” he said, “is my business. I am of the
+International Police, and in the secret service of your Majesty.”
+
+“Then I must know your name,” said the King, and added with a dignity
+that was most becoming, “You will find we are not ungrateful.”
+
+Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+
+“I said in your secret service,” he repeated. “Did even your Majesty
+know me, my usefulness would be at an end.” He pointed toward the two
+policemen. “If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the
+men to reward.”
+
+He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into
+the hall and on into the corridor.
+
+The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the
+heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they
+had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still
+ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their
+music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two
+distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were
+talking in leisurely whispers.
+
+One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a
+reporter had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on matters
+concerning the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a Pennsylvania
+Dutchman from Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the
+night shift in the same mills he now controlled. But with a roar and
+a spectacular flash, not unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he had
+soared to fame and fortune. He recognized Philip as one of the bright
+young men of the Republic; but in his own opinion he was far too
+self-important to betray that fact.
+
+Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in
+imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what
+he knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While
+waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip,
+from where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust
+and of the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features
+and a pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American
+many-time millionaire on having that morning come into possession of
+a rare and valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently
+discovered portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+
+Philip sighed enviously.
+
+“Fancy,” he thought, “owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to
+yourself! It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be poor!”
+
+The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in tones
+of rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and solemnity.
+
+“I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust,” he said. “In no gallery in
+Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another Velasquez. This
+is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing
+her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon
+as it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh,
+every Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too.
+For it is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain,
+Mr. Faust! What a bargain!”
+
+To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced
+in the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard, frowned
+importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his
+voice.
+
+“Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron,” he said, “that costs three
+hundred thousand dollars!”
+
+Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly
+that Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So he
+obligingly assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle
+simulations of surprise, awe, and envy.
+
+The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his features.
+
+Mr. Faust continued. “If you will come upstairs,” he said to the
+picture-dealer, “I will give you your check; and then I should like to
+drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture.”
+
+“I am sorry,” the Baron said, “but I have had it moved to my art gallery
+to be packed.”
+
+“Then let's go to the gallery,” urged the patron of art. “We've just
+time before lunch.” He rose to his feet, and on the instant the soul of
+the picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+
+In actual words he said: “The picture is already boxed and in its lead
+coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry.” But
+his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: “Fancy my letting this
+vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old
+masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames
+and canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van
+Dycks, the new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own
+copy of Velasquez next to the one exactly like it--the one MacMillan
+finished yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in
+a convent, we shall 'discover' it.”
+
+Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the
+situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud. The two men,
+who had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at
+nothing, turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+
+“Pardon me,” he said to Faust, “but you spoke so loud I couldn't help
+overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter on the
+Republic.”
+
+The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+
+“Really!” he protested irritably, “you reporters butt in everywhere. No
+public man is safe. Is there no place we can go where you fellows won't
+annoy us?”
+
+“You can go to the devil for all I care,” said Philip, “or even to
+Pittsburgh!”
+
+He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail,
+and moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the reporter would escape
+him, hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.
+
+“However, since you've learned so much,” he said, “I'll tell you the
+whole of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of international
+importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?”
+
+“Do you?” asked Philip.
+
+The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+
+“I think I do,” he said. “And to prove it, I shall tell you something
+that will be news to you. I have just bought a Velasquez that I am going
+to place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars.”
+
+Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad
+as he had expected.
+
+“Now, I shall tell you something,” he said, “that will be news to you.
+You are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez than this hair
+oil is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars.”
+
+“How dare you!” shouted Faust. “Are you mad?”
+
+The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+
+“Who is this insolent one?” he sputtered.
+
+“I will make you a sporting proposition,” said Philip. “You can take it,
+or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will drive to this man's
+studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on
+its way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen
+other 'old masters' half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm
+right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE
+YOU TO HIS STUDIO!”
+
+“Indeed, I will not,” roared the German. “It would be to insult myself.”
+
+“It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too,” said Philip.
+
+“How dare you insult the Baron?” demanded Faust. “What makes you
+think--”
+
+“I don't think, I know!” said Philip. “For the price of a taxi-cab fare
+to Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds.”
+
+“We will all three go at once,” cried the German. “My car is outside.
+Wait here. I will have it brought to the door?”
+
+Faust protested indignantly.
+
+“Do not disturb yourself, Baron,” he said; “just because a fresh
+reporter--”
+
+But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They
+saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and
+shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.
+
+“That's the last you'll see of him,” said Philip.
+
+“His actions are certainly peculiar,” gasped the millionaire. “He did
+not wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think, after all, I
+had better go to Tate Street.”
+
+“Do so,” said Philip, “and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars,
+and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me here at lunch.
+If I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds.”
+
+“You should come with me,” said Faust. “It is only fair to yourself.”
+
+“I'll take your word for what you find in the studio,” said Philip. “I
+cannot go. This is my busy day.”
+
+Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and,
+in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+
+Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save
+for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty,
+and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.
+
+“Surely,” Philip thought, “the French chap was right who said words were
+given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if
+every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying
+would become a lost art. I wonder,” he mused cynically, “is any one
+quite honest? Does any one speak as he thinks and think as he speaks?”
+
+At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen
+had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet from him.
+
+“I sincerely hope, Sir John,” said one of the two, “that you have
+no regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the best
+interests of all?”
+
+“I do, indeed,” the other replied heartily “We shall be thought entirely
+selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done is for the
+benefit of the shareholders.”
+
+Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old
+gentlemen ran hand in hand with his spoken words. “Here, at least,” he
+said to himself, “are two honest men.”
+
+As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+
+“And I hope,” continued the one addressed as Sir John, “that you approve
+of my holding back the public announcement of the combine until the
+afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given
+out the news in this morning's papers the stockbrokers would have--”
+
+“It was most wise,” interrupted the other. “Most just.”
+
+The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
+standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
+chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
+away.
+
+Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
+three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip
+saw the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened
+by the breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various
+combinations; but always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of
+the three his heart spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a
+mother reaches toward her firstborn.
+
+Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
+was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
+Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags--a flag with a red cross
+on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her
+to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
+return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
+mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
+wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place
+of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great
+ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is
+equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite
+after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate
+to a love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help
+from a sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still
+flew the same house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now
+in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+
+Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
+corridor to the telephone.
+
+Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
+stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
+him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
+
+Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+
+“I want you to act for me,” he whispered, “and act quick! I want you
+to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
+Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle.”
+
+He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+
+“There's nothing in that yarn of a combine,” he called. “It has fallen
+through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds.”
+
+Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a five-pound
+note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+
+“I don't care what they are,” he shouted. “The combine is already signed
+and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour everybody will
+know it!”
+
+“What makes you think you know it?” demanded the broker.
+
+“I've seen the house-flags!” cried Philip. “I have--do as I tell you,”
+ he commanded.
+
+There was a distracting delay.
+
+“No matter who's back of you,” objected Maddox, “it's a big order on a
+gamble.”
+
+“It's not a gamble,” cried Philip. “It's an accomplished fact. I'm at
+the Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when you've got a
+thousand of each, stop!”
+
+Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for
+half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself to read the
+illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same advertisement
+five times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him
+half-way with a message.
+
+“Have secured for you a thousand shares of each,” he read, “at fifteen.
+Maddox.”
+
+Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate
+the horror of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was
+sufficiently horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them,
+he had bought shares in three steamship lines, which shares, added
+together, were worth two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
+He returned down the corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own
+audacity, he was in a state of almost complete panic, when that happened
+which made his outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was
+drawing near to half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men
+and beautiful ladies, the component parts of different luncheon parties
+were beginning to assemble.
+
+Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one
+guest had arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one was
+sufficient. It was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed
+on the doors opening from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with
+appeals, blessings, and adoration, ran toward her. Her profile was
+toward him, and she could not see him; but he could see her. And he
+noted that, as though seeking some one, her eyes were turned searchingly
+upon each young man as he entered and moved from one to another of those
+already in the lounge. Her expression was eager and anxious.
+
+“If only,” Philip exclaimed, “she were looking for me! She certainly is
+looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?”
+
+As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his
+steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind? Why did he
+not KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind upon
+the waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: “Of
+what are you thinking?”
+
+There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging
+from Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and proffered
+it. Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the half-burned
+cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in
+that mental process had Philip been conscious! The conclusion was only
+too apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+
+Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered
+them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used his power to his
+own advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the
+happiness of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart
+the dishonesty of a swindler, he had been all-powerful; but when he
+endeavored to bend it to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood
+abashed and repentant, Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the
+sight of him, there leaped to them happiness and welcome and complete
+content. It was “the look that never was on land or sea,” and it was not
+necessary to be a mind reader to understand it. Philip sprang toward her
+as quickly as a man dodges a taxi-cab.
+
+“I came early,” said Helen, “because I wanted to talk to you before the
+others arrived.” She seemed to be repeating words already rehearsed, to
+be following a course of conduct already predetermined. “I want to tell
+you,” she said, “that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you
+that I shall miss you very much.” She paused and drew a long breath. And
+she looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her
+to go on.
+
+Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+
+“Will you miss me,” he asked, “in the Row, where I used to wait among
+the trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances, where I used
+to hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss me
+at night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the
+railings of the Carlton Club, just to see you run across the pavement
+from your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to
+see the light go out, and to know that you are sleeping?”
+
+Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+
+“Did you use to do that?” she asked.
+
+“Every night I do that,” said Philip. “Ask the policemen! They arrested
+me three times.”
+
+“Why?” said Helen gently.
+
+But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+
+“They thought I was a burglar.”
+
+Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+
+“You know what I mean,” she said. “Why did you keep guard outside my
+window?”
+
+“It was the policeman kept guard,” said Philip. “I was there only as a
+burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience,
+or else I knew my own unworthiness.” There was a long pause. As both
+of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the
+Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the “Grizzly Bear,”
+ and people were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with
+a look of so complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare
+of such savage hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to
+last for many years.
+
+At last Helen said: “Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew
+in a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up
+at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to
+the lady's window, and she lifted him in and kissed him--because he had
+dared to climb.”
+
+Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
+doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She
+was delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
+
+“At any moment,” Philip said, “I may know whether I owe two hundred
+and twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am
+worth about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at
+the exact place where you last spoke--AFTER I know whether I am going to
+jail, or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars.”
+
+Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+
+“I knew that was it!” she cried. “You don't like my money. I was afraid
+you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
+will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long
+as you don't dislike me.”
+
+What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
+many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with
+a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: “Combine is announced,
+shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?”
+
+That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
+deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message
+three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own
+sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter
+of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound
+note. He pushed the boy from him.
+
+“Run!” he commanded. “Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!”
+
+He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned
+or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence,
+Helen said: “Is it good news?”
+
+“That depends entirely upon you,” replied Philip soberly. “Indeed, all
+my future life depends upon what you are going to say next.”
+
+Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+
+“And--what am I going to say?”
+
+“How can I know that?” demanded Philip. “Am I a mind reader?”
+
+But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
+chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
+shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+
+Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
+taxi-cab.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
+socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley
+line, the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his
+son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his
+father; or, if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone
+through Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would
+not have known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told
+him.
+
+When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
+innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon
+lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for
+other social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes
+and ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to
+lay siege to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York
+itself. A widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had
+told them not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent
+of a society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them
+that in New York the waiting-list is already interminable, and that, if
+you hoped to break into New York society, the clever thing to do was to
+lay siege to it by way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If you went
+direct to New York knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact,
+and the result would be disastrous.
+
+She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the
+West, who, at the first dance to which they were invited, asked, “Who is
+the old lady in the wig?” and that question argued them so unknown that
+it set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the
+Keeps with misgivings. They agreed with the lady correspondent that it
+was far better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves
+in the suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from
+Keepsburg, which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long Island, or
+Westchester, or Bordentown.
+
+“In all of those places,” explained the widow lady, “our smartest people
+have country homes, and at the country club you may get to know them.
+Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city.”
+
+The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them
+could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be
+fought and won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club.
+But the attack did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear
+that the lady correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although
+three months had passed, and they had played golf together until they
+were as loath to clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one,
+and no one knew them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and
+if you lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you
+were not to be found on any map.
+
+Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens
+had looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those
+days the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so
+proud that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, “No horses
+allowed. Take the other road.” The other road was an earth road used by
+tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and
+automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden
+estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of
+people who occupy cemeteries--except “Harry” Van Warden, and she lived
+in New York at the Turf Club.
+
+Harry, according to all local tradition--for he frequently motored out
+to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat--and, according to the
+newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable.
+So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for
+overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his
+front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden
+Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but
+because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+
+“If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,”
+ sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, “you would meet Harry Van Warden, and
+he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere.”
+
+“If I was to ride to hounds,” returned her husband, “the only thing I'd
+break would be my neck.”
+
+The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the
+purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The
+house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated
+fortune; and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler,
+his pictures, furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an
+eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its
+chief attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay
+directly below the terrace of the house and also in full view from the
+road to Albany.
+
+This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood
+were many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted
+these born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer
+evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the
+hedge, and used the lake as a swimming-pool.
+
+“It makes me nervous,” complained Winnie. “I don't like the idea of
+people prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve
+hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are
+burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the very first one
+they'll break into.”
+
+“I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house
+yet,” said Fred, “and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!”
+
+They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was
+just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October
+night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows
+of close-clipped box. A full moon was just showing itself above the
+tree-tops, turning the lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his
+wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride, touched her hair
+fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+
+“What if we don't know anybody, Win,” he said, “and nobody knows us?
+It's been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it
+that way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon,
+to be together, to be alone--”
+
+Winnie laughed shortly. “They certainly have left us alone!” she sighed.
+
+“But where else could we have been any happier?” demanded the young
+husband loyally. “Where will you find any prettier place than this, just
+as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing
+the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake?
+Where's there a better place for a honeymoon? It's a bower--a bower of
+peace, solitude a--bower of--”
+
+As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside
+the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It
+came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage.
+Then, as suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after
+a pause of an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two
+sharp blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream
+of rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who
+heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+
+“In the name of Heaven!” gasped Keep, “what's that?”
+
+Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped,
+he spoke as though he were announcing dinner. “A convict, sir,” he said,
+“has escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not understand the
+whistle. I thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors.”
+
+“Why?” asked Winnie Keep.
+
+“The house is near the road, madam,” said the butler. “And there are
+so many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here, and the
+keepers--there was a fight.” The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his
+wife on the arm.
+
+“It's time to dress for dinner, Win,” he said.
+
+“And what are you going to do?” demanded Winnie.
+
+“I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to
+change.” He turned to the butler. “And I'll have a cocktail, too I'll
+have it out here.”
+
+The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the
+terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely. “Fred,” she
+begged, “you--you're not going to poke around in the bushes, are
+you?--just because you think I'm frightened?”
+
+Her husband laughed at her. “I certainly am NOT!” he said. “And you're
+not frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a minute.”
+
+But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the
+siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very door, to beat
+and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to
+her ears.
+
+“Why don't they stop it!” she whispered. “Why don't they give him a
+chance!”
+
+When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge
+of the terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his hands, sat
+staring down at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees,
+had blotted the lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the
+hedges with wavering shadows. Somewhere near at hand a criminal--a
+murderer, burglar, thug--was at large, and the voice of the prison he
+had tricked still bellowed in rage, in amazement, still clamored not
+only for his person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside
+heard it: the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the
+guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red candle shades; the joy
+riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It woke
+the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The granite walls
+of the Palisades flung it back against the granite walls of the prison.
+Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching for him,
+pointing him out--stirring in the heart of each who heard it the lust of
+the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the hunted thing is a man.
+
+“Find him!” shrieked the siren. “Find him! He's there, behind your
+hedge! He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in the
+moonlight. THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag
+him down! He's mine! Mine!”
+
+But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the
+home of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with his soul.
+Each, clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful
+joy, each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will
+the hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled panting through the crisp
+October night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows,
+staggering and falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that
+wherever his feet led him the siren still held him by the heels.
+
+As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
+adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing
+to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night,
+although her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he
+heard no singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour.
+Gridley, the aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for
+twenty years had been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and
+taken away the empty glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts.
+They were entirely of the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him
+and begged his aid, what would he do? He knew quite well what he would
+do. He considered even the means by which he would assist the fugitive
+to a successful get-away.
+
+The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his
+duty to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had
+visited “the institution,” as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers
+to speak of it, he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping
+from Sing Sing and not being at once retaken was one out of six
+thousand. So with Fred it was largely a sporting proposition. Any man
+who could beat a six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+
+And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine
+himself in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring
+to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself
+of his tell-tale clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in
+Westchester County a naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in
+the purple-gray cloth of the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He
+might hold up a passer-by, and, if the passer-by did not flee from
+him or punch him into insensibility, he might effect an exchange of
+garments; he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might
+despoil a scarecrow.
+
+But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
+deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as
+he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was
+not entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas
+awning. Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats
+in the lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He
+was a young man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face
+smooth-shaven, and above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He had the
+sharp, clever, rat-like face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water
+dripped from him, and either for that reason or from fright the young
+man trembled, and, like one who had been running, breathed in short,
+hard gasps.
+
+Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It
+was as though he had been waiting for the man, as though it had been an
+appointment.
+
+Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of
+his visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and that the man, not
+knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might
+rush him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the
+moonlight the two young men eyed each other warily.
+
+Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of
+his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+
+“I took a bath in your pond,” he blurted forth, “and--and they stole my
+clothes! That's why I'm like this!”
+
+Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative
+how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid himself of
+accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the stranger
+with admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he
+could not let him suppose that he was deceived by it.
+
+“Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?” he said.
+
+As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of
+shivering.
+
+“It wasn't a bath,” he gasped. “It was a bet!”
+
+“A what!” exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. “A bet? Then
+you are not alone?”
+
+“I am NOW--damn them!” exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+reluctantly. “We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting here
+in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim
+across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed
+up on me from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to
+where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I
+got to the hedge the car was gone!”
+
+Keep smiled encouragingly. “The car!” he assented. “So you've been
+riding around in the moonlight?”
+
+The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them
+the roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and
+came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed
+fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a
+fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer
+to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of
+Keep.
+
+“You--you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?” he stuttered.
+“Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all right,” he added;
+reassuringly. “I live near here.”
+
+With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young
+man continued less confidently.
+
+“I don't blame you if you don't believe it,” he stammered, “seeing me
+like this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody around here knows
+me, and I guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'm--that is,
+my name--” like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and
+the rat-like eyes regarded Keep watchfully--“my name is Van Warden. I'm
+the one you read about--Harry--I'm Harry Van Warden!”
+
+After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile
+was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he could not longer
+enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+
+“My boy!” he exclaimed, “you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!”
+ He rose and made a peremptory gesture. “Sorry,” he said, “but this isn't
+safe for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and send you
+where you want to go.” He turned and whispered over his shoulder: “Some
+day let me hear from you. A man with your nerve--”
+
+In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+
+The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room. First
+making sure the library and hall were free of servants, Fred tiptoed to
+the coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light.
+The naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of damp footprints, followed
+at his heels.
+
+Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and
+on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+
+“Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes,” he commanded. “They'll cover
+you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you here while
+I get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your
+head. Just say you're waiting to see me--Mr. Keep. I won't be long.
+Wait.”
+
+“Wait!” snorted the stranger. “You BET I'll wait!”
+
+As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself
+violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+
+In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt,
+boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out for him, and he
+snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer
+he counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the
+trousers pocket of the serge suit and with the bundle of clothes in his
+arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coat-room.
+
+“Don't come out until I knock,” he commanded. “And,” he added in a
+vehement whisper, “don't come out at all unless you have clothes on!”
+
+The stranger grunted.
+
+Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the
+door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes. When the butler
+had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coat-room door. The
+stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at
+the moment was carefully arranging the tie.
+
+“Hurry!” commanded Keep. “The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I
+tell him to take you?”
+
+The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning.
+“New York,” he whispered, “fast as he can get there! Look here,” he
+added doubtfully, “there's a roll of bills in these clothes.”
+
+“They're yours,” said Fred.
+
+The stranger exclaimed vigorously. “You're all right!” he whispered. “I
+won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the money back same time I
+send the clothes.”
+
+“Exactly!” said Fred.
+
+The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred
+slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before it. After
+a period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the
+inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of
+the width of a finger, and put his ear to the crack.
+
+“You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?” whispered the stranger.
+
+Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the
+chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had
+gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy could be
+trusted.
+
+“You're to take a man to New York,” he said, “or wherever he wants
+to go. Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if YOU'RE
+questioned, you can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!”
+
+The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps.
+As he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still demanding its
+prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow,
+the youth jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where
+Keep stood above him.
+
+“I told you,” said Keep, “to ask no questions.”
+
+As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs
+toward him. She had changed to one of the prettiest evening gowns of her
+trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself and
+the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he
+was lost in admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the
+door of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet the
+stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly
+appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp shriek.
+
+With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon the
+visitor.
+
+“Did you fix it?” he demanded.
+
+The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his
+eyes were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by
+Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to
+nod his head dully.
+
+“Come,” commanded Fred. “The car is waiting.”
+
+Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a
+woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood
+still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn,
+Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery,
+so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and
+inarticulate. For protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.
+
+The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been
+intended for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot
+reciting its lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+
+“My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden.”
+
+He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though
+he had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as though a
+stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+
+But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced
+an instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated excitement and
+delight. How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of
+Scarboro she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward
+him a glance of deep and grateful devotion.
+
+Then she beamed upon the stranger. “Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to
+dinner?” she asked.
+
+Her husband emitted a howl. “He will NOT!” he cried. “He's not that kind
+of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that fixes the telephone!”
+
+He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and dragged
+him down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor
+stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful
+lady. Fred thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at
+the golf-cap and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly
+twisting in his hands, Fred whispered fiercely:
+
+“Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what to do.”
+
+With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the
+signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to throw in the
+clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,
+directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself
+upon the gravel; something in a suit of purple-gray; something torn
+and bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and
+crawled, that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the
+glare of the head-lights the white face and white hair of a very old,
+old man. The kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in
+the pit of the stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man
+stretched his arms toward them. From long disuse his voice cracked and
+broke.
+
+“I'm done!” he sobbed. “I can't go no farther! I give myself up!”
+
+Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison
+siren shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+
+It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and
+slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he flung it over
+the suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's
+frightened eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down over the white hair. With
+one arm he lifted the convict, and with the other dragged and pushed him
+into the seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he
+thrust the roll of bills.
+
+“Get him away!” he ordered. “It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut
+line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a ticket to Boston.
+Go through White Plains to Greenwich--and then you're safe!”
+
+As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he
+swung upon Fred. “Am I right?” he demanded.
+
+“Of course!” roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though
+throwing him into space.
+
+“Get-to-hell-out-of-here!” he shouted.
+
+The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being,
+chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With a grinding of
+gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking
+in farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in
+jeering notes of joy and victory.
+
+Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed
+to leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger remained
+motionless.
+
+Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the
+stranger by the arm.
+
+“But you?” he demanded. “How are you going to get away?”
+
+The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step stood
+Winnie Keep.
+
+“I don't want to get away,” he said. “I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me
+stay to dinner.”
+
+A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so
+that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of the stranger.
+
+“Will you kindly tell me,” Fred demanded, “who the devil you are?”
+
+The stranger exclaimed peevishly. “I've BEEN telling you all evening,”
+ he protested. “I'm Harry Van Warden!”
+
+Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+
+“Dinner is served, madam,” he said.
+
+The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. “Hello, Gridley!” he
+cried. “Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if he'll ask
+me to dinner, I won't steal the spoons.”
+
+Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the
+privilege of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the stranger
+fondly, proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the
+affection of an old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to Keep.
+
+“If Mr. Harry--Mr. Van Warden,” he said, “is to stay to dinner, might I
+suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert, '84.”
+
+Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his
+wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly happy.
+
+Gridley coughed tentatively. “Shall I open a bottle, sir?” he asked.
+
+Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+
+“Open a case!” he roared.
+
+At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of
+such mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling each other by
+their first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken
+from the telephone. It was a long-distance call from Yonkers, sent by
+James, the faithful chauffeur.
+
+Fred read it aloud.
+
+“I got that party the articles he needed,” it read, “and saw him safe on
+a train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for speeding the car
+on the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers.”
+
+
+
+Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+Before he finally arrested him, “Jimmie” Sniffen had seen the man with
+the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round
+Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie
+knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not
+deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and
+secretly vowed to “stalk” him. From that moment, had the stranger known
+it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his
+sleeve for “stalking” and “path-finding,” not to boast of others
+for “gardening” and “cooking,” can outwit any spy. Even had, General
+Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
+Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by
+inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of
+the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with
+Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of
+the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach
+road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of
+his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and
+rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+
+If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not
+see a Pease and Elliman “For Sale” sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could
+see in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
+
+Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's
+axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before
+in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he
+would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+
+“But there ain't no panthers in Westchester,” Jimmie would reassure
+himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still
+Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that
+when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. “Mebbe dad
+told me it happened to grandpop,” Jimmie would explain, “or I dreamed
+it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book.”
+
+The “German spy” mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the
+week end with “Squire” Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides
+being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President
+of the Country Club, was also a local “councilman” for the Round Hill
+Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In
+deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen
+in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was
+his peroration that made trouble.
+
+“And any day,” he assured his audience, “this country may be at war with
+Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You
+can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and
+then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven
+and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.
+I haven't the least doubt,” exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet,
+“that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
+blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to
+find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what
+extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows,
+the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down
+on their maps the wells and streams.”
+
+As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the
+door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. “Keep your eyes open!” he commanded.
+“Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your
+sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be
+prepared!'”
+
+That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+saw spiked helmets.
+
+Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+
+“Next time you talk to my scouts,” he declared, “you'll talk on 'Votes
+for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who
+dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
+from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites.”
+
+“YOU are not!” retorted his friend, “you own half the county now, and
+you're trying to buy the other half.”
+
+“I'm a justice of the peace,” explained Van Vorst. “I don't know WHY I
+am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble.
+The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and
+I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the
+Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black
+Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for
+a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a
+millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to
+'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being
+arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break
+into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!”
+
+The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie
+liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
+adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the
+top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
+pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
+himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
+squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
+night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
+was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
+Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in
+the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
+same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
+and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why
+on his sleeve was the badge for “stalking.” But always to have to make
+believe became monotonous. Even “dry shopping” along the Rue de la Paix
+when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one
+just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent
+to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a
+week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his
+flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he
+most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his
+energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.
+The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but
+the enemy of his country.
+
+In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked
+the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and
+he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor
+from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian
+arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant
+gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor
+to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where
+one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor
+was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week
+following Jimmie was again disappointed.
+
+On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting
+in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book,
+and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of
+New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing
+a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and
+at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he
+followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
+mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam,
+was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the
+Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From
+the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man
+working alone upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American,
+and already on Jimmie's list of “suspects.” That for the use of the
+German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was
+only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was
+only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin
+was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect
+a fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
+discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him
+his troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. “My advice to you,
+Jimmie,” he said, “is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a
+very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for
+him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before
+you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant.”
+
+So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+
+Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a
+new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young
+man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to
+be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and,
+from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie
+mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not
+been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed
+that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been
+forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered
+Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
+
+“Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now,
+or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!”
+
+Jimmie smiled in sympathy. “It's early to be hungry,” said Jimmie; “when
+did you have your breakfast?”
+
+“I didn't,” laughed the young man. “I went out to walk up an appetite,
+and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the
+shortest way back to Bedford?”
+
+“The first road to your right,” said Jimmie.
+
+“Is it far?” asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+evident.
+
+“It's a half-hour's walk,” said Jimmie
+
+“If I live that long,” corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+
+Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut
+him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance,
+and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road, “stalked” him. From
+behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one
+in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+
+He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a
+runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he
+heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who
+knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad
+shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by
+the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed
+the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered,
+that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also
+reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road,
+he approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the
+whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been
+hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was
+at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward
+Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut
+State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like
+arrow-heads.
+
+For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty
+miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him
+south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread
+tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as
+in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he
+catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset
+as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the
+skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous
+as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until
+the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was
+in no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face
+east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to
+splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into
+the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen
+it, there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
+cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time
+for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the
+top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone
+wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath
+to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was
+tripping and tumbling. Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned
+hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie
+shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the
+coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+
+“You wait!” he shouted. “I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun.”
+
+Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over
+the chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+shirt buttoned his license to “hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+or other devices.”
+
+He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested
+more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of
+the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen
+he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What
+he had seen was his warrant--plus the shotgun.
+
+As a “pathfinder” should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent
+grew hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and
+Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
+right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires
+had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the
+car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy
+on the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car.
+Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did
+not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked
+that hill.
+
+Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before
+him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away
+to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich.
+Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests,
+green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash
+of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had
+washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the
+glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
+those in a colored photograph; and as still.
+
+In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+
+“If he moves,” he sighed happily, “I've got him!”
+
+Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which
+he had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was
+crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing
+an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in
+poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the
+sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the
+hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall.
+With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised
+his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
+the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie
+knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him.
+Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill
+opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall.
+With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon
+the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+
+Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the
+contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill
+opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which
+he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live
+wire, stepped on tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it.
+The binoculars hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was
+spread a map. He was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he
+hummed a tune.
+
+Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+
+“Throw up your hands!” he commanded.
+
+The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no
+sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled
+valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed
+by some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the
+sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+
+Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but
+still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his
+smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief.
+These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm.
+“Don't point that thing at me!” shouted the stranger. “Is it loaded?”
+ With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length
+of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open
+palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to
+be exclaiming, “Can such things be?”
+
+“Get up!” commanded Jimmie.
+
+With alacrity the stranger rose.
+
+“Walk over there,” ordered the scout. “Walk backward. Stop! Take off
+those field-glasses and throw them to me.” Without removing his eyes
+from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed
+them to the stone wall. “See here!” he pleaded, “if you'll only point
+that damned blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my
+watch, and clothes, and all my money; only don't--”
+
+Jimmie flushed crimson. “You can't bribe me,” he growled. At least, he
+tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+
+“I'm not trying to bribe you,” he protested. “If you don't want
+anything, why are you holding me up?”
+
+“I'm not,” returned Jimmie, “I'm arresting you!”
+
+The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. “Oh,” he cried,
+“I see! Have I been trespassing?”
+
+With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall.
+“If you try to rush me,” he warned, “I'll shoot you full of buckshot.”
+
+The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. “Don't worry about that,” he
+exclaimed. “I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?”
+
+Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder,
+and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and
+menacing.
+
+“The name on them” he accused, “is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?”
+ The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, “That's
+the name of the firm that makes them.”
+
+Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. “Hah!” he cried, “made in Germany!”
+
+The stranger shook his head.
+
+“I don't understand,” he said. “Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?”
+ With polite insistence he repeated, “Would you mind telling me why I am
+arrested, and who you might happen to be?”
+
+Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But
+the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he
+saw, “Correct range, 1,800 yards”; “this stream not fordable”; “slope of
+hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery.” “Wire entanglements here”;
+“forage for five squadrons.”
+
+Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+gun motioned toward the base of the hill. “Keep forty feet ahead of me,”
+ he commanded, “and walk to your car.” The stranger did not seem to hear
+him. He spoke with irritation.
+
+“I suppose,” he said, “I'll have to explain to you about that map.”
+
+“Not to me, you won't,” declared his captor. “You're going to drive
+straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!”
+
+The stranger tossed his arms even higher. “Thank God!” he exclaimed
+gratefully.
+
+With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a
+willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's
+he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie
+held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating
+circumstance.
+
+They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a
+bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to
+his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a
+gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him
+with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting
+German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was
+great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the
+hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence
+of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a
+feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a
+halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+
+Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+not entirety successful.
+
+“I got him!” he cried. “I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!”
+
+“What one?” demanded Van Vorst.
+
+Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+
+“THAT one!” cried Jimmie. “He's a German spy!”
+
+The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+indignation, anger, reproach.
+
+“Jimmie!” he cried.
+
+Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his “Exhibit A.” “Look what
+he's wrote,” commanded the scout. “It's all military words. And these
+are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been
+stalking him for a week. He's a spy!”
+
+When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+he was puzzled.
+
+But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+
+“I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed,” he said. “I'm only glad it's
+no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every
+stranger he sees--”
+
+The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+
+“Please!” he begged, “Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+Might I speak with you--ALONE?” he asked.
+
+Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+
+“I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park,” he said. “She must have been
+a great loss to you?”
+
+“She was,” said Van Vorst. “The week before she broke her back, I
+refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?”
+
+The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+
+“I brought you inside,” he said, “because I didn't want your servants to
+hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been
+a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think
+he has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit
+as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+capture.”
+
+Van Vorst pointed to the map. “My bet is,” he said, “that you're an
+officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I
+right?”
+
+The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+
+“You're warm,” he said, “but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the
+Real Thing.” From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on
+the table. “I'm 'Sherry' McCoy,” he said, “Captain of Artillery in the
+United States Army.” He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+
+“You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not
+picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of
+defense for Americans when the Germans come!”
+
+Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+
+“My word!” he exclaimed. “You're as bad as Jimmie!”
+
+Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+
+“And you, sir,” he retorted, “are as bad as ninety million other
+Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill,
+when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe,
+you'll believe THEN.”
+
+“Are you serious?” demanded Van Vorst. “And you an army officer?”
+
+“That's why I am serious,” returned McCoy. “WE know. But when we try to
+prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in underhand ways,
+for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and accuse
+us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to prepare
+under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like a
+chicken thief. And,” he added sharply, “that's why that boy must not
+know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at
+Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed.”
+
+Van Vorst moved to the door.
+
+“He will never learn the truth from me,” he said. “For I will tell him
+you are to be shot at sunrise.”
+
+“Good!” laughed the Captain. “And tell me his name. If ever we fight
+over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And
+give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes
+from you.”
+
+But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. “You mustn't,” he
+begged; “I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if
+I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot
+at sunrise.” At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook
+with terror. “Make it for twenty years,” he begged. “Make it for ten,”
+ he coaxed, “but, please, promise you won't shoot him.”
+
+When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+smile.
+
+“I gave Jimmie your ten dollars,” said Van Vorst, “and made it twenty,
+and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to
+spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty
+years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune.”
+
+“No!” protested Captain McCoy, “We will drink to Jimmie!”
+
+When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs
+had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted
+to depart; but he was again delayed.
+
+Other visitors were arriving.
+
+Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat
+were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it
+had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted
+at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot
+with anger.
+
+“A gray touring-car,” he shouted. “It stopped here. We saw it from that
+hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?”
+
+“Who?” demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, “Captain McCoy?”
+
+The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow,
+silenced him.
+
+“Yes, Captain McCoy,” assented the driver eagerly. “Which way did he
+go?”
+
+“To New York,” said Van Vorst.
+
+The driver shrieked at his companion.
+
+“Then, he's doubled back,” he cried. “He's gone to New Haven.” He
+stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+
+A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+
+“What do you want with him?” he called “Who are you?”
+
+Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the
+car the words of the driver were flung back. “We're Secret Service from
+Washington,” he shouted. “He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!”
+
+Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+curtain of white, whirling dust.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
+and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be
+the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
+illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
+Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church,
+after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding
+floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the
+waits singing “God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.”
+
+To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in
+my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children,
+of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls,
+skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them,
+sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my
+wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation,
+and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him
+save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful
+harmony with his appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week
+longer he might safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply
+was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of Hallam Hall and
+a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of
+Ireland, and the only log on board was the one the captain kept to
+himself.
+
+I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on
+the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot,
+or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier
+conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner
+in which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But,
+either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the
+fictitious gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man
+in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from
+dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and
+icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
+
+Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers
+testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room
+crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I
+met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.
+All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that,
+though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of
+his years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have
+spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French
+watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France
+I had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to
+place. Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked
+glibly, but in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking
+the trouble to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his
+talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object.
+I felt he was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he
+might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in
+New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a
+banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in
+self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The next evening I
+discovered the motive.
+
+He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled
+that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a
+bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: “I saw you last
+summer at Aix-les-Bains.”
+
+His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for
+some particular card.
+
+“What was I doing?” he asked.
+
+“Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs.”
+
+With obvious relief he laughed.
+
+“Oh, yes,” he assented; “jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money
+there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em
+alone.” As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me
+to excuse him, he smiled appealingly. “Poker, bridge, chemin de fer,
+I like 'em all,” he rattled on, “but they don't like me. So I stick to
+solitaire. It's dull, but cheap.” He shuffled the cards clumsily. As
+though making conversation, he asked: “You care for cards yourself?”
+
+I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a
+spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been
+wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even
+of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had
+hurt him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them
+I saw in them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he
+was utterly unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man
+facing a crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry
+for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of
+the few dollars he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed
+his need was great. Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck.
+When I returned an hour later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game
+of poker.
+
+As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+
+“Don't scold, now,” he laughed; “you know I can't keep away from it.”
+
+From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends
+of long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he
+thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered:
+“Known him for years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my
+right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my
+people swear by him.”
+
+One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met
+mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see.
+“What would you draw?” he asked.
+
+His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him
+and walk on.
+
+When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we
+were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+
+“Sorry,” he said. “Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a
+hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now,” he assured me.
+“They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the
+limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark.”
+
+“And I take it you are not,” I said stiffly.
+
+He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile
+died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and
+fear.
+
+As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
+
+“I'm 'in bad,' doctor,” he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered,
+like that of a child. “I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't
+think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at
+the door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't
+work, and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could
+you--couldn't give me something to keep my head straight?”
+
+The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob
+our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly
+dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him
+to the ship's surgeon.
+
+“But I don't know HIM,” he protested.
+
+Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
+
+“Well, you certainly don't know me.”
+
+My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+
+“I know who you ARE,” he returned. “You and I--” With a deprecatory
+gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he
+stopped. “But the ship's surgeon!” he protested, “he's an awful bounder!
+Besides,” he added quite simply, “he's watching me.”
+
+“As a doctor,” I asked, “or watching you play cards?”
+
+“Play cards,” the young man answered. “I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon
+on the P. & O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I
+fancy he remembers me.”
+
+His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+
+“But you mustn't tell me that,” I protested. “I can't have you making
+trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here
+to the captain?”
+
+As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+
+He made a mock obeisance.
+
+“I claim the seal of your profession,” he said. “Nonsense,” I retorted.
+“It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that
+you are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest.”
+
+For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me
+sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+
+“I got to make expenses,” he muttered. “And, besides, all card games
+are games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway,” he
+repeated, as though disposing of all argument, “I got to make expenses.”
+
+After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat
+waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find “my
+friend.” I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance
+only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
+
+“We want to give him his revenge,” one of them volunteered.
+
+“He's losing, then?” I asked.
+
+The man chuckled complacently.
+
+“The only loser,” he said.
+
+“I wouldn't worry,” I advised. “He'll come for his revenge.”
+
+That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on
+the lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that
+with difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
+
+“I'm scared,” he stammered, “scared!”
+
+I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent
+it to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for
+myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were
+closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself
+in his arms.
+
+“Have you been drinking?” I asked.
+
+In surprise he opened his eyes.
+
+“I can't drink,” he answered simply. “It's nerves and worry. I'm tired.”
+
+He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the
+fingers lay open.
+
+“God,” he whispered, “how tired I am!”
+
+In spite of his tan--and certainly he had led the out-of-door life--his
+face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
+
+“They're crowdin' me,” the boy whispered. “They're always crowdin'
+me.” His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child
+complaining of something beyond his experience. “I can't remember when
+they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always
+movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris,
+and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there, very
+quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, too--a flat in Berkeley
+Street--roulette and chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out;
+anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on
+this. It's my last chance!”
+
+“This trip?”
+
+“No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me
+to live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back.
+I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the
+husks that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that;
+want to follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted
+calf.” He laughed sardonically. “Like hell they will! They'd rather see
+ME killed.”
+
+It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning
+repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure
+them. I suggested as much.
+
+“If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it,” I said, “and they send a
+wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly--”
+
+“I know,” he interrupted; “but I got to chance that. I GOT to make
+enough to go on with--until I see my family.”
+
+“If they won't see you?” I asked. “What then?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as
+though for him the prospect held no terror.
+
+“Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'” he said. “And I won't be a bother to
+anybody any more.”
+
+I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the
+sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+
+It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first
+appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a
+healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit;
+ready for any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so
+expert I asked him to avoid.
+
+“Can't be done!” he assured me. “I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow
+morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing.”
+
+It was the others who made the killing.
+
+I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was
+seated. The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider
+semicircle were passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's
+purser.
+
+Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the
+pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long
+cigarette-holder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult
+of angry voices, and the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly
+at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of
+my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited
+accusation.
+
+“When the ship's surgeon first met you,” he cried, “you called yourself
+Lord Ridley.”
+
+“I'll call myself anything I jolly well like,” returned Talbot. “If I
+choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my
+name to every meddling busybody that--”
+
+“You'll give it to the police, all right,” chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the
+confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he
+shouted: “And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!”
+
+The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot
+rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his
+sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: “Only too delighted
+to keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely.”
+
+But he was not to escape with the last word.
+
+His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+
+“And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer,” he shouted, “make
+sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from
+sharpers and swindlers--”
+
+Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Oh, go to the devil!” he called, and walked out into the night.
+
+The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
+
+“Bad business,” he exclaimed.
+
+“What happened?” I asked.
+
+“I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack,” he
+said. “I understand they suspected him from the first--seems our surgeon
+recognized him--and to-night they had outsiders watching him. The
+outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of the
+pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad.”
+
+I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to
+call himself Meyer.
+
+“They accused him of travelling under a false name,” explained the
+purser, “and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters.
+Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it
+seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was
+a silly ass thing to do,” protested the purser. “Everybody knows Meyer
+hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got
+away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless
+ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police.”
+
+“Has he no other way of spending his money?” I asked.
+
+“He's a confounded nuisance!” growled the purser. “He wants to show us
+he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means
+a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and,” he added with disgust,
+“these smoking-room rows never helped any line.”
+
+I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of
+a collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry
+the young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and
+then, after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at
+his cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief.
+But he would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was
+“all right,” wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the
+sleep he claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness,
+and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine
+thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly
+and trying to appear unconscious of the glances--amused, contemptuous,
+hostile--that were turned toward him. He would have passed me without
+speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed
+quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+
+“What are you going to do?” I asked.
+
+“Doesn't depend on me,” he said. “Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy
+little body!”
+
+The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I
+saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke
+in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident
+no longer was of interest.
+
+“They were watching me,” he said. “But I knew they were, and besides, no
+matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and
+they'd never have seen it. But I didn't.”
+
+My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+
+“I didn't!” he repeated stubbornly. “I didn't have to! I was playing
+in luck--wonderful luck--sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning. But
+because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful not
+to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the cards
+they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I
+could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the
+air, shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to
+believe; they didn't want the facts.”
+
+It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling
+the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather
+harshly, I said:
+
+“They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer,
+either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?”
+
+Talbot did not answer.
+
+“Why?” I insisted.
+
+The boy laughed impudently.
+
+“How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?” he protested. “It was
+a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are
+Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by
+me.”
+
+“But you,” I retorted impatiently, “are not a Jew!”
+
+“I am not,” said Talbot, “but I've often SAID I was. It's helped--lots
+of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer,
+instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew.” He smiled and
+turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the
+police, he began to enumerate:
+
+“Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic,
+according to taste. Do you see?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“But it didn't work,” he concluded. “I picked the wrong Jew.”
+
+His face grew serious. “Do you suppose that Smedburg person has
+wirelessed that banker?”
+
+I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+
+“And what will Meyer do?” he asked. “Will he drop it or make a fuss?
+What sort is he?”
+
+Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew
+in New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his
+own race.
+
+“Then maybe,” cried Talbot hopefully, “he won't make a row, and my
+family won't hear of it!”
+
+He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted,
+his shoulders straightened.
+
+And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+
+“Look!” he whispered. “There, at the end of the wharf--the little Jew in
+furs!”
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected
+by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker,
+philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
+
+We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face
+of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad
+business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot
+and found him gone.
+
+His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a
+growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It
+seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and
+dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose
+Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other
+empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one
+gave heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no
+one was in a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the
+gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck
+to deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced
+blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men,
+pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought,
+only to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the
+last of the passengers was leaving it.
+
+I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
+white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
+why I was wanted.
+
+“The ship's surgeon, sir,” he stammered, “asks you please to hurry to
+the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!”
+
+On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
+eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
+Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
+darkened.
+
+I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+
+“It was HE sent for you,” he said, “but he doesn't need you.
+Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!”
+
+The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
+
+“I was so tired,” he whispered. “Always moving me on. I was so tired!”
+
+Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar
+them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to
+one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable
+coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+
+For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
+staring at the face on the pillow.
+
+Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand
+of the card-sharp.
+
+“Heine!” he begged. “Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
+little brother Adolph!”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Cross Girl
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Commentator: Gouverneur Morris
+
+Posting Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1733]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED CROSS GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
+
+By Richard Harding Davis
+
+With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     Introduction by Gouverneur Morris
+
+     1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+     2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+     3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+     4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+     5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+     6. THE MIND READER
+
+     7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+     8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+     9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                         R. H. D.
+
+     "And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+     unafraid."
+
+He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and
+so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
+middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
+have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
+brother was Peter Pan.
+
+Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of
+sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites
+against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and
+medicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go
+elephant shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants.
+Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I
+think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman.
+Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said the last word. Do you
+remember the Happy Hunting Ground in "The Bar Sinister"?--"Where nobody
+hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt."
+
+Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
+sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
+out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of
+them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary
+member of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
+friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was
+another.
+
+To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
+thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better
+than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted
+every corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he
+played a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed,
+or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for
+hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But
+about the other fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes
+of wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the
+invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
+talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the
+slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they
+were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and
+color. With the written word or the spoken word he was the greatest
+recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps,
+that ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners
+and customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
+truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to
+his special articles and to his letters. Read over again the Queen's
+Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through
+Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a
+friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the
+same again.
+
+But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in
+due time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
+
+One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact
+with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a
+good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he
+distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it.
+Men go to him tired and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be
+alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil
+himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect.
+And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but
+from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of
+knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and
+discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the
+scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a
+book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and
+from the receiver there poured into you affection and encouragement.
+
+But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
+temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or
+too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
+invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants
+in the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and
+the baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
+double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
+disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+
+He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid
+of them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much
+he loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,
+unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then
+the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great
+heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite
+bliss, akin to anguish.
+
+One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
+telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that
+little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has
+suffered....
+
+Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed
+to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and
+though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with
+dignity and without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H.
+D. thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm
+the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was
+taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R.
+H. D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they
+wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the
+iris. And then back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
+adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind
+him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a
+gardener who blushed and smiled in the darkness under the Actinidia
+vines.
+
+It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was
+with us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
+dependent upon each other in many ways.
+
+Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
+complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
+needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
+time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
+where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had
+no name. Now it is called "Let's Pretend."
+
+Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
+built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but
+we pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
+fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
+pretendings, until real troubles went down before them--down and out.
+
+It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
+lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were
+in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or
+two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against
+gray cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It
+never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of
+the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four
+for tennis and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we
+sat in front of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and
+talked until the next morning.
+
+He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure
+not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the
+moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his
+knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good
+Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the
+Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
+sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
+there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day began with
+attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted
+with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a
+loud and joyous singing of ballads.
+
+At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
+marble, gone down the ages as "statue of a young athlete." He stood
+six feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine
+head carried by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a
+child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He
+was the weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
+tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that
+he could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
+
+The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door
+you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at
+work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a
+stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written
+and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in
+that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure
+to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send
+you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn
+a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half
+column of unsigned print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find time to
+praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged from his room
+at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and
+whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and
+carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters and telegrams.
+
+Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
+dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced
+in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is,
+or ought to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest.
+Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of
+statesmen, laughter and sentiment--to him, at breakfast, these things
+were as important as sausages and thick cream.
+
+Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's
+work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
+conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper,
+he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a
+wistful glance, and hurry to his workroom.
+
+He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
+wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
+and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and
+he didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously
+human, flowed from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of
+corresponding, "The German March Through Brussels," was probably written
+almost as fast as he could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the
+fastest talker I ever heard), but when it came to fiction he had no
+facility at all. Perhaps I should say that he held in contempt any
+facility that he may have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy
+and Joblike patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all. Every
+phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could think of,
+the fittest in his relentless judgment to survive. Phrases, paragraphs,
+pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He worked
+upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile
+turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description
+from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair
+of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a
+turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of omitting one by one
+those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and after each
+omission he would ask himself: "Does the picture remain?" If it did not,
+he restored the detail which he had just omitted, and experimented with
+the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on, until after Herculean
+labor there remained for the reader one of those swiftly flashed,
+ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which his tales and
+romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+
+But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
+emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
+and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
+writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
+never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he
+has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
+circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
+stand in their present order until--after lunch.
+
+A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
+denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
+him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
+own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
+Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after
+many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
+it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the
+smoke there was in it.
+
+He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
+whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
+toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
+far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
+fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps
+I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a
+will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction
+his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never
+obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
+must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into
+any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the
+heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young
+people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of
+virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not
+furnish examples.
+
+Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
+had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him
+in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get
+your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without
+any trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid
+mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were
+going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram
+from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next
+day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my
+own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
+liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him
+so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.
+
+Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
+he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
+matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter
+that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to
+it.
+
+Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
+their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And
+it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them;
+her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under
+fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away
+upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.
+We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken
+arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two
+hours and a half.
+
+I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give
+more than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space
+at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch
+upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
+Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from
+which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers;
+those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
+quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous
+exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
+He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning
+to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time
+looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue
+is owing in some measure to him.
+
+R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
+peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
+infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
+country to see the matter in the same way.
+
+I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface
+of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which
+was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
+"personal interviews" which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
+important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
+which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a
+fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain."
+
+There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
+men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
+men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his work?
+And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be
+sure that I am right.
+
+An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
+Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his
+brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer
+are subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his
+powers of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate,
+too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.
+
+The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
+the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts us and
+there is nothing to hunt."
+
+GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
+
+
+
+Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
+wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills
+above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story,
+and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day
+in October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great
+lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across
+the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+
+Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
+night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he
+was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York
+from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
+already he was a "star" man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+
+"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor. "With the
+speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns."
+
+"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect type-written
+speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
+any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
+trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men
+in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
+story in that?"
+
+"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to be glad to
+get a day in the country."
+
+"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If you'd
+wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
+every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself."
+
+"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New York except
+cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the
+sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle
+of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except
+on the women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the
+elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts
+in department stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we
+never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women
+who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a
+Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!"
+
+"How curious!" said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the street and
+made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
+are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
+they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
+they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
+under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
+are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble."
+
+The city editor sighed. "How young you are!" he exclaimed. "However,
+to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be
+few women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in
+convalescents--and you do not look like a convalescent."
+
+Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
+overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
+assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
+him give away a million dollars.
+
+"Aren't you going to get his speech?", asked Redding, the staff
+photographer.
+
+"Get HIS speech!" said Sam. "They have Pinkertons all over the grounds
+to see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to
+hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the
+first train back to the centre of civilization."
+
+"There's going to be a fine lunch," said Redding, "and reporters are
+expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were."
+
+Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his
+armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his
+clothes and always treated them with courtesy.
+
+"You can have my share," he said. "I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
+minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have
+a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
+Rochelle."
+
+He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron
+gates; but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble
+barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform
+of a nursing sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar
+turned down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet.
+A bow of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had
+hair like golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such
+health and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
+
+She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
+as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+
+Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that
+other people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have
+observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out
+that which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says:
+"That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that." And so
+warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the
+indiscreet utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does
+not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning under
+screaming headlines.
+
+Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
+official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
+swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
+that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
+Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him
+was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would
+have guessed that he observed that--least of all Sister Anne. He stood
+in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
+impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt--as though
+his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
+
+"I am from the REPUBLIC," he said. "Everybody is so busy here to-day
+that I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,"
+he added disappointedly, "because it's so well done that people ought
+to know about it." He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was
+apparent that the ignorance of the public concerning their excellence
+greatly annoyed him.
+
+When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in
+alarm--obviously she was upon the point of instant flight.
+
+"You are a reporter?" she said.
+
+Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
+they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others--only
+reporters know how few--would as soon place themselves in the hands of a
+dentist.
+
+"A reporter from the REPUBLIC," repeated Sam.
+
+"But why ask ME?" demanded Sister Anne.
+
+Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
+he glanced at her uniform.
+
+"I thought you were at work here," he said simply. "I beg your pardon."
+
+He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
+impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+
+"There was no other reason," persisted Sister Anne. "I mean for speaking
+to me?"
+
+The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
+this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
+hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
+
+"I am sorry," said Sam. "I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and,
+as you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics
+about the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color."
+
+Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
+she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly
+he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this
+young woman that at the mere approach of a reporter--even of such a
+nice-looking reporter as himself--she should shake and shudder. "If
+that's what you really want to know," said Sister Anne doubtfully, "I'll
+try and help you; but," she added, looking at him as one who issues an
+ultimatum, "you must not say anything about me!"
+
+Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class
+will always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so
+that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young
+woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her?
+Much as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: "The
+Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful
+of all living women." No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as
+there was nothing to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to
+say nothing. Sister Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled,
+not because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the
+promise amused her. Sam wondered why.
+
+Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of
+the hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about
+one person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
+containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated
+by Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne--only
+to exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
+unselfishness of her nature.
+
+"Do you really scrub the floors?" he demanded--"I mean you
+yourself--down on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing
+brush?"
+
+Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+
+"We do that when we first come here," she said--"when we are
+probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?"
+
+"And these awful patients," demanded Sam--"do you wait on them? Do you
+have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?" He
+glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
+annihilate them. "It's not fair!" exclaimed Sam. "It's ridiculous. I'd
+like to choke them!"
+
+"That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents," said Sister
+Anne.
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean," said Sam. "Here are you--if
+you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
+person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
+and cripples."
+
+"Nor is that quite the way we look at," said Sister Anne.
+
+"We?" demanded Sam.
+
+Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+
+"I'm not the only nurse here," she said "There are over forty."
+
+"You are the only one here," said Sam, "who is not! That's Just what
+I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
+ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not talking about anybody
+else; I'm talking about you--you are too young! Somehow you are
+different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
+sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds."
+
+Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Sam stiffly.
+
+"No--pardon me," said Sister Anne; "but your ideas of the duties of a
+nurse are so quaint."
+
+"No matter what the duties are," declared Sam; "You should not be here!"
+
+Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders--as
+delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+
+"One must live," said Sister Anne.
+
+They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows
+of rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them
+stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated
+herself upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the
+flashing waters of the Sound.
+
+"Yes; that's it," she repeated softly--"one must live."
+
+Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
+looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
+occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
+heightened by the fact that "the woman was very fair." He conceded
+that. He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced
+by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his
+feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her profession, the
+gentlest and most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed
+that this young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish
+sick people.
+
+"If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
+there are other ways of earning a living."
+
+The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere--and again she
+smiled.
+
+"Now what would you suggest?" she asked. "You see," she said, "I have no
+one to advise me--no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
+I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so
+I doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own
+work must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living.
+Maybe you could advise me?"
+
+Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his
+salary would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember
+which of the men in the office were married, and whether they were
+those whose salaries were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy
+editors, he knew, was very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was
+married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office to take
+her to the theatre, and often Sam had thought she was extremely well
+dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear
+would be a matter of indifference; but then women did not always look
+at it that way. Sam was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life
+position that his silence had become significant; and to cover his real
+thoughts he said hurriedly:
+
+"Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
+difficult."
+
+"And manicuring?" suggested Sister Anne.
+
+Sam exclaimed in horror.
+
+"You!" he cried roughly. "For you! Quite impossible!"
+
+"Why for me?" said the girl.
+
+In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
+walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
+see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
+
+"You?" protested Sam. "You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
+are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!" His vehemence
+was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
+gravel walk, his profile toward her--and, unobserved, she could study
+his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
+good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city
+editor, his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes
+full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. "How much do they give you
+a month?" "Forty dollars," answered Sister Anne. "This is what hurts me
+about it," said Sam.
+
+"It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
+are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to
+work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However,
+probably you know that better than I do."
+
+"No; I don't know that," said Sister Anne.
+
+Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
+statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
+relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
+complete stranger--even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but,
+though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+
+"I think you are working too hard," he said, smiling happily. "I think
+you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever
+give you a day off?"
+
+"Next Saturday," said Sister Anne. "Why?"
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
+going to prescribe a day off for you--a day entirely away from iodoform
+and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and a
+lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh--or cry,
+if you like that better--and then, maybe, some fresh air in the park in
+a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see you
+safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer," he added hurriedly,
+"I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself and doing
+all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of the
+other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only, honestly,
+I hope you won't!"
+
+The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not
+say so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost
+laughing with happiness.
+
+"I think that would be quite delightful," said Sister Anne,"--quite
+delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't
+bring another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great
+deal of money. I think we might cut out the taxicab--and walk in the
+park and feed the squirrels."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Sam in disappointment,--"then you know Central Park?"
+
+Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+
+"I once lived near there," she said.
+
+"In Harlem?"
+
+"Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young," said Sister
+Anne. "Since then I have always lived in the country or in--other
+places."
+
+Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+
+"It's so kind of you to consent," he cried. "Indeed, you are the kindest
+person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
+sick people, and, now I know."
+
+"It is you who are kind," protested Sister Anne, "to take pity on me."
+
+"Pity on you!" laughed Sam. "You can't pity a person who can do more
+with a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now," he
+demanded in happy anticipation, "where are we to meet?"
+
+"That's it," said Sister Anne. "Where are we to meet?"
+
+"Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,"
+said Sam; "and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
+want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh," exclaimed Sam joyfully, "it
+will be a wonderful day--a wonderful day!"
+
+Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
+wistfully. She held out her hand.
+
+"I must go back to my duties," she said. "Good-by."
+
+"Not good-by," said Sam heartily, "only until Saturday--and my name's
+Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
+name?"
+
+"Sister Anne," said the girl. "In the nursing order to which I belong we
+have no last names."
+
+"So," asked Sam, "I'll call you Sister Anne?"
+
+"No; just Sister," said the girl.
+
+"Sister!" repeated Sam, "Sister!" He breathed the word rather than spoke
+it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made
+it carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said
+"Sweetheart!" or "Beloved!" "I'll not forget," said Sam.
+
+Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+
+"Nor I," she said.
+
+Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
+cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over
+again and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed
+their next meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would
+meet her with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her
+when they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way
+would be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to
+be the most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be
+the slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance--and it should
+cost half his week's salary.
+
+The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he
+had observed that women had strange ideas about clothes--some of them
+thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some
+of them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction
+upon the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He
+was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she
+must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
+conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
+would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
+eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning
+each week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the
+birthday of his life! No, he contradicted--the day he had first met her
+must always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one
+like her and he was sure there never would be one like her. She was
+so entirely superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult--in her
+manner there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her
+simple nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a
+princess in fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged
+her to let him for one day personally conduct her over the great city!
+"You are so kind to take pity on me," she had said. He thought of many
+clever, pretty speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had
+not thought of them at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in
+front of him.
+
+He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
+beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous
+that one so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry
+living--forty dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her
+sit in the flat where one could look at her; for already he had decided
+that, when they were married, they would live in a flat--probably in
+one overlooking Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several
+attractive suites there at thirty-five dollars a week--or, if she
+preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return
+to the country. In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he
+conceded even that sacrifice.
+
+When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
+at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
+carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
+already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+
+After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
+the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way
+to a waiting motor car and said, "Home!" to the chauffeur. He drove
+her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors
+called the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
+Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on
+the Sound.
+
+There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted
+her noisily.
+
+"I have had a most splendid adventure!" said Sister Anne. "There were
+six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
+programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real
+nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about
+it to keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry
+for me; and...."
+
+One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself
+on knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights
+and prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
+
+"Don't you believe it!" he interrupted. "That man who was talking to you
+was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was
+just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who
+wouldn't know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper."
+
+Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+
+"He did not know me!" she protested. "It quite upset him that I should
+be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds."
+
+There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+
+"I told him," continued Sister Anne, "that I got forty dollars a month,
+and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
+be a manicurist."
+
+"Oh, Anita!" protested the admiring chorus.
+
+"And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
+manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
+me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
+drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
+park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
+We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
+He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'"
+
+"Oh, Anita!" shrieked the chorus.
+
+Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
+American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
+Anita Flagg, was amused.
+
+"What an awfully jolly rag!" he cried. "And what are you going to do
+about it?"
+
+"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making me
+ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
+And," she added, "that's all there is to that!"
+
+That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
+Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: "I want to hear
+you call me Sister."
+
+"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you," he
+whispered, "what I'd like to call you!"
+
+"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say Sister
+once. Say it as though you meant it."
+
+"But I don't mean it," protested his lordship. "I've said already what
+I...."
+
+"Never mind what you've said already," commanded Miss Flagg. "I've heard
+that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once."
+
+His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+
+"Sister!" he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+
+Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
+though she were cold.
+
+"Not a bit like it, Deptford," she said. "Good-night."
+
+Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was
+to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
+window looking out toward the great city to the south.
+
+When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that
+young woman to shriek with amazement.
+
+"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
+cry?"
+
+It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She
+turned upon the tactless intruder.
+
+"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty
+dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor
+and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more
+than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
+millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care
+of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
+met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
+do?"
+
+"Why, Anita!" exclaimed Miss Page.
+
+"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what you'd do: You'd
+go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
+from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love
+me--and love me!"
+
+"And why don't you?" cried Helen Page.
+
+"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita Flagg. "Because
+I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?"
+
+At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward,
+in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing
+Sam's story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar
+was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine
+ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in
+mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue
+pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk
+and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins
+rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these
+explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no
+more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
+office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"
+
+The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
+impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
+was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
+clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
+came back to earth.
+
+"What's what?" Sam demanded.
+
+At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the
+room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward
+Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was
+late--and it was important.
+
+"What's wrong?" he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
+
+"Read the opening paragraph," protested Collins. "It's like that for a
+column! It's all about a girl--about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about
+Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story at
+all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
+what it is. And, what's worse," wailed the copy editor defiantly and
+to the amazement of all, "it's so darned good that you can't touch it.
+You've got to let it go or kill it."
+
+The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade,
+were racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at
+Collins.
+
+"Is it all like that?"
+
+"There's a column like that!"
+
+"Run it just as it is," commanded the managing editor. "Use it for your
+introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
+out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
+with pictures." He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+
+"What's the idea, Ward?" he said. "This is a newspaper--not a magazine!"
+
+The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
+had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
+reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also
+smiled, but unhappily.
+
+"I know it's not news, Sir," he said; "but that's the way I saw the
+story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the
+governor's staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside,
+this girl right on the job--taking care of the sick and wounded. It
+seemed to me that a million from a man that won't miss a million didn't
+stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I
+wanted to say," continued Sam stoutly "was that the moving spirit of the
+hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women
+who do the work--the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you
+called 'The Red Cross Girl.'"
+
+Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
+traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
+
+"But it's not news!"
+
+"It's not news," said Elliott doubtfully; "but it's the kind of story
+that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives
+men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the
+illegitimate sister.'"
+
+It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to
+a girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was
+this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return
+for its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
+business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it
+served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and
+incidentally a million other people, how deeply he honored her; how
+clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant
+Sister Anne, save two people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and
+for him that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real
+incidents of the day; he had described her as she passed through the
+wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the
+little acts of consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
+
+The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
+and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
+her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
+he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
+after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the
+front page was his story, "The Red Cross Girl." It had the place of
+honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his
+own story was one of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken
+of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform of
+mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of
+the camera. There was no mistaking her for any other living woman;
+but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a
+strange and grotesque legend.
+
+"Daughter of Millionaire Flagg," it read, "in a New Role, Miss Anita
+Flagg as The Red Cross Girl."
+
+For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper
+so that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From
+below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting--cable cars jangled, taxis
+hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
+shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A
+girl he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever--worse than
+that had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that
+made no difference, or just as little difference as it would have made
+had Sister Anne really lived and really died.
+
+At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
+party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone
+at the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
+Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the
+table and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press,
+had pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking
+at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
+surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
+fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading "The Red
+Cross Girl"; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent
+slumber, her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks
+the color flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read
+as far as a paragraph beginning, "When Sister Anne walked between them
+those who suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces
+to the rain," she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+
+"Any man," cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
+servants, "who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
+and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might
+be like that--if any man would help."
+
+She gave her attention to the telephone and "Information." She demanded
+to be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr.
+Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
+
+"I'm tired of being called a good sport," she protested, "by men who
+aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
+money--as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on
+his shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
+good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint;
+and he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy--and I like being made
+dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!"
+
+
+"Be still!" implored Helen Page. "Any one might think you meant it!" She
+nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
+
+"Ye gods, Parker!" cried Anita Flagg. "Does it take three of you to pour
+a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three
+caught me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the
+telephone and that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!"
+
+The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. "And
+what's more," Anita hurled after them, "get your bets down quick, for
+after I meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!"
+
+Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
+office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
+happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the
+only person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she
+refused to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, "I'll call him up
+later," and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for
+all the beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+
+To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
+particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
+opposite the cathedral.
+
+"You're the very man I want," said Hollworthy joyously--"you've got to
+decide a bet."
+
+He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+
+"It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
+who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you
+knew. I bet her a theatre party."
+
+To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had
+even been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he
+had no right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know
+what Sister Anne had meant to him?
+
+"I'm afraid you lose," he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
+leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+
+"You don't say so!" exclaimed that young man. "Fancy one of you chaps
+being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in--getting up
+a story for the Sunday supplement."
+
+Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet
+to escape. "And, instead of your fooling her," exclaimed Holworthy
+incredulously, "she was having fun, with you!"
+
+With difficulty Sam smiled.
+
+"So it would seem," he said.
+
+"She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!" exclaimed Holworthy
+admiringly. "I thought she was making it up--she must have made some of
+it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
+so is it?"
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"By Jove!" cried Holworthy--"and that you invited her to see the
+moving-picture shows?"
+
+Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket,
+smiled pleasantly.
+
+"Did she say I said that--or you?" he asked
+
+"She did."
+
+"Well, then, I must have said it."
+
+Holworthy roared with amusement.
+
+"And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?"
+
+Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+
+"Yes; I said that too."
+
+"And I thought she was making it up!" exclaimed Holworthy. "We did
+laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself."
+
+Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+
+"You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita
+Flagg--just as if she were nobody!"
+
+"I don't think," said Sam, "that was my idea." He waved his stick at a
+passing taxi. "I'm late," he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
+chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
+had made.
+
+An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
+telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
+
+"You're wanted on the 'phone," he commanded. His voice dropped to an
+awed whisper. "Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!"
+
+The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
+this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
+never met.
+
+"Say you can't find me," he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
+precipitately.
+
+"The lady says she wants your telephone number--says she must have it."
+
+"Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules--and hang
+up."
+
+Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
+informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg--the rich,
+the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
+morning--had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
+thrown down--and thrown hard!
+
+That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
+entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
+whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+
+Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+
+"Ward," he began abruptly, "I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
+It's on account of that story of this morning."
+
+Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served
+so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that,
+considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was
+causing him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of
+position did not disturb him. In the last month too many managing
+editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious
+as to the future. So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say
+without resentment:
+
+"Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+
+"I did," returned Elliott; "I liked it so much that I'm sending you to
+a bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as
+our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work;
+and if you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday."
+
+After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air.
+He could not believe it was real--that it was actually to him it had
+happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events,
+to come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of
+reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh
+Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and
+the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback
+only to his happiness--there was no one with whom he might divide it.
+He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with
+some one who would understand how much it meant to him, who would really
+care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would
+have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to
+accept them--begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and
+terrifying capital of the world, and start the new life together.
+
+Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
+Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
+because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
+his admiration--and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
+ingenuously he had shown it to her--meant nothing; but because the girl
+he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
+marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
+ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous
+when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a
+hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could
+not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself
+had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
+
+Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
+as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be.
+His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
+impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
+of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that.
+Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and
+flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who
+wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got
+the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and
+said sharp, bitter things that made her appear hard and heartless.
+
+As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
+addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
+Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so--when on arriving at the
+office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
+reading, "Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
+begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg "--he
+was able to reply: "Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
+person, who unfortunately has since died!"'
+
+When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes
+tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned
+miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
+
+"But why does he do it to me?" Her tone was that of the bewildered child
+who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
+without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
+
+Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
+changed into a very angry young woman.
+
+"And what's more," she announced, "he can't do it to me!"
+
+She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
+it was signed, "Sister Anne."
+
+In an hour the answer came: "Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
+She is dead."
+
+Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was
+not in his nature to be rude--certainly not to a woman, especially not
+to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name
+was Anita or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he
+assured himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could
+see in a well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was
+of no interest to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing
+their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that
+she looked upon him as one entirely out of her world--as one with whom
+she could do an unconventional thing and make a good story about it
+later, knowing that it would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+
+He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance.
+And, besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He
+no longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy.
+He was now a man with a responsible position--one who soon would be
+conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage
+by the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
+correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
+as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
+
+Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased
+tickets. And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have
+occupied could not be filled by any other person. It would have been
+sacrilege. At least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through
+dinner, which he ate alone at the same restaurant to which he had
+intended taking her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And
+at the theatre, where there was going forward the most popular of all
+musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the audience, appeared
+wastefully empty, was to him filled with her gracious presence. That
+Sister Anne was not there--that the pretty romance he had woven about
+her had ended in disaster--filled, him with real regret. He was glad he
+was leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing would
+remind him of her. And then he glanced up--and looked straight into her
+eyes!
+
+He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
+Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
+farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
+stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
+full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him.
+There were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
+enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
+the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was
+all in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing
+suit; round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
+curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
+rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee,
+was gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with
+excitement.
+
+When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized
+her, she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her
+the ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
+neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over
+his left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but
+some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the
+stage and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but
+it was a cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly
+sought the stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to
+be laughing; and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile
+exposed pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble
+like those of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard
+smile--and heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
+
+"That's all she cares." he told himself.
+
+It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did,
+she kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister
+Anne.
+
+For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained
+upon her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly
+and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the'
+darkest recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage
+by a barrier of women's hats.
+
+"Your friend Mr. Ward," she began abruptly, in a whisper, "is the
+rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the
+other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved
+abominably--like a boor--like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor?
+Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt
+me?"
+
+"Hurt you?" exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. "Don't be
+ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is?
+Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too
+good-looking; and a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him.
+So when one of them laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the
+trouble. I could see that when I was telling him."
+
+"Telling him!" repeated Miss Flagg--"Telling him what?"
+
+"About what a funny story you made of it," explained Holworthy. "About
+his having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with
+him."
+
+Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+
+"Oh!" she said softly. "So-so you told him that, did you? And--what else
+did you tell him?"
+
+"Only what you told us--that he said 'the day could not begin too soon';
+that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands of men
+who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Did I tell you he said that?" breathed Anita Flagg.
+
+"You know you did," said Holworthy.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"I must have been mad!" said the girl.
+
+There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+
+"I'm afraid you are angry," he ventured.
+
+"Angry!" exclaimed Miss Flagg. "I should say I was angry, but not with
+you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
+let you take me out into the lobby."
+
+With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage
+and seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had
+destroyed his ideal of a sweet and noble woman--and he was sorry for
+Miss Flagg because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be
+that man did not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and,
+indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his
+friends on the stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he
+would take himself out of the front row, to give him back his money at
+the box office. Sam certainly wished to take himself away; but he did
+not want to admit that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that
+the presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his evening--could, in the
+slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling
+that he was in a false position; that if he were it was his own fault;
+that he had acted like an ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful
+feeling.
+
+When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the
+second act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance
+running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude
+to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
+Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at
+him--whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense;
+again making his advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that
+he flushed indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+
+And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
+figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past
+him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to
+speak--and Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to
+give him time; for, without regarding him in the least, and as though
+to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and
+deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent
+toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile reproaching
+him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him
+gently:
+
+"This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
+enough of it?"
+
+Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or
+of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal--and something else
+that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
+
+For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
+remorsefully.
+
+"It's not Anita Flagg at all," he said. "It's Sister Anne come back to
+life again!" The girl shook her head.
+
+"No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met
+and I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that
+was before I understood--before I read what you wrote about Sister
+Anne--about the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I
+knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and
+gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
+there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you called me
+Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I
+wanted you to say it."
+
+She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near that her
+shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
+scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest.
+Half of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with
+the greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky
+youth in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
+
+The young people in the front row did not know they were observed.
+They were alone--as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
+sweeping above the clouds.
+
+"Say it again," prompted Anita Flagg "Sister."
+
+"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say this," he
+whispered: "I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
+the finest woman who has ever lived!"
+
+Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
+at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but that sounds just as good."
+
+When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
+box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper;
+but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
+
+"We can see this act," she said, "or--my car's in front of the
+theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three. Which
+would you prefer?"
+
+"Don't make me laugh!" said Sam.
+
+As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but
+paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
+
+"There's only one thing," she said to Sam, "that is making me unhappy;
+and because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am
+leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next
+Wednesday."
+
+"My business is to gather news," said Sam, "but in all my life I never
+gathered such good news as that."
+
+"Good news!" exclaimed Anita.
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "I am leaving, America--am spending the winter
+in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but that
+is not what makes me unhappy."
+
+"Tell me," begged Anita.
+
+"Some day," said Sam.
+
+The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea--as they
+leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
+
+"This is my unhappiness," said Sam--and he pointed to a name on the
+passenger list. It was: "The Earl of Deptford, and valet." "And because
+he is on board!"
+
+Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+
+"He is not on board," she said. "He changed to another boat."
+
+Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
+soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.
+
+"Why did he change?" he begged.
+
+Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
+despair.
+
+"Is that all that is worrying you?" she said.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their
+examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This
+may or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But
+whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior
+year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them
+even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have
+been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It
+was the professors who cheated.
+
+At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you
+can score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief
+history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has
+attained it. After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for
+the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where
+he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest
+they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.
+Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.
+
+The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects
+in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an
+average of ninety, you are passed "with honors"; if of seventy-five, you
+pass "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike
+the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The
+whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be
+lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined
+that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would
+see that he passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of
+awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much,
+but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his
+dignified title the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who
+dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater,
+who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting
+Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his
+official resignation.
+
+Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
+president. If he did not actually run after money he went where
+money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who
+possessed it. And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through
+a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose
+to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool,
+or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to
+it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious
+instructor.
+
+He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
+examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
+inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
+
+"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
+"Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride,
+and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let
+us hope he will pull through." For four years every professor had been
+pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.
+They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of
+him forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew
+that of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle
+would hold the blank cartridge.
+
+The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at
+Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of
+those well-known text-books, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and
+Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had
+been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back,
+the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and
+worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always
+possessed a contemporary and news interest.
+
+"Here is a review of the history," he would say--he always referred to
+it as "the" history--"that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT."
+
+In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it
+was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
+
+The members of his class who were examined on the "Rise and Fall," and
+who invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the
+"Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the.... Fall." The history began when
+Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to
+Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds
+with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since
+Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.
+When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish
+Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume
+that would cover the last three centuries.
+
+"In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book," said the chancellor, "I
+think the Russian-Turkish War should be included."
+
+Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in
+mild reproach. "The war in the Crimea!" he exclaimed. "Why, I was alive
+at the time. I know about it. That is not history."
+
+Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
+knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
+trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
+Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history
+certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which
+he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with
+malice toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked "five."
+
+Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty.
+In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but
+they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single
+point higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five
+completely knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter
+was "found" and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only
+son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private
+college--the son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the
+new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and
+the Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim
+hall of the Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own
+disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-glass window cast upon his
+nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter
+wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he desired laurels he had not won,
+but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to
+be. Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that
+followed made Stillwater history.
+
+"My son is not an ass!" is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
+Doctor Black. "And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
+the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.
+And I'll send my money where I send Peter."
+
+In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the
+son and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had
+failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say
+that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college
+president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a
+conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He
+lowered his voice.
+
+"There has been contemptible work here," he whispered--"spite and a mean
+spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I
+find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our
+college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance--Doctor Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary." This did
+not happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford
+to be too particular.
+
+"I have seen no reason for raising his salary--and there you have the
+explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his
+mark. In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own
+downfall. I have already asked for his resignation."
+
+Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this
+particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem
+humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than
+that his son was an idiot.
+
+"I don't want the man discharged," he protested, "just because Peter is
+lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he
+sacrificed my Peter in order to get even...."
+
+"That," exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, "is exactly what he did!
+Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all
+over America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an
+increase in salary it was really you who refused it--and he struck at
+you through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself
+shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly
+not your brilliant son--look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club
+and foot-ball tour--is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman
+went too far. And he has been justly punished!"
+
+What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor
+told him, and his opinion of the matter as expressed to Peter, differed
+materially.
+
+"They tell me," he concluded, "that in the fall they will give you
+another examination, and if you pass then, you will get your degree. No
+one will know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the side-door
+like a cold potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that
+when your classmates stood up and got their parchments--the thing they'd
+been working for four years, the only reason for their going to college
+at all--YOU were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you
+don't get your degree next fall that will be my fault. I've supported
+you through college and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you
+deliver them next fall, or you can support yourself."
+
+"That will be all right," said Peter humbly; "I'll pass next fall."
+
+"I'm going to make sure of that," said Hallowell senior. "To-morrow you
+will take those history books that you did not open, especially Gilman's
+'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you
+will travel for the entire summer with a private tutor...."
+
+Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-ball teams
+over half of the Middle States and daily bullied and browbeat them,
+protested with indignation. "WON'T travel with a private tutor!"
+
+"If I say so," returned Hallowell senior grimly, "you'll travel with
+a governess and a trained nurse, and wear a strait jacket. And you'll
+continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward.
+And in order that you may know it backward--and forward you will spend
+this summer in Turkey--in Constantinople--until I send you permission to
+come home."
+
+"Constantinople!" yelled Peter. "In August! Are you serious?"
+
+"Do I look it?" asked Peter's father. He did.
+
+"In Constantinople," explained Mr. Hallowell senior, "there will be
+nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself
+every minute you will be imbibing history and local color."
+
+"I'll be imbibing fever,", returned Peter, "and sunstroke and sudden
+death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you send me to the island
+where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to
+study about Turkey."
+
+"You do!" said his father.
+
+Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he
+hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving them away to the members
+of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was, and to
+bid him good-by. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him
+were loyally enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments,
+and to that end they planned a mock trial of the "Rise and Fall," at
+which a packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to
+hang Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with a rope round its neck was
+even then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silver-white
+beard and the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations.
+He did not know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he
+protested that the horse-play of his friends would make him appear a
+bad loser. "It would look, boys," he said, "as though I couldn't take my
+medicine. Looks like kicking against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman
+fought fair. He gave me just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight
+more of him than do of that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal
+nerve to pretend I scored fifty!"
+
+Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus,
+gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see. Since that
+morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater
+College. They were retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly,
+cutting down unnecessary expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black
+was too intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was
+far too innocent of evil, far too detached from college politics to
+suspect. He would remain a professor emeritus on half pay, but he no
+longer would teach. The college he had served for thirty years-since
+it consisted of two brick buildings and a faculty of ten young men--no
+longer needed him. Even his ivy-covered cottage, in which his wife and
+he had lived for twenty years, in which their one child had died, would
+at the beginning of the next term be required of him. But the college
+would allow him those six months in which to "look round." So, just
+outside the circle of light from his student lamp, he sat in his study,
+and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of Socrates. He was not
+considering ways and means. They must be faced later. He was considering
+how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What eviction from
+that house would mean to her no one but he understood. Since the day
+their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her
+playroom, bedroom, and nursery had been altered, nothing had been
+touched. To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given
+child was still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living
+presence. When at night the professor and his wife sat at either end
+of the study table, reading by the same lamp, he would see her suddenly
+lift her head, alert and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step
+had sounded, as though from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her.
+And when they would be forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some
+students' boarding-house, though they could take with them their books,
+their furniture, their mutual love and comradeship, they must leave
+behind them the haunting presence of the child, the colored pictures she
+had cut from the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls,
+the rambler roses that with her own hands she had planted and that now
+climbed to her window and each summer peered into her empty room.
+
+Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
+lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
+of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest
+elms, and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer
+succeeded cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the
+heroes of the diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had
+flunked especially for one man who had flunked. But for that man who
+for thirty years in the class room had served the college there were
+no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one student who had best
+reason to remember him. But this recollection Peter had no rancor or
+bitterness and, still anxious lest he should be considered a bad loser,
+he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the
+celebration was at its height and just before train was due to carry
+him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the Gilman cottage
+say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so far only as
+half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which opened
+upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor and
+wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each other,
+the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin, delicate,
+well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her awkward
+unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.
+
+Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
+What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The
+idea that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never
+entered mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was
+something so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to
+offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and,
+avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour
+later the entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and
+with "He's a jolly good fellow" and "He's off to Philippopolis in the
+morn--ing" ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car
+and gazed at the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life.
+And he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the
+students, dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the
+smoking-car fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in
+the cottage stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children
+lost in the streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same
+moment whisper words of courage.
+
+Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
+over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
+not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
+Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In
+the mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly
+forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture
+man through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects
+for the camera.
+
+The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
+newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in
+a moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
+illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
+Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed
+it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor,
+and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks
+very old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the
+entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at
+Therapia.
+
+There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence
+of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
+Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was
+a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington
+in favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was
+afraid his father would consider Therapia "out of bounds."
+
+
+"He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he thinks I'm
+not playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and
+he might cut off my allowance."
+
+In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This
+was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at
+he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his
+letter-of-credit and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own
+against men three times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of
+his father. Only they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot
+evening Peter saw as much of their money scattered over the green table
+as his father had spent over the Hallowell athletic field.
+
+In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile--in the morning
+trying to fill his brain with names of great men who had been a long
+time dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his
+active spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter
+from Charley Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived
+after Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from
+boredom and gave life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip
+intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read:
+"Old man Gilman has got the sack. The chancellor offered him up as a
+sacrifice to your father, and because he was unwise enough to flunk you.
+He is to move out in September. I ran across them last week when I was
+looking for rooms for a Freshman cousin. They were reserving one in the
+same boarding-house. It's a shame, and I know you'll agree. They are a
+fine old couple, and I don't like to think of them herding with Freshmen
+in a shine boardinghouse. Black always was a swine."
+
+Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+
+"Just learned," he cabled his father, "Gilman dismissed because flunked
+me consider this outrageous please see he is reinstated."
+
+The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read:
+"Informed Gilman acted through spite have no authority as you know to
+interfere any act of black."
+
+Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had
+befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the injustice had been hourly
+increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his
+filial piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but
+little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next cable
+was not conciliatory.
+
+"Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me
+appear contemptible Black is a toady will do as you direct please
+reinstate."
+
+To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+
+"If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black incident is
+closed."
+
+"Is it?" said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid
+and explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous cablegram of his
+distinguished contemporary: "Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!"
+
+Peter's paraphrase of this ran: "Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will
+not try for degree."
+
+The reply was equally emphatic:
+
+"You earn your degree or you earn your own living."
+
+This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: "Choose
+to earn my own living am leaving Constantinople."
+
+Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer
+via Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very much, would have
+accompanied him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by
+way of Paris and London.
+
+"You'll get there long before I do," said Peter, "and as soon as you
+arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor Gilman some
+souvenir of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He
+wouldn't accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to
+be something characteristic of the country, Like a prayer rug, or a
+scimitar, or an illuminated Koran, or..."
+
+Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a
+flat morocco case and opened it. "What's the matter with one of these?"
+he asked.
+
+In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt.
+To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+
+"That's the Star of the Crescent," said Peter. "Where did you buy it?"
+
+"Buy it!" exclaimed Stetson. "You don't buy them. The Sultan bestows
+them."
+
+"I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one," said Peter.
+
+"I'll bet," returned Stetson, "I've got something in my pocket that says
+he did."
+
+He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving
+Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical.
+
+"What does that say when it says it in English?" he asked.
+
+"It says," translated Stetson, "that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan,
+bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author, lecturer, the Star of
+the Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to
+Turkey."
+
+Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+
+"Never try to fool the fakirs, my son," he protested. "I'm a fakir
+myself. What services did you ever...."
+
+"Services rendered," continued Stetson undisturbed, "in spreading
+throughout the United States a greater knowledge of the customs,
+industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That," he explained,
+"refers to my--I should say our--moving-picture lecture. I thought
+it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish
+decoration, so I went after this one."
+
+Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+
+"But did they believe you," he demanded, "when you told them you were an
+author and educator?"
+
+Stetson closed one eye and grinned. "They believed whatever I paid them
+to believe."
+
+"If you can get one of those," cried Peter, "Old man Gilman ought to
+get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest
+history of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a
+real professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the
+five volumes with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?"
+
+"Two hundred dollars in bribes," said Stetson briskly, "and two months
+of diplomacy."
+
+"I haven't got two months for diplomacy," said Peter, "so I'll have to
+increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the decoration for Gilman,
+and you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the
+Crescent, but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know
+what we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever
+bestowed by a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell
+the people often enough that anything is the best they believe you.
+That's the way father sells his hams. You've been a press-agent.
+From now on you're going to be my press-agent--I mean Doctor Gilman's
+press-agent. I pay your salary, but your work is to advertise him and
+the Order of the Crescent. I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at
+Stillwater. He sends out college news to a syndicate and he's the local
+Associated Press man. He's sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my
+best friend, and he'll work the papers as far as you like. Your job is
+to make Stillwater College and Doctor Black and my father believe that
+when they lost Gilman they lost the man who made Stillwater famous.
+And before we get through boosting Gilman, we'll make my father's
+million-dollar gift laboratory look like an insult."
+
+In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle burned
+fiercely, memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of his strategies
+and tactics in advertising soared before him.
+
+"It's great!" he exclaimed. "I've got your idea and you've got me. And
+you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-agent for politicians,
+actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horse-shows--and I'm the
+best! I was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he
+ran for governor. He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took
+hold of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs.
+Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at Newport, when all she ever saw
+of Newport was Bergers and the Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that
+made the American People believe Russian dancers can dance!"
+
+"It's plain to see you hate yourself," said 'Peter. "You must not get so
+despondent or you might commit suicide. How much money will you want?"
+
+"How much have you got?"
+
+"All kinds," said Peter. "Some in a letter-of-credit that my father
+earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker
+from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my
+living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need
+to boost Gilman and the Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman
+Defense, Publicity, and Development Committee, and you will begin by
+introducing me to the man I am to bribe."
+
+"In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to
+bribe," exclaimed Stetson; "you just bribe him!"
+
+
+That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made
+their first move in the game of winning for Professor Gilman the Order
+of the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock
+coat and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign
+office and appeared to be "a friend of a friend of a friend" of the
+assistant third secretary.
+
+The five volumes of the "Rise and Fall" were spread before him, and
+Peter demanded to know why so distinguished a scholar as Doctor
+Gilman had not received some recognition from the country he had so
+sympathetically described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and
+promised the matter should be brought at once to the attention of the
+grand vizier.
+
+After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little
+chance of getting within speaking distance of the grand vizier as of the
+ladies of his harem.
+
+"It's like Tammany," said Stetson; "there are sachems, district leaders,
+and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled to trade or give away a few of
+these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage
+of jobs in the street-cleaning department. This fellow will go to his
+patron, his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he
+will put it up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.
+
+"In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a
+hundred others, without knowing what he is signing; then you cable me,
+and the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way
+that will make Halley's comet look like a wax match."
+
+The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left
+alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the
+contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He
+had not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an
+itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus
+would receive very different treatment.
+
+Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard and diamond
+rings called with Osman to apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man
+explained--had been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he
+had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class
+that had been given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an honor for
+a savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth
+class would hardly be high enough. The fees, the fat man added, would
+Also be higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference,
+because the fourth class entitled the wearer to a salute from all
+sentries.
+
+"There are few sentries at Stillwater," said Peter; "but I want the best
+and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class."
+
+The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the
+embassy. The secretary was considerably annoyed.
+
+"My dear Hallowell," he protested, "why the devil didn't you tell me you
+wanted a decoration? Of course the State department expressly forbids
+us to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the
+Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at once--but, on two
+conditions: that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it."
+
+Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat
+demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one of the Gilman Defense
+Committee.
+
+"Doctor Gilman's history," he said, "must be presented to the Sultan.
+You must have the five volumes rebound in red and green, the colors of
+Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope," he
+added, "they are not soiled."
+
+"Not by me," Peter assured him.
+
+"I will take them myself," continued Stimson, "to Muley Pasha, the
+minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to present them to his Imperial
+Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he
+won't so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the
+Order of the Crescent of the third class."
+
+"Going up!" exclaimed Peter. "The third class. That will cost me my
+entire letter-of-credit."
+
+"Not at all," said Stimson. "I've saved you from the grafters. It will
+cost you only what you pay to have the books rebound. And the THIRD
+class is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it
+round your neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a
+thousand soldiers."
+
+"I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers," said Peter, "and wear it longer
+round my neck What's the matter with our getting the second class or the
+first class?"
+
+At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+
+"The first class," he explained patiently, "is the Great Grand Cross,
+and is given only to reigning sovereigns. The second is called the Grand
+Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men
+of world-wide fame...."
+
+"What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide fame?" said
+Peter. "He will be some day, when Stetson starts boosting."
+
+"Some day," retorted Stimson stiffly, "I may be an ambassador. When I
+am I hope to get the Grand Cross of the Crescent, but not now. I'm
+sorry you're not satisfied," he added aggrievedly. "No one can get you
+anything higher than the third class, and I may lose my official head
+asking for that."
+
+"Nothing is too good for old man Gilman," said Peter, "nor for you.
+You get the third class for him, and I'll have father make you an
+ambassador."
+
+That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who
+had come from a reception at the Grand vizier's and still wore his
+decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of
+the young prince he regarded with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul
+with wide-eyed awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan,
+and because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation
+in Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming,
+distinguished, courteous to the verge of humility, most cleverly
+cynical, most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won,
+and while doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards
+and the cards held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his
+equal.
+
+In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack,
+Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that nestled behind the lapel of
+Abdul's coat.
+
+"May I ask what that is?" said Peter.
+
+The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and
+then smiled delightedly.
+
+"It is an order," he said in a quick aside, "bestowed only upon men of
+world-wide fame. I dined to-night," he explained, "with your charming
+compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson."
+
+"And Joe told?" said Peter.
+
+The prince nodded. "Joe told," he repeated; "but it is all arranged.
+Your distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater, will receive the
+Crescent of the third class."
+
+Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond sunburst.
+
+"Why," he demanded, "can't some one get him one like that?"
+
+As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then
+thought better of it and smiled.
+
+"There are only two men in all Turkey," he said, "who could do that."
+
+"And is the Sultan the other one?" asked Peter. The prince gasped as
+though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold shower, and then laughed
+long and silently.
+
+"You flatter me," he murmured.
+
+"You know you could if you liked!" whispered Peter stoutly.
+
+Apparently Abdul did not hear him. "I will take one card," he said.
+
+Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand francs in
+the pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had dropped out. "Will you
+divide?" asked the prince.
+
+"Why should I?" said Peter. "I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or
+call?" The prince called and laid down a full house. Peter showed four
+tens.
+
+"I will deal you one hand, double or quits," said the prince.
+
+Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+
+"You will pay me double what is on the table," he said, "or you quit
+owing me nothing."
+
+The prince nodded.
+
+"Go ahead," said Peter.
+
+The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held
+a seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours. Hoping to draw another
+king, which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul,
+he threw away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The
+prince showed three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
+
+"I'll make you a sporting proposition," he murmured. "You owe me a
+hundred and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only
+two men in the empire can give me."
+
+The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the
+table. But the puzzled glances of the other players showed that to them
+Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+
+The prince smiled cynically.
+
+"For yourself?" he demanded.
+
+"For Doctor Gilman," said Peter.
+
+"We will cut for deal and one hand will decide," said the prince. His
+voice dropped to a whisper. "And no one must ever know," he warned.
+
+Peter also could be cynical.
+
+"Not even the Sultan," he said.
+
+Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he
+dealt Peter was the better one.
+
+The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY
+announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the
+University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously
+pleased to confer the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crescent.
+
+Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at
+Quarantine. It read: "Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get busy."
+
+But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had
+been brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince Abdul, although
+pitchforked into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its
+most enthusiastic members.
+
+"For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE," he declared. "If it
+is worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will
+command that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that
+it be placed in the national library. Moreover, the University of
+Constantinople, the College of Salonica, and the National Historical
+Society have each elected Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed
+him, the Patriarch of Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish
+ambassador in America has been instructed to present the insignia with
+his own hands."
+
+Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his press-work, and
+to further the idea that all Europe was now clamoring for the "Rise and
+fall," Peter paid an impecunious but over-educated dragoman to translate
+it into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed out that
+not since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so
+highly honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand
+vizier--who had been requested by Prince Abdul--to request the State
+Department to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from
+such a source was a command and, as desired, the State Department
+wrote as requested by the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered
+congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from Washington by
+Associated Press. This official recognition by the Government and by the
+newspapers was all and more than Stetson wanted. He took off his coat
+and with a megaphone, rather than a pen, told the people of the United
+States who Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross
+was, and why America's greatest historian was not without honor save in
+his own country. Columns of this were paid for and appeared as "patent
+insides," with a portrait of Doctor Gilman taken from the STILLWATER
+COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination,
+in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western, and Eastern States.
+special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures of the Grand Cross
+followed, and, using Stillwater as his base, Stetson continued to
+flood the country. Young Hines, the local correspondent, acting under
+instructions by cable from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a
+traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer
+of the author of the "Rise and fall." Stetson, having studied it as a
+student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at the feet of
+the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on the steps
+of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from the
+unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life.
+To this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added
+photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered
+cottage, of his favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian
+at work at his desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife
+on the croquet lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually
+presented. This pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much
+to his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
+Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to
+a Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
+Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag
+a secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
+travelled down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary
+took the local train to Stillwater.
+
+The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the
+ambassador as one of the happiest incidents of his distinguished career.
+Never since he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western
+republic had its barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly
+approaching his own idea of what was his due.
+
+"This ambassador," Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater,
+who was also the proprietor of its largest department store, "is the
+personal representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right."
+
+"It's exactly," added Stetson, "as though the Sultan himself were
+coming."
+
+"And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater," continued Hines, "that we
+ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as he comes to pay the
+highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen."
+
+The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+
+"What'd I better do?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Stetson here," Hines pointed out, "has lived in Turkey, and he
+knows what they expect. Maybe he will help us."
+
+"Will you?" begged the mayor.
+
+"I will," said Stetson.
+
+Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most
+of the faculty were on their vacations. But there were half a dozen
+professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed
+out to them that the coming honor to one lately of their number
+reflected glory upon the college and upon them, and that they should
+take official action.
+
+It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear
+their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these suggestions, with
+alacrity--partly because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because
+they had never been photographed by a moving-picture machine--they all
+agreed. So it came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and
+dusty stepped off the way-train at Stillwater station he found to
+his delighted amazement a red carpet stretching to a perfectly new
+automobile, a company of the local militia presenting arms, a committee,
+consisting of the mayor in a high hat and white gloves and three
+professors in gowns and colored hoods, and the Stillwater silver
+Cornet Band playing what, after several repetitions, the ambassador was
+graciously pleased to recognize as his national anthem.
+
+The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was
+dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration. Here at last
+were people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the
+mayor helped him into the automobile, and those students who lived
+in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture
+machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But
+inwardly he was ill at ease.
+
+Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
+America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
+honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
+blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost
+on the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
+the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+
+Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki,
+by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous
+liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater
+gathered outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling
+and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
+ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only
+frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor
+Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
+Stillwater shouted, "Speech," in sudden panic he reached out his hand
+quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
+
+"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader. "Now, then, 'See
+the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the bandmaster. "Attention! Present arms!"
+yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
+applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
+his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
+and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
+drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the
+rear of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
+he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to
+the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
+
+Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
+Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater.
+They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might
+inadvertently drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+
+So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to
+supply his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts
+of the great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he
+choked. Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently
+before the public, and never before had her president been so utterly
+and completely ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized
+that even had he been present he could not have shown his face. How
+could he, who had, as every one connected with the college now knew, out
+of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join
+in chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior,
+might not hear of Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of
+anything else. At his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one
+he met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had
+come to his pet college.
+
+"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,"
+exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. "Now if I pay a hundred
+thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty
+dollars, but you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in
+half a million dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor
+Gilman's doing as much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns
+Hopkins or as Walter Camp does for Yale."
+
+Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he
+was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage
+increased. It seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor
+Gilman. The stone he had rejected had become the corner-stone of
+Stillwater. Whenever he opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming:
+"Will no one rid me of this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall,"
+in an edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up
+by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a popular edition was
+on view in the windows of every book-shop; It was offered as a prize to
+subscribers to all the more sedate magazines, and the name and features
+of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a day
+passed but that some new honor, at least so the newspapers stated,
+was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced that he was to be the next
+exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he was to lecture at the
+Sorbonne; that in June he was to receive a degree from Oxford.
+
+A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by
+offering him the chair of history at that seat of learning at a salary
+of five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust
+upon Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson,
+but this offer happened to be genuine.
+
+"Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter
+from the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+
+"We could not be happy away from Stillwater," he said. "We have only a
+month more in the cottage, but after that we still can walk past it; we
+can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit
+the place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and
+miserable for her, and she would be lonely for us."
+
+Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave
+Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern college at which
+Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his
+jealousy knew no bounds.
+
+He telegraphed to Black: "Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six
+thousand--offer him whatever he wants, but make him promise for no
+consideration to leave Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought
+any credit to the college if we lose him I'll hold you responsible."
+
+The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor
+called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble pie that for a week he
+suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care
+for that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished,
+was back in the faculty, and had made only one condition--that he might
+live until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+
+Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history
+examination, which, should he pass it, would give him his degree, he
+found on every side evidences of the "worldwide fame" he himself had
+created. The newsstand at the depot, the book-stores, the drugstores,
+the picture-shops, all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing
+the ivy-covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,
+advertisements of the different editions of "the" history proclaimed
+his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success of his own handiwork,
+approached the ivy-covered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs.
+Gilman welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which
+she always gave courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations,
+and Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle
+courtesy.
+
+The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers
+Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
+
+"I should indeed!" Peter assured him.
+
+"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor, "that you
+have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five." In
+real sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great
+astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking
+offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+the precocious act of a beloved child.
+
+"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer you did not
+work very hard for your degree!"
+
+Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I got working
+for something worth while--and I forgot about the degree."
+
+
+
+Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
+Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at
+the time military attach� of the German Government with the Russian
+army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
+Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his
+part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the
+ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses
+below us glowing and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+
+Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been
+Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a
+spy.
+
+The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
+correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell
+it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
+
+In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
+have yet to find any one who will believe it.
+
+What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of
+the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" in
+the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford
+attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place,
+the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then
+again, it might not.
+
+As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel written by a
+very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion
+of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to
+be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and
+despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian
+Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred
+and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of
+Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this
+coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are
+dry, that England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest
+naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it as the spot best adapted
+for such a raid.
+
+What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
+read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and
+under separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: "I suggest your
+Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage,
+and of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms,
+take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want
+ideas?"
+
+What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
+was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford
+went to Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the
+Shakespeare Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the
+robe, Ford was left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors
+and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent
+Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a
+long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by
+trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when
+the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English
+clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a
+spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The
+assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared
+ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, "Does a German uniform
+always affect a Territorial like that?"
+
+The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"It did give me quite a turn," he said. "It's this talk of invasion, I
+fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along
+the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
+anyway."
+
+"And, quite right, too!" said Ford.
+
+He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at
+his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play
+truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the
+words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later
+young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
+terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young
+Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's
+friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university.
+After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights"
+week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
+undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to
+study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy;
+instead of "wines" he found pleasure in debating clubs where he
+discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes,
+that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His
+undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms
+they declared unjust and without intelligence.
+
+"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil here, for
+example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
+never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of
+him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as
+yours!"
+
+"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.
+
+"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours;
+as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat
+through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a
+man from Balliol?"
+
+"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What price that?
+When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen
+guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The
+country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!" challenged
+Herbert. "Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that
+will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
+and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.
+Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here
+in town and all of them undergraduates."
+
+"Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. "That's
+just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's
+the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
+theatricals!"
+
+"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage fright is,
+just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt
+cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a
+little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!"
+
+Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and
+with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now
+he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly
+about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of
+the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
+departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside
+the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the
+Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of
+Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower
+House was still sitting.
+
+"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that is risky,
+that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
+you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"
+
+Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+
+"Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never reads
+anything! Go on!"
+
+"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what else is
+most talked about?" He answered his own question. "The landing of the
+Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book
+in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would
+happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just
+where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of
+soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?"
+
+"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy Scouts would
+fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!"
+
+"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
+"How?" he demanded breathlessly. "How are we to do it? It would take
+hundreds of men."
+
+"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car. I
+thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German
+uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out
+how prepared you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now
+that you wanted a chance to go to jail--"
+
+"What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.
+
+"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.
+
+"We?" demanded Herbert. "Are you in this?"
+
+"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private invasion! I'm
+letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be
+any invasion!"
+
+The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
+nodded.
+
+"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What's your
+plan?"
+
+In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
+slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
+indignation.
+
+"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he demanded. "Do you
+suppose for one minute I will allow--"
+
+His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
+
+"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on, Ford," he
+said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us."
+
+Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
+miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
+misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and
+on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
+occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
+at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route
+by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
+forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
+chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
+the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
+of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half
+Inch" road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
+
+At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
+numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had
+come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they
+were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent
+head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
+In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even
+more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-master, a leader
+of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his
+station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf
+bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the
+intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
+their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map
+fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked
+it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes
+scrawled roughly in pencil. With an expression that no longer was that
+of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and then slipped
+into the empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
+a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl
+presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It was open so
+that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident
+the tallest of the three strangers was an American.
+
+"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been playing hob
+with my map?"
+
+For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with
+disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a
+glance, he signified the waiter.
+
+"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club asked us
+to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
+petrol."
+
+The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance,
+he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the
+windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray
+stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret,
+he glanced carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
+eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+
+In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long
+lines of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull
+of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a
+black leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+
+In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+
+"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
+There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight
+for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!"
+
+At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the
+three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear,
+of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
+gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
+way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he
+again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed
+fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
+Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these
+the sea was empty.
+
+By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
+off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
+Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman
+on his rounds, to the driver of the char � banc. He had been a year in
+Cromer and was well known and well liked.
+
+Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand,
+the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees.
+Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding.
+Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding
+path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the
+bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
+But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his
+heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
+
+Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn.
+In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there
+now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a
+kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a
+new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on
+the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl
+drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
+
+"I have been in constant communication," said the man with the beard.
+"They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly
+from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you
+to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last
+edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final
+advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
+know the moment has come!"
+
+As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens
+where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with
+pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High
+above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had
+served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
+balls.
+
+"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at their posts.
+They are fiddling while England falls!"
+
+Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
+about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
+around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
+was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
+were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms,
+and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
+Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
+
+"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
+Leute?" he demanded.
+
+"You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I am a trifle
+'ard of 'earing."
+
+The soldier addressed him in English.
+
+"What is the name of this village?" he demanded.
+
+Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
+recalled its name with difficulty.
+
+"Have you seen any of our people?"
+
+With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
+
+"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights, and remain
+indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
+Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe. "May I lock
+in the pigs first, sir?"
+
+One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two
+others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still
+standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he
+should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
+
+The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+
+"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had to pick out
+the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
+better pack up and go home."
+
+"The village inn is still open," said Ford. "We'll close It."
+
+They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles
+on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two
+fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose
+to the occasion.
+
+"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come tumbling
+into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
+fellow, my lad, or--"
+
+The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
+interrupted her sharply.
+
+"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You are
+prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
+If you into the street go, we will shoot!"
+
+He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that
+the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one
+shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
+
+"You ass!" muttered the tall German. "Get out!"
+
+As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
+shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
+later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
+
+"That will hold Stiffkey for a while!" said Ford. "Now, back to the
+car."
+
+But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive
+figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted
+cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
+
+"The constable!" whispered Herbert. "He must see us, but he mustn't
+speak to us."
+
+For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the
+street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken
+alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes
+later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode
+slowly into Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The
+driver of the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to
+his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
+
+"Mr. Policeman," he began; "when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
+in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward
+the beach. What's the idea--manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--"
+
+"Yes, sir," the policeman assured him promptly; "I saw them. It's
+manoeuvres, sir. Territorials."
+
+"They didn't look like Territorials," objected the chauffeur. "They
+looked like Germans."
+
+Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal
+a grin.
+
+"Just Territorials, sir," he protested soothingly; "skylarking maybe,
+but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em."
+
+A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+
+"I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's
+serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast
+Guard."
+
+The constable considered deeply.
+
+"I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard," he protested;
+"not at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
+gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
+your cards--"
+
+"Ye gods!" cried the man in the rear of the car. "Go on!" he commanded.
+
+As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
+
+"What's the use!" he protested. "You couldn't wake these people with
+dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home."
+
+"They little know of England who only Stiffkey know," chanted the
+chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
+live wire!"
+
+Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
+job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
+of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road--and in the
+light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across
+the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was
+followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+
+"Put out that light," he commanded. "Go to your home and tell no one
+what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot.
+Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road."
+
+The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed
+his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding
+over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.
+Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear--fear of
+laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
+silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he
+had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably
+informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney,
+sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the
+gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer
+and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
+on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud.
+As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car
+farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained
+to Ford, were intended to give "verisimilitude to an otherwise bald
+and unconvincing narrative." And the sighing of the bullets gave young
+Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he was not the
+victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his
+feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an hour into the main street of
+Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so
+completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His
+head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager.
+A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer
+pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and then
+closing in his wake.
+
+"Have you seen any--any soldiers?" he demanded.
+
+"German soldiers!" Ford answered. "They tried to catch us, but when I
+saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and--"
+
+"How many--and where?"
+
+"A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
+didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
+better telephone the garrison, and--"
+
+"Thank you!" snapped the elderly gentleman. "I happen to be in command
+of this district. What are your names?"
+
+Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+
+"I've no time for that!" he called. "We've got to warn every coast town
+in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!"
+
+As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+
+"We've got them guessing," he said. "Now, what we want is a live wire,
+some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
+countryside."
+
+"Looks ahead there," said Birrell, "as though it hadn't gone to bed."
+
+Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
+lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, "trippers"
+in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to
+witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their
+escorts, shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion
+sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
+
+"What's this tale about Germans?" he demanded jocularly.
+
+"You can see their lights from the beach," said Ford. "They've landed
+two regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut
+all the wires south."
+
+The proprietor refused to be "had."
+
+"Let 'em all come!" he mocked.
+
+"All right," returned Ford. "Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
+Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
+Germans back! Gangway," he shouted, and the car shot forward. "We warned
+you," he called, "And it's up to you to--"
+
+His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
+with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated
+cheer.
+
+Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his
+seat.
+
+"This thing is going to fail!" he cried petulantly. "They don't believe
+us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--in a dozen places."
+
+"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman. "Now, if
+this had happened in my native land--"
+
+He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that
+spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past
+and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their
+head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed
+in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could
+find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death
+were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
+into the night.
+
+"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop? As I said
+before, what we want is a live one."
+
+Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+
+"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of a mile from
+here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
+the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his
+life."
+
+The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
+when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw
+three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat
+helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an an�mic, pale-faced youth
+without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply
+in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+
+In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. "You are a prisoner," he
+said. "We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
+out!"
+
+As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
+the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument.
+Ford flung his rifle upon it.
+
+"No, you don't!" he growled. "Get out!"
+
+With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
+
+"My pay--my month's pay?" he stammered. "Can I take It?"
+
+The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+
+"Take it and get out," Ford commanded.
+
+With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
+pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the
+papers inside.
+
+"Quick!" cried Ford.
+
+The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake,
+and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre
+issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders,
+Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the
+window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the
+tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to
+shout: "Don't touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a message
+through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!"
+
+For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his
+heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm
+raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward
+across the table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the
+circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
+
+When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Your last remark," he said, "was that what we wanted was a live one."
+
+"Don't mention it!" said Ford. "He jammed that gun half down my throat.
+I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?"
+
+"According to the route we mapped out this afternoon," said Herbert, "We
+are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse
+and Weybourne, but--"
+
+"Not with me!" exclaimed Birrell fiercely. "Those towns have been tipped
+off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
+death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
+Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
+believe him, and they'll call out the navy."
+
+Herbert consulted his map.
+
+"There is a Coast Guard," he said, "stationed just the other side of
+Morston. And," he added fervently, "let us hope he's lonely."
+
+They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
+coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars,
+nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped
+out upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon
+fires burning fiercely.
+
+Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+
+"Since seeing those fires," he explained, "I feel a strange reluctance
+about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard."
+
+"Coast Guards don't shoot!" mocked Birrell. "They only look at the
+clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able
+to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope."
+
+The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
+cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
+cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
+showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
+
+"We must pass in single file in front of that light," whispered Ford,
+"And then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the
+devil!"
+
+"I'm on in that last scene," growled Herbert.
+
+"Only," repeated Ford with emphasis, "We must be sure he has seen us."
+
+Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars,
+many flashes, many bullets.
+
+"He's seen us!" yelled Birrell.
+
+After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier
+fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from
+the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed
+his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he
+proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
+emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to
+sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of
+a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.
+
+After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
+length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
+last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
+painfully.
+
+"What happened to Herbert?" panted Ford.
+
+"I don't know," gasped Birrell, "When I saw him last he was diving over
+the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?"
+
+"About twenty!" groaned the American, "And, besides being dead, I am
+severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time
+I hit a rock!"
+
+A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
+head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water,
+and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and
+fell into his golf clothes.
+
+"Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform," he cried, "can have
+mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway."
+
+The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles
+and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open
+road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris
+tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car,
+turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror
+to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a
+regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the "double." An
+officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
+
+"I'll have to commandeer this," he said. "Run back to Cromer. Don't
+crush my men, but go like the devil!"
+
+"We heard firing here," explained the officer at the Coast Guard
+station. "The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen.
+They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel
+walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,"
+exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if you are the three gentlemen who
+first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the
+other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names."
+
+Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
+discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst
+might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably
+were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been
+returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had
+been held up by the Germans.
+
+"You were lucky to escape," said the officer "And in keeping on to give
+warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
+extremely well."
+
+Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence.
+With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car
+through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were
+banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+
+"Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!" exclaimed Ford
+admiringly.
+
+"MY regiment!" snorted the officer. "You've passed through five
+regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places.
+They're everywhere!" he cried jubilantly.
+
+"And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires," exclaimed
+Ford.
+
+"That's what the Germans think," said the officer. "It's working like
+a clock," he cried happily. "There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they
+got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a
+wave, on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government
+took over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down
+in London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
+Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
+them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
+eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
+the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
+sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And
+on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast
+alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from
+Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H.
+A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns
+spread out over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They
+thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another
+surprise party!"
+
+On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
+the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
+and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon,
+the clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command
+raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless
+fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The
+night had been turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like
+the eyes of those who had passed through an earthquake, of those who
+looked upon the burning of San Francisco, upon the destruction of
+Messina.
+
+"We were betrayed, general," whispered the head-waiter.
+
+"We were betrayed, baron," replied the bearded one.
+
+"But you were in time to warn the flotilla."
+
+With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+
+"The last message I received over the wireless," he said, "before I
+destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
+movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And," added the general, "The
+English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept
+that explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history.
+Return to the hotel," he commanded, "And in two months you can rejoin
+your regiment."
+
+On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map
+of Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that
+was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: "Lester Ford, our London
+correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
+warn the English people."
+
+On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared
+this paragraph:
+
+"The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son
+of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell--both of Balliol College,
+Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
+These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
+infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
+authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
+people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful."
+
+A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
+
+"Shall we, or shall we not," asked Herbert, "tell my uncle that we
+three, and we three alone, were the invaders?"
+
+"That's hardly correct," said Ford, "as we now know there were two
+hundred thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore."
+
+"I vote we don't tell him," said Birrell. "Let him think with everybody
+else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon
+and gave the show away. If we talk," he argued, "We'll get credit for a
+successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
+saved England. I'm content to let it go at that."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company.
+The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the
+New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the
+little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in
+railroad tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate
+as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these
+different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the
+sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman.
+But David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he even
+succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as
+demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out
+of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly
+because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a
+great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to
+possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather
+is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the
+possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight.
+He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
+existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a doctor
+in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David
+emerged as a Son of Washington.
+
+It was sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear
+a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary
+ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
+graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a
+person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at
+Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on
+moving to New York, his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not
+affect his record. To enter a society founded on heredity, the important
+thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him,
+David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors.
+He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
+without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find
+himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid
+salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in
+Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of "Neck
+or Nothing" Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a
+man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. David's life had
+lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the
+big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his
+two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+
+The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said,
+"All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+great-great dad ever do for you?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said David stiffly, "he fought in the War of the
+Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England;
+he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free
+republic."
+
+"Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that," protested Wyckoff,
+"because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about
+it in a book."
+
+"I am not grudging glory to others," returned David; "I am only saying I
+am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist."
+
+Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+frame that folded like a concertina.
+
+"I don't want to be a descendant," he said; "I'd rather be an ancestor.
+Look at those." Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with
+the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at
+the children.
+
+"When I'm married," he stammered, and at the words he blushed, "I hope
+to be an ancestor."
+
+"If you're thinking of getting married," said Wyckoff, "you'd better
+hope for a raise in salary."
+
+The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not
+the grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative
+David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to
+attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to
+erect monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
+joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones;
+to inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those
+present at the annual "banquet" at Delmonico's. In order that when he
+opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society
+his office address.
+
+In these communications he was always addressed as "Dear Compatriot,"
+and never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift
+him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to
+things uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know
+what an aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an
+aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
+overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
+he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the
+blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
+easily with a word could I crush them!"
+
+But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button.
+They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+liable to give that impression.
+
+When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
+person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss
+Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
+prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
+figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
+something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
+accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
+Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
+when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
+go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
+from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
+
+The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
+great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
+as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
+another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
+to achieve glory for himself.
+
+From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
+person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
+The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
+raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
+of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
+sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
+with awe, touched her imagination.
+
+"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If you're
+a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."
+
+"I know I'm not worthy of you," David sighed.
+
+"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied indignantly.
+"It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of
+your grandpa Hiram!"
+
+"But HOW?" complained David. "What chance has a twenty-five dollar a
+week clerk--"
+
+It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of
+Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+
+"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba and
+help free it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I
+know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill."
+
+"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what have
+the American rebels ever done for me?"
+
+"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be selling
+automatic punches."
+
+"There's your trouble," declared Emily "You lack self-confidence. You're
+too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
+yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
+You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
+the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
+war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!"
+
+Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+
+"Emily," he said, "you're going to be awfully disappointed in me."
+
+Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But
+when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+
+"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a career, and
+one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him."
+
+"I've often wished you would," said David.
+
+"Would what? Run your career for you?"
+
+"No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so."
+
+"Maybe I'd like you better," said Emily, "if you weren't so darned
+polite."
+
+A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a
+step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David
+was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted.
+Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She
+did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in
+the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
+that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days--at
+least she did not count them aloud.
+
+David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she
+was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
+ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
+Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
+her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
+the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
+It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
+him.
+
+The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
+to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
+and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons.
+A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
+Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+
+And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
+manner.
+
+On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
+leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute,
+and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
+Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
+Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
+to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
+when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
+dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
+back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
+find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
+In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+
+There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
+he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a
+shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in
+mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
+and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down
+under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train
+or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched
+a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead
+trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was
+not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of
+the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the
+train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
+himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For,
+in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would
+have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his
+companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+
+"I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
+surrounded by alligators."
+
+And then he found he was not alone.
+
+In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and
+the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above
+the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of
+a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had
+been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the
+clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou
+broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf
+an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his
+pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the
+company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure.
+He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug,
+something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No
+lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks
+were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from
+her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
+uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to
+the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not
+considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.
+The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who
+means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high
+boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his
+movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily
+excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug. "How'd you get
+here?"
+
+"I walked," said David.
+
+"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.
+
+"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put me off
+about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going
+to wait here for the next train north."
+
+The little man laughed mockingly.
+
+"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just walk
+away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+gesture.
+
+"You walk!" he commanded.
+
+"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.
+
+As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+tug.
+
+"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You WAIT, that's
+all, you WAIT!"
+
+David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
+property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station
+the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he
+judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks
+and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself
+hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any
+other person.
+
+"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers. They're
+certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+of a perfectly harmless stranger?"
+
+Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+
+"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly? as though in
+answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard
+the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his
+course of action.
+
+The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His
+plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though
+he had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only
+stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his
+arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in
+amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred
+yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
+head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it
+blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear
+of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a
+train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as
+unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly
+tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
+
+"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.
+
+He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to
+a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the
+ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls
+and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+
+So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note
+the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little
+man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore
+no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters
+of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his
+right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that
+moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man
+carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest
+man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his
+beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild
+moonlight it flamed like a torch.
+
+"What's your business?" demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+
+"I came here," began David, "to wait for a train--"
+
+The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+
+"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+wait for a train!"
+
+In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+"Don't you lie to ME!" he bullied. "Do you know who I am? Do you know
+WHO you're up against? I'm--"
+
+The barkeeper person interrupted.
+
+"Never mind who you are," he said. "We know that. Find out who HE is."
+
+David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?" he protested. "I'm a
+travelling man--"
+
+"You won't travel any to-night," mocked the red-haired one. "You've seen
+what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!"
+
+As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
+riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
+
+"Tie him to a tree!" he suggested.
+
+"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him back by
+the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any."
+
+"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who do you
+think I am?"
+
+"We know who you are," shouted the fiery-headed one. "You're a
+blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+whichever you are you don't get away to-night!"
+
+David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+
+"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you like
+it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!"
+
+Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting
+to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head
+rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance,
+and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
+"Nine--ten--and OUT!"
+
+When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of
+a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf
+cap who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed
+wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw
+that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
+with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side
+the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with
+stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+
+"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we drop the
+pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him."
+
+David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as
+large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+
+"What happened to me?" he demanded.
+
+"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It was a
+raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad."
+
+"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+done? Who were those men who--"
+
+From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
+engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
+
+"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going ashore.
+Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as--"
+
+But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws
+an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into
+the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the
+fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
+
+It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby
+hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph
+to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+
+David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open
+sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a
+policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and
+held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by
+the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great
+was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's
+ear.
+
+"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for us for
+three weeks, and now," he shrieked exultingly, "the old man's going to
+give her a race for it."
+
+From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting
+beyond his control.
+
+"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"
+
+"You don't!"
+
+"When he drops the pilot, don't I--"
+
+"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got to stick
+by the boat. So have you."
+
+David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+face.
+
+"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are you?
+What boat is this?"
+
+In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down
+his spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
+
+"THE THREE FRIENDS!" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a
+pirate! Where're we going?
+
+"To Cuba!"
+
+David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+
+"What for?" he shrieked.
+
+The young man regarded him coldly.
+
+"To pick bananas," he said.
+
+"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--"
+
+David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged.
+Like a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to
+stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did
+not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he
+would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to
+David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots.
+Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish,
+rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the
+waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight
+the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the
+tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the
+slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a
+hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had
+found a congenial spirit, he shouted Joyfully, "She's fired two blanks
+at us!" he cried; "now she's firing cannon-balls!"
+
+"Thank God," whispered David; "perhaps she'll sink us!"
+
+But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
+as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
+those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries
+of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching
+head, of the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered
+him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull
+consciousness of his position. At such moments he added to his misery by
+speculating upon the other misfortunes that might have befallen him
+on shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and
+married--probably a navy officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett
+and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had
+caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as
+a defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were
+being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
+passed; to David it seemed many ages.
+
+On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
+motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and
+fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought
+him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a
+bowl of smoking soup.
+
+David considered it a doubtful attention.
+
+But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+with these pirates?"
+
+The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not mixed
+up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+captain."
+
+"The barkeeper with the derby hat?" said David.
+
+"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and he's the
+greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway,
+and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about
+this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found
+out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story
+either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest,
+and he's promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I
+can write as much about it as I darn please."
+
+"Then you're a reporter?" said David.
+
+"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've always
+dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose,
+I can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!"
+
+"And you LIKE this?" groaned David.
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've a
+stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and lowered his voice. "Now,
+here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you read about in
+the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!"
+
+Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+
+"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If they
+knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls
+himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida
+coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is
+a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English
+officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen
+battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the
+red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans.
+The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here
+to work the machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do
+will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."
+
+A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
+Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+
+Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
+of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition,
+and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats
+she was preparing to defend herself.
+
+"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and they're
+going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+you."
+
+David shook his head feebly.
+
+"I can't move!" he protested. "I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba."
+
+For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+unintelligent.
+
+"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together
+in his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never did, either, but I've put
+hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work."
+
+"What's wrong with it?" said Carr.
+
+Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+
+Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+saw it first.
+
+"Land!" he hailed.
+
+The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+rose in a fierce chorus.
+
+"Cuba libre!" they yelled.
+
+The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken
+with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each
+topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like
+columns of marble rose the royal palms.
+
+"You MUST look!" Carr entreated David, "it's just as it is in the
+pictures!
+
+"Then I don't have to look," groaned David.
+
+The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
+sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore
+of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
+waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
+voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
+patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
+their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition
+of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box
+of shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+
+"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse Harry,
+"we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask," he cried
+mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!"
+
+His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three
+Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal
+questions or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug
+was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she
+raced in pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there
+came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+
+With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell
+into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he
+tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and
+gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship
+was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+
+Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+feet splashed into a wave.
+
+From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+removed from any of the greater emotions.
+
+"It's no use!" he protested. "They can't do! It's not connected!"
+
+"WHAT'S not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
+half-dragged him to his feet.
+
+"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he
+shouted, "or I'll--"
+
+David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on
+the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness
+of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
+through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
+come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
+shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
+more was a sane, sound young man.
+
+With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism.
+He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+
+Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
+his work was good.
+
+They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
+to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
+continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
+feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
+pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.
+
+He shouted with delight.
+
+"I've got it working," he yelled.
+
+He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
+of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
+tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
+splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
+stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
+distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
+sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
+in volleys.
+
+To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived
+it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
+made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
+box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click
+as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against
+the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
+gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
+flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
+forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
+engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
+unceasingly:
+
+"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the
+voice was his own.
+
+The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+
+"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"
+
+For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself
+aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun
+served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight
+of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the
+limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made,
+warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
+
+They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
+and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
+straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished
+reading aloud his account of the engagement.
+
+"You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud
+author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind.
+You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
+wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
+That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
+took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
+Bay."
+
+Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainty did, Dave,"
+protested the great man, "I seen you when you done it!"
+
+At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+spread across the map of the United States.
+
+Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower
+Broadway tendered congratulations.
+
+"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would protest
+and wink heavily. "Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd
+no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him
+go, would we?" Then again they would wink heavily. "I suppose you know,"
+they would say, "that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene,
+who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'" And
+then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and
+exclaim: "Here's to Cuba libre!"
+
+When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the
+Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and
+all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+
+And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her
+best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as
+Burdett and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+
+She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+"David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll never, never do it again!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care
+in the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to the left; if
+it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely
+the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled
+broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved
+his fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over
+Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of
+verandas, from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces.
+Empaled on their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
+languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
+sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been
+a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he
+would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer
+bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders
+most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried
+treasure, the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really
+asking a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+
+Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
+Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
+pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen
+Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the "season" opened; when she
+departed the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of
+stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she
+played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines
+her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded
+youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
+Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with
+the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the
+matrons. To each her manner was always as though she were of their age.
+When she met the latter on the beach road, she greeted them riotously
+and joyfully by their maiden names. And the matrons liked it. In
+comparison the deference shown them by the other young women did not so
+strongly appeal.
+
+"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them, "and
+Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were
+twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside
+her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat.
+Why does he never wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or
+because Helen drives so fast he can't keep it on?"
+
+"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new arrival.
+"That might help some."
+
+"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never leaves her."
+
+This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them
+so many times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf
+together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way
+to look. But they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not
+to see them, Helen shouted at you. She made you feel you had been caught
+doing something indelicate and underhand.
+
+The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young
+Latimer. So many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in that
+inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange
+young man who apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends
+for years had learned they must remain friends, could not hope to escape
+criticism. Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston
+and Harvard, but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at
+both the law and the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully;
+but it was rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that
+he played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as for
+exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey and soda at two in
+the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark: "I find it does
+not tend toward efficiency." It was a remark that irritated and, to the
+minds of the men at the country clubs, seemed to place him. They liked
+to play polo because they liked to play polo, not because it kept their
+muscles limber and their brains clear.
+
+"Some Western people were telling me," said one of the matrons, "that he
+wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is very ambitious
+and very selfish."
+
+"Any man is selfish," protested one who for years had attempted to marry
+Helen, "who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to
+be a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one
+lose sympathy."
+
+Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship
+of Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been working overtime and was
+treating himself to his first vacation in years--he was young--he was
+in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either, that
+Helen Page was happy. Those who had known her since she was a child
+could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore
+her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings
+to old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses.
+She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him
+she liked better to be with him than with any one else,--it would have
+been difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer
+colony,--but she explained that that did not mean she would marry him.
+She announced this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She
+announced it in what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly
+that she did not intend to marry for several years.
+
+This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so
+eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep her own. She as
+though she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to
+sea. When, at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer
+had paused to catch his, she shook her head miserably.
+
+"The trouble is," she complained, "there are so many think the same
+thing!"
+
+"What do they think?" demanded Latimer.
+
+"That they want to marry me."
+
+Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+
+"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this important
+difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE
+you as I do!"
+
+"That's ANOTHER thing they think," sighed Helen.
+
+"I'm sorry to be so unoriginal," snapped Latimer.
+
+"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen. "I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not
+unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to take it to
+heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable
+a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind
+whether or not she wants to marry him. But when there's so many she just
+stops worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all."
+
+"ALL!" exclaimed Latimer. "It is incredible that I have undervalued you,
+but may I ask how many there are?"
+
+"I don't know," sighed Helen miserably. "There seems to be something
+about me that--"
+
+"There is!" interrupted Latimer. "I've noticed it. You don't have to
+tell me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult
+habit to break!"
+
+It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least,
+not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+
+One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on
+which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored
+a forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked
+the sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played
+hide and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this
+place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back
+to a tree and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose
+works he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to
+them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into
+his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and
+mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
+
+But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible
+for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: "Please
+excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider--" and the spell
+was gone.
+
+One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the "Oxford
+Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW?"
+
+"I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy;
+he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and
+he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday--"
+
+"I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer, "or in
+what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning
+man myself!"
+
+Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. "Men get over THAT kind of
+drowning," she said.
+
+"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer. "And don't tell me," he
+cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all say."
+
+"If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen. "If one could only be sure
+that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him
+the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that,
+it would help you a lot in making up your mind."
+
+"There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is to
+marry him. I mean, of course," he corrected hastily, "to marry me."
+
+One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the
+man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the
+village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their
+hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the
+ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the
+world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind
+caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it
+tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand
+a tiny oar and smiling happily.
+
+"He has a friendly smile," said Helen; "I think he likes us."
+
+"He is on guard," Latimer explained. "I put him there to warn us if
+any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away
+trespassers. Do you understand?" he demanded of the sailorman. "Your
+duty is to protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must
+guard this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You
+never sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She
+wrongs you. It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure
+when I look at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways
+alike. I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I
+never sleep, at least not since I met her."
+
+From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman
+and frowned.
+
+"It is not a happy simile," she objected. "For one thing, a sailorman
+has a sweetheart in every port."
+
+"Wait and see," said Latimer.
+
+"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on
+earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less
+CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--"
+
+"Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. "You come back here,"
+he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the winds have
+beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you
+will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently,
+proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because those who are your slaves, those
+who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if
+you drive them away!"
+
+The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about
+in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs,
+his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one
+blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
+
+When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it
+was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say
+good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to
+say that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think
+that a man such as he believed you were so fine a person, and during the
+coming winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her
+to be, but which, she assured him, she was not.
+
+Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to
+which she said: "Oh, indeed no!" and then, as though he were giving her
+a cue, he said: "Good-by!" But she did not take up his cue, and they
+shook hands. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
+
+"Surely, now that the parting has come," he assured himself, "she will
+make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total'
+under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me
+through the long winter."
+
+But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that
+he really forced her to say: "Don't miss your train," which kind
+consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor,
+indeed, later did she herself recall the remark with satisfaction.
+
+With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine suitor
+attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they had over Latimer
+was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at dinners,
+dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawing-room. Like any sailor
+from the Charlestown Navy Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk
+beside her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch
+dates and initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one
+side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when
+the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were
+beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known
+her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and
+friends in common; they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to
+her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests,
+and he was forced to choose between telling her of his lawsuits and
+his efforts in politics or of his love. To write to her of his affairs
+seemed wasteful and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had
+received what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he
+wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send you." Had
+he known it, his best letters were those he did not send. When in the
+morning mail Helen found his familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand
+out like the face of a friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon
+the letter, read it, and, assured of his love, would go on her way
+rejoicing. But when in the morning there was no letter, she wondered
+why, and all day she wondered why. And the next morning when again
+she was disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and
+speculations concerning him shut out every other interest. He became a
+perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind. And then he
+would spoil it all by writing her that he loved her and that of all the
+women in the world she was the only one. And, reassured upon that point,
+Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.
+
+But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had
+seen him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more gratefully,
+than that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had walked that
+same afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude
+he was first, and there was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she
+was ready to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him.
+But as yet she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she
+was, life was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited
+her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the object
+of each seemed to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day.
+Her nature was such that to make her happy was not difficult. Some of
+her devotees could do it by giving her a dance and letting her invite
+half of Boston, and her kid brother could do it by taking her to
+Cambridge to watch the team at practice.
+
+She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she
+was happy because she loved some one and that particular some one loved
+her. Her being "free" was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she
+thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered
+that, so far from being free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and
+soul.
+
+But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+
+Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch. The
+sun had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen
+upon his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the
+north, he spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan the surrounding
+landscape that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor,
+indeed, did any one attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret
+hiding-place, but the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him
+away. He was always triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing
+rabbits he was a thing of terror. Once, when the air was still, an
+impertinent crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and with
+scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue
+reefer, his red cheeks. But when the wind suddenly drove past them the
+sailorman sprang into action and the crow screamed in alarm and darted
+away. So, alone and with no one to come to his relief, the sailorman
+stood his watch. About him the branches bent with the snow, the icicles
+froze him into immobility, and in the tree-tops strange groanings filled
+him with alarms. But undaunted, month after month, alert and smiling,
+he waited the return of the beautiful lady and of the tall young man who
+had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy eyes.
+
+Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was
+the best thing that could come into his life. But to sit down and lament
+over the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite
+expression, "tend toward efficiency." He removed from his sight the
+three pictures of her he had cut from illustrated papers, and ceased to
+write to her.
+
+In his last letter he said: "I have told you how it is, and that is how
+it is always going to be. There never has been, there never can be any
+one but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought
+out every week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an
+advertisement of a motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be
+cheapened, to be subjected to slights and silence. If ever you should
+want it, it is yours. It is here waiting. But you must tell me so. I
+have done everything a man can do to make you understand. But you do not
+want me or my love. And my love says to me: 'Don't send me there
+again to have the door shut in my face. Keep me with you to be your
+inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so it shall be."
+
+When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not
+know how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly she had
+grown very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in
+consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not
+see why the two hundred and forty-nine expected her to keep on doing
+exactly the same things she had been doing with delight for six months,
+and indeed for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer
+was there any pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer
+that she found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not
+arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He
+said that he would always love her, but how could she now know that?
+Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position
+which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to
+escape? Were this true, and she wrote and said all those things that
+were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him
+to her against his will? The love that once he had for her might no
+longer exist, and if, in her turn, she told him she loved him and had
+always loved him, might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel
+it was his duty to pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It
+was intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as day succeeded
+day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very
+unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen
+had none, and for her life became a game of putting little things
+together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make
+up each day. It was a dreary game.
+
+From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his
+own State, he was an "Insurgent" making a fight, the outcome of which
+was expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West.
+When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became
+a national figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next
+governor, promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to
+take him further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place
+even in his thoughts.
+
+At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her
+about her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only
+because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over
+her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence,
+as the leader and exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she
+no longer could pretend to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he
+belonged to all of them.
+
+Older men would say to her: "I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
+is he?"
+
+Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man
+who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or
+halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+
+She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down
+and needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she
+agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent
+her, for she knew wherever she went she must still force herself to
+go on putting one hour on top of another, until she had built up the
+inexorable and necessary twenty-four.
+
+When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning
+unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse the thin spring
+sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task.
+She assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming
+and Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled
+herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is
+a pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer
+had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+
+Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not
+to think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking hours. Should she,
+as it sometimes happened, dream of him--should she imagine they were
+again seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at
+fifty miles an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying
+past, with the wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts
+happiness and content--that would not be breaking her rule. If she
+dreamed of him, she could not be held responsible. She could only be
+grateful.
+
+And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came
+East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with
+a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of
+three cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party
+leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's country. He was due to speak
+in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to
+leave for the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the
+city. He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New
+York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that
+week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting
+cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward
+to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the
+time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more
+direct attacks upon her feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to
+remain until, on the first of May at midnight, he again would pass out
+of her life, maybe forever. No one saw in her going any significance.
+Spring had come, and in preparation for the summer season the house at
+Fair Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of
+some one of the Page family was easily explained.
+
+She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it
+herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if
+it would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the
+memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out
+by those of one summer, by those of one man. The natives greeted her
+joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the
+village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though
+they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she
+had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused
+her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and
+hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in
+the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively
+to his open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The
+golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where
+he always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds
+than to remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where
+the schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon;
+the wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the
+pond into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+
+On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places
+purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way. They no longer
+distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends,
+who had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
+
+But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the opening
+among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea--she could
+not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third day
+when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own
+accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And
+again from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked
+the sea, he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For
+hours, stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same
+branches patiently waiting.
+
+On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one
+enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred
+circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find
+there she could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown
+to her. She saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal.
+No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more
+poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no
+sign of his or of her former presence. Across the open space something
+had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place,
+a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that
+once had been brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She
+had but one desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her
+forever, to remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had
+remembered it, and as now she must always remember It. She turned softly
+on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.
+
+But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of
+wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the
+branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And
+at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a
+violent, joyous tattoo--a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the
+woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged
+wings.
+
+Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes--and beheld the sailorman.
+
+Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy,
+calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down
+at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's
+ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though
+Latimer stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no
+longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that
+brought to her peace, and pride, and happiness.
+
+"So long as I love this beautiful lady," had been his foolish words,
+"you will guard this place. It is a life sentence!"
+
+With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman
+stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a
+joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her
+hands and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
+
+An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair
+Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between
+his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by
+landing them in jail.
+
+At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark
+places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced
+against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
+beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of
+the one thing that could make his life worth living.
+
+And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat,
+the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at
+peace, his duty well performed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+
+When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
+life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he
+knew. Under the title of "Tales of the Yard" they were collected in book
+form, and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a
+reporter on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of
+which a reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in
+gathering news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines,
+and later in a book under the title of "Tales of the Streets." They also
+were well received.
+
+Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: "There
+are two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction--men of genius and
+reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way
+that he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe
+something he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a
+way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but
+if I had, that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling
+tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers;
+how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling
+has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how
+each of them feels. He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot
+do it because you are not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at
+college; and now that you are in the newspaper business all your tales
+are only of newspaper work. You merely report what you see. So, if you
+are doomed to write only of what you see, then the best thing for you to
+do is to see as many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life.
+You must progress. You must leave New York, and you had better go to
+London."
+
+"But on the Republic," Endicott pointed out, "I get a salary. And in
+London I should have to sweep a crossing."
+
+"Then," said the literary editor, "you could write a story about a man
+who swept a crossing."
+
+It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven
+Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the daughter
+of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one
+winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money,
+and that she possessed so much of it that, unless he could show some
+unusual quality of mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from
+his own point of view at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew
+that no one could love her as he did, that no one so truly wished for
+her happiness, or would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him
+it did not seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was
+not able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or her food, who would
+have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a
+hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in birth and education and
+charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he came from New
+York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen Carey he had with
+him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That was all he possessed in the
+world; and unless the magazines bought his stories there was no prospect
+of his getting any more.
+
+Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was
+easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to entertain
+modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated
+he could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough
+to be able to live there on three sovereigns a day you had first to
+spend so many five-pound notes in getting acquainted with London that
+there were no sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just
+enough money to buy him a second-class passage back to New York, and he
+was as far from Helen as ever.
+
+Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to
+marry. And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that when two
+people truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money
+or not. But when in London, with only a five-pound note, and face to
+face with the actual proposition of asking Helen Carey not only to marry
+him but to support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had
+supposed. He found money was many different things--it was self-respect,
+and proper pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking
+these things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not
+one for whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he
+knew how he loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she loved
+him. She always seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be
+explained in different ways. It might be that what was in her heart for
+him was really a sort of "old home week" feeling; that to her it was a
+relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to
+have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she
+was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking
+slang.
+
+The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a
+friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had sent him cards
+for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And
+Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with
+him in Hyde Park and through the National Galleries; and they had fed
+buns to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They
+thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed.
+Later they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because
+they were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have
+laughed.
+
+On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to bed with
+his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound note to last
+him until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now
+that he loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between
+them was liable to unseat his courage and his self-control. In London
+he could, each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning
+against the iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window.
+But, once on the other side of the ocean, that tender exercise must
+be abandoned. He must even consider her pursued by most attractive
+guardsmen, diplomats, and belted earls. He knew they could not love her
+as he did; he knew they could not love her for the reasons he loved her,
+because the fine and beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped
+they did not seek, and so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few
+thousand dollars, he must remain silent, must put from him the best that
+ever came into his life, must waste the wonderful devotion he longed
+to give, must starve the love that he could never summon for any other
+woman.
+
+On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and completely
+miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and unrefreshed.
+
+And then the miracle came.
+
+Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house
+where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his breakfast. As he
+placed the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though
+Prichard had said: "I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman
+who takes these rooms may not be so open-handed. He never locked up his
+cigars or his whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits
+me, except across the shoulders."
+
+Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved.
+In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+
+"How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?"
+
+"I wouldn't take such a liberty," protested Prichard. "Not with any of
+our gentlemen's clothes."
+
+"How did you know I was talking about clothes," demanded Philip. "You
+didn't say anything about clothes, did you?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I--"
+
+"Were you thinking of clothes?"
+
+"Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was," answered the valet.
+"Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new, I thought..."
+
+"It's mental telepathy," said Philip.
+
+"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Prichard.
+
+"You needn't wait," said Philip.
+
+The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning
+papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged
+into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded
+with people; and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every
+one at whom he looked began to talk aloud. Their lips did not move,
+nor did any sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken
+phrases of thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a
+crowd, snatches of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his
+debts; another of the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to
+his silk hat; another planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over
+a telegram he had but that moment received. To himself he kept repeating
+the words of the telegram--"No need to come, out of danger." To Philip
+the message came as clearly as though he were reading it from the folded
+slip of paper that the stranger clutched in his hand.
+
+Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might
+consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge from the crowded
+street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some
+unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with
+him, and he was inventing the phrases he seemed to hear, that he was
+attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent.
+But, whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative
+that he should at once get at the meaning of it.
+
+The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of
+stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and directly in
+front of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted.
+Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept
+repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or
+a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff?
+Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff
+Mary Queen of Scots would look ridiculous!"
+
+Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed
+she was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had distinguished
+the words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was
+going mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman
+should determine it. He advanced boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, "but I believe you are waiting for your maid
+Hudson?"
+
+As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in silence.
+
+"I only wish to make sure," continued Philip, "that you are she for whom
+I have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to be photographed
+in fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?"
+
+"Well?" assented the girl.
+
+"And you telephoned Hudson," he continued, "to bring you your muff."
+
+The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+
+"Oh!" she protested; "I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want
+my ruff."
+
+Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+
+"For the love of Heaven!" he exclaimed in horror; "it's true!"
+
+"What's true?" demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+
+"That I'm a mind reader," declared Philip. "I've read your mind! I can
+read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking now. You're
+thinking I'm mad!"
+
+The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a
+gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs to the studio.
+Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to
+explain? How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable?
+Besides, the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of
+one, he could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to
+his ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as,
+before that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal,
+he now could look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind. The
+thought was appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a key-hole.
+In his dismay his first idea was to seek medical advice--the best in
+London. He turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There,
+he determined, to the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his
+strange plight. For only as a misfortune did the miracle appear to him.
+But as he made his way through the streets his pace slackened.
+
+Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed
+this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as a madman?
+Might they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his
+liberty? At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of
+the miracle as a "power" had opened a new line of speculation. If this
+strange gift (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently)
+were concealed from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful
+purpose? For, among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not
+he--among all other men the only one able to read the minds of all
+other men--a god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length
+considering the possibilities that lay within him.
+
+It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments.
+If it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends
+avoid him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at
+the mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would
+lead to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might
+easily become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the
+present he had best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+
+As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded
+it with less aversion. He began to consider to what advantage he could
+place it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he
+might learn secrets leading to far-reaching results. To a statesman, to
+a financier, such a gift as he possessed would make him a ruler of men.
+Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how
+could he bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to
+marry Helen Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet
+men who possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions
+to them. And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds
+would tell him the truth.
+
+The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no
+better than reading other people's letters. But, he argued, the dishonor
+in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he
+used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit
+to others, was he not justified in trading on his superior equipment? He
+decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance
+with the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was
+determined to become rich. Did not the end justify the means? Certainly
+an all-wise Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to
+take her away from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them
+for one another, the all-wise Providence had overlooked the fact that
+she was rich and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently
+was now endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic
+and roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift
+that could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of
+Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building
+it in a hurry.
+
+From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady
+Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he
+turned in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the
+corridor of the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and
+fortune, and in reading their minds he might pass the time before
+luncheon with entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing
+Bruton Street trying to discover the principles of conduct that
+threatened to hamper his new power, he had found that in actual
+operation it was quite simple. He learned that his mind, in relation
+to other minds, was like the receiver of a wireless station with an
+unlimited field. For, while the wireless could receive messages only
+from those instruments with which it was attuned, his mind was in key
+with all other minds. To read the thoughts of another, he had only to
+concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut off the thoughts of
+that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts elsewhere. But also
+he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside the range of his
+physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what Helen Carey was
+at that moment thinking, there was no result. But when he asked, "Of
+what is that policeman on the corner thinking?" he was surprised to find
+that that officer of the law was formulating regulations to abolish the
+hobble skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+
+As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great
+distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the person of a
+young gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the
+source from which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a
+pink-cheeked, yellow-haired youth of extremely boyish appearance, and
+dressed as if for the race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish
+face wore an expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was
+gazing at a house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the street.
+And his thoughts were these: "She is the best that ever lived, and I am
+the most ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow
+stucco! Only now, when she has closed its doors to me, do I know how
+happy! If she would give me another chance, never again would I distress
+or deceive her."
+
+So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile
+of surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front
+of the house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young
+person. She was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of
+haunting beauty and innocence.
+
+"My wife!" exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he
+dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to a four-wheeler, was
+contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+
+With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house
+and disappeared.
+
+The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly.
+He shares the troubles of so many people that to the troubles of other
+people he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the
+family fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter,
+he acted quickly. Hardly had the door closed upon the young lady than
+he had mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he
+could not resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the
+outlawed husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from
+across the back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of
+his general appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to
+alter all of them, was quickly communicated to the American. They were
+thoughts of a nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily
+cut off all connection.
+
+As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly announced:
+
+"Her ladyship is not receiving."
+
+"Her ladyship will, I think, receive me," said Philip pleasantly, "when
+you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his lordship."
+
+From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall there
+issued a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with joy; and in
+the hall the noble lady instantly appeared.
+
+When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought had
+been, "Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!" Philip felt no
+embarrassment whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the
+erring but bitterly repentant husband; inside, her tenderest thoughts
+racing tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy child-wife begging to be
+begged to pardon.
+
+For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good
+manners, it was too easy.
+
+"I do not know you," said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she
+motioned to the butler to go away. "You must be one of his new friends."
+Her tone was one of envy.
+
+"Indeed, I am his newest friend," Philip assured her; "but I can safely
+say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are all of you!"
+
+The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she shook
+her head.
+
+"They tell me I must not believe him," she announced. "They tell me--"
+
+"Never mind what they tell you," commanded Philip. "Listen to ME. He
+loves you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks is the
+chance to tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at
+you, and not believe that he loves you! Let me," he begged, "bring him
+to you." He started from her when, remembering the somewhat violent
+thoughts of the youthful husband, he added hastily: "Or perhaps it would
+be better if you called him yourself."
+
+"Called him!" exclaimed the lady. "He is in Paris-at the races--with
+her!"
+
+"If they tell you that sort of thing," protested Philip indignantly,
+"you must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is not with her. There
+never was a her!"
+
+He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. "He is there--behind that
+ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell you that not only
+did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never do
+it again."
+
+The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more
+boldly showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over the scarlet
+geraniums, she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous.
+Philip bolted for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted
+down the steps, the youthful husband, in strides resembling those of an
+ostrich, shot past him. Philip did not cease running until he was well
+out of Berkeley Square. Then, not ill-pleased with the adventure, he
+turned and smiled back at the house of yellow stucco.
+
+"Bless you, my children," he murmured; "bless you!"
+
+He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter
+entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered around it
+a considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that
+stretched down the steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet
+in June, when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining gently,
+can mean only royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip
+halted. He remembered that for a few days the young King of Asturia and
+the Queen Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen
+the young man who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his
+own kingdom, Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+
+As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of
+those about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of pity for
+the exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross
+street, of pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the
+coachman of the court carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount
+of his Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as
+the warm sunshine.
+
+And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts was
+shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought
+of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was murder.
+
+"When they appear at the doorway," spoke the brain of the maniac, "I
+shall lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my head. I
+shall crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of
+these people into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVE--a martyr
+to the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!"
+
+Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a
+tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing close to
+the open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized
+him around the waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow.
+Philip's face, appearing over the man's shoulder, stared straight into
+that of the policeman.
+
+"He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!" yelled Philip. "I can hold him
+while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop it!" Philip turned
+upon the crowd. "Run! all of you!" he shouted. "Run like the devil!"
+
+At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young
+and beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that her robes of
+mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Go back, sir!" warned Philip. "He means to kill you!"
+
+At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed
+helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang protectingly
+in front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now
+holding the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head;
+Philip's arms, like a lariat, were wound around his chest; and from his
+pocket the first policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of
+the size of a glass fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved
+his free hand warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no
+one remaining to observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling
+and biting in the grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other
+policeman unhappily holding the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought to
+escape into the Ritz. But the young King broke through the circle of
+attendants and stopped him.
+
+"I must thank you," said the boy eagerly; "and I wish you to tell me how
+you came to suspect the man's purpose."
+
+Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of fiction, began
+to improvise fluently.
+
+"To learn their purpose, sir," he said, "is my business. I am of the
+International Police, and in the secret service of your Majesty."
+
+"Then I must know your name," said the King, and added with a dignity
+that was most becoming, "You will find we are not ungrateful."
+
+Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+
+"I said in your secret service," he repeated. "Did even your Majesty
+know me, my usefulness would be at an end." He pointed toward the two
+policemen. "If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the
+men to reward."
+
+He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into
+the hall and on into the corridor.
+
+The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the
+heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they
+had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still
+ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their
+music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two
+distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were
+talking in leisurely whispers.
+
+One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a
+reporter had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on matters
+concerning the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a Pennsylvania
+Dutchman from Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the
+night shift in the same mills he now controlled. But with a roar and
+a spectacular flash, not unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he had
+soared to fame and fortune. He recognized Philip as one of the bright
+young men of the Republic; but in his own opinion he was far too
+self-important to betray that fact.
+
+Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in
+imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what
+he knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While
+waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip,
+from where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust
+and of the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features
+and a pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American
+many-time millionaire on having that morning come into possession of
+a rare and valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently
+discovered portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+
+Philip sighed enviously.
+
+"Fancy," he thought, "owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to
+yourself! It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be poor!"
+
+The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in tones
+of rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and solemnity.
+
+"I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust," he said. "In no gallery in
+Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another Velasquez. This
+is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing
+her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon
+as it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh,
+every Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too.
+For it is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain,
+Mr. Faust! What a bargain!"
+
+To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced
+in the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard, frowned
+importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his
+voice.
+
+"Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron," he said, "that costs three
+hundred thousand dollars!"
+
+Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly
+that Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So he
+obligingly assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle
+simulations of surprise, awe, and envy.
+
+The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his features.
+
+Mr. Faust continued. "If you will come upstairs," he said to the
+picture-dealer, "I will give you your check; and then I should like to
+drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture."
+
+"I am sorry," the Baron said, "but I have had it moved to my art gallery
+to be packed."
+
+"Then let's go to the gallery," urged the patron of art. "We've just
+time before lunch." He rose to his feet, and on the instant the soul of
+the picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+
+In actual words he said: "The picture is already boxed and in its lead
+coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry." But
+his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: "Fancy my letting this
+vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old
+masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames
+and canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van
+Dycks, the new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own
+copy of Velasquez next to the one exactly like it--the one MacMillan
+finished yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in
+a convent, we shall 'discover' it."
+
+Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the
+situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud. The two men,
+who had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at
+nothing, turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+
+"Pardon me," he said to Faust, "but you spoke so loud I couldn't help
+overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter on the
+Republic."
+
+The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+
+"Really!" he protested irritably, "you reporters butt in everywhere. No
+public man is safe. Is there no place we can go where you fellows won't
+annoy us?"
+
+"You can go to the devil for all I care," said Philip, "or even to
+Pittsburgh!"
+
+He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail,
+and moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the reporter would escape
+him, hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.
+
+"However, since you've learned so much," he said, "I'll tell you the
+whole of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of international
+importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?"
+
+"Do you?" asked Philip.
+
+The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+
+"I think I do," he said. "And to prove it, I shall tell you something
+that will be news to you. I have just bought a Velasquez that I am going
+to place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars."
+
+Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad
+as he had expected.
+
+"Now, I shall tell you something," he said, "that will be news to you.
+You are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez than this hair
+oil is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars."
+
+"How dare you!" shouted Faust. "Are you mad?"
+
+The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+
+"Who is this insolent one?" he sputtered.
+
+"I will make you a sporting proposition," said Philip. "You can take it,
+or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will drive to this man's
+studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on
+its way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen
+other 'old masters' half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm
+right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE
+YOU TO HIS STUDIO!"
+
+"Indeed, I will not," roared the German. "It would be to insult myself."
+
+"It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too," said Philip.
+
+"How dare you insult the Baron?" demanded Faust. "What makes you
+think--"
+
+"I don't think, I know!" said Philip. "For the price of a taxi-cab fare
+to Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds."
+
+"We will all three go at once," cried the German. "My car is outside.
+Wait here. I will have it brought to the door?"
+
+Faust protested indignantly.
+
+"Do not disturb yourself, Baron," he said; "just because a fresh
+reporter--"
+
+But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They
+saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and
+shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.
+
+"That's the last you'll see of him," said Philip.
+
+"His actions are certainly peculiar," gasped the millionaire. "He did
+not wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think, after all, I
+had better go to Tate Street."
+
+"Do so," said Philip, "and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars,
+and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me here at lunch.
+If I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds."
+
+"You should come with me," said Faust. "It is only fair to yourself."
+
+"I'll take your word for what you find in the studio," said Philip. "I
+cannot go. This is my busy day."
+
+Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and,
+in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+
+Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save
+for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty,
+and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.
+
+"Surely," Philip thought, "the French chap was right who said words were
+given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if
+every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying
+would become a lost art. I wonder," he mused cynically, "is any one
+quite honest? Does any one speak as he thinks and think as he speaks?"
+
+At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen
+had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet from him.
+
+"I sincerely hope, Sir John," said one of the two, "that you have
+no regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the best
+interests of all?"
+
+"I do, indeed," the other replied heartily "We shall be thought entirely
+selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done is for the
+benefit of the shareholders."
+
+Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old
+gentlemen ran hand in hand with his spoken words. "Here, at least," he
+said to himself, "are two honest men."
+
+As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+
+"And I hope," continued the one addressed as Sir John, "that you approve
+of my holding back the public announcement of the combine until the
+afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given
+out the news in this morning's papers the stockbrokers would have--"
+
+"It was most wise," interrupted the other. "Most just."
+
+The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
+standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
+chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
+away.
+
+Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
+three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip
+saw the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened
+by the breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various
+combinations; but always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of
+the three his heart spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a
+mother reaches toward her firstborn.
+
+Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
+was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
+Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags--a flag with a red cross
+on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her
+to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
+return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
+mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
+wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place
+of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great
+ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is
+equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite
+after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate
+to a love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help
+from a sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still
+flew the same house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now
+in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+
+Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
+corridor to the telephone.
+
+Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
+stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
+him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
+
+Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+
+"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want you
+to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
+Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle."
+
+He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+
+"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called. "It has fallen
+through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds."
+
+Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a five-pound
+note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+
+"I don't care what they are," he shouted. "The combine is already signed
+and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour everybody will
+know it!"
+
+"What makes you think you know it?" demanded the broker.
+
+"I've seen the house-flags!" cried Philip. "I have--do as I tell you,"
+he commanded.
+
+There was a distracting delay.
+
+"No matter who's back of you," objected Maddox, "it's a big order on a
+gamble."
+
+"It's not a gamble," cried Philip. "It's an accomplished fact. I'm at
+the Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when you've got a
+thousand of each, stop!"
+
+Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for
+half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself to read the
+illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same advertisement
+five times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him
+half-way with a message.
+
+"Have secured for you a thousand shares of each," he read, "at fifteen.
+Maddox."
+
+Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate
+the horror of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was
+sufficiently horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them,
+he had bought shares in three steamship lines, which shares, added
+together, were worth two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
+He returned down the corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own
+audacity, he was in a state of almost complete panic, when that happened
+which made his outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was
+drawing near to half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men
+and beautiful ladies, the component parts of different luncheon parties
+were beginning to assemble.
+
+Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one
+guest had arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one was
+sufficient. It was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed
+on the doors opening from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with
+appeals, blessings, and adoration, ran toward her. Her profile was
+toward him, and she could not see him; but he could see her. And he
+noted that, as though seeking some one, her eyes were turned searchingly
+upon each young man as he entered and moved from one to another of those
+already in the lounge. Her expression was eager and anxious.
+
+"If only," Philip exclaimed, "she were looking for me! She certainly is
+looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?"
+
+As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his
+steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind? Why did he
+not KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind upon
+the waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: "Of
+what are you thinking?"
+
+There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging
+from Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and proffered
+it. Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the half-burned
+cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in
+that mental process had Philip been conscious! The conclusion was only
+too apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+
+Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered
+them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used his power to his
+own advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the
+happiness of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart
+the dishonesty of a swindler, he had been all-powerful; but when he
+endeavored to bend it to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood
+abashed and repentant, Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the
+sight of him, there leaped to them happiness and welcome and complete
+content. It was "the look that never was on land or sea," and it was not
+necessary to be a mind reader to understand it. Philip sprang toward her
+as quickly as a man dodges a taxi-cab.
+
+"I came early," said Helen, "because I wanted to talk to you before the
+others arrived." She seemed to be repeating words already rehearsed, to
+be following a course of conduct already predetermined. "I want to tell
+you," she said, "that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you
+that I shall miss you very much." She paused and drew a long breath. And
+she looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her
+to go on.
+
+Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+
+"Will you miss me," he asked, "in the Row, where I used to wait among
+the trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances, where I used
+to hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss me
+at night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the
+railings of the Carlton Club, just to see you run across the pavement
+from your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to
+see the light go out, and to know that you are sleeping?"
+
+Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+
+"Did you use to do that?" she asked.
+
+"Every night I do that," said Philip. "Ask the policemen! They arrested
+me three times."
+
+"Why?" said Helen gently.
+
+But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+
+"They thought I was a burglar."
+
+Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+
+"You know what I mean," she said. "Why did you keep guard outside my
+window?"
+
+"It was the policeman kept guard," said Philip. "I was there only as a
+burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience,
+or else I knew my own unworthiness." There was a long pause. As both
+of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the
+Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the "Grizzly Bear,"
+and people were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with
+a look of so complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare
+of such savage hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to
+last for many years.
+
+At last Helen said: "Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew
+in a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up
+at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to
+the lady's window, and she lifted him in and kissed him--because he had
+dared to climb."
+
+Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
+doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She
+was delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
+
+"At any moment," Philip said, "I may know whether I owe two hundred
+and twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am
+worth about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at
+the exact place where you last spoke--AFTER I know whether I am going to
+jail, or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars."
+
+Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+
+"I knew that was it!" she cried. "You don't like my money. I was afraid
+you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
+will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long
+as you don't dislike me."
+
+What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
+many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with
+a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: "Combine is announced,
+shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?"
+
+That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
+deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message
+three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own
+sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter
+of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound
+note. He pushed the boy from him.
+
+"Run!" he commanded. "Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!"
+
+He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned
+or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence,
+Helen said: "Is it good news?"
+
+"That depends entirely upon you," replied Philip soberly. "Indeed, all
+my future life depends upon what you are going to say next."
+
+Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+
+"And--what am I going to say?"
+
+"How can I know that?" demanded Philip. "Am I a mind reader?"
+
+But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
+chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
+shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+
+Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
+taxi-cab.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
+socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley
+line, the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his
+son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his
+father; or, if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone
+through Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would
+not have known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told
+him.
+
+When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
+innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon
+lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for
+other social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes
+and ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to
+lay siege to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York
+itself. A widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had
+told them not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent
+of a society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them
+that in New York the waiting-list is already interminable, and that, if
+you hoped to break into New York society, the clever thing to do was to
+lay siege to it by way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If you went
+direct to New York knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact,
+and the result would be disastrous.
+
+She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the
+West, who, at the first dance to which they were invited, asked, "Who is
+the old lady in the wig?" and that question argued them so unknown that
+it set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the
+Keeps with misgivings. They agreed with the lady correspondent that it
+was far better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves
+in the suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from
+Keepsburg, which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long Island, or
+Westchester, or Bordentown.
+
+"In all of those places," explained the widow lady, "our smartest people
+have country homes, and at the country club you may get to know them.
+Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city."
+
+The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them
+could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be
+fought and won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club.
+But the attack did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear
+that the lady correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although
+three months had passed, and they had played golf together until they
+were as loath to clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one,
+and no one knew them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and
+if you lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you
+were not to be found on any map.
+
+Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens
+had looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those
+days the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so
+proud that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, "No horses
+allowed. Take the other road." The other road was an earth road used by
+tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and
+automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden
+estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of
+people who occupy cemeteries--except "Harry" Van Warden, and she lived
+in New York at the Turf Club.
+
+Harry, according to all local tradition--for he frequently motored out
+to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat--and, according to the
+newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable.
+So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for
+overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his
+front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden
+Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but
+because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+
+"If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,"
+sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, "you would meet Harry Van Warden, and
+he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere."
+
+"If I was to ride to hounds," returned her husband, "the only thing I'd
+break would be my neck."
+
+The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the
+purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The
+house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated
+fortune; and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler,
+his pictures, furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an
+eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its
+chief attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay
+directly below the terrace of the house and also in full view from the
+road to Albany.
+
+This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood
+were many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted
+these born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer
+evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the
+hedge, and used the lake as a swimming-pool.
+
+"It makes me nervous," complained Winnie. "I don't like the idea of
+people prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve
+hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are
+burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the very first one
+they'll break into."
+
+"I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house
+yet," said Fred, "and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!"
+
+They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was
+just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October
+night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows
+of close-clipped box. A full moon was just showing itself above the
+tree-tops, turning the lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his
+wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride, touched her hair
+fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+
+"What if we don't know anybody, Win," he said, "and nobody knows us?
+It's been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it
+that way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon,
+to be together, to be alone--"
+
+Winnie laughed shortly. "They certainly have left us alone!" she sighed.
+
+"But where else could we have been any happier?" demanded the young
+husband loyally. "Where will you find any prettier place than this, just
+as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing
+the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake?
+Where's there a better place for a honeymoon? It's a bower--a bower of
+peace, solitude a--bower of--"
+
+As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside
+the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It
+came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage.
+Then, as suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after
+a pause of an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two
+sharp blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream
+of rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who
+heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+
+"In the name of Heaven!" gasped Keep, "what's that?"
+
+Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped,
+he spoke as though he were announcing dinner. "A convict, sir," he said,
+"has escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not understand the
+whistle. I thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors."
+
+"Why?" asked Winnie Keep.
+
+"The house is near the road, madam," said the butler. "And there are
+so many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here, and the
+keepers--there was a fight." The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his
+wife on the arm.
+
+"It's time to dress for dinner, Win," he said.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" demanded Winnie.
+
+"I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to
+change." He turned to the butler. "And I'll have a cocktail, too I'll
+have it out here."
+
+The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the
+terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely. "Fred," she
+begged, "you--you're not going to poke around in the bushes, are
+you?--just because you think I'm frightened?"
+
+Her husband laughed at her. "I certainly am NOT!" he said. "And you're
+not frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a minute."
+
+But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the
+siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very door, to beat
+and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to
+her ears.
+
+"Why don't they stop it!" she whispered. "Why don't they give him a
+chance!"
+
+When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge
+of the terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his hands, sat
+staring down at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees,
+had blotted the lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the
+hedges with wavering shadows. Somewhere near at hand a criminal--a
+murderer, burglar, thug--was at large, and the voice of the prison he
+had tricked still bellowed in rage, in amazement, still clamored not
+only for his person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside
+heard it: the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the
+guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red candle shades; the joy
+riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It woke
+the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The granite walls
+of the Palisades flung it back against the granite walls of the prison.
+Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching for him,
+pointing him out--stirring in the heart of each who heard it the lust of
+the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the hunted thing is a man.
+
+"Find him!" shrieked the siren. "Find him! He's there, behind your
+hedge! He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in the
+moonlight. THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag
+him down! He's mine! Mine!"
+
+But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the
+home of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with his soul.
+Each, clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful
+joy, each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will
+the hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled panting through the crisp
+October night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows,
+staggering and falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that
+wherever his feet led him the siren still held him by the heels.
+
+As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
+adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing
+to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night,
+although her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he
+heard no singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour.
+Gridley, the aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for
+twenty years had been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and
+taken away the empty glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts.
+They were entirely of the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him
+and begged his aid, what would he do? He knew quite well what he would
+do. He considered even the means by which he would assist the fugitive
+to a successful get-away.
+
+The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his
+duty to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had
+visited "the institution," as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers
+to speak of it, he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping
+from Sing Sing and not being at once retaken was one out of six
+thousand. So with Fred it was largely a sporting proposition. Any man
+who could beat a six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+
+And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine
+himself in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring
+to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself
+of his tell-tale clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in
+Westchester County a naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in
+the purple-gray cloth of the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He
+might hold up a passer-by, and, if the passer-by did not flee from
+him or punch him into insensibility, he might effect an exchange of
+garments; he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might
+despoil a scarecrow.
+
+But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
+deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as
+he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was
+not entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas
+awning. Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats
+in the lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He
+was a young man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face
+smooth-shaven, and above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He had the
+sharp, clever, rat-like face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water
+dripped from him, and either for that reason or from fright the young
+man trembled, and, like one who had been running, breathed in short,
+hard gasps.
+
+Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It
+was as though he had been waiting for the man, as though it had been an
+appointment.
+
+Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of
+his visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and that the man, not
+knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might
+rush him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the
+moonlight the two young men eyed each other warily.
+
+Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of
+his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+
+"I took a bath in your pond," he blurted forth, "and--and they stole my
+clothes! That's why I'm like this!"
+
+Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative
+how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid himself of
+accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the stranger
+with admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he
+could not let him suppose that he was deceived by it.
+
+"Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?" he said.
+
+As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of
+shivering.
+
+"It wasn't a bath," he gasped. "It was a bet!"
+
+"A what!" exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. "A bet? Then
+you are not alone?"
+
+"I am NOW--damn them!" exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+reluctantly. "We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting here
+in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim
+across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed
+up on me from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to
+where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I
+got to the hedge the car was gone!"
+
+Keep smiled encouragingly. "The car!" he assented. "So you've been
+riding around in the moonlight?"
+
+The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them
+the roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and
+came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed
+fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a
+fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer
+to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of
+Keep.
+
+"You--you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?" he stuttered.
+"Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all right," he added;
+reassuringly. "I live near here."
+
+With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young
+man continued less confidently.
+
+"I don't blame you if you don't believe it," he stammered, "seeing me
+like this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody around here knows
+me, and I guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'm--that is,
+my name--" like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and
+the rat-like eyes regarded Keep watchfully--"my name is Van Warden. I'm
+the one you read about--Harry--I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile
+was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he could not longer
+enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+
+"My boy!" he exclaimed, "you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!"
+He rose and made a peremptory gesture. "Sorry," he said, "but this isn't
+safe for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and send you
+where you want to go." He turned and whispered over his shoulder: "Some
+day let me hear from you. A man with your nerve--"
+
+In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+
+The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room. First
+making sure the library and hall were free of servants, Fred tiptoed to
+the coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light.
+The naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of damp footprints, followed
+at his heels.
+
+Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and
+on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+
+"Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes," he commanded. "They'll cover
+you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you here while
+I get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your
+head. Just say you're waiting to see me--Mr. Keep. I won't be long.
+Wait."
+
+"Wait!" snorted the stranger. "You BET I'll wait!"
+
+As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself
+violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+
+In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt,
+boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out for him, and he
+snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer
+he counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the
+trousers pocket of the serge suit and with the bundle of clothes in his
+arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coat-room.
+
+"Don't come out until I knock," he commanded. "And," he added in a
+vehement whisper, "don't come out at all unless you have clothes on!"
+
+The stranger grunted.
+
+Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the
+door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes. When the butler
+had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coat-room door. The
+stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at
+the moment was carefully arranging the tie.
+
+"Hurry!" commanded Keep. "The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I
+tell him to take you?"
+
+The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning.
+"New York," he whispered, "fast as he can get there! Look here," he
+added doubtfully, "there's a roll of bills in these clothes."
+
+"They're yours," said Fred.
+
+The stranger exclaimed vigorously. "You're all right!" he whispered. "I
+won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the money back same time I
+send the clothes."
+
+"Exactly!" said Fred.
+
+The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred
+slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before it. After
+a period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the
+inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of
+the width of a finger, and put his ear to the crack.
+
+"You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?" whispered the stranger.
+
+Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the
+chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had
+gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy could be
+trusted.
+
+"You're to take a man to New York," he said, "or wherever he wants
+to go. Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if YOU'RE
+questioned, you can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!"
+
+The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps.
+As he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still demanding its
+prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow,
+the youth jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where
+Keep stood above him.
+
+"I told you," said Keep, "to ask no questions."
+
+As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs
+toward him. She had changed to one of the prettiest evening gowns of her
+trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself and
+the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he
+was lost in admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the
+door of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet the
+stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly
+appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp shriek.
+
+With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon the
+visitor.
+
+"Did you fix it?" he demanded.
+
+The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his
+eyes were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by
+Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to
+nod his head dully.
+
+"Come," commanded Fred. "The car is waiting."
+
+Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a
+woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood
+still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn,
+Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery,
+so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and
+inarticulate. For protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.
+
+The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been
+intended for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot
+reciting its lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+
+"My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden."
+
+He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though
+he had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as though a
+stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+
+But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced
+an instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated excitement and
+delight. How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of
+Scarboro she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward
+him a glance of deep and grateful devotion.
+
+Then she beamed upon the stranger. "Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to
+dinner?" she asked.
+
+Her husband emitted a howl. "He will NOT!" he cried. "He's not that kind
+of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that fixes the telephone!"
+
+He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and dragged
+him down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor
+stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful
+lady. Fred thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at
+the golf-cap and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly
+twisting in his hands, Fred whispered fiercely:
+
+"Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what to do."
+
+With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the
+signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to throw in the
+clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,
+directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself
+upon the gravel; something in a suit of purple-gray; something torn
+and bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and
+crawled, that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the
+glare of the head-lights the white face and white hair of a very old,
+old man. The kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in
+the pit of the stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man
+stretched his arms toward them. From long disuse his voice cracked and
+broke.
+
+"I'm done!" he sobbed. "I can't go no farther! I give myself up!"
+
+Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison
+siren shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+
+It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and
+slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he flung it over
+the suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's
+frightened eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down over the white hair. With
+one arm he lifted the convict, and with the other dragged and pushed him
+into the seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he
+thrust the roll of bills.
+
+"Get him away!" he ordered. "It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut
+line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a ticket to Boston.
+Go through White Plains to Greenwich--and then you're safe!"
+
+As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he
+swung upon Fred. "Am I right?" he demanded.
+
+"Of course!" roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though
+throwing him into space.
+
+"Get-to-hell-out-of-here!" he shouted.
+
+The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being,
+chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With a grinding of
+gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking
+in farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in
+jeering notes of joy and victory.
+
+Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed
+to leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger remained
+motionless.
+
+Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the
+stranger by the arm.
+
+"But you?" he demanded. "How are you going to get away?"
+
+The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step stood
+Winnie Keep.
+
+"I don't want to get away," he said. "I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me
+stay to dinner."
+
+A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so
+that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of the stranger.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," Fred demanded, "who the devil you are?"
+
+The stranger exclaimed peevishly. "I've BEEN telling you all evening,"
+he protested. "I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+
+"Dinner is served, madam," he said.
+
+The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. "Hello, Gridley!" he
+cried. "Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if he'll ask
+me to dinner, I won't steal the spoons."
+
+Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the
+privilege of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the stranger
+fondly, proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the
+affection of an old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to Keep.
+
+"If Mr. Harry--Mr. Van Warden," he said, "is to stay to dinner, might I
+suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert, '84."
+
+Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his
+wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly happy.
+
+Gridley coughed tentatively. "Shall I open a bottle, sir?" he asked.
+
+Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+
+"Open a case!" he roared.
+
+At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of
+such mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling each other by
+their first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken
+from the telephone. It was a long-distance call from Yonkers, sent by
+James, the faithful chauffeur.
+
+Fred read it aloud.
+
+"I got that party the articles he needed," it read, "and saw him safe on
+a train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for speeding the car
+on the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers."
+
+
+
+Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with
+the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round
+Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie
+knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not
+deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and
+secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known
+it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his
+sleeve for "stalking" and "path-finding," not to boast of others
+for "gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had, General
+Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
+Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by
+inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of
+the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with
+Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of
+the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach
+road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of
+his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and
+rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+
+If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not
+see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale" sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could
+see in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
+
+Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's
+axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before
+in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he
+would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+
+"But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure
+himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still
+Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that
+when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. "Mebbe dad
+told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed
+it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book."
+
+The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the
+week end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides
+being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President
+of the Country Club, was also a local "councilman" for the Round Hill
+Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In
+deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen
+in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was
+his peroration that made trouble.
+
+"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with
+Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You
+can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and
+then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven
+and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.
+I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet,
+"that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
+blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to
+find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what
+extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows,
+the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down
+on their maps the wells and streams."
+
+As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the
+door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. "Keep your eyes open!" he commanded.
+"Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your
+sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be
+prepared!'"
+
+That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+saw spiked helmets.
+
+Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+
+"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, "you'll talk on 'Votes
+for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who
+dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
+from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites."
+
+"YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now, and
+you're trying to buy the other half."
+
+"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know WHY I
+am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble.
+The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and
+I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the
+Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black
+Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for
+a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a
+millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to
+'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being
+arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break
+into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!"
+
+The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie
+liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
+adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the
+top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
+pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
+himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
+squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
+night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
+was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
+Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in
+the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
+same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
+and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why
+on his sleeve was the badge for "stalking." But always to have to make
+believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix
+when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one
+just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent
+to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a
+week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his
+flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he
+most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his
+energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.
+The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but
+the enemy of his country.
+
+In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked
+the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and
+he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor
+from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian
+arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant
+gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor
+to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where
+one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor
+was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week
+following Jimmie was again disappointed.
+
+On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting
+in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book,
+and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of
+New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing
+a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and
+at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he
+followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
+mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam,
+was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the
+Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From
+the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man
+working alone upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American,
+and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the
+German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was
+only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was
+only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin
+was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect
+a fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
+discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him
+his troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. "My advice to you,
+Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a
+very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for
+him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before
+you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."
+
+So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+
+Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a
+new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young
+man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to
+be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and,
+from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie
+mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not
+been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed
+that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been
+forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered
+Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now,
+or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"
+
+Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when
+did you have your breakfast?"
+
+"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite,
+and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the
+shortest way back to Bedford?"
+
+"The first road to your right," said Jimmie.
+
+"Is it far?" asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+evident.
+
+"It's a half-hour's walk," said Jimmie
+
+"If I live that long," corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+
+Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut
+him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance,
+and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road, "stalked" him. From
+behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one
+in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+
+He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a
+runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he
+heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who
+knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad
+shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by
+the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed
+the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered,
+that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also
+reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road,
+he approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the
+whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been
+hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was
+at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward
+Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut
+State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like
+arrow-heads.
+
+For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty
+miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him
+south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread
+tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as
+in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he
+catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset
+as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the
+skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous
+as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until
+the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was
+in no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face
+east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to
+splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into
+the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen
+it, there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
+cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time
+for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the
+top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone
+wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath
+to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was
+tripping and tumbling. Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned
+hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie
+shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the
+coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+
+"You wait!" he shouted. "I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun."
+
+Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over
+the chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+or other devices."
+
+He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested
+more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of
+the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen
+he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What
+he had seen was his warrant--plus the shotgun.
+
+As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent
+grew hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and
+Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
+right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires
+had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the
+car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy
+on the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car.
+Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did
+not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked
+that hill.
+
+Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before
+him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away
+to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich.
+Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests,
+green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash
+of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had
+washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the
+glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
+those in a colored photograph; and as still.
+
+In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+
+"If he moves," he sighed happily, "I've got him!"
+
+Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which
+he had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was
+crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing
+an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in
+poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the
+sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the
+hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall.
+With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised
+his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
+the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie
+knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him.
+Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill
+opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall.
+With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon
+the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+
+Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the
+contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill
+opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which
+he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live
+wire, stepped on tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it.
+The binoculars hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was
+spread a map. He was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he
+hummed a tune.
+
+Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+
+"Throw up your hands!" he commanded.
+
+The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no
+sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled
+valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed
+by some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the
+sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+
+Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but
+still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his
+smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief.
+These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm.
+"Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the stranger. "Is it loaded?"
+With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length
+of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open
+palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to
+be exclaiming, "Can such things be?"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Jimmie.
+
+With alacrity the stranger rose.
+
+"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off
+those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing his eyes
+from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed
+them to the stone wall. "See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point
+that damned blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my
+watch, and clothes, and all my money; only don't--"
+
+Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At least, he
+tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+
+"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want
+anything, why are you holding me up?"
+
+"I'm not," returned Jimmie, "I'm arresting you!"
+
+The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he cried,
+"I see! Have I been trespassing?"
+
+With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall.
+"If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you full of buckshot."
+
+The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. "Don't worry about that," he
+exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?"
+
+Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder,
+and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and
+menacing.
+
+"The name on them" he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?"
+The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, "That's
+the name of the firm that makes them."
+
+Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. "Hah!" he cried, "made in Germany!"
+
+The stranger shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?"
+With polite insistence he repeated, "Would you mind telling me why I am
+arrested, and who you might happen to be?"
+
+Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But
+the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he
+saw, "Correct range, 1,800 yards"; "this stream not fordable"; "slope of
+hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here";
+"forage for five squadrons."
+
+Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+gun motioned toward the base of the hill. "Keep forty feet ahead of me,"
+he commanded, "and walk to your car." The stranger did not seem to hear
+him. He spoke with irritation.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "I'll have to explain to you about that map."
+
+"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to drive
+straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!"
+
+The stranger tossed his arms even higher. "Thank God!" he exclaimed
+gratefully.
+
+With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a
+willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's
+he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie
+held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating
+circumstance.
+
+They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a
+bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to
+his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a
+gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him
+with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting
+German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was
+great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the
+hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence
+of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a
+feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a
+halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+
+Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+not entirety successful.
+
+"I got him!" he cried. "I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!"
+
+"What one?" demanded Van Vorst.
+
+Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+
+"THAT one!" cried Jimmie. "He's a German spy!"
+
+The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+indignation, anger, reproach.
+
+"Jimmie!" he cried.
+
+Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A." "Look what
+he's wrote," commanded the scout. "It's all military words. And these
+are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been
+stalking him for a week. He's a spy!"
+
+When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+he was puzzled.
+
+But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+
+"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only glad it's
+no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every
+stranger he sees--"
+
+The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+
+"Please!" he begged, "Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+Might I speak with you--ALONE?" he asked.
+
+Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+
+"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must have been
+a great loss to you?"
+
+"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I
+refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+
+"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your servants to
+hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been
+a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think
+he has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit
+as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+capture."
+
+Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're an
+officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I
+right?"
+
+The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+
+"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the
+Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on
+the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in the
+United States Army." He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+
+"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not
+picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of
+defense for Americans when the Germans come!"
+
+Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+
+"My word!" he exclaimed. "You're as bad as Jimmie!"
+
+Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+
+"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other
+Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill,
+when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe,
+you'll believe THEN."
+
+"Are you serious?" demanded Van Vorst. "And you an army officer?"
+
+"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "WE know. But when we try to
+prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in underhand ways,
+for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and accuse
+us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to prepare
+under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like a
+chicken thief. And," he added sharply, "that's why that boy must not
+know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at
+Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed."
+
+Van Vorst moved to the door.
+
+"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will tell him
+you are to be shot at sunrise."
+
+"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we fight
+over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And
+give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes
+from you."
+
+But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. "You mustn't," he
+begged; "I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if
+I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot
+at sunrise." At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook
+with terror. "Make it for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for ten,"
+he coaxed, "but, please, promise you won't shoot him."
+
+When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+smile.
+
+"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it twenty,
+and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to
+spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty
+years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune."
+
+"No!" protested Captain McCoy, "We will drink to Jimmie!"
+
+When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs
+had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted
+to depart; but he was again delayed.
+
+Other visitors were arriving.
+
+Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat
+were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it
+had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted
+at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot
+with anger.
+
+"A gray touring-car," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it from that
+hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?"
+
+"Who?" demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, "Captain McCoy?"
+
+The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow,
+silenced him.
+
+"Yes, Captain McCoy," assented the driver eagerly. "Which way did he
+go?"
+
+"To New York," said Van Vorst.
+
+The driver shrieked at his companion.
+
+"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He
+stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+
+A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+
+"What do you want with him?" he called "Who are you?"
+
+Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the
+car the words of the driver were flung back. "We're Secret Service from
+Washington," he shouted. "He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!"
+
+Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+curtain of white, whirling dust.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
+and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be
+the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
+illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
+Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church,
+after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding
+floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the
+waits singing "God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay."
+
+To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in
+my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children,
+of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls,
+skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them,
+sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my
+wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation,
+and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him
+save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful
+harmony with his appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week
+longer he might safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply
+was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of Hallam Hall and
+a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of
+Ireland, and the only log on board was the one the captain kept to
+himself.
+
+I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on
+the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot,
+or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier
+conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner
+in which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But,
+either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the
+fictitious gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man
+in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from
+dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and
+icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
+
+Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers
+testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room
+crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I
+met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.
+All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that,
+though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of
+his years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have
+spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French
+watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France
+I had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to
+place. Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked
+glibly, but in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking
+the trouble to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his
+talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object.
+I felt he was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he
+might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in
+New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a
+banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in
+self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The next evening I
+discovered the motive.
+
+He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled
+that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a
+bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: "I saw you last
+summer at Aix-les-Bains."
+
+His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for
+some particular card.
+
+"What was I doing?" he asked.
+
+"Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs."
+
+With obvious relief he laughed.
+
+"Oh, yes," he assented; "jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money
+there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em
+alone." As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me
+to excuse him, he smiled appealingly. "Poker, bridge, chemin de fer,
+I like 'em all," he rattled on, "but they don't like me. So I stick to
+solitaire. It's dull, but cheap." He shuffled the cards clumsily. As
+though making conversation, he asked: "You care for cards yourself?"
+
+I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a
+spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been
+wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even
+of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had
+hurt him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them
+I saw in them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he
+was utterly unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man
+facing a crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry
+for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of
+the few dollars he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed
+his need was great. Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck.
+When I returned an hour later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game
+of poker.
+
+As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+
+"Don't scold, now," he laughed; "you know I can't keep away from it."
+
+From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends
+of long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he
+thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered:
+"Known him for years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my
+right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my
+people swear by him."
+
+One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met
+mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see.
+"What would you draw?" he asked.
+
+His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him
+and walk on.
+
+When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we
+were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+
+"Sorry," he said. "Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a
+hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now," he assured me.
+"They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the
+limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark."
+
+"And I take it you are not," I said stiffly.
+
+He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile
+died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and
+fear.
+
+As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
+
+"I'm 'in bad,' doctor," he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered,
+like that of a child. "I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't
+think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at
+the door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't
+work, and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could
+you--couldn't give me something to keep my head straight?"
+
+The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob
+our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly
+dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him
+to the ship's surgeon.
+
+"But I don't know HIM," he protested.
+
+Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
+
+"Well, you certainly don't know me."
+
+My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+
+"I know who you ARE," he returned. "You and I--" With a deprecatory
+gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he
+stopped. "But the ship's surgeon!" he protested, "he's an awful bounder!
+Besides," he added quite simply, "he's watching me."
+
+"As a doctor," I asked, "or watching you play cards?"
+
+"Play cards," the young man answered. "I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon
+on the P. & O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I
+fancy he remembers me."
+
+His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+
+"But you mustn't tell me that," I protested. "I can't have you making
+trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here
+to the captain?"
+
+As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+
+He made a mock obeisance.
+
+"I claim the seal of your profession," he said. "Nonsense," I retorted.
+"It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that
+you are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest."
+
+For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me
+sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+
+"I got to make expenses," he muttered. "And, besides, all card games
+are games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway," he
+repeated, as though disposing of all argument, "I got to make expenses."
+
+After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat
+waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find "my
+friend." I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance
+only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
+
+"We want to give him his revenge," one of them volunteered.
+
+"He's losing, then?" I asked.
+
+The man chuckled complacently.
+
+"The only loser," he said.
+
+"I wouldn't worry," I advised. "He'll come for his revenge."
+
+That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on
+the lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that
+with difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
+
+"I'm scared," he stammered, "scared!"
+
+I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent
+it to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for
+myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were
+closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself
+in his arms.
+
+"Have you been drinking?" I asked.
+
+In surprise he opened his eyes.
+
+"I can't drink," he answered simply. "It's nerves and worry. I'm tired."
+
+He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the
+fingers lay open.
+
+"God," he whispered, "how tired I am!"
+
+In spite of his tan--and certainly he had led the out-of-door life--his
+face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
+
+"They're crowdin' me," the boy whispered. "They're always crowdin'
+me." His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child
+complaining of something beyond his experience. "I can't remember when
+they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always
+movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris,
+and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there, very
+quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, too--a flat in Berkeley
+Street--roulette and chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out;
+anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on
+this. It's my last chance!"
+
+"This trip?"
+
+"No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me
+to live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back.
+I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the
+husks that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that;
+want to follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted
+calf." He laughed sardonically. "Like hell they will! They'd rather see
+ME killed."
+
+It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning
+repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure
+them. I suggested as much.
+
+"If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it," I said, "and they send a
+wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly--"
+
+"I know," he interrupted; "but I got to chance that. I GOT to make
+enough to go on with--until I see my family."
+
+"If they won't see you?" I asked. "What then?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as
+though for him the prospect held no terror.
+
+"Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'" he said. "And I won't be a bother to
+anybody any more."
+
+I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the
+sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+
+It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first
+appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a
+healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit;
+ready for any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so
+expert I asked him to avoid.
+
+"Can't be done!" he assured me. "I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow
+morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing."
+
+It was the others who made the killing.
+
+I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was
+seated. The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider
+semicircle were passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's
+purser.
+
+Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the
+pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long
+cigarette-holder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult
+of angry voices, and the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly
+at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of
+my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited
+accusation.
+
+"When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called yourself
+Lord Ridley."
+
+"I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I
+choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my
+name to every meddling busybody that--"
+
+"You'll give it to the police, all right," chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the
+confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he
+shouted: "And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!"
+
+The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot
+rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his
+sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: "Only too delighted
+to keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely."
+
+But he was not to escape with the last word.
+
+His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+
+"And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer," he shouted, "make
+sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from
+sharpers and swindlers--"
+
+Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil!" he called, and walked out into the night.
+
+The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
+
+"Bad business," he exclaimed.
+
+"What happened?" I asked.
+
+"I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack," he
+said. "I understand they suspected him from the first--seems our surgeon
+recognized him--and to-night they had outsiders watching him. The
+outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of the
+pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad."
+
+I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to
+call himself Meyer.
+
+"They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained the
+purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters.
+Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it
+seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was
+a silly ass thing to do," protested the purser. "Everybody knows Meyer
+hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got
+away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless
+ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police."
+
+"Has he no other way of spending his money?" I asked.
+
+"He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser. "He wants to show us
+he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means
+a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and," he added with disgust,
+"these smoking-room rows never helped any line."
+
+I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of
+a collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry
+the young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and
+then, after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at
+his cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief.
+But he would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was
+"all right," wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the
+sleep he claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness,
+and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine
+thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly
+and trying to appear unconscious of the glances--amused, contemptuous,
+hostile--that were turned toward him. He would have passed me without
+speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed
+quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.
+
+"Doesn't depend on me," he said. "Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy
+little body!"
+
+The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I
+saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke
+in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident
+no longer was of interest.
+
+"They were watching me," he said. "But I knew they were, and besides, no
+matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and
+they'd never have seen it. But I didn't."
+
+My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+
+"I didn't!" he repeated stubbornly. "I didn't have to! I was playing
+in luck--wonderful luck--sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning. But
+because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful not
+to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the cards
+they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I
+could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the
+air, shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to
+believe; they didn't want the facts."
+
+It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling
+the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather
+harshly, I said:
+
+"They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer,
+either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?"
+
+Talbot did not answer.
+
+"Why?" I insisted.
+
+The boy laughed impudently.
+
+"How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?" he protested. "It was
+a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are
+Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by
+me."
+
+"But you," I retorted impatiently, "are not a Jew!"
+
+"I am not," said Talbot, "but I've often SAID I was. It's helped--lots
+of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer,
+instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew." He smiled and
+turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the
+police, he began to enumerate:
+
+"Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic,
+according to taste. Do you see?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But it didn't work," he concluded. "I picked the wrong Jew."
+
+His face grew serious. "Do you suppose that Smedburg person has
+wirelessed that banker?"
+
+I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+
+"And what will Meyer do?" he asked. "Will he drop it or make a fuss?
+What sort is he?"
+
+Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew
+in New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his
+own race.
+
+"Then maybe," cried Talbot hopefully, "he won't make a row, and my
+family won't hear of it!"
+
+He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted,
+his shoulders straightened.
+
+And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+
+"Look!" he whispered. "There, at the end of the wharf--the little Jew in
+furs!"
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected
+by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker,
+philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
+
+We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face
+of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad
+business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot
+and found him gone.
+
+His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a
+growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It
+seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and
+dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose
+Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other
+empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one
+gave heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no
+one was in a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the
+gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck
+to deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced
+blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men,
+pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought,
+only to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the
+last of the passengers was leaving it.
+
+I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
+white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
+why I was wanted.
+
+"The ship's surgeon, sir," he stammered, "asks you please to hurry to
+the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!"
+
+On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
+eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
+Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
+darkened.
+
+I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+
+"It was HE sent for you," he said, "but he doesn't need you.
+Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!"
+
+The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
+
+"I was so tired," he whispered. "Always moving me on. I was so tired!"
+
+Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar
+them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to
+one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable
+coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+
+For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
+staring at the face on the pillow.
+
+Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand
+of the card-sharp.
+
+"Heine!" he begged. "Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
+little brother Adolph!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Cross Girl
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Commentator: Gouverneur Morris
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1733]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED CROSS GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE RED CROSS GIRL
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Richard Harding Davis
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Contents
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+            </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter 6. THE MIND READER </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         R. H. D.
+
+     &ldquo;And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+     unafraid.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and so
+      he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
+      middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
+      have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
+      brother was Peter Pan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of sperm
+      whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites against
+      the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and medicines, and
+      tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go elephant shooting in
+      Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants. Once R. H. D. shot a
+      hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I think he never killed
+      anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman. Of hunting, as of many
+      other things, he has said the last word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting
+      Ground in &ldquo;The Bar Sinister&rdquo;?&mdash;&ldquo;Where nobody hunts us, and there is
+      nothing to hunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
+      sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
+      out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of them
+      and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary member
+      of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful friend, but
+      largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
+      thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better than
+      he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted every
+      corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he played
+      a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed, or hiding
+      behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for hours!) so as
+      not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But about the other
+      fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes of wit and
+      character building and admiration or contempt. Until the invention of
+      moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his talk. His eye
+      had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the slides, his
+      words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they were reproduced
+      on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and color. With the
+      written word or the spoken word he was the greatest recorder and reporter
+      of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps, that ever lived. The
+      history of the last thirty years, its manners and customs and its leading
+      events and inventions, cannot be written truthfully without reference to
+      the records which he has left, to his special articles and to his letters.
+      Read over again the Queen's Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of
+      the Germans through Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too
+      zealously, even for a friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the
+      world can never be the same again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in due
+      time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact with
+      him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a good deal,
+      because every day he does the work of five or six men), he distributes the
+      inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it. Men go to him tired
+      and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be alive, still gladder that
+      he is alive, and ready to fight the devil himself in a good cause. Upon
+      his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity
+      that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He
+      had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a
+      slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either
+      appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a
+      yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the
+      telephone rang and from the receiver there poured into you affection and
+      encouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
+      temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or too
+      cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
+      invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants in
+      the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and the
+      baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
+      double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
+      disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid of
+      them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much he loved
+      them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and, unsolicited,
+      climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then the loveliest
+      expression came over his face, and you knew that the great heart, which
+      the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite bliss, akin to
+      anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
+      telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that little
+      Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has suffered....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed to
+      sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and though
+      I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with dignity and
+      without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H. D. thought it
+      was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm the kitchen to
+      tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was taking life easy on
+      the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R. H. D. had never seen
+      our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they wouldn't grow at all. It
+      wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the iris. And then back he would
+      come to us, with a wonderful story of his adventures in the pantry on his
+      way to the kitchen, and leaving behind him a cook to whom there had been
+      issued a new lease of life, and a gardener who blushed and smiled in the
+      darkness under the Actinidia vines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was with
+      us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
+      dependent upon each other in many ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
+      complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
+      needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
+      time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
+      where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had no
+      name. Now it is called &ldquo;Let's Pretend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
+      built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but we
+      pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
+      fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
+      pretendings, until real troubles went down before them&mdash;down and out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
+      lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were in
+      bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or two
+      somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against gray
+      cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It never
+      rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of the day it
+      was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four for tennis
+      and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we sat in front
+      of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and talked until the
+      next morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure not
+      in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the moment.
+      Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his knowledge that
+      Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good Tuesday. He knew it
+      the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the Tuesday sunshine making
+      patterns of bright light upon the floor. The sunshine rejoiced him and the
+      knowledge that even before breakfast there was vouchsafed to him a whole
+      hour of life. That day began with attentions to his physical well-being.
+      There were exercises conducted with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by
+      a tub, artesian cold, and a loud and joyous singing of ballads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
+      marble, gone down the ages as &ldquo;statue of a young athlete.&rdquo; He stood six
+      feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine head carried
+      by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a child's. He
+      weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He was the
+      weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
+      tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that he
+      could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door you
+      must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at work,
+      doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a stranger to
+      him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written and published
+      it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in that story (very
+      little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure to tell you so. If he
+      had liked the story very much he would send you instead of a note a
+      telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn a picture, or, as a cub
+      reporter, had shown golden promise in a half column of unsigned print, R.
+      H. D. would find you out, and find time to praise you and help you. So it
+      was that when he emerged from his room at sharp eight o'clock, he was
+      wide-awake and happy and hungry, and whistled and double-shuffled with his
+      feet, out of excessive energy, and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of
+      notes and letters and telegrams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
+      dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced in
+      each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is, or ought
+      to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest. Discussions of
+      the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of statesmen,
+      laughter and sentiment&mdash;to him, at breakfast, these things were as
+      important as sausages and thick cream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's work
+      (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
+      conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper, he
+      would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a wistful
+      glance, and hurry to his workroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
+      wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
+      and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and he
+      didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously human, flowed
+      from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of corresponding, &ldquo;The
+      German March Through Brussels,&rdquo; was probably written almost as fast as he
+      could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the fastest talker I ever
+      heard), but when it came to fiction he had no facility at all. Perhaps I
+      should say that he held in contempt any facility that he may have had. It
+      was owing to his incomparable energy and Joblike patience that he ever
+      gave us any fiction at all. Every phrase in his fiction was, of all the
+      myriad phrases he could think of, the fittest in his relentless judgment
+      to survive. Phrases, paragraphs, pages, whole stories even, were written
+      over and over again. He worked upon a principle of elimination. If he
+      wished to describe an automobile turning in at a gate, he made first a
+      long and elaborate description from which there was omitted no detail,
+      which the most observant pair of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with
+      reference to just such a turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of
+      omitting one by one those details which he had been at such pains to
+      recall; and after each omission he would ask himself: &ldquo;Does the picture
+      remain?&rdquo; If it did not, he restored the detail which he had just omitted,
+      and experimented with the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on,
+      until after Herculean labor there remained for the reader one of those
+      swiftly flashed, ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which
+      his tales and romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
+      emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
+      and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
+      writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
+      never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he has
+      searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
+      circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
+      stand in their present order until&mdash;after lunch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
+      denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
+      him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
+      own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
+      Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after many
+      hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked it
+      with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the smoke
+      there was in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
+      whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
+      toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
+      far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
+      fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps I
+      shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a will of
+      iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction his
+      conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never obtrusive
+      conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as must all
+      consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into any action
+      that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes and
+      heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young people. R. H.
+      D. never called upon his characters for any trait of virtue, or
+      renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not furnish
+      examples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
+      had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him in
+      his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get your
+      biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without any
+      trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid mountains.
+      He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were going to hurt
+      some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram from him which
+      urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next day was my wife's
+      birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my own private affair. And
+      when I declared that I had read a story which I liked very, very much and
+      was going to write to the author to tell him so, he always kept at me till
+      the letter was written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
+      he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
+      matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter that
+      he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
+      their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And it
+      hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them; her
+      heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under fire,
+      or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away upon a
+      little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure. We had
+      found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken arrow-head,
+      and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two hours and a
+      half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give more
+      than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space at my
+      command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch upon them all
+      would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as
+      much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all
+      those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers; those trenchant
+      assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those quixotic efforts to
+      redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous exposures of this and that,
+      from an absolutely unexpected point of view. He was a quickener of the
+      public conscience. That people are beginning to think tolerantly of
+      preparedness, that a nation which at one time looked yellow as a dandelion
+      is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue is owing in some measure to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that peace
+      at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
+      infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
+      country to see the matter in the same way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface of my
+      subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which was
+      inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable &ldquo;personal
+      interviews&rdquo; which appear in the newspapers, and in which the important
+      person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things which he
+      never said, or thought, or dreamed of&mdash;&ldquo;You can't expect a
+      fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
+      men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
+      men&mdash;differ in his personal character and in the character of his
+      work? And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and
+      be sure that I am right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording Angel
+      keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his brilliancy,
+      his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer are subordinate;
+      and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his powers of affection,
+      of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate, too; and that
+      characteristic is cleanliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
+      the world&mdash;gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where &ldquo;Nobody hunts us
+      and there is nothing to hunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
+      wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills above
+      Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story, and
+      with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day in
+      October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great lawn
+      in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across the
+      waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
+      night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he was
+      still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York from a
+      small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but already he was
+      a &ldquo;star&rdquo; man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with the story?&rdquo; asked the city editor. &ldquo;With the
+      speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose it does!&rdquo; exclaimed Ward; &ldquo;anybody can collect type-written
+      speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
+      any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
+      trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men in
+      pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the story
+      in that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a reporter,&rdquo; declared the city editor, &ldquo;I used to be glad to
+      get a day in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you'd never lived in the country,&rdquo; returned Sam. &ldquo;If you'd wasted
+      twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that every minute
+      you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; demanded the city editor. &ldquo;There's nothing to New York except
+      cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the sun
+      in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle of the
+      street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except on the
+      women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the elevators&mdash;they
+      spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts in department
+      stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we never see
+      children in New York because the janitors won't let the women who live in
+      elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a Little Nemo
+      nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How curious!&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;Now I see why they took you off the street and
+      made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
+      are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
+      they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+      you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
+      they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
+      under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
+      are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The city editor sighed. &ldquo;How young you are!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;However,
+      to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be few women
+      at the celebration, and they will be interested only in convalescents&mdash;and
+      you do not look like a convalescent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
+      overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
+      assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
+      him give away a million dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you going to get his speech?&rdquo;, asked Redding, the staff
+      photographer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get HIS speech!&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;They have Pinkertons all over the grounds to
+      see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to hear
+      the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the first
+      train back to the centre of civilization.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's going to be a fine lunch,&rdquo; said Redding, &ldquo;and reporters are
+      expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his armpit
+      and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his clothes and
+      always treated them with courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have my share,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
+      minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have a
+      club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
+      Rochelle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron gates;
+      but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble barred his
+      way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform of a nursing
+      sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar turned down,
+      white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet. A bow of white
+      lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had hair like golden-rod
+      and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such health and cleanliness
+      and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
+      as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that other
+      people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have observed
+      them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out that which is
+      indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says: &ldquo;That's most
+      interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that.&rdquo; And so warns the great man
+      into silence. But the star reporter receives the indiscreet utterance as
+      though it bored him; and the great man does not know he has blundered
+      until he reads of it the next morning under screaming headlines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
+      official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
+      swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
+      that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
+      Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him was
+      the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would have
+      guessed that he observed that&mdash;least of all Sister Anne. He stood in
+      her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
+      impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt&mdash;as
+      though his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am from the REPUBLIC,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Everybody is so busy here to-day that
+      I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,&rdquo; he added
+      disappointedly, &ldquo;because it's so well done that people ought to know about
+      it.&rdquo; He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was apparent that the
+      ignorance of the public concerning their excellence greatly annoyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in alarm&mdash;obviously
+      she was upon the point of instant flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a reporter?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
+      they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others&mdash;only
+      reporters know how few&mdash;would as soon place themselves in the hands
+      of a dentist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A reporter from the REPUBLIC,&rdquo; repeated Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why ask ME?&rdquo; demanded Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
+      he glanced at her uniform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were at work here,&rdquo; he said simply. &ldquo;I beg your pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
+      impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no other reason,&rdquo; persisted Sister Anne. &ldquo;I mean for speaking
+      to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
+      this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
+      hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and, as
+      you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics about
+      the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
+      she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly he
+      was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this young
+      woman that at the mere approach of a reporter&mdash;even of such a
+      nice-looking reporter as himself&mdash;she should shake and shudder. &ldquo;If
+      that's what you really want to know,&rdquo; said Sister Anne doubtfully, &ldquo;I'll
+      try and help you; but,&rdquo; she added, looking at him as one who issues an
+      ultimatum, &ldquo;you must not say anything about me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class will
+      always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so that
+      he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young woman
+      meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her? Much as
+      he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: &ldquo;The Flagg Home
+      for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful of all living
+      women.&rdquo; No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as there was nothing
+      to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to say nothing. Sister
+      Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled, not because his promise
+      had set her mind at ease, but because the promise amused her. Sam wondered
+      why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of the
+      hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about one
+      person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
+      containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated by
+      Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne&mdash;only to
+      exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
+      unselfishness of her nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really scrub the floors?&rdquo; he demanded&mdash;&ldquo;I mean you yourself&mdash;down
+      on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing brush?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do that when we first come here,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;when we are
+      probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these awful patients,&rdquo; demanded Sam&mdash;&ldquo;do you wait on them? Do
+      you have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?&rdquo; He
+      glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
+      annihilate them. &ldquo;It's not fair!&rdquo; exclaimed Sam. &ldquo;It's ridiculous. I'd
+      like to choke them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents,&rdquo; said Sister
+      Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know perfectly well what I mean,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;Here are you&mdash;if
+      you'll allow me to say so&mdash;a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
+      person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
+      and cripples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor is that quite the way we look at,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We?&rdquo; demanded Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not the only nurse here,&rdquo; she said &ldquo;There are over forty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the only one here,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;who is not! That's Just what I
+      mean&mdash;I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
+      ministering angel part of it; but you&mdash;I'm not talking about anybody
+      else; I'm talking about you&mdash;you are too young! Somehow you are
+      different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
+      sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Sam stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;pardon me,&rdquo; said Sister Anne; &ldquo;but your ideas of the duties of a
+      nurse are so quaint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter what the duties are,&rdquo; declared Sam; &ldquo;You should not be here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders&mdash;as
+      delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must live,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows of
+      rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them stretched
+      Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated herself upon the
+      marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the flashing waters of
+      the Sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; that's it,&rdquo; she repeated softly&mdash;&ldquo;one must live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam looked at her&mdash;but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
+      looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
+      occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
+      heightened by the fact that &ldquo;the woman was very fair.&rdquo; He conceded that.
+      He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced by the
+      outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his feelings made by
+      her uniform&mdash;made by the appeal of her profession, the gentlest and
+      most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed that this
+      young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish sick people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
+      there are other ways of earning a living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere&mdash;and again
+      she smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now what would you suggest?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have no
+      one to advise me&mdash;no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
+      I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so I
+      doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own work
+      must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living. Maybe
+      you could advise me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his salary
+      would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember which of the
+      men in the office were married, and whether they were those whose salaries
+      were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy editors, he knew, was
+      very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was married, because his
+      wife used to wait for him in the office to take her to the theatre, and
+      often Sam had thought she was extremely well dressed. Of course Sister
+      Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear would be a matter of
+      indifference; but then women did not always look at it that way. Sam was
+      so long considering offering Sister Anne a life position that his silence
+      had become significant; and to cover his real thoughts he said hurriedly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
+      difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And manicuring?&rdquo; suggested Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam exclaimed in horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he cried roughly. &ldquo;For you! Quite impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why for me?&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
+      walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
+      see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; protested Sam. &ldquo;You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
+      are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!&rdquo; His vehemence
+      was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
+      gravel walk, his profile toward her&mdash;and, unobserved, she could study
+      his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
+      good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city editor,
+      his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes full of
+      concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. &ldquo;How much do they give you a month?&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Forty dollars,&rdquo; answered Sister Anne. &ldquo;This is what hurts me about it,&rdquo;
+       said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
+      are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to work
+      for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However, probably
+      you know that better than I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I don't know that,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
+      statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
+      relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
+      complete stranger&mdash;even to deceive him was quite within her rights;
+      but, though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are working too hard,&rdquo; he said, smiling happily. &ldquo;I think you
+      ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever give you
+      a day off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next Saturday,&rdquo; said Sister Anne. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; explained Sam, &ldquo;if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
+      going to prescribe a day off for you&mdash;a day entirely away from
+      iodoform and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city
+      and a lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh&mdash;or
+      cry, if you like that better&mdash;and then, maybe, some fresh air in the
+      park in a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see
+      you safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer,&rdquo; he added
+      hurriedly, &ldquo;I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself
+      and doing all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of
+      the other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only,
+      honestly, I hope you won't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not say
+      so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost laughing
+      with happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that would be quite delightful,&rdquo; said Sister Anne,&rdquo;&mdash;quite
+      delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't bring
+      another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great deal of
+      money. I think we might cut out the taxicab&mdash;and walk in the park and
+      feed the squirrels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Sam in disappointment,&mdash;&ldquo;then you know Central Park?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once lived near there,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Harlem?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+      &ldquo;Since then I have always lived in the country or in&mdash;other places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's so kind of you to consent,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Indeed, you are the kindest
+      person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
+      sick people, and, now I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is you who are kind,&rdquo; protested Sister Anne, &ldquo;to take pity on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pity on you!&rdquo; laughed Sam. &ldquo;You can't pity a person who can do more with
+      a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now,&rdquo; he demanded
+      in happy anticipation, &ldquo;where are we to meet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it,&rdquo; said Sister Anne. &ldquo;Where are we to meet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,&rdquo;
+       said Sam; &ldquo;and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
+      want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh,&rdquo; exclaimed Sam joyfully, &ldquo;it
+      will be a wonderful day&mdash;a wonderful day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
+      wistfully. She held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go back to my duties,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not good-by,&rdquo; said Sam heartily, &ldquo;only until Saturday&mdash;and my name's
+      Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
+      name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Anne,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;In the nursing order to which I belong we
+      have no last names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; asked Sam, &ldquo;I'll call you Sister Anne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; just Sister,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister!&rdquo; repeated Sam, &ldquo;Sister!&rdquo; He breathed the word rather than spoke
+      it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made it
+      carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said &ldquo;Sweetheart!&rdquo;
+       or &ldquo;Beloved!&rdquo; &ldquo;I'll not forget,&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
+      cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over again
+      and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed their next
+      meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would meet her
+      with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her when they
+      were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way would be
+      more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to be the
+      most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be the
+      slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance&mdash;and it should
+      cost half his week's salary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he had
+      observed that women had strange ideas about clothes&mdash;some of them
+      thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some of
+      them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction upon
+      the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He was
+      sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she must
+      always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
+      conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
+      would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
+      eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning each
+      week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the birthday
+      of his life! No, he contradicted&mdash;the day he had first met her must
+      always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one like her and
+      he was sure there never would be one like her. She was so entirely
+      superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult&mdash;in her manner
+      there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her simple
+      nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a princess in
+      fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged her to let
+      him for one day personally conduct her over the great city! &ldquo;You are so
+      kind to take pity on me,&rdquo; she had said. He thought of many clever, pretty
+      speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had not thought of them
+      at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
+      beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous that one
+      so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry living&mdash;forty
+      dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her sit in the flat
+      where one could look at her; for already he had decided that, when they
+      were married, they would live in a flat&mdash;probably in one overlooking
+      Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several attractive suites
+      there at thirty-five dollars a week&mdash;or, if she preferred the
+      suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return to the country.
+      In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he conceded even that
+      sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
+      at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
+      carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
+      already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
+      the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way to
+      a waiting motor car and said, &ldquo;Home!&rdquo; to the chauffeur. He drove her to
+      the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors called
+      the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above Greenwich, and
+      which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on the Sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted her
+      noisily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a most splendid adventure!&rdquo; said Sister Anne. &ldquo;There were six
+      of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
+      programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real nurse
+      and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about it to
+      keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry for me;
+      and....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself on
+      knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights and
+      prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you believe it!&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;That man who was talking to you
+      was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was just
+      leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who wouldn't
+      know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not know me!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;It quite upset him that I should be
+      wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him,&rdquo; continued Sister Anne, &ldquo;that I got forty dollars a month,
+      and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
+      be a manicurist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Anita!&rdquo; protested the admiring chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
+      manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show me
+      New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a drive
+      on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the park. And
+      if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses. We're to
+      meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station. He said,
+      'The day cannot begin too soon.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Anita!&rdquo; shrieked the chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the American
+      public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry Anita Flagg,
+      was amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an awfully jolly rag!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;And what are you going to do about
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said Anita Flagg. &ldquo;The reporters have been making me ridiculous
+      for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them! And,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;that's all there is to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
+      Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: &ldquo;I want to hear you
+      call me Sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call you what?&rdquo; exclaimed the young man. &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; he whispered,
+      &ldquo;what I'd like to call you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not!&rdquo; interrupted Anita. &ldquo;Do as I tell you and say Sister once.
+      Say it as though you meant it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't mean it,&rdquo; protested his lordship. &ldquo;I've said already what
+      I....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what you've said already,&rdquo; commanded Miss Flagg. &ldquo;I've heard
+      that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister!&rdquo; he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
+      though she were cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit like it, Deptford,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was to
+      ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
+      window looking out toward the great city to the south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that young
+      woman to shriek with amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anita!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
+      cry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She turned
+      upon the tactless intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; cried Anita fiercely, &ldquo;a man thought you were worth forty
+      dollars a month&mdash;honestly didn't know!&mdash;honestly believed you
+      were poor and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth
+      more than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
+      millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care of
+      you, to slave for you&mdash;only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+      working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
+      met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
+      do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Anita!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you do?&rdquo; demanded Anita Flagg. &ldquo;This is what you'd do: You'd
+      go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
+      from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me&mdash;and love me&mdash;and
+      love me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why don't you?&rdquo; cried Helen Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!&rdquo; cried Anita Flagg. &ldquo;Because
+      I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward, in
+      the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing Sam's
+      story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar was
+      tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to
+      fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-air; and
+      continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue pencil swooped and
+      circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk and the blue pencil
+      remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered
+      ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder
+      and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and, swinging swiftly in
+      his revolving chair, his glance swept the office. &ldquo;In the name of Mike!&rdquo;
+       he shouted. &ldquo;What IS this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
+      impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
+      was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
+      clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
+      came back to earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's what?&rdquo; Sam demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the room
+      his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward Collins
+      quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was late&mdash;and
+      it was important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's wrong?&rdquo; he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read the opening paragraph,&rdquo; protested Collins. &ldquo;It's like that for a
+      column! It's all about a girl&mdash;about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word
+      about Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story
+      at all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
+      what it is. And, what's worse,&rdquo; wailed the copy editor defiantly and to
+      the amazement of all, &ldquo;it's so darned good that you can't touch it. You've
+      got to let it go or kill it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade, were
+      racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at Collins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it all like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a column like that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run it just as it is,&rdquo; commanded the managing editor. &ldquo;Use it for your
+      introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
+      out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
+      with pictures.&rdquo; He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the idea, Ward?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is a newspaper&mdash;not a
+      magazine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
+      had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
+      reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also smiled,
+      but unhappily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it's not news, Sir,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but that's the way I saw the story&mdash;outside
+      on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the governor's staff
+      and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside, this girl right on
+      the job&mdash;taking care of the sick and wounded. It seemed to me that a
+      million from a man that won't miss a million didn't stack up against what
+      this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I wanted to say,&rdquo; continued
+      Sam stoutly &ldquo;was that the moving spirit of the hospital was not in the man
+      who signed the checks, but in these women who do the work&mdash;the
+      nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you called 'The Red Cross
+      Girl.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
+      traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's not news!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not news,&rdquo; said Elliott doubtfully; &ldquo;but it's the kind of story that
+      made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives men out of
+      this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the illegitimate
+      sister.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to a
+      girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was this
+      combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return for
+      its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
+      business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it served him
+      so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and incidentally a
+      million other people, how deeply he honored her; how clearly he
+      appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant Sister Anne,
+      save two people&mdash;Sister Anne and himself; but for her and for him
+      that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real incidents
+      of the day; he had described her as she passed through the wards of the
+      hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the little acts of
+      consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
+      and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
+      her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
+      he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
+      after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the front
+      page was his story, &ldquo;The Red Cross Girl.&rdquo; It had the place of honor&mdash;right-hand
+      column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his own story was one
+      of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken of Sister Anne when
+      first she had approached them, in her uniform of mercy, advancing across
+      the lawn, walking straight into the focus of the camera. There was no
+      mistaking her for any other living woman; but beneath the picture, in
+      bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a strange and grotesque legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter of Millionaire Flagg,&rdquo; it read, &ldquo;in a New Role, Miss Anita Flagg
+      as The Red Cross Girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper so
+      that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From below,
+      Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting&mdash;cable cars jangled, taxis
+      hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
+      shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+      life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A girl
+      he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever&mdash;worse than that
+      had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that made no
+      difference, or just as little difference as it would have made had Sister
+      Anne really lived and really died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
+      party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone at
+      the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
+      Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the table
+      and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press, had
+      pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking at
+      the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
+      surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
+      fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading &ldquo;The Red Cross
+      Girl&rdquo;; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent slumber,
+      her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks the color
+      flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read as far as a
+      paragraph beginning, &ldquo;When Sister Anne walked between them those who
+      suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces to the
+      rain,&rdquo; she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any man,&rdquo; cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
+      servants, &ldquo;who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
+      and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might be
+      like that&mdash;if any man would help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave her attention to the telephone and &ldquo;Information.&rdquo; She demanded to
+      be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr. Sam
+      Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm tired of being called a good sport,&rdquo; she protested, &ldquo;by men who
+      aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
+      money&mdash;as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on his
+      shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
+      good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint; and
+      he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy&mdash;and I like being made
+      dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be still!&rdquo; implored Helen Page. &ldquo;Any one might think you meant it!&rdquo; She
+      nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye gods, Parker!&rdquo; cried Anita Flagg. &ldquo;Does it take three of you to pour a
+      cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three caught
+      me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the telephone and
+      that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. &ldquo;And what's
+      more,&rdquo; Anita hurled after them, &ldquo;get your bets down quick, for after I
+      meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
+      office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
+      happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the only
+      person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she refused
+      to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, &ldquo;I'll call him up later,&rdquo;
+       and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for all the
+      beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
+      particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
+      opposite the cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the very man I want,&rdquo; said Hollworthy joyously&mdash;&ldquo;you've got
+      to decide a bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
+      who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you knew.
+      I bet her a theatre party.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had even
+      been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he had no
+      right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know what
+      Sister Anne had meant to him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid you lose,&rdquo; he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
+      leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say so!&rdquo; exclaimed that young man. &ldquo;Fancy one of you chaps
+      being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in&mdash;getting
+      up a story for the Sunday supplement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet to
+      escape. &ldquo;And, instead of your fooling her,&rdquo; exclaimed Holworthy
+      incredulously, &ldquo;she was having fun, with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With difficulty Sam smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it would seem,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!&rdquo; exclaimed Holworthy
+      admiringly. &ldquo;I thought she was making it up&mdash;she must have made some
+      of it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
+      so is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; cried Holworthy&mdash;&ldquo;and that you invited her to see the
+      moving-picture shows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket, smiled
+      pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she say I said that&mdash;or you?&rdquo; he asked
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I must have said it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Holworthy roared with amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I said that too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I thought she was making it up!&rdquo; exclaimed Holworthy. &ldquo;We did laugh.
+      You must see the fun of it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita Flagg&mdash;just
+      as if she were nobody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;that was my idea.&rdquo; He waved his stick at a
+      passing taxi. &ldquo;I'm late,&rdquo; he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
+      chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
+      had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
+      telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're wanted on the 'phone,&rdquo; he commanded. His voice dropped to an awed
+      whisper. &ldquo;Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
+      this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
+      never met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say you can't find me,&rdquo; he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
+      precipitately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lady says she wants your telephone number&mdash;says she must have
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules&mdash;and
+      hang up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
+      informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg&mdash;the rich,
+      the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
+      morning&mdash;had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
+      thrown down&mdash;and thrown hard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
+      entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
+      whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ward,&rdquo; he began abruptly, &ldquo;I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
+      It's on account of that story of this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served so
+      loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that, considering
+      the spirit in which the story had been written, it was causing him more
+      kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of position did not disturb
+      him. In the last month too many managing editors had tried to steal him
+      from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious as to the future. So he accepted
+      his dismissal calmly, and could say without resentment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did,&rdquo; returned Elliott; &ldquo;I liked it so much that I'm sending you to a
+      bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as our
+      special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work; and if
+      you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air. He
+      could not believe it was real&mdash;that it was actually to him it had
+      happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events, to
+      come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of reporting
+      what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh Street, he
+      would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and the British
+      Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback only to his
+      happiness&mdash;there was no one with whom he might divide it. He wanted
+      to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with some one who
+      would understand how much it meant to him, who would really care. Had
+      Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would have laid
+      himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to accept them&mdash;begged
+      her to run away with him to this tremendous and terrifying capital of the
+      world, and start the new life together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
+      Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
+      because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
+      his admiration&mdash;and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
+      ingenuously he had shown it to her&mdash;meant nothing; but because the
+      girl he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
+      marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
+      ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous when
+      offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a hospital.
+      It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make
+      up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself had inspired
+      that girl and for a day given her existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
+      as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be. His
+      Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
+      impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
+      of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that. Ever
+      since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and flatterers,
+      both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who wanted her money
+      and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got the motives of the
+      latter two confused that she was so often hurt and said sharp, bitter
+      things that made her appear hard and heartless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
+      addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
+      Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so&mdash;when on arriving at the
+      office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
+      reading, &ldquo;Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
+      begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg &ldquo;&mdash;he
+      was able to reply: &ldquo;Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
+      person, who unfortunately has since died!&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes tears
+      that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned miserably,
+      appealingly to Helen Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why does he do it to me?&rdquo; Her tone was that of the bewildered child
+      who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
+      without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
+      changed into a very angry young woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what's more,&rdquo; she announced, &ldquo;he can't do it to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
+      it was signed, &ldquo;Sister Anne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In an hour the answer came: &ldquo;Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
+      She is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was not
+      in his nature to be rude&mdash;certainly not to a woman, especially not to
+      the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name was Anita
+      or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he assured
+      himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could see in a
+      well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was of no interest
+      to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing their acquaintance
+      flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that she looked upon him as
+      one entirely out of her world&mdash;as one with whom she could do an
+      unconventional thing and make a good story about it later, knowing that it
+      would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance. And,
+      besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He no
+      longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy. He was
+      now a man with a responsible position&mdash;one who soon would be
+      conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+      He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage by
+      the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
+      correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
+      as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased tickets.
+      And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have occupied
+      could not be filled by any other person. It would have been sacrilege. At
+      least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through dinner, which he ate
+      alone at the same restaurant to which he had intended taking her, he
+      continued, to pretend she was with him. And at the theatre, where there
+      was going forward the most popular of all musical comedies, the seat next
+      to him, which to the audience, appeared wastefully empty, was to him
+      filled with her gracious presence. That Sister Anne was not there&mdash;that
+      the pretty romance he had woven about her had ended in disaster&mdash;filled,
+      him with real regret. He was glad he was leaving New York. He was glad he
+      was going, where nothing would remind him of her. And then he glanced up&mdash;and
+      looked straight into her eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
+      Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
+      farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
+      stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
+      full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him. There
+      were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+      shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
+      enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
+      the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was all
+      in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing suit;
+      round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+      golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
+      curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
+      rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee, was
+      gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized her,
+      she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her the
+      ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
+      neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over his
+      left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but some
+      one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the stage
+      and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but it was a
+      cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly sought the
+      stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to be laughing;
+      and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile exposed
+      pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble like those
+      of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard smile&mdash;and
+      heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all she cares.&rdquo; he told himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did, she
+      kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained upon
+      her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly and
+      unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the' darkest
+      recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage by a
+      barrier of women's hats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend Mr. Ward,&rdquo; she began abruptly, in a whisper, &ldquo;is the rudest,
+      most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the other day I
+      thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved abominably&mdash;like
+      a boor&mdash;like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor? Because I
+      played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurt you?&rdquo; exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. &ldquo;Don't be ridiculous!
+      How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is? Ward's a clever
+      fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too good-looking; and
+      a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him. So when one of them
+      laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the trouble. I could see that
+      when I was telling him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telling him!&rdquo; repeated Miss Flagg&mdash;&ldquo;Telling him what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About what a funny story you made of it,&rdquo; explained Holworthy. &ldquo;About his
+      having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said softly. &ldquo;So-so you told him that, did you? And&mdash;what
+      else did you tell him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what you told us&mdash;that he said 'the day could not begin too
+      soon'; that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands
+      of men who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I tell you he said that?&rdquo; breathed Anita Flagg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you did,&rdquo; said Holworthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have been mad!&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid you are angry,&rdquo; he ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angry!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Flagg. &ldquo;I should say I was angry, but not with
+      you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
+      let you take me out into the lobby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage and
+      seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had destroyed
+      his ideal of a sweet and noble woman&mdash;and he was sorry for Miss Flagg
+      because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be that man did
+      not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and, indeed, so
+      miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his friends on the
+      stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he would take himself
+      out of the front row, to give him back his money at the box office. Sam
+      certainly wished to take himself away; but he did not want to admit that
+      he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that the presence of Anita
+      Flagg could spoil his evening&mdash;could, in the slightest degree affect
+      him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling that he was in a false
+      position; that if he were it was his own fault; that he had acted like an
+      ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the second
+      act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance running
+      into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude to
+      abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
+      Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+      laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at him&mdash;whether
+      Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense; again making his
+      advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that he flushed
+      indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
+      figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past him, and
+      sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to speak&mdash;and
+      Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to give him time;
+      for, without regarding him in the least, and as though to establish the
+      fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and deliberately to
+      remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent toward him, her eyes
+      looking straight into his, her smile reproaching him. In the familiar tone
+      of an old and dear friend she said to him gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
+      enough of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or of
+      mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal&mdash;and something else
+      that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
+      remorsefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not Anita Flagg at all,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's Sister Anne come back to
+      life again!&rdquo; The girl shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met and
+      I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that was before I
+      understood&mdash;before I read what you wrote about Sister Anne&mdash;about
+      the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I knew what sort of
+      a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and gentle, and I knew you
+      had dug out something that I did not know was there&mdash;that no one else
+      had found. And I remembered how you called me Sister. I mean the way you
+      said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I wanted you to say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her face to his. She was very near him&mdash;so near that her
+      shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
+      scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest. Half
+      of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with the
+      greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+      programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky youth
+      in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young people in the front row did not know they were observed. They
+      were alone&mdash;as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
+      sweeping above the clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say it again,&rdquo; prompted Anita Flagg &ldquo;Sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not!&rdquo; returned the young man firmly. &ldquo;But I'll say this,&rdquo; he
+      whispered: &ldquo;I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
+      the finest woman who has ever lived!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
+      at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but that sounds just as good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
+      box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper; but
+      when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can see this act,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;or&mdash;my car's in front of the
+      theatre&mdash;we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three.
+      Which would you prefer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't make me laugh!&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but paying
+      no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only one thing,&rdquo; she said to Sam, &ldquo;that is making me unhappy; and
+      because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am leaving
+      America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My business is to gather news,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;but in all my life I never
+      gathered such good news as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good news!&rdquo; exclaimed Anita.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; explained Sam, &ldquo;I am leaving, America&mdash;am spending the
+      winter in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but
+      that is not what makes me unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; begged Anita.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea&mdash;as
+      they leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is my unhappiness,&rdquo; said Sam&mdash;and he pointed to a name on the
+      passenger list. It was: &ldquo;The Earl of Deptford, and valet.&rdquo; &ldquo;And because he
+      is on board!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not on board,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He changed to another boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
+      soul. He looked at her appealingly&mdash;hungrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did he change?&rdquo; he begged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all that is worrying you?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their
+      examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This may
+      or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But
+      whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior
+      year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them even
+      by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have been
+      too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It was the
+      professors who cheated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you can
+      score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief history
+      of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has attained it.
+      After graduating he &ldquo;accepted a position&rdquo; in an asylum for the insane,
+      from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where he died. Many
+      Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest they also should
+      attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else. Among these Peter
+      was by far the most afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects in
+      which you have been examined your marks added together give you an average
+      of ninety, you are passed &ldquo;with honors&rdquo;; if of seventy-five, you pass
+      &ldquo;with distinction&rdquo;; if Of fifty, You just &ldquo;pass.&rdquo; It is not unlike the
+      grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The whole
+      college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be lucky, but
+      the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined that, no
+      matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would see that he
+      passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of awards. Their
+      interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much, but because each
+      loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his dignified title
+      the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who dared to flunk
+      the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater, who supported
+      Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting Stillwater
+      indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his official
+      resignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
+      president. If he did not actually run after money he went where money was,
+      and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who possessed it.
+      And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through a too strict
+      respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose to that
+      institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool, or
+      gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to it that
+      the college lost also the services of that too conscientious instructor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
+      examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
+      inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is too bad!&rdquo; he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
+      &ldquo;Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride,
+      and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let us
+      hope he will pull through.&rdquo; For four years every professor had been
+      pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.
+      They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of him
+      forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew that
+      of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle would
+      hold the blank cartridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman. Doctor
+      Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at Stillwater, and
+      greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of those well-known
+      text-books, &ldquo;The Founders of Islam,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Rise and Fall of the Turkish
+      Empire.&rdquo; This latter work, in five volumes, had been not unfavorably
+      compared to Gibbon's &ldquo;Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.&rdquo; The original
+      newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back, the doctor had preserved,
+      and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to
+      visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always possessed a
+      contemporary and news interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is a review of the history,&rdquo; he would say&mdash;he always referred
+      to it as &ldquo;the&rdquo; history&mdash;&ldquo;that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it
+      was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The members of his class who were examined on the &ldquo;Rise and Fall,&rdquo; and who
+      invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the &ldquo;Fall,&rdquo;
+       sometimes feelingly as &ldquo;the.... Fall.&rdquo; The history began when
+      Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to
+      Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds with
+      the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since Suleiman,
+      Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map. When his
+      history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish Empire fell.
+      Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume that would
+      cover the last three centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book,&rdquo; said the chancellor, &ldquo;I
+      think the Russian-Turkish War should be included.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in
+      mild reproach. &ldquo;The war in the Crimea!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Why, I was alive at
+      the time. I know about it. That is not history.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
+      knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
+      trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
+      Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom &ldquo;the&rdquo; history
+      certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+      examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which he
+      had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with malice
+      toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked &ldquo;five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty. In
+      their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but they
+      refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single point
+      higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five completely
+      knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter was &ldquo;found&rdquo; and
+      could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only son of the only
+      Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private college&mdash;the
+      son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the new Laboratory,
+      the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and the Hallowell
+      Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim hall of the Memorial
+      to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own disgrace and downfall,
+      the light the stained-glass window cast upon his nose was of no sicklier a
+      green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter wanted an A.M. or an A.B.,
+      not that he desired laurels he had not won, but because the young man was
+      afraid of his father. And he had cause to be. Father arrived at Stillwater
+      the next morning. The interviews that followed made Stillwater history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son is not an ass!&rdquo; is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
+      Doctor Black. &ldquo;And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
+      the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can. And
+      I'll send my money where I send Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the son
+      and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had failed
+      to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say that? Oh, no,
+      he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college president.
+      Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a conspirator in a
+      comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He lowered his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been contemptible work here,&rdquo; he whispered&mdash;&ldquo;spite and a
+      mean spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I
+      find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our
+      college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance&mdash;Doctor Gilman.
+      Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary.&rdquo; This did not
+      happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford to
+      be too particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen no reason for raising his salary&mdash;and there you have the
+      explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his mark.
+      In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own
+      downfall. I have already asked for his resignation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this
+      particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem
+      humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than that
+      his son was an idiot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want the man discharged,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;just because Peter is
+      lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he
+      sacrificed my Peter in order to get even....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, &ldquo;is exactly what he did!
+      Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all over
+      America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an increase
+      in salary it was really you who refused it&mdash;and he struck at you
+      through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+      indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself
+      shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly
+      not your brilliant son&mdash;look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club
+      and foot-ball tour&mdash;is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor
+      Gilman went too far. And he has been justly punished!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor told
+      him, and his opinion of the matter as expressed to Peter, differed
+      materially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;that in the fall they will give you another
+      examination, and if you pass then, you will get your degree. No one will
+      know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the side-door like a
+      cold potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that when your
+      classmates stood up and got their parchments&mdash;the thing they'd been
+      working for four years, the only reason for their going to college at all&mdash;YOU
+      were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you don't get your
+      degree next fall that will be my fault. I've supported you through college
+      and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you deliver them next fall, or
+      you can support yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be all right,&rdquo; said Peter humbly; &ldquo;I'll pass next fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to make sure of that,&rdquo; said Hallowell senior. &ldquo;To-morrow you
+      will take those history books that you did not open, especially Gilman's
+      'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you will
+      travel for the entire summer with a private tutor....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-ball teams over
+      half of the Middle States and daily bullied and browbeat them, protested
+      with indignation. &ldquo;WON'T travel with a private tutor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I say so,&rdquo; returned Hallowell senior grimly, &ldquo;you'll travel with a
+      governess and a trained nurse, and wear a strait jacket. And you'll
+      continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward.
+      And in order that you may know it backward&mdash;and forward you will
+      spend this summer in Turkey&mdash;in Constantinople&mdash;until I send you
+      permission to come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constantinople!&rdquo; yelled Peter. &ldquo;In August! Are you serious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I look it?&rdquo; asked Peter's father. He did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Constantinople,&rdquo; explained Mr. Hallowell senior, &ldquo;there will be
+      nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself every
+      minute you will be imbibing history and local color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be imbibing fever,&rdquo;, returned Peter, &ldquo;and sunstroke and sudden
+      death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you send me to the island
+      where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to
+      study about Turkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do!&rdquo; said his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he
+      hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving them away to the members
+      of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was, and to bid
+      him good-by. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him were
+      loyally enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments, and to
+      that end they planned a mock trial of the &ldquo;Rise and Fall,&rdquo; at which a
+      packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to hang
+      Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with a rope round its neck was even
+      then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silver-white beard and
+      the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations. He did not
+      know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he protested that the
+      horse-play of his friends would make him appear a bad loser. &ldquo;It would
+      look, boys,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as though I couldn't take my medicine. Looks like
+      kicking against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman fought fair. He gave me
+      just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight more of him than do of
+      that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal nerve to pretend I scored
+      fifty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus, gazing
+      at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see. Since that morning he
+      had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater College. They were
+      retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly, cutting down unnecessary
+      expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black was too intelligent to hint
+      at his real motive, and the professor was far too innocent of evil, far
+      too detached from college politics to suspect. He would remain a professor
+      emeritus on half pay, but he no longer would teach. The college he had
+      served for thirty years-since it consisted of two brick buildings and a
+      faculty of ten young men&mdash;no longer needed him. Even his ivy-covered
+      cottage, in which his wife and he had lived for twenty years, in which
+      their one child had died, would at the beginning of the next term be
+      required of him. But the college would allow him those six months in which
+      to &ldquo;look round.&rdquo; So, just outside the circle of light from his student
+      lamp, he sat in his study, and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of
+      Socrates. He was not considering ways and means. They must be faced later.
+      He was considering how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What
+      eviction from that house would mean to her no one but he understood. Since
+      the day their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her
+      playroom, bedroom, and nursery had been altered, nothing had been touched.
+      To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given child was
+      still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living presence. When
+      at night the professor and his wife sat at either end of the study table,
+      reading by the same lamp, he would see her suddenly lift her head, alert
+      and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step had sounded, as though
+      from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her. And when they would be
+      forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some students' boarding-house,
+      though they could take with them their books, their furniture, their
+      mutual love and comradeship, they must leave behind them the haunting
+      presence of the child, the colored pictures she had cut from the Christmas
+      numbers and plastered over the nursery walls, the rambler roses that with
+      her own hands she had planted and that now climbed to her window and each
+      summer peered into her empty room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
+      lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
+      of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest elms,
+      and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer succeeded
+      cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the heroes of the
+      diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had flunked especially
+      for one man who had flunked. But for that man who for thirty years in the
+      class room had served the college there were no cheers. No one remembered
+      him, except the one student who had best reason to remember him. But this
+      recollection Peter had no rancor or bitterness and, still anxious lest he
+      should be considered a bad loser, he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else
+      to know that. So when the celebration was at its height and just before
+      train was due to carry him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the
+      Gilman cottage say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so
+      far only as half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which
+      opened upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor
+      and wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each
+      other, the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin,
+      delicate, well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her
+      awkward unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
+      What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The idea
+      that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never entered
+      mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was something
+      so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to offer his
+      sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and, avoiding the
+      celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour later the
+      entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and with &ldquo;He's a
+      jolly good fellow&rdquo; and &ldquo;He's off to Philippopolis in the morn&mdash;ing&rdquo;
+       ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car and gazed at
+      the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life. And he was
+      surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the students,
+      dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the smoking-car
+      fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in the cottage
+      stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children lost in the
+      streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same moment
+      whisper words of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
+      over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
+      not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
+      Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In the
+      mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly forgot;
+      and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture man
+      through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects for the
+      camera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
+      newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in a
+      moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
+      illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
+      Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed it
+      with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor, and
+      the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks very
+      old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the entire
+      diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at Therapia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence of
+      the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
+      Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was a
+      power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington in
+      favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was afraid
+      his father would consider Therapia &ldquo;out of bounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He sent me to Constantinople,&rdquo; explained Peter, &ldquo;and if he thinks I'm not
+      playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and he
+      might cut off my allowance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This was
+      fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at he Cercle,
+      was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his letter-of-credit
+      and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own against men three
+      times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of his father. Only
+      they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot evening Peter saw
+      as much of their money scattered over the green table as his father had
+      spent over the Hallowell athletic field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile&mdash;in the morning
+      trying to fill his brain with names of great men who had been a long time
+      dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his active
+      spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter from Charley
+      Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived after Peter had
+      endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from boredom and gave
+      life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip intended to amuse.
+      One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read: &ldquo;Old man Gilman has got the
+      sack. The chancellor offered him up as a sacrifice to your father, and
+      because he was unwise enough to flunk you. He is to move out in September.
+      I ran across them last week when I was looking for rooms for a Freshman
+      cousin. They were reserving one in the same boarding-house. It's a shame,
+      and I know you'll agree. They are a fine old couple, and I don't like to
+      think of them herding with Freshmen in a shine boardinghouse. Black always
+      was a swine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just learned,&rdquo; he cabled his father, &ldquo;Gilman dismissed because flunked me
+      consider this outrageous please see he is reinstated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read:
+      &ldquo;Informed Gilman acted through spite have no authority as you know to
+      interfere any act of black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had
+      befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the injustice had been hourly
+      increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his
+      filial piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but
+      little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next cable
+      was not conciliatory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me appear
+      contemptible Black is a toady will do as you direct please reinstate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black incident is
+      closed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid and
+      explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous cablegram of his
+      distinguished contemporary: &ldquo;Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's paraphrase of this ran: &ldquo;Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will
+      not try for degree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply was equally emphatic:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You earn your degree or you earn your own living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: &ldquo;Choose
+      to earn my own living am leaving Constantinople.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer via
+      Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very much, would have accompanied
+      him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by way of Paris and
+      London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get there long before I do,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and as soon as you
+      arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor Gilman some souvenir
+      of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He wouldn't
+      accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to be something
+      characteristic of the country, Like a prayer rug, or a scimitar, or an
+      illuminated Koran, or...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a
+      flat morocco case and opened it. &ldquo;What's the matter with one of these?&rdquo; he
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt.
+      To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the Star of the Crescent,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Where did you buy it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buy it!&rdquo; exclaimed Stetson. &ldquo;You don't buy them. The Sultan bestows
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet,&rdquo; returned Stetson, &ldquo;I've got something in my pocket that says
+      he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving
+      Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that say when it says it in English?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It says,&rdquo; translated Stetson, &ldquo;that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan,
+      bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author, lecturer, the Star of the
+      Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to
+      Turkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never try to fool the fakirs, my son,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I'm a fakir myself.
+      What services did you ever....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Services rendered,&rdquo; continued Stetson undisturbed, &ldquo;in spreading
+      throughout the United States a greater knowledge of the customs,
+      industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That,&rdquo; he explained,
+      &ldquo;refers to my&mdash;I should say our&mdash;moving-picture lecture. I
+      thought it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish
+      decoration, so I went after this one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But did they believe you,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;when you told them you were an
+      author and educator?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stetson closed one eye and grinned. &ldquo;They believed whatever I paid them to
+      believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can get one of those,&rdquo; cried Peter, &ldquo;Old man Gilman ought to get a
+      dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest history
+      of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a real
+      professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the five
+      volumes with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred dollars in bribes,&rdquo; said Stetson briskly, &ldquo;and two months of
+      diplomacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't got two months for diplomacy,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;so I'll have to
+      increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the decoration for Gilman, and
+      you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the
+      Crescent, but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know what
+      we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever bestowed by
+      a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell the people
+      often enough that anything is the best they believe you. That's the way
+      father sells his hams. You've been a press-agent. From now on you're going
+      to be my press-agent&mdash;I mean Doctor Gilman's press-agent. I pay your
+      salary, but your work is to advertise him and the Order of the Crescent.
+      I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at Stillwater. He sends out
+      college news to a syndicate and he's the local Associated Press man. He's
+      sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my best friend, and he'll work
+      the papers as far as you like. Your job is to make Stillwater College and
+      Doctor Black and my father believe that when they lost Gilman they lost
+      the man who made Stillwater famous. And before we get through boosting
+      Gilman, we'll make my father's million-dollar gift laboratory look like an
+      insult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle burned fiercely,
+      memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of his strategies and tactics in
+      advertising soared before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's great!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I've got your idea and you've got me. And
+      you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-agent for politicians,
+      actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horse-shows&mdash;and I'm
+      the best! I was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he ran
+      for governor. He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+      Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took hold
+      of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs.
+      Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at Newport, when all she ever saw of
+      Newport was Bergers and the Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that made
+      the American People believe Russian dancers can dance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's plain to see you hate yourself,&rdquo; said 'Peter. &ldquo;You must not get so
+      despondent or you might commit suicide. How much money will you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much have you got?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All kinds,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Some in a letter-of-credit that my father earned
+      from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker from the
+      pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my living.
+      Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman
+      and the Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman Defense, Publicity,
+      and Development Committee, and you will begin by introducing me to the man
+      I am to bribe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to
+      bribe,&rdquo; exclaimed Stetson; &ldquo;you just bribe him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made
+      their first move in the game of winning for Professor Gilman the Order of
+      the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock coat
+      and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign office
+      and appeared to be &ldquo;a friend of a friend of a friend&rdquo; of the assistant
+      third secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The five volumes of the &ldquo;Rise and Fall&rdquo; were spread before him, and Peter
+      demanded to know why so distinguished a scholar as Doctor Gilman had not
+      received some recognition from the country he had so sympathetically
+      described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and promised the matter
+      should be brought at once to the attention of the grand vizier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little
+      chance of getting within speaking distance of the grand vizier as of the
+      ladies of his harem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like Tammany,&rdquo; said Stetson; &ldquo;there are sachems, district leaders,
+      and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled to trade or give away a few of
+      these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage of
+      jobs in the street-cleaning department. This fellow will go to his patron,
+      his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he will put it
+      up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a
+      hundred others, without knowing what he is signing; then you cable me, and
+      the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way that
+      will make Halley's comet look like a wax match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left
+      alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the
+      contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He had
+      not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an
+      itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus
+      would receive very different treatment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard and diamond
+      rings called with Osman to apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man
+      explained&mdash;had been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he
+      had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class
+      that had been given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+      all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an honor for a
+      savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth class
+      would hardly be high enough. The fees, the fat man added, would Also be
+      higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference, because the
+      fourth class entitled the wearer to a salute from all sentries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are few sentries at Stillwater,&rdquo; said Peter; &ldquo;but I want the best
+      and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the
+      embassy. The secretary was considerably annoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Hallowell,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;why the devil didn't you tell me you
+      wanted a decoration? Of course the State department expressly forbids us
+      to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the
+      Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at once&mdash;but, on
+      two conditions: that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+      why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat
+      demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one of the Gilman Defense
+      Committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor Gilman's history,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;must be presented to the Sultan. You
+      must have the five volumes rebound in red and green, the colors of
+      Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;they are not soiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by me,&rdquo; Peter assured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will take them myself,&rdquo; continued Stimson, &ldquo;to Muley Pasha, the
+      minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to present them to his Imperial
+      Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he
+      won't so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the
+      Order of the Crescent of the third class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going up!&rdquo; exclaimed Peter. &ldquo;The third class. That will cost me my entire
+      letter-of-credit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Stimson. &ldquo;I've saved you from the grafters. It will
+      cost you only what you pay to have the books rebound. And the THIRD class
+      is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it round your
+      neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a thousand
+      soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and wear it longer
+      round my neck What's the matter with our getting the second class or the
+      first class?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first class,&rdquo; he explained patiently, &ldquo;is the Great Grand Cross, and
+      is given only to reigning sovereigns. The second is called the Grand
+      Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men
+      of world-wide fame....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide fame?&rdquo; said
+      Peter. &ldquo;He will be some day, when Stetson starts boosting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; retorted Stimson stiffly, &ldquo;I may be an ambassador. When I am I
+      hope to get the Grand Cross of the Crescent, but not now. I'm sorry you're
+      not satisfied,&rdquo; he added aggrievedly. &ldquo;No one can get you anything higher
+      than the third class, and I may lose my official head asking for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing is too good for old man Gilman,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;nor for you. You
+      get the third class for him, and I'll have father make you an ambassador.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who had
+      come from a reception at the Grand vizier's and still wore his
+      decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of
+      the young prince he regarded with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul
+      with wide-eyed awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan, and
+      because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation in
+      Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming,
+      distinguished, courteous to the verge of humility, most cleverly cynical,
+      most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won, and while
+      doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards and the cards
+      held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack,
+      Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that nestled behind the lapel of
+      Abdul's coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask what that is?&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and
+      then smiled delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an order,&rdquo; he said in a quick aside, &ldquo;bestowed only upon men of
+      world-wide fame. I dined to-night,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;with your charming
+      compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Joe told?&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince nodded. &ldquo;Joe told,&rdquo; he repeated; &ldquo;but it is all arranged. Your
+      distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater, will receive the Crescent of
+      the third class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond sunburst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;can't some one get him one like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then
+      thought better of it and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are only two men in all Turkey,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;who could do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is the Sultan the other one?&rdquo; asked Peter. The prince gasped as
+      though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold shower, and then laughed
+      long and silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You flatter me,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you could if you liked!&rdquo; whispered Peter stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently Abdul did not hear him. &ldquo;I will take one card,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand francs in the
+      pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had dropped out. &ldquo;Will you
+      divide?&rdquo; asked the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I?&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or
+      call?&rdquo; The prince called and laid down a full house. Peter showed four
+      tens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will deal you one hand, double or quits,&rdquo; said the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+      mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will pay me double what is on the table,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or you quit owing
+      me nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go ahead,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held a
+      seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours. Hoping to draw another king,
+      which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul, he threw
+      away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The prince
+      showed three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll make you a sporting proposition,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;You owe me a hundred
+      and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only two men in
+      the empire can give me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the
+      table. But the puzzled glances of the other players showed that to them
+      Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince smiled cynically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For yourself?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Doctor Gilman,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will cut for deal and one hand will decide,&rdquo; said the prince. His
+      voice dropped to a whisper. &ldquo;And no one must ever know,&rdquo; he warned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter also could be cynical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even the Sultan,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he
+      dealt Peter was the better one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY
+      announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the
+      University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously pleased
+      to confer the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at
+      Quarantine. It read: &ldquo;Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had been
+      brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince Abdul, although pitchforked
+      into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its most
+      enthusiastic members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE,&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;If it is
+      worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will command
+      that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that it be placed
+      in the national library. Moreover, the University of Constantinople, the
+      College of Salonica, and the National Historical Society have each elected
+      Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed him, the Patriarch of
+      Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish ambassador in America has been
+      instructed to present the insignia with his own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his press-work, and to
+      further the idea that all Europe was now clamoring for the &ldquo;Rise and
+      fall,&rdquo; Peter paid an impecunious but over-educated dragoman to translate
+      it into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+      bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed out that not
+      since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so highly
+      honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand vizier&mdash;who
+      had been requested by Prince Abdul&mdash;to request the State Department
+      to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from such a source
+      was a command and, as desired, the State Department wrote as requested by
+      the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered congratulations. The fact
+      was sent out briefly from Washington by Associated Press. This official
+      recognition by the Government and by the newspapers was all and more than
+      Stetson wanted. He took off his coat and with a megaphone, rather than a
+      pen, told the people of the United States who Doctor Gilman was, who the
+      Sultan was, what a Grand Cross was, and why America's greatest historian
+      was not without honor save in his own country. Columns of this were paid
+      for and appeared as &ldquo;patent insides,&rdquo; with a portrait of Doctor Gilman
+      taken from the STILLWATER COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross
+      drawn from imagination, in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle,
+      Western, and Eastern States. special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and
+      pictures of the Grand Cross followed, and, using Stillwater as his base,
+      Stetson continued to flood the country. Young Hines, the local
+      correspondent, acting under instructions by cable from Peter, introduced
+      him to Doctor Gilman as a traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who
+      was a humble admirer of the author of the &ldquo;Rise and fall.&rdquo; Stetson, having
+      studied it as a student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at
+      the feet of the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on
+      the steps of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from
+      the unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life. To
+      this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added photographs
+      he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered cottage, of his
+      favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian at work at his
+      desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife on the croquet
+      lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually presented. This
+      pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much to his
+      astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
+      Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to a
+      Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
+      Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag a
+      secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
+      travelled down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary took
+      the local train to Stillwater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the ambassador
+      as one of the happiest incidents of his distinguished career. Never since
+      he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western republic had its
+      barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly approaching his
+      own idea of what was his due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This ambassador,&rdquo; Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater, who was
+      also the proprietor of its largest department store, &ldquo;is the personal
+      representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's exactly,&rdquo; added Stetson, &ldquo;as though the Sultan himself were coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater,&rdquo; continued Hines, &ldquo;that we
+      ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as he comes to pay the
+      highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'd I better do?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Stetson here,&rdquo; Hines pointed out, &ldquo;has lived in Turkey, and he knows
+      what they expect. Maybe he will help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; begged the mayor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will,&rdquo; said Stetson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most of
+      the faculty were on their vacations. But there were half a dozen
+      professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed out
+      to them that the coming honor to one lately of their number reflected
+      glory upon the college and upon them, and that they should take official
+      action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear
+      their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these suggestions, with alacrity&mdash;partly
+      because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because they had never
+      been photographed by a moving-picture machine&mdash;they all agreed. So it
+      came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and dusty stepped off
+      the way-train at Stillwater station he found to his delighted amazement a
+      red carpet stretching to a perfectly new automobile, a company of the
+      local militia presenting arms, a committee, consisting of the mayor in a
+      high hat and white gloves and three professors in gowns and colored hoods,
+      and the Stillwater silver Cornet Band playing what, after several
+      repetitions, the ambassador was graciously pleased to recognize as his
+      national anthem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was
+      dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration. Here at last were
+      people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the mayor helped
+      him into the automobile, and those students who lived in Stillwater
+      welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture machine aimed at
+      him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But inwardly he was ill at
+      ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
+      America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
+      honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
+      blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost on
+      the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+      leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
+      the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki, by
+      the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous liking
+      and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater gathered
+      outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling and
+      bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
+      ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only frock
+      coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor Gilman
+      smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
+      Stillwater shouted, &ldquo;Speech,&rdquo; in sudden panic he reached out his hand
+      quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, three Long ones!&rdquo; yelled the cheer leader. &ldquo;Now, then, 'See
+      the Conquering Hero!'&rdquo; yelled the bandmaster. &ldquo;Attention! Present arms!&rdquo;
+       yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
+      applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
+      his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+      all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
+      and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
+      drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the rear
+      of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+      professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
+      he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to the
+      Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
+      Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater. They were
+      afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might inadvertently
+      drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to supply
+      his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts of the
+      great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he choked.
+      Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently before the
+      public, and never before had her president been so utterly and completely
+      ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized that even had he
+      been present he could not have shown his face. How could he, who had, as
+      every one connected with the college now knew, out of spite and without
+      cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join in chanting his
+      praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior, might not hear of
+      Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of anything else. At
+      his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one he met
+      congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had come to
+      his pet college.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,&rdquo;
+       exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. &ldquo;Now if I pay a hundred thousand
+      for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty dollars, but
+      you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in half a million
+      dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor Gilman's doing as
+      much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns Hopkins or as Walter
+      Camp does for Yale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he was able,
+      and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage increased. It
+      seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor Gilman. The stone
+      he had rejected had become the corner-stone of Stillwater. Whenever he
+      opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming: &ldquo;Will no one rid me of this
+      pestilent fellow?&rdquo; For the &ldquo;Rise and Fall,&rdquo; in an edition deluxe limited
+      to two hundred copies, was being bought up by all his book-collecting
+      millionaire friends; a popular edition was on view in the windows of every
+      book-shop; It was offered as a prize to subscribers to all the more sedate
+      magazines, and the name and features of the distinguished author had
+      become famous and familiar. Not a day passed but that some new honor, at
+      least so the newspapers stated, was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced
+      that he was to be the next exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he
+      was to lecture at the Sorbonne; that in June he was to receive a degree
+      from Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by
+      offering him the chair of history at that seat of learning at a salary of
+      five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust upon
+      Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson, but
+      this offer happened to be genuine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter from
+      the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We could not be happy away from Stillwater,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We have only a
+      month more in the cottage, but after that we still can walk past it; we
+      can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit the
+      place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and
+      miserable for her, and she would be lonely for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave
+      Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern college at which
+      Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his
+      jealousy knew no bounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He telegraphed to Black: &ldquo;Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six thousand&mdash;offer
+      him whatever he wants, but make him promise for no consideration to leave
+      Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought any credit to the
+      college if we lose him I'll hold you responsible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor
+      called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble pie that for a week he
+      suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care
+      for that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished, was
+      back in the faculty, and had made only one condition&mdash;that he might
+      live until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history
+      examination, which, should he pass it, would give him his degree, he found
+      on every side evidences of the &ldquo;worldwide fame&rdquo; he himself had created.
+      The newsstand at the depot, the book-stores, the drugstores, the
+      picture-shops, all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing the
+      ivy-covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,
+      advertisements of the different editions of &ldquo;the&rdquo; history proclaimed his
+      fame. Peter, fascinated by the success of his own handiwork, approached
+      the ivy-covered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs. Gilman
+      welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which she always
+      gave courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations, and Doctor
+      Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers
+      Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should indeed!&rdquo; Peter assured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell,&rdquo; said the professor, &ldquo;that you have
+      not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five.&rdquo; In real
+      sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great
+      astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking
+      offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+      the precocious act of a beloved child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; said Doctor Gilman gently, &ldquo;that this summer you did not
+      work very hard for your degree!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell you the truth, Professor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're right I got working
+      for something worth while&mdash;and I forgot about the degree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
+      Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at the
+      time military attaché of the German Government with the Russian army in
+      the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of Manchuria,
+      and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his part in the
+      invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the ramparts of the
+      Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses below us glowing
+      and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been Carl
+      Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a spy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
+      correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell it
+      in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
+      have yet to find any one who will believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of the East
+      Cliff Hotel left a copy of &ldquo;The Riddle of the Sands&rdquo; in the coffee-room,
+      where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the
+      Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place, the German flag
+      might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, it might not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As every German knows, &ldquo;The Riddle of the Sands&rdquo; is a novel written by a
+      very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion of
+      his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to be embarked
+      in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and despatched
+      simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From
+      there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred and forty miles
+      through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of Norfolk somewhere
+      between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this coast is low-lying and
+      bordered by sand flats which at low water are dry, that England maintains
+      no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest naval base is at Chatham, seem
+      to point to it as the spot best adapted for such a raid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
+      read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and under
+      separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: &ldquo;I suggest your
+      Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage, and
+      of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms, take
+      them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want ideas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
+      was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford went to
+      Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the Shakespeare
+      Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the robe, Ford was
+      left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors and shelves, and
+      packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent Garden balls and
+      amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a long, secretly
+      cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by trying on all the
+      uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant
+      returned, instead of finding a young American in English clothes and a
+      high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a spiked helmet
+      fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The assistant retreated
+      precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to
+      turn the tables by saying, &ldquo;Does a German uniform always affect a
+      Territorial like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It did give me quite a turn,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's this talk of invasion, I
+      fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along the
+      beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, quite right, too!&rdquo; said Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at his
+      post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play truant
+      and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the words of
+      Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young
+      Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of
+      the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young Herbert, who was
+      only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an
+      Irishman, both in their third term at the university. After five years'
+      service in India, Bellew had spent the last &ldquo;Eights&rdquo; week at Oxford, and
+      was complaining bitterly that since his day the undergraduate had
+      deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to study, far too well
+      behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy; instead of &ldquo;wines&rdquo; he
+      found pleasure in debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging,
+      practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes, that once were wont to set England in a
+      roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests combated these charges
+      fiercely. His criticisms they declared unjust and without intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're talking rot!&rdquo; said his dutiful nephew. &ldquo;Take Phil here, for
+      example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
+      never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of him.
+      And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as yours!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse!&rdquo; assented Birrell loyally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours; as the
+      Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat through a
+      temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a man from
+      Balliol?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!&rdquo; cried Herbert. &ldquo;What price that? When
+      the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen guns. That
+      was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The country hasn't
+      stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!&rdquo; challenged Herbert. &ldquo;Make it as
+      hard as you like; something risky, something that will make the country
+      sit up, something that will send us all to jail, and Phil and I will put
+      it through whether it takes one man or a dozen. Go on,&rdquo; he persisted, &ldquo;And
+      I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here in town and all of them
+      undergraduates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give you the idea, yes!&rdquo; mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. &ldquo;That's just
+      what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's the
+      idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
+      theatricals!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it!&rdquo; snorted Herbert. &ldquo;If you want to know what stage fright is, just
+      go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt cork
+      and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a little
+      different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and with
+      well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now he
+      suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly about
+      him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace,
+      and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had departed to the
+      theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside the open windows,
+      were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the
+      west by the great shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by the
+      flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was still sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'LL give you an idea for a rag,&rdquo; whispered Ford. &ldquo;One that is risky,
+      that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
+      you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mind him,&rdquo; exclaimed Herbert impatiently. &ldquo;HE never reads anything!
+      Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the book most talked about,&rdquo; explained Ford. &ldquo;And what else is most
+      talked about?&rdquo; He answered his own question. &ldquo;The landing of the Germans
+      in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book in
+      everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen
+      if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just where the
+      book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of soldiers; not
+      in one place, but in twenty places?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would happen?&rdquo; roared Major Bellew loyally. &ldquo;The Boy Scouts would
+      fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo; he demanded breathlessly. &ldquo;How are we to do it? It would take
+      hundreds of men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two men,&rdquo; corrected Ford, &ldquo;And a third man to drive the car. I thought it
+      out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German uniforms. I
+      thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out how prepared
+      you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now that you
+      wanted a chance to go to jail&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your plan?&rdquo; interrupted Birrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We would start just before dawn&mdash;&rdquo; began Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We?&rdquo; demanded Herbert. &ldquo;Are you in this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I in it?&rdquo; cried Ford indignantly. &ldquo;It's my own private invasion! I'm
+      letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be any
+      invasion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
+      nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We accept your services, sir,&rdquo; said Birrell gravely. &ldquo;What's your plan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
+      slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
+      indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the preposterous, outrageous&mdash;Are you mad?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Do
+      you suppose for one minute I will allow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you go to the devil!&rdquo; he exclaimed cheerfully. &ldquo;Come on, Ford,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
+      miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
+      misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and on
+      his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
+      occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles at
+      the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route by
+      which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
+      forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
+      chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
+      the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+      lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
+      of each was alike&mdash;each produced a pencil and on the face of his
+      &ldquo;Half Inch&rdquo; road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
+      numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had come,
+      they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they were
+      returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them
+      the information they desired. He was an intelligent head-waiter, young,
+      and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing. In a frock coat he
+      might easily have been mistaken for something even more important than a
+      head-waiter&mdash;for a German riding-master, a leader of a Hungarian
+      band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even
+      assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen
+      from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing
+      pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz
+      followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one
+      of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace
+      it, when his eyes were held by notes scrawled roughly in pencil. With an
+      expression that no longer was that of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift
+      glance about him and then slipped into the empty coat-room and locked the
+      door. Five minutes later, with a smile that played uneasily over a face
+      grown gray with anxiety, Carl presented the map to the tallest of the
+      three strangers. It was open so that the pencil marks were most obvious.
+      By his accent it was evident the tallest of the three strangers was an
+      American.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil!&rdquo; he protested; &ldquo;which of you boys has been playing hob
+      with my map?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with disfavor;
+      until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a glance, he
+      signified the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that!&rdquo; exclaimed the younger one. &ldquo;The Automobile Club asked us to
+      mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
+      petrol.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance, he
+      departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the windows
+      of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray stretch of
+      sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret, he glanced
+      carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned eagerly
+      forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long lines
+      of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull of
+      thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a black
+      leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Patience,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
+      There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight for
+      us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the three
+      strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear, of
+      gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
+      gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
+      way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again
+      allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats
+      were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a Norwegian tramp was
+      drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these the sea was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
+      off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
+      Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman on
+      his rounds, to the driver of the char à banc. He had been a year in Cromer
+      and was well known and well liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand, the
+      chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees. Between the
+      trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the
+      gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by
+      bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new apart, and a
+      man sprang into the walk and confronted him. But, at sight of the
+      head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his heels clicked together,
+      his hand went sharply to his visor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn. In
+      the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there now
+      stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen
+      table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and
+      perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the key,
+      was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl drew his
+      legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been in constant communication,&rdquo; said the man with the beard.
+      &ldquo;They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly from
+      the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you to-morrow
+      at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of
+      this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final advertisement. Thirty
+      thousand of our own people will read it. They will know the moment has
+      come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens where,
+      upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with pretty
+      ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above
+      him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served
+      at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf balls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A nation of wasters,&rdquo; muttered the German, &ldquo;sleeping at their posts. They
+      are fiddling while England falls!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
+      about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
+      around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
+      was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
+      were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms, and
+      to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
+      Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Du bist gefangen!&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
+      Leute?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Shutliffe, &ldquo;but I am a trifle
+      'ard of 'earing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier addressed him in English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the name of this village?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
+      recalled its name with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen any of our people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go indoors!&rdquo; commanded the soldier, &ldquo;And put out all lights, and remain
+      indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
+      Do you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly,&rdquo; stammered Mr. Shutliffe. &ldquo;May I lock in
+      the pigs first, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two others
+      trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still standing
+      uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he should lock up
+      the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a fine start!&rdquo; mocked Herbert. &ldquo;Of course, you had to pick out
+      the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
+      better pack up and go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The village inn is still open,&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;We'll close It.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles on
+      the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two fishermen
+      removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose to the
+      occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; she exclaimed briskly, &ldquo;What way is that to come tumbling
+      into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
+      fellow, my lad, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents, interrupted
+      her sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are Germans!&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;This village is captured. You are
+      prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
+      If you into the street go, we will shoot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that the
+      soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one shouldered
+      his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ass!&rdquo; muttered the tall German. &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
+      shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
+      later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will hold Stiffkey for a while!&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;Now, back to the car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive figure.
+      His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted cobble-stones
+      proclaimed his calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The constable!&rdquo; whispered Herbert. &ldquo;He must see us, but he mustn't speak
+      to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the street,
+      and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken alarm,
+      disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes later a
+      motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into
+      Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The driver of the
+      car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to his heels he
+      was covered by a raincoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Policeman,&rdquo; he began; &ldquo;when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
+      in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward the
+      beach. What's the idea&mdash;manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; the policeman assured him promptly; &ldquo;I saw them. It's
+      manoeuvres, sir. Territorials.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't look like Territorials,&rdquo; objected the chauffeur. &ldquo;They looked
+      like Germans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal a
+      grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Territorials, sir,&rdquo; he protested soothingly; &ldquo;skylarking maybe, but
+      meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's serious,
+      and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast Guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The constable considered deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard,&rdquo; he protested; &ldquo;not
+      at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
+      gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
+      your cards&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye gods!&rdquo; cried the man in the rear of the car. &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;You couldn't wake these people with
+      dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They little know of England who only Stiffkey know,&rdquo; chanted the
+      chauffeur reprovingly. &ldquo;Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
+      live wire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
+      job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
+      of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road&mdash;and in
+      the light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged
+      across the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He
+      was followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put out that light,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Go to your home and tell no one what
+      you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot. Our
+      sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed his
+      comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding over the
+      cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below. Young Bradshaw
+      stood quite still. In his heart was much fear&mdash;fear of laughter, of
+      ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly, silently he
+      turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he had just
+      climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably informed that
+      in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney, sentries were
+      waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the gauntlet. He saw that
+      it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer and later as a
+      Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced on the rifle
+      range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud. As he threw his
+      leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car farther up the hill,
+      fired two shots over his head. These, he explained to Ford, were intended
+      to give &ldquo;verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.&rdquo;
+       And the sighing of the bullets gave young Bradshaw exactly what he wanted&mdash;the
+      assurance that he was not the victim of a practical joke. He threw his
+      weight forward and, lifting his feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an
+      hour into the main street of Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car
+      followed, a mob of men so completely blocked the water-front that Ford was
+      forced to stop. His head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious,
+      sceptical, eager. A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a
+      retired army officer pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for
+      him, and then closing in his wake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen any&mdash;any soldiers?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;German soldiers!&rdquo; Ford answered. &ldquo;They tried to catch us, but when I saw
+      who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many&mdash;and where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
+      didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
+      better telephone the garrison, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; snapped the elderly gentleman. &ldquo;I happen to be in command of
+      this district. What are your names?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've no time for that!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;We've got to warn every coast town in
+      Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got them guessing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now, what we want is a live wire,
+      some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
+      countryside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks ahead there,&rdquo; said Birrell, &ldquo;as though it hadn't gone to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
+      lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, &ldquo;trippers&rdquo; in
+      flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to witness
+      a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their escorts,
+      shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion sprang in
+      front of the car and waved his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's this tale about Germans?&rdquo; he demanded jocularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can see their lights from the beach,&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;They've landed two
+      regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut all
+      the wires south.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The proprietor refused to be &ldquo;had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let 'em all come!&rdquo; he mocked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; returned Ford. &ldquo;Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
+      Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
+      Germans back! Gangway,&rdquo; he shouted, and the car shot forward. &ldquo;We warned
+      you,&rdquo; he called, &ldquo;And it's up to you to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
+      with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This thing is going to fail!&rdquo; he cried petulantly. &ldquo;They don't believe
+      us. We've got to show ourselves&mdash;many times&mdash;in a dozen places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The British mind moves slowly,&rdquo; said Birrell, the Irishman. &ldquo;Now, if this
+      had happened in my native land&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned
+      the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past and disappeared in
+      the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that
+      men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying
+      from its running boards. Before they could find their voices a motor
+      cycle, driven as though the angel of death were at the wheel, shaved their
+      mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things are looking up!&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;Where is our next stop? As I said
+      before, what we want is a live one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are next billed to appear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;about a quarter of a mile from
+      here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
+      the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
+      when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw three
+      German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat helmets,
+      with long brown rifles. They saw an anæmic, pale-faced youth without a
+      coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply in his chair
+      and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. &ldquo;You are a prisoner,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
+      out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
+      the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument. Ford
+      flung his rifle upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't!&rdquo; he growled. &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My pay&mdash;my month's pay?&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Can I take It?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it and get out,&rdquo; Ford commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
+      pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the papers
+      inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo; cried Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake, and
+      Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre issued
+      by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders, Herbert
+      twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the window, and
+      almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the tower. Birrell
+      leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to shout: &ldquo;Don't touch
+      that instrument! If you attempt to send a message through, we will shoot.
+      We go to cut the wires!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his heart
+      beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm raised to
+      guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward across the
+      table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the circuit and
+      through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your last remark,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was that what we wanted was a live one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mention it!&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;He jammed that gun half down my throat. I
+      can taste it still. Where do we go from here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;According to the route we mapped out this afternoon,&rdquo; said Herbert, &ldquo;We
+      are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse and
+      Weybourne, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not with me!&rdquo; exclaimed Birrell fiercely. &ldquo;Those towns have been tipped
+      off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
+      death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
+      Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
+      believe him, and they'll call out the navy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herbert consulted his map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a Coast Guard,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;stationed just the other side of
+      Morston. And,&rdquo; he added fervently, &ldquo;let us hope he's lonely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
+      coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars, nor
+      moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped out
+      upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon fires
+      burning fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since seeing those fires,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;I feel a strange reluctance
+      about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coast Guards don't shoot!&rdquo; mocked Birrell. &ldquo;They only look at the clouds
+      through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able to
+      frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
+      cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
+      cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
+      showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must pass in single file in front of that light,&rdquo; whispered Ford, &ldquo;And
+      then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm on in that last scene,&rdquo; growled Herbert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only,&rdquo; repeated Ford with emphasis, &ldquo;We must be sure he has seen us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars, many
+      flashes, many bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's seen us!&rdquo; yelled Birrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier fully
+      armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from the
+      shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed his first
+      shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he proceeded to
+      sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he emptied into the
+      night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to sea, now at his own
+      shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of a mile away at
+      Morston it sounded like a battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
+      length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
+      last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
+      painfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened to Herbert?&rdquo; panted Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; gasped Birrell, &ldquo;When I saw him last he was diving over
+      the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About twenty!&rdquo; groaned the American, &ldquo;And, besides being dead, I am
+      severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time I
+      hit a rock!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the head-lights.
+      It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water, and clad simply
+      in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and fell into his golf
+      clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;can have
+      mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles and
+      helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open road, and
+      five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris tweeds, and
+      with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car, turned into the
+      shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror to their guilty
+      souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a regiment of
+      regulars advancing in column of fours, at the &ldquo;double.&rdquo; An officer sprang
+      to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have to commandeer this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Run back to Cromer. Don't crush
+      my men, but go like the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We heard firing here,&rdquo; explained the officer at the Coast Guard station.
+      &ldquo;The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen. They made
+      pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks as
+      though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,&rdquo; exclaimed the
+      officer suddenly, &ldquo;if you are the three gentlemen who first gave the alarm
+      to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the other coast towns. Because,
+      if you are, he wants your names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
+      discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst might
+      happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably were the men
+      to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been returning from
+      Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had been held up by
+      the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were lucky to escape,&rdquo; said the officer &ldquo;And in keeping on to give
+      warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
+      extremely well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence. With
+      his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car through
+      lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were banked
+      behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!&rdquo; exclaimed Ford
+      admiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY regiment!&rdquo; snorted the officer. &ldquo;You've passed through five regiments
+      already, and there are as many more in the dark places. They're
+      everywhere!&rdquo; he cried jubilantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires,&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what the Germans think,&rdquo; said the officer. &ldquo;It's working like a
+      clock,&rdquo; he cried happily. &ldquo;There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they got
+      your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a wave,
+      on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government took
+      over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+      territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down in
+      London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
+      Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
+      them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
+      eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+      coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
+      the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
+      sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on
+      land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast alone
+      before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from Colchester
+      the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H. A.'s with
+      siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns spread out
+      over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They thought they'd
+      give us a surprise party. They will never give us another surprise party!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
+      Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
+      the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
+      and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon, the
+      clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command raised in
+      sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless fires. Every
+      window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The night had been
+      turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like the eyes of those
+      who had passed through an earthquake, of those who looked upon the burning
+      of San Francisco, upon the destruction of Messina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were betrayed, general,&rdquo; whispered the head-waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were betrayed, baron,&rdquo; replied the bearded one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you were in time to warn the flotilla.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last message I received over the wireless,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;before I
+      destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
+      movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And,&rdquo; added the general, &ldquo;The
+      English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept that
+      explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history. Return
+      to the hotel,&rdquo; he commanded, &ldquo;And in two months you can rejoin your
+      regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map of
+      Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that was
+      spread over five. Beneath it was printed: &ldquo;Lester Ford, our London
+      correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
+      warn the English people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared this
+      paragraph:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son of
+      Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell&mdash;both of Balliol College,
+      Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
+      These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+      prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
+      infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
+      authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
+      people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we, or shall we not,&rdquo; asked Herbert, &ldquo;tell my uncle that we three,
+      and we three alone, were the invaders?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's hardly correct,&rdquo; said Ford, &ldquo;as we now know there were two hundred
+      thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I vote we don't tell him,&rdquo; said Birrell. &ldquo;Let him think with everybody
+      else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon and
+      gave the show away. If we talk,&rdquo; he argued, &ldquo;We'll get credit for a
+      successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
+      saved England. I'm content to let it go at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company. The
+      manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the New York
+      offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the little
+      nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in railroad
+      tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate as easily as
+      into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these different punches,
+      and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the sons turned a customer
+      over to David he spoke of him as a salesman. But David called himself a
+      &ldquo;demonstrator.&rdquo; For a short time he even succeeded in persuading the other
+      salesmen to speak of themselves as demonstrators, but the shipping clerks
+      and bookkeepers laughed them out of it. They could not laugh David out of
+      it. This was so, partly because he had no sense of humor, and partly
+      because he had a great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower
+      Broadway, to possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a
+      great-grandfather is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But
+      to David the possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and
+      open delight. He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he
+      always had existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a
+      doctor in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that
+      David emerged as a Son of Washington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was sister Anne, anxious to &ldquo;get in&rdquo; as a &ldquo;Daughter&rdquo; and wear a distaff
+      pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary ancestor. She
+      unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the graveyard of the
+      Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a person than General
+      Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at Trenton and at
+      Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on moving to New York,
+      his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not affect his record. To
+      enter a society founded on heredity, the important thing is first to catch
+      your ancestor, and having made sure of him, David entered the Society of
+      the Sons of Washington with flying colors. He was not unlike the man who
+      had been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it. He was not
+      unlike the other man who woke to find himself famous. He had gone to bed a
+      timid, near-sighted, underpaid salesman without a relative in the world,
+      except a married sister in Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a
+      direct descendant of &ldquo;Neck or Nothing&rdquo; Greene, a revolutionary hero, a
+      friend of Washington, a man whose portrait hung in the State House at
+      Trenton. David's life had lacked color. The day he carried his certificate
+      of membership to the big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes,
+      one for each of his two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+      one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said, &ldquo;All
+      grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+      great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+      live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+      great-great dad ever do for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for one thing,&rdquo; said David stiffly, &ldquo;he fought in the War of the
+      Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England; he made
+      it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that,&rdquo; protested Wyckoff,
+      &ldquo;because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about it
+      in a book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not grudging glory to others,&rdquo; returned David; &ldquo;I am only saying I
+      am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+      frame that folded like a concertina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to be a descendant,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I'd rather be an ancestor.
+      Look at those.&rdquo; Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with the
+      baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at the
+      children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I'm married,&rdquo; he stammered, and at the words he blushed, &ldquo;I hope to
+      be an ancestor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're thinking of getting married,&rdquo; said Wyckoff, &ldquo;you'd better hope
+      for a raise in salary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+      showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+      on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+      soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not the
+      grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative David
+      was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to attend the
+      monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to erect monuments
+      on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in joyous excursions to
+      the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones; to inspect West Point,
+      Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those present at the annual
+      &ldquo;banquet&rdquo; at Delmonico's. In order that when he opened these letters he
+      might have an audience, he had given the society his office address.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these communications he was always addressed as &ldquo;Dear Compatriot,&rdquo; and
+      never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift him out
+      of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to things
+      uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know what an
+      aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an aristocrat.
+      When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was overbearing,
+      this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he would smile
+      and say to himself: &ldquo;If they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my
+      button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How easily with a word
+      could I crush them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button. They
+      thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+      teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+      liable to give that impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+      although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the person
+      in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss Emily Anthony,
+      one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and prettiest
+      stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a figure as did
+      some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found something in him
+      so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours, accepted his
+      devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring. Indeed, so far had
+      matters progressed, that it had been almost decided when in a few months
+      they would go upon their vacations they also would go upon their
+      honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and from a quarter from
+      which David had expected only sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trouble befell when David discovered he had a great-great-grandfather.
+      With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost as pleased as was David
+      himself, but while he was content to bask in another's glory, Miss Anthony
+      saw in his inheritance only an incentive to achieve glory for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+      descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+      determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young person.
+      She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed. The
+      great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon&mdash;had, in a way,
+      raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales of
+      past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he sat
+      shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke with
+      awe, touched her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn't be content to just wear a button,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;If you're a
+      Son of Washington, you ought to act like one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I'm not worthy of you,&rdquo; David sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean that, and you know I don't,&rdquo; Emily replied indignantly. &ldquo;It
+      has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of your
+      grandpa Hiram!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But HOW?&rdquo; complained David. &ldquo;What chance has a twenty-five dollar a week
+      clerk&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of Cuba
+      were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were a Son of the Revolution,&rdquo; said Emily, &ldquo;I'd go to Cuba and help
+      free it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk nonsense,&rdquo; cried David. &ldquo;If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+      we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I know
+      about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Lafayette talk like that?&rdquo; demanded Emily. &ldquo;Did he ask what have the
+      American rebels ever done for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were in Lafayette's class,&rdquo; sighed David, &ldquo;I wouldn't be selling
+      automatic punches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's your trouble,&rdquo; declared Emily &ldquo;You lack self-confidence. You're
+      too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
+      yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
+      You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
+      the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
+      war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+      pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emily,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're going to be awfully disappointed in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But when
+      she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not,&rdquo; she protested; &ldquo;only I want a husband with a career, and
+      one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've often wished you would,&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would what? Run your career for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe I'd like you better,&rdquo; said Emily, &ldquo;if you weren't so darned
+      polite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+      David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+      salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a step
+      forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David was not
+      elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted. Her
+      ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She did
+      not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+      lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+      completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in the
+      office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days that
+      still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+      honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days&mdash;at
+      least she did not count them aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+      learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she was
+      even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in ignorance
+      of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt
+      just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed her, longed
+      for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the frequency
+      with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him. It was almost a
+      relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close to
+      the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful, and at
+      the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+      congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+      Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+      Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A
+      year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+      celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+      shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+      more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish Hiram
+      Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+      him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+      son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to leave
+      the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute, and they
+      left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any Southern
+      railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame Fortune gets
+      on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train to Miami as
+      the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the
+      conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped
+      David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked back
+      along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would find a
+      flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north. In an
+      hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+      fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment he
+      would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+      encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+      tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a shed.
+      Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he
+      did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot, and too
+      disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down under the
+      open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train or daylight.
+      So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched a swamp, silent,
+      dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead trees, naked of bark
+      and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was not a sound or sign of
+      human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at night David
+      remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to Tampa and of the
+      loathing with which he had considered placing himself between its sheets.
+      But now how gladly would he welcome it! For, in the sleeping-car,
+      ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would have been surrounded by
+      fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his companions were owls,
+      water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am alone,&rdquo; he told himself, &ldquo;on a railroad embankment, entirely
+      surrounded by alligators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he found he was not alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+      there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and the
+      face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above the
+      level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+      embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of a
+      tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+      embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had been
+      a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds
+      disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening
+      into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an
+      ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his pipe,
+      had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company
+      of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced
+      quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something
+      mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed
+      from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as
+      was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake
+      and awake to some purpose. David stood uncertainly, questioning whether to
+      make his presence known or return to the loneliness of the shed. The
+      question was decided for him. He had not considered that standing in the
+      moonlight he was a conspicuous figure. The planks of the wharf creaked and
+      a man came toward him. As one who means to attack, or who fears attack, he
+      approached warily. He wore high boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He
+      was a little man, but his movements were alert and active. To David he
+      seemed unnecessarily excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who the devil are you?&rdquo; demanded the man from the tug. &ldquo;How'd you get
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I walked,&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walked?&rdquo; the man snorted incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took the wrong train,&rdquo; explained David pleasantly. &ldquo;They put me off
+      about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going to
+      wait here for the next train north.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man laughed mockingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no you're not,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you walked here, you can just walk away
+      again!&rdquo; With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+      gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You walk!&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do just as I please about that,&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+      tug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll find some one who'll make you walk!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;You WAIT, that's
+      all, you WAIT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private property
+      and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station the rights
+      of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he judged it best to
+      choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks and sat down on his
+      suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he
+      could see in the moonlight the approach of any other person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're river pirates,&rdquo; said David to himself, &ldquo;or smugglers. They're
+      certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+      of a perfectly harmless stranger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish that train would come,&rdquo; he sighed. And instantly? as though in
+      answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard the
+      rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his course
+      of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+      smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+      the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His plan
+      was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though he had no
+      lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only stand on the
+      track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David
+      sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his
+      arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards distant
+      and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no head-light, and
+      though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle,
+      tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear of the sightless
+      engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying
+      Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as unreal as the black
+      swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly tug-boat tied to the
+      rotting wharf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the place haunted!&rdquo; exclaimed David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to a
+      sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the ground,
+      and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls and eager
+      greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+      mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note the
+      equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little man
+      from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore no coat
+      and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters of pink
+      elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his right hand
+      flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had
+      stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the
+      outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest man he had
+      ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his beard and
+      hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild moonlight it
+      flamed like a torch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your business?&rdquo; demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here,&rdquo; began David, &ldquo;to wait for a train&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he shouted; &ldquo;this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+      wait for a train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+      &ldquo;Don't you lie to ME!&rdquo; he bullied. &ldquo;Do you know who I am? Do you know WHO
+      you're up against? I'm&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The barkeeper person interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind who you are,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We know that. Find out who HE is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I'm a travelling
+      man&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't travel any to-night,&rdquo; mocked the red-haired one. &ldquo;You've seen
+      what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+      wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in riding-boots
+      pushed forward importantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tie him to a tree!&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better take him on board,&rdquo; said the barkeeper, &ldquo;and send him back by the
+      pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think I want to hurt you?&rdquo; demanded David. &ldquo;Who do you
+      think I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know who you are,&rdquo; shouted the fiery-headed one. &ldquo;You're a
+      blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+      whichever you are you don't get away to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+      self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have made a very serious mistake,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and whether you like it
+      or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+      short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+      up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+      conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting to
+      pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head rolled
+      against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance, and in a
+      strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying, &ldquo;Nine&mdash;ten&mdash;and
+      OUT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+      his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of a
+      lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf cap who
+      was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed wildly
+      about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw that from
+      where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed with men. She
+      was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side the gray light
+      that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with stunted
+      palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to disturb you,&rdquo; said the youth in the golf cap, &ldquo;but we drop the
+      pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as large
+      as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened to me?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were sort of kidnapped, I guess,&rdquo; laughed the young man. &ldquo;It was a
+      raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+      Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; demanded David indignantly. &ldquo;Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+      done? Who were those men who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the engine-room,
+      and the speed of the tug slackened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; commanded the young man briskly. &ldquo;The pilot's going ashore.
+      Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+      where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws an
+      electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into the
+      glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the fierce,
+      blatant radiance of a search-light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+      prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+      scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+      man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+      fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+      David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby hat
+      pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the
+      engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+      Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+      the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+      quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open sea.
+      But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a policeman's
+      bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and held her in
+      its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by the arm. With
+      his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great was the tumult
+      that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the revenue cutter!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;She's been laying for us for
+      three weeks, and now,&rdquo; he shrieked exultingly, &ldquo;the old man's going to
+      give her a race for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting beyond
+      his control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;how do I get ashore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he drops the pilot, don't I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can he drop the pilot?&rdquo; yelled the youth. &ldquo;The pilot's got to stick
+      by the boat. So have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stick by what boat?&rdquo; yelled David. &ldquo;Who are these men? Who are you? What
+      boat is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+      at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+      himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+      board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+      David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his
+      spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THE THREE FRIENDS!&rdquo; shrieked David. &ldquo;She's a filibuster! She's a pirate!
+      Where're we going?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Cuba!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; he shrieked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man regarded him coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To pick bananas,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't go to Cuba,&rdquo; shouted David. &ldquo;I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+      machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+      ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+      the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+      succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged. Like a
+      hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to stern. No
+      longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did not put him
+      ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he would have
+      crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to David, nor to
+      many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots. Their groans of
+      self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish, rose high above
+      the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the waves. Even when the
+      search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight the circumstance was
+      unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the tidings brought forward
+      by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the slippery decks and vaulted the
+      prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a hurdler on a cinder track. To David,
+      in whom he seemed to think he had found a congenial spirit, he shouted
+      Joyfully, &ldquo;She's fired two blanks at us!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;now she's firing
+      cannon-balls!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; whispered David; &ldquo;perhaps she'll sink us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
+      as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
+      those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries of
+      fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching head, of
+      the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered him, David fell
+      into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull consciousness of his
+      position. At such moments he added to his misery by speculating upon the
+      other misfortunes that might have befallen him on shore. Emily, he
+      decided, had given him up for lost and married&mdash;probably a navy
+      officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett and Sons had cast him off
+      forever. Possibly his disappearance had caused them to suspect him; even
+      now they might be regarding him as a defaulter, as a fugitive from
+      justice. His accounts, no doubt, were being carefully overhauled. In
+      actual time, two days and two nights had passed; to David it seemed many
+      ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less motion,
+      and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and fell upon it.
+      From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought him food and
+      drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a bowl of
+      smoking soup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David considered it a doubtful attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he said, &ldquo;You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+      with these pirates?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're not pirates, they're patriots,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I'm not mixed up
+      with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+      captain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The barkeeper with the derby hat?&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler,&rdquo; Carr corrected, &ldquo;and he's the
+      greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway, and
+      he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+      mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about this
+      expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found out and
+      sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story either.
+      Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest, and he's
+      promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I can write as
+      much about it as I darn please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you're a reporter?&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm what we call a cub reporter,&rdquo; laughed Carr. &ldquo;You see, I've always
+      dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+      too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+      it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+      real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose, I can
+      tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+      Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you LIKE this?&rdquo; groaned David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are,&rdquo; said Carr, &ldquo;but I've a stomach
+      like a Harlem goat.&rdquo; He stooped and lowered his voice. &ldquo;Now, here are two
+      fake filibusters,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;The men you read about in the
+      newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+      little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All they ask,&rdquo; whispered Carr, &ldquo;is money and advertisement. If they knew
+      I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls himself
+      Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida coast, and
+      that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a dare-devil
+      calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English officer, and a
+      soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says
+      he's never been near enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the
+      base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans. The Junta thinks they're
+      great fighters, and it's sent them down here to work the machine guns. But
+      I'm afraid the only fighting they will do will be in the sporting columns,
+      and not in the ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+      dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
+      Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
+      of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition, and
+      that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats she was
+      preparing to defend herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've got an automatic gun in that crate,&rdquo; said Carr, &ldquo;and they're
+      going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David shook his head feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't move!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+      Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+      above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+      David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+      unintelligent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together in
+      his life,&rdquo; he whispered to Carr. &ldquo;I never did, either, but I've put
+      hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's wrong with it?&rdquo; said Carr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+      all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+      to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+      never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+      saw it first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land!&rdquo; he hailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+      rose in a fierce chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cuba libre!&rdquo; they yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken with
+      bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each topped by
+      a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like columns of
+      marble rose the royal palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You MUST look!&rdquo; Carr entreated David, &ldquo;it's just as it is in the
+      pictures!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I don't have to look,&rdquo; groaned David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
+      sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore of
+      that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
+      waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
+      voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
+      patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
+      their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition of
+      Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box of
+      shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In two hours, if we have smooth water,&rdquo; shouted Lighthouse Harry, &ldquo;we
+      ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask,&rdquo; he cried
+      mightily, &ldquo;is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+      Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+      fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three Friends
+      she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal questions
+      or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug was
+      sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she raced in
+      pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there came from the
+      gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into
+      the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged
+      at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed
+      impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was
+      ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+      feet splashed into a wave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+      removed from any of the greater emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;They can't do! It's not connected!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT'S not connected?&rdquo; yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
+      half-dragged him to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it,&rdquo; he shouted,
+      &ldquo;or I'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on the
+      instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness of
+      morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+      jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
+      through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
+      come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
+      shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
+      more was a sane, sound young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+      from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism. He
+      wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that his
+      work was good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them to
+      cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+      smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a continuous
+      whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked feverishly. He swung
+      to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open, pulled on the trigger and
+      found it gave before his forefinger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shouted with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got it working,&rdquo; he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one of
+      the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the tall
+      form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell splashed
+      to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David stood staring
+      wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the distance between
+      them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her bow, at
+      the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing in volleys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived it
+      all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+      leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and made
+      him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the box of
+      ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click as the
+      breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against the weight of
+      his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing gun-boat, saw her
+      again and many times disappear behind a flash of flame. A bullet gashed
+      his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his forearm, but he did not
+      heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the engines, with the roar of
+      the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking unceasingly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cuba libre!&rdquo; it yelled. &ldquo;To hell with Spain!&rdquo; and he found that the voice
+      was his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the best of it is,&rdquo; he exclaimed joyfully, &ldquo;it's true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself aground
+      by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one
+      man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over
+      night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter
+      had projected a new &ldquo;hero,&rdquo; a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular
+      idol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were seated in the pilot-house, &ldquo;Jimmy&rdquo; Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+      patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba, and
+      The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
+      straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished reading
+      aloud his account of the engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will tell the story just as I have written it,&rdquo; commanded the proud
+      author. &ldquo;Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind. You
+      came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your wish
+      you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board. That was
+      just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you took command
+      of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe Bay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. &ldquo;You certainty did, Dave,&rdquo;
+       protested the great man, &ldquo;I seen you when you done it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+      David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+      spread across the map of the United States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+      office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower Broadway
+      tendered congratulations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it's a great surprise to us,&rdquo; Burdett and Sons would protest
+      and wink heavily. &ldquo;Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd no
+      idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him go,
+      would we?&rdquo; Then again they would wink heavily. &ldquo;I suppose you know,&rdquo; they
+      would say, &ldquo;that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene, who won
+      the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'&rdquo; And then in a
+      body every one in the club would move against the bar and exclaim: &ldquo;Here's
+      to Cuba libre!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the Tampa
+      cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and all of
+      the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+      bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+      surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+      Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+      travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her best
+      hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as Burdett
+      and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+      &ldquo;David!&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;promise me you'll never, never do it again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care in
+      the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to the left; if it
+      came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely the wind
+      that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled broadly,
+      happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved his
+      fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over Nantucket
+      and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of verandas,
+      from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces. Empaled on
+      their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled&mdash;sometimes
+      languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
+      sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been a
+      sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he would
+      have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer bought
+      for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders most grave
+      and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried treasure,
+      the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really asking a
+      great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
+      Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
+      pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen Page
+      ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the &ldquo;season&rdquo; opened; when she departed
+      the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of stock. She was
+      so popular because she possessed charm, and because she played no
+      favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner
+      was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded youths who came
+      to win the championship cups and remained to try to win Helen. She was
+      just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with the &ldquo;kids&rdquo; as to
+      take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the matrons. To each her
+      manner was always as though she were of their age. When she met the latter
+      on the beach road, she greeted them riotously and joyfully by their maiden
+      names. And the matrons liked it. In comparison the deference shown them by
+      the other young women did not so strongly appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I'm jogging along in my station wagon,&rdquo; said one of them, &ldquo;and Helen
+      shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were twenty, and
+      I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside her, instead of
+      that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat. Why does he never
+      wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or because Helen drives so
+      fast he can't keep it on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?&rdquo; asked the new arrival.
+      &ldquo;That might help some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will never know,&rdquo; exclaimed the young matron; &ldquo;he never leaves her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them so many
+      times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf together,
+      that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way to look. But
+      they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not to see them,
+      Helen shouted at you. She made you feel you had been caught doing
+      something indelicate and underhand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young Latimer. So
+      many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in that inarticulate,
+      worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange young man who
+      apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends for years had
+      learned they must remain friends, could not hope to escape criticism.
+      Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston and Harvard,
+      but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at both the law and
+      the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully; but it was rather
+      held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that he played at there
+      games, not so much for the sake of the game as for exercise. He put aside
+      many things, such as whiskey and soda at two in the morning, and bridge
+      all afternoon, with the remark: &ldquo;I find it does not tend toward
+      efficiency.&rdquo; It was a remark that irritated and, to the minds of the men
+      at the country clubs, seemed to place him. They liked to play polo because
+      they liked to play polo, not because it kept their muscles limber and
+      their brains clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some Western people were telling me,&rdquo; said one of the matrons, &ldquo;that he
+      wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is very ambitious
+      and very selfish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any man is selfish,&rdquo; protested one who for years had attempted to marry
+      Helen, &ldquo;who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to be
+      a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one lose
+      sympathy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship of
+      Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been working overtime and was
+      treating himself to his first vacation in years&mdash;he was young&mdash;he
+      was in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either,
+      that Helen Page was happy. Those who had known her since she was a child
+      could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore
+      her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings to
+      old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses. She was
+      very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him she liked
+      better to be with him than with any one else,&mdash;it would have been
+      difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer colony,&mdash;but
+      she explained that that did not mean she would marry him. She announced
+      this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She announced it in
+      what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly that she did not
+      intend to marry for several years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so
+      eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep her own. She as though
+      she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to sea. When,
+      at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer had paused to
+      catch his, she shook her head miserably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trouble is,&rdquo; she complained, &ldquo;there are so many think the same
+      thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they think?&rdquo; demanded Latimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That they want to marry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can quite believe that,&rdquo; he agreed, &ldquo;but there's this important
+      difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE you
+      as I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's ANOTHER thing they think,&rdquo; sighed Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry to be so unoriginal,&rdquo; snapped Latimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;PLEASE don't!&rdquo; pleaded Helen. &ldquo;I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not
+      unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to take it to
+      heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable a girl
+      must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind whether or
+      not she wants to marry him. But when there's so many she just stops
+      worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ALL!&rdquo; exclaimed Latimer. &ldquo;It is incredible that I have undervalued you,
+      but may I ask how many there are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; sighed Helen miserably. &ldquo;There seems to be something about
+      me that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is!&rdquo; interrupted Latimer. &ldquo;I've noticed it. You don't have to tell
+      me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult habit
+      to break!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least,
+      not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on
+      which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored a
+      forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked the
+      sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played hide
+      and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this place,
+      and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a tree
+      and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose works he
+      read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to them for
+      rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into his voice he
+      would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and mass meetings
+      had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible for
+      any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: &ldquo;Please excuse me
+      for interrupting, but there is a large spider&mdash;&rdquo; and the spell was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day she exclaimed: &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; and Latimer patiently lowered the &ldquo;Oxford
+      Book of Verse,&rdquo; and asked: &ldquo;What is it, NOW?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so sorry,&rdquo; Helen said, &ldquo;but I can't help watching that Chapman boy;
+      he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he
+      can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy,&rdquo; said Latimer, &ldquo;or in
+      what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning man
+      myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. &ldquo;Men get over THAT kind of
+      drowning,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not THIS kind of man doesn't!&rdquo; said Latimer. &ldquo;And don't tell me,&rdquo; he
+      cried indignantly, &ldquo;that that's ANOTHER thing they all say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one could only be sure!&rdquo; sighed Helen. &ldquo;If one could only be sure that
+      you&mdash;that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him the
+      way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that, it
+      would help you a lot in making up your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one way to find that out,&rdquo; said Latimer; &ldquo;that is to marry
+      him. I mean, of course,&rdquo; he corrected hastily, &ldquo;to marry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the
+      man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the
+      village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their
+      hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the
+      ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the
+      world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind
+      caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it
+      tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+      sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a
+      tiny oar and smiling happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a friendly smile,&rdquo; said Helen; &ldquo;I think he likes us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is on guard,&rdquo; Latimer explained. &ldquo;I put him there to warn us if any
+      one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away
+      trespassers. Do you understand?&rdquo; he demanded of the sailorman. &ldquo;Your duty
+      is to protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must guard
+      this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You never
+      sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She wrongs
+      you. It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure when I look
+      at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways alike. I also
+      am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I never sleep, at
+      least not since I met her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman
+      and frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a happy simile,&rdquo; she objected. &ldquo;For one thing, a sailorman has
+      a sweetheart in every port.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait and see,&rdquo; said Latimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued the girl with some asperity, &ldquo;if there is anything on
+      earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less
+      CERTAIN, less CONSTANT&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constant?&rdquo; Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. &ldquo;You come back here,&rdquo; he
+      challenged, &ldquo;months from now, years from now, when the winds have beaten
+      him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you will find
+      him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently, proudly,
+      joyously, devotedly. Because those who are your slaves, those who love
+      YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if you drive
+      them away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about
+      in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs,
+      his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one
+      blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it was
+      time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say
+      good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to say
+      that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think that a
+      man such as he believed you were so fine a person, and during the coming
+      winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her to be, but
+      which, she assured him, she was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to
+      which she said: &ldquo;Oh, indeed no!&rdquo; and then, as though he were giving her a
+      cue, he said: &ldquo;Good-by!&rdquo; But she did not take up his cue, and they shook
+      hands. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, now that the parting has come,&rdquo; he assured himself, &ldquo;she will
+      make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total'
+      under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me through
+      the long winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that he really
+      forced her to say: &ldquo;Don't miss your train,&rdquo; which kind consideration for
+      his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor, indeed, later did she
+      herself recall the remark with satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine suitor
+      attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they had over Latimer
+      was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at dinners,
+      dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawing-room. Like any sailor
+      from the Charlestown Navy Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk beside
+      her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch dates and
+      initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one side of
+      Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when the sun
+      was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were beginning
+      to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known her since they
+      wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and friends in common;
+      they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to her only in letters,
+      for with her he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to
+      choose between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in politics or
+      of his love. To write to her of his affairs seemed wasteful and
+      impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had received what he told
+      of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he wrote but seldom, and
+      then only to say: &ldquo;You know what I send you.&rdquo; Had he known it, his best
+      letters were those he did not send. When in the morning mail Helen found
+      his familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand out like the face of a
+      friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon the letter, read it, and, assured
+      of his love, would go on her way rejoicing. But when in the morning there
+      was no letter, she wondered why, and all day she wondered why. And the
+      next morning when again she was disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and
+      her doubts and speculations concerning him shut out every other interest.
+      He became a perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind.
+      And then he would spoil it all by writing her that he loved her and that
+      of all the women in the world she was the only one. And, reassured upon
+      that point, Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had seen
+      him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more gratefully, than
+      that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had walked that same
+      afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude he was
+      first, and there was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she was ready
+      to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him. But as yet
+      she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she was, life
+      was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited her to be of
+      his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the object of each seemed
+      to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day. Her nature was such
+      that to make her happy was not difficult. Some of her devotees could do it
+      by giving her a dance and letting her invite half of Boston, and her kid
+      brother could do it by taking her to Cambridge to watch the team at
+      practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she
+      was happy because she loved some one and that particular some one loved
+      her. Her being &ldquo;free&rdquo; was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she
+      thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered that,
+      so far from being free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+      hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch. The sun
+      had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen upon
+      his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the north, he
+      spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan the surrounding landscape
+      that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor, indeed, did any
+      one attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret hiding-place, but
+      the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him away. He was always
+      triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing rabbits he was a thing
+      of terror. Once, when the air was still, an impertinent crow perched on
+      the very limb on which he stood, and with scornful, disapproving eyes
+      surveyed his white trousers, his blue reefer, his red cheeks. But when the
+      wind suddenly drove past them the sailorman sprang into action and the
+      crow screamed in alarm and darted away. So, alone and with no one to come
+      to his relief, the sailorman stood his watch. About him the branches bent
+      with the snow, the icicles froze him into immobility, and in the tree-tops
+      strange groanings filled him with alarms. But undaunted, month after
+      month, alert and smiling, he waited the return of the beautiful lady and
+      of the tall young man who had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was the
+      best thing that could come into his life. But to sit down and lament over
+      the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite
+      expression, &ldquo;tend toward efficiency.&rdquo; He removed from his sight the three
+      pictures of her he had cut from illustrated papers, and ceased to write to
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his last letter he said: &ldquo;I have told you how it is, and that is how it
+      is always going to be. There never has been, there never can be any one
+      but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought out every
+      week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an advertisement of a
+      motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be cheapened, to be subjected to
+      slights and silence. If ever you should want it, it is yours. It is here
+      waiting. But you must tell me so. I have done everything a man can do to
+      make you understand. But you do not want me or my love. And my love says
+      to me: 'Don't send me there again to have the door shut in my face. Keep
+      me with you to be your inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so
+      it shall be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not know
+      how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly she had grown
+      very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in
+      consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not see
+      why the two hundred and forty-nine expected her to keep on doing exactly
+      the same things she had been doing with delight for six months, and indeed
+      for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer was there
+      any pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer that she
+      found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not arisen a
+      fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He said that he
+      would always love her, but how could she now know that? Why might not this
+      letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position which he wished to
+      abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to escape? Were this true,
+      and she wrote and said all those things that were in her heart, that now
+      she knew were true, might she not hold him to her against his will? The
+      love that once he had for her might no longer exist, and if, in her turn,
+      she told him she loved him and had always loved him, might he not in some
+      mistaken spirit of chivalry feel it was his duty to pretend to care? Her
+      cheeks burned at the thought. It was intolerable. She could not write that
+      letter. And as day succeeded day, to do so became more difficult. And so
+      she never wrote and was very unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he
+      had his work, and Helen had none, and for her life became a game of
+      putting little things together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an
+      hour there, to make up each day. It was a dreary game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his own
+      State, he was an &ldquo;Insurgent&rdquo; making a fight, the outcome of which was
+      expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West. When he won
+      his fight much more was written about him, and he became a national
+      figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next governor,
+      promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to take him
+      further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place even in his
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her about
+      her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only because
+      Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over her head, as
+      though she were not present, as a power, an influence, as the leader and
+      exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she no longer could pretend
+      to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he belonged to all of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Older men would say to her: &ldquo;I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
+      is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man who
+      sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or halting
+      to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down and
+      needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she agreed
+      in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent her, for she
+      knew wherever she went she must still force herself to go on putting one
+      hour on top of another, until she had built up the inexorable and
+      necessary twenty-four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning
+      unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse the thin spring
+      sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task. She
+      assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming and
+      Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled
+      herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is a
+      pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+      memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer
+      had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not to
+      think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking hours. Should she, as it
+      sometimes happened, dream of him&mdash;should she imagine they were again
+      seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at fifty miles
+      an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying past, with the
+      wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts happiness and content&mdash;that
+      would not be breaking her rule. If she dreamed of him, she could not be
+      held responsible. She could only be grateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came
+      East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with a
+      blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of three
+      cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party leaders,
+      to carry the war into the enemy's country. He was due to speak in Boston
+      at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to leave for the
+      West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the city. He had
+      spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York, and for a
+      week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that week, from the sight
+      of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting cheering mobs, from
+      snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward to grasp eager hands,
+      Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the time he was actually in
+      Boston she might spare herself further and more direct attacks upon her
+      feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to remain until, on the first
+      of May at midnight, he again would pass out of her life, maybe forever. No
+      one saw in her going any significance. Spring had come, and in preparation
+      for the summer season the house at Fair Harbor must be opened and set in
+      order, and the presence there of some one of the Page family was easily
+      explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it
+      herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if it
+      would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the
+      memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out by
+      those of one summer, by those of one man. The natives greeted her
+      joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the
+      village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though
+      they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she had
+      exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused her
+      throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and
+      hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in
+      the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively to
+      his open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The
+      golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where he
+      always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds than to
+      remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where the
+      schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon; the
+      wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the pond
+      into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places
+      purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way. They no longer
+      distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends, who
+      had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the secret hiding-place&mdash;their very own hiding-place, the opening
+      among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea&mdash;she
+      could not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third
+      day when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own
+      accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And again
+      from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked the sea,
+      he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For hours,
+      stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same branches
+      patiently waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one enters
+      the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred circle.
+      And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find there she
+      could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown to her. She
+      saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal. No haunted
+      house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more poignantly,
+      more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no sign of his or
+      of her former presence. Across the open space something had passed its
+      hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place, a bower, a nest,
+      had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that once had been
+      brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She had but one
+      desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her forever, to
+      remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had remembered it,
+      and as now she must always remember It. She turned softly on tiptoe as one
+      who has intruded on a shrine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of wind
+      that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the branches
+      tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the same
+      instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous
+      tattoo&mdash;a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the woods, a
+      creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes&mdash;and beheld the sailorman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy,
+      calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down at
+      her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's ears
+      Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer
+      stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no longer a jest;
+      they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that brought to her
+      peace, and pride, and happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long as I love this beautiful lady,&rdquo; had been his foolish words, &ldquo;you
+      will guard this place. It is a life sentence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman
+      stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a
+      joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her hands
+      and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair Harbor at
+      a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between his chattering
+      teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by landing them in
+      jail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark
+      places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced
+      against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
+      beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of the
+      one thing that could make his life worth living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat, the
+      sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at peace,
+      his duty well performed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
+      life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he knew.
+      Under the title of &ldquo;Tales of the Yard&rdquo; they were collected in book form,
+      and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a reporter
+      on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of which a
+      reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in gathering
+      news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines, and later
+      in a book under the title of &ldquo;Tales of the Streets.&rdquo; They also were well
+      received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: &ldquo;There are
+      two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction&mdash;men of genius and
+      reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way that
+      he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe something
+      he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a way that the
+      reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but if I had,
+      that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling tells us how
+      a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers; how a mother
+      rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling has never been a
+      mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how each of them feels.
+      He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot do it because you are
+      not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at college; and now that
+      you are in the newspaper business all your tales are only of newspaper
+      work. You merely report what you see. So, if you are doomed to write only
+      of what you see, then the best thing for you to do is to see as many
+      things as possible. You must see all kinds of life. You must progress. You
+      must leave New York, and you had better go to London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But on the Republic,&rdquo; Endicott pointed out, &ldquo;I get a salary. And in
+      London I should have to sweep a crossing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the literary editor, &ldquo;you could write a story about a man who
+      swept a crossing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven
+      Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the daughter of the
+      American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one winter, he
+      loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money, and that she
+      possessed so much of it that, unless he could show some unusual quality of
+      mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from his own point of view
+      at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew that no one could love
+      her as he did, that no one so truly wished for her happiness, or would try
+      so devotedly to make her happy. But to him it did not seem possible that a
+      girl could be happy with a man who was not able to pay for her home, or
+      her clothes, or her food, who would have to borrow her purse if he wanted
+      a new pair of gloves or a hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in
+      birth and education and charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in
+      May, he came from New York to lay siege to London and to the heart of
+      Helen Carey he had with him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That was
+      all he possessed in the world; and unless the magazines bought his stories
+      there was no prospect of his getting any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was
+      easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to entertain
+      modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated he
+      could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough to
+      be able to live there on three sovereigns a day you had first to spend so
+      many five-pound notes in getting acquainted with London that there were no
+      sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just enough money to buy
+      him a second-class passage back to New York, and he was as far from Helen
+      as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to marry.
+      And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that when two people
+      truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money or not.
+      But when in London, with only a five-pound note, and face to face with the
+      actual proposition of asking Helen Carey not only to marry him but to
+      support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had supposed. He
+      found money was many different things&mdash;it was self-respect, and
+      proper pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking these
+      things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not one for
+      whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he knew how he
+      loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she loved him. She always
+      seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be explained in different
+      ways. It might be that what was in her heart for him was really a sort of
+      &ldquo;old home week&rdquo; feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who
+      spoke her own language, who did not need to have it explained when she was
+      jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly
+      satisfactory phrases that she must be talking slang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a
+      friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had sent him cards
+      for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And
+      Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with
+      him in Hyde Park and through the National Galleries; and they had fed buns
+      to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They
+      thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed.
+      Later they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because they
+      were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to bed with
+      his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound note to last him
+      until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now that he
+      loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between them was
+      liable to unseat his courage and his self-control. In London he could,
+      each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning against the
+      iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window. But, once on the
+      other side of the ocean, that tender exercise must be abandoned. He must
+      even consider her pursued by most attractive guardsmen, diplomats, and
+      belted earls. He knew they could not love her as he did; he knew they
+      could not love her for the reasons he loved her, because the fine and
+      beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped they did not seek, and
+      so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few thousand dollars, he must
+      remain silent, must put from him the best that ever came into his life,
+      must waste the wonderful devotion he longed to give, must starve the love
+      that he could never summon for any other woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and completely
+      miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and unrefreshed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the miracle came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house
+      where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his breakfast. As he placed
+      the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though Prichard
+      had said: &ldquo;I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman who takes these
+      rooms may not be so open-handed. He never locked up his cigars or his
+      whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits me, except across
+      the shoulders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved.
+      In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't take such a liberty,&rdquo; protested Prichard. &ldquo;Not with any of our
+      gentlemen's clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know I was talking about clothes,&rdquo; demanded Philip. &ldquo;You
+      didn't say anything about clothes, did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you thinking of clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was,&rdquo; answered the valet.
+      &ldquo;Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new, I thought...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's mental telepathy,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; exclaimed Prichard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't wait,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning
+      papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged into
+      the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded with
+      people; and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every one at
+      whom he looked began to talk aloud. Their lips did not move, nor did any
+      sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken phrases of
+      thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a crowd, snatches
+      of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his debts; another of
+      the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to his silk hat; another
+      planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over a telegram he had but
+      that moment received. To himself he kept repeating the words of the
+      telegram&mdash;&ldquo;No need to come, out of danger.&rdquo; To Philip the message
+      came as clearly as though he were reading it from the folded slip of paper
+      that the stranger clutched in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might
+      consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge from the crowded
+      street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some
+      unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with him,
+      and he was inventing the phrases he seemed to hear, that he was
+      attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent. But,
+      whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative that he
+      should at once get at the meaning of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of
+      stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and directly in front
+      of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted. Her glance
+      was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept repeating: &ldquo;Did
+      I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will
+      she get the telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it would
+      be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of Scots would
+      look ridiculous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed she
+      was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had distinguished the
+      words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was going
+      mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman should
+      determine it. He advanced boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I believe you are waiting for your maid
+      Hudson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wish to make sure,&rdquo; continued Philip, &ldquo;that you are she for whom I
+      have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to be photographed in
+      fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; assented the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you telephoned Hudson,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;to bring you your muff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she protested; &ldquo;I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want
+      my ruff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the love of Heaven!&rdquo; he exclaimed in horror; &ldquo;it's true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's true?&rdquo; demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I'm a mind reader,&rdquo; declared Philip. &ldquo;I've read your mind! I can
+      read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking now. You're
+      thinking I'm mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a
+      gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs to the studio.
+      Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to explain?
+      How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable? Besides,
+      the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of one, he
+      could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to his
+      ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as, before
+      that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal, he now could
+      look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind. The thought was
+      appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a key-hole. In his dismay
+      his first idea was to seek medical advice&mdash;the best in London. He
+      turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There, he determined,
+      to the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his strange plight.
+      For only as a misfortune did the miracle appear to him. But as he made his
+      way through the streets his pace slackened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed
+      this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as a madman? Might
+      they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his liberty?
+      At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of the miracle
+      as a &ldquo;power&rdquo; had opened a new line of speculation. If this strange gift
+      (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently) were concealed
+      from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful purpose? For,
+      among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not he&mdash;among all
+      other men the only one able to read the minds of all other men&mdash;a
+      god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length considering the
+      possibilities that lay within him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments. If
+      it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends avoid
+      him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at the
+      mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would lead
+      to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might easily
+      become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the present he had
+      best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded it
+      with less aversion. He began to consider to what advantage he could place
+      it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he might
+      learn secrets leading to far-reaching results. To a statesman, to a
+      financier, such a gift as he possessed would make him a ruler of men.
+      Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how could
+      he bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to marry Helen
+      Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet men who
+      possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions to them.
+      And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds would tell
+      him the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no
+      better than reading other people's letters. But, he argued, the dishonor
+      in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he
+      used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit to
+      others, was he not justified in trading on his superior equipment? He
+      decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance with
+      the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was determined
+      to become rich. Did not the end justify the means? Certainly an all-wise
+      Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to take her away
+      from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them for one
+      another, the all-wise Providence had overlooked the fact that she was rich
+      and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently was now
+      endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic and
+      roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift that
+      could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of
+      Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building it
+      in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady
+      Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he turned
+      in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the corridor of
+      the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and fortune, and in
+      reading their minds he might pass the time before luncheon with
+      entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing Bruton Street
+      trying to discover the principles of conduct that threatened to hamper his
+      new power, he had found that in actual operation it was quite simple. He
+      learned that his mind, in relation to other minds, was like the receiver
+      of a wireless station with an unlimited field. For, while the wireless
+      could receive messages only from those instruments with which it was
+      attuned, his mind was in key with all other minds. To read the thoughts of
+      another, he had only to concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut
+      off the thoughts of that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts
+      elsewhere. But also he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside
+      the range of his physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what
+      Helen Carey was at that moment thinking, there was no result. But when he
+      asked, &ldquo;Of what is that policeman on the corner thinking?&rdquo; he was
+      surprised to find that that officer of the law was formulating regulations
+      to abolish the hobble skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great
+      distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the person of a young
+      gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the source from
+      which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a pink-cheeked,
+      yellow-haired youth of extremely boyish appearance, and dressed as if for
+      the race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish face wore an
+      expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was gazing at a
+      house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the street. And his
+      thoughts were these: &ldquo;She is the best that ever lived, and I am the most
+      ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow stucco! Only
+      now, when she has closed its doors to me, do I know how happy! If she
+      would give me another chance, never again would I distress or deceive
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile of
+      surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front of the
+      house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young person. She
+      was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of haunting
+      beauty and innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife!&rdquo; exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he
+      dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to a four-wheeler, was
+      contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house and
+      disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly. He
+      shares the troubles of so many people that to the troubles of other people
+      he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the family
+      fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter, he acted
+      quickly. Hardly had the door closed upon the young lady than he had
+      mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he could not
+      resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the outlawed
+      husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from across the
+      back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of his general
+      appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to alter all of
+      them, was quickly communicated to the American. They were thoughts of a
+      nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily cut off all
+      connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+      fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly announced:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ladyship is not receiving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ladyship will, I think, receive me,&rdquo; said Philip pleasantly, &ldquo;when
+      you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his lordship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall there issued
+      a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with joy; and in the hall
+      the noble lady instantly appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+      embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought had been,
+      &ldquo;Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!&rdquo; Philip felt no embarrassment
+      whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the erring but
+      bitterly repentant husband; inside, her tenderest thoughts racing
+      tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy child-wife begging to be begged to
+      pardon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good manners,
+      it was too easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know you,&rdquo; said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she motioned
+      to the butler to go away. &ldquo;You must be one of his new friends.&rdquo; Her tone
+      was one of envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I am his newest friend,&rdquo; Philip assured her; &ldquo;but I can safely
+      say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are all of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she shook her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me I must not believe him,&rdquo; she announced. &ldquo;They tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what they tell you,&rdquo; commanded Philip. &ldquo;Listen to ME. He loves
+      you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks is the chance to
+      tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at you, and not
+      believe that he loves you! Let me,&rdquo; he begged, &ldquo;bring him to you.&rdquo; He
+      started from her when, remembering the somewhat violent thoughts of the
+      youthful husband, he added hastily: &ldquo;Or perhaps it would be better if you
+      called him yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Called him!&rdquo; exclaimed the lady. &ldquo;He is in Paris-at the races&mdash;with
+      her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they tell you that sort of thing,&rdquo; protested Philip indignantly, &ldquo;you
+      must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is not with her. There never was
+      a her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. &ldquo;He is there&mdash;behind
+      that ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell you that not
+      only did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never
+      do it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more boldly
+      showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over the scarlet geraniums,
+      she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous. Philip bolted
+      for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted down the steps, the
+      youthful husband, in strides resembling those of an ostrich, shot past
+      him. Philip did not cease running until he was well out of Berkeley
+      Square. Then, not ill-pleased with the adventure, he turned and smiled
+      back at the house of yellow stucco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless you, my children,&rdquo; he murmured; &ldquo;bless you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter
+      entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered around it a
+      considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that stretched
+      down the steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet in June,
+      when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining gently, can mean only
+      royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip halted. He
+      remembered that for a few days the young King of Asturia and the Queen
+      Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen the young man
+      who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his own kingdom,
+      Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of those
+      about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of pity for the
+      exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross street,
+      of pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the coachman of
+      the court carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount of his
+      Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as the warm
+      sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+      midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts was
+      shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought
+      of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they appear at the doorway,&rdquo; spoke the brain of the maniac, &ldquo;I shall
+      lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my head. I shall
+      crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of these
+      people into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVE&mdash;a martyr to
+      the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a
+      tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing close to the
+      open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized him around
+      the waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow. Philip's face,
+      appearing over the man's shoulder, stared straight into that of the
+      policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!&rdquo; yelled Philip. &ldquo;I can hold him
+      while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop it!&rdquo; Philip turned
+      upon the crowd. &ldquo;Run! all of you!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Run like the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young and
+      beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that her robes of
+      mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back, sir!&rdquo; warned Philip. &ldquo;He means to kill you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed
+      helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang protectingly in
+      front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now holding
+      the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head; Philip's arms,
+      like a lariat, were wound around his chest; and from his pocket the first
+      policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of the size of a glass
+      fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved his free hand
+      warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no one remaining to
+      observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling and biting in the
+      grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other policeman unhappily holding
+      the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought to escape into the Ritz. But the
+      young King broke through the circle of attendants and stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must thank you,&rdquo; said the boy eagerly; &ldquo;and I wish you to tell me how
+      you came to suspect the man's purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of fiction, began
+      to improvise fluently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To learn their purpose, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is my business. I am of the
+      International Police, and in the secret service of your Majesty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must know your name,&rdquo; said the King, and added with a dignity that
+      was most becoming, &ldquo;You will find we are not ungrateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said in your secret service,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Did even your Majesty know
+      me, my usefulness would be at an end.&rdquo; He pointed toward the two
+      policemen. &ldquo;If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the
+      men to reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into the
+      hall and on into the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the
+      heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they had
+      been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still
+      ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their
+      music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two
+      distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were
+      talking in leisurely whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a reporter
+      had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on matters concerning
+      the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a Pennsylvania Dutchman from
+      Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the night shift in the
+      same mills he now controlled. But with a roar and a spectacular flash, not
+      unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he had soared to fame and fortune.
+      He recognized Philip as one of the bright young men of the Republic; but
+      in his own opinion he was far too self-important to betray that fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in
+      imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what he
+      knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While
+      waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip, from
+      where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust and of
+      the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features and a
+      pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American many-time
+      millionaire on having that morning come into possession of a rare and
+      valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently discovered
+      portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip sighed enviously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fancy,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to yourself!
+      It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be poor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in tones of
+      rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and solemnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In no gallery in
+      Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another Velasquez. This
+      is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing
+      her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon as
+      it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh, every
+      Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too. For it
+      is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain, Mr.
+      Faust! What a bargain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced in
+      the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard, frowned
+      importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that costs three
+      hundred thousand dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly that
+      Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So he obligingly
+      assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle simulations of
+      surprise, awe, and envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Faust continued. &ldquo;If you will come upstairs,&rdquo; he said to the
+      picture-dealer, &ldquo;I will give you your check; and then I should like to
+      drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; the Baron said, &ldquo;but I have had it moved to my art gallery
+      to be packed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let's go to the gallery,&rdquo; urged the patron of art. &ldquo;We've just time
+      before lunch.&rdquo; He rose to his feet, and on the instant the soul of the
+      picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In actual words he said: &ldquo;The picture is already boxed and in its lead
+      coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry.&rdquo; But
+      his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: &ldquo;Fancy my letting this
+      vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old
+      masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames and
+      canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van Dycks, the
+      new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own copy of
+      Velasquez next to the one exactly like it&mdash;the one MacMillan finished
+      yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in a convent,
+      we shall 'discover' it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the
+      situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud. The two men, who
+      had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at nothing,
+      turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; he said to Faust, &ldquo;but you spoke so loud I couldn't help
+      overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter on the
+      Republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really!&rdquo; he protested irritably, &ldquo;you reporters butt in everywhere. No
+      public man is safe. Is there no place we can go where you fellows won't
+      annoy us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can go to the devil for all I care,&rdquo; said Philip, &ldquo;or even to
+      Pittsburgh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail, and
+      moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the reporter would escape him,
+      hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, since you've learned so much,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll tell you the whole
+      of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of international
+      importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; asked Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And to prove it, I shall tell you something that
+      will be news to you. I have just bought a Velasquez that I am going to
+      place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad as
+      he had expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I shall tell you something,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that will be news to you. You
+      are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez than this hair oil
+      is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you!&rdquo; shouted Faust. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is this insolent one?&rdquo; he sputtered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will make you a sporting proposition,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;You can take it,
+      or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will drive to this man's
+      studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on
+      its way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen
+      other 'old masters' half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm
+      right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE
+      YOU TO HIS STUDIO!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I will not,&rdquo; roared the German. &ldquo;It would be to insult myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you insult the Baron?&rdquo; demanded Faust. &ldquo;What makes you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think, I know!&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;For the price of a taxi-cab fare to
+      Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will all three go at once,&rdquo; cried the German. &ldquo;My car is outside. Wait
+      here. I will have it brought to the door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust protested indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not disturb yourself, Baron,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;just because a fresh reporter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They
+      saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and
+      shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the last you'll see of him,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His actions are certainly peculiar,&rdquo; gasped the millionaire. &ldquo;He did not
+      wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think, after all, I had
+      better go to Tate Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do so,&rdquo; said Philip, &ldquo;and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars,
+      and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me here at lunch. If
+      I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should come with me,&rdquo; said Faust. &ldquo;It is only fair to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take your word for what you find in the studio,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;I
+      cannot go. This is my busy day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and,
+      in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save for
+      the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty, and his
+      reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; Philip thought, &ldquo;the French chap was right who said words were
+      given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if
+      every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying
+      would become a lost art. I wonder,&rdquo; he mused cynically, &ldquo;is any one quite
+      honest? Does any one speak as he thinks and think as he speaks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen
+      had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sincerely hope, Sir John,&rdquo; said one of the two, &ldquo;that you have no
+      regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the best interests
+      of all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, indeed,&rdquo; the other replied heartily &ldquo;We shall be thought entirely
+      selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done is for the benefit
+      of the shareholders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old gentlemen
+      ran hand in hand with his spoken words. &ldquo;Here, at least,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, &ldquo;are two honest men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I hope,&rdquo; continued the one addressed as Sir John, &ldquo;that you approve
+      of my holding back the public announcement of the combine until the
+      afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given out
+      the news in this morning's papers the stockbrokers would have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was most wise,&rdquo; interrupted the other. &ldquo;Most just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
+      standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
+      chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
+      three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip saw
+      the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened by the
+      breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various combinations; but
+      always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of the three his heart
+      spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a mother reaches toward her
+      firstborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
+      was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
+      Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags&mdash;a flag with a red
+      cross on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed
+      her to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
+      return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
+      mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
+      wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place of
+      the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great ocean
+      liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is equipped,
+      with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite after suite
+      of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate to a love
+      message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help from a
+      sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still flew the
+      same house-flag&mdash;the red cross on the field of white&mdash;only now
+      in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
+      corridor to the telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
+      stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
+      him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to act for me,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;and act quick! I want you to
+      buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
+      Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing in that yarn of a combine,&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;It has fallen
+      through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a five-pound
+      note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care what they are,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;The combine is already signed
+      and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour everybody will know
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think you know it?&rdquo; demanded the broker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've seen the house-flags!&rdquo; cried Philip. &ldquo;I have&mdash;do as I tell
+      you,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a distracting delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter who's back of you,&rdquo; objected Maddox, &ldquo;it's a big order on a
+      gamble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not a gamble,&rdquo; cried Philip. &ldquo;It's an accomplished fact. I'm at the
+      Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when you've got a thousand
+      of each, stop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for
+      half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself to read the
+      illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same advertisement five
+      times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him half-way
+      with a message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have secured for you a thousand shares of each,&rdquo; he read, &ldquo;at fifteen.
+      Maddox.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate the horror
+      of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was sufficiently
+      horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them, he had bought
+      shares in three steamship lines, which shares, added together, were worth
+      two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. He returned down the
+      corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own audacity, he was in a
+      state of almost complete panic, when that happened which made his
+      outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was drawing near to
+      half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men and beautiful
+      ladies, the component parts of different luncheon parties were beginning
+      to assemble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one guest had
+      arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one was sufficient. It
+      was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed on the doors opening
+      from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with appeals, blessings, and
+      adoration, ran toward her. Her profile was toward him, and she could not
+      see him; but he could see her. And he noted that, as though seeking some
+      one, her eyes were turned searchingly upon each young man as he entered
+      and moved from one to another of those already in the lounge. Her
+      expression was eager and anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only,&rdquo; Philip exclaimed, &ldquo;she were looking for me! She certainly is
+      looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his
+      steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind? Why did he not
+      KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind upon the
+      waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: &ldquo;Of what
+      are you thinking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging from
+      Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and proffered it.
+      Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the half-burned
+      cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in that
+      mental process had Philip been conscious! The conclusion was only too
+      apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered
+      them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used his power to his own
+      advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the happiness
+      of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart the dishonesty
+      of a swindler, he had been all-powerful; but when he endeavored to bend it
+      to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood abashed and repentant,
+      Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the sight of him, there leaped
+      to them happiness and welcome and complete content. It was &ldquo;the look that
+      never was on land or sea,&rdquo; and it was not necessary to be a mind reader to
+      understand it. Philip sprang toward her as quickly as a man dodges a
+      taxi-cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came early,&rdquo; said Helen, &ldquo;because I wanted to talk to you before the
+      others arrived.&rdquo; She seemed to be repeating words already rehearsed, to be
+      following a course of conduct already predetermined. &ldquo;I want to tell you,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you that I
+      shall miss you very much.&rdquo; She paused and drew a long breath. And she
+      looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her to go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you miss me,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;in the Row, where I used to wait among the
+      trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances, where I used to
+      hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss me at
+      night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the
+      railings of the Carlton Club, just to see you run across the pavement from
+      your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to see the
+      light go out, and to know that you are sleeping?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you use to do that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every night I do that,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;Ask the policemen! They arrested me
+      three times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; said Helen gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They thought I was a burglar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Why did you keep guard outside my
+      window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the policeman kept guard,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;I was there only as a
+      burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience, or
+      else I knew my own unworthiness.&rdquo; There was a long pause. As both of them,
+      whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the Hungarian
+      band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the &ldquo;Grizzly Bear,&rdquo; and people
+      were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with a look of so
+      complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare of such savage
+      hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to last for many
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Helen said: &ldquo;Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew in
+      a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up at her
+      from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to the lady's
+      window, and she lifted him in and kissed him&mdash;because he had dared to
+      climb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
+      doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She was
+      delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any moment,&rdquo; Philip said, &ldquo;I may know whether I owe two hundred and
+      twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am worth
+      about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at the exact
+      place where you last spoke&mdash;AFTER I know whether I am going to jail,
+      or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that was it!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You don't like my money. I was afraid
+      you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
+      will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long as
+      you don't dislike me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
+      many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with a
+      hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: &ldquo;Combine is announced,
+      shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
+      deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message three
+      times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own sanity, he
+      grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter of a million
+      dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound note. He
+      pushed the boy from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned or
+      denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence, Helen
+      said: &ldquo;Is it good news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends entirely upon you,&rdquo; replied Philip soberly. &ldquo;Indeed, all my
+      future life depends upon what you are going to say next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;what am I going to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I know that?&rdquo; demanded Philip. &ldquo;Am I a mind reader?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
+      chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
+      shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
+      taxi-cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
+      socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley line,
+      the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his son, and
+      the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his father; or,
+      if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone through
+      Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would not have
+      known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
+      innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon lose
+      them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for other
+      social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes and
+      ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to lay siege
+      to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York itself. A
+      widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had told them
+      not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent of a society
+      paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them that in New York
+      the waiting-list is already interminable, and that, if you hoped to break
+      into New York society, the clever thing to do was to lay siege to it by
+      way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If you went direct to New York
+      knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact, and the result would
+      be disastrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the
+      West, who, at the first dance to which they were invited, asked, &ldquo;Who is
+      the old lady in the wig?&rdquo; and that question argued them so unknown that it
+      set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the Keeps
+      with misgivings. They agreed with the lady correspondent that it was far
+      better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves in the
+      suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from Keepsburg,
+      which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long Island, or Westchester,
+      or Bordentown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In all of those places,&rdquo; explained the widow lady, &ldquo;our smartest people
+      have country homes, and at the country club you may get to know them.
+      Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+      Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them could
+      play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be fought and
+      won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. But the attack
+      did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear that the lady
+      correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although three months
+      had passed, and they had played golf together until they were as loath to
+      clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one, and no one knew
+      them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and if you lived at
+      Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you were not to be
+      found on any map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens had
+      looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those days
+      the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so proud
+      that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, &ldquo;No horses allowed.
+      Take the other road.&rdquo; The other road was an earth road used by
+      tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and
+      automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden
+      estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+      occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of
+      people who occupy cemeteries&mdash;except &ldquo;Harry&rdquo; Van Warden, and she
+      lived in New York at the Turf Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Harry, according to all local tradition&mdash;for he frequently motored
+      out to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat&mdash;and, according to
+      the newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or
+      unsociable. So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested
+      for overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his
+      front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden
+      Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but
+      because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,&rdquo;
+       sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, &ldquo;you would meet Harry Van Warden, and
+      he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was to ride to hounds,&rdquo; returned her husband, &ldquo;the only thing I'd
+      break would be my neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the
+      purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The house
+      was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated fortune;
+      and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler, his pictures,
+      furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an eminence, was
+      heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its chief attraction
+      was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay directly below the
+      terrace of the house and also in full view from the road to Albany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood were
+      many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted these
+      born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer evenings,
+      small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the hedge, and
+      used the lake as a swimming-pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me nervous,&rdquo; complained Winnie. &ldquo;I don't like the idea of people
+      prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve hundred
+      convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are burglars, and
+      if they ever get out, our house is the very first one they'll break into.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house
+      yet,&rdquo; said Fred, &ldquo;and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was
+      just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October night had
+      fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows of close-clipped
+      box. A full moon was just showing itself above the tree-tops, turning the
+      lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his wicker chair and, crossing to
+      his young bride, touched her hair fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if we don't know anybody, Win,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and nobody knows us? It's
+      been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it that
+      way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon, to be
+      together, to be alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Winnie laughed shortly. &ldquo;They certainly have left us alone!&rdquo; she sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where else could we have been any happier?&rdquo; demanded the young
+      husband loyally. &ldquo;Where will you find any prettier place than this, just
+      as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing
+      the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake?
+      Where's there a better place for a honeymoon? It's a bower&mdash;a bower
+      of peace, solitude a&mdash;bower of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside the
+      shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It came as
+      sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage. Then, as
+      suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after a pause of
+      an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two sharp
+      blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream of
+      rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who heard
+      it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the name of Heaven!&rdquo; gasped Keep, &ldquo;what's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped, he
+      spoke as though he were announcing dinner. &ldquo;A convict, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;has
+      escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not understand the whistle. I
+      thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Winnie Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The house is near the road, madam,&rdquo; said the butler. &ldquo;And there are so
+      many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here, and the keepers&mdash;there
+      was a fight.&rdquo; The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his wife on the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's time to dress for dinner, Win,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what are you going to do?&rdquo; demanded Winnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to change.&rdquo;
+       He turned to the butler. &ldquo;And I'll have a cocktail, too I'll have it out
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the
+      terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely. &ldquo;Fred,&rdquo; she
+      begged, &ldquo;you&mdash;you're not going to poke around in the bushes, are you?&mdash;just
+      because you think I'm frightened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband laughed at her. &ldquo;I certainly am NOT!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And you're not
+      frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the
+      siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very door, to beat
+      and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to
+      her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't they stop it!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Why don't they give him a
+      chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge of the
+      terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his hands, sat staring down
+      at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees, had blotted the
+      lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the hedges with wavering
+      shadows. Somewhere near at hand a criminal&mdash;a murderer, burglar, thug&mdash;was
+      at large, and the voice of the prison he had tricked still bellowed in
+      rage, in amazement, still clamored not only for his person but perhaps for
+      his life. The whole countryside heard it: the farmers bedding down their
+      cattle for the night; the guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red
+      candle shades; the joy riders from the city, racing their cars along the
+      Albany road. It woke the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson.
+      The granite walls of the Palisades flung it back against the granite walls
+      of the prison. Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching
+      for him, pointing him out&mdash;stirring in the heart of each who heard it
+      the lust of the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the hunted thing
+      is a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find him!&rdquo; shrieked the siren. &ldquo;Find him! He's there, behind your hedge!
+      He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in the moonlight.
+      THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag him down! He's
+      mine! Mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the home
+      of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with his soul. Each,
+      clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful joy,
+      each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will the
+      hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled panting through the crisp October
+      night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows, staggering and
+      falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that wherever his feet
+      led him the siren still held him by the heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
+      adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing to
+      herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night, although
+      her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he heard no
+      singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour. Gridley, the
+      aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for twenty years had
+      been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and taken away the empty
+      glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts. They were entirely of
+      the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him and begged his aid, what
+      would he do? He knew quite well what he would do. He considered even the
+      means by which he would assist the fugitive to a successful get-away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his duty
+      to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had visited &ldquo;the
+      institution,&rdquo; as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers to speak of it,
+      he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping from Sing Sing and
+      not being at once retaken was one out of six thousand. So with Fred it was
+      largely a sporting proposition. Any man who could beat a
+      six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine himself
+      in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring to escape.
+      Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself of his tell-tale
+      clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in Westchester County a
+      naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in the purple-gray cloth of
+      the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He might hold up a passer-by,
+      and, if the passer-by did not flee from him or punch him into
+      insensibility, he might effect an exchange of garments; he might by
+      threats obtain them from some farmer; he might despoil a scarecrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
+      deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as he
+      sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was not
+      entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas awning.
+      Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats in the
+      lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He was a young
+      man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face smooth-shaven, and
+      above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He had the sharp, clever, rat-like
+      face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water dripped from him, and
+      either for that reason or from fright the young man trembled, and, like
+      one who had been running, breathed in short, hard gasps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It was
+      as though he had been waiting for the man, as though it had been an
+      appointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of his
+      visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and that the man, not
+      knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might
+      rush him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the
+      moonlight the two young men eyed each other warily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of
+      his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took a bath in your pond,&rdquo; he blurted forth, &ldquo;and&mdash;and they stole
+      my clothes! That's why I'm like this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative
+      how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid himself of
+      accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the stranger with
+      admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he could
+      not let him suppose that he was deceived by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of
+      shivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't a bath,&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;It was a bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A what!&rdquo; exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. &ldquo;A bet? Then you
+      are not alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am NOW&mdash;damn them!&rdquo; exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+      reluctantly. &ldquo;We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting here in
+      the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim across
+      your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed up on me
+      from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to where I'd
+      left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I got to the
+      hedge the car was gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Keep smiled encouragingly. &ldquo;The car!&rdquo; he assented. &ldquo;So you've been riding
+      around in the moonlight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them the
+      roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and came in
+      greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely,
+      and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of
+      coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him.
+      But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?&rdquo; he
+      stuttered. &ldquo;Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all right,&rdquo; he
+      added; reassuringly. &ldquo;I live near here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young
+      man continued less confidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't blame you if you don't believe it,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;seeing me like
+      this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody around here knows me, and I
+      guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'm&mdash;that is, my name&mdash;&rdquo;
+       like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and the rat-like
+      eyes regarded Keep watchfully&mdash;&ldquo;my name is Van Warden. I'm the one
+      you read about&mdash;Harry&mdash;I'm Harry Van Warden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile
+      was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he could not longer
+      enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!&rdquo; He
+      rose and made a peremptory gesture. &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but this isn't safe
+      for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and send you where you
+      want to go.&rdquo; He turned and whispered over his shoulder: &ldquo;Some day let me
+      hear from you. A man with your nerve&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room. First making
+      sure the library and hall were free of servants, Fred tiptoed to the
+      coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light. The
+      naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of damp footprints, followed at his
+      heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and
+      on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;They'll cover
+      you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you here while I
+      get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your
+      head. Just say you're waiting to see me&mdash;Mr. Keep. I won't be long.
+      Wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; snorted the stranger. &ldquo;You BET I'll wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself
+      violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt,
+      boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out for him, and he
+      snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer he
+      counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the
+      trousers pocket of the serge suit and with the bundle of clothes in his
+      arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coat-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't come out until I knock,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he added in a
+      vehement whisper, &ldquo;don't come out at all unless you have clothes on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the
+      door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes. When the butler
+      had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coat-room door. The
+      stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at the
+      moment was carefully arranging the tie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry!&rdquo; commanded Keep. &ldquo;The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I
+      tell him to take you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning.
+      &ldquo;New York,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;fast as he can get there! Look here,&rdquo; he added
+      doubtfully, &ldquo;there's a roll of bills in these clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're yours,&rdquo; said Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger exclaimed vigorously. &ldquo;You're all right!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;I
+      won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the money back same time I
+      send the clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; said Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred
+      slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before it. After a
+      period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the
+      inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of the
+      width of a finger, and put his ear to the crack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?&rdquo; whispered the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the
+      chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had
+      gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy could be
+      trusted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're to take a man to New York,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or wherever he wants to go.
+      Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if YOU'RE questioned, you
+      can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps. As
+      he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still demanding its
+      prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow, the
+      youth jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where Keep
+      stood above him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you,&rdquo; said Keep, &ldquo;to ask no questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs toward
+      him. She had changed to one of the prettiest evening gowns of her
+      trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself and
+      the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he
+      was lost in admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the
+      door of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet the
+      stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly
+      appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon the
+      visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you fix it?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his eyes
+      were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by Winnie
+      Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to nod his
+      head dully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; commanded Fred. &ldquo;The car is waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a
+      woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood
+      still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn, Winnie
+      beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery, so overcome
+      by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and inarticulate. For
+      protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been intended
+      for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot reciting its
+      lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though he
+      had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as though a
+      stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced an
+      instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated excitement and delight.
+      How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of Scarboro
+      she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward him a glance
+      of deep and grateful devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she beamed upon the stranger. &ldquo;Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to dinner?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband emitted a howl. &ldquo;He will NOT!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;He's not that kind
+      of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that fixes the telephone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and dragged him
+      down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor stumbled
+      after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful lady. Fred
+      thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at the golf-cap
+      and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly twisting in his
+      hands, Fred whispered fiercely:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the
+      signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to throw in the
+      clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,
+      directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself upon
+      the gravel; something in a suit of purple-gray; something torn and
+      bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and crawled,
+      that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the glare of
+      the head-lights the white face and white hair of a very old, old man. The
+      kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in the pit of the
+      stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man stretched his
+      arms toward them. From long disuse his voice cracked and broke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm done!&rdquo; he sobbed. &ldquo;I can't go no farther! I give myself up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison siren
+      shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and
+      slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he flung it over the
+      suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's frightened
+      eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down over the white hair. With one arm he
+      lifted the convict, and with the other dragged and pushed him into the
+      seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he thrust the
+      roll of bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get him away!&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut
+      line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a ticket to Boston. Go
+      through White Plains to Greenwich&mdash;and then you're safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he
+      swung upon Fred. &ldquo;Am I right?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though
+      throwing him into space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get-to-hell-out-of-here!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being,
+      chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With a grinding of
+      gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking in
+      farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in
+      jeering notes of joy and victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed to
+      leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger remained motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the
+      stranger by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;How are you going to get away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step stood Winnie
+      Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to get away,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me
+      stay to dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so
+      that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly tell me,&rdquo; Fred demanded, &ldquo;who the devil you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger exclaimed peevishly. &ldquo;I've BEEN telling you all evening,&rdquo; he
+      protested. &ldquo;I'm Harry Van Warden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dinner is served, madam,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. &ldquo;Hello, Gridley!&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if he'll ask me to
+      dinner, I won't steal the spoons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the privilege
+      of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the stranger fondly,
+      proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the affection of an
+      old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Harry&mdash;Mr. Van Warden,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is to stay to dinner, might
+      I suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert, '84.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his
+      wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gridley coughed tentatively. &ldquo;Shall I open a bottle, sir?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open a case!&rdquo; he roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of such
+      mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling each other by their
+      first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken from the
+      telephone. It was a long-distance call from Yonkers, sent by James, the
+      faithful chauffeur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred read it aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got that party the articles he needed,&rdquo; it read, &ldquo;and saw him safe on a
+      train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for speeding the car on
+      the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before he finally arrested him, &ldquo;Jimmie&rdquo; Sniffen had seen the man with the
+      golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+      unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill
+      where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew people
+      do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not deceived. He
+      guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to
+      &ldquo;stalk&rdquo; him. From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good
+      as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for &ldquo;stalking&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;path-finding,&rdquo; not to boast of others for &ldquo;gardening&rdquo; and &ldquo;cooking,&rdquo; can
+      outwit any spy. Even had, General Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and
+      not invented the boy scout, Jimmie Sniffen would have been one. Because,
+      by birth he was a boy, and by inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County
+      the Sniffens are one of the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a
+      Sniffen; and with Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to
+      when the acres of the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road
+      to the coach road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on
+      one of his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound
+      and rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+      great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+      deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+      weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+      Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+      cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+      familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not
+      see a Pease and Elliman &ldquo;For Sale&rdquo; sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see
+      in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe
+      into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before in
+      those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+      tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+      secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would
+      raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there ain't no panthers in Westchester,&rdquo; Jimmie would reassure
+      himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+      with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still Jimmie
+      remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that when he
+      raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. &ldquo;Mebbe dad told me it
+      happened to grandpop,&rdquo; Jimmie would explain, &ldquo;or I dreamed it, or, mebbe,
+      I read it in a story book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;German spy&rdquo; mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+      scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the week
+      end with &ldquo;Squire&rdquo; Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides being a
+      justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of the Country
+      Club, was also a local &ldquo;councilman&rdquo; for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought
+      his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In deference to his
+      audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of
+      the part they were playing in the great war. It was his peroration that
+      made trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And any day,&rdquo; he assured his audience, &ldquo;this country may be at war with
+      Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You can
+      begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+      Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+      Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and then
+      they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven and New
+      York Central railroads, and march straight through this village. I haven't
+      the least doubt,&rdquo; exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet, &ldquo;that at this
+      moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as blackberries. They are
+      here to select camp sites and gun positions, to find out which of these
+      hills enfilade the others and to learn to what extent their armies can
+      live on the country. They are counting the cows, the horses, the barns
+      where fodder is stored; and they are marking down on their maps the wells
+      and streams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the door,
+      Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. &ldquo;Keep your eyes open!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Watch
+      every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your sheriff,
+      or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be prepared!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+      saw spiked helmets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next time you talk to my scouts,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;you'll talk on 'Votes for
+      Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who dares
+      open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away from
+      Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU are not!&rdquo; retorted his friend, &ldquo;you own half the county now, and
+      you're trying to buy the other half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a justice of the peace,&rdquo; explained Van Vorst. &ldquo;I don't know WHY I am,
+      except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble. The
+      Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and I have
+      to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the Italians for
+      poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black Hand letters.
+      And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for a German spy who is
+      selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a millionaire who is tired
+      of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to 'own his own home' and his own
+      golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being arrested that he'll take his
+      millions to Long Island and try to break into the Piping Rock Club. And,
+      it will be your fault!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+      Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+      with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+      scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+      companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+      frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked to
+      pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile adversaries. It
+      was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the top of a hill and on
+      peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck was
+      a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie
+      and watch, off its guard, a rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a
+      crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made believe he was
+      eating venison. Sometimes he was a scout of the Continental Army and
+      carried despatches to General Washington. The rules of that game were that
+      if any man ploughing in the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even
+      approaching along the same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie
+      was taken prisoner, and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom
+      shot. Or else why on his sleeve was the badge for &ldquo;stalking.&rdquo; But always
+      to have to make believe became monotonous. Even &ldquo;dry shopping&rdquo; along the
+      Rue de la Paix when you pretend you can have anything you see in any
+      window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war
+      correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the
+      circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms,
+      to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in
+      which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he
+      waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot
+      field. The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy,
+      but the enemy of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked the
+      part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and he
+      carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor from
+      the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian arrow-heads.
+      And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested
+      Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor to a secret cave of
+      his own, though on some one else's property, where one not only could dig
+      for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor was delighted, but for
+      Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week following Jimmie was again
+      disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting in
+      a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book, and his
+      runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+      blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+      planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New
+      York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing a shot,
+      New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk
+      of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he followed the
+      runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the mysterious
+      stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was the State
+      Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the Panama Canal.
+      Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From the heights of
+      Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man working alone upon
+      a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American, and already on
+      Jimmie's list of &ldquo;suspects.&rdquo; That for the use of the German artillery he
+      was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was only too evident. But
+      closer investigation proved that the concrete was only two inches thick.
+      And the hyphenated one explained that the basin was built over a spring,
+      in the waters of which he planned to erect a fountain and raise gold fish.
+      It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst
+      one day in the road he told him his troubles. The young judge proved
+      unsympathetic. &ldquo;My advice to you, Jimmie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is to go slow.
+      Accusing everybody of espionage is a very serious matter. If you call a
+      man a spy, it's sometimes hard for him to disprove it; and the name
+      sticks. So, go slow&mdash;very slow. Before you arrest any more people,
+      come to me first for a warrant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+      with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+      chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+      Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a new
+      barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young man
+      in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to be
+      always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and, from
+      the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie mistrusted
+      him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not been raining,
+      but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed that while the
+      dew was still on the leaves the young man had been forcing his way through
+      underbrush. The stranger must have remembered Jimmie, for he laughed and
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now, or
+      I'd hold you up. I'm starving!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie smiled in sympathy. &ldquo;It's early to be hungry,&rdquo; said Jimmie; &ldquo;when
+      did you have your breakfast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't,&rdquo; laughed the young man. &ldquo;I went out to walk up an appetite, and
+      I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the shortest way
+      back to Bedford?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first road to your right,&rdquo; said Jimmie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it far?&rdquo; asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+      evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a half-hour's walk,&rdquo; said Jimmie
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I live that long,&rdquo; corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut him
+      from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance, and,
+      then, diving into the wood that lined the road, &ldquo;stalked&rdquo; him. From behind
+      a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one in the
+      road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a runner
+      stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he heard
+      the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who knew his
+      way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad shoulders of
+      the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by the noise of the
+      crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed the stranger had
+      reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered, that led to Middle
+      Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also reached it, and as now he
+      was close to where it entered the main road, he approached warily. But, he
+      was too late. There was a sound like the whir of a rising partridge, and
+      ahead of him from where it had been hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into
+      the highway. The stranger was at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of
+      dust, the car raced toward Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it
+      bore a Connecticut State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed
+      little V's, like arrow-heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty miles
+      he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him south, they
+      were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread tarvia.
+      Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as in his
+      copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he catch up
+      with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset as he
+      passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the skyline,
+      in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as a
+      flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+      offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until the
+      stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was in no
+      haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face east
+      toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to splash and
+      as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into the darkness.
+      And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it, there suddenly
+      flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from cover. It was no
+      longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time for caution had
+      passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top of the hill, and
+      found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone wall, forced his way
+      through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath to listen. Just beyond
+      him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was tripping and tumbling.
+      Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned hot. It sounded as though
+      from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie shook his fist at the
+      enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the coming storm and the tossing
+      tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over the
+      chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+      family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+      shirt buttoned his license to &ldquo;hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+      or other devices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested more
+      spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of the
+      head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen he
+      could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What he
+      had seen was his warrant&mdash;plus the shotgun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a &ldquo;pathfinder&rdquo; should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+      lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+      Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+      night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+      so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+      beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew
+      hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and Jimmie
+      broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the right, and
+      in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires had pressed
+      deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the car. It was
+      empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy on the nearest
+      hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car. Between lying in
+      ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did not climb the hill
+      nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked that hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before
+      him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away to
+      his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich. Directly
+      before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests, green fields,
+      gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash of white, that
+      quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had washed the air.
+      Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the glare of the August
+      sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as those in a colored
+      photograph; and as still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he moves,&rdquo; he sighed happily, &ldquo;I've got him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which he had
+      found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was crowned with
+      a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing an ancient
+      boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in poison-ivy. In
+      places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the sun, overhung the
+      wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the hill into sectors. He
+      began at the right, and slowly followed the wall. With his eyes he took it
+      apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised his head, Jimmie would have
+      seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like the reflection of the sun
+      upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie knew he had found his spy. A
+      pair of binoculars had betrayed him. Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on
+      the ground at the top of the hill opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak,
+      his back against the stone wall. With the binoculars to his eyes he had
+      leaned too far forward, and upon the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+      like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the contour
+      of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite. When
+      he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the
+      stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on
+      tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars
+      hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He
+      was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he hummed a tune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Throw up your hands!&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no sign
+      that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled valley.
+      They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed by some deep
+      and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the sun-filled valley
+      some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but still
+      smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his smile was
+      swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief. These were
+      followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm. &ldquo;Don't point
+      that thing at me!&rdquo; shouted the stranger. &ldquo;Is it loaded?&rdquo; With his cheek
+      pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length of the brown
+      barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open palms. They accented
+      his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to be exclaiming, &ldquo;Can
+      such things be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up!&rdquo; commanded Jimmie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With alacrity the stranger rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk over there,&rdquo; ordered the scout. &ldquo;Walk backward. Stop! Take off those
+      field-glasses and throw them to me.&rdquo; Without removing his eyes from the
+      gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed them to
+      the stone wall. &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;if you'll only point that damned
+      blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my watch, and
+      clothes, and all my money; only don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie flushed crimson. &ldquo;You can't bribe me,&rdquo; he growled. At least, he
+      tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+      excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+      flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+      words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not trying to bribe you,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;If you don't want anything,
+      why are you holding me up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not,&rdquo; returned Jimmie, &ldquo;I'm arresting you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he cried,
+      &ldquo;I see! Have I been trespassing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+      stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall. &ldquo;If
+      you try to rush me,&rdquo; he warned, &ldquo;I'll shoot you full of buckshot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. &ldquo;Don't worry about that,&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+      binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder, and
+      again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and menacing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The name on them&rdquo; he accused, &ldquo;is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?&rdquo;
+       The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, &ldquo;That's
+      the name of the firm that makes them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. &ldquo;Hah!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;made in Germany!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?&rdquo; With
+      polite insistence he repeated, &ldquo;Would you mind telling me why I am
+      arrested, and who you might happen to be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+      did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+      annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But the
+      penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he saw,
+      &ldquo;Correct range, 1,800 yards&rdquo;; &ldquo;this stream not fordable&rdquo;; &ldquo;slope of hill
+      15 degrees inaccessible for artillery.&rdquo; &ldquo;Wire entanglements here&rdquo;; &ldquo;forage
+      for five squadrons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+      gun motioned toward the base of the hill. &ldquo;Keep forty feet ahead of me,&rdquo;
+       he commanded, &ldquo;and walk to your car.&rdquo; The stranger did not seem to hear
+      him. He spoke with irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll have to explain to you about that map.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to me, you won't,&rdquo; declared his captor. &ldquo;You're going to drive
+      straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger tossed his arms even higher. &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+      gratefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a willing
+      captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's he
+      exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie held the
+      shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating circumstance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a bag
+      of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+      climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to his
+      front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a gun,
+      the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him with
+      misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting German
+      spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was great.
+      And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the hands of
+      the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence of a
+      butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+      increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a feeling
+      of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a halt, he
+      breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+      not entirety successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got him!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What one?&rdquo; demanded Van Vorst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+      the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+      wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THAT one!&rdquo; cried Jimmie. &ldquo;He's a German spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+      indignation, anger, reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmie!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his &ldquo;Exhibit A.&rdquo; &ldquo;Look what
+      he's wrote,&rdquo; commanded the scout. &ldquo;It's all military words. And these are
+      his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been stalking
+      him for a week. He's a spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+      Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+      he was puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm only glad it's no
+      worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every stranger
+      he sees&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please!&rdquo; he begged, &ldquo;Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+      Might I speak with you&mdash;ALONE?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+      that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+      directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She must have been a
+      great loss to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was,&rdquo; said Van Vorst. &ldquo;The week before she broke her back, I refused
+      three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I brought you inside,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because I didn't want your servants to
+      hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+      boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+      threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been a
+      German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think he
+      has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit as
+      though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+      capture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Vorst pointed to the map. &ldquo;My bet is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you're an
+      officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I
+      right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're warm,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the
+      Real Thing.&rdquo; From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on
+      the table. &ldquo;I'm 'Sherry' McCoy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Captain of Artillery in the
+      United States Army.&rdquo; He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+      Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not picking
+      out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of defense for
+      Americans when the Germans come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You're as bad as Jimmie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, sir,&rdquo; he retorted, &ldquo;are as bad as ninety million other
+      Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill,
+      when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe, you'll
+      believe THEN.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you serious?&rdquo; demanded Van Vorst. &ldquo;And you an army officer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why I am serious,&rdquo; returned McCoy. &ldquo;WE know. But when we try to
+      prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly&mdash;in underhand
+      ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and
+      accuse us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to
+      prepare under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like
+      a chicken thief. And,&rdquo; he added sharply, &ldquo;that's why that boy must not
+      know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at
+      Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Vorst moved to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never learn the truth from me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For I will tell him you
+      are to be shot at sunrise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; laughed the Captain. &ldquo;And tell me his name. If ever we fight over
+      Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And give him
+      this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+      captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. &ldquo;You mustn't,&rdquo; he
+      begged; &ldquo;I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if
+      I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot at
+      sunrise.&rdquo; At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook with
+      terror. &ldquo;Make it for twenty years,&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;Make it for ten,&rdquo; he
+      coaxed, &ldquo;but, please, promise you won't shoot him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+      who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave Jimmie your ten dollars,&rdquo; said Van Vorst, &ldquo;and made it twenty, and
+      he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to spare your
+      life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty years in a
+      fortress. I drink to your good fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; protested Captain McCoy, &ldquo;We will drink to Jimmie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs had
+      again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted to
+      depart; but he was again delayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other visitors were arriving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+      tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat were
+      white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+      indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+      swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it had
+      just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted at
+      Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot with
+      anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A gray touring-car,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;It stopped here. We saw it from that
+      hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, &ldquo;Captain McCoy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow,
+      silenced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Captain McCoy,&rdquo; assented the driver eagerly. &ldquo;Which way did he go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To New York,&rdquo; said Van Vorst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver shrieked at his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, he's doubled back,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;He's gone to New Haven.&rdquo; He stooped
+      and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want with him?&rdquo; he called &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the car
+      the words of the driver were flung back. &ldquo;We're Secret Service from
+      Washington,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+      curtain of white, whirling dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
+      and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be the
+      kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
+      illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
+      Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church, after
+      luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding floating
+      in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the waits
+      singing &ldquo;God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in my
+      gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of whose
+      age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees, and
+      cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes
+      explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient
+      gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York
+      would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I
+      advised postponement. Having lived in lawful harmony with his appendix for
+      fifty years, I thought, for one week longer he might safely maintain the
+      status quo. But his cable in reply was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve,
+      instead of Hallam Hall and a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and
+      pitching off the coast of Ireland, and the only log on board was the one
+      the captain kept to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on
+      the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot,
+      or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier
+      conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner in
+      which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But, either
+      out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the fictitious
+      gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man in a
+      knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from dinner
+      time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and icicles,
+      was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+      inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers
+      testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room
+      crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I
+      met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.
+      All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that,
+      though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of his
+      years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have spent
+      much time, and according to himself much money, at the French
+      watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France I
+      had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to place.
+      Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked glibly, but
+      in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking the trouble
+      to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his talking about
+      himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object. I felt he was
+      presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might ask a
+      favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in New York
+      would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a banker, I could
+      not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in self-interest, I could
+      think of no other motive. The next evening I discovered the motive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled that
+      it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a bank at
+      baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: &ldquo;I saw you last summer at
+      Aix-les-Bains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for some
+      particular card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was I doing?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With obvious relief he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he assented; &ldquo;jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money
+      there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em alone.&rdquo;
+       As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me to excuse
+      him, he smiled appealingly. &ldquo;Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like 'em
+      all,&rdquo; he rattled on, &ldquo;but they don't like me. So I stick to solitaire.
+      It's dull, but cheap.&rdquo; He shuffled the cards clumsily. As though making
+      conversation, he asked: &ldquo;You care for cards yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a
+      spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been
+      wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even of
+      irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had hurt
+      him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them I saw in
+      them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he was utterly
+      unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man facing a
+      crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry for him. In
+      me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of the few dollars
+      he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed his need was great.
+      Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck. When I returned an hour
+      later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game of poker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't scold, now,&rdquo; he laughed; &ldquo;you know I can't keep away from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends of
+      long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he thought I
+      had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered: &ldquo;Known him for
+      years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my right femur
+      'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my people swear
+      by him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met
+      mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see. &ldquo;What
+      would you draw?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him
+      and walk on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we
+      were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a
+      hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now,&rdquo; he assured me.
+      &ldquo;They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the
+      limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I take it you are not,&rdquo; I said stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile
+      died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm 'in bad,' doctor,&rdquo; he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered,
+      like that of a child. &ldquo;I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't
+      think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at the
+      door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't work,
+      and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could you&mdash;couldn't
+      give me something to keep my head straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob our
+      fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly dodged it.
+      I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him to the
+      ship's surgeon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't know HIM,&rdquo; he protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you certainly don't know me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know who you ARE,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;You and I&mdash;&rdquo; With a deprecatory
+      gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he stopped.
+      &ldquo;But the ship's surgeon!&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;he's an awful bounder! Besides,&rdquo;
+       he added quite simply, &ldquo;he's watching me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a doctor,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;or watching you play cards?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play cards,&rdquo; the young man answered. &ldquo;I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon on
+      the P. &amp; O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I fancy
+      he remembers me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you mustn't tell me that,&rdquo; I protested. &ldquo;I can't have you making
+      trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here
+      to the captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a mock obeisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I claim the seal of your profession,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; I retorted.
+      &ldquo;It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that you
+      are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me
+      sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got to make expenses,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;And, besides, all card games are
+      games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway,&rdquo; he
+      repeated, as though disposing of all argument, &ldquo;I got to make expenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat
+      waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find &ldquo;my
+      friend.&rdquo; I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance
+      only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want to give him his revenge,&rdquo; one of them volunteered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's losing, then?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man chuckled complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only loser,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't worry,&rdquo; I advised. &ldquo;He'll come for his revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on the
+      lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that with
+      difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm scared,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;scared!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent it
+      to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for
+      myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were
+      closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself in
+      his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been drinking?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In surprise he opened his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't drink,&rdquo; he answered simply. &ldquo;It's nerves and worry. I'm tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the
+      fingers lay open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;how tired I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his tan&mdash;and certainly he had led the out-of-door life&mdash;his
+      face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're crowdin' me,&rdquo; the boy whispered. &ldquo;They're always crowdin' me.&rdquo;
+       His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child complaining
+      of something beyond his experience. &ldquo;I can't remember when they haven't
+      been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved
+      me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut
+      me out of London. I opened a club there, very quiet, very exclusive, smart
+      neighborhood, too&mdash;a flat in Berkeley Street&mdash;roulette and
+      chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out; anyway, they came in
+      and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on this. It's my last
+      chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This trip?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me to
+      live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back. I'm
+      coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the husks
+      that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that; want to
+      follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted calf.&rdquo; He
+      laughed sardonically. &ldquo;Like hell they will! They'd rather see ME killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning
+      repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure them.
+      I suggested as much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and they send a
+      wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he interrupted; &ldquo;but I got to chance that. I GOT to make enough
+      to go on with&mdash;until I see my family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they won't see you?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as
+      though for him the prospect held no terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I won't be a bother to
+      anybody any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the
+      sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first
+      appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a healthy
+      picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit; ready for
+      any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so expert I
+      asked him to avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't be done!&rdquo; he assured me. &ldquo;I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow
+      morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the others who made the killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was seated.
+      The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider semicircle were
+      passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's purser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the pockets of
+      his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long cigarette-holder
+      was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult of angry voices, and
+      the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly at least he met them with
+      complete indifference. The voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest
+      named Smedburg, was raised in excited accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the ship's surgeon first met you,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you called yourself
+      Lord Ridley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll call myself anything I jolly well like,&rdquo; returned Talbot. &ldquo;If I
+      choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my name
+      to every meddling busybody that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll give it to the police, all right,&rdquo; chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the
+      confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he
+      shouted: &ldquo;And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot
+      rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his
+      sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: &ldquo;Only too delighted to
+      keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not to escape with the last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;make
+      sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from
+      sharpers and swindlers&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go to the devil!&rdquo; he called, and walked out into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad business,&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;I understand they suspected him from the first&mdash;seems our
+      surgeon recognized him&mdash;and to-night they had outsiders watching him.
+      The outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of
+      the pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to call
+      himself Meyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They accused him of travelling under a false name,&rdquo; explained the purser,
+      &ldquo;and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters. Then he
+      said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems
+      Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was a silly
+      ass thing to do,&rdquo; protested the purser. &ldquo;Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a
+      brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got away with the
+      other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer
+      and to the police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he no other way of spending his money?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a confounded nuisance!&rdquo; growled the purser. &ldquo;He wants to show us he
+      knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means a
+      scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and,&rdquo; he added with disgust,
+      &ldquo;these smoking-room rows never helped any line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of a
+      collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry the
+      young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and then,
+      after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at his
+      cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief. But he
+      would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was &ldquo;all
+      right,&rdquo; wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the sleep he
+      claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness, and the next
+      morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine thrill. I found
+      him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly and trying to appear
+      unconscious of the glances&mdash;amused, contemptuous, hostile&mdash;that
+      were turned toward him. He would have passed me without speaking, but I
+      took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed quarantine and a
+      convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't depend on me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy little
+      body!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I
+      saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke in
+      a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident no
+      longer was of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were watching me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I knew they were, and besides, no
+      matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and
+      they'd never have seen it. But I didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't!&rdquo; he repeated stubbornly. &ldquo;I didn't have to! I was playing in
+      luck&mdash;wonderful luck&mdash;sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning.
+      But because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful
+      not to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the
+      cards they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I
+      could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the air,
+      shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to believe;
+      they didn't want the facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling the
+      truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather harshly,
+      I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer,
+      either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Talbot did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy laughed impudently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;It was a
+      good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are
+      Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you,&rdquo; I retorted impatiently, &ldquo;are not a Jew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not,&rdquo; said Talbot, &ldquo;but I've often SAID I was. It's helped&mdash;lots
+      of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer,
+      instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew.&rdquo; He smiled and
+      turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the
+      police, he began to enumerate:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic,
+      according to taste. Do you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it didn't work,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;I picked the wrong Jew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face grew serious. &ldquo;Do you suppose that Smedburg person has wirelessed
+      that banker?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what will Meyer do?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Will he drop it or make a fuss? What
+      sort is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew in
+      New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his own
+      race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then maybe,&rdquo; cried Talbot hopefully, &ldquo;he won't make a row, and my family
+      won't hear of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted, his
+      shoulders straightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;There, at the end of the wharf&mdash;the little Jew
+      in furs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected by
+      two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker,
+      philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face
+      of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad
+      business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot and
+      found him gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a growing
+      fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It seemed many
+      hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and dismantled, and
+      by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose Talbot were
+      seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other empty,
+      dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one gave
+      heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no one was in
+      a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the gangway, the
+      stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck to deck, down
+      lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced blindly, peering
+      into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men, pursuing some one
+      in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought, only to find he was
+      unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the last of the passengers
+      was leaving it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
+      white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
+      why I was wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ship's surgeon, sir,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;asks you please to hurry to the
+      sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
+      eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
+      Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
+      darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was HE sent for you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but he doesn't need you. Fortunately,
+      he's a damned bad shot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so tired,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Always moving me on. I was so tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar them
+      out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to one
+      side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable coat,
+      Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
+      staring at the face on the pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand of
+      the card-sharp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heine!&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
+      little brother Adolph!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/1733.txt b/1733.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/1733.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7803 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Cross Girl
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Commentator: Gouverneur Morris
+
+Posting Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1733]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED CROSS GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
+
+By Richard Harding Davis
+
+With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     Introduction by Gouverneur Morris
+
+     1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+     2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+     3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+     4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+     5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+     6. THE MIND READER
+
+     7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+     8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+     9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                         R. H. D.
+
+     "And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+     unafraid."
+
+He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and
+so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
+middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
+have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
+brother was Peter Pan.
+
+Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of
+sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites
+against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and
+medicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go
+elephant shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants.
+Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I
+think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman.
+Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said the last word. Do you
+remember the Happy Hunting Ground in "The Bar Sinister"?--"Where nobody
+hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt."
+
+Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
+sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
+out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of
+them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary
+member of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
+friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was
+another.
+
+To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
+thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better
+than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted
+every corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he
+played a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed,
+or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for
+hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But
+about the other fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes
+of wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the
+invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
+talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the
+slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they
+were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and
+color. With the written word or the spoken word he was the greatest
+recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps,
+that ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners
+and customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
+truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to
+his special articles and to his letters. Read over again the Queen's
+Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through
+Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a
+friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the
+same again.
+
+But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in
+due time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
+
+One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact
+with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a
+good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he
+distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it.
+Men go to him tired and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be
+alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil
+himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect.
+And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but
+from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of
+knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and
+discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the
+scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a
+book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and
+from the receiver there poured into you affection and encouragement.
+
+But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
+temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or
+too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
+invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants
+in the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and
+the baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
+double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
+disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+
+He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid
+of them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much
+he loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,
+unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then
+the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great
+heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite
+bliss, akin to anguish.
+
+One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
+telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that
+little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has
+suffered....
+
+Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed
+to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and
+though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with
+dignity and without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H.
+D. thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm
+the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was
+taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R.
+H. D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they
+wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the
+iris. And then back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
+adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind
+him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a
+gardener who blushed and smiled in the darkness under the Actinidia
+vines.
+
+It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was
+with us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
+dependent upon each other in many ways.
+
+Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
+complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
+needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
+time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
+where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had
+no name. Now it is called "Let's Pretend."
+
+Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
+built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but
+we pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
+fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
+pretendings, until real troubles went down before them--down and out.
+
+It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
+lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were
+in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or
+two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against
+gray cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It
+never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of
+the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four
+for tennis and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we
+sat in front of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and
+talked until the next morning.
+
+He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure
+not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the
+moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his
+knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good
+Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the
+Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
+sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
+there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day began with
+attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted
+with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a
+loud and joyous singing of ballads.
+
+At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
+marble, gone down the ages as "statue of a young athlete." He stood
+six feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine
+head carried by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a
+child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He
+was the weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
+tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that
+he could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
+
+The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door
+you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at
+work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a
+stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written
+and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in
+that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure
+to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send
+you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn
+a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half
+column of unsigned print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find time to
+praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged from his room
+at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and
+whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and
+carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters and telegrams.
+
+Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
+dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced
+in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is,
+or ought to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest.
+Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of
+statesmen, laughter and sentiment--to him, at breakfast, these things
+were as important as sausages and thick cream.
+
+Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's
+work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
+conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper,
+he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a
+wistful glance, and hurry to his workroom.
+
+He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
+wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
+and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and
+he didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously
+human, flowed from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of
+corresponding, "The German March Through Brussels," was probably written
+almost as fast as he could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the
+fastest talker I ever heard), but when it came to fiction he had no
+facility at all. Perhaps I should say that he held in contempt any
+facility that he may have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy
+and Joblike patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all. Every
+phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could think of,
+the fittest in his relentless judgment to survive. Phrases, paragraphs,
+pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He worked
+upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile
+turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description
+from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair
+of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a
+turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of omitting one by one
+those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and after each
+omission he would ask himself: "Does the picture remain?" If it did not,
+he restored the detail which he had just omitted, and experimented with
+the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on, until after Herculean
+labor there remained for the reader one of those swiftly flashed,
+ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which his tales and
+romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+
+But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
+emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
+and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
+writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
+never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he
+has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
+circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
+stand in their present order until--after lunch.
+
+A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
+denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
+him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
+own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
+Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after
+many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
+it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the
+smoke there was in it.
+
+He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
+whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
+toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
+far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
+fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps
+I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a
+will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction
+his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never
+obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
+must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into
+any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the
+heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young
+people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of
+virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not
+furnish examples.
+
+Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
+had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him
+in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get
+your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without
+any trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid
+mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were
+going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram
+from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next
+day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my
+own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
+liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him
+so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.
+
+Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
+he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
+matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter
+that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to
+it.
+
+Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
+their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And
+it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them;
+her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under
+fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away
+upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.
+We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken
+arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two
+hours and a half.
+
+I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give
+more than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space
+at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch
+upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
+Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from
+which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers;
+those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
+quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous
+exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
+He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning
+to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time
+looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue
+is owing in some measure to him.
+
+R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
+peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
+infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
+country to see the matter in the same way.
+
+I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface
+of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which
+was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
+"personal interviews" which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
+important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
+which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a
+fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain."
+
+There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
+men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
+men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his work?
+And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be
+sure that I am right.
+
+An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
+Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his
+brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer
+are subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his
+powers of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate,
+too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.
+
+The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
+the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts us and
+there is nothing to hunt."
+
+GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
+
+
+
+Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
+wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills
+above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story,
+and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day
+in October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great
+lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across
+the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+
+Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
+night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he
+was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York
+from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
+already he was a "star" man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+
+"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor. "With the
+speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns."
+
+"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect type-written
+speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
+any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
+trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men
+in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
+story in that?"
+
+"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to be glad to
+get a day in the country."
+
+"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If you'd
+wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
+every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself."
+
+"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New York except
+cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the
+sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle
+of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except
+on the women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the
+elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts
+in department stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we
+never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women
+who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a
+Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!"
+
+"How curious!" said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the street and
+made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
+are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
+they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
+they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
+under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
+are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble."
+
+The city editor sighed. "How young you are!" he exclaimed. "However,
+to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be
+few women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in
+convalescents--and you do not look like a convalescent."
+
+Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
+overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
+assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
+him give away a million dollars.
+
+"Aren't you going to get his speech?", asked Redding, the staff
+photographer.
+
+"Get HIS speech!" said Sam. "They have Pinkertons all over the grounds
+to see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to
+hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the
+first train back to the centre of civilization."
+
+"There's going to be a fine lunch," said Redding, "and reporters are
+expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were."
+
+Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his
+armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his
+clothes and always treated them with courtesy.
+
+"You can have my share," he said. "I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
+minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have
+a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
+Rochelle."
+
+He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron
+gates; but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble
+barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform
+of a nursing sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar
+turned down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet.
+A bow of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had
+hair like golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such
+health and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
+
+She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
+as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+
+Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that
+other people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have
+observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out
+that which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says:
+"That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that." And so
+warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the
+indiscreet utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does
+not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning under
+screaming headlines.
+
+Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
+official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
+swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
+that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
+Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him
+was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would
+have guessed that he observed that--least of all Sister Anne. He stood
+in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
+impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt--as though
+his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
+
+"I am from the REPUBLIC," he said. "Everybody is so busy here to-day
+that I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,"
+he added disappointedly, "because it's so well done that people ought
+to know about it." He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was
+apparent that the ignorance of the public concerning their excellence
+greatly annoyed him.
+
+When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in
+alarm--obviously she was upon the point of instant flight.
+
+"You are a reporter?" she said.
+
+Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
+they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others--only
+reporters know how few--would as soon place themselves in the hands of a
+dentist.
+
+"A reporter from the REPUBLIC," repeated Sam.
+
+"But why ask ME?" demanded Sister Anne.
+
+Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
+he glanced at her uniform.
+
+"I thought you were at work here," he said simply. "I beg your pardon."
+
+He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
+impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+
+"There was no other reason," persisted Sister Anne. "I mean for speaking
+to me?"
+
+The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
+this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
+hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
+
+"I am sorry," said Sam. "I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and,
+as you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics
+about the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color."
+
+Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
+she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly
+he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this
+young woman that at the mere approach of a reporter--even of such a
+nice-looking reporter as himself--she should shake and shudder. "If
+that's what you really want to know," said Sister Anne doubtfully, "I'll
+try and help you; but," she added, looking at him as one who issues an
+ultimatum, "you must not say anything about me!"
+
+Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class
+will always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so
+that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young
+woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her?
+Much as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: "The
+Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful
+of all living women." No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as
+there was nothing to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to
+say nothing. Sister Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled,
+not because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the
+promise amused her. Sam wondered why.
+
+Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of
+the hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about
+one person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
+containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated
+by Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne--only
+to exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
+unselfishness of her nature.
+
+"Do you really scrub the floors?" he demanded--"I mean you
+yourself--down on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing
+brush?"
+
+Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+
+"We do that when we first come here," she said--"when we are
+probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?"
+
+"And these awful patients," demanded Sam--"do you wait on them? Do you
+have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?" He
+glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
+annihilate them. "It's not fair!" exclaimed Sam. "It's ridiculous. I'd
+like to choke them!"
+
+"That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents," said Sister
+Anne.
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean," said Sam. "Here are you--if
+you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
+person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
+and cripples."
+
+"Nor is that quite the way we look at," said Sister Anne.
+
+"We?" demanded Sam.
+
+Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+
+"I'm not the only nurse here," she said "There are over forty."
+
+"You are the only one here," said Sam, "who is not! That's Just what
+I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
+ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not talking about anybody
+else; I'm talking about you--you are too young! Somehow you are
+different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
+sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds."
+
+Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Sam stiffly.
+
+"No--pardon me," said Sister Anne; "but your ideas of the duties of a
+nurse are so quaint."
+
+"No matter what the duties are," declared Sam; "You should not be here!"
+
+Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders--as
+delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+
+"One must live," said Sister Anne.
+
+They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows
+of rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them
+stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated
+herself upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the
+flashing waters of the Sound.
+
+"Yes; that's it," she repeated softly--"one must live."
+
+Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
+looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
+occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
+heightened by the fact that "the woman was very fair." He conceded
+that. He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced
+by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his
+feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her profession, the
+gentlest and most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed
+that this young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish
+sick people.
+
+"If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
+there are other ways of earning a living."
+
+The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere--and again she
+smiled.
+
+"Now what would you suggest?" she asked. "You see," she said, "I have no
+one to advise me--no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
+I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so
+I doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own
+work must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living.
+Maybe you could advise me?"
+
+Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his
+salary would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember
+which of the men in the office were married, and whether they were
+those whose salaries were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy
+editors, he knew, was very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was
+married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office to take
+her to the theatre, and often Sam had thought she was extremely well
+dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear
+would be a matter of indifference; but then women did not always look
+at it that way. Sam was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life
+position that his silence had become significant; and to cover his real
+thoughts he said hurriedly:
+
+"Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
+difficult."
+
+"And manicuring?" suggested Sister Anne.
+
+Sam exclaimed in horror.
+
+"You!" he cried roughly. "For you! Quite impossible!"
+
+"Why for me?" said the girl.
+
+In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
+walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
+see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
+
+"You?" protested Sam. "You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
+are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!" His vehemence
+was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
+gravel walk, his profile toward her--and, unobserved, she could study
+his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
+good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city
+editor, his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes
+full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. "How much do they give you
+a month?" "Forty dollars," answered Sister Anne. "This is what hurts me
+about it," said Sam.
+
+"It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
+are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to
+work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However,
+probably you know that better than I do."
+
+"No; I don't know that," said Sister Anne.
+
+Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
+statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
+relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
+complete stranger--even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but,
+though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+
+"I think you are working too hard," he said, smiling happily. "I think
+you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever
+give you a day off?"
+
+"Next Saturday," said Sister Anne. "Why?"
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
+going to prescribe a day off for you--a day entirely away from iodoform
+and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and a
+lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh--or cry,
+if you like that better--and then, maybe, some fresh air in the park in
+a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see you
+safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer," he added hurriedly,
+"I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself and doing
+all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of the
+other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only, honestly,
+I hope you won't!"
+
+The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not
+say so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost
+laughing with happiness.
+
+"I think that would be quite delightful," said Sister Anne,"--quite
+delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't
+bring another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great
+deal of money. I think we might cut out the taxicab--and walk in the
+park and feed the squirrels."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Sam in disappointment,--"then you know Central Park?"
+
+Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+
+"I once lived near there," she said.
+
+"In Harlem?"
+
+"Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young," said Sister
+Anne. "Since then I have always lived in the country or in--other
+places."
+
+Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+
+"It's so kind of you to consent," he cried. "Indeed, you are the kindest
+person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
+sick people, and, now I know."
+
+"It is you who are kind," protested Sister Anne, "to take pity on me."
+
+"Pity on you!" laughed Sam. "You can't pity a person who can do more
+with a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now," he
+demanded in happy anticipation, "where are we to meet?"
+
+"That's it," said Sister Anne. "Where are we to meet?"
+
+"Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,"
+said Sam; "and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
+want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh," exclaimed Sam joyfully, "it
+will be a wonderful day--a wonderful day!"
+
+Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
+wistfully. She held out her hand.
+
+"I must go back to my duties," she said. "Good-by."
+
+"Not good-by," said Sam heartily, "only until Saturday--and my name's
+Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
+name?"
+
+"Sister Anne," said the girl. "In the nursing order to which I belong we
+have no last names."
+
+"So," asked Sam, "I'll call you Sister Anne?"
+
+"No; just Sister," said the girl.
+
+"Sister!" repeated Sam, "Sister!" He breathed the word rather than spoke
+it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made
+it carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said
+"Sweetheart!" or "Beloved!" "I'll not forget," said Sam.
+
+Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+
+"Nor I," she said.
+
+Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
+cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over
+again and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed
+their next meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would
+meet her with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her
+when they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way
+would be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to
+be the most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be
+the slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance--and it should
+cost half his week's salary.
+
+The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he
+had observed that women had strange ideas about clothes--some of them
+thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some
+of them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction
+upon the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He
+was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she
+must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
+conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
+would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
+eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning
+each week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the
+birthday of his life! No, he contradicted--the day he had first met her
+must always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one
+like her and he was sure there never would be one like her. She was
+so entirely superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult--in her
+manner there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her
+simple nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a
+princess in fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged
+her to let him for one day personally conduct her over the great city!
+"You are so kind to take pity on me," she had said. He thought of many
+clever, pretty speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had
+not thought of them at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in
+front of him.
+
+He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
+beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous
+that one so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry
+living--forty dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her
+sit in the flat where one could look at her; for already he had decided
+that, when they were married, they would live in a flat--probably in
+one overlooking Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several
+attractive suites there at thirty-five dollars a week--or, if she
+preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return
+to the country. In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he
+conceded even that sacrifice.
+
+When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
+at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
+carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
+already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+
+After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
+the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way
+to a waiting motor car and said, "Home!" to the chauffeur. He drove
+her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors
+called the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
+Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on
+the Sound.
+
+There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted
+her noisily.
+
+"I have had a most splendid adventure!" said Sister Anne. "There were
+six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
+programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real
+nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about
+it to keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry
+for me; and...."
+
+One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself
+on knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights
+and prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
+
+"Don't you believe it!" he interrupted. "That man who was talking to you
+was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was
+just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who
+wouldn't know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper."
+
+Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+
+"He did not know me!" she protested. "It quite upset him that I should
+be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds."
+
+There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+
+"I told him," continued Sister Anne, "that I got forty dollars a month,
+and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
+be a manicurist."
+
+"Oh, Anita!" protested the admiring chorus.
+
+"And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
+manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
+me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
+drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
+park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
+We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
+He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'"
+
+"Oh, Anita!" shrieked the chorus.
+
+Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
+American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
+Anita Flagg, was amused.
+
+"What an awfully jolly rag!" he cried. "And what are you going to do
+about it?"
+
+"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making me
+ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
+And," she added, "that's all there is to that!"
+
+That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
+Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: "I want to hear
+you call me Sister."
+
+"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you," he
+whispered, "what I'd like to call you!"
+
+"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say Sister
+once. Say it as though you meant it."
+
+"But I don't mean it," protested his lordship. "I've said already what
+I...."
+
+"Never mind what you've said already," commanded Miss Flagg. "I've heard
+that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once."
+
+His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+
+"Sister!" he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+
+Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
+though she were cold.
+
+"Not a bit like it, Deptford," she said. "Good-night."
+
+Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was
+to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
+window looking out toward the great city to the south.
+
+When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that
+young woman to shriek with amazement.
+
+"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
+cry?"
+
+It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She
+turned upon the tactless intruder.
+
+"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty
+dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor
+and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more
+than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
+millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care
+of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
+met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
+do?"
+
+"Why, Anita!" exclaimed Miss Page.
+
+"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what you'd do: You'd
+go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
+from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love
+me--and love me!"
+
+"And why don't you?" cried Helen Page.
+
+"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita Flagg. "Because
+I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?"
+
+At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward,
+in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing
+Sam's story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar
+was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine
+ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in
+mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue
+pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk
+and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins
+rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these
+explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no
+more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
+office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"
+
+The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
+impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
+was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
+clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
+came back to earth.
+
+"What's what?" Sam demanded.
+
+At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the
+room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward
+Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was
+late--and it was important.
+
+"What's wrong?" he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
+
+"Read the opening paragraph," protested Collins. "It's like that for a
+column! It's all about a girl--about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about
+Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story at
+all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
+what it is. And, what's worse," wailed the copy editor defiantly and
+to the amazement of all, "it's so darned good that you can't touch it.
+You've got to let it go or kill it."
+
+The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade,
+were racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at
+Collins.
+
+"Is it all like that?"
+
+"There's a column like that!"
+
+"Run it just as it is," commanded the managing editor. "Use it for your
+introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
+out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
+with pictures." He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+
+"What's the idea, Ward?" he said. "This is a newspaper--not a magazine!"
+
+The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
+had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
+reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also
+smiled, but unhappily.
+
+"I know it's not news, Sir," he said; "but that's the way I saw the
+story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the
+governor's staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside,
+this girl right on the job--taking care of the sick and wounded. It
+seemed to me that a million from a man that won't miss a million didn't
+stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I
+wanted to say," continued Sam stoutly "was that the moving spirit of the
+hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women
+who do the work--the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you
+called 'The Red Cross Girl.'"
+
+Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
+traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
+
+"But it's not news!"
+
+"It's not news," said Elliott doubtfully; "but it's the kind of story
+that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives
+men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the
+illegitimate sister.'"
+
+It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to
+a girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was
+this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return
+for its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
+business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it
+served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and
+incidentally a million other people, how deeply he honored her; how
+clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant
+Sister Anne, save two people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and
+for him that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real
+incidents of the day; he had described her as she passed through the
+wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the
+little acts of consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
+
+The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
+and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
+her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
+he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
+after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the
+front page was his story, "The Red Cross Girl." It had the place of
+honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his
+own story was one of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken
+of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform of
+mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of
+the camera. There was no mistaking her for any other living woman;
+but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a
+strange and grotesque legend.
+
+"Daughter of Millionaire Flagg," it read, "in a New Role, Miss Anita
+Flagg as The Red Cross Girl."
+
+For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper
+so that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From
+below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting--cable cars jangled, taxis
+hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
+shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A
+girl he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever--worse than
+that had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that
+made no difference, or just as little difference as it would have made
+had Sister Anne really lived and really died.
+
+At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
+party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone
+at the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
+Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the
+table and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press,
+had pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking
+at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
+surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
+fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading "The Red
+Cross Girl"; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent
+slumber, her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks
+the color flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read
+as far as a paragraph beginning, "When Sister Anne walked between them
+those who suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces
+to the rain," she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+
+"Any man," cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
+servants, "who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
+and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might
+be like that--if any man would help."
+
+She gave her attention to the telephone and "Information." She demanded
+to be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr.
+Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
+
+"I'm tired of being called a good sport," she protested, "by men who
+aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
+money--as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on
+his shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
+good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint;
+and he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy--and I like being made
+dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!"
+
+
+"Be still!" implored Helen Page. "Any one might think you meant it!" She
+nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
+
+"Ye gods, Parker!" cried Anita Flagg. "Does it take three of you to pour
+a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three
+caught me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the
+telephone and that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!"
+
+The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. "And
+what's more," Anita hurled after them, "get your bets down quick, for
+after I meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!"
+
+Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
+office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
+happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the
+only person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she
+refused to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, "I'll call him up
+later," and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for
+all the beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+
+To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
+particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
+opposite the cathedral.
+
+"You're the very man I want," said Hollworthy joyously--"you've got to
+decide a bet."
+
+He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+
+"It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
+who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you
+knew. I bet her a theatre party."
+
+To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had
+even been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he
+had no right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know
+what Sister Anne had meant to him?
+
+"I'm afraid you lose," he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
+leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+
+"You don't say so!" exclaimed that young man. "Fancy one of you chaps
+being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in--getting up
+a story for the Sunday supplement."
+
+Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet
+to escape. "And, instead of your fooling her," exclaimed Holworthy
+incredulously, "she was having fun, with you!"
+
+With difficulty Sam smiled.
+
+"So it would seem," he said.
+
+"She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!" exclaimed Holworthy
+admiringly. "I thought she was making it up--she must have made some of
+it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
+so is it?"
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"By Jove!" cried Holworthy--"and that you invited her to see the
+moving-picture shows?"
+
+Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket,
+smiled pleasantly.
+
+"Did she say I said that--or you?" he asked
+
+"She did."
+
+"Well, then, I must have said it."
+
+Holworthy roared with amusement.
+
+"And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?"
+
+Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+
+"Yes; I said that too."
+
+"And I thought she was making it up!" exclaimed Holworthy. "We did
+laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself."
+
+Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+
+"You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita
+Flagg--just as if she were nobody!"
+
+"I don't think," said Sam, "that was my idea." He waved his stick at a
+passing taxi. "I'm late," he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
+chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
+had made.
+
+An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
+telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
+
+"You're wanted on the 'phone," he commanded. His voice dropped to an
+awed whisper. "Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!"
+
+The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
+this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
+never met.
+
+"Say you can't find me," he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
+precipitately.
+
+"The lady says she wants your telephone number--says she must have it."
+
+"Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules--and hang
+up."
+
+Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
+informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg--the rich,
+the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
+morning--had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
+thrown down--and thrown hard!
+
+That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
+entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
+whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+
+Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+
+"Ward," he began abruptly, "I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
+It's on account of that story of this morning."
+
+Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served
+so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that,
+considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was
+causing him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of
+position did not disturb him. In the last month too many managing
+editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious
+as to the future. So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say
+without resentment:
+
+"Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+
+"I did," returned Elliott; "I liked it so much that I'm sending you to
+a bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as
+our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work;
+and if you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday."
+
+After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air.
+He could not believe it was real--that it was actually to him it had
+happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events,
+to come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of
+reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh
+Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and
+the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback
+only to his happiness--there was no one with whom he might divide it.
+He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with
+some one who would understand how much it meant to him, who would really
+care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would
+have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to
+accept them--begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and
+terrifying capital of the world, and start the new life together.
+
+Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
+Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
+because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
+his admiration--and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
+ingenuously he had shown it to her--meant nothing; but because the girl
+he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
+marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
+ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous
+when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a
+hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could
+not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself
+had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
+
+Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
+as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be.
+His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
+impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
+of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that.
+Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and
+flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who
+wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got
+the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and
+said sharp, bitter things that made her appear hard and heartless.
+
+As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
+addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
+Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so--when on arriving at the
+office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
+reading, "Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
+begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg "--he
+was able to reply: "Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
+person, who unfortunately has since died!"'
+
+When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes
+tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned
+miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
+
+"But why does he do it to me?" Her tone was that of the bewildered child
+who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
+without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
+
+Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
+changed into a very angry young woman.
+
+"And what's more," she announced, "he can't do it to me!"
+
+She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
+it was signed, "Sister Anne."
+
+In an hour the answer came: "Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
+She is dead."
+
+Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was
+not in his nature to be rude--certainly not to a woman, especially not
+to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name
+was Anita or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he
+assured himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could
+see in a well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was
+of no interest to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing
+their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that
+she looked upon him as one entirely out of her world--as one with whom
+she could do an unconventional thing and make a good story about it
+later, knowing that it would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+
+He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance.
+And, besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He
+no longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy.
+He was now a man with a responsible position--one who soon would be
+conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage
+by the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
+correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
+as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
+
+Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased
+tickets. And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have
+occupied could not be filled by any other person. It would have been
+sacrilege. At least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through
+dinner, which he ate alone at the same restaurant to which he had
+intended taking her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And
+at the theatre, where there was going forward the most popular of all
+musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the audience, appeared
+wastefully empty, was to him filled with her gracious presence. That
+Sister Anne was not there--that the pretty romance he had woven about
+her had ended in disaster--filled, him with real regret. He was glad he
+was leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing would
+remind him of her. And then he glanced up--and looked straight into her
+eyes!
+
+He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
+Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
+farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
+stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
+full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him.
+There were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
+enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
+the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was
+all in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing
+suit; round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
+curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
+rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee,
+was gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with
+excitement.
+
+When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized
+her, she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her
+the ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
+neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over
+his left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but
+some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the
+stage and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but
+it was a cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly
+sought the stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to
+be laughing; and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile
+exposed pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble
+like those of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard
+smile--and heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
+
+"That's all she cares." he told himself.
+
+It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did,
+she kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister
+Anne.
+
+For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained
+upon her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly
+and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the'
+darkest recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage
+by a barrier of women's hats.
+
+"Your friend Mr. Ward," she began abruptly, in a whisper, "is the
+rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the
+other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved
+abominably--like a boor--like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor?
+Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt
+me?"
+
+"Hurt you?" exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. "Don't be
+ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is?
+Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too
+good-looking; and a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him.
+So when one of them laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the
+trouble. I could see that when I was telling him."
+
+"Telling him!" repeated Miss Flagg--"Telling him what?"
+
+"About what a funny story you made of it," explained Holworthy. "About
+his having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with
+him."
+
+Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+
+"Oh!" she said softly. "So-so you told him that, did you? And--what else
+did you tell him?"
+
+"Only what you told us--that he said 'the day could not begin too soon';
+that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands of men
+who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Did I tell you he said that?" breathed Anita Flagg.
+
+"You know you did," said Holworthy.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"I must have been mad!" said the girl.
+
+There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+
+"I'm afraid you are angry," he ventured.
+
+"Angry!" exclaimed Miss Flagg. "I should say I was angry, but not with
+you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
+let you take me out into the lobby."
+
+With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage
+and seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had
+destroyed his ideal of a sweet and noble woman--and he was sorry for
+Miss Flagg because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be
+that man did not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and,
+indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his
+friends on the stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he
+would take himself out of the front row, to give him back his money at
+the box office. Sam certainly wished to take himself away; but he did
+not want to admit that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that
+the presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his evening--could, in the
+slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling
+that he was in a false position; that if he were it was his own fault;
+that he had acted like an ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful
+feeling.
+
+When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the
+second act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance
+running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude
+to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
+Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at
+him--whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense;
+again making his advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that
+he flushed indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+
+And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
+figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past
+him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to
+speak--and Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to
+give him time; for, without regarding him in the least, and as though
+to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and
+deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent
+toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile reproaching
+him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him
+gently:
+
+"This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
+enough of it?"
+
+Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or
+of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal--and something else
+that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
+
+For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
+remorsefully.
+
+"It's not Anita Flagg at all," he said. "It's Sister Anne come back to
+life again!" The girl shook her head.
+
+"No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met
+and I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that
+was before I understood--before I read what you wrote about Sister
+Anne--about the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I
+knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and
+gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
+there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you called me
+Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I
+wanted you to say it."
+
+She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near that her
+shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
+scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest.
+Half of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with
+the greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky
+youth in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
+
+The young people in the front row did not know they were observed.
+They were alone--as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
+sweeping above the clouds.
+
+"Say it again," prompted Anita Flagg "Sister."
+
+"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say this," he
+whispered: "I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
+the finest woman who has ever lived!"
+
+Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
+at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but that sounds just as good."
+
+When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
+box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper;
+but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
+
+"We can see this act," she said, "or--my car's in front of the
+theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three. Which
+would you prefer?"
+
+"Don't make me laugh!" said Sam.
+
+As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but
+paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
+
+"There's only one thing," she said to Sam, "that is making me unhappy;
+and because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am
+leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next
+Wednesday."
+
+"My business is to gather news," said Sam, "but in all my life I never
+gathered such good news as that."
+
+"Good news!" exclaimed Anita.
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "I am leaving, America--am spending the winter
+in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but that
+is not what makes me unhappy."
+
+"Tell me," begged Anita.
+
+"Some day," said Sam.
+
+The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea--as they
+leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
+
+"This is my unhappiness," said Sam--and he pointed to a name on the
+passenger list. It was: "The Earl of Deptford, and valet." "And because
+he is on board!"
+
+Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+
+"He is not on board," she said. "He changed to another boat."
+
+Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
+soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.
+
+"Why did he change?" he begged.
+
+Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
+despair.
+
+"Is that all that is worrying you?" she said.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their
+examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This
+may or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But
+whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior
+year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them
+even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have
+been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It
+was the professors who cheated.
+
+At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you
+can score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief
+history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has
+attained it. After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for
+the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where
+he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest
+they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.
+Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.
+
+The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects
+in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an
+average of ninety, you are passed "with honors"; if of seventy-five, you
+pass "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike
+the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The
+whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be
+lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined
+that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would
+see that he passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of
+awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much,
+but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his
+dignified title the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who
+dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater,
+who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting
+Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his
+official resignation.
+
+Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
+president. If he did not actually run after money he went where
+money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who
+possessed it. And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through
+a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose
+to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool,
+or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to
+it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious
+instructor.
+
+He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
+examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
+inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
+
+"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
+"Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride,
+and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let
+us hope he will pull through." For four years every professor had been
+pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.
+They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of
+him forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew
+that of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle
+would hold the blank cartridge.
+
+The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at
+Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of
+those well-known text-books, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and
+Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had
+been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back,
+the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and
+worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always
+possessed a contemporary and news interest.
+
+"Here is a review of the history," he would say--he always referred to
+it as "the" history--"that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT."
+
+In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it
+was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
+
+The members of his class who were examined on the "Rise and Fall," and
+who invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the
+"Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the.... Fall." The history began when
+Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to
+Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds
+with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since
+Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.
+When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish
+Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume
+that would cover the last three centuries.
+
+"In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book," said the chancellor, "I
+think the Russian-Turkish War should be included."
+
+Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in
+mild reproach. "The war in the Crimea!" he exclaimed. "Why, I was alive
+at the time. I know about it. That is not history."
+
+Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
+knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
+trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
+Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history
+certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which
+he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with
+malice toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked "five."
+
+Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty.
+In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but
+they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single
+point higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five
+completely knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter
+was "found" and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only
+son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private
+college--the son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the
+new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and
+the Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim
+hall of the Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own
+disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-glass window cast upon his
+nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter
+wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he desired laurels he had not won,
+but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to
+be. Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that
+followed made Stillwater history.
+
+"My son is not an ass!" is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
+Doctor Black. "And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
+the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.
+And I'll send my money where I send Peter."
+
+In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the
+son and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had
+failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say
+that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college
+president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a
+conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He
+lowered his voice.
+
+"There has been contemptible work here," he whispered--"spite and a mean
+spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I
+find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our
+college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance--Doctor Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary." This did
+not happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford
+to be too particular.
+
+"I have seen no reason for raising his salary--and there you have the
+explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his
+mark. In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own
+downfall. I have already asked for his resignation."
+
+Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this
+particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem
+humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than
+that his son was an idiot.
+
+"I don't want the man discharged," he protested, "just because Peter is
+lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he
+sacrificed my Peter in order to get even...."
+
+"That," exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, "is exactly what he did!
+Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all
+over America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an
+increase in salary it was really you who refused it--and he struck at
+you through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself
+shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly
+not your brilliant son--look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club
+and foot-ball tour--is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman
+went too far. And he has been justly punished!"
+
+What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor
+told him, and his opinion of the matter as expressed to Peter, differed
+materially.
+
+"They tell me," he concluded, "that in the fall they will give you
+another examination, and if you pass then, you will get your degree. No
+one will know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the side-door
+like a cold potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that
+when your classmates stood up and got their parchments--the thing they'd
+been working for four years, the only reason for their going to college
+at all--YOU were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you
+don't get your degree next fall that will be my fault. I've supported
+you through college and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you
+deliver them next fall, or you can support yourself."
+
+"That will be all right," said Peter humbly; "I'll pass next fall."
+
+"I'm going to make sure of that," said Hallowell senior. "To-morrow you
+will take those history books that you did not open, especially Gilman's
+'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you
+will travel for the entire summer with a private tutor...."
+
+Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-ball teams
+over half of the Middle States and daily bullied and browbeat them,
+protested with indignation. "WON'T travel with a private tutor!"
+
+"If I say so," returned Hallowell senior grimly, "you'll travel with
+a governess and a trained nurse, and wear a strait jacket. And you'll
+continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward.
+And in order that you may know it backward--and forward you will spend
+this summer in Turkey--in Constantinople--until I send you permission to
+come home."
+
+"Constantinople!" yelled Peter. "In August! Are you serious?"
+
+"Do I look it?" asked Peter's father. He did.
+
+"In Constantinople," explained Mr. Hallowell senior, "there will be
+nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself
+every minute you will be imbibing history and local color."
+
+"I'll be imbibing fever,", returned Peter, "and sunstroke and sudden
+death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you send me to the island
+where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to
+study about Turkey."
+
+"You do!" said his father.
+
+Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he
+hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving them away to the members
+of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was, and to
+bid him good-by. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him
+were loyally enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments,
+and to that end they planned a mock trial of the "Rise and Fall," at
+which a packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to
+hang Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with a rope round its neck was
+even then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silver-white
+beard and the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations.
+He did not know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he
+protested that the horse-play of his friends would make him appear a
+bad loser. "It would look, boys," he said, "as though I couldn't take my
+medicine. Looks like kicking against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman
+fought fair. He gave me just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight
+more of him than do of that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal
+nerve to pretend I scored fifty!"
+
+Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus,
+gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see. Since that
+morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater
+College. They were retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly,
+cutting down unnecessary expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black
+was too intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was
+far too innocent of evil, far too detached from college politics to
+suspect. He would remain a professor emeritus on half pay, but he no
+longer would teach. The college he had served for thirty years-since
+it consisted of two brick buildings and a faculty of ten young men--no
+longer needed him. Even his ivy-covered cottage, in which his wife and
+he had lived for twenty years, in which their one child had died, would
+at the beginning of the next term be required of him. But the college
+would allow him those six months in which to "look round." So, just
+outside the circle of light from his student lamp, he sat in his study,
+and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of Socrates. He was not
+considering ways and means. They must be faced later. He was considering
+how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What eviction from
+that house would mean to her no one but he understood. Since the day
+their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her
+playroom, bedroom, and nursery had been altered, nothing had been
+touched. To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given
+child was still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living
+presence. When at night the professor and his wife sat at either end
+of the study table, reading by the same lamp, he would see her suddenly
+lift her head, alert and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step
+had sounded, as though from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her.
+And when they would be forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some
+students' boarding-house, though they could take with them their books,
+their furniture, their mutual love and comradeship, they must leave
+behind them the haunting presence of the child, the colored pictures she
+had cut from the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls,
+the rambler roses that with her own hands she had planted and that now
+climbed to her window and each summer peered into her empty room.
+
+Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
+lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
+of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest
+elms, and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer
+succeeded cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the
+heroes of the diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had
+flunked especially for one man who had flunked. But for that man who
+for thirty years in the class room had served the college there were
+no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one student who had best
+reason to remember him. But this recollection Peter had no rancor or
+bitterness and, still anxious lest he should be considered a bad loser,
+he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the
+celebration was at its height and just before train was due to carry
+him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the Gilman cottage
+say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so far only as
+half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which opened
+upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor and
+wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each other,
+the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin, delicate,
+well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her awkward
+unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.
+
+Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
+What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The
+idea that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never
+entered mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was
+something so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to
+offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and,
+avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour
+later the entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and
+with "He's a jolly good fellow" and "He's off to Philippopolis in the
+morn--ing" ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car
+and gazed at the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life.
+And he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the
+students, dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the
+smoking-car fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in
+the cottage stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children
+lost in the streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same
+moment whisper words of courage.
+
+Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
+over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
+not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
+Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In
+the mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly
+forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture
+man through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects
+for the camera.
+
+The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
+newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in
+a moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
+illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
+Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed
+it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor,
+and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks
+very old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the
+entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at
+Therapia.
+
+There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence
+of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
+Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was
+a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington
+in favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was
+afraid his father would consider Therapia "out of bounds."
+
+
+"He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he thinks I'm
+not playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and
+he might cut off my allowance."
+
+In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This
+was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at
+he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his
+letter-of-credit and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own
+against men three times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of
+his father. Only they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot
+evening Peter saw as much of their money scattered over the green table
+as his father had spent over the Hallowell athletic field.
+
+In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile--in the morning
+trying to fill his brain with names of great men who had been a long
+time dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his
+active spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter
+from Charley Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived
+after Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from
+boredom and gave life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip
+intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read:
+"Old man Gilman has got the sack. The chancellor offered him up as a
+sacrifice to your father, and because he was unwise enough to flunk you.
+He is to move out in September. I ran across them last week when I was
+looking for rooms for a Freshman cousin. They were reserving one in the
+same boarding-house. It's a shame, and I know you'll agree. They are a
+fine old couple, and I don't like to think of them herding with Freshmen
+in a shine boardinghouse. Black always was a swine."
+
+Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+
+"Just learned," he cabled his father, "Gilman dismissed because flunked
+me consider this outrageous please see he is reinstated."
+
+The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read:
+"Informed Gilman acted through spite have no authority as you know to
+interfere any act of black."
+
+Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had
+befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the injustice had been hourly
+increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his
+filial piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but
+little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next cable
+was not conciliatory.
+
+"Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me
+appear contemptible Black is a toady will do as you direct please
+reinstate."
+
+To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+
+"If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black incident is
+closed."
+
+"Is it?" said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid
+and explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous cablegram of his
+distinguished contemporary: "Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!"
+
+Peter's paraphrase of this ran: "Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will
+not try for degree."
+
+The reply was equally emphatic:
+
+"You earn your degree or you earn your own living."
+
+This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: "Choose
+to earn my own living am leaving Constantinople."
+
+Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer
+via Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very much, would have
+accompanied him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by
+way of Paris and London.
+
+"You'll get there long before I do," said Peter, "and as soon as you
+arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor Gilman some
+souvenir of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He
+wouldn't accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to
+be something characteristic of the country, Like a prayer rug, or a
+scimitar, or an illuminated Koran, or..."
+
+Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a
+flat morocco case and opened it. "What's the matter with one of these?"
+he asked.
+
+In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt.
+To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+
+"That's the Star of the Crescent," said Peter. "Where did you buy it?"
+
+"Buy it!" exclaimed Stetson. "You don't buy them. The Sultan bestows
+them."
+
+"I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one," said Peter.
+
+"I'll bet," returned Stetson, "I've got something in my pocket that says
+he did."
+
+He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving
+Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical.
+
+"What does that say when it says it in English?" he asked.
+
+"It says," translated Stetson, "that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan,
+bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author, lecturer, the Star of
+the Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to
+Turkey."
+
+Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+
+"Never try to fool the fakirs, my son," he protested. "I'm a fakir
+myself. What services did you ever...."
+
+"Services rendered," continued Stetson undisturbed, "in spreading
+throughout the United States a greater knowledge of the customs,
+industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That," he explained,
+"refers to my--I should say our--moving-picture lecture. I thought
+it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish
+decoration, so I went after this one."
+
+Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+
+"But did they believe you," he demanded, "when you told them you were an
+author and educator?"
+
+Stetson closed one eye and grinned. "They believed whatever I paid them
+to believe."
+
+"If you can get one of those," cried Peter, "Old man Gilman ought to
+get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest
+history of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a
+real professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the
+five volumes with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?"
+
+"Two hundred dollars in bribes," said Stetson briskly, "and two months
+of diplomacy."
+
+"I haven't got two months for diplomacy," said Peter, "so I'll have to
+increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the decoration for Gilman,
+and you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the
+Crescent, but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know
+what we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever
+bestowed by a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell
+the people often enough that anything is the best they believe you.
+That's the way father sells his hams. You've been a press-agent.
+From now on you're going to be my press-agent--I mean Doctor Gilman's
+press-agent. I pay your salary, but your work is to advertise him and
+the Order of the Crescent. I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at
+Stillwater. He sends out college news to a syndicate and he's the local
+Associated Press man. He's sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my
+best friend, and he'll work the papers as far as you like. Your job is
+to make Stillwater College and Doctor Black and my father believe that
+when they lost Gilman they lost the man who made Stillwater famous.
+And before we get through boosting Gilman, we'll make my father's
+million-dollar gift laboratory look like an insult."
+
+In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle burned
+fiercely, memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of his strategies
+and tactics in advertising soared before him.
+
+"It's great!" he exclaimed. "I've got your idea and you've got me. And
+you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-agent for politicians,
+actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horse-shows--and I'm the
+best! I was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he
+ran for governor. He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took
+hold of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs.
+Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at Newport, when all she ever saw
+of Newport was Bergers and the Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that
+made the American People believe Russian dancers can dance!"
+
+"It's plain to see you hate yourself," said 'Peter. "You must not get so
+despondent or you might commit suicide. How much money will you want?"
+
+"How much have you got?"
+
+"All kinds," said Peter. "Some in a letter-of-credit that my father
+earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker
+from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my
+living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need
+to boost Gilman and the Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman
+Defense, Publicity, and Development Committee, and you will begin by
+introducing me to the man I am to bribe."
+
+"In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to
+bribe," exclaimed Stetson; "you just bribe him!"
+
+
+That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made
+their first move in the game of winning for Professor Gilman the Order
+of the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock
+coat and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign
+office and appeared to be "a friend of a friend of a friend" of the
+assistant third secretary.
+
+The five volumes of the "Rise and Fall" were spread before him, and
+Peter demanded to know why so distinguished a scholar as Doctor
+Gilman had not received some recognition from the country he had so
+sympathetically described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and
+promised the matter should be brought at once to the attention of the
+grand vizier.
+
+After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little
+chance of getting within speaking distance of the grand vizier as of the
+ladies of his harem.
+
+"It's like Tammany," said Stetson; "there are sachems, district leaders,
+and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled to trade or give away a few of
+these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage
+of jobs in the street-cleaning department. This fellow will go to his
+patron, his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he
+will put it up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.
+
+"In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a
+hundred others, without knowing what he is signing; then you cable me,
+and the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way
+that will make Halley's comet look like a wax match."
+
+The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left
+alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the
+contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He
+had not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an
+itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus
+would receive very different treatment.
+
+Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard and diamond
+rings called with Osman to apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man
+explained--had been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he
+had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class
+that had been given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an honor for
+a savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth
+class would hardly be high enough. The fees, the fat man added, would
+Also be higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference,
+because the fourth class entitled the wearer to a salute from all
+sentries.
+
+"There are few sentries at Stillwater," said Peter; "but I want the best
+and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class."
+
+The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the
+embassy. The secretary was considerably annoyed.
+
+"My dear Hallowell," he protested, "why the devil didn't you tell me you
+wanted a decoration? Of course the State department expressly forbids
+us to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the
+Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at once--but, on two
+conditions: that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it."
+
+Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat
+demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one of the Gilman Defense
+Committee.
+
+"Doctor Gilman's history," he said, "must be presented to the Sultan.
+You must have the five volumes rebound in red and green, the colors of
+Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope," he
+added, "they are not soiled."
+
+"Not by me," Peter assured him.
+
+"I will take them myself," continued Stimson, "to Muley Pasha, the
+minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to present them to his Imperial
+Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he
+won't so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the
+Order of the Crescent of the third class."
+
+"Going up!" exclaimed Peter. "The third class. That will cost me my
+entire letter-of-credit."
+
+"Not at all," said Stimson. "I've saved you from the grafters. It will
+cost you only what you pay to have the books rebound. And the THIRD
+class is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it
+round your neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a
+thousand soldiers."
+
+"I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers," said Peter, "and wear it longer
+round my neck What's the matter with our getting the second class or the
+first class?"
+
+At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+
+"The first class," he explained patiently, "is the Great Grand Cross,
+and is given only to reigning sovereigns. The second is called the Grand
+Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men
+of world-wide fame...."
+
+"What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide fame?" said
+Peter. "He will be some day, when Stetson starts boosting."
+
+"Some day," retorted Stimson stiffly, "I may be an ambassador. When I
+am I hope to get the Grand Cross of the Crescent, but not now. I'm
+sorry you're not satisfied," he added aggrievedly. "No one can get you
+anything higher than the third class, and I may lose my official head
+asking for that."
+
+"Nothing is too good for old man Gilman," said Peter, "nor for you.
+You get the third class for him, and I'll have father make you an
+ambassador."
+
+That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who
+had come from a reception at the Grand vizier's and still wore his
+decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of
+the young prince he regarded with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul
+with wide-eyed awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan,
+and because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation
+in Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming,
+distinguished, courteous to the verge of humility, most cleverly
+cynical, most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won,
+and while doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards
+and the cards held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his
+equal.
+
+In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack,
+Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that nestled behind the lapel of
+Abdul's coat.
+
+"May I ask what that is?" said Peter.
+
+The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and
+then smiled delightedly.
+
+"It is an order," he said in a quick aside, "bestowed only upon men of
+world-wide fame. I dined to-night," he explained, "with your charming
+compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson."
+
+"And Joe told?" said Peter.
+
+The prince nodded. "Joe told," he repeated; "but it is all arranged.
+Your distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater, will receive the
+Crescent of the third class."
+
+Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond sunburst.
+
+"Why," he demanded, "can't some one get him one like that?"
+
+As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then
+thought better of it and smiled.
+
+"There are only two men in all Turkey," he said, "who could do that."
+
+"And is the Sultan the other one?" asked Peter. The prince gasped as
+though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold shower, and then laughed
+long and silently.
+
+"You flatter me," he murmured.
+
+"You know you could if you liked!" whispered Peter stoutly.
+
+Apparently Abdul did not hear him. "I will take one card," he said.
+
+Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand francs in
+the pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had dropped out. "Will you
+divide?" asked the prince.
+
+"Why should I?" said Peter. "I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or
+call?" The prince called and laid down a full house. Peter showed four
+tens.
+
+"I will deal you one hand, double or quits," said the prince.
+
+Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+
+"You will pay me double what is on the table," he said, "or you quit
+owing me nothing."
+
+The prince nodded.
+
+"Go ahead," said Peter.
+
+The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held
+a seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours. Hoping to draw another
+king, which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul,
+he threw away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The
+prince showed three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
+
+"I'll make you a sporting proposition," he murmured. "You owe me a
+hundred and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only
+two men in the empire can give me."
+
+The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the
+table. But the puzzled glances of the other players showed that to them
+Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+
+The prince smiled cynically.
+
+"For yourself?" he demanded.
+
+"For Doctor Gilman," said Peter.
+
+"We will cut for deal and one hand will decide," said the prince. His
+voice dropped to a whisper. "And no one must ever know," he warned.
+
+Peter also could be cynical.
+
+"Not even the Sultan," he said.
+
+Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he
+dealt Peter was the better one.
+
+The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY
+announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the
+University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously
+pleased to confer the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crescent.
+
+Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at
+Quarantine. It read: "Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get busy."
+
+But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had
+been brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince Abdul, although
+pitchforked into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its
+most enthusiastic members.
+
+"For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE," he declared. "If it
+is worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will
+command that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that
+it be placed in the national library. Moreover, the University of
+Constantinople, the College of Salonica, and the National Historical
+Society have each elected Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed
+him, the Patriarch of Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish
+ambassador in America has been instructed to present the insignia with
+his own hands."
+
+Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his press-work, and
+to further the idea that all Europe was now clamoring for the "Rise and
+fall," Peter paid an impecunious but over-educated dragoman to translate
+it into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed out that
+not since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so
+highly honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand
+vizier--who had been requested by Prince Abdul--to request the State
+Department to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from
+such a source was a command and, as desired, the State Department
+wrote as requested by the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered
+congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from Washington by
+Associated Press. This official recognition by the Government and by the
+newspapers was all and more than Stetson wanted. He took off his coat
+and with a megaphone, rather than a pen, told the people of the United
+States who Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross
+was, and why America's greatest historian was not without honor save in
+his own country. Columns of this were paid for and appeared as "patent
+insides," with a portrait of Doctor Gilman taken from the STILLWATER
+COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination,
+in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western, and Eastern States.
+special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures of the Grand Cross
+followed, and, using Stillwater as his base, Stetson continued to
+flood the country. Young Hines, the local correspondent, acting under
+instructions by cable from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a
+traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer
+of the author of the "Rise and fall." Stetson, having studied it as a
+student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at the feet of
+the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on the steps
+of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from the
+unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life.
+To this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added
+photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered
+cottage, of his favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian
+at work at his desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife
+on the croquet lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually
+presented. This pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much
+to his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
+Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to
+a Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
+Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag
+a secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
+travelled down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary
+took the local train to Stillwater.
+
+The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the
+ambassador as one of the happiest incidents of his distinguished career.
+Never since he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western
+republic had its barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly
+approaching his own idea of what was his due.
+
+"This ambassador," Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater,
+who was also the proprietor of its largest department store, "is the
+personal representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right."
+
+"It's exactly," added Stetson, "as though the Sultan himself were
+coming."
+
+"And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater," continued Hines, "that we
+ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as he comes to pay the
+highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen."
+
+The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+
+"What'd I better do?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Stetson here," Hines pointed out, "has lived in Turkey, and he
+knows what they expect. Maybe he will help us."
+
+"Will you?" begged the mayor.
+
+"I will," said Stetson.
+
+Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most
+of the faculty were on their vacations. But there were half a dozen
+professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed
+out to them that the coming honor to one lately of their number
+reflected glory upon the college and upon them, and that they should
+take official action.
+
+It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear
+their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these suggestions, with
+alacrity--partly because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because
+they had never been photographed by a moving-picture machine--they all
+agreed. So it came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and
+dusty stepped off the way-train at Stillwater station he found to
+his delighted amazement a red carpet stretching to a perfectly new
+automobile, a company of the local militia presenting arms, a committee,
+consisting of the mayor in a high hat and white gloves and three
+professors in gowns and colored hoods, and the Stillwater silver
+Cornet Band playing what, after several repetitions, the ambassador was
+graciously pleased to recognize as his national anthem.
+
+The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was
+dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration. Here at last
+were people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the
+mayor helped him into the automobile, and those students who lived
+in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture
+machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But
+inwardly he was ill at ease.
+
+Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
+America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
+honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
+blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost
+on the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
+the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+
+Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki,
+by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous
+liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater
+gathered outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling
+and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
+ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only
+frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor
+Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
+Stillwater shouted, "Speech," in sudden panic he reached out his hand
+quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
+
+"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader. "Now, then, 'See
+the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the bandmaster. "Attention! Present arms!"
+yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
+applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
+his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
+and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
+drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the
+rear of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
+he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to
+the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
+
+Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
+Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater.
+They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might
+inadvertently drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+
+So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to
+supply his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts
+of the great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he
+choked. Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently
+before the public, and never before had her president been so utterly
+and completely ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized
+that even had he been present he could not have shown his face. How
+could he, who had, as every one connected with the college now knew, out
+of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join
+in chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior,
+might not hear of Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of
+anything else. At his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one
+he met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had
+come to his pet college.
+
+"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,"
+exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. "Now if I pay a hundred
+thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty
+dollars, but you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in
+half a million dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor
+Gilman's doing as much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns
+Hopkins or as Walter Camp does for Yale."
+
+Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he
+was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage
+increased. It seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor
+Gilman. The stone he had rejected had become the corner-stone of
+Stillwater. Whenever he opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming:
+"Will no one rid me of this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall,"
+in an edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up
+by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a popular edition was
+on view in the windows of every book-shop; It was offered as a prize to
+subscribers to all the more sedate magazines, and the name and features
+of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a day
+passed but that some new honor, at least so the newspapers stated,
+was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced that he was to be the next
+exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he was to lecture at the
+Sorbonne; that in June he was to receive a degree from Oxford.
+
+A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by
+offering him the chair of history at that seat of learning at a salary
+of five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust
+upon Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson,
+but this offer happened to be genuine.
+
+"Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter
+from the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+
+"We could not be happy away from Stillwater," he said. "We have only a
+month more in the cottage, but after that we still can walk past it; we
+can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit
+the place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and
+miserable for her, and she would be lonely for us."
+
+Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave
+Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern college at which
+Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his
+jealousy knew no bounds.
+
+He telegraphed to Black: "Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six
+thousand--offer him whatever he wants, but make him promise for no
+consideration to leave Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought
+any credit to the college if we lose him I'll hold you responsible."
+
+The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor
+called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble pie that for a week he
+suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care
+for that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished,
+was back in the faculty, and had made only one condition--that he might
+live until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+
+Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history
+examination, which, should he pass it, would give him his degree, he
+found on every side evidences of the "worldwide fame" he himself had
+created. The newsstand at the depot, the book-stores, the drugstores,
+the picture-shops, all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing
+the ivy-covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,
+advertisements of the different editions of "the" history proclaimed
+his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success of his own handiwork,
+approached the ivy-covered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs.
+Gilman welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which
+she always gave courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations,
+and Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle
+courtesy.
+
+The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers
+Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
+
+"I should indeed!" Peter assured him.
+
+"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor, "that you
+have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five." In
+real sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great
+astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking
+offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+the precocious act of a beloved child.
+
+"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer you did not
+work very hard for your degree!"
+
+Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I got working
+for something worth while--and I forgot about the degree."
+
+
+
+Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
+Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at
+the time military attache of the German Government with the Russian
+army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
+Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his
+part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the
+ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses
+below us glowing and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+
+Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been
+Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a
+spy.
+
+The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
+correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell
+it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
+
+In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
+have yet to find any one who will believe it.
+
+What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of
+the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" in
+the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford
+attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place,
+the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then
+again, it might not.
+
+As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel written by a
+very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion
+of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to
+be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and
+despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian
+Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred
+and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of
+Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this
+coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are
+dry, that England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest
+naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it as the spot best adapted
+for such a raid.
+
+What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
+read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and
+under separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: "I suggest your
+Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage,
+and of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms,
+take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want
+ideas?"
+
+What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
+was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford
+went to Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the
+Shakespeare Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the
+robe, Ford was left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors
+and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent
+Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a
+long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by
+trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when
+the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English
+clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a
+spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The
+assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared
+ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, "Does a German uniform
+always affect a Territorial like that?"
+
+The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"It did give me quite a turn," he said. "It's this talk of invasion, I
+fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along
+the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
+anyway."
+
+"And, quite right, too!" said Ford.
+
+He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at
+his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play
+truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the
+words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later
+young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
+terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young
+Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's
+friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university.
+After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights"
+week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
+undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to
+study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy;
+instead of "wines" he found pleasure in debating clubs where he
+discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes,
+that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His
+undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms
+they declared unjust and without intelligence.
+
+"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil here, for
+example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
+never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of
+him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as
+yours!"
+
+"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.
+
+"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours;
+as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat
+through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a
+man from Balliol?"
+
+"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What price that?
+When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen
+guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The
+country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!" challenged
+Herbert. "Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that
+will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
+and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.
+Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here
+in town and all of them undergraduates."
+
+"Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. "That's
+just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's
+the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
+theatricals!"
+
+"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage fright is,
+just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt
+cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a
+little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!"
+
+Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and
+with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now
+he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly
+about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of
+the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
+departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside
+the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the
+Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of
+Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower
+House was still sitting.
+
+"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that is risky,
+that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
+you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"
+
+Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+
+"Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never reads
+anything! Go on!"
+
+"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what else is
+most talked about?" He answered his own question. "The landing of the
+Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book
+in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would
+happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just
+where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of
+soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?"
+
+"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy Scouts would
+fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!"
+
+"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
+"How?" he demanded breathlessly. "How are we to do it? It would take
+hundreds of men."
+
+"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car. I
+thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German
+uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out
+how prepared you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now
+that you wanted a chance to go to jail--"
+
+"What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.
+
+"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.
+
+"We?" demanded Herbert. "Are you in this?"
+
+"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private invasion! I'm
+letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be
+any invasion!"
+
+The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
+nodded.
+
+"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What's your
+plan?"
+
+In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
+slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
+indignation.
+
+"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he demanded. "Do you
+suppose for one minute I will allow--"
+
+His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
+
+"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on, Ford," he
+said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us."
+
+Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
+miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
+misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and
+on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
+occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
+at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route
+by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
+forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
+chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
+the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
+of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half
+Inch" road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
+
+At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
+numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had
+come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they
+were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent
+head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
+In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even
+more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-master, a leader
+of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his
+station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf
+bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the
+intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
+their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map
+fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked
+it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes
+scrawled roughly in pencil. With an expression that no longer was that
+of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and then slipped
+into the empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
+a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl
+presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It was open so
+that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident
+the tallest of the three strangers was an American.
+
+"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been playing hob
+with my map?"
+
+For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with
+disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a
+glance, he signified the waiter.
+
+"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club asked us
+to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
+petrol."
+
+The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance,
+he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the
+windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray
+stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret,
+he glanced carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
+eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+
+In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long
+lines of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull
+of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a
+black leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+
+In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+
+"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
+There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight
+for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!"
+
+At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the
+three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear,
+of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
+gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
+way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he
+again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed
+fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
+Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these
+the sea was empty.
+
+By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
+off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
+Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman
+on his rounds, to the driver of the char a banc. He had been a year in
+Cromer and was well known and well liked.
+
+Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand,
+the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees.
+Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding.
+Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding
+path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the
+bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
+But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his
+heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
+
+Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn.
+In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there
+now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a
+kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a
+new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on
+the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl
+drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
+
+"I have been in constant communication," said the man with the beard.
+"They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly
+from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you
+to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last
+edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final
+advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
+know the moment has come!"
+
+As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens
+where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with
+pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High
+above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had
+served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
+balls.
+
+"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at their posts.
+They are fiddling while England falls!"
+
+Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
+about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
+around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
+was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
+were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms,
+and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
+Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
+
+"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
+Leute?" he demanded.
+
+"You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I am a trifle
+'ard of 'earing."
+
+The soldier addressed him in English.
+
+"What is the name of this village?" he demanded.
+
+Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
+recalled its name with difficulty.
+
+"Have you seen any of our people?"
+
+With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
+
+"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights, and remain
+indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
+Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe. "May I lock
+in the pigs first, sir?"
+
+One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two
+others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still
+standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he
+should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
+
+The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+
+"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had to pick out
+the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
+better pack up and go home."
+
+"The village inn is still open," said Ford. "We'll close It."
+
+They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles
+on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two
+fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose
+to the occasion.
+
+"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come tumbling
+into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
+fellow, my lad, or--"
+
+The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
+interrupted her sharply.
+
+"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You are
+prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
+If you into the street go, we will shoot!"
+
+He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that
+the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one
+shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
+
+"You ass!" muttered the tall German. "Get out!"
+
+As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
+shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
+later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
+
+"That will hold Stiffkey for a while!" said Ford. "Now, back to the
+car."
+
+But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive
+figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted
+cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
+
+"The constable!" whispered Herbert. "He must see us, but he mustn't
+speak to us."
+
+For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the
+street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken
+alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes
+later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode
+slowly into Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The
+driver of the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to
+his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
+
+"Mr. Policeman," he began; "when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
+in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward
+the beach. What's the idea--manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--"
+
+"Yes, sir," the policeman assured him promptly; "I saw them. It's
+manoeuvres, sir. Territorials."
+
+"They didn't look like Territorials," objected the chauffeur. "They
+looked like Germans."
+
+Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal
+a grin.
+
+"Just Territorials, sir," he protested soothingly; "skylarking maybe,
+but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em."
+
+A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+
+"I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's
+serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast
+Guard."
+
+The constable considered deeply.
+
+"I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard," he protested;
+"not at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
+gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
+your cards--"
+
+"Ye gods!" cried the man in the rear of the car. "Go on!" he commanded.
+
+As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
+
+"What's the use!" he protested. "You couldn't wake these people with
+dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home."
+
+"They little know of England who only Stiffkey know," chanted the
+chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
+live wire!"
+
+Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
+job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
+of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road--and in the
+light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across
+the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was
+followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+
+"Put out that light," he commanded. "Go to your home and tell no one
+what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot.
+Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road."
+
+The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed
+his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding
+over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.
+Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear--fear of
+laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
+silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he
+had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably
+informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney,
+sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the
+gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer
+and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
+on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud.
+As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car
+farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained
+to Ford, were intended to give "verisimilitude to an otherwise bald
+and unconvincing narrative." And the sighing of the bullets gave young
+Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he was not the
+victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his
+feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an hour into the main street of
+Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so
+completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His
+head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager.
+A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer
+pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and then
+closing in his wake.
+
+"Have you seen any--any soldiers?" he demanded.
+
+"German soldiers!" Ford answered. "They tried to catch us, but when I
+saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and--"
+
+"How many--and where?"
+
+"A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
+didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
+better telephone the garrison, and--"
+
+"Thank you!" snapped the elderly gentleman. "I happen to be in command
+of this district. What are your names?"
+
+Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+
+"I've no time for that!" he called. "We've got to warn every coast town
+in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!"
+
+As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+
+"We've got them guessing," he said. "Now, what we want is a live wire,
+some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
+countryside."
+
+"Looks ahead there," said Birrell, "as though it hadn't gone to bed."
+
+Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
+lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, "trippers"
+in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to
+witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their
+escorts, shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion
+sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
+
+"What's this tale about Germans?" he demanded jocularly.
+
+"You can see their lights from the beach," said Ford. "They've landed
+two regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut
+all the wires south."
+
+The proprietor refused to be "had."
+
+"Let 'em all come!" he mocked.
+
+"All right," returned Ford. "Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
+Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
+Germans back! Gangway," he shouted, and the car shot forward. "We warned
+you," he called, "And it's up to you to--"
+
+His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
+with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated
+cheer.
+
+Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his
+seat.
+
+"This thing is going to fail!" he cried petulantly. "They don't believe
+us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--in a dozen places."
+
+"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman. "Now, if
+this had happened in my native land--"
+
+He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that
+spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past
+and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their
+head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed
+in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could
+find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death
+were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
+into the night.
+
+"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop? As I said
+before, what we want is a live one."
+
+Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+
+"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of a mile from
+here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
+the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his
+life."
+
+The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
+when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw
+three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat
+helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an anaemic, pale-faced youth
+without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply
+in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+
+In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. "You are a prisoner," he
+said. "We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
+out!"
+
+As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
+the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument.
+Ford flung his rifle upon it.
+
+"No, you don't!" he growled. "Get out!"
+
+With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
+
+"My pay--my month's pay?" he stammered. "Can I take It?"
+
+The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+
+"Take it and get out," Ford commanded.
+
+With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
+pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the
+papers inside.
+
+"Quick!" cried Ford.
+
+The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake,
+and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre
+issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders,
+Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the
+window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the
+tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to
+shout: "Don't touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a message
+through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!"
+
+For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his
+heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm
+raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward
+across the table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the
+circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
+
+When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Your last remark," he said, "was that what we wanted was a live one."
+
+"Don't mention it!" said Ford. "He jammed that gun half down my throat.
+I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?"
+
+"According to the route we mapped out this afternoon," said Herbert, "We
+are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse
+and Weybourne, but--"
+
+"Not with me!" exclaimed Birrell fiercely. "Those towns have been tipped
+off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
+death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
+Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
+believe him, and they'll call out the navy."
+
+Herbert consulted his map.
+
+"There is a Coast Guard," he said, "stationed just the other side of
+Morston. And," he added fervently, "let us hope he's lonely."
+
+They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
+coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars,
+nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped
+out upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon
+fires burning fiercely.
+
+Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+
+"Since seeing those fires," he explained, "I feel a strange reluctance
+about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard."
+
+"Coast Guards don't shoot!" mocked Birrell. "They only look at the
+clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able
+to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope."
+
+The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
+cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
+cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
+showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
+
+"We must pass in single file in front of that light," whispered Ford,
+"And then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the
+devil!"
+
+"I'm on in that last scene," growled Herbert.
+
+"Only," repeated Ford with emphasis, "We must be sure he has seen us."
+
+Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars,
+many flashes, many bullets.
+
+"He's seen us!" yelled Birrell.
+
+After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier
+fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from
+the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed
+his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he
+proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
+emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to
+sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of
+a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.
+
+After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
+length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
+last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
+painfully.
+
+"What happened to Herbert?" panted Ford.
+
+"I don't know," gasped Birrell, "When I saw him last he was diving over
+the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?"
+
+"About twenty!" groaned the American, "And, besides being dead, I am
+severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time
+I hit a rock!"
+
+A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
+head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water,
+and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and
+fell into his golf clothes.
+
+"Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform," he cried, "can have
+mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway."
+
+The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles
+and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open
+road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris
+tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car,
+turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror
+to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a
+regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the "double." An
+officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
+
+"I'll have to commandeer this," he said. "Run back to Cromer. Don't
+crush my men, but go like the devil!"
+
+"We heard firing here," explained the officer at the Coast Guard
+station. "The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen.
+They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel
+walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,"
+exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if you are the three gentlemen who
+first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the
+other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names."
+
+Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
+discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst
+might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably
+were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been
+returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had
+been held up by the Germans.
+
+"You were lucky to escape," said the officer "And in keeping on to give
+warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
+extremely well."
+
+Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence.
+With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car
+through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were
+banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+
+"Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!" exclaimed Ford
+admiringly.
+
+"MY regiment!" snorted the officer. "You've passed through five
+regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places.
+They're everywhere!" he cried jubilantly.
+
+"And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires," exclaimed
+Ford.
+
+"That's what the Germans think," said the officer. "It's working like
+a clock," he cried happily. "There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they
+got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a
+wave, on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government
+took over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down
+in London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
+Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
+them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
+eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
+the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
+sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And
+on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast
+alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from
+Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H.
+A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns
+spread out over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They
+thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another
+surprise party!"
+
+On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
+the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
+and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon,
+the clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command
+raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless
+fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The
+night had been turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like
+the eyes of those who had passed through an earthquake, of those who
+looked upon the burning of San Francisco, upon the destruction of
+Messina.
+
+"We were betrayed, general," whispered the head-waiter.
+
+"We were betrayed, baron," replied the bearded one.
+
+"But you were in time to warn the flotilla."
+
+With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+
+"The last message I received over the wireless," he said, "before I
+destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
+movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And," added the general, "The
+English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept
+that explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history.
+Return to the hotel," he commanded, "And in two months you can rejoin
+your regiment."
+
+On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map
+of Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that
+was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: "Lester Ford, our London
+correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
+warn the English people."
+
+On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared
+this paragraph:
+
+"The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son
+of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell--both of Balliol College,
+Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
+These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
+infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
+authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
+people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful."
+
+A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
+
+"Shall we, or shall we not," asked Herbert, "tell my uncle that we
+three, and we three alone, were the invaders?"
+
+"That's hardly correct," said Ford, "as we now know there were two
+hundred thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore."
+
+"I vote we don't tell him," said Birrell. "Let him think with everybody
+else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon
+and gave the show away. If we talk," he argued, "We'll get credit for a
+successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
+saved England. I'm content to let it go at that."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company.
+The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the
+New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the
+little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in
+railroad tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate
+as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these
+different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the
+sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman.
+But David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he even
+succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as
+demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out
+of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly
+because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a
+great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to
+possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather
+is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the
+possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight.
+He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
+existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a doctor
+in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David
+emerged as a Son of Washington.
+
+It was sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear
+a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary
+ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
+graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a
+person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at
+Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on
+moving to New York, his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not
+affect his record. To enter a society founded on heredity, the important
+thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him,
+David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors.
+He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
+without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find
+himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid
+salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in
+Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of "Neck
+or Nothing" Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a
+man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. David's life had
+lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the
+big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his
+two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+
+The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said,
+"All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+great-great dad ever do for you?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said David stiffly, "he fought in the War of the
+Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England;
+he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free
+republic."
+
+"Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that," protested Wyckoff,
+"because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about
+it in a book."
+
+"I am not grudging glory to others," returned David; "I am only saying I
+am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist."
+
+Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+frame that folded like a concertina.
+
+"I don't want to be a descendant," he said; "I'd rather be an ancestor.
+Look at those." Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with
+the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at
+the children.
+
+"When I'm married," he stammered, and at the words he blushed, "I hope
+to be an ancestor."
+
+"If you're thinking of getting married," said Wyckoff, "you'd better
+hope for a raise in salary."
+
+The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not
+the grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative
+David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to
+attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to
+erect monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
+joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones;
+to inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those
+present at the annual "banquet" at Delmonico's. In order that when he
+opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society
+his office address.
+
+In these communications he was always addressed as "Dear Compatriot,"
+and never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift
+him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to
+things uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know
+what an aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an
+aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
+overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
+he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the
+blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
+easily with a word could I crush them!"
+
+But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button.
+They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+liable to give that impression.
+
+When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
+person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss
+Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
+prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
+figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
+something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
+accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
+Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
+when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
+go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
+from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
+
+The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
+great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
+as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
+another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
+to achieve glory for himself.
+
+From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
+person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
+The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
+raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
+of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
+sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
+with awe, touched her imagination.
+
+"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If you're
+a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."
+
+"I know I'm not worthy of you," David sighed.
+
+"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied indignantly.
+"It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of
+your grandpa Hiram!"
+
+"But HOW?" complained David. "What chance has a twenty-five dollar a
+week clerk--"
+
+It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of
+Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+
+"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba and
+help free it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I
+know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill."
+
+"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what have
+the American rebels ever done for me?"
+
+"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be selling
+automatic punches."
+
+"There's your trouble," declared Emily "You lack self-confidence. You're
+too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
+yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
+You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
+the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
+war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!"
+
+Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+
+"Emily," he said, "you're going to be awfully disappointed in me."
+
+Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But
+when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+
+"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a career, and
+one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him."
+
+"I've often wished you would," said David.
+
+"Would what? Run your career for you?"
+
+"No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so."
+
+"Maybe I'd like you better," said Emily, "if you weren't so darned
+polite."
+
+A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a
+step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David
+was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted.
+Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She
+did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in
+the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
+that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days--at
+least she did not count them aloud.
+
+David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she
+was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
+ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
+Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
+her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
+the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
+It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
+him.
+
+The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
+to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
+and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons.
+A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
+Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+
+And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
+manner.
+
+On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
+leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute,
+and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
+Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
+Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
+to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
+when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
+dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
+back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
+find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
+In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+
+There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
+he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a
+shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in
+mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
+and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down
+under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train
+or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched
+a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead
+trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was
+not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of
+the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the
+train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
+himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For,
+in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would
+have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his
+companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+
+"I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
+surrounded by alligators."
+
+And then he found he was not alone.
+
+In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and
+the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above
+the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of
+a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had
+been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the
+clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou
+broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf
+an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his
+pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the
+company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure.
+He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug,
+something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No
+lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks
+were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from
+her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
+uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to
+the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not
+considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.
+The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who
+means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high
+boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his
+movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily
+excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug. "How'd you get
+here?"
+
+"I walked," said David.
+
+"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.
+
+"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put me off
+about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going
+to wait here for the next train north."
+
+The little man laughed mockingly.
+
+"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just walk
+away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+gesture.
+
+"You walk!" he commanded.
+
+"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.
+
+As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+tug.
+
+"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You WAIT, that's
+all, you WAIT!"
+
+David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
+property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station
+the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he
+judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks
+and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself
+hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any
+other person.
+
+"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers. They're
+certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+of a perfectly harmless stranger?"
+
+Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+
+"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly? as though in
+answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard
+the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his
+course of action.
+
+The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His
+plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though
+he had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only
+stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his
+arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in
+amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred
+yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
+head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it
+blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear
+of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a
+train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as
+unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly
+tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
+
+"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.
+
+He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to
+a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the
+ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls
+and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+
+So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note
+the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little
+man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore
+no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters
+of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his
+right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that
+moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man
+carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest
+man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his
+beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild
+moonlight it flamed like a torch.
+
+"What's your business?" demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+
+"I came here," began David, "to wait for a train--"
+
+The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+
+"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+wait for a train!"
+
+In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+"Don't you lie to ME!" he bullied. "Do you know who I am? Do you know
+WHO you're up against? I'm--"
+
+The barkeeper person interrupted.
+
+"Never mind who you are," he said. "We know that. Find out who HE is."
+
+David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?" he protested. "I'm a
+travelling man--"
+
+"You won't travel any to-night," mocked the red-haired one. "You've seen
+what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!"
+
+As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
+riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
+
+"Tie him to a tree!" he suggested.
+
+"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him back by
+the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any."
+
+"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who do you
+think I am?"
+
+"We know who you are," shouted the fiery-headed one. "You're a
+blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+whichever you are you don't get away to-night!"
+
+David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+
+"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you like
+it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!"
+
+Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting
+to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head
+rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance,
+and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
+"Nine--ten--and OUT!"
+
+When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of
+a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf
+cap who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed
+wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw
+that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
+with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side
+the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with
+stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+
+"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we drop the
+pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him."
+
+David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as
+large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+
+"What happened to me?" he demanded.
+
+"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It was a
+raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad."
+
+"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+done? Who were those men who--"
+
+From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
+engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
+
+"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going ashore.
+Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as--"
+
+But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws
+an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into
+the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the
+fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
+
+It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby
+hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph
+to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+
+David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open
+sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a
+policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and
+held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by
+the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great
+was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's
+ear.
+
+"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for us for
+three weeks, and now," he shrieked exultingly, "the old man's going to
+give her a race for it."
+
+From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting
+beyond his control.
+
+"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"
+
+"You don't!"
+
+"When he drops the pilot, don't I--"
+
+"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got to stick
+by the boat. So have you."
+
+David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+face.
+
+"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are you?
+What boat is this?"
+
+In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down
+his spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
+
+"THE THREE FRIENDS!" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a
+pirate! Where're we going?
+
+"To Cuba!"
+
+David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+
+"What for?" he shrieked.
+
+The young man regarded him coldly.
+
+"To pick bananas," he said.
+
+"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--"
+
+David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged.
+Like a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to
+stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did
+not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he
+would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to
+David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots.
+Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish,
+rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the
+waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight
+the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the
+tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the
+slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a
+hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had
+found a congenial spirit, he shouted Joyfully, "She's fired two blanks
+at us!" he cried; "now she's firing cannon-balls!"
+
+"Thank God," whispered David; "perhaps she'll sink us!"
+
+But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
+as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
+those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries
+of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching
+head, of the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered
+him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull
+consciousness of his position. At such moments he added to his misery by
+speculating upon the other misfortunes that might have befallen him
+on shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and
+married--probably a navy officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett
+and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had
+caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as
+a defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were
+being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
+passed; to David it seemed many ages.
+
+On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
+motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and
+fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought
+him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a
+bowl of smoking soup.
+
+David considered it a doubtful attention.
+
+But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+with these pirates?"
+
+The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not mixed
+up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+captain."
+
+"The barkeeper with the derby hat?" said David.
+
+"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and he's the
+greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway,
+and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about
+this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found
+out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story
+either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest,
+and he's promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I
+can write as much about it as I darn please."
+
+"Then you're a reporter?" said David.
+
+"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've always
+dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose,
+I can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!"
+
+"And you LIKE this?" groaned David.
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've a
+stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and lowered his voice. "Now,
+here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you read about in
+the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!"
+
+Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+
+"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If they
+knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls
+himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida
+coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is
+a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English
+officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen
+battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the
+red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans.
+The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here
+to work the machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do
+will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."
+
+A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
+Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+
+Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
+of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition,
+and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats
+she was preparing to defend herself.
+
+"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and they're
+going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+you."
+
+David shook his head feebly.
+
+"I can't move!" he protested. "I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba."
+
+For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+unintelligent.
+
+"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together
+in his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never did, either, but I've put
+hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work."
+
+"What's wrong with it?" said Carr.
+
+Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+
+Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+saw it first.
+
+"Land!" he hailed.
+
+The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+rose in a fierce chorus.
+
+"Cuba libre!" they yelled.
+
+The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken
+with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each
+topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like
+columns of marble rose the royal palms.
+
+"You MUST look!" Carr entreated David, "it's just as it is in the
+pictures!
+
+"Then I don't have to look," groaned David.
+
+The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
+sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore
+of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
+waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
+voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
+patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
+their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition
+of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box
+of shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+
+"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse Harry,
+"we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask," he cried
+mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!"
+
+His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three
+Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal
+questions or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug
+was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she
+raced in pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there
+came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+
+With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell
+into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he
+tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and
+gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship
+was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+
+Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+feet splashed into a wave.
+
+From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+removed from any of the greater emotions.
+
+"It's no use!" he protested. "They can't do! It's not connected!"
+
+"WHAT'S not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
+half-dragged him to his feet.
+
+"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he
+shouted, "or I'll--"
+
+David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on
+the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness
+of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
+through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
+come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
+shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
+more was a sane, sound young man.
+
+With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism.
+He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+
+Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
+his work was good.
+
+They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
+to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
+continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
+feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
+pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.
+
+He shouted with delight.
+
+"I've got it working," he yelled.
+
+He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
+of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
+tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
+splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
+stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
+distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
+sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
+in volleys.
+
+To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived
+it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
+made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
+box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click
+as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against
+the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
+gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
+flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
+forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
+engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
+unceasingly:
+
+"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the
+voice was his own.
+
+The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+
+"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"
+
+For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself
+aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun
+served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight
+of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the
+limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made,
+warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
+
+They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
+and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
+straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished
+reading aloud his account of the engagement.
+
+"You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud
+author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind.
+You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
+wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
+That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
+took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
+Bay."
+
+Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainty did, Dave,"
+protested the great man, "I seen you when you done it!"
+
+At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+spread across the map of the United States.
+
+Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower
+Broadway tendered congratulations.
+
+"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would protest
+and wink heavily. "Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd
+no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him
+go, would we?" Then again they would wink heavily. "I suppose you know,"
+they would say, "that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene,
+who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'" And
+then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and
+exclaim: "Here's to Cuba libre!"
+
+When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the
+Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and
+all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+
+And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her
+best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as
+Burdett and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+
+She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+"David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll never, never do it again!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care
+in the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to the left; if
+it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely
+the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled
+broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved
+his fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over
+Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of
+verandas, from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces.
+Empaled on their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
+languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
+sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been
+a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he
+would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer
+bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders
+most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried
+treasure, the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really
+asking a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+
+Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
+Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
+pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen
+Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the "season" opened; when she
+departed the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of
+stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she
+played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines
+her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded
+youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
+Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with
+the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the
+matrons. To each her manner was always as though she were of their age.
+When she met the latter on the beach road, she greeted them riotously
+and joyfully by their maiden names. And the matrons liked it. In
+comparison the deference shown them by the other young women did not so
+strongly appeal.
+
+"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them, "and
+Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were
+twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside
+her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat.
+Why does he never wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or
+because Helen drives so fast he can't keep it on?"
+
+"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new arrival.
+"That might help some."
+
+"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never leaves her."
+
+This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them
+so many times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf
+together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way
+to look. But they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not
+to see them, Helen shouted at you. She made you feel you had been caught
+doing something indelicate and underhand.
+
+The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young
+Latimer. So many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in that
+inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange
+young man who apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends
+for years had learned they must remain friends, could not hope to escape
+criticism. Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston
+and Harvard, but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at
+both the law and the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully;
+but it was rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that
+he played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as for
+exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey and soda at two in
+the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark: "I find it does
+not tend toward efficiency." It was a remark that irritated and, to the
+minds of the men at the country clubs, seemed to place him. They liked
+to play polo because they liked to play polo, not because it kept their
+muscles limber and their brains clear.
+
+"Some Western people were telling me," said one of the matrons, "that he
+wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is very ambitious
+and very selfish."
+
+"Any man is selfish," protested one who for years had attempted to marry
+Helen, "who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to
+be a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one
+lose sympathy."
+
+Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship
+of Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been working overtime and was
+treating himself to his first vacation in years--he was young--he was
+in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either, that
+Helen Page was happy. Those who had known her since she was a child
+could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore
+her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings
+to old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses.
+She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him
+she liked better to be with him than with any one else,--it would have
+been difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer
+colony,--but she explained that that did not mean she would marry him.
+She announced this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She
+announced it in what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly
+that she did not intend to marry for several years.
+
+This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so
+eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep her own. She as
+though she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to
+sea. When, at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer
+had paused to catch his, she shook her head miserably.
+
+"The trouble is," she complained, "there are so many think the same
+thing!"
+
+"What do they think?" demanded Latimer.
+
+"That they want to marry me."
+
+Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+
+"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this important
+difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE
+you as I do!"
+
+"That's ANOTHER thing they think," sighed Helen.
+
+"I'm sorry to be so unoriginal," snapped Latimer.
+
+"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen. "I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not
+unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to take it to
+heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable
+a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind
+whether or not she wants to marry him. But when there's so many she just
+stops worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all."
+
+"ALL!" exclaimed Latimer. "It is incredible that I have undervalued you,
+but may I ask how many there are?"
+
+"I don't know," sighed Helen miserably. "There seems to be something
+about me that--"
+
+"There is!" interrupted Latimer. "I've noticed it. You don't have to
+tell me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult
+habit to break!"
+
+It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least,
+not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+
+One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on
+which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored
+a forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked
+the sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played
+hide and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this
+place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back
+to a tree and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose
+works he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to
+them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into
+his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and
+mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
+
+But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible
+for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: "Please
+excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider--" and the spell
+was gone.
+
+One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the "Oxford
+Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW?"
+
+"I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy;
+he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and
+he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday--"
+
+"I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer, "or in
+what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning
+man myself!"
+
+Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. "Men get over THAT kind of
+drowning," she said.
+
+"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer. "And don't tell me," he
+cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all say."
+
+"If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen. "If one could only be sure
+that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him
+the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that,
+it would help you a lot in making up your mind."
+
+"There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is to
+marry him. I mean, of course," he corrected hastily, "to marry me."
+
+One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the
+man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the
+village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their
+hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the
+ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the
+world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind
+caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it
+tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand
+a tiny oar and smiling happily.
+
+"He has a friendly smile," said Helen; "I think he likes us."
+
+"He is on guard," Latimer explained. "I put him there to warn us if
+any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away
+trespassers. Do you understand?" he demanded of the sailorman. "Your
+duty is to protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must
+guard this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You
+never sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She
+wrongs you. It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure
+when I look at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways
+alike. I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I
+never sleep, at least not since I met her."
+
+From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman
+and frowned.
+
+"It is not a happy simile," she objected. "For one thing, a sailorman
+has a sweetheart in every port."
+
+"Wait and see," said Latimer.
+
+"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on
+earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less
+CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--"
+
+"Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. "You come back here,"
+he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the winds have
+beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you
+will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently,
+proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because those who are your slaves, those
+who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if
+you drive them away!"
+
+The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about
+in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs,
+his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one
+blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
+
+When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it
+was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say
+good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to
+say that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think
+that a man such as he believed you were so fine a person, and during the
+coming winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her
+to be, but which, she assured him, she was not.
+
+Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to
+which she said: "Oh, indeed no!" and then, as though he were giving her
+a cue, he said: "Good-by!" But she did not take up his cue, and they
+shook hands. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
+
+"Surely, now that the parting has come," he assured himself, "she will
+make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total'
+under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me
+through the long winter."
+
+But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that
+he really forced her to say: "Don't miss your train," which kind
+consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor,
+indeed, later did she herself recall the remark with satisfaction.
+
+With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine suitor
+attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they had over Latimer
+was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at dinners,
+dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawing-room. Like any sailor
+from the Charlestown Navy Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk
+beside her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch
+dates and initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one
+side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when
+the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were
+beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known
+her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and
+friends in common; they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to
+her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests,
+and he was forced to choose between telling her of his lawsuits and
+his efforts in politics or of his love. To write to her of his affairs
+seemed wasteful and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had
+received what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he
+wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send you." Had
+he known it, his best letters were those he did not send. When in the
+morning mail Helen found his familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand
+out like the face of a friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon
+the letter, read it, and, assured of his love, would go on her way
+rejoicing. But when in the morning there was no letter, she wondered
+why, and all day she wondered why. And the next morning when again
+she was disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and
+speculations concerning him shut out every other interest. He became a
+perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind. And then he
+would spoil it all by writing her that he loved her and that of all the
+women in the world she was the only one. And, reassured upon that point,
+Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.
+
+But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had
+seen him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more gratefully,
+than that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had walked that
+same afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude
+he was first, and there was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she
+was ready to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him.
+But as yet she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she
+was, life was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited
+her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the object
+of each seemed to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day.
+Her nature was such that to make her happy was not difficult. Some of
+her devotees could do it by giving her a dance and letting her invite
+half of Boston, and her kid brother could do it by taking her to
+Cambridge to watch the team at practice.
+
+She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she
+was happy because she loved some one and that particular some one loved
+her. Her being "free" was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she
+thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered
+that, so far from being free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and
+soul.
+
+But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+
+Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch. The
+sun had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen
+upon his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the
+north, he spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan the surrounding
+landscape that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor,
+indeed, did any one attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret
+hiding-place, but the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him
+away. He was always triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing
+rabbits he was a thing of terror. Once, when the air was still, an
+impertinent crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and with
+scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue
+reefer, his red cheeks. But when the wind suddenly drove past them the
+sailorman sprang into action and the crow screamed in alarm and darted
+away. So, alone and with no one to come to his relief, the sailorman
+stood his watch. About him the branches bent with the snow, the icicles
+froze him into immobility, and in the tree-tops strange groanings filled
+him with alarms. But undaunted, month after month, alert and smiling,
+he waited the return of the beautiful lady and of the tall young man who
+had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy eyes.
+
+Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was
+the best thing that could come into his life. But to sit down and lament
+over the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite
+expression, "tend toward efficiency." He removed from his sight the
+three pictures of her he had cut from illustrated papers, and ceased to
+write to her.
+
+In his last letter he said: "I have told you how it is, and that is how
+it is always going to be. There never has been, there never can be any
+one but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought
+out every week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an
+advertisement of a motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be
+cheapened, to be subjected to slights and silence. If ever you should
+want it, it is yours. It is here waiting. But you must tell me so. I
+have done everything a man can do to make you understand. But you do not
+want me or my love. And my love says to me: 'Don't send me there
+again to have the door shut in my face. Keep me with you to be your
+inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so it shall be."
+
+When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not
+know how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly she had
+grown very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in
+consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not
+see why the two hundred and forty-nine expected her to keep on doing
+exactly the same things she had been doing with delight for six months,
+and indeed for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer
+was there any pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer
+that she found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not
+arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He
+said that he would always love her, but how could she now know that?
+Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position
+which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to
+escape? Were this true, and she wrote and said all those things that
+were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him
+to her against his will? The love that once he had for her might no
+longer exist, and if, in her turn, she told him she loved him and had
+always loved him, might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel
+it was his duty to pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It
+was intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as day succeeded
+day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very
+unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen
+had none, and for her life became a game of putting little things
+together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make
+up each day. It was a dreary game.
+
+From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his
+own State, he was an "Insurgent" making a fight, the outcome of which
+was expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West.
+When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became
+a national figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next
+governor, promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to
+take him further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place
+even in his thoughts.
+
+At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her
+about her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only
+because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over
+her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence,
+as the leader and exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she
+no longer could pretend to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he
+belonged to all of them.
+
+Older men would say to her: "I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
+is he?"
+
+Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man
+who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or
+halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+
+She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down
+and needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she
+agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent
+her, for she knew wherever she went she must still force herself to
+go on putting one hour on top of another, until she had built up the
+inexorable and necessary twenty-four.
+
+When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning
+unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse the thin spring
+sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task.
+She assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming
+and Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled
+herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is
+a pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer
+had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+
+Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not
+to think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking hours. Should she,
+as it sometimes happened, dream of him--should she imagine they were
+again seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at
+fifty miles an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying
+past, with the wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts
+happiness and content--that would not be breaking her rule. If she
+dreamed of him, she could not be held responsible. She could only be
+grateful.
+
+And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came
+East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with
+a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of
+three cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party
+leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's country. He was due to speak
+in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to
+leave for the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the
+city. He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New
+York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that
+week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting
+cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward
+to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the
+time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more
+direct attacks upon her feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to
+remain until, on the first of May at midnight, he again would pass out
+of her life, maybe forever. No one saw in her going any significance.
+Spring had come, and in preparation for the summer season the house at
+Fair Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of
+some one of the Page family was easily explained.
+
+She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it
+herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if
+it would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the
+memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out
+by those of one summer, by those of one man. The natives greeted her
+joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the
+village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though
+they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she
+had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused
+her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and
+hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in
+the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively
+to his open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The
+golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where
+he always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds
+than to remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where
+the schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon;
+the wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the
+pond into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+
+On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places
+purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way. They no longer
+distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends,
+who had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
+
+But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the opening
+among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea--she could
+not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third day
+when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own
+accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And
+again from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked
+the sea, he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For
+hours, stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same
+branches patiently waiting.
+
+On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one
+enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred
+circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find
+there she could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown
+to her. She saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal.
+No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more
+poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no
+sign of his or of her former presence. Across the open space something
+had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place,
+a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that
+once had been brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She
+had but one desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her
+forever, to remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had
+remembered it, and as now she must always remember It. She turned softly
+on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.
+
+But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of
+wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the
+branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And
+at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a
+violent, joyous tattoo--a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the
+woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged
+wings.
+
+Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes--and beheld the sailorman.
+
+Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy,
+calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down
+at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's
+ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though
+Latimer stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no
+longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that
+brought to her peace, and pride, and happiness.
+
+"So long as I love this beautiful lady," had been his foolish words,
+"you will guard this place. It is a life sentence!"
+
+With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman
+stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a
+joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her
+hands and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
+
+An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair
+Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between
+his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by
+landing them in jail.
+
+At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark
+places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced
+against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
+beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of
+the one thing that could make his life worth living.
+
+And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat,
+the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at
+peace, his duty well performed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+
+When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
+life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he
+knew. Under the title of "Tales of the Yard" they were collected in book
+form, and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a
+reporter on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of
+which a reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in
+gathering news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines,
+and later in a book under the title of "Tales of the Streets." They also
+were well received.
+
+Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: "There
+are two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction--men of genius and
+reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way
+that he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe
+something he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a
+way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but
+if I had, that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling
+tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers;
+how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling
+has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how
+each of them feels. He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot
+do it because you are not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at
+college; and now that you are in the newspaper business all your tales
+are only of newspaper work. You merely report what you see. So, if you
+are doomed to write only of what you see, then the best thing for you to
+do is to see as many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life.
+You must progress. You must leave New York, and you had better go to
+London."
+
+"But on the Republic," Endicott pointed out, "I get a salary. And in
+London I should have to sweep a crossing."
+
+"Then," said the literary editor, "you could write a story about a man
+who swept a crossing."
+
+It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven
+Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the daughter
+of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one
+winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money,
+and that she possessed so much of it that, unless he could show some
+unusual quality of mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from
+his own point of view at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew
+that no one could love her as he did, that no one so truly wished for
+her happiness, or would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him
+it did not seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was
+not able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or her food, who would
+have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a
+hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in birth and education and
+charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he came from New
+York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen Carey he had with
+him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That was all he possessed in the
+world; and unless the magazines bought his stories there was no prospect
+of his getting any more.
+
+Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was
+easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to entertain
+modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated
+he could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough
+to be able to live there on three sovereigns a day you had first to
+spend so many five-pound notes in getting acquainted with London that
+there were no sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just
+enough money to buy him a second-class passage back to New York, and he
+was as far from Helen as ever.
+
+Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to
+marry. And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that when two
+people truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money
+or not. But when in London, with only a five-pound note, and face to
+face with the actual proposition of asking Helen Carey not only to marry
+him but to support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had
+supposed. He found money was many different things--it was self-respect,
+and proper pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking
+these things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not
+one for whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he
+knew how he loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she loved
+him. She always seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be
+explained in different ways. It might be that what was in her heart for
+him was really a sort of "old home week" feeling; that to her it was a
+relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to
+have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she
+was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking
+slang.
+
+The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a
+friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had sent him cards
+for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And
+Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with
+him in Hyde Park and through the National Galleries; and they had fed
+buns to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They
+thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed.
+Later they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because
+they were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have
+laughed.
+
+On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to bed with
+his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound note to last
+him until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now
+that he loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between
+them was liable to unseat his courage and his self-control. In London
+he could, each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning
+against the iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window.
+But, once on the other side of the ocean, that tender exercise must
+be abandoned. He must even consider her pursued by most attractive
+guardsmen, diplomats, and belted earls. He knew they could not love her
+as he did; he knew they could not love her for the reasons he loved her,
+because the fine and beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped
+they did not seek, and so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few
+thousand dollars, he must remain silent, must put from him the best that
+ever came into his life, must waste the wonderful devotion he longed
+to give, must starve the love that he could never summon for any other
+woman.
+
+On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and completely
+miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and unrefreshed.
+
+And then the miracle came.
+
+Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house
+where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his breakfast. As he
+placed the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though
+Prichard had said: "I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman
+who takes these rooms may not be so open-handed. He never locked up his
+cigars or his whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits
+me, except across the shoulders."
+
+Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved.
+In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+
+"How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?"
+
+"I wouldn't take such a liberty," protested Prichard. "Not with any of
+our gentlemen's clothes."
+
+"How did you know I was talking about clothes," demanded Philip. "You
+didn't say anything about clothes, did you?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I--"
+
+"Were you thinking of clothes?"
+
+"Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was," answered the valet.
+"Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new, I thought..."
+
+"It's mental telepathy," said Philip.
+
+"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Prichard.
+
+"You needn't wait," said Philip.
+
+The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning
+papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged
+into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded
+with people; and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every
+one at whom he looked began to talk aloud. Their lips did not move,
+nor did any sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken
+phrases of thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a
+crowd, snatches of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his
+debts; another of the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to
+his silk hat; another planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over
+a telegram he had but that moment received. To himself he kept repeating
+the words of the telegram--"No need to come, out of danger." To Philip
+the message came as clearly as though he were reading it from the folded
+slip of paper that the stranger clutched in his hand.
+
+Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might
+consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge from the crowded
+street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some
+unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with
+him, and he was inventing the phrases he seemed to hear, that he was
+attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent.
+But, whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative
+that he should at once get at the meaning of it.
+
+The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of
+stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and directly in
+front of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted.
+Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept
+repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or
+a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff?
+Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff
+Mary Queen of Scots would look ridiculous!"
+
+Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed
+she was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had distinguished
+the words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was
+going mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman
+should determine it. He advanced boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, "but I believe you are waiting for your maid
+Hudson?"
+
+As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in silence.
+
+"I only wish to make sure," continued Philip, "that you are she for whom
+I have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to be photographed
+in fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?"
+
+"Well?" assented the girl.
+
+"And you telephoned Hudson," he continued, "to bring you your muff."
+
+The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+
+"Oh!" she protested; "I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want
+my ruff."
+
+Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+
+"For the love of Heaven!" he exclaimed in horror; "it's true!"
+
+"What's true?" demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+
+"That I'm a mind reader," declared Philip. "I've read your mind! I can
+read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking now. You're
+thinking I'm mad!"
+
+The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a
+gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs to the studio.
+Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to
+explain? How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable?
+Besides, the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of
+one, he could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to
+his ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as,
+before that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal,
+he now could look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind. The
+thought was appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a key-hole.
+In his dismay his first idea was to seek medical advice--the best in
+London. He turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There,
+he determined, to the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his
+strange plight. For only as a misfortune did the miracle appear to him.
+But as he made his way through the streets his pace slackened.
+
+Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed
+this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as a madman?
+Might they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his
+liberty? At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of
+the miracle as a "power" had opened a new line of speculation. If this
+strange gift (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently)
+were concealed from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful
+purpose? For, among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not
+he--among all other men the only one able to read the minds of all
+other men--a god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length
+considering the possibilities that lay within him.
+
+It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments.
+If it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends
+avoid him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at
+the mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would
+lead to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might
+easily become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the
+present he had best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+
+As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded
+it with less aversion. He began to consider to what advantage he could
+place it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he
+might learn secrets leading to far-reaching results. To a statesman, to
+a financier, such a gift as he possessed would make him a ruler of men.
+Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how
+could he bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to
+marry Helen Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet
+men who possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions
+to them. And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds
+would tell him the truth.
+
+The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no
+better than reading other people's letters. But, he argued, the dishonor
+in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he
+used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit
+to others, was he not justified in trading on his superior equipment? He
+decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance
+with the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was
+determined to become rich. Did not the end justify the means? Certainly
+an all-wise Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to
+take her away from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them
+for one another, the all-wise Providence had overlooked the fact that
+she was rich and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently
+was now endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic
+and roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift
+that could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of
+Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building
+it in a hurry.
+
+From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady
+Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he
+turned in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the
+corridor of the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and
+fortune, and in reading their minds he might pass the time before
+luncheon with entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing
+Bruton Street trying to discover the principles of conduct that
+threatened to hamper his new power, he had found that in actual
+operation it was quite simple. He learned that his mind, in relation
+to other minds, was like the receiver of a wireless station with an
+unlimited field. For, while the wireless could receive messages only
+from those instruments with which it was attuned, his mind was in key
+with all other minds. To read the thoughts of another, he had only to
+concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut off the thoughts of
+that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts elsewhere. But also
+he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside the range of his
+physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what Helen Carey was
+at that moment thinking, there was no result. But when he asked, "Of
+what is that policeman on the corner thinking?" he was surprised to find
+that that officer of the law was formulating regulations to abolish the
+hobble skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+
+As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great
+distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the person of a
+young gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the
+source from which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a
+pink-cheeked, yellow-haired youth of extremely boyish appearance, and
+dressed as if for the race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish
+face wore an expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was
+gazing at a house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the street.
+And his thoughts were these: "She is the best that ever lived, and I am
+the most ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow
+stucco! Only now, when she has closed its doors to me, do I know how
+happy! If she would give me another chance, never again would I distress
+or deceive her."
+
+So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile
+of surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front
+of the house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young
+person. She was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of
+haunting beauty and innocence.
+
+"My wife!" exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he
+dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to a four-wheeler, was
+contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+
+With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house
+and disappeared.
+
+The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly.
+He shares the troubles of so many people that to the troubles of other
+people he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the
+family fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter,
+he acted quickly. Hardly had the door closed upon the young lady than
+he had mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he
+could not resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the
+outlawed husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from
+across the back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of
+his general appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to
+alter all of them, was quickly communicated to the American. They were
+thoughts of a nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily
+cut off all connection.
+
+As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly announced:
+
+"Her ladyship is not receiving."
+
+"Her ladyship will, I think, receive me," said Philip pleasantly, "when
+you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his lordship."
+
+From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall there
+issued a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with joy; and in
+the hall the noble lady instantly appeared.
+
+When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought had
+been, "Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!" Philip felt no
+embarrassment whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the
+erring but bitterly repentant husband; inside, her tenderest thoughts
+racing tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy child-wife begging to be
+begged to pardon.
+
+For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good
+manners, it was too easy.
+
+"I do not know you," said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she
+motioned to the butler to go away. "You must be one of his new friends."
+Her tone was one of envy.
+
+"Indeed, I am his newest friend," Philip assured her; "but I can safely
+say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are all of you!"
+
+The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she shook
+her head.
+
+"They tell me I must not believe him," she announced. "They tell me--"
+
+"Never mind what they tell you," commanded Philip. "Listen to ME. He
+loves you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks is the
+chance to tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at
+you, and not believe that he loves you! Let me," he begged, "bring him
+to you." He started from her when, remembering the somewhat violent
+thoughts of the youthful husband, he added hastily: "Or perhaps it would
+be better if you called him yourself."
+
+"Called him!" exclaimed the lady. "He is in Paris-at the races--with
+her!"
+
+"If they tell you that sort of thing," protested Philip indignantly,
+"you must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is not with her. There
+never was a her!"
+
+He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. "He is there--behind that
+ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell you that not only
+did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never do
+it again."
+
+The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more
+boldly showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over the scarlet
+geraniums, she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous.
+Philip bolted for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted
+down the steps, the youthful husband, in strides resembling those of an
+ostrich, shot past him. Philip did not cease running until he was well
+out of Berkeley Square. Then, not ill-pleased with the adventure, he
+turned and smiled back at the house of yellow stucco.
+
+"Bless you, my children," he murmured; "bless you!"
+
+He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter
+entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered around it
+a considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that
+stretched down the steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet
+in June, when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining gently,
+can mean only royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip
+halted. He remembered that for a few days the young King of Asturia and
+the Queen Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen
+the young man who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his
+own kingdom, Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+
+As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of
+those about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of pity for
+the exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross
+street, of pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the
+coachman of the court carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount
+of his Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as
+the warm sunshine.
+
+And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts was
+shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought
+of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was murder.
+
+"When they appear at the doorway," spoke the brain of the maniac, "I
+shall lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my head. I
+shall crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of
+these people into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVE--a martyr
+to the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!"
+
+Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a
+tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing close to
+the open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized
+him around the waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow.
+Philip's face, appearing over the man's shoulder, stared straight into
+that of the policeman.
+
+"He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!" yelled Philip. "I can hold him
+while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop it!" Philip turned
+upon the crowd. "Run! all of you!" he shouted. "Run like the devil!"
+
+At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young
+and beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that her robes of
+mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Go back, sir!" warned Philip. "He means to kill you!"
+
+At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed
+helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang protectingly
+in front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now
+holding the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head;
+Philip's arms, like a lariat, were wound around his chest; and from his
+pocket the first policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of
+the size of a glass fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved
+his free hand warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no
+one remaining to observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling
+and biting in the grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other
+policeman unhappily holding the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought to
+escape into the Ritz. But the young King broke through the circle of
+attendants and stopped him.
+
+"I must thank you," said the boy eagerly; "and I wish you to tell me how
+you came to suspect the man's purpose."
+
+Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of fiction, began
+to improvise fluently.
+
+"To learn their purpose, sir," he said, "is my business. I am of the
+International Police, and in the secret service of your Majesty."
+
+"Then I must know your name," said the King, and added with a dignity
+that was most becoming, "You will find we are not ungrateful."
+
+Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+
+"I said in your secret service," he repeated. "Did even your Majesty
+know me, my usefulness would be at an end." He pointed toward the two
+policemen. "If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the
+men to reward."
+
+He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into
+the hall and on into the corridor.
+
+The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the
+heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they
+had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still
+ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their
+music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two
+distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were
+talking in leisurely whispers.
+
+One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a
+reporter had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on matters
+concerning the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a Pennsylvania
+Dutchman from Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the
+night shift in the same mills he now controlled. But with a roar and
+a spectacular flash, not unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he had
+soared to fame and fortune. He recognized Philip as one of the bright
+young men of the Republic; but in his own opinion he was far too
+self-important to betray that fact.
+
+Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in
+imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what
+he knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While
+waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip,
+from where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust
+and of the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features
+and a pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American
+many-time millionaire on having that morning come into possession of
+a rare and valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently
+discovered portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+
+Philip sighed enviously.
+
+"Fancy," he thought, "owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to
+yourself! It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be poor!"
+
+The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in tones
+of rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and solemnity.
+
+"I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust," he said. "In no gallery in
+Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another Velasquez. This
+is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing
+her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon
+as it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh,
+every Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too.
+For it is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain,
+Mr. Faust! What a bargain!"
+
+To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced
+in the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard, frowned
+importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his
+voice.
+
+"Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron," he said, "that costs three
+hundred thousand dollars!"
+
+Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly
+that Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So he
+obligingly assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle
+simulations of surprise, awe, and envy.
+
+The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his features.
+
+Mr. Faust continued. "If you will come upstairs," he said to the
+picture-dealer, "I will give you your check; and then I should like to
+drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture."
+
+"I am sorry," the Baron said, "but I have had it moved to my art gallery
+to be packed."
+
+"Then let's go to the gallery," urged the patron of art. "We've just
+time before lunch." He rose to his feet, and on the instant the soul of
+the picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+
+In actual words he said: "The picture is already boxed and in its lead
+coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry." But
+his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: "Fancy my letting this
+vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old
+masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames
+and canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van
+Dycks, the new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own
+copy of Velasquez next to the one exactly like it--the one MacMillan
+finished yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in
+a convent, we shall 'discover' it."
+
+Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the
+situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud. The two men,
+who had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at
+nothing, turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+
+"Pardon me," he said to Faust, "but you spoke so loud I couldn't help
+overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter on the
+Republic."
+
+The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+
+"Really!" he protested irritably, "you reporters butt in everywhere. No
+public man is safe. Is there no place we can go where you fellows won't
+annoy us?"
+
+"You can go to the devil for all I care," said Philip, "or even to
+Pittsburgh!"
+
+He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail,
+and moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the reporter would escape
+him, hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.
+
+"However, since you've learned so much," he said, "I'll tell you the
+whole of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of international
+importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?"
+
+"Do you?" asked Philip.
+
+The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+
+"I think I do," he said. "And to prove it, I shall tell you something
+that will be news to you. I have just bought a Velasquez that I am going
+to place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars."
+
+Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad
+as he had expected.
+
+"Now, I shall tell you something," he said, "that will be news to you.
+You are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez than this hair
+oil is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars."
+
+"How dare you!" shouted Faust. "Are you mad?"
+
+The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+
+"Who is this insolent one?" he sputtered.
+
+"I will make you a sporting proposition," said Philip. "You can take it,
+or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will drive to this man's
+studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on
+its way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen
+other 'old masters' half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm
+right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE
+YOU TO HIS STUDIO!"
+
+"Indeed, I will not," roared the German. "It would be to insult myself."
+
+"It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too," said Philip.
+
+"How dare you insult the Baron?" demanded Faust. "What makes you
+think--"
+
+"I don't think, I know!" said Philip. "For the price of a taxi-cab fare
+to Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds."
+
+"We will all three go at once," cried the German. "My car is outside.
+Wait here. I will have it brought to the door?"
+
+Faust protested indignantly.
+
+"Do not disturb yourself, Baron," he said; "just because a fresh
+reporter--"
+
+But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They
+saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and
+shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.
+
+"That's the last you'll see of him," said Philip.
+
+"His actions are certainly peculiar," gasped the millionaire. "He did
+not wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think, after all, I
+had better go to Tate Street."
+
+"Do so," said Philip, "and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars,
+and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me here at lunch.
+If I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds."
+
+"You should come with me," said Faust. "It is only fair to yourself."
+
+"I'll take your word for what you find in the studio," said Philip. "I
+cannot go. This is my busy day."
+
+Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and,
+in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+
+Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save
+for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty,
+and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.
+
+"Surely," Philip thought, "the French chap was right who said words were
+given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if
+every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying
+would become a lost art. I wonder," he mused cynically, "is any one
+quite honest? Does any one speak as he thinks and think as he speaks?"
+
+At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen
+had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet from him.
+
+"I sincerely hope, Sir John," said one of the two, "that you have
+no regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the best
+interests of all?"
+
+"I do, indeed," the other replied heartily "We shall be thought entirely
+selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done is for the
+benefit of the shareholders."
+
+Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old
+gentlemen ran hand in hand with his spoken words. "Here, at least," he
+said to himself, "are two honest men."
+
+As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+
+"And I hope," continued the one addressed as Sir John, "that you approve
+of my holding back the public announcement of the combine until the
+afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given
+out the news in this morning's papers the stockbrokers would have--"
+
+"It was most wise," interrupted the other. "Most just."
+
+The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
+standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
+chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
+away.
+
+Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
+three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip
+saw the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened
+by the breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various
+combinations; but always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of
+the three his heart spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a
+mother reaches toward her firstborn.
+
+Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
+was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
+Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags--a flag with a red cross
+on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her
+to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
+return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
+mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
+wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place
+of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great
+ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is
+equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite
+after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate
+to a love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help
+from a sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still
+flew the same house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now
+in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+
+Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
+corridor to the telephone.
+
+Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
+stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
+him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
+
+Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+
+"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want you
+to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
+Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle."
+
+He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+
+"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called. "It has fallen
+through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds."
+
+Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a five-pound
+note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+
+"I don't care what they are," he shouted. "The combine is already signed
+and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour everybody will
+know it!"
+
+"What makes you think you know it?" demanded the broker.
+
+"I've seen the house-flags!" cried Philip. "I have--do as I tell you,"
+he commanded.
+
+There was a distracting delay.
+
+"No matter who's back of you," objected Maddox, "it's a big order on a
+gamble."
+
+"It's not a gamble," cried Philip. "It's an accomplished fact. I'm at
+the Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when you've got a
+thousand of each, stop!"
+
+Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for
+half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself to read the
+illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same advertisement
+five times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him
+half-way with a message.
+
+"Have secured for you a thousand shares of each," he read, "at fifteen.
+Maddox."
+
+Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate
+the horror of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was
+sufficiently horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them,
+he had bought shares in three steamship lines, which shares, added
+together, were worth two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
+He returned down the corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own
+audacity, he was in a state of almost complete panic, when that happened
+which made his outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was
+drawing near to half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men
+and beautiful ladies, the component parts of different luncheon parties
+were beginning to assemble.
+
+Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one
+guest had arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one was
+sufficient. It was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed
+on the doors opening from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with
+appeals, blessings, and adoration, ran toward her. Her profile was
+toward him, and she could not see him; but he could see her. And he
+noted that, as though seeking some one, her eyes were turned searchingly
+upon each young man as he entered and moved from one to another of those
+already in the lounge. Her expression was eager and anxious.
+
+"If only," Philip exclaimed, "she were looking for me! She certainly is
+looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?"
+
+As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his
+steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind? Why did he
+not KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind upon
+the waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: "Of
+what are you thinking?"
+
+There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging
+from Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and proffered
+it. Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the half-burned
+cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in
+that mental process had Philip been conscious! The conclusion was only
+too apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+
+Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered
+them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used his power to his
+own advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the
+happiness of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart
+the dishonesty of a swindler, he had been all-powerful; but when he
+endeavored to bend it to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood
+abashed and repentant, Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the
+sight of him, there leaped to them happiness and welcome and complete
+content. It was "the look that never was on land or sea," and it was not
+necessary to be a mind reader to understand it. Philip sprang toward her
+as quickly as a man dodges a taxi-cab.
+
+"I came early," said Helen, "because I wanted to talk to you before the
+others arrived." She seemed to be repeating words already rehearsed, to
+be following a course of conduct already predetermined. "I want to tell
+you," she said, "that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you
+that I shall miss you very much." She paused and drew a long breath. And
+she looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her
+to go on.
+
+Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+
+"Will you miss me," he asked, "in the Row, where I used to wait among
+the trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances, where I used
+to hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss me
+at night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the
+railings of the Carlton Club, just to see you run across the pavement
+from your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to
+see the light go out, and to know that you are sleeping?"
+
+Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+
+"Did you use to do that?" she asked.
+
+"Every night I do that," said Philip. "Ask the policemen! They arrested
+me three times."
+
+"Why?" said Helen gently.
+
+But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+
+"They thought I was a burglar."
+
+Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+
+"You know what I mean," she said. "Why did you keep guard outside my
+window?"
+
+"It was the policeman kept guard," said Philip. "I was there only as a
+burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience,
+or else I knew my own unworthiness." There was a long pause. As both
+of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the
+Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the "Grizzly Bear,"
+and people were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with
+a look of so complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare
+of such savage hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to
+last for many years.
+
+At last Helen said: "Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew
+in a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up
+at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to
+the lady's window, and she lifted him in and kissed him--because he had
+dared to climb."
+
+Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
+doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She
+was delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
+
+"At any moment," Philip said, "I may know whether I owe two hundred
+and twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am
+worth about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at
+the exact place where you last spoke--AFTER I know whether I am going to
+jail, or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars."
+
+Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+
+"I knew that was it!" she cried. "You don't like my money. I was afraid
+you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
+will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long
+as you don't dislike me."
+
+What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
+many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with
+a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: "Combine is announced,
+shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?"
+
+That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
+deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message
+three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own
+sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter
+of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound
+note. He pushed the boy from him.
+
+"Run!" he commanded. "Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!"
+
+He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned
+or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence,
+Helen said: "Is it good news?"
+
+"That depends entirely upon you," replied Philip soberly. "Indeed, all
+my future life depends upon what you are going to say next."
+
+Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+
+"And--what am I going to say?"
+
+"How can I know that?" demanded Philip. "Am I a mind reader?"
+
+But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
+chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
+shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+
+Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
+taxi-cab.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
+socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley
+line, the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his
+son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his
+father; or, if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone
+through Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would
+not have known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told
+him.
+
+When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
+innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon
+lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for
+other social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes
+and ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to
+lay siege to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York
+itself. A widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had
+told them not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent
+of a society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them
+that in New York the waiting-list is already interminable, and that, if
+you hoped to break into New York society, the clever thing to do was to
+lay siege to it by way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If you went
+direct to New York knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact,
+and the result would be disastrous.
+
+She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the
+West, who, at the first dance to which they were invited, asked, "Who is
+the old lady in the wig?" and that question argued them so unknown that
+it set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the
+Keeps with misgivings. They agreed with the lady correspondent that it
+was far better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves
+in the suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from
+Keepsburg, which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long Island, or
+Westchester, or Bordentown.
+
+"In all of those places," explained the widow lady, "our smartest people
+have country homes, and at the country club you may get to know them.
+Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city."
+
+The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them
+could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be
+fought and won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club.
+But the attack did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear
+that the lady correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although
+three months had passed, and they had played golf together until they
+were as loath to clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one,
+and no one knew them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and
+if you lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you
+were not to be found on any map.
+
+Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens
+had looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those
+days the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so
+proud that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, "No horses
+allowed. Take the other road." The other road was an earth road used by
+tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and
+automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden
+estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of
+people who occupy cemeteries--except "Harry" Van Warden, and she lived
+in New York at the Turf Club.
+
+Harry, according to all local tradition--for he frequently motored out
+to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat--and, according to the
+newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable.
+So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for
+overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his
+front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden
+Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but
+because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+
+"If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,"
+sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, "you would meet Harry Van Warden, and
+he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere."
+
+"If I was to ride to hounds," returned her husband, "the only thing I'd
+break would be my neck."
+
+The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the
+purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The
+house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated
+fortune; and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler,
+his pictures, furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an
+eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its
+chief attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay
+directly below the terrace of the house and also in full view from the
+road to Albany.
+
+This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood
+were many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted
+these born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer
+evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the
+hedge, and used the lake as a swimming-pool.
+
+"It makes me nervous," complained Winnie. "I don't like the idea of
+people prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve
+hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are
+burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the very first one
+they'll break into."
+
+"I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house
+yet," said Fred, "and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!"
+
+They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was
+just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October
+night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows
+of close-clipped box. A full moon was just showing itself above the
+tree-tops, turning the lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his
+wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride, touched her hair
+fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+
+"What if we don't know anybody, Win," he said, "and nobody knows us?
+It's been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it
+that way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon,
+to be together, to be alone--"
+
+Winnie laughed shortly. "They certainly have left us alone!" she sighed.
+
+"But where else could we have been any happier?" demanded the young
+husband loyally. "Where will you find any prettier place than this, just
+as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing
+the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake?
+Where's there a better place for a honeymoon? It's a bower--a bower of
+peace, solitude a--bower of--"
+
+As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside
+the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It
+came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage.
+Then, as suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after
+a pause of an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two
+sharp blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream
+of rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who
+heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+
+"In the name of Heaven!" gasped Keep, "what's that?"
+
+Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped,
+he spoke as though he were announcing dinner. "A convict, sir," he said,
+"has escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not understand the
+whistle. I thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors."
+
+"Why?" asked Winnie Keep.
+
+"The house is near the road, madam," said the butler. "And there are
+so many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here, and the
+keepers--there was a fight." The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his
+wife on the arm.
+
+"It's time to dress for dinner, Win," he said.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" demanded Winnie.
+
+"I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to
+change." He turned to the butler. "And I'll have a cocktail, too I'll
+have it out here."
+
+The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the
+terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely. "Fred," she
+begged, "you--you're not going to poke around in the bushes, are
+you?--just because you think I'm frightened?"
+
+Her husband laughed at her. "I certainly am NOT!" he said. "And you're
+not frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a minute."
+
+But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the
+siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very door, to beat
+and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to
+her ears.
+
+"Why don't they stop it!" she whispered. "Why don't they give him a
+chance!"
+
+When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge
+of the terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his hands, sat
+staring down at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees,
+had blotted the lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the
+hedges with wavering shadows. Somewhere near at hand a criminal--a
+murderer, burglar, thug--was at large, and the voice of the prison he
+had tricked still bellowed in rage, in amazement, still clamored not
+only for his person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside
+heard it: the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the
+guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red candle shades; the joy
+riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It woke
+the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The granite walls
+of the Palisades flung it back against the granite walls of the prison.
+Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching for him,
+pointing him out--stirring in the heart of each who heard it the lust of
+the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the hunted thing is a man.
+
+"Find him!" shrieked the siren. "Find him! He's there, behind your
+hedge! He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in the
+moonlight. THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag
+him down! He's mine! Mine!"
+
+But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the
+home of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with his soul.
+Each, clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful
+joy, each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will
+the hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled panting through the crisp
+October night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows,
+staggering and falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that
+wherever his feet led him the siren still held him by the heels.
+
+As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
+adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing
+to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night,
+although her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he
+heard no singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour.
+Gridley, the aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for
+twenty years had been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and
+taken away the empty glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts.
+They were entirely of the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him
+and begged his aid, what would he do? He knew quite well what he would
+do. He considered even the means by which he would assist the fugitive
+to a successful get-away.
+
+The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his
+duty to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had
+visited "the institution," as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers
+to speak of it, he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping
+from Sing Sing and not being at once retaken was one out of six
+thousand. So with Fred it was largely a sporting proposition. Any man
+who could beat a six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+
+And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine
+himself in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring
+to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself
+of his tell-tale clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in
+Westchester County a naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in
+the purple-gray cloth of the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He
+might hold up a passer-by, and, if the passer-by did not flee from
+him or punch him into insensibility, he might effect an exchange of
+garments; he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might
+despoil a scarecrow.
+
+But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
+deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as
+he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was
+not entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas
+awning. Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats
+in the lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He
+was a young man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face
+smooth-shaven, and above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He had the
+sharp, clever, rat-like face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water
+dripped from him, and either for that reason or from fright the young
+man trembled, and, like one who had been running, breathed in short,
+hard gasps.
+
+Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It
+was as though he had been waiting for the man, as though it had been an
+appointment.
+
+Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of
+his visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and that the man, not
+knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might
+rush him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the
+moonlight the two young men eyed each other warily.
+
+Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of
+his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+
+"I took a bath in your pond," he blurted forth, "and--and they stole my
+clothes! That's why I'm like this!"
+
+Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative
+how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid himself of
+accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the stranger
+with admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he
+could not let him suppose that he was deceived by it.
+
+"Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?" he said.
+
+As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of
+shivering.
+
+"It wasn't a bath," he gasped. "It was a bet!"
+
+"A what!" exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. "A bet? Then
+you are not alone?"
+
+"I am NOW--damn them!" exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+reluctantly. "We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting here
+in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim
+across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed
+up on me from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to
+where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I
+got to the hedge the car was gone!"
+
+Keep smiled encouragingly. "The car!" he assented. "So you've been
+riding around in the moonlight?"
+
+The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them
+the roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and
+came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed
+fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a
+fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer
+to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of
+Keep.
+
+"You--you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?" he stuttered.
+"Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all right," he added;
+reassuringly. "I live near here."
+
+With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young
+man continued less confidently.
+
+"I don't blame you if you don't believe it," he stammered, "seeing me
+like this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody around here knows
+me, and I guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'm--that is,
+my name--" like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and
+the rat-like eyes regarded Keep watchfully--"my name is Van Warden. I'm
+the one you read about--Harry--I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile
+was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he could not longer
+enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+
+"My boy!" he exclaimed, "you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!"
+He rose and made a peremptory gesture. "Sorry," he said, "but this isn't
+safe for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and send you
+where you want to go." He turned and whispered over his shoulder: "Some
+day let me hear from you. A man with your nerve--"
+
+In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+
+The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room. First
+making sure the library and hall were free of servants, Fred tiptoed to
+the coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light.
+The naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of damp footprints, followed
+at his heels.
+
+Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and
+on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+
+"Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes," he commanded. "They'll cover
+you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you here while
+I get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your
+head. Just say you're waiting to see me--Mr. Keep. I won't be long.
+Wait."
+
+"Wait!" snorted the stranger. "You BET I'll wait!"
+
+As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself
+violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+
+In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt,
+boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out for him, and he
+snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer
+he counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the
+trousers pocket of the serge suit and with the bundle of clothes in his
+arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coat-room.
+
+"Don't come out until I knock," he commanded. "And," he added in a
+vehement whisper, "don't come out at all unless you have clothes on!"
+
+The stranger grunted.
+
+Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the
+door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes. When the butler
+had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coat-room door. The
+stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at
+the moment was carefully arranging the tie.
+
+"Hurry!" commanded Keep. "The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I
+tell him to take you?"
+
+The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning.
+"New York," he whispered, "fast as he can get there! Look here," he
+added doubtfully, "there's a roll of bills in these clothes."
+
+"They're yours," said Fred.
+
+The stranger exclaimed vigorously. "You're all right!" he whispered. "I
+won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the money back same time I
+send the clothes."
+
+"Exactly!" said Fred.
+
+The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred
+slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before it. After
+a period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the
+inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of
+the width of a finger, and put his ear to the crack.
+
+"You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?" whispered the stranger.
+
+Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the
+chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had
+gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy could be
+trusted.
+
+"You're to take a man to New York," he said, "or wherever he wants
+to go. Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if YOU'RE
+questioned, you can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!"
+
+The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps.
+As he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still demanding its
+prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow,
+the youth jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where
+Keep stood above him.
+
+"I told you," said Keep, "to ask no questions."
+
+As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs
+toward him. She had changed to one of the prettiest evening gowns of her
+trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself and
+the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he
+was lost in admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the
+door of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet the
+stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly
+appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp shriek.
+
+With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon the
+visitor.
+
+"Did you fix it?" he demanded.
+
+The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his
+eyes were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by
+Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to
+nod his head dully.
+
+"Come," commanded Fred. "The car is waiting."
+
+Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a
+woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood
+still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn,
+Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery,
+so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and
+inarticulate. For protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.
+
+The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been
+intended for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot
+reciting its lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+
+"My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden."
+
+He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though
+he had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as though a
+stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+
+But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced
+an instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated excitement and
+delight. How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of
+Scarboro she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward
+him a glance of deep and grateful devotion.
+
+Then she beamed upon the stranger. "Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to
+dinner?" she asked.
+
+Her husband emitted a howl. "He will NOT!" he cried. "He's not that kind
+of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that fixes the telephone!"
+
+He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and dragged
+him down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor
+stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful
+lady. Fred thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at
+the golf-cap and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly
+twisting in his hands, Fred whispered fiercely:
+
+"Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what to do."
+
+With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the
+signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to throw in the
+clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,
+directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself
+upon the gravel; something in a suit of purple-gray; something torn
+and bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and
+crawled, that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the
+glare of the head-lights the white face and white hair of a very old,
+old man. The kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in
+the pit of the stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man
+stretched his arms toward them. From long disuse his voice cracked and
+broke.
+
+"I'm done!" he sobbed. "I can't go no farther! I give myself up!"
+
+Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison
+siren shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+
+It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and
+slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he flung it over
+the suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's
+frightened eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down over the white hair. With
+one arm he lifted the convict, and with the other dragged and pushed him
+into the seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he
+thrust the roll of bills.
+
+"Get him away!" he ordered. "It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut
+line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a ticket to Boston.
+Go through White Plains to Greenwich--and then you're safe!"
+
+As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he
+swung upon Fred. "Am I right?" he demanded.
+
+"Of course!" roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though
+throwing him into space.
+
+"Get-to-hell-out-of-here!" he shouted.
+
+The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being,
+chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With a grinding of
+gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking
+in farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in
+jeering notes of joy and victory.
+
+Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed
+to leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger remained
+motionless.
+
+Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the
+stranger by the arm.
+
+"But you?" he demanded. "How are you going to get away?"
+
+The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step stood
+Winnie Keep.
+
+"I don't want to get away," he said. "I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me
+stay to dinner."
+
+A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so
+that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of the stranger.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," Fred demanded, "who the devil you are?"
+
+The stranger exclaimed peevishly. "I've BEEN telling you all evening,"
+he protested. "I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+
+"Dinner is served, madam," he said.
+
+The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. "Hello, Gridley!" he
+cried. "Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if he'll ask
+me to dinner, I won't steal the spoons."
+
+Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the
+privilege of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the stranger
+fondly, proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the
+affection of an old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to Keep.
+
+"If Mr. Harry--Mr. Van Warden," he said, "is to stay to dinner, might I
+suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert, '84."
+
+Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his
+wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly happy.
+
+Gridley coughed tentatively. "Shall I open a bottle, sir?" he asked.
+
+Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+
+"Open a case!" he roared.
+
+At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of
+such mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling each other by
+their first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken
+from the telephone. It was a long-distance call from Yonkers, sent by
+James, the faithful chauffeur.
+
+Fred read it aloud.
+
+"I got that party the articles he needed," it read, "and saw him safe on
+a train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for speeding the car
+on the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers."
+
+
+
+Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with
+the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round
+Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie
+knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not
+deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and
+secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known
+it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his
+sleeve for "stalking" and "path-finding," not to boast of others
+for "gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had, General
+Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
+Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by
+inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of
+the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with
+Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of
+the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach
+road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of
+his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and
+rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+
+If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not
+see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale" sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could
+see in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
+
+Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's
+axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before
+in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he
+would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+
+"But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure
+himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still
+Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that
+when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. "Mebbe dad
+told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed
+it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book."
+
+The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the
+week end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides
+being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President
+of the Country Club, was also a local "councilman" for the Round Hill
+Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In
+deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen
+in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was
+his peroration that made trouble.
+
+"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with
+Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You
+can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and
+then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven
+and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.
+I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet,
+"that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
+blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to
+find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what
+extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows,
+the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down
+on their maps the wells and streams."
+
+As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the
+door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. "Keep your eyes open!" he commanded.
+"Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your
+sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be
+prepared!'"
+
+That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+saw spiked helmets.
+
+Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+
+"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, "you'll talk on 'Votes
+for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who
+dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
+from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites."
+
+"YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now, and
+you're trying to buy the other half."
+
+"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know WHY I
+am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble.
+The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and
+I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the
+Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black
+Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for
+a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a
+millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to
+'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being
+arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break
+into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!"
+
+The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie
+liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
+adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the
+top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
+pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
+himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
+squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
+night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
+was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
+Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in
+the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
+same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
+and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why
+on his sleeve was the badge for "stalking." But always to have to make
+believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix
+when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one
+just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent
+to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a
+week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his
+flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he
+most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his
+energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.
+The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but
+the enemy of his country.
+
+In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked
+the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and
+he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor
+from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian
+arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant
+gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor
+to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where
+one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor
+was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week
+following Jimmie was again disappointed.
+
+On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting
+in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book,
+and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of
+New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing
+a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and
+at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he
+followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
+mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam,
+was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the
+Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From
+the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man
+working alone upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American,
+and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the
+German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was
+only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was
+only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin
+was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect
+a fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
+discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him
+his troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. "My advice to you,
+Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a
+very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for
+him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before
+you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."
+
+So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+
+Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a
+new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young
+man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to
+be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and,
+from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie
+mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not
+been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed
+that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been
+forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered
+Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now,
+or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"
+
+Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when
+did you have your breakfast?"
+
+"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite,
+and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the
+shortest way back to Bedford?"
+
+"The first road to your right," said Jimmie.
+
+"Is it far?" asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+evident.
+
+"It's a half-hour's walk," said Jimmie
+
+"If I live that long," corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+
+Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut
+him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance,
+and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road, "stalked" him. From
+behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one
+in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+
+He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a
+runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he
+heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who
+knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad
+shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by
+the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed
+the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered,
+that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also
+reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road,
+he approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the
+whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been
+hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was
+at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward
+Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut
+State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like
+arrow-heads.
+
+For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty
+miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him
+south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread
+tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as
+in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he
+catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset
+as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the
+skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous
+as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until
+the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was
+in no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face
+east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to
+splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into
+the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen
+it, there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
+cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time
+for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the
+top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone
+wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath
+to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was
+tripping and tumbling. Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned
+hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie
+shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the
+coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+
+"You wait!" he shouted. "I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun."
+
+Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over
+the chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+or other devices."
+
+He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested
+more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of
+the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen
+he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What
+he had seen was his warrant--plus the shotgun.
+
+As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent
+grew hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and
+Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
+right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires
+had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the
+car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy
+on the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car.
+Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did
+not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked
+that hill.
+
+Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before
+him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away
+to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich.
+Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests,
+green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash
+of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had
+washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the
+glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
+those in a colored photograph; and as still.
+
+In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+
+"If he moves," he sighed happily, "I've got him!"
+
+Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which
+he had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was
+crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing
+an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in
+poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the
+sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the
+hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall.
+With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised
+his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
+the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie
+knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him.
+Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill
+opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall.
+With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon
+the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+
+Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the
+contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill
+opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which
+he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live
+wire, stepped on tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it.
+The binoculars hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was
+spread a map. He was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he
+hummed a tune.
+
+Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+
+"Throw up your hands!" he commanded.
+
+The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no
+sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled
+valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed
+by some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the
+sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+
+Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but
+still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his
+smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief.
+These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm.
+"Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the stranger. "Is it loaded?"
+With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length
+of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open
+palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to
+be exclaiming, "Can such things be?"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Jimmie.
+
+With alacrity the stranger rose.
+
+"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off
+those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing his eyes
+from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed
+them to the stone wall. "See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point
+that damned blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my
+watch, and clothes, and all my money; only don't--"
+
+Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At least, he
+tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+
+"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want
+anything, why are you holding me up?"
+
+"I'm not," returned Jimmie, "I'm arresting you!"
+
+The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he cried,
+"I see! Have I been trespassing?"
+
+With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall.
+"If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you full of buckshot."
+
+The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. "Don't worry about that," he
+exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?"
+
+Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder,
+and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and
+menacing.
+
+"The name on them" he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?"
+The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, "That's
+the name of the firm that makes them."
+
+Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. "Hah!" he cried, "made in Germany!"
+
+The stranger shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?"
+With polite insistence he repeated, "Would you mind telling me why I am
+arrested, and who you might happen to be?"
+
+Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But
+the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he
+saw, "Correct range, 1,800 yards"; "this stream not fordable"; "slope of
+hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here";
+"forage for five squadrons."
+
+Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+gun motioned toward the base of the hill. "Keep forty feet ahead of me,"
+he commanded, "and walk to your car." The stranger did not seem to hear
+him. He spoke with irritation.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "I'll have to explain to you about that map."
+
+"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to drive
+straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!"
+
+The stranger tossed his arms even higher. "Thank God!" he exclaimed
+gratefully.
+
+With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a
+willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's
+he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie
+held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating
+circumstance.
+
+They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a
+bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to
+his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a
+gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him
+with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting
+German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was
+great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the
+hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence
+of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a
+feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a
+halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+
+Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+not entirety successful.
+
+"I got him!" he cried. "I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!"
+
+"What one?" demanded Van Vorst.
+
+Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+
+"THAT one!" cried Jimmie. "He's a German spy!"
+
+The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+indignation, anger, reproach.
+
+"Jimmie!" he cried.
+
+Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A." "Look what
+he's wrote," commanded the scout. "It's all military words. And these
+are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been
+stalking him for a week. He's a spy!"
+
+When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+he was puzzled.
+
+But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+
+"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only glad it's
+no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every
+stranger he sees--"
+
+The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+
+"Please!" he begged, "Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+Might I speak with you--ALONE?" he asked.
+
+Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+
+"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must have been
+a great loss to you?"
+
+"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I
+refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+
+"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your servants to
+hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been
+a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think
+he has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit
+as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+capture."
+
+Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're an
+officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I
+right?"
+
+The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+
+"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the
+Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on
+the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in the
+United States Army." He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+
+"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not
+picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of
+defense for Americans when the Germans come!"
+
+Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+
+"My word!" he exclaimed. "You're as bad as Jimmie!"
+
+Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+
+"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other
+Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill,
+when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe,
+you'll believe THEN."
+
+"Are you serious?" demanded Van Vorst. "And you an army officer?"
+
+"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "WE know. But when we try to
+prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in underhand ways,
+for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and accuse
+us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to prepare
+under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like a
+chicken thief. And," he added sharply, "that's why that boy must not
+know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at
+Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed."
+
+Van Vorst moved to the door.
+
+"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will tell him
+you are to be shot at sunrise."
+
+"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we fight
+over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And
+give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes
+from you."
+
+But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. "You mustn't," he
+begged; "I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if
+I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot
+at sunrise." At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook
+with terror. "Make it for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for ten,"
+he coaxed, "but, please, promise you won't shoot him."
+
+When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+smile.
+
+"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it twenty,
+and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to
+spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty
+years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune."
+
+"No!" protested Captain McCoy, "We will drink to Jimmie!"
+
+When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs
+had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted
+to depart; but he was again delayed.
+
+Other visitors were arriving.
+
+Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat
+were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it
+had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted
+at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot
+with anger.
+
+"A gray touring-car," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it from that
+hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?"
+
+"Who?" demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, "Captain McCoy?"
+
+The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow,
+silenced him.
+
+"Yes, Captain McCoy," assented the driver eagerly. "Which way did he
+go?"
+
+"To New York," said Van Vorst.
+
+The driver shrieked at his companion.
+
+"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He
+stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+
+A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+
+"What do you want with him?" he called "Who are you?"
+
+Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the
+car the words of the driver were flung back. "We're Secret Service from
+Washington," he shouted. "He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!"
+
+Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+curtain of white, whirling dust.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
+and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be
+the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
+illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
+Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church,
+after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding
+floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the
+waits singing "God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay."
+
+To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in
+my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children,
+of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls,
+skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them,
+sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my
+wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation,
+and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him
+save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful
+harmony with his appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week
+longer he might safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply
+was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of Hallam Hall and
+a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of
+Ireland, and the only log on board was the one the captain kept to
+himself.
+
+I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on
+the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot,
+or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier
+conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner
+in which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But,
+either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the
+fictitious gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man
+in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from
+dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and
+icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
+
+Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers
+testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room
+crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I
+met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.
+All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that,
+though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of
+his years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have
+spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French
+watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France
+I had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to
+place. Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked
+glibly, but in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking
+the trouble to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his
+talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object.
+I felt he was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he
+might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in
+New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a
+banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in
+self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The next evening I
+discovered the motive.
+
+He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled
+that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a
+bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: "I saw you last
+summer at Aix-les-Bains."
+
+His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for
+some particular card.
+
+"What was I doing?" he asked.
+
+"Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs."
+
+With obvious relief he laughed.
+
+"Oh, yes," he assented; "jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money
+there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em
+alone." As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me
+to excuse him, he smiled appealingly. "Poker, bridge, chemin de fer,
+I like 'em all," he rattled on, "but they don't like me. So I stick to
+solitaire. It's dull, but cheap." He shuffled the cards clumsily. As
+though making conversation, he asked: "You care for cards yourself?"
+
+I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a
+spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been
+wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even
+of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had
+hurt him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them
+I saw in them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he
+was utterly unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man
+facing a crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry
+for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of
+the few dollars he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed
+his need was great. Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck.
+When I returned an hour later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game
+of poker.
+
+As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+
+"Don't scold, now," he laughed; "you know I can't keep away from it."
+
+From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends
+of long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he
+thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered:
+"Known him for years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my
+right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my
+people swear by him."
+
+One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met
+mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see.
+"What would you draw?" he asked.
+
+His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him
+and walk on.
+
+When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we
+were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+
+"Sorry," he said. "Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a
+hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now," he assured me.
+"They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the
+limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark."
+
+"And I take it you are not," I said stiffly.
+
+He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile
+died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and
+fear.
+
+As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
+
+"I'm 'in bad,' doctor," he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered,
+like that of a child. "I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't
+think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at
+the door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't
+work, and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could
+you--couldn't give me something to keep my head straight?"
+
+The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob
+our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly
+dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him
+to the ship's surgeon.
+
+"But I don't know HIM," he protested.
+
+Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
+
+"Well, you certainly don't know me."
+
+My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+
+"I know who you ARE," he returned. "You and I--" With a deprecatory
+gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he
+stopped. "But the ship's surgeon!" he protested, "he's an awful bounder!
+Besides," he added quite simply, "he's watching me."
+
+"As a doctor," I asked, "or watching you play cards?"
+
+"Play cards," the young man answered. "I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon
+on the P. & O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I
+fancy he remembers me."
+
+His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+
+"But you mustn't tell me that," I protested. "I can't have you making
+trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here
+to the captain?"
+
+As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+
+He made a mock obeisance.
+
+"I claim the seal of your profession," he said. "Nonsense," I retorted.
+"It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that
+you are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest."
+
+For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me
+sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+
+"I got to make expenses," he muttered. "And, besides, all card games
+are games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway," he
+repeated, as though disposing of all argument, "I got to make expenses."
+
+After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat
+waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find "my
+friend." I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance
+only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
+
+"We want to give him his revenge," one of them volunteered.
+
+"He's losing, then?" I asked.
+
+The man chuckled complacently.
+
+"The only loser," he said.
+
+"I wouldn't worry," I advised. "He'll come for his revenge."
+
+That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on
+the lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that
+with difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
+
+"I'm scared," he stammered, "scared!"
+
+I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent
+it to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for
+myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were
+closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself
+in his arms.
+
+"Have you been drinking?" I asked.
+
+In surprise he opened his eyes.
+
+"I can't drink," he answered simply. "It's nerves and worry. I'm tired."
+
+He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the
+fingers lay open.
+
+"God," he whispered, "how tired I am!"
+
+In spite of his tan--and certainly he had led the out-of-door life--his
+face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
+
+"They're crowdin' me," the boy whispered. "They're always crowdin'
+me." His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child
+complaining of something beyond his experience. "I can't remember when
+they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always
+movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris,
+and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there, very
+quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, too--a flat in Berkeley
+Street--roulette and chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out;
+anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on
+this. It's my last chance!"
+
+"This trip?"
+
+"No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me
+to live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back.
+I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the
+husks that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that;
+want to follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted
+calf." He laughed sardonically. "Like hell they will! They'd rather see
+ME killed."
+
+It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning
+repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure
+them. I suggested as much.
+
+"If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it," I said, "and they send a
+wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly--"
+
+"I know," he interrupted; "but I got to chance that. I GOT to make
+enough to go on with--until I see my family."
+
+"If they won't see you?" I asked. "What then?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as
+though for him the prospect held no terror.
+
+"Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'" he said. "And I won't be a bother to
+anybody any more."
+
+I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the
+sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+
+It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first
+appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a
+healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit;
+ready for any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so
+expert I asked him to avoid.
+
+"Can't be done!" he assured me. "I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow
+morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing."
+
+It was the others who made the killing.
+
+I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was
+seated. The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider
+semicircle were passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's
+purser.
+
+Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the
+pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long
+cigarette-holder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult
+of angry voices, and the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly
+at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of
+my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited
+accusation.
+
+"When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called yourself
+Lord Ridley."
+
+"I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I
+choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my
+name to every meddling busybody that--"
+
+"You'll give it to the police, all right," chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the
+confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he
+shouted: "And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!"
+
+The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot
+rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his
+sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: "Only too delighted
+to keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely."
+
+But he was not to escape with the last word.
+
+His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+
+"And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer," he shouted, "make
+sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from
+sharpers and swindlers--"
+
+Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil!" he called, and walked out into the night.
+
+The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
+
+"Bad business," he exclaimed.
+
+"What happened?" I asked.
+
+"I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack," he
+said. "I understand they suspected him from the first--seems our surgeon
+recognized him--and to-night they had outsiders watching him. The
+outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of the
+pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad."
+
+I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to
+call himself Meyer.
+
+"They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained the
+purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters.
+Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it
+seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was
+a silly ass thing to do," protested the purser. "Everybody knows Meyer
+hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got
+away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless
+ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police."
+
+"Has he no other way of spending his money?" I asked.
+
+"He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser. "He wants to show us
+he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means
+a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and," he added with disgust,
+"these smoking-room rows never helped any line."
+
+I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of
+a collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry
+the young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and
+then, after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at
+his cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief.
+But he would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was
+"all right," wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the
+sleep he claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness,
+and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine
+thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly
+and trying to appear unconscious of the glances--amused, contemptuous,
+hostile--that were turned toward him. He would have passed me without
+speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed
+quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.
+
+"Doesn't depend on me," he said. "Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy
+little body!"
+
+The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I
+saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke
+in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident
+no longer was of interest.
+
+"They were watching me," he said. "But I knew they were, and besides, no
+matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and
+they'd never have seen it. But I didn't."
+
+My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+
+"I didn't!" he repeated stubbornly. "I didn't have to! I was playing
+in luck--wonderful luck--sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning. But
+because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful not
+to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the cards
+they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I
+could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the
+air, shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to
+believe; they didn't want the facts."
+
+It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling
+the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather
+harshly, I said:
+
+"They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer,
+either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?"
+
+Talbot did not answer.
+
+"Why?" I insisted.
+
+The boy laughed impudently.
+
+"How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?" he protested. "It was
+a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are
+Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by
+me."
+
+"But you," I retorted impatiently, "are not a Jew!"
+
+"I am not," said Talbot, "but I've often SAID I was. It's helped--lots
+of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer,
+instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew." He smiled and
+turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the
+police, he began to enumerate:
+
+"Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic,
+according to taste. Do you see?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But it didn't work," he concluded. "I picked the wrong Jew."
+
+His face grew serious. "Do you suppose that Smedburg person has
+wirelessed that banker?"
+
+I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+
+"And what will Meyer do?" he asked. "Will he drop it or make a fuss?
+What sort is he?"
+
+Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew
+in New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his
+own race.
+
+"Then maybe," cried Talbot hopefully, "he won't make a row, and my
+family won't hear of it!"
+
+He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted,
+his shoulders straightened.
+
+And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+
+"Look!" he whispered. "There, at the end of the wharf--the little Jew in
+furs!"
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected
+by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker,
+philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
+
+We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face
+of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad
+business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot
+and found him gone.
+
+His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a
+growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It
+seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and
+dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose
+Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other
+empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one
+gave heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no
+one was in a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the
+gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck
+to deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced
+blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men,
+pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought,
+only to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the
+last of the passengers was leaving it.
+
+I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
+white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
+why I was wanted.
+
+"The ship's surgeon, sir," he stammered, "asks you please to hurry to
+the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!"
+
+On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
+eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
+Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
+darkened.
+
+I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+
+"It was HE sent for you," he said, "but he doesn't need you.
+Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!"
+
+The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
+
+"I was so tired," he whispered. "Always moving me on. I was so tired!"
+
+Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar
+them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to
+one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable
+coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+
+For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
+staring at the face on the pillow.
+
+Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand
+of the card-sharp.
+
+"Heine!" he begged. "Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
+little brother Adolph!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
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diff --git a/1733.zip b/1733.zip
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diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1733 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1733)
diff --git a/old/1733-h.htm.2021-01-27 b/old/1733-h.htm.2021-01-27
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Cross Girl
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Commentator: Gouverneur Morris
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1733]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED CROSS GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE RED CROSS GIRL
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Richard Harding Davis
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Contents
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+            </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter 6. THE MIND READER </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         R. H. D.
+
+     &ldquo;And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+     unafraid.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and so
+      he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
+      middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
+      have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
+      brother was Peter Pan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of sperm
+      whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites against
+      the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and medicines, and
+      tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go elephant shooting in
+      Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants. Once R. H. D. shot a
+      hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I think he never killed
+      anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman. Of hunting, as of many
+      other things, he has said the last word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting
+      Ground in &ldquo;The Bar Sinister&rdquo;?&mdash;&ldquo;Where nobody hunts us, and there is
+      nothing to hunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
+      sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
+      out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of them
+      and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary member
+      of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful friend, but
+      largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
+      thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better than
+      he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted every
+      corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he played
+      a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed, or hiding
+      behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for hours!) so as
+      not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But about the other
+      fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes of wit and
+      character building and admiration or contempt. Until the invention of
+      moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his talk. His eye
+      had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the slides, his
+      words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they were reproduced
+      on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and color. With the
+      written word or the spoken word he was the greatest recorder and reporter
+      of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps, that ever lived. The
+      history of the last thirty years, its manners and customs and its leading
+      events and inventions, cannot be written truthfully without reference to
+      the records which he has left, to his special articles and to his letters.
+      Read over again the Queen's Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of
+      the Germans through Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too
+      zealously, even for a friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the
+      world can never be the same again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in due
+      time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact with
+      him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a good deal,
+      because every day he does the work of five or six men), he distributes the
+      inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it. Men go to him tired
+      and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be alive, still gladder that
+      he is alive, and ready to fight the devil himself in a good cause. Upon
+      his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity
+      that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He
+      had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a
+      slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either
+      appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a
+      yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the
+      telephone rang and from the receiver there poured into you affection and
+      encouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
+      temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or too
+      cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
+      invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants in
+      the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and the
+      baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
+      double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
+      disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid of
+      them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much he loved
+      them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and, unsolicited,
+      climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then the loveliest
+      expression came over his face, and you knew that the great heart, which
+      the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite bliss, akin to
+      anguish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
+      telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that little
+      Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has suffered....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed to
+      sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and though
+      I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with dignity and
+      without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H. D. thought it
+      was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm the kitchen to
+      tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was taking life easy on
+      the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R. H. D. had never seen
+      our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they wouldn't grow at all. It
+      wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the iris. And then back he would
+      come to us, with a wonderful story of his adventures in the pantry on his
+      way to the kitchen, and leaving behind him a cook to whom there had been
+      issued a new lease of life, and a gardener who blushed and smiled in the
+      darkness under the Actinidia vines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was with
+      us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
+      dependent upon each other in many ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
+      complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
+      needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
+      time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
+      where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had no
+      name. Now it is called &ldquo;Let's Pretend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
+      built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but we
+      pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
+      fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
+      pretendings, until real troubles went down before them&mdash;down and out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
+      lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were in
+      bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or two
+      somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against gray
+      cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It never
+      rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of the day it
+      was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four for tennis
+      and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we sat in front
+      of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and talked until the
+      next morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure not
+      in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the moment.
+      Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his knowledge that
+      Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good Tuesday. He knew it
+      the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the Tuesday sunshine making
+      patterns of bright light upon the floor. The sunshine rejoiced him and the
+      knowledge that even before breakfast there was vouchsafed to him a whole
+      hour of life. That day began with attentions to his physical well-being.
+      There were exercises conducted with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by
+      a tub, artesian cold, and a loud and joyous singing of ballads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
+      marble, gone down the ages as &ldquo;statue of a young athlete.&rdquo; He stood six
+      feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine head carried
+      by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a child's. He
+      weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He was the
+      weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
+      tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that he
+      could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door you
+      must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at work,
+      doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a stranger to
+      him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written and published
+      it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in that story (very
+      little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure to tell you so. If he
+      had liked the story very much he would send you instead of a note a
+      telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn a picture, or, as a cub
+      reporter, had shown golden promise in a half column of unsigned print, R.
+      H. D. would find you out, and find time to praise you and help you. So it
+      was that when he emerged from his room at sharp eight o'clock, he was
+      wide-awake and happy and hungry, and whistled and double-shuffled with his
+      feet, out of excessive energy, and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of
+      notes and letters and telegrams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
+      dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced in
+      each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is, or ought
+      to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest. Discussions of
+      the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of statesmen,
+      laughter and sentiment&mdash;to him, at breakfast, these things were as
+      important as sausages and thick cream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's work
+      (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
+      conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper, he
+      would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a wistful
+      glance, and hurry to his workroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
+      wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
+      and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and he
+      didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously human, flowed
+      from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of corresponding, &ldquo;The
+      German March Through Brussels,&rdquo; was probably written almost as fast as he
+      could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the fastest talker I ever
+      heard), but when it came to fiction he had no facility at all. Perhaps I
+      should say that he held in contempt any facility that he may have had. It
+      was owing to his incomparable energy and Joblike patience that he ever
+      gave us any fiction at all. Every phrase in his fiction was, of all the
+      myriad phrases he could think of, the fittest in his relentless judgment
+      to survive. Phrases, paragraphs, pages, whole stories even, were written
+      over and over again. He worked upon a principle of elimination. If he
+      wished to describe an automobile turning in at a gate, he made first a
+      long and elaborate description from which there was omitted no detail,
+      which the most observant pair of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with
+      reference to just such a turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of
+      omitting one by one those details which he had been at such pains to
+      recall; and after each omission he would ask himself: &ldquo;Does the picture
+      remain?&rdquo; If it did not, he restored the detail which he had just omitted,
+      and experimented with the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on,
+      until after Herculean labor there remained for the reader one of those
+      swiftly flashed, ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which
+      his tales and romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
+      emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
+      and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
+      writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
+      never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he has
+      searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
+      circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
+      stand in their present order until&mdash;after lunch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
+      denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
+      him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
+      own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
+      Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after many
+      hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked it
+      with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the smoke
+      there was in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
+      whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
+      toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
+      far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
+      fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps I
+      shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a will of
+      iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction his
+      conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never obtrusive
+      conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as must all
+      consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into any action
+      that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes and
+      heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young people. R. H.
+      D. never called upon his characters for any trait of virtue, or
+      renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not furnish
+      examples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
+      had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him in
+      his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get your
+      biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without any
+      trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid mountains.
+      He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were going to hurt
+      some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram from him which
+      urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next day was my wife's
+      birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my own private affair. And
+      when I declared that I had read a story which I liked very, very much and
+      was going to write to the author to tell him so, he always kept at me till
+      the letter was written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
+      he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
+      matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter that
+      he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
+      their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And it
+      hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them; her
+      heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under fire,
+      or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away upon a
+      little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure. We had
+      found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken arrow-head,
+      and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two hours and a
+      half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give more
+      than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space at my
+      command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch upon them all
+      would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as
+      much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all
+      those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers; those trenchant
+      assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those quixotic efforts to
+      redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous exposures of this and that,
+      from an absolutely unexpected point of view. He was a quickener of the
+      public conscience. That people are beginning to think tolerantly of
+      preparedness, that a nation which at one time looked yellow as a dandelion
+      is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue is owing in some measure to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that peace
+      at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
+      infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
+      country to see the matter in the same way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface of my
+      subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which was
+      inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable &ldquo;personal
+      interviews&rdquo; which appear in the newspapers, and in which the important
+      person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things which he
+      never said, or thought, or dreamed of&mdash;&ldquo;You can't expect a
+      fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
+      men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
+      men&mdash;differ in his personal character and in the character of his
+      work? And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and
+      be sure that I am right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording Angel
+      keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his brilliancy,
+      his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer are subordinate;
+      and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his powers of affection,
+      of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate, too; and that
+      characteristic is cleanliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
+      the world&mdash;gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where &ldquo;Nobody hunts us
+      and there is nothing to hunt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
+      wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills above
+      Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story, and
+      with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day in
+      October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great lawn
+      in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across the
+      waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
+      night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he was
+      still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York from a
+      small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but already he was
+      a &ldquo;star&rdquo; man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with the story?&rdquo; asked the city editor. &ldquo;With the
+      speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose it does!&rdquo; exclaimed Ward; &ldquo;anybody can collect type-written
+      speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
+      any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
+      trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men in
+      pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the story
+      in that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a reporter,&rdquo; declared the city editor, &ldquo;I used to be glad to
+      get a day in the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you'd never lived in the country,&rdquo; returned Sam. &ldquo;If you'd wasted
+      twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that every minute
+      you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what?&rdquo; demanded the city editor. &ldquo;There's nothing to New York except
+      cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the sun
+      in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle of the
+      street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except on the
+      women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the elevators&mdash;they
+      spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts in department
+      stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we never see
+      children in New York because the janitors won't let the women who live in
+      elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a Little Nemo
+      nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How curious!&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;Now I see why they took you off the street and
+      made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
+      are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
+      they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+      you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
+      they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
+      under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
+      are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The city editor sighed. &ldquo;How young you are!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;However,
+      to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be few women
+      at the celebration, and they will be interested only in convalescents&mdash;and
+      you do not look like a convalescent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
+      overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
+      assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
+      him give away a million dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't you going to get his speech?&rdquo;, asked Redding, the staff
+      photographer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get HIS speech!&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;They have Pinkertons all over the grounds to
+      see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to hear
+      the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the first
+      train back to the centre of civilization.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's going to be a fine lunch,&rdquo; said Redding, &ldquo;and reporters are
+      expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his armpit
+      and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his clothes and
+      always treated them with courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have my share,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
+      minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have a
+      club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
+      Rochelle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron gates;
+      but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble barred his
+      way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform of a nursing
+      sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar turned down,
+      white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet. A bow of white
+      lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had hair like golden-rod
+      and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such health and cleanliness
+      and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
+      as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that other
+      people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have observed
+      them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out that which is
+      indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says: &ldquo;That's most
+      interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that.&rdquo; And so warns the great man
+      into silence. But the star reporter receives the indiscreet utterance as
+      though it bored him; and the great man does not know he has blundered
+      until he reads of it the next morning under screaming headlines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
+      official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
+      swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
+      that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
+      Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him was
+      the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would have
+      guessed that he observed that&mdash;least of all Sister Anne. He stood in
+      her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
+      impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt&mdash;as
+      though his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am from the REPUBLIC,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Everybody is so busy here to-day that
+      I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,&rdquo; he added
+      disappointedly, &ldquo;because it's so well done that people ought to know about
+      it.&rdquo; He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was apparent that the
+      ignorance of the public concerning their excellence greatly annoyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in alarm&mdash;obviously
+      she was upon the point of instant flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a reporter?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
+      they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others&mdash;only
+      reporters know how few&mdash;would as soon place themselves in the hands
+      of a dentist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A reporter from the REPUBLIC,&rdquo; repeated Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why ask ME?&rdquo; demanded Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
+      he glanced at her uniform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were at work here,&rdquo; he said simply. &ldquo;I beg your pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
+      impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no other reason,&rdquo; persisted Sister Anne. &ldquo;I mean for speaking
+      to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
+      this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
+      hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and, as
+      you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics about
+      the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
+      she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly he
+      was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this young
+      woman that at the mere approach of a reporter&mdash;even of such a
+      nice-looking reporter as himself&mdash;she should shake and shudder. &ldquo;If
+      that's what you really want to know,&rdquo; said Sister Anne doubtfully, &ldquo;I'll
+      try and help you; but,&rdquo; she added, looking at him as one who issues an
+      ultimatum, &ldquo;you must not say anything about me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class will
+      always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so that
+      he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young woman
+      meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her? Much as
+      he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: &ldquo;The Flagg Home
+      for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful of all living
+      women.&rdquo; No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as there was nothing
+      to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to say nothing. Sister
+      Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled, not because his promise
+      had set her mind at ease, but because the promise amused her. Sam wondered
+      why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of the
+      hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about one
+      person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
+      containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated by
+      Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne&mdash;only to
+      exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
+      unselfishness of her nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really scrub the floors?&rdquo; he demanded&mdash;&ldquo;I mean you yourself&mdash;down
+      on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing brush?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do that when we first come here,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;when we are
+      probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these awful patients,&rdquo; demanded Sam&mdash;&ldquo;do you wait on them? Do
+      you have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?&rdquo; He
+      glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
+      annihilate them. &ldquo;It's not fair!&rdquo; exclaimed Sam. &ldquo;It's ridiculous. I'd
+      like to choke them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents,&rdquo; said Sister
+      Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know perfectly well what I mean,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;Here are you&mdash;if
+      you'll allow me to say so&mdash;a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
+      person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
+      and cripples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor is that quite the way we look at,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We?&rdquo; demanded Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not the only nurse here,&rdquo; she said &ldquo;There are over forty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the only one here,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;who is not! That's Just what I
+      mean&mdash;I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
+      ministering angel part of it; but you&mdash;I'm not talking about anybody
+      else; I'm talking about you&mdash;you are too young! Somehow you are
+      different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
+      sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Sam stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;pardon me,&rdquo; said Sister Anne; &ldquo;but your ideas of the duties of a
+      nurse are so quaint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter what the duties are,&rdquo; declared Sam; &ldquo;You should not be here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders&mdash;as
+      delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must live,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows of
+      rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them stretched
+      Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated herself upon the
+      marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the flashing waters of
+      the Sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; that's it,&rdquo; she repeated softly&mdash;&ldquo;one must live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam looked at her&mdash;but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
+      looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
+      occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
+      heightened by the fact that &ldquo;the woman was very fair.&rdquo; He conceded that.
+      He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced by the
+      outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his feelings made by
+      her uniform&mdash;made by the appeal of her profession, the gentlest and
+      most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed that this
+      young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish sick people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
+      there are other ways of earning a living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere&mdash;and again
+      she smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now what would you suggest?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have no
+      one to advise me&mdash;no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
+      I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so I
+      doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own work
+      must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living. Maybe
+      you could advise me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his salary
+      would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember which of the
+      men in the office were married, and whether they were those whose salaries
+      were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy editors, he knew, was
+      very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was married, because his
+      wife used to wait for him in the office to take her to the theatre, and
+      often Sam had thought she was extremely well dressed. Of course Sister
+      Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear would be a matter of
+      indifference; but then women did not always look at it that way. Sam was
+      so long considering offering Sister Anne a life position that his silence
+      had become significant; and to cover his real thoughts he said hurriedly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
+      difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And manicuring?&rdquo; suggested Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam exclaimed in horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he cried roughly. &ldquo;For you! Quite impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why for me?&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
+      walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
+      see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; protested Sam. &ldquo;You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
+      are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!&rdquo; His vehemence
+      was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
+      gravel walk, his profile toward her&mdash;and, unobserved, she could study
+      his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
+      good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city editor,
+      his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes full of
+      concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. &ldquo;How much do they give you a month?&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Forty dollars,&rdquo; answered Sister Anne. &ldquo;This is what hurts me about it,&rdquo;
+       said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
+      are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to work
+      for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However, probably
+      you know that better than I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I don't know that,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
+      statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
+      relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
+      complete stranger&mdash;even to deceive him was quite within her rights;
+      but, though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are working too hard,&rdquo; he said, smiling happily. &ldquo;I think you
+      ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever give you
+      a day off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next Saturday,&rdquo; said Sister Anne. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; explained Sam, &ldquo;if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
+      going to prescribe a day off for you&mdash;a day entirely away from
+      iodoform and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city
+      and a lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh&mdash;or
+      cry, if you like that better&mdash;and then, maybe, some fresh air in the
+      park in a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see
+      you safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer,&rdquo; he added
+      hurriedly, &ldquo;I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself
+      and doing all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of
+      the other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only,
+      honestly, I hope you won't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not say
+      so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost laughing
+      with happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that would be quite delightful,&rdquo; said Sister Anne,&rdquo;&mdash;quite
+      delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't bring
+      another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great deal of
+      money. I think we might cut out the taxicab&mdash;and walk in the park and
+      feed the squirrels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Sam in disappointment,&mdash;&ldquo;then you know Central Park?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once lived near there,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Harlem?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young,&rdquo; said Sister Anne.
+      &ldquo;Since then I have always lived in the country or in&mdash;other places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's so kind of you to consent,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Indeed, you are the kindest
+      person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
+      sick people, and, now I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is you who are kind,&rdquo; protested Sister Anne, &ldquo;to take pity on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pity on you!&rdquo; laughed Sam. &ldquo;You can't pity a person who can do more with
+      a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now,&rdquo; he demanded
+      in happy anticipation, &ldquo;where are we to meet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it,&rdquo; said Sister Anne. &ldquo;Where are we to meet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,&rdquo;
+       said Sam; &ldquo;and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
+      want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh,&rdquo; exclaimed Sam joyfully, &ldquo;it
+      will be a wonderful day&mdash;a wonderful day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
+      wistfully. She held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go back to my duties,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not good-by,&rdquo; said Sam heartily, &ldquo;only until Saturday&mdash;and my name's
+      Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
+      name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister Anne,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;In the nursing order to which I belong we
+      have no last names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; asked Sam, &ldquo;I'll call you Sister Anne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; just Sister,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister!&rdquo; repeated Sam, &ldquo;Sister!&rdquo; He breathed the word rather than spoke
+      it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made it
+      carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said &ldquo;Sweetheart!&rdquo;
+       or &ldquo;Beloved!&rdquo; &ldquo;I'll not forget,&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
+      cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over again
+      and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed their next
+      meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would meet her
+      with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her when they
+      were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way would be
+      more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to be the
+      most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be the
+      slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance&mdash;and it should
+      cost half his week's salary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he had
+      observed that women had strange ideas about clothes&mdash;some of them
+      thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some of
+      them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction upon
+      the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He was
+      sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she must
+      always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
+      conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
+      would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
+      eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning each
+      week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the birthday
+      of his life! No, he contradicted&mdash;the day he had first met her must
+      always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one like her and
+      he was sure there never would be one like her. She was so entirely
+      superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult&mdash;in her manner
+      there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her simple
+      nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a princess in
+      fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged her to let
+      him for one day personally conduct her over the great city! &ldquo;You are so
+      kind to take pity on me,&rdquo; she had said. He thought of many clever, pretty
+      speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had not thought of them
+      at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
+      beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous that one
+      so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry living&mdash;forty
+      dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her sit in the flat
+      where one could look at her; for already he had decided that, when they
+      were married, they would live in a flat&mdash;probably in one overlooking
+      Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several attractive suites
+      there at thirty-five dollars a week&mdash;or, if she preferred the
+      suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return to the country.
+      In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he conceded even that
+      sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
+      at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
+      carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
+      already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
+      the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way to
+      a waiting motor car and said, &ldquo;Home!&rdquo; to the chauffeur. He drove her to
+      the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors called
+      the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above Greenwich, and
+      which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on the Sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted her
+      noisily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had a most splendid adventure!&rdquo; said Sister Anne. &ldquo;There were six
+      of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
+      programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real nurse
+      and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about it to
+      keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry for me;
+      and....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself on
+      knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights and
+      prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you believe it!&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;That man who was talking to you
+      was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was just
+      leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who wouldn't
+      know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not know me!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;It quite upset him that I should be
+      wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him,&rdquo; continued Sister Anne, &ldquo;that I got forty dollars a month,
+      and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
+      be a manicurist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Anita!&rdquo; protested the admiring chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
+      manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show me
+      New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a drive
+      on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the park. And
+      if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses. We're to
+      meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station. He said,
+      'The day cannot begin too soon.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Anita!&rdquo; shrieked the chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the American
+      public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry Anita Flagg,
+      was amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an awfully jolly rag!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;And what are you going to do about
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said Anita Flagg. &ldquo;The reporters have been making me ridiculous
+      for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them! And,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;that's all there is to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
+      Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: &ldquo;I want to hear you
+      call me Sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call you what?&rdquo; exclaimed the young man. &ldquo;I will tell you,&rdquo; he whispered,
+      &ldquo;what I'd like to call you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not!&rdquo; interrupted Anita. &ldquo;Do as I tell you and say Sister once.
+      Say it as though you meant it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't mean it,&rdquo; protested his lordship. &ldquo;I've said already what
+      I....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what you've said already,&rdquo; commanded Miss Flagg. &ldquo;I've heard
+      that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister!&rdquo; he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
+      though she were cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit like it, Deptford,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was to
+      ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
+      window looking out toward the great city to the south.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that young
+      woman to shriek with amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anita!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
+      cry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She turned
+      upon the tactless intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; cried Anita fiercely, &ldquo;a man thought you were worth forty
+      dollars a month&mdash;honestly didn't know!&mdash;honestly believed you
+      were poor and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth
+      more than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
+      millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care of
+      you, to slave for you&mdash;only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+      working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
+      met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
+      do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Anita!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you do?&rdquo; demanded Anita Flagg. &ldquo;This is what you'd do: You'd
+      go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
+      from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me&mdash;and love me&mdash;and
+      love me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why don't you?&rdquo; cried Helen Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!&rdquo; cried Anita Flagg. &ldquo;Because
+      I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward, in
+      the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing Sam's
+      story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar was
+      tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to
+      fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-air; and
+      continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue pencil swooped and
+      circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk and the blue pencil
+      remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered
+      ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder
+      and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and, swinging swiftly in
+      his revolving chair, his glance swept the office. &ldquo;In the name of Mike!&rdquo;
+       he shouted. &ldquo;What IS this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
+      impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
+      was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
+      clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
+      came back to earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's what?&rdquo; Sam demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the room
+      his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward Collins
+      quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was late&mdash;and
+      it was important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's wrong?&rdquo; he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read the opening paragraph,&rdquo; protested Collins. &ldquo;It's like that for a
+      column! It's all about a girl&mdash;about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word
+      about Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story
+      at all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
+      what it is. And, what's worse,&rdquo; wailed the copy editor defiantly and to
+      the amazement of all, &ldquo;it's so darned good that you can't touch it. You've
+      got to let it go or kill it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade, were
+      racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at Collins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it all like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a column like that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run it just as it is,&rdquo; commanded the managing editor. &ldquo;Use it for your
+      introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
+      out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
+      with pictures.&rdquo; He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the idea, Ward?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is a newspaper&mdash;not a
+      magazine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
+      had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
+      reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also smiled,
+      but unhappily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it's not news, Sir,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but that's the way I saw the story&mdash;outside
+      on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the governor's staff
+      and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside, this girl right on
+      the job&mdash;taking care of the sick and wounded. It seemed to me that a
+      million from a man that won't miss a million didn't stack up against what
+      this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I wanted to say,&rdquo; continued
+      Sam stoutly &ldquo;was that the moving spirit of the hospital was not in the man
+      who signed the checks, but in these women who do the work&mdash;the
+      nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you called 'The Red Cross
+      Girl.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
+      traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's not news!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not news,&rdquo; said Elliott doubtfully; &ldquo;but it's the kind of story that
+      made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives men out of
+      this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the illegitimate
+      sister.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to a
+      girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was this
+      combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return for
+      its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
+      business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it served him
+      so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and incidentally a
+      million other people, how deeply he honored her; how clearly he
+      appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant Sister Anne,
+      save two people&mdash;Sister Anne and himself; but for her and for him
+      that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real incidents
+      of the day; he had described her as she passed through the wards of the
+      hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the little acts of
+      consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
+      and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
+      her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
+      he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
+      after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the front
+      page was his story, &ldquo;The Red Cross Girl.&rdquo; It had the place of honor&mdash;right-hand
+      column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his own story was one
+      of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken of Sister Anne when
+      first she had approached them, in her uniform of mercy, advancing across
+      the lawn, walking straight into the focus of the camera. There was no
+      mistaking her for any other living woman; but beneath the picture, in
+      bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a strange and grotesque legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter of Millionaire Flagg,&rdquo; it read, &ldquo;in a New Role, Miss Anita Flagg
+      as The Red Cross Girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper so
+      that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From below,
+      Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting&mdash;cable cars jangled, taxis
+      hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
+      shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+      life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A girl
+      he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever&mdash;worse than that
+      had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that made no
+      difference, or just as little difference as it would have made had Sister
+      Anne really lived and really died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
+      party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone at
+      the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
+      Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the table
+      and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press, had
+      pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking at
+      the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
+      surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
+      fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading &ldquo;The Red Cross
+      Girl&rdquo;; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent slumber,
+      her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks the color
+      flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read as far as a
+      paragraph beginning, &ldquo;When Sister Anne walked between them those who
+      suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces to the
+      rain,&rdquo; she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any man,&rdquo; cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
+      servants, &ldquo;who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
+      and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might be
+      like that&mdash;if any man would help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave her attention to the telephone and &ldquo;Information.&rdquo; She demanded to
+      be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr. Sam
+      Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm tired of being called a good sport,&rdquo; she protested, &ldquo;by men who
+      aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
+      money&mdash;as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on his
+      shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
+      good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint; and
+      he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy&mdash;and I like being made
+      dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be still!&rdquo; implored Helen Page. &ldquo;Any one might think you meant it!&rdquo; She
+      nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye gods, Parker!&rdquo; cried Anita Flagg. &ldquo;Does it take three of you to pour a
+      cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three caught
+      me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the telephone and
+      that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. &ldquo;And what's
+      more,&rdquo; Anita hurled after them, &ldquo;get your bets down quick, for after I
+      meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
+      office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
+      happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the only
+      person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she refused
+      to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, &ldquo;I'll call him up later,&rdquo;
+       and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for all the
+      beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
+      particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
+      opposite the cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're the very man I want,&rdquo; said Hollworthy joyously&mdash;&ldquo;you've got
+      to decide a bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
+      who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you knew.
+      I bet her a theatre party.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had even
+      been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he had no
+      right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know what
+      Sister Anne had meant to him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid you lose,&rdquo; he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
+      leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say so!&rdquo; exclaimed that young man. &ldquo;Fancy one of you chaps
+      being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in&mdash;getting
+      up a story for the Sunday supplement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet to
+      escape. &ldquo;And, instead of your fooling her,&rdquo; exclaimed Holworthy
+      incredulously, &ldquo;she was having fun, with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With difficulty Sam smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it would seem,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!&rdquo; exclaimed Holworthy
+      admiringly. &ldquo;I thought she was making it up&mdash;she must have made some
+      of it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
+      so is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; cried Holworthy&mdash;&ldquo;and that you invited her to see the
+      moving-picture shows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket, smiled
+      pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she say I said that&mdash;or you?&rdquo; he asked
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I must have said it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Holworthy roared with amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I said that too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I thought she was making it up!&rdquo; exclaimed Holworthy. &ldquo;We did laugh.
+      You must see the fun of it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita Flagg&mdash;just
+      as if she were nobody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;that was my idea.&rdquo; He waved his stick at a
+      passing taxi. &ldquo;I'm late,&rdquo; he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
+      chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
+      had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
+      telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're wanted on the 'phone,&rdquo; he commanded. His voice dropped to an awed
+      whisper. &ldquo;Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
+      this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
+      never met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say you can't find me,&rdquo; he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
+      precipitately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lady says she wants your telephone number&mdash;says she must have
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules&mdash;and
+      hang up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
+      informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg&mdash;the rich,
+      the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
+      morning&mdash;had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
+      thrown down&mdash;and thrown hard!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
+      entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
+      whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ward,&rdquo; he began abruptly, &ldquo;I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
+      It's on account of that story of this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served so
+      loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that, considering
+      the spirit in which the story had been written, it was causing him more
+      kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of position did not disturb
+      him. In the last month too many managing editors had tried to steal him
+      from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious as to the future. So he accepted
+      his dismissal calmly, and could say without resentment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did,&rdquo; returned Elliott; &ldquo;I liked it so much that I'm sending you to a
+      bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as our
+      special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work; and if
+      you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air. He
+      could not believe it was real&mdash;that it was actually to him it had
+      happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events, to
+      come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of reporting
+      what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh Street, he
+      would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and the British
+      Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback only to his
+      happiness&mdash;there was no one with whom he might divide it. He wanted
+      to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with some one who
+      would understand how much it meant to him, who would really care. Had
+      Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would have laid
+      himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to accept them&mdash;begged
+      her to run away with him to this tremendous and terrifying capital of the
+      world, and start the new life together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
+      Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
+      because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
+      his admiration&mdash;and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
+      ingenuously he had shown it to her&mdash;meant nothing; but because the
+      girl he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
+      marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
+      ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous when
+      offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a hospital.
+      It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make
+      up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself had inspired
+      that girl and for a day given her existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
+      as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be. His
+      Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
+      impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
+      of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that. Ever
+      since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and flatterers,
+      both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who wanted her money
+      and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got the motives of the
+      latter two confused that she was so often hurt and said sharp, bitter
+      things that made her appear hard and heartless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
+      addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
+      Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so&mdash;when on arriving at the
+      office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
+      reading, &ldquo;Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
+      begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg &ldquo;&mdash;he
+      was able to reply: &ldquo;Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
+      person, who unfortunately has since died!&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes tears
+      that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned miserably,
+      appealingly to Helen Page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why does he do it to me?&rdquo; Her tone was that of the bewildered child
+      who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
+      without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
+      changed into a very angry young woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what's more,&rdquo; she announced, &ldquo;he can't do it to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
+      it was signed, &ldquo;Sister Anne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In an hour the answer came: &ldquo;Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
+      She is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was not
+      in his nature to be rude&mdash;certainly not to a woman, especially not to
+      the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name was Anita
+      or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he assured
+      himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could see in a
+      well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was of no interest
+      to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing their acquaintance
+      flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that she looked upon him as
+      one entirely out of her world&mdash;as one with whom she could do an
+      unconventional thing and make a good story about it later, knowing that it
+      would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance. And,
+      besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He no
+      longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy. He was
+      now a man with a responsible position&mdash;one who soon would be
+      conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+      He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage by
+      the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
+      correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
+      as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased tickets.
+      And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have occupied
+      could not be filled by any other person. It would have been sacrilege. At
+      least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through dinner, which he ate
+      alone at the same restaurant to which he had intended taking her, he
+      continued, to pretend she was with him. And at the theatre, where there
+      was going forward the most popular of all musical comedies, the seat next
+      to him, which to the audience, appeared wastefully empty, was to him
+      filled with her gracious presence. That Sister Anne was not there&mdash;that
+      the pretty romance he had woven about her had ended in disaster&mdash;filled,
+      him with real regret. He was glad he was leaving New York. He was glad he
+      was going, where nothing would remind him of her. And then he glanced up&mdash;and
+      looked straight into her eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
+      Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
+      farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
+      stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
+      full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him. There
+      were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+      shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
+      enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
+      the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was all
+      in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing suit;
+      round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+      golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
+      curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
+      rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee, was
+      gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized her,
+      she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her the
+      ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
+      neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over his
+      left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but some
+      one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the stage
+      and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but it was a
+      cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly sought the
+      stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to be laughing;
+      and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile exposed
+      pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble like those
+      of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard smile&mdash;and
+      heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all she cares.&rdquo; he told himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did, she
+      kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister Anne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained upon
+      her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly and
+      unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the' darkest
+      recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage by a
+      barrier of women's hats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend Mr. Ward,&rdquo; she began abruptly, in a whisper, &ldquo;is the rudest,
+      most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the other day I
+      thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved abominably&mdash;like
+      a boor&mdash;like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor? Because I
+      played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurt you?&rdquo; exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. &ldquo;Don't be ridiculous!
+      How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is? Ward's a clever
+      fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too good-looking; and
+      a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him. So when one of them
+      laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the trouble. I could see that
+      when I was telling him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Telling him!&rdquo; repeated Miss Flagg&mdash;&ldquo;Telling him what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About what a funny story you made of it,&rdquo; explained Holworthy. &ldquo;About his
+      having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said softly. &ldquo;So-so you told him that, did you? And&mdash;what
+      else did you tell him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only what you told us&mdash;that he said 'the day could not begin too
+      soon'; that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands
+      of men who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I tell you he said that?&rdquo; breathed Anita Flagg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you did,&rdquo; said Holworthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must have been mad!&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid you are angry,&rdquo; he ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angry!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Flagg. &ldquo;I should say I was angry, but not with
+      you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
+      let you take me out into the lobby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage and
+      seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had destroyed
+      his ideal of a sweet and noble woman&mdash;and he was sorry for Miss Flagg
+      because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be that man did
+      not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and, indeed, so
+      miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his friends on the
+      stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he would take himself
+      out of the front row, to give him back his money at the box office. Sam
+      certainly wished to take himself away; but he did not want to admit that
+      he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that the presence of Anita
+      Flagg could spoil his evening&mdash;could, in the slightest degree affect
+      him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling that he was in a false
+      position; that if he were it was his own fault; that he had acted like an
+      ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the second
+      act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance running
+      into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude to
+      abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
+      Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+      laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at him&mdash;whether
+      Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense; again making his
+      advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that he flushed
+      indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
+      figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past him, and
+      sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to speak&mdash;and
+      Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to give him time;
+      for, without regarding him in the least, and as though to establish the
+      fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and deliberately to
+      remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent toward him, her eyes
+      looking straight into his, her smile reproaching him. In the familiar tone
+      of an old and dear friend she said to him gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
+      enough of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or of
+      mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal&mdash;and something else
+      that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
+      remorsefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not Anita Flagg at all,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's Sister Anne come back to
+      life again!&rdquo; The girl shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met and
+      I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that was before I
+      understood&mdash;before I read what you wrote about Sister Anne&mdash;about
+      the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I knew what sort of
+      a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and gentle, and I knew you
+      had dug out something that I did not know was there&mdash;that no one else
+      had found. And I remembered how you called me Sister. I mean the way you
+      said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I wanted you to say it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lifted her face to his. She was very near him&mdash;so near that her
+      shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
+      scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest. Half
+      of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with the
+      greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+      programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky youth
+      in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young people in the front row did not know they were observed. They
+      were alone&mdash;as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
+      sweeping above the clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say it again,&rdquo; prompted Anita Flagg &ldquo;Sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not!&rdquo; returned the young man firmly. &ldquo;But I'll say this,&rdquo; he
+      whispered: &ldquo;I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
+      the finest woman who has ever lived!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
+      at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but that sounds just as good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
+      box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper; but
+      when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can see this act,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;or&mdash;my car's in front of the
+      theatre&mdash;we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three.
+      Which would you prefer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't make me laugh!&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but paying
+      no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's only one thing,&rdquo; she said to Sam, &ldquo;that is making me unhappy; and
+      because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am leaving
+      America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next Wednesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My business is to gather news,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;but in all my life I never
+      gathered such good news as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good news!&rdquo; exclaimed Anita.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; explained Sam, &ldquo;I am leaving, America&mdash;am spending the
+      winter in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but
+      that is not what makes me unhappy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; begged Anita.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea&mdash;as
+      they leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is my unhappiness,&rdquo; said Sam&mdash;and he pointed to a name on the
+      passenger list. It was: &ldquo;The Earl of Deptford, and valet.&rdquo; &ldquo;And because he
+      is on board!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not on board,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He changed to another boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
+      soul. He looked at her appealingly&mdash;hungrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did he change?&rdquo; he begged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all that is worrying you?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their
+      examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This may
+      or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But
+      whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior
+      year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them even
+      by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have been
+      too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It was the
+      professors who cheated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you can
+      score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief history
+      of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has attained it.
+      After graduating he &ldquo;accepted a position&rdquo; in an asylum for the insane,
+      from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where he died. Many
+      Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest they also should
+      attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else. Among these Peter
+      was by far the most afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects in
+      which you have been examined your marks added together give you an average
+      of ninety, you are passed &ldquo;with honors&rdquo;; if of seventy-five, you pass
+      &ldquo;with distinction&rdquo;; if Of fifty, You just &ldquo;pass.&rdquo; It is not unlike the
+      grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The whole
+      college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be lucky, but
+      the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined that, no
+      matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would see that he
+      passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of awards. Their
+      interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much, but because each
+      loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his dignified title
+      the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who dared to flunk
+      the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater, who supported
+      Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting Stillwater
+      indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his official
+      resignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
+      president. If he did not actually run after money he went where money was,
+      and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who possessed it.
+      And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through a too strict
+      respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose to that
+      institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool, or
+      gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to it that
+      the college lost also the services of that too conscientious instructor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
+      examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
+      inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is too bad!&rdquo; he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
+      &ldquo;Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride,
+      and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let us
+      hope he will pull through.&rdquo; For four years every professor had been
+      pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.
+      They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of him
+      forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew that
+      of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle would
+      hold the blank cartridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman. Doctor
+      Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at Stillwater, and
+      greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of those well-known
+      text-books, &ldquo;The Founders of Islam,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Rise and Fall of the Turkish
+      Empire.&rdquo; This latter work, in five volumes, had been not unfavorably
+      compared to Gibbon's &ldquo;Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.&rdquo; The original
+      newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back, the doctor had preserved,
+      and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to
+      visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always possessed a
+      contemporary and news interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is a review of the history,&rdquo; he would say&mdash;he always referred
+      to it as &ldquo;the&rdquo; history&mdash;&ldquo;that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it
+      was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The members of his class who were examined on the &ldquo;Rise and Fall,&rdquo; and who
+      invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the &ldquo;Fall,&rdquo;
+       sometimes feelingly as &ldquo;the.... Fall.&rdquo; The history began when
+      Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to
+      Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds with
+      the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since Suleiman,
+      Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map. When his
+      history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish Empire fell.
+      Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume that would
+      cover the last three centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book,&rdquo; said the chancellor, &ldquo;I
+      think the Russian-Turkish War should be included.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in
+      mild reproach. &ldquo;The war in the Crimea!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Why, I was alive at
+      the time. I know about it. That is not history.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
+      knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
+      trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
+      Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom &ldquo;the&rdquo; history
+      certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+      examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which he
+      had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with malice
+      toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked &ldquo;five.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty. In
+      their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but they
+      refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single point
+      higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five completely
+      knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter was &ldquo;found&rdquo; and
+      could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only son of the only
+      Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private college&mdash;the
+      son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the new Laboratory,
+      the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and the Hallowell
+      Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim hall of the Memorial
+      to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own disgrace and downfall,
+      the light the stained-glass window cast upon his nose was of no sicklier a
+      green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter wanted an A.M. or an A.B.,
+      not that he desired laurels he had not won, but because the young man was
+      afraid of his father. And he had cause to be. Father arrived at Stillwater
+      the next morning. The interviews that followed made Stillwater history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My son is not an ass!&rdquo; is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
+      Doctor Black. &ldquo;And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
+      the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can. And
+      I'll send my money where I send Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the son
+      and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had failed
+      to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say that? Oh, no,
+      he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college president.
+      Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a conspirator in a
+      comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He lowered his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been contemptible work here,&rdquo; he whispered&mdash;&ldquo;spite and a
+      mean spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I
+      find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our
+      college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance&mdash;Doctor Gilman.
+      Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary.&rdquo; This did not
+      happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford to
+      be too particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen no reason for raising his salary&mdash;and there you have the
+      explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his mark.
+      In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own
+      downfall. I have already asked for his resignation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this
+      particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem
+      humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than that
+      his son was an idiot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want the man discharged,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;just because Peter is
+      lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he
+      sacrificed my Peter in order to get even....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, &ldquo;is exactly what he did!
+      Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all over
+      America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an increase
+      in salary it was really you who refused it&mdash;and he struck at you
+      through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+      indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself
+      shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly
+      not your brilliant son&mdash;look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club
+      and foot-ball tour&mdash;is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor
+      Gilman went too far. And he has been justly punished!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor told
+      him, and his opinion of the matter as expressed to Peter, differed
+      materially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me,&rdquo; he concluded, &ldquo;that in the fall they will give you another
+      examination, and if you pass then, you will get your degree. No one will
+      know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the side-door like a
+      cold potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that when your
+      classmates stood up and got their parchments&mdash;the thing they'd been
+      working for four years, the only reason for their going to college at all&mdash;YOU
+      were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you don't get your
+      degree next fall that will be my fault. I've supported you through college
+      and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you deliver them next fall, or
+      you can support yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will be all right,&rdquo; said Peter humbly; &ldquo;I'll pass next fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to make sure of that,&rdquo; said Hallowell senior. &ldquo;To-morrow you
+      will take those history books that you did not open, especially Gilman's
+      'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you will
+      travel for the entire summer with a private tutor....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-ball teams over
+      half of the Middle States and daily bullied and browbeat them, protested
+      with indignation. &ldquo;WON'T travel with a private tutor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I say so,&rdquo; returned Hallowell senior grimly, &ldquo;you'll travel with a
+      governess and a trained nurse, and wear a strait jacket. And you'll
+      continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward.
+      And in order that you may know it backward&mdash;and forward you will
+      spend this summer in Turkey&mdash;in Constantinople&mdash;until I send you
+      permission to come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constantinople!&rdquo; yelled Peter. &ldquo;In August! Are you serious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I look it?&rdquo; asked Peter's father. He did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Constantinople,&rdquo; explained Mr. Hallowell senior, &ldquo;there will be
+      nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself every
+      minute you will be imbibing history and local color.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be imbibing fever,&rdquo;, returned Peter, &ldquo;and sunstroke and sudden
+      death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you send me to the island
+      where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to
+      study about Turkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do!&rdquo; said his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he
+      hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving them away to the members
+      of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was, and to bid
+      him good-by. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him were
+      loyally enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments, and to
+      that end they planned a mock trial of the &ldquo;Rise and Fall,&rdquo; at which a
+      packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to hang
+      Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with a rope round its neck was even
+      then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silver-white beard and
+      the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations. He did not
+      know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he protested that the
+      horse-play of his friends would make him appear a bad loser. &ldquo;It would
+      look, boys,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as though I couldn't take my medicine. Looks like
+      kicking against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman fought fair. He gave me
+      just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight more of him than do of
+      that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal nerve to pretend I scored
+      fifty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus, gazing
+      at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see. Since that morning he
+      had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater College. They were
+      retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly, cutting down unnecessary
+      expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black was too intelligent to hint
+      at his real motive, and the professor was far too innocent of evil, far
+      too detached from college politics to suspect. He would remain a professor
+      emeritus on half pay, but he no longer would teach. The college he had
+      served for thirty years-since it consisted of two brick buildings and a
+      faculty of ten young men&mdash;no longer needed him. Even his ivy-covered
+      cottage, in which his wife and he had lived for twenty years, in which
+      their one child had died, would at the beginning of the next term be
+      required of him. But the college would allow him those six months in which
+      to &ldquo;look round.&rdquo; So, just outside the circle of light from his student
+      lamp, he sat in his study, and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of
+      Socrates. He was not considering ways and means. They must be faced later.
+      He was considering how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What
+      eviction from that house would mean to her no one but he understood. Since
+      the day their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her
+      playroom, bedroom, and nursery had been altered, nothing had been touched.
+      To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given child was
+      still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living presence. When
+      at night the professor and his wife sat at either end of the study table,
+      reading by the same lamp, he would see her suddenly lift her head, alert
+      and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step had sounded, as though
+      from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her. And when they would be
+      forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some students' boarding-house,
+      though they could take with them their books, their furniture, their
+      mutual love and comradeship, they must leave behind them the haunting
+      presence of the child, the colored pictures she had cut from the Christmas
+      numbers and plastered over the nursery walls, the rambler roses that with
+      her own hands she had planted and that now climbed to her window and each
+      summer peered into her empty room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
+      lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
+      of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest elms,
+      and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer succeeded
+      cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the heroes of the
+      diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had flunked especially
+      for one man who had flunked. But for that man who for thirty years in the
+      class room had served the college there were no cheers. No one remembered
+      him, except the one student who had best reason to remember him. But this
+      recollection Peter had no rancor or bitterness and, still anxious lest he
+      should be considered a bad loser, he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else
+      to know that. So when the celebration was at its height and just before
+      train was due to carry him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the
+      Gilman cottage say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so
+      far only as half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which
+      opened upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor
+      and wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each
+      other, the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin,
+      delicate, well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her
+      awkward unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
+      What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The idea
+      that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never entered
+      mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was something
+      so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to offer his
+      sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and, avoiding the
+      celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour later the
+      entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and with &ldquo;He's a
+      jolly good fellow&rdquo; and &ldquo;He's off to Philippopolis in the morn&mdash;ing&rdquo;
+       ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car and gazed at
+      the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life. And he was
+      surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the students,
+      dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the smoking-car
+      fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in the cottage
+      stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children lost in the
+      streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same moment
+      whisper words of courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
+      over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
+      not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
+      Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In the
+      mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly forgot;
+      and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture man
+      through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects for the
+      camera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
+      newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in a
+      moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
+      illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
+      Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed it
+      with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor, and
+      the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks very
+      old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the entire
+      diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at Therapia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence of
+      the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
+      Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was a
+      power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington in
+      favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was afraid
+      his father would consider Therapia &ldquo;out of bounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He sent me to Constantinople,&rdquo; explained Peter, &ldquo;and if he thinks I'm not
+      playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and he
+      might cut off my allowance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This was
+      fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at he Cercle,
+      was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his letter-of-credit
+      and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own against men three
+      times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of his father. Only
+      they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot evening Peter saw
+      as much of their money scattered over the green table as his father had
+      spent over the Hallowell athletic field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile&mdash;in the morning
+      trying to fill his brain with names of great men who had been a long time
+      dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his active
+      spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter from Charley
+      Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived after Peter had
+      endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from boredom and gave
+      life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip intended to amuse.
+      One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read: &ldquo;Old man Gilman has got the
+      sack. The chancellor offered him up as a sacrifice to your father, and
+      because he was unwise enough to flunk you. He is to move out in September.
+      I ran across them last week when I was looking for rooms for a Freshman
+      cousin. They were reserving one in the same boarding-house. It's a shame,
+      and I know you'll agree. They are a fine old couple, and I don't like to
+      think of them herding with Freshmen in a shine boardinghouse. Black always
+      was a swine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just learned,&rdquo; he cabled his father, &ldquo;Gilman dismissed because flunked me
+      consider this outrageous please see he is reinstated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read:
+      &ldquo;Informed Gilman acted through spite have no authority as you know to
+      interfere any act of black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had
+      befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the injustice had been hourly
+      increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his
+      filial piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but
+      little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next cable
+      was not conciliatory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me appear
+      contemptible Black is a toady will do as you direct please reinstate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black incident is
+      closed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid and
+      explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous cablegram of his
+      distinguished contemporary: &ldquo;Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's paraphrase of this ran: &ldquo;Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will
+      not try for degree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply was equally emphatic:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You earn your degree or you earn your own living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: &ldquo;Choose
+      to earn my own living am leaving Constantinople.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer via
+      Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very much, would have accompanied
+      him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by way of Paris and
+      London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get there long before I do,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and as soon as you
+      arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor Gilman some souvenir
+      of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He wouldn't
+      accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to be something
+      characteristic of the country, Like a prayer rug, or a scimitar, or an
+      illuminated Koran, or...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a
+      flat morocco case and opened it. &ldquo;What's the matter with one of these?&rdquo; he
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt.
+      To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the Star of the Crescent,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Where did you buy it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buy it!&rdquo; exclaimed Stetson. &ldquo;You don't buy them. The Sultan bestows
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet,&rdquo; returned Stetson, &ldquo;I've got something in my pocket that says
+      he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving
+      Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that say when it says it in English?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It says,&rdquo; translated Stetson, &ldquo;that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan,
+      bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author, lecturer, the Star of the
+      Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to
+      Turkey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never try to fool the fakirs, my son,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I'm a fakir myself.
+      What services did you ever....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Services rendered,&rdquo; continued Stetson undisturbed, &ldquo;in spreading
+      throughout the United States a greater knowledge of the customs,
+      industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That,&rdquo; he explained,
+      &ldquo;refers to my&mdash;I should say our&mdash;moving-picture lecture. I
+      thought it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish
+      decoration, so I went after this one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But did they believe you,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;when you told them you were an
+      author and educator?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stetson closed one eye and grinned. &ldquo;They believed whatever I paid them to
+      believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you can get one of those,&rdquo; cried Peter, &ldquo;Old man Gilman ought to get a
+      dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest history
+      of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a real
+      professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the five
+      volumes with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred dollars in bribes,&rdquo; said Stetson briskly, &ldquo;and two months of
+      diplomacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't got two months for diplomacy,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;so I'll have to
+      increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the decoration for Gilman, and
+      you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the
+      Crescent, but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know what
+      we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever bestowed by
+      a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell the people
+      often enough that anything is the best they believe you. That's the way
+      father sells his hams. You've been a press-agent. From now on you're going
+      to be my press-agent&mdash;I mean Doctor Gilman's press-agent. I pay your
+      salary, but your work is to advertise him and the Order of the Crescent.
+      I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at Stillwater. He sends out
+      college news to a syndicate and he's the local Associated Press man. He's
+      sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my best friend, and he'll work
+      the papers as far as you like. Your job is to make Stillwater College and
+      Doctor Black and my father believe that when they lost Gilman they lost
+      the man who made Stillwater famous. And before we get through boosting
+      Gilman, we'll make my father's million-dollar gift laboratory look like an
+      insult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle burned fiercely,
+      memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of his strategies and tactics in
+      advertising soared before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's great!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;I've got your idea and you've got me. And
+      you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-agent for politicians,
+      actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horse-shows&mdash;and I'm
+      the best! I was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he ran
+      for governor. He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+      Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took hold
+      of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs.
+      Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at Newport, when all she ever saw of
+      Newport was Bergers and the Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that made
+      the American People believe Russian dancers can dance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's plain to see you hate yourself,&rdquo; said 'Peter. &ldquo;You must not get so
+      despondent or you might commit suicide. How much money will you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much have you got?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All kinds,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;Some in a letter-of-credit that my father earned
+      from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker from the
+      pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my living.
+      Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman
+      and the Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman Defense, Publicity,
+      and Development Committee, and you will begin by introducing me to the man
+      I am to bribe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to
+      bribe,&rdquo; exclaimed Stetson; &ldquo;you just bribe him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made
+      their first move in the game of winning for Professor Gilman the Order of
+      the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock coat
+      and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign office
+      and appeared to be &ldquo;a friend of a friend of a friend&rdquo; of the assistant
+      third secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The five volumes of the &ldquo;Rise and Fall&rdquo; were spread before him, and Peter
+      demanded to know why so distinguished a scholar as Doctor Gilman had not
+      received some recognition from the country he had so sympathetically
+      described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and promised the matter
+      should be brought at once to the attention of the grand vizier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little
+      chance of getting within speaking distance of the grand vizier as of the
+      ladies of his harem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like Tammany,&rdquo; said Stetson; &ldquo;there are sachems, district leaders,
+      and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled to trade or give away a few of
+      these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage of
+      jobs in the street-cleaning department. This fellow will go to his patron,
+      his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he will put it
+      up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a
+      hundred others, without knowing what he is signing; then you cable me, and
+      the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way that
+      will make Halley's comet look like a wax match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left
+      alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the
+      contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He had
+      not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an
+      itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus
+      would receive very different treatment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard and diamond
+      rings called with Osman to apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man
+      explained&mdash;had been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he
+      had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class
+      that had been given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+      all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an honor for a
+      savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth class
+      would hardly be high enough. The fees, the fat man added, would Also be
+      higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference, because the
+      fourth class entitled the wearer to a salute from all sentries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are few sentries at Stillwater,&rdquo; said Peter; &ldquo;but I want the best
+      and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the
+      embassy. The secretary was considerably annoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Hallowell,&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;why the devil didn't you tell me you
+      wanted a decoration? Of course the State department expressly forbids us
+      to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the
+      Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at once&mdash;but, on
+      two conditions: that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+      why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat
+      demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one of the Gilman Defense
+      Committee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor Gilman's history,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;must be presented to the Sultan. You
+      must have the five volumes rebound in red and green, the colors of
+      Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;they are not soiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by me,&rdquo; Peter assured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will take them myself,&rdquo; continued Stimson, &ldquo;to Muley Pasha, the
+      minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to present them to his Imperial
+      Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he
+      won't so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the
+      Order of the Crescent of the third class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going up!&rdquo; exclaimed Peter. &ldquo;The third class. That will cost me my entire
+      letter-of-credit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Stimson. &ldquo;I've saved you from the grafters. It will
+      cost you only what you pay to have the books rebound. And the THIRD class
+      is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it round your
+      neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a thousand
+      soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and wear it longer
+      round my neck What's the matter with our getting the second class or the
+      first class?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first class,&rdquo; he explained patiently, &ldquo;is the Great Grand Cross, and
+      is given only to reigning sovereigns. The second is called the Grand
+      Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men
+      of world-wide fame....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide fame?&rdquo; said
+      Peter. &ldquo;He will be some day, when Stetson starts boosting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day,&rdquo; retorted Stimson stiffly, &ldquo;I may be an ambassador. When I am I
+      hope to get the Grand Cross of the Crescent, but not now. I'm sorry you're
+      not satisfied,&rdquo; he added aggrievedly. &ldquo;No one can get you anything higher
+      than the third class, and I may lose my official head asking for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing is too good for old man Gilman,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;nor for you. You
+      get the third class for him, and I'll have father make you an ambassador.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who had
+      come from a reception at the Grand vizier's and still wore his
+      decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of
+      the young prince he regarded with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul
+      with wide-eyed awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan, and
+      because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation in
+      Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming,
+      distinguished, courteous to the verge of humility, most cleverly cynical,
+      most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won, and while
+      doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards and the cards
+      held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his equal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack,
+      Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that nestled behind the lapel of
+      Abdul's coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask what that is?&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and
+      then smiled delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an order,&rdquo; he said in a quick aside, &ldquo;bestowed only upon men of
+      world-wide fame. I dined to-night,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;with your charming
+      compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Joe told?&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince nodded. &ldquo;Joe told,&rdquo; he repeated; &ldquo;but it is all arranged. Your
+      distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater, will receive the Crescent of
+      the third class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond sunburst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;can't some one get him one like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then
+      thought better of it and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are only two men in all Turkey,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;who could do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is the Sultan the other one?&rdquo; asked Peter. The prince gasped as
+      though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold shower, and then laughed
+      long and silently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You flatter me,&rdquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know you could if you liked!&rdquo; whispered Peter stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently Abdul did not hear him. &ldquo;I will take one card,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand francs in the
+      pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had dropped out. &ldquo;Will you
+      divide?&rdquo; asked the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I?&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or
+      call?&rdquo; The prince called and laid down a full house. Peter showed four
+      tens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will deal you one hand, double or quits,&rdquo; said the prince.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+      mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will pay me double what is on the table,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or you quit owing
+      me nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go ahead,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held a
+      seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours. Hoping to draw another king,
+      which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul, he threw
+      away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The prince
+      showed three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll make you a sporting proposition,&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;You owe me a hundred
+      and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only two men in
+      the empire can give me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the
+      table. But the puzzled glances of the other players showed that to them
+      Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince smiled cynically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For yourself?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Doctor Gilman,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will cut for deal and one hand will decide,&rdquo; said the prince. His
+      voice dropped to a whisper. &ldquo;And no one must ever know,&rdquo; he warned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter also could be cynical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even the Sultan,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he
+      dealt Peter was the better one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY
+      announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the
+      University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously pleased
+      to confer the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at
+      Quarantine. It read: &ldquo;Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had been
+      brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince Abdul, although pitchforked
+      into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its most
+      enthusiastic members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE,&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;If it is
+      worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will command
+      that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that it be placed
+      in the national library. Moreover, the University of Constantinople, the
+      College of Salonica, and the National Historical Society have each elected
+      Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed him, the Patriarch of
+      Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish ambassador in America has been
+      instructed to present the insignia with his own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his press-work, and to
+      further the idea that all Europe was now clamoring for the &ldquo;Rise and
+      fall,&rdquo; Peter paid an impecunious but over-educated dragoman to translate
+      it into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+      bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed out that not
+      since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so highly
+      honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand vizier&mdash;who
+      had been requested by Prince Abdul&mdash;to request the State Department
+      to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from such a source
+      was a command and, as desired, the State Department wrote as requested by
+      the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered congratulations. The fact
+      was sent out briefly from Washington by Associated Press. This official
+      recognition by the Government and by the newspapers was all and more than
+      Stetson wanted. He took off his coat and with a megaphone, rather than a
+      pen, told the people of the United States who Doctor Gilman was, who the
+      Sultan was, what a Grand Cross was, and why America's greatest historian
+      was not without honor save in his own country. Columns of this were paid
+      for and appeared as &ldquo;patent insides,&rdquo; with a portrait of Doctor Gilman
+      taken from the STILLWATER COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross
+      drawn from imagination, in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle,
+      Western, and Eastern States. special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and
+      pictures of the Grand Cross followed, and, using Stillwater as his base,
+      Stetson continued to flood the country. Young Hines, the local
+      correspondent, acting under instructions by cable from Peter, introduced
+      him to Doctor Gilman as a traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who
+      was a humble admirer of the author of the &ldquo;Rise and fall.&rdquo; Stetson, having
+      studied it as a student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at
+      the feet of the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on
+      the steps of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from
+      the unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life. To
+      this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added photographs
+      he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered cottage, of his
+      favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian at work at his
+      desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife on the croquet
+      lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually presented. This
+      pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much to his
+      astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
+      Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to a
+      Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
+      Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag a
+      secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
+      travelled down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary took
+      the local train to Stillwater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the ambassador
+      as one of the happiest incidents of his distinguished career. Never since
+      he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western republic had its
+      barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly approaching his
+      own idea of what was his due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This ambassador,&rdquo; Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater, who was
+      also the proprietor of its largest department store, &ldquo;is the personal
+      representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's exactly,&rdquo; added Stetson, &ldquo;as though the Sultan himself were coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater,&rdquo; continued Hines, &ldquo;that we
+      ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as he comes to pay the
+      highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'd I better do?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Stetson here,&rdquo; Hines pointed out, &ldquo;has lived in Turkey, and he knows
+      what they expect. Maybe he will help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you?&rdquo; begged the mayor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will,&rdquo; said Stetson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most of
+      the faculty were on their vacations. But there were half a dozen
+      professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed out
+      to them that the coming honor to one lately of their number reflected
+      glory upon the college and upon them, and that they should take official
+      action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear
+      their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these suggestions, with alacrity&mdash;partly
+      because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because they had never
+      been photographed by a moving-picture machine&mdash;they all agreed. So it
+      came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and dusty stepped off
+      the way-train at Stillwater station he found to his delighted amazement a
+      red carpet stretching to a perfectly new automobile, a company of the
+      local militia presenting arms, a committee, consisting of the mayor in a
+      high hat and white gloves and three professors in gowns and colored hoods,
+      and the Stillwater silver Cornet Band playing what, after several
+      repetitions, the ambassador was graciously pleased to recognize as his
+      national anthem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was
+      dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration. Here at last were
+      people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the mayor helped
+      him into the automobile, and those students who lived in Stillwater
+      welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture machine aimed at
+      him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But inwardly he was ill at
+      ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
+      America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
+      honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
+      blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost on
+      the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+      leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
+      the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki, by
+      the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous liking
+      and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater gathered
+      outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling and
+      bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
+      ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only frock
+      coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor Gilman
+      smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
+      Stillwater shouted, &ldquo;Speech,&rdquo; in sudden panic he reached out his hand
+      quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, three Long ones!&rdquo; yelled the cheer leader. &ldquo;Now, then, 'See
+      the Conquering Hero!'&rdquo; yelled the bandmaster. &ldquo;Attention! Present arms!&rdquo;
+       yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
+      applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
+      his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+      all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
+      and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
+      drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the rear
+      of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+      professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
+      he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to the
+      Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
+      Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater. They were
+      afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might inadvertently
+      drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to supply
+      his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts of the
+      great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he choked.
+      Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently before the
+      public, and never before had her president been so utterly and completely
+      ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized that even had he
+      been present he could not have shown his face. How could he, who had, as
+      every one connected with the college now knew, out of spite and without
+      cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join in chanting his
+      praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior, might not hear of
+      Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of anything else. At
+      his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one he met
+      congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had come to
+      his pet college.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,&rdquo;
+       exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. &ldquo;Now if I pay a hundred thousand
+      for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty dollars, but
+      you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in half a million
+      dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor Gilman's doing as
+      much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns Hopkins or as Walter
+      Camp does for Yale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he was able,
+      and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage increased. It
+      seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor Gilman. The stone
+      he had rejected had become the corner-stone of Stillwater. Whenever he
+      opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming: &ldquo;Will no one rid me of this
+      pestilent fellow?&rdquo; For the &ldquo;Rise and Fall,&rdquo; in an edition deluxe limited
+      to two hundred copies, was being bought up by all his book-collecting
+      millionaire friends; a popular edition was on view in the windows of every
+      book-shop; It was offered as a prize to subscribers to all the more sedate
+      magazines, and the name and features of the distinguished author had
+      become famous and familiar. Not a day passed but that some new honor, at
+      least so the newspapers stated, was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced
+      that he was to be the next exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he
+      was to lecture at the Sorbonne; that in June he was to receive a degree
+      from Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by
+      offering him the chair of history at that seat of learning at a salary of
+      five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust upon
+      Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson, but
+      this offer happened to be genuine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter from
+      the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We could not be happy away from Stillwater,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We have only a
+      month more in the cottage, but after that we still can walk past it; we
+      can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit the
+      place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and
+      miserable for her, and she would be lonely for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave
+      Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern college at which
+      Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his
+      jealousy knew no bounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He telegraphed to Black: &ldquo;Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six thousand&mdash;offer
+      him whatever he wants, but make him promise for no consideration to leave
+      Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought any credit to the
+      college if we lose him I'll hold you responsible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor
+      called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble pie that for a week he
+      suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care
+      for that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished, was
+      back in the faculty, and had made only one condition&mdash;that he might
+      live until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history
+      examination, which, should he pass it, would give him his degree, he found
+      on every side evidences of the &ldquo;worldwide fame&rdquo; he himself had created.
+      The newsstand at the depot, the book-stores, the drugstores, the
+      picture-shops, all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing the
+      ivy-covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,
+      advertisements of the different editions of &ldquo;the&rdquo; history proclaimed his
+      fame. Peter, fascinated by the success of his own handiwork, approached
+      the ivy-covered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs. Gilman
+      welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which she always
+      gave courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations, and Doctor
+      Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers
+      Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should indeed!&rdquo; Peter assured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell,&rdquo; said the professor, &ldquo;that you have
+      not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five.&rdquo; In real
+      sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great
+      astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking
+      offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+      the precocious act of a beloved child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; said Doctor Gilman gently, &ldquo;that this summer you did not
+      work very hard for your degree!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell you the truth, Professor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're right I got working
+      for something worth while&mdash;and I forgot about the degree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
+      Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at the
+      time military attaché of the German Government with the Russian army in
+      the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of Manchuria,
+      and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his part in the
+      invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the ramparts of the
+      Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses below us glowing
+      and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been Carl
+      Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a spy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
+      correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell it
+      in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
+      have yet to find any one who will believe it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of the East
+      Cliff Hotel left a copy of &ldquo;The Riddle of the Sands&rdquo; in the coffee-room,
+      where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the
+      Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place, the German flag
+      might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, it might not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As every German knows, &ldquo;The Riddle of the Sands&rdquo; is a novel written by a
+      very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion of
+      his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to be embarked
+      in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and despatched
+      simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From
+      there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred and forty miles
+      through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of Norfolk somewhere
+      between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this coast is low-lying and
+      bordered by sand flats which at low water are dry, that England maintains
+      no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest naval base is at Chatham, seem
+      to point to it as the spot best adapted for such a raid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
+      read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and under
+      separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: &ldquo;I suggest your
+      Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage, and
+      of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms, take
+      them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want ideas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
+      was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford went to
+      Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the Shakespeare
+      Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the robe, Ford was
+      left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors and shelves, and
+      packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent Garden balls and
+      amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a long, secretly
+      cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by trying on all the
+      uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant
+      returned, instead of finding a young American in English clothes and a
+      high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a spiked helmet
+      fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The assistant retreated
+      precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to
+      turn the tables by saying, &ldquo;Does a German uniform always affect a
+      Territorial like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It did give me quite a turn,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It's this talk of invasion, I
+      fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along the
+      beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, quite right, too!&rdquo; said Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at his
+      post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play truant
+      and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the words of
+      Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young
+      Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of
+      the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young Herbert, who was
+      only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an
+      Irishman, both in their third term at the university. After five years'
+      service in India, Bellew had spent the last &ldquo;Eights&rdquo; week at Oxford, and
+      was complaining bitterly that since his day the undergraduate had
+      deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to study, far too well
+      behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy; instead of &ldquo;wines&rdquo; he
+      found pleasure in debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging,
+      practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes, that once were wont to set England in a
+      roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests combated these charges
+      fiercely. His criticisms they declared unjust and without intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're talking rot!&rdquo; said his dutiful nephew. &ldquo;Take Phil here, for
+      example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
+      never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of him.
+      And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as yours!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse!&rdquo; assented Birrell loyally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours; as the
+      Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat through a
+      temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a man from
+      Balliol?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!&rdquo; cried Herbert. &ldquo;What price that? When
+      the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen guns. That
+      was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The country hasn't
+      stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!&rdquo; challenged Herbert. &ldquo;Make it as
+      hard as you like; something risky, something that will make the country
+      sit up, something that will send us all to jail, and Phil and I will put
+      it through whether it takes one man or a dozen. Go on,&rdquo; he persisted, &ldquo;And
+      I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here in town and all of them
+      undergraduates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give you the idea, yes!&rdquo; mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. &ldquo;That's just
+      what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's the
+      idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
+      theatricals!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it!&rdquo; snorted Herbert. &ldquo;If you want to know what stage fright is, just
+      go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt cork
+      and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a little
+      different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and with
+      well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now he
+      suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly about
+      him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace,
+      and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had departed to the
+      theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside the open windows,
+      were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the
+      west by the great shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by the
+      flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was still sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'LL give you an idea for a rag,&rdquo; whispered Ford. &ldquo;One that is risky,
+      that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
+      you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mind him,&rdquo; exclaimed Herbert impatiently. &ldquo;HE never reads anything!
+      Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the book most talked about,&rdquo; explained Ford. &ldquo;And what else is most
+      talked about?&rdquo; He answered his own question. &ldquo;The landing of the Germans
+      in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book in
+      everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen
+      if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just where the
+      book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of soldiers; not
+      in one place, but in twenty places?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would happen?&rdquo; roared Major Bellew loyally. &ldquo;The Boy Scouts would
+      fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut up!&rdquo; snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo; he demanded breathlessly. &ldquo;How are we to do it? It would take
+      hundreds of men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two men,&rdquo; corrected Ford, &ldquo;And a third man to drive the car. I thought it
+      out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German uniforms. I
+      thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out how prepared
+      you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now that you
+      wanted a chance to go to jail&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your plan?&rdquo; interrupted Birrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We would start just before dawn&mdash;&rdquo; began Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We?&rdquo; demanded Herbert. &ldquo;Are you in this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I in it?&rdquo; cried Ford indignantly. &ldquo;It's my own private invasion! I'm
+      letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be any
+      invasion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
+      nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We accept your services, sir,&rdquo; said Birrell gravely. &ldquo;What's your plan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
+      slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
+      indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the preposterous, outrageous&mdash;Are you mad?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Do
+      you suppose for one minute I will allow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you go to the devil!&rdquo; he exclaimed cheerfully. &ldquo;Come on, Ford,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
+      miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
+      misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and on
+      his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
+      occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles at
+      the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route by
+      which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
+      forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
+      chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
+      the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+      lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
+      of each was alike&mdash;each produced a pencil and on the face of his
+      &ldquo;Half Inch&rdquo; road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
+      numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had come,
+      they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they were
+      returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them
+      the information they desired. He was an intelligent head-waiter, young,
+      and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing. In a frock coat he
+      might easily have been mistaken for something even more important than a
+      head-waiter&mdash;for a German riding-master, a leader of a Hungarian
+      band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his station. He even
+      assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen
+      from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of the homing
+      pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found their way. As Carl Schultz
+      followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map fell from the pocket of one
+      of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace
+      it, when his eyes were held by notes scrawled roughly in pencil. With an
+      expression that no longer was that of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift
+      glance about him and then slipped into the empty coat-room and locked the
+      door. Five minutes later, with a smile that played uneasily over a face
+      grown gray with anxiety, Carl presented the map to the tallest of the
+      three strangers. It was open so that the pencil marks were most obvious.
+      By his accent it was evident the tallest of the three strangers was an
+      American.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil!&rdquo; he protested; &ldquo;which of you boys has been playing hob
+      with my map?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with disfavor;
+      until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a glance, he
+      signified the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that!&rdquo; exclaimed the younger one. &ldquo;The Automobile Club asked us to
+      mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
+      petrol.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance, he
+      departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the windows
+      of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray stretch of
+      sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret, he glanced
+      carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned eagerly
+      forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long lines
+      of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull of
+      thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a black
+      leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Patience,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
+      There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight for
+      us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the three
+      strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear, of
+      gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
+      gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
+      way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again
+      allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats
+      were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a Norwegian tramp was
+      drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these the sea was empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
+      off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
+      Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman on
+      his rounds, to the driver of the char à banc. He had been a year in Cromer
+      and was well known and well liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand, the
+      chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees. Between the
+      trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the
+      gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by
+      bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new apart, and a
+      man sprang into the walk and confronted him. But, at sight of the
+      head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his heels clicked together,
+      his hand went sharply to his visor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn. In
+      the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there now
+      stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen
+      table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and
+      perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the key,
+      was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl drew his
+      legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been in constant communication,&rdquo; said the man with the beard.
+      &ldquo;They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly from
+      the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you to-morrow
+      at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of
+      this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final advertisement. Thirty
+      thousand of our own people will read it. They will know the moment has
+      come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens where,
+      upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with pretty
+      ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above
+      him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served
+      at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf balls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A nation of wasters,&rdquo; muttered the German, &ldquo;sleeping at their posts. They
+      are fiddling while England falls!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
+      about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
+      around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
+      was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
+      were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms, and
+      to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
+      Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Du bist gefangen!&rdquo; he announced. &ldquo;Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
+      Leute?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Shutliffe, &ldquo;but I am a trifle
+      'ard of 'earing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier addressed him in English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the name of this village?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
+      recalled its name with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen any of our people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go indoors!&rdquo; commanded the soldier, &ldquo;And put out all lights, and remain
+      indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
+      Do you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly,&rdquo; stammered Mr. Shutliffe. &ldquo;May I lock in
+      the pigs first, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two others
+      trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still standing
+      uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he should lock up
+      the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a fine start!&rdquo; mocked Herbert. &ldquo;Of course, you had to pick out
+      the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
+      better pack up and go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The village inn is still open,&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;We'll close It.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles on
+      the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two fishermen
+      removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose to the
+      occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; she exclaimed briskly, &ldquo;What way is that to come tumbling
+      into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
+      fellow, my lad, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents, interrupted
+      her sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are Germans!&rdquo; he declared. &ldquo;This village is captured. You are
+      prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
+      If you into the street go, we will shoot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that the
+      soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one shouldered
+      his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ass!&rdquo; muttered the tall German. &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
+      shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
+      later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will hold Stiffkey for a while!&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;Now, back to the car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive figure.
+      His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted cobble-stones
+      proclaimed his calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The constable!&rdquo; whispered Herbert. &ldquo;He must see us, but he mustn't speak
+      to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the street,
+      and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken alarm,
+      disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes later a
+      motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into
+      Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The driver of the
+      car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to his heels he
+      was covered by a raincoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Policeman,&rdquo; he began; &ldquo;when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
+      in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward the
+      beach. What's the idea&mdash;manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; the policeman assured him promptly; &ldquo;I saw them. It's
+      manoeuvres, sir. Territorials.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't look like Territorials,&rdquo; objected the chauffeur. &ldquo;They looked
+      like Germans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal a
+      grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Territorials, sir,&rdquo; he protested soothingly; &ldquo;skylarking maybe, but
+      meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's serious,
+      and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast Guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The constable considered deeply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard,&rdquo; he protested; &ldquo;not
+      at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
+      gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
+      your cards&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye gods!&rdquo; cried the man in the rear of the car. &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;You couldn't wake these people with
+      dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They little know of England who only Stiffkey know,&rdquo; chanted the
+      chauffeur reprovingly. &ldquo;Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
+      live wire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
+      job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
+      of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road&mdash;and in
+      the light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged
+      across the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He
+      was followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put out that light,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Go to your home and tell no one what
+      you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot. Our
+      sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed his
+      comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding over the
+      cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below. Young Bradshaw
+      stood quite still. In his heart was much fear&mdash;fear of laughter, of
+      ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly, silently he
+      turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he had just
+      climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably informed that
+      in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney, sentries were
+      waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the gauntlet. He saw that
+      it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer and later as a
+      Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced on the rifle
+      range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud. As he threw his
+      leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car farther up the hill,
+      fired two shots over his head. These, he explained to Ford, were intended
+      to give &ldquo;verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.&rdquo;
+       And the sighing of the bullets gave young Bradshaw exactly what he wanted&mdash;the
+      assurance that he was not the victim of a practical joke. He threw his
+      weight forward and, lifting his feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an
+      hour into the main street of Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car
+      followed, a mob of men so completely blocked the water-front that Ford was
+      forced to stop. His head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious,
+      sceptical, eager. A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a
+      retired army officer pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for
+      him, and then closing in his wake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen any&mdash;any soldiers?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;German soldiers!&rdquo; Ford answered. &ldquo;They tried to catch us, but when I saw
+      who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many&mdash;and where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
+      didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
+      better telephone the garrison, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; snapped the elderly gentleman. &ldquo;I happen to be in command of
+      this district. What are your names?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've no time for that!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;We've got to warn every coast town in
+      Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got them guessing,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now, what we want is a live wire,
+      some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
+      countryside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks ahead there,&rdquo; said Birrell, &ldquo;as though it hadn't gone to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
+      lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, &ldquo;trippers&rdquo; in
+      flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to witness
+      a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their escorts,
+      shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion sprang in
+      front of the car and waved his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's this tale about Germans?&rdquo; he demanded jocularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can see their lights from the beach,&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;They've landed two
+      regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut all
+      the wires south.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The proprietor refused to be &ldquo;had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let 'em all come!&rdquo; he mocked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; returned Ford. &ldquo;Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
+      Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
+      Germans back! Gangway,&rdquo; he shouted, and the car shot forward. &ldquo;We warned
+      you,&rdquo; he called, &ldquo;And it's up to you to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
+      with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This thing is going to fail!&rdquo; he cried petulantly. &ldquo;They don't believe
+      us. We've got to show ourselves&mdash;many times&mdash;in a dozen places.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The British mind moves slowly,&rdquo; said Birrell, the Irishman. &ldquo;Now, if this
+      had happened in my native land&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned
+      the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past and disappeared in
+      the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that
+      men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying
+      from its running boards. Before they could find their voices a motor
+      cycle, driven as though the angel of death were at the wheel, shaved their
+      mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things are looking up!&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;Where is our next stop? As I said
+      before, what we want is a live one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are next billed to appear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;about a quarter of a mile from
+      here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
+      the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
+      when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw three
+      German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat helmets,
+      with long brown rifles. They saw an anæmic, pale-faced youth without a
+      coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply in his chair
+      and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. &ldquo;You are a prisoner,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
+      out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
+      the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument. Ford
+      flung his rifle upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't!&rdquo; he growled. &ldquo;Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My pay&mdash;my month's pay?&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Can I take It?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it and get out,&rdquo; Ford commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
+      pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the papers
+      inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo; cried Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake, and
+      Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre issued
+      by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders, Herbert
+      twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the window, and
+      almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the tower. Birrell
+      leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to shout: &ldquo;Don't touch
+      that instrument! If you attempt to send a message through, we will shoot.
+      We go to cut the wires!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his heart
+      beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm raised to
+      guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward across the
+      table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the circuit and
+      through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your last remark,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was that what we wanted was a live one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mention it!&rdquo; said Ford. &ldquo;He jammed that gun half down my throat. I
+      can taste it still. Where do we go from here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;According to the route we mapped out this afternoon,&rdquo; said Herbert, &ldquo;We
+      are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse and
+      Weybourne, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not with me!&rdquo; exclaimed Birrell fiercely. &ldquo;Those towns have been tipped
+      off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
+      death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
+      Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
+      believe him, and they'll call out the navy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herbert consulted his map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a Coast Guard,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;stationed just the other side of
+      Morston. And,&rdquo; he added fervently, &ldquo;let us hope he's lonely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
+      coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars, nor
+      moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped out
+      upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon fires
+      burning fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since seeing those fires,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;I feel a strange reluctance
+      about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coast Guards don't shoot!&rdquo; mocked Birrell. &ldquo;They only look at the clouds
+      through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able to
+      frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
+      cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
+      cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
+      showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must pass in single file in front of that light,&rdquo; whispered Ford, &ldquo;And
+      then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm on in that last scene,&rdquo; growled Herbert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only,&rdquo; repeated Ford with emphasis, &ldquo;We must be sure he has seen us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars, many
+      flashes, many bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's seen us!&rdquo; yelled Birrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier fully
+      armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from the
+      shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed his first
+      shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he proceeded to
+      sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he emptied into the
+      night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to sea, now at his own
+      shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of a mile away at
+      Morston it sounded like a battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
+      length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
+      last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
+      painfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened to Herbert?&rdquo; panted Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; gasped Birrell, &ldquo;When I saw him last he was diving over
+      the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About twenty!&rdquo; groaned the American, &ldquo;And, besides being dead, I am
+      severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time I
+      hit a rock!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the head-lights.
+      It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water, and clad simply
+      in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and fell into his golf
+      clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;can have
+      mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles and
+      helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open road, and
+      five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris tweeds, and
+      with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car, turned into the
+      shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror to their guilty
+      souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a regiment of
+      regulars advancing in column of fours, at the &ldquo;double.&rdquo; An officer sprang
+      to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have to commandeer this,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Run back to Cromer. Don't crush
+      my men, but go like the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We heard firing here,&rdquo; explained the officer at the Coast Guard station.
+      &ldquo;The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen. They made
+      pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks as
+      though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,&rdquo; exclaimed the
+      officer suddenly, &ldquo;if you are the three gentlemen who first gave the alarm
+      to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the other coast towns. Because,
+      if you are, he wants your names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
+      discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst might
+      happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably were the men
+      to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been returning from
+      Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had been held up by
+      the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were lucky to escape,&rdquo; said the officer &ldquo;And in keeping on to give
+      warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
+      extremely well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence. With
+      his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car through
+      lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were banked
+      behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!&rdquo; exclaimed Ford
+      admiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY regiment!&rdquo; snorted the officer. &ldquo;You've passed through five regiments
+      already, and there are as many more in the dark places. They're
+      everywhere!&rdquo; he cried jubilantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires,&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Ford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what the Germans think,&rdquo; said the officer. &ldquo;It's working like a
+      clock,&rdquo; he cried happily. &ldquo;There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they got
+      your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a wave,
+      on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government took
+      over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+      territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down in
+      London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
+      Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
+      them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
+      eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+      coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
+      the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
+      sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on
+      land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast alone
+      before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from Colchester
+      the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H. A.'s with
+      siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns spread out
+      over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They thought they'd
+      give us a surprise party. They will never give us another surprise party!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
+      Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
+      the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
+      and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon, the
+      clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command raised in
+      sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless fires. Every
+      window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The night had been
+      turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like the eyes of those
+      who had passed through an earthquake, of those who looked upon the burning
+      of San Francisco, upon the destruction of Messina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were betrayed, general,&rdquo; whispered the head-waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were betrayed, baron,&rdquo; replied the bearded one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you were in time to warn the flotilla.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last message I received over the wireless,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;before I
+      destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
+      movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And,&rdquo; added the general, &ldquo;The
+      English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept that
+      explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history. Return
+      to the hotel,&rdquo; he commanded, &ldquo;And in two months you can rejoin your
+      regiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map of
+      Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that was
+      spread over five. Beneath it was printed: &ldquo;Lester Ford, our London
+      correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
+      warn the English people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared this
+      paragraph:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son of
+      Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell&mdash;both of Balliol College,
+      Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
+      These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+      prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
+      infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
+      authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
+      people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we, or shall we not,&rdquo; asked Herbert, &ldquo;tell my uncle that we three,
+      and we three alone, were the invaders?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's hardly correct,&rdquo; said Ford, &ldquo;as we now know there were two hundred
+      thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I vote we don't tell him,&rdquo; said Birrell. &ldquo;Let him think with everybody
+      else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon and
+      gave the show away. If we talk,&rdquo; he argued, &ldquo;We'll get credit for a
+      successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
+      saved England. I'm content to let it go at that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company. The
+      manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the New York
+      offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the little
+      nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in railroad
+      tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate as easily as
+      into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these different punches,
+      and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the sons turned a customer
+      over to David he spoke of him as a salesman. But David called himself a
+      &ldquo;demonstrator.&rdquo; For a short time he even succeeded in persuading the other
+      salesmen to speak of themselves as demonstrators, but the shipping clerks
+      and bookkeepers laughed them out of it. They could not laugh David out of
+      it. This was so, partly because he had no sense of humor, and partly
+      because he had a great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower
+      Broadway, to possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a
+      great-grandfather is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But
+      to David the possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and
+      open delight. He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he
+      always had existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a
+      doctor in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that
+      David emerged as a Son of Washington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was sister Anne, anxious to &ldquo;get in&rdquo; as a &ldquo;Daughter&rdquo; and wear a distaff
+      pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary ancestor. She
+      unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the graveyard of the
+      Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a person than General
+      Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at Trenton and at
+      Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on moving to New York,
+      his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not affect his record. To
+      enter a society founded on heredity, the important thing is first to catch
+      your ancestor, and having made sure of him, David entered the Society of
+      the Sons of Washington with flying colors. He was not unlike the man who
+      had been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it. He was not
+      unlike the other man who woke to find himself famous. He had gone to bed a
+      timid, near-sighted, underpaid salesman without a relative in the world,
+      except a married sister in Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a
+      direct descendant of &ldquo;Neck or Nothing&rdquo; Greene, a revolutionary hero, a
+      friend of Washington, a man whose portrait hung in the State House at
+      Trenton. David's life had lacked color. The day he carried his certificate
+      of membership to the big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes,
+      one for each of his two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+      one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said, &ldquo;All
+      grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+      great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+      live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+      great-great dad ever do for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, for one thing,&rdquo; said David stiffly, &ldquo;he fought in the War of the
+      Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England; he made
+      it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that,&rdquo; protested Wyckoff,
+      &ldquo;because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about it
+      in a book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not grudging glory to others,&rdquo; returned David; &ldquo;I am only saying I
+      am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+      frame that folded like a concertina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to be a descendant,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I'd rather be an ancestor.
+      Look at those.&rdquo; Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with the
+      baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at the
+      children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I'm married,&rdquo; he stammered, and at the words he blushed, &ldquo;I hope to
+      be an ancestor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're thinking of getting married,&rdquo; said Wyckoff, &ldquo;you'd better hope
+      for a raise in salary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+      showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+      on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+      soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not the
+      grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative David
+      was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to attend the
+      monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to erect monuments
+      on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in joyous excursions to
+      the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones; to inspect West Point,
+      Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those present at the annual
+      &ldquo;banquet&rdquo; at Delmonico's. In order that when he opened these letters he
+      might have an audience, he had given the society his office address.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In these communications he was always addressed as &ldquo;Dear Compatriot,&rdquo; and
+      never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift him out
+      of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to things
+      uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know what an
+      aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an aristocrat.
+      When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was overbearing,
+      this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he would smile
+      and say to himself: &ldquo;If they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my
+      button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How easily with a word
+      could I crush them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button. They
+      thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+      teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+      liable to give that impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+      although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the person
+      in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss Emily Anthony,
+      one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and prettiest
+      stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a figure as did
+      some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found something in him
+      so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours, accepted his
+      devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring. Indeed, so far had
+      matters progressed, that it had been almost decided when in a few months
+      they would go upon their vacations they also would go upon their
+      honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and from a quarter from
+      which David had expected only sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trouble befell when David discovered he had a great-great-grandfather.
+      With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost as pleased as was David
+      himself, but while he was content to bask in another's glory, Miss Anthony
+      saw in his inheritance only an incentive to achieve glory for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+      descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+      determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young person.
+      She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed. The
+      great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon&mdash;had, in a way,
+      raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales of
+      past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he sat
+      shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke with
+      awe, touched her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shouldn't be content to just wear a button,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;If you're a
+      Son of Washington, you ought to act like one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I'm not worthy of you,&rdquo; David sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mean that, and you know I don't,&rdquo; Emily replied indignantly. &ldquo;It
+      has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of your
+      grandpa Hiram!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But HOW?&rdquo; complained David. &ldquo;What chance has a twenty-five dollar a week
+      clerk&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of Cuba
+      were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were a Son of the Revolution,&rdquo; said Emily, &ldquo;I'd go to Cuba and help
+      free it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk nonsense,&rdquo; cried David. &ldquo;If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+      we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I know
+      about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did Lafayette talk like that?&rdquo; demanded Emily. &ldquo;Did he ask what have the
+      American rebels ever done for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were in Lafayette's class,&rdquo; sighed David, &ldquo;I wouldn't be selling
+      automatic punches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's your trouble,&rdquo; declared Emily &ldquo;You lack self-confidence. You're
+      too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
+      yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
+      You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
+      the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
+      war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+      pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emily,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you're going to be awfully disappointed in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But when
+      she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not,&rdquo; she protested; &ldquo;only I want a husband with a career, and
+      one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've often wished you would,&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would what? Run your career for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe I'd like you better,&rdquo; said Emily, &ldquo;if you weren't so darned
+      polite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+      David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+      salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a step
+      forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David was not
+      elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted. Her
+      ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She did
+      not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+      lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+      completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in the
+      office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days that
+      still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+      honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days&mdash;at
+      least she did not count them aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+      learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she was
+      even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in ignorance
+      of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt
+      just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed her, longed
+      for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the frequency
+      with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him. It was almost a
+      relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close to
+      the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful, and at
+      the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+      congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+      Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+      Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A
+      year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+      celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+      shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+      more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish Hiram
+      Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+      him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+      son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to leave
+      the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute, and they
+      left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any Southern
+      railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame Fortune gets
+      on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train to Miami as
+      the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the
+      conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped
+      David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked back
+      along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would find a
+      flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north. In an
+      hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+      fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment he
+      would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+      encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+      tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a shed.
+      Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he
+      did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot, and too
+      disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down under the
+      open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train or daylight.
+      So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched a swamp, silent,
+      dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead trees, naked of bark
+      and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was not a sound or sign of
+      human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at night David
+      remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to Tampa and of the
+      loathing with which he had considered placing himself between its sheets.
+      But now how gladly would he welcome it! For, in the sleeping-car,
+      ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would have been surrounded by
+      fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his companions were owls,
+      water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am alone,&rdquo; he told himself, &ldquo;on a railroad embankment, entirely
+      surrounded by alligators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he found he was not alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+      there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and the
+      face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above the
+      level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+      embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of a
+      tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+      embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had been
+      a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds
+      disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening
+      into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an
+      ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his pipe,
+      had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company
+      of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced
+      quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something
+      mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed
+      from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as
+      was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake
+      and awake to some purpose. David stood uncertainly, questioning whether to
+      make his presence known or return to the loneliness of the shed. The
+      question was decided for him. He had not considered that standing in the
+      moonlight he was a conspicuous figure. The planks of the wharf creaked and
+      a man came toward him. As one who means to attack, or who fears attack, he
+      approached warily. He wore high boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He
+      was a little man, but his movements were alert and active. To David he
+      seemed unnecessarily excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who the devil are you?&rdquo; demanded the man from the tug. &ldquo;How'd you get
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I walked,&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walked?&rdquo; the man snorted incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took the wrong train,&rdquo; explained David pleasantly. &ldquo;They put me off
+      about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going to
+      wait here for the next train north.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man laughed mockingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no you're not,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you walked here, you can just walk away
+      again!&rdquo; With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+      gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You walk!&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do just as I please about that,&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+      tug.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll find some one who'll make you walk!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;You WAIT, that's
+      all, you WAIT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private property
+      and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station the rights
+      of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he judged it best to
+      choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks and sat down on his
+      suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he
+      could see in the moonlight the approach of any other person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're river pirates,&rdquo; said David to himself, &ldquo;or smugglers. They're
+      certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+      of a perfectly harmless stranger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish that train would come,&rdquo; he sighed. And instantly? as though in
+      answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard the
+      rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his course
+      of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+      smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+      the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His plan
+      was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though he had no
+      lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only stand on the
+      track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David
+      sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his
+      arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards distant
+      and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no head-light, and
+      though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle,
+      tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear of the sightless
+      engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying
+      Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as unreal as the black
+      swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly tug-boat tied to the
+      rotting wharf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the place haunted!&rdquo; exclaimed David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to a
+      sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the ground,
+      and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls and eager
+      greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+      mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note the
+      equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little man
+      from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore no coat
+      and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters of pink
+      elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his right hand
+      flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had
+      stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the
+      outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest man he had
+      ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his beard and
+      hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild moonlight it
+      flamed like a torch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your business?&rdquo; demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came here,&rdquo; began David, &ldquo;to wait for a train&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he shouted; &ldquo;this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+      wait for a train!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+      &ldquo;Don't you lie to ME!&rdquo; he bullied. &ldquo;Do you know who I am? Do you know WHO
+      you're up against? I'm&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The barkeeper person interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind who you are,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We know that. Find out who HE is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I'm a travelling
+      man&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't travel any to-night,&rdquo; mocked the red-haired one. &ldquo;You've seen
+      what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+      wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in riding-boots
+      pushed forward importantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tie him to a tree!&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better take him on board,&rdquo; said the barkeeper, &ldquo;and send him back by the
+      pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think I want to hurt you?&rdquo; demanded David. &ldquo;Who do you
+      think I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know who you are,&rdquo; shouted the fiery-headed one. &ldquo;You're a
+      blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+      whichever you are you don't get away to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+      self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have made a very serious mistake,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and whether you like it
+      or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+      short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+      up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+      conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting to
+      pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head rolled
+      against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance, and in a
+      strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying, &ldquo;Nine&mdash;ten&mdash;and
+      OUT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+      his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of a
+      lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf cap who
+      was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed wildly
+      about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw that from
+      where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed with men. She
+      was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side the gray light
+      that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with stunted
+      palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to disturb you,&rdquo; said the youth in the golf cap, &ldquo;but we drop the
+      pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as large
+      as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened to me?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were sort of kidnapped, I guess,&rdquo; laughed the young man. &ldquo;It was a
+      raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+      Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; demanded David indignantly. &ldquo;Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+      done? Who were those men who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the engine-room,
+      and the speed of the tug slackened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; commanded the young man briskly. &ldquo;The pilot's going ashore.
+      Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+      where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws an
+      electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into the
+      glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the fierce,
+      blatant radiance of a search-light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+      prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+      scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+      man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+      fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+      David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby hat
+      pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the
+      engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+      Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+      the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+      quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open sea.
+      But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a policeman's
+      bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and held her in
+      its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by the arm. With
+      his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great was the tumult
+      that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the revenue cutter!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;She's been laying for us for
+      three weeks, and now,&rdquo; he shrieked exultingly, &ldquo;the old man's going to
+      give her a race for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting beyond
+      his control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;how do I get ashore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he drops the pilot, don't I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can he drop the pilot?&rdquo; yelled the youth. &ldquo;The pilot's got to stick
+      by the boat. So have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stick by what boat?&rdquo; yelled David. &ldquo;Who are these men? Who are you? What
+      boat is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+      at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+      himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+      board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+      David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his
+      spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THE THREE FRIENDS!&rdquo; shrieked David. &ldquo;She's a filibuster! She's a pirate!
+      Where're we going?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Cuba!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; he shrieked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man regarded him coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To pick bananas,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't go to Cuba,&rdquo; shouted David. &ldquo;I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+      machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+      ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+      the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+      succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged. Like a
+      hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to stern. No
+      longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did not put him
+      ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he would have
+      crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to David, nor to
+      many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots. Their groans of
+      self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish, rose high above
+      the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the waves. Even when the
+      search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight the circumstance was
+      unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the tidings brought forward
+      by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the slippery decks and vaulted the
+      prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a hurdler on a cinder track. To David,
+      in whom he seemed to think he had found a congenial spirit, he shouted
+      Joyfully, &ldquo;She's fired two blanks at us!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;now she's firing
+      cannon-balls!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God,&rdquo; whispered David; &ldquo;perhaps she'll sink us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
+      as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
+      those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries of
+      fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching head, of
+      the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered him, David fell
+      into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull consciousness of his
+      position. At such moments he added to his misery by speculating upon the
+      other misfortunes that might have befallen him on shore. Emily, he
+      decided, had given him up for lost and married&mdash;probably a navy
+      officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett and Sons had cast him off
+      forever. Possibly his disappearance had caused them to suspect him; even
+      now they might be regarding him as a defaulter, as a fugitive from
+      justice. His accounts, no doubt, were being carefully overhauled. In
+      actual time, two days and two nights had passed; to David it seemed many
+      ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less motion,
+      and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and fell upon it.
+      From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought him food and
+      drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a bowl of
+      smoking soup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David considered it a doubtful attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he said, &ldquo;You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+      with these pirates?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're not pirates, they're patriots,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I'm not mixed up
+      with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+      captain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The barkeeper with the derby hat?&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler,&rdquo; Carr corrected, &ldquo;and he's the
+      greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway, and
+      he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+      mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about this
+      expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found out and
+      sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story either.
+      Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest, and he's
+      promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I can write as
+      much about it as I darn please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you're a reporter?&rdquo; said David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm what we call a cub reporter,&rdquo; laughed Carr. &ldquo;You see, I've always
+      dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+      too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+      it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+      real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose, I can
+      tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+      Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you LIKE this?&rdquo; groaned David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are,&rdquo; said Carr, &ldquo;but I've a stomach
+      like a Harlem goat.&rdquo; He stooped and lowered his voice. &ldquo;Now, here are two
+      fake filibusters,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;The men you read about in the
+      newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+      little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All they ask,&rdquo; whispered Carr, &ldquo;is money and advertisement. If they knew
+      I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls himself
+      Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida coast, and
+      that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a dare-devil
+      calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English officer, and a
+      soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says
+      he's never been near enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the
+      base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans. The Junta thinks they're
+      great fighters, and it's sent them down here to work the machine guns. But
+      I'm afraid the only fighting they will do will be in the sporting columns,
+      and not in the ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+      dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
+      Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
+      of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition, and
+      that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats she was
+      preparing to defend herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've got an automatic gun in that crate,&rdquo; said Carr, &ldquo;and they're
+      going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David shook his head feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't move!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+      Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+      above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+      David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+      unintelligent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together in
+      his life,&rdquo; he whispered to Carr. &ldquo;I never did, either, but I've put
+      hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's wrong with it?&rdquo; said Carr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+      all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+      to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+      never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+      saw it first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land!&rdquo; he hailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+      rose in a fierce chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cuba libre!&rdquo; they yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken with
+      bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each topped by
+      a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like columns of
+      marble rose the royal palms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You MUST look!&rdquo; Carr entreated David, &ldquo;it's just as it is in the
+      pictures!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I don't have to look,&rdquo; groaned David.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
+      sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore of
+      that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
+      waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
+      voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
+      patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
+      their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition of
+      Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box of
+      shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In two hours, if we have smooth water,&rdquo; shouted Lighthouse Harry, &ldquo;we
+      ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask,&rdquo; he cried
+      mightily, &ldquo;is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+      Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+      fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three Friends
+      she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal questions
+      or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug was
+      sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she raced in
+      pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there came from the
+      gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into
+      the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged
+      at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed
+      impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was
+      ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+      feet splashed into a wave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+      removed from any of the greater emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use!&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;They can't do! It's not connected!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT'S not connected?&rdquo; yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
+      half-dragged him to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it,&rdquo; he shouted,
+      &ldquo;or I'll&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on the
+      instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness of
+      morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+      jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
+      through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
+      come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
+      shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
+      more was a sane, sound young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+      from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism. He
+      wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that his
+      work was good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them to
+      cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+      smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a continuous
+      whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked feverishly. He swung
+      to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open, pulled on the trigger and
+      found it gave before his forefinger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shouted with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got it working,&rdquo; he yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one of
+      the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the tall
+      form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell splashed
+      to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David stood staring
+      wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the distance between
+      them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her bow, at
+      the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing in volleys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived it
+      all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+      leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and made
+      him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the box of
+      ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click as the
+      breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against the weight of
+      his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing gun-boat, saw her
+      again and many times disappear behind a flash of flame. A bullet gashed
+      his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his forearm, but he did not
+      heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the engines, with the roar of
+      the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking unceasingly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cuba libre!&rdquo; it yelled. &ldquo;To hell with Spain!&rdquo; and he found that the voice
+      was his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the best of it is,&rdquo; he exclaimed joyfully, &ldquo;it's true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself aground
+      by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one
+      man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight of the war. Over
+      night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter
+      had projected a new &ldquo;hero,&rdquo; a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular
+      idol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were seated in the pilot-house, &ldquo;Jimmy&rdquo; Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+      patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba, and
+      The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
+      straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished reading
+      aloud his account of the engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will tell the story just as I have written it,&rdquo; commanded the proud
+      author. &ldquo;Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind. You
+      came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your wish
+      you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board. That was
+      just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you took command
+      of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe Bay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. &ldquo;You certainty did, Dave,&rdquo;
+       protested the great man, &ldquo;I seen you when you done it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+      David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+      spread across the map of the United States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+      office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower Broadway
+      tendered congratulations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it's a great surprise to us,&rdquo; Burdett and Sons would protest
+      and wink heavily. &ldquo;Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd no
+      idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him go,
+      would we?&rdquo; Then again they would wink heavily. &ldquo;I suppose you know,&rdquo; they
+      would say, &ldquo;that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene, who won
+      the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'&rdquo; And then in a
+      body every one in the club would move against the bar and exclaim: &ldquo;Here's
+      to Cuba libre!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the Tampa
+      cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and all of
+      the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+      bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+      surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+      Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+      travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her best
+      hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as Burdett
+      and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+      &ldquo;David!&rdquo; she sobbed, &ldquo;promise me you'll never, never do it again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care in
+      the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to the left; if it
+      came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely the wind
+      that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled broadly,
+      happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved his
+      fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over Nantucket
+      and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of verandas,
+      from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces. Empaled on
+      their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled&mdash;sometimes
+      languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
+      sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been a
+      sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he would
+      have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer bought
+      for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders most grave
+      and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried treasure,
+      the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really asking a
+      great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
+      Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
+      pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen Page
+      ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the &ldquo;season&rdquo; opened; when she departed
+      the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of stock. She was
+      so popular because she possessed charm, and because she played no
+      favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner
+      was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded youths who came
+      to win the championship cups and remained to try to win Helen. She was
+      just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with the &ldquo;kids&rdquo; as to
+      take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the matrons. To each her
+      manner was always as though she were of their age. When she met the latter
+      on the beach road, she greeted them riotously and joyfully by their maiden
+      names. And the matrons liked it. In comparison the deference shown them by
+      the other young women did not so strongly appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I'm jogging along in my station wagon,&rdquo; said one of them, &ldquo;and Helen
+      shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were twenty, and
+      I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside her, instead of
+      that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat. Why does he never
+      wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or because Helen drives so
+      fast he can't keep it on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?&rdquo; asked the new arrival.
+      &ldquo;That might help some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will never know,&rdquo; exclaimed the young matron; &ldquo;he never leaves her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them so many
+      times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf together,
+      that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way to look. But
+      they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not to see them,
+      Helen shouted at you. She made you feel you had been caught doing
+      something indelicate and underhand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young Latimer. So
+      many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in that inarticulate,
+      worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange young man who
+      apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends for years had
+      learned they must remain friends, could not hope to escape criticism.
+      Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston and Harvard,
+      but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at both the law and
+      the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully; but it was rather
+      held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that he played at there
+      games, not so much for the sake of the game as for exercise. He put aside
+      many things, such as whiskey and soda at two in the morning, and bridge
+      all afternoon, with the remark: &ldquo;I find it does not tend toward
+      efficiency.&rdquo; It was a remark that irritated and, to the minds of the men
+      at the country clubs, seemed to place him. They liked to play polo because
+      they liked to play polo, not because it kept their muscles limber and
+      their brains clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some Western people were telling me,&rdquo; said one of the matrons, &ldquo;that he
+      wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is very ambitious
+      and very selfish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any man is selfish,&rdquo; protested one who for years had attempted to marry
+      Helen, &ldquo;who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to be
+      a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one lose
+      sympathy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship of
+      Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been working overtime and was
+      treating himself to his first vacation in years&mdash;he was young&mdash;he
+      was in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either,
+      that Helen Page was happy. Those who had known her since she was a child
+      could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore
+      her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings to
+      old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses. She was
+      very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him she liked
+      better to be with him than with any one else,&mdash;it would have been
+      difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer colony,&mdash;but
+      she explained that that did not mean she would marry him. She announced
+      this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She announced it in
+      what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly that she did not
+      intend to marry for several years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so
+      eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep her own. She as though
+      she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to sea. When,
+      at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer had paused to
+      catch his, she shook her head miserably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trouble is,&rdquo; she complained, &ldquo;there are so many think the same
+      thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they think?&rdquo; demanded Latimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That they want to marry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can quite believe that,&rdquo; he agreed, &ldquo;but there's this important
+      difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE you
+      as I do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's ANOTHER thing they think,&rdquo; sighed Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry to be so unoriginal,&rdquo; snapped Latimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;PLEASE don't!&rdquo; pleaded Helen. &ldquo;I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not
+      unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to take it to
+      heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable a girl
+      must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind whether or
+      not she wants to marry him. But when there's so many she just stops
+      worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ALL!&rdquo; exclaimed Latimer. &ldquo;It is incredible that I have undervalued you,
+      but may I ask how many there are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; sighed Helen miserably. &ldquo;There seems to be something about
+      me that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is!&rdquo; interrupted Latimer. &ldquo;I've noticed it. You don't have to tell
+      me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult habit
+      to break!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least,
+      not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on
+      which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored a
+      forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked the
+      sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played hide
+      and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this place,
+      and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a tree
+      and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose works he
+      read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to them for
+      rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into his voice he
+      would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and mass meetings
+      had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible for
+      any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: &ldquo;Please excuse me
+      for interrupting, but there is a large spider&mdash;&rdquo; and the spell was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day she exclaimed: &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; and Latimer patiently lowered the &ldquo;Oxford
+      Book of Verse,&rdquo; and asked: &ldquo;What is it, NOW?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so sorry,&rdquo; Helen said, &ldquo;but I can't help watching that Chapman boy;
+      he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he
+      can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy,&rdquo; said Latimer, &ldquo;or in
+      what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning man
+      myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. &ldquo;Men get over THAT kind of
+      drowning,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not THIS kind of man doesn't!&rdquo; said Latimer. &ldquo;And don't tell me,&rdquo; he
+      cried indignantly, &ldquo;that that's ANOTHER thing they all say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one could only be sure!&rdquo; sighed Helen. &ldquo;If one could only be sure that
+      you&mdash;that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him the
+      way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that, it
+      would help you a lot in making up your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one way to find that out,&rdquo; said Latimer; &ldquo;that is to marry
+      him. I mean, of course,&rdquo; he corrected hastily, &ldquo;to marry me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the
+      man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the
+      village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their
+      hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the
+      ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the
+      world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind
+      caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it
+      tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+      sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a
+      tiny oar and smiling happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a friendly smile,&rdquo; said Helen; &ldquo;I think he likes us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is on guard,&rdquo; Latimer explained. &ldquo;I put him there to warn us if any
+      one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away
+      trespassers. Do you understand?&rdquo; he demanded of the sailorman. &ldquo;Your duty
+      is to protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must guard
+      this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You never
+      sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She wrongs
+      you. It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure when I look
+      at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways alike. I also
+      am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I never sleep, at
+      least not since I met her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman
+      and frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a happy simile,&rdquo; she objected. &ldquo;For one thing, a sailorman has
+      a sweetheart in every port.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait and see,&rdquo; said Latimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued the girl with some asperity, &ldquo;if there is anything on
+      earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less
+      CERTAIN, less CONSTANT&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constant?&rdquo; Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. &ldquo;You come back here,&rdquo; he
+      challenged, &ldquo;months from now, years from now, when the winds have beaten
+      him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you will find
+      him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently, proudly,
+      joyously, devotedly. Because those who are your slaves, those who love
+      YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if you drive
+      them away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about
+      in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs,
+      his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one
+      blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it was
+      time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say
+      good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to say
+      that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think that a
+      man such as he believed you were so fine a person, and during the coming
+      winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her to be, but
+      which, she assured him, she was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to
+      which she said: &ldquo;Oh, indeed no!&rdquo; and then, as though he were giving her a
+      cue, he said: &ldquo;Good-by!&rdquo; But she did not take up his cue, and they shook
+      hands. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely, now that the parting has come,&rdquo; he assured himself, &ldquo;she will
+      make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total'
+      under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me through
+      the long winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that he really
+      forced her to say: &ldquo;Don't miss your train,&rdquo; which kind consideration for
+      his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor, indeed, later did she
+      herself recall the remark with satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine suitor
+      attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they had over Latimer
+      was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at dinners,
+      dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawing-room. Like any sailor
+      from the Charlestown Navy Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk beside
+      her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch dates and
+      initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one side of
+      Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when the sun
+      was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were beginning
+      to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known her since they
+      wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and friends in common;
+      they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to her only in letters,
+      for with her he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to
+      choose between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in politics or
+      of his love. To write to her of his affairs seemed wasteful and
+      impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had received what he told
+      of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he wrote but seldom, and
+      then only to say: &ldquo;You know what I send you.&rdquo; Had he known it, his best
+      letters were those he did not send. When in the morning mail Helen found
+      his familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand out like the face of a
+      friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon the letter, read it, and, assured
+      of his love, would go on her way rejoicing. But when in the morning there
+      was no letter, she wondered why, and all day she wondered why. And the
+      next morning when again she was disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and
+      her doubts and speculations concerning him shut out every other interest.
+      He became a perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind.
+      And then he would spoil it all by writing her that he loved her and that
+      of all the women in the world she was the only one. And, reassured upon
+      that point, Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had seen
+      him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more gratefully, than
+      that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had walked that same
+      afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude he was
+      first, and there was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she was ready
+      to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him. But as yet
+      she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she was, life
+      was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited her to be of
+      his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the object of each seemed
+      to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day. Her nature was such
+      that to make her happy was not difficult. Some of her devotees could do it
+      by giving her a dance and letting her invite half of Boston, and her kid
+      brother could do it by taking her to Cambridge to watch the team at
+      practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she
+      was happy because she loved some one and that particular some one loved
+      her. Her being &ldquo;free&rdquo; was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she
+      thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered that,
+      so far from being free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+      hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch. The sun
+      had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen upon
+      his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the north, he
+      spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan the surrounding landscape
+      that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor, indeed, did any
+      one attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret hiding-place, but
+      the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him away. He was always
+      triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing rabbits he was a thing
+      of terror. Once, when the air was still, an impertinent crow perched on
+      the very limb on which he stood, and with scornful, disapproving eyes
+      surveyed his white trousers, his blue reefer, his red cheeks. But when the
+      wind suddenly drove past them the sailorman sprang into action and the
+      crow screamed in alarm and darted away. So, alone and with no one to come
+      to his relief, the sailorman stood his watch. About him the branches bent
+      with the snow, the icicles froze him into immobility, and in the tree-tops
+      strange groanings filled him with alarms. But undaunted, month after
+      month, alert and smiling, he waited the return of the beautiful lady and
+      of the tall young man who had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was the
+      best thing that could come into his life. But to sit down and lament over
+      the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite
+      expression, &ldquo;tend toward efficiency.&rdquo; He removed from his sight the three
+      pictures of her he had cut from illustrated papers, and ceased to write to
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his last letter he said: &ldquo;I have told you how it is, and that is how it
+      is always going to be. There never has been, there never can be any one
+      but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought out every
+      week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an advertisement of a
+      motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be cheapened, to be subjected to
+      slights and silence. If ever you should want it, it is yours. It is here
+      waiting. But you must tell me so. I have done everything a man can do to
+      make you understand. But you do not want me or my love. And my love says
+      to me: 'Don't send me there again to have the door shut in my face. Keep
+      me with you to be your inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so
+      it shall be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not know
+      how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly she had grown
+      very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in
+      consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not see
+      why the two hundred and forty-nine expected her to keep on doing exactly
+      the same things she had been doing with delight for six months, and indeed
+      for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer was there
+      any pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer that she
+      found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not arisen a
+      fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He said that he
+      would always love her, but how could she now know that? Why might not this
+      letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position which he wished to
+      abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to escape? Were this true,
+      and she wrote and said all those things that were in her heart, that now
+      she knew were true, might she not hold him to her against his will? The
+      love that once he had for her might no longer exist, and if, in her turn,
+      she told him she loved him and had always loved him, might he not in some
+      mistaken spirit of chivalry feel it was his duty to pretend to care? Her
+      cheeks burned at the thought. It was intolerable. She could not write that
+      letter. And as day succeeded day, to do so became more difficult. And so
+      she never wrote and was very unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he
+      had his work, and Helen had none, and for her life became a game of
+      putting little things together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an
+      hour there, to make up each day. It was a dreary game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his own
+      State, he was an &ldquo;Insurgent&rdquo; making a fight, the outcome of which was
+      expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West. When he won
+      his fight much more was written about him, and he became a national
+      figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next governor,
+      promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to take him
+      further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place even in his
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her about
+      her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only because
+      Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over her head, as
+      though she were not present, as a power, an influence, as the leader and
+      exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she no longer could pretend
+      to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he belonged to all of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Older men would say to her: &ldquo;I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
+      is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man who
+      sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or halting
+      to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down and
+      needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she agreed
+      in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent her, for she
+      knew wherever she went she must still force herself to go on putting one
+      hour on top of another, until she had built up the inexorable and
+      necessary twenty-four.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning
+      unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse the thin spring
+      sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task. She
+      assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming and
+      Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled
+      herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is a
+      pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+      memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer
+      had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not to
+      think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking hours. Should she, as it
+      sometimes happened, dream of him&mdash;should she imagine they were again
+      seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at fifty miles
+      an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying past, with the
+      wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts happiness and content&mdash;that
+      would not be breaking her rule. If she dreamed of him, she could not be
+      held responsible. She could only be grateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came
+      East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with a
+      blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of three
+      cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party leaders,
+      to carry the war into the enemy's country. He was due to speak in Boston
+      at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to leave for the
+      West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the city. He had
+      spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York, and for a
+      week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that week, from the sight
+      of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting cheering mobs, from
+      snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward to grasp eager hands,
+      Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the time he was actually in
+      Boston she might spare herself further and more direct attacks upon her
+      feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to remain until, on the first
+      of May at midnight, he again would pass out of her life, maybe forever. No
+      one saw in her going any significance. Spring had come, and in preparation
+      for the summer season the house at Fair Harbor must be opened and set in
+      order, and the presence there of some one of the Page family was easily
+      explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it
+      herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if it
+      would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the
+      memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out by
+      those of one summer, by those of one man. The natives greeted her
+      joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the
+      village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though
+      they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she had
+      exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused her
+      throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and
+      hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in
+      the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively to
+      his open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The
+      golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where he
+      always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds than to
+      remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where the
+      schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon; the
+      wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the pond
+      into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places
+      purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way. They no longer
+      distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends, who
+      had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the secret hiding-place&mdash;their very own hiding-place, the opening
+      among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea&mdash;she
+      could not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third
+      day when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own
+      accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And again
+      from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked the sea,
+      he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For hours,
+      stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same branches
+      patiently waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one enters
+      the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred circle.
+      And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find there she
+      could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown to her. She
+      saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal. No haunted
+      house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more poignantly,
+      more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no sign of his or
+      of her former presence. Across the open space something had passed its
+      hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place, a bower, a nest,
+      had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that once had been
+      brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She had but one
+      desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her forever, to
+      remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had remembered it,
+      and as now she must always remember It. She turned softly on tiptoe as one
+      who has intruded on a shrine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of wind
+      that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the branches
+      tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the same
+      instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous
+      tattoo&mdash;a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the woods, a
+      creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes&mdash;and beheld the sailorman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy,
+      calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down at
+      her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's ears
+      Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer
+      stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no longer a jest;
+      they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that brought to her
+      peace, and pride, and happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long as I love this beautiful lady,&rdquo; had been his foolish words, &ldquo;you
+      will guard this place. It is a life sentence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman
+      stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a
+      joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her hands
+      and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair Harbor at
+      a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between his chattering
+      teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by landing them in
+      jail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark
+      places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced
+      against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
+      beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of the
+      one thing that could make his life worth living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat, the
+      sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at peace,
+      his duty well performed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
+      life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he knew.
+      Under the title of &ldquo;Tales of the Yard&rdquo; they were collected in book form,
+      and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a reporter
+      on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of which a
+      reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in gathering
+      news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines, and later
+      in a book under the title of &ldquo;Tales of the Streets.&rdquo; They also were well
+      received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: &ldquo;There are
+      two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction&mdash;men of genius and
+      reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way that
+      he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe something
+      he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a way that the
+      reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but if I had,
+      that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling tells us how
+      a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers; how a mother
+      rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling has never been a
+      mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how each of them feels.
+      He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot do it because you are
+      not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at college; and now that
+      you are in the newspaper business all your tales are only of newspaper
+      work. You merely report what you see. So, if you are doomed to write only
+      of what you see, then the best thing for you to do is to see as many
+      things as possible. You must see all kinds of life. You must progress. You
+      must leave New York, and you had better go to London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But on the Republic,&rdquo; Endicott pointed out, &ldquo;I get a salary. And in
+      London I should have to sweep a crossing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the literary editor, &ldquo;you could write a story about a man who
+      swept a crossing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven
+      Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the daughter of the
+      American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one winter, he
+      loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money, and that she
+      possessed so much of it that, unless he could show some unusual quality of
+      mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from his own point of view
+      at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew that no one could love
+      her as he did, that no one so truly wished for her happiness, or would try
+      so devotedly to make her happy. But to him it did not seem possible that a
+      girl could be happy with a man who was not able to pay for her home, or
+      her clothes, or her food, who would have to borrow her purse if he wanted
+      a new pair of gloves or a hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in
+      birth and education and charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in
+      May, he came from New York to lay siege to London and to the heart of
+      Helen Carey he had with him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That was
+      all he possessed in the world; and unless the magazines bought his stories
+      there was no prospect of his getting any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was
+      easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to entertain
+      modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated he
+      could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough to
+      be able to live there on three sovereigns a day you had first to spend so
+      many five-pound notes in getting acquainted with London that there were no
+      sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just enough money to buy
+      him a second-class passage back to New York, and he was as far from Helen
+      as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to marry.
+      And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that when two people
+      truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money or not.
+      But when in London, with only a five-pound note, and face to face with the
+      actual proposition of asking Helen Carey not only to marry him but to
+      support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had supposed. He
+      found money was many different things&mdash;it was self-respect, and
+      proper pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking these
+      things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not one for
+      whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he knew how he
+      loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she loved him. She always
+      seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be explained in different
+      ways. It might be that what was in her heart for him was really a sort of
+      &ldquo;old home week&rdquo; feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who
+      spoke her own language, who did not need to have it explained when she was
+      jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly
+      satisfactory phrases that she must be talking slang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a
+      friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had sent him cards
+      for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And
+      Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with
+      him in Hyde Park and through the National Galleries; and they had fed buns
+      to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They
+      thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed.
+      Later they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because they
+      were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to bed with
+      his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound note to last him
+      until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now that he
+      loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between them was
+      liable to unseat his courage and his self-control. In London he could,
+      each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning against the
+      iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window. But, once on the
+      other side of the ocean, that tender exercise must be abandoned. He must
+      even consider her pursued by most attractive guardsmen, diplomats, and
+      belted earls. He knew they could not love her as he did; he knew they
+      could not love her for the reasons he loved her, because the fine and
+      beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped they did not seek, and
+      so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few thousand dollars, he must
+      remain silent, must put from him the best that ever came into his life,
+      must waste the wonderful devotion he longed to give, must starve the love
+      that he could never summon for any other woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and completely
+      miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and unrefreshed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the miracle came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house
+      where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his breakfast. As he placed
+      the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though Prichard
+      had said: &ldquo;I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman who takes these
+      rooms may not be so open-handed. He never locked up his cigars or his
+      whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits me, except across
+      the shoulders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved.
+      In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't take such a liberty,&rdquo; protested Prichard. &ldquo;Not with any of our
+      gentlemen's clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know I was talking about clothes,&rdquo; demanded Philip. &ldquo;You
+      didn't say anything about clothes, did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you thinking of clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was,&rdquo; answered the valet.
+      &ldquo;Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new, I thought...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's mental telepathy,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; exclaimed Prichard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't wait,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning
+      papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged into
+      the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded with
+      people; and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every one at
+      whom he looked began to talk aloud. Their lips did not move, nor did any
+      sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken phrases of
+      thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a crowd, snatches
+      of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his debts; another of
+      the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to his silk hat; another
+      planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over a telegram he had but
+      that moment received. To himself he kept repeating the words of the
+      telegram&mdash;&ldquo;No need to come, out of danger.&rdquo; To Philip the message
+      came as clearly as though he were reading it from the folded slip of paper
+      that the stranger clutched in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might
+      consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge from the crowded
+      street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some
+      unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with him,
+      and he was inventing the phrases he seemed to hear, that he was
+      attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent. But,
+      whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative that he
+      should at once get at the meaning of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of
+      stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and directly in front
+      of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted. Her glance
+      was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept repeating: &ldquo;Did
+      I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will
+      she get the telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it would
+      be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of Scots would
+      look ridiculous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed she
+      was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had distinguished the
+      words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was going
+      mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman should
+      determine it. He advanced boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but I believe you are waiting for your maid
+      Hudson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wish to make sure,&rdquo; continued Philip, &ldquo;that you are she for whom I
+      have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to be photographed in
+      fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; assented the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you telephoned Hudson,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;to bring you your muff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she protested; &ldquo;I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want
+      my ruff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the love of Heaven!&rdquo; he exclaimed in horror; &ldquo;it's true!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's true?&rdquo; demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I'm a mind reader,&rdquo; declared Philip. &ldquo;I've read your mind! I can
+      read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking now. You're
+      thinking I'm mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a
+      gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs to the studio.
+      Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to explain?
+      How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable? Besides,
+      the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of one, he
+      could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to his
+      ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as, before
+      that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal, he now could
+      look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind. The thought was
+      appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a key-hole. In his dismay
+      his first idea was to seek medical advice&mdash;the best in London. He
+      turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There, he determined,
+      to the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his strange plight.
+      For only as a misfortune did the miracle appear to him. But as he made his
+      way through the streets his pace slackened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed
+      this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as a madman? Might
+      they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his liberty?
+      At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of the miracle
+      as a &ldquo;power&rdquo; had opened a new line of speculation. If this strange gift
+      (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently) were concealed
+      from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful purpose? For,
+      among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not he&mdash;among all
+      other men the only one able to read the minds of all other men&mdash;a
+      god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length considering the
+      possibilities that lay within him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments. If
+      it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends avoid
+      him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at the
+      mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would lead
+      to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might easily
+      become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the present he had
+      best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded it
+      with less aversion. He began to consider to what advantage he could place
+      it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he might
+      learn secrets leading to far-reaching results. To a statesman, to a
+      financier, such a gift as he possessed would make him a ruler of men.
+      Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how could
+      he bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to marry Helen
+      Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet men who
+      possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions to them.
+      And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds would tell
+      him the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no
+      better than reading other people's letters. But, he argued, the dishonor
+      in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he
+      used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit to
+      others, was he not justified in trading on his superior equipment? He
+      decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance with
+      the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was determined
+      to become rich. Did not the end justify the means? Certainly an all-wise
+      Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to take her away
+      from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them for one
+      another, the all-wise Providence had overlooked the fact that she was rich
+      and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently was now
+      endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic and
+      roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift that
+      could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of
+      Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building it
+      in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady
+      Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he turned
+      in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the corridor of
+      the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and fortune, and in
+      reading their minds he might pass the time before luncheon with
+      entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing Bruton Street
+      trying to discover the principles of conduct that threatened to hamper his
+      new power, he had found that in actual operation it was quite simple. He
+      learned that his mind, in relation to other minds, was like the receiver
+      of a wireless station with an unlimited field. For, while the wireless
+      could receive messages only from those instruments with which it was
+      attuned, his mind was in key with all other minds. To read the thoughts of
+      another, he had only to concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut
+      off the thoughts of that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts
+      elsewhere. But also he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside
+      the range of his physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what
+      Helen Carey was at that moment thinking, there was no result. But when he
+      asked, &ldquo;Of what is that policeman on the corner thinking?&rdquo; he was
+      surprised to find that that officer of the law was formulating regulations
+      to abolish the hobble skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great
+      distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the person of a young
+      gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the source from
+      which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a pink-cheeked,
+      yellow-haired youth of extremely boyish appearance, and dressed as if for
+      the race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish face wore an
+      expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was gazing at a
+      house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the street. And his
+      thoughts were these: &ldquo;She is the best that ever lived, and I am the most
+      ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow stucco! Only
+      now, when she has closed its doors to me, do I know how happy! If she
+      would give me another chance, never again would I distress or deceive
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile of
+      surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front of the
+      house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young person. She
+      was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of haunting
+      beauty and innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife!&rdquo; exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he
+      dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to a four-wheeler, was
+      contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house and
+      disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly. He
+      shares the troubles of so many people that to the troubles of other people
+      he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the family
+      fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter, he acted
+      quickly. Hardly had the door closed upon the young lady than he had
+      mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he could not
+      resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the outlawed
+      husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from across the
+      back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of his general
+      appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to alter all of
+      them, was quickly communicated to the American. They were thoughts of a
+      nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily cut off all
+      connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+      fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly announced:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ladyship is not receiving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her ladyship will, I think, receive me,&rdquo; said Philip pleasantly, &ldquo;when
+      you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his lordship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall there issued
+      a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with joy; and in the hall
+      the noble lady instantly appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+      embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought had been,
+      &ldquo;Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!&rdquo; Philip felt no embarrassment
+      whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the erring but
+      bitterly repentant husband; inside, her tenderest thoughts racing
+      tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy child-wife begging to be begged to
+      pardon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good manners,
+      it was too easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know you,&rdquo; said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she motioned
+      to the butler to go away. &ldquo;You must be one of his new friends.&rdquo; Her tone
+      was one of envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I am his newest friend,&rdquo; Philip assured her; &ldquo;but I can safely
+      say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are all of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she shook her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me I must not believe him,&rdquo; she announced. &ldquo;They tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what they tell you,&rdquo; commanded Philip. &ldquo;Listen to ME. He loves
+      you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks is the chance to
+      tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at you, and not
+      believe that he loves you! Let me,&rdquo; he begged, &ldquo;bring him to you.&rdquo; He
+      started from her when, remembering the somewhat violent thoughts of the
+      youthful husband, he added hastily: &ldquo;Or perhaps it would be better if you
+      called him yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Called him!&rdquo; exclaimed the lady. &ldquo;He is in Paris-at the races&mdash;with
+      her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they tell you that sort of thing,&rdquo; protested Philip indignantly, &ldquo;you
+      must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is not with her. There never was
+      a her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. &ldquo;He is there&mdash;behind
+      that ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell you that not
+      only did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never
+      do it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more boldly
+      showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over the scarlet geraniums,
+      she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous. Philip bolted
+      for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted down the steps, the
+      youthful husband, in strides resembling those of an ostrich, shot past
+      him. Philip did not cease running until he was well out of Berkeley
+      Square. Then, not ill-pleased with the adventure, he turned and smiled
+      back at the house of yellow stucco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless you, my children,&rdquo; he murmured; &ldquo;bless you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter
+      entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered around it a
+      considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that stretched
+      down the steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet in June,
+      when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining gently, can mean only
+      royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip halted. He
+      remembered that for a few days the young King of Asturia and the Queen
+      Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen the young man
+      who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his own kingdom,
+      Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of those
+      about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of pity for the
+      exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross street,
+      of pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the coachman of
+      the court carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount of his
+      Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as the warm
+      sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+      midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts was
+      shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought
+      of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they appear at the doorway,&rdquo; spoke the brain of the maniac, &ldquo;I shall
+      lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my head. I shall
+      crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of these
+      people into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVE&mdash;a martyr to
+      the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a
+      tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing close to the
+      open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized him around
+      the waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow. Philip's face,
+      appearing over the man's shoulder, stared straight into that of the
+      policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!&rdquo; yelled Philip. &ldquo;I can hold him
+      while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop it!&rdquo; Philip turned
+      upon the crowd. &ldquo;Run! all of you!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Run like the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young and
+      beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that her robes of
+      mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back, sir!&rdquo; warned Philip. &ldquo;He means to kill you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed
+      helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang protectingly in
+      front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now holding
+      the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head; Philip's arms,
+      like a lariat, were wound around his chest; and from his pocket the first
+      policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of the size of a glass
+      fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved his free hand
+      warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no one remaining to
+      observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling and biting in the
+      grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other policeman unhappily holding
+      the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought to escape into the Ritz. But the
+      young King broke through the circle of attendants and stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must thank you,&rdquo; said the boy eagerly; &ldquo;and I wish you to tell me how
+      you came to suspect the man's purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of fiction, began
+      to improvise fluently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To learn their purpose, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is my business. I am of the
+      International Police, and in the secret service of your Majesty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must know your name,&rdquo; said the King, and added with a dignity that
+      was most becoming, &ldquo;You will find we are not ungrateful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said in your secret service,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Did even your Majesty know
+      me, my usefulness would be at an end.&rdquo; He pointed toward the two
+      policemen. &ldquo;If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the
+      men to reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into the
+      hall and on into the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the
+      heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they had
+      been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still
+      ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their
+      music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two
+      distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were
+      talking in leisurely whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a reporter
+      had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on matters concerning
+      the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a Pennsylvania Dutchman from
+      Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the night shift in the
+      same mills he now controlled. But with a roar and a spectacular flash, not
+      unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he had soared to fame and fortune.
+      He recognized Philip as one of the bright young men of the Republic; but
+      in his own opinion he was far too self-important to betray that fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in
+      imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what he
+      knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While
+      waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip, from
+      where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust and of
+      the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features and a
+      pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American many-time
+      millionaire on having that morning come into possession of a rare and
+      valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently discovered
+      portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip sighed enviously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fancy,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to yourself!
+      It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be poor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in tones of
+      rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and solemnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In no gallery in
+      Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another Velasquez. This
+      is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing
+      her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon as
+      it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh, every
+      Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too. For it
+      is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain, Mr.
+      Faust! What a bargain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced in
+      the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard, frowned
+      importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that costs three
+      hundred thousand dollars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly that
+      Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So he obligingly
+      assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle simulations of
+      surprise, awe, and envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Faust continued. &ldquo;If you will come upstairs,&rdquo; he said to the
+      picture-dealer, &ldquo;I will give you your check; and then I should like to
+      drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; the Baron said, &ldquo;but I have had it moved to my art gallery
+      to be packed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let's go to the gallery,&rdquo; urged the patron of art. &ldquo;We've just time
+      before lunch.&rdquo; He rose to his feet, and on the instant the soul of the
+      picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In actual words he said: &ldquo;The picture is already boxed and in its lead
+      coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry.&rdquo; But
+      his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: &ldquo;Fancy my letting this
+      vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old
+      masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames and
+      canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van Dycks, the
+      new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own copy of
+      Velasquez next to the one exactly like it&mdash;the one MacMillan finished
+      yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in a convent,
+      we shall 'discover' it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the
+      situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud. The two men, who
+      had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at nothing,
+      turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; he said to Faust, &ldquo;but you spoke so loud I couldn't help
+      overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter on the
+      Republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really!&rdquo; he protested irritably, &ldquo;you reporters butt in everywhere. No
+      public man is safe. Is there no place we can go where you fellows won't
+      annoy us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can go to the devil for all I care,&rdquo; said Philip, &ldquo;or even to
+      Pittsburgh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail, and
+      moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the reporter would escape him,
+      hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, since you've learned so much,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll tell you the whole
+      of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of international
+      importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; asked Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And to prove it, I shall tell you something that
+      will be news to you. I have just bought a Velasquez that I am going to
+      place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad as
+      he had expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, I shall tell you something,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that will be news to you. You
+      are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez than this hair oil
+      is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you!&rdquo; shouted Faust. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is this insolent one?&rdquo; he sputtered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will make you a sporting proposition,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;You can take it,
+      or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will drive to this man's
+      studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on
+      its way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen
+      other 'old masters' half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm
+      right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE
+      YOU TO HIS STUDIO!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I will not,&rdquo; roared the German. &ldquo;It would be to insult myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you insult the Baron?&rdquo; demanded Faust. &ldquo;What makes you think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think, I know!&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;For the price of a taxi-cab fare to
+      Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will all three go at once,&rdquo; cried the German. &ldquo;My car is outside. Wait
+      here. I will have it brought to the door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust protested indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not disturb yourself, Baron,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;just because a fresh reporter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They
+      saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and
+      shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the last you'll see of him,&rdquo; said Philip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His actions are certainly peculiar,&rdquo; gasped the millionaire. &ldquo;He did not
+      wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think, after all, I had
+      better go to Tate Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do so,&rdquo; said Philip, &ldquo;and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars,
+      and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me here at lunch. If
+      I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should come with me,&rdquo; said Faust. &ldquo;It is only fair to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take your word for what you find in the studio,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;I
+      cannot go. This is my busy day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and,
+      in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save for
+      the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty, and his
+      reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; Philip thought, &ldquo;the French chap was right who said words were
+      given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if
+      every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying
+      would become a lost art. I wonder,&rdquo; he mused cynically, &ldquo;is any one quite
+      honest? Does any one speak as he thinks and think as he speaks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen
+      had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sincerely hope, Sir John,&rdquo; said one of the two, &ldquo;that you have no
+      regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the best interests
+      of all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, indeed,&rdquo; the other replied heartily &ldquo;We shall be thought entirely
+      selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done is for the benefit
+      of the shareholders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old gentlemen
+      ran hand in hand with his spoken words. &ldquo;Here, at least,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself, &ldquo;are two honest men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I hope,&rdquo; continued the one addressed as Sir John, &ldquo;that you approve
+      of my holding back the public announcement of the combine until the
+      afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given out
+      the news in this morning's papers the stockbrokers would have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was most wise,&rdquo; interrupted the other. &ldquo;Most just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
+      standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
+      chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
+      three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip saw
+      the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened by the
+      breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various combinations; but
+      always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of the three his heart
+      spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a mother reaches toward her
+      firstborn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
+      was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
+      Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags&mdash;a flag with a red
+      cross on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed
+      her to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
+      return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
+      mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
+      wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place of
+      the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great ocean
+      liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is equipped,
+      with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite after suite
+      of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate to a love
+      message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help from a
+      sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still flew the
+      same house-flag&mdash;the red cross on the field of white&mdash;only now
+      in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
+      corridor to the telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
+      stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
+      him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to act for me,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;and act quick! I want you to
+      buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
+      Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing in that yarn of a combine,&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;It has fallen
+      through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a five-pound
+      note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care what they are,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;The combine is already signed
+      and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour everybody will know
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes you think you know it?&rdquo; demanded the broker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've seen the house-flags!&rdquo; cried Philip. &ldquo;I have&mdash;do as I tell
+      you,&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a distracting delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter who's back of you,&rdquo; objected Maddox, &ldquo;it's a big order on a
+      gamble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not a gamble,&rdquo; cried Philip. &ldquo;It's an accomplished fact. I'm at the
+      Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when you've got a thousand
+      of each, stop!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for
+      half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself to read the
+      illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same advertisement five
+      times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him half-way
+      with a message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have secured for you a thousand shares of each,&rdquo; he read, &ldquo;at fifteen.
+      Maddox.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate the horror
+      of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was sufficiently
+      horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them, he had bought
+      shares in three steamship lines, which shares, added together, were worth
+      two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. He returned down the
+      corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own audacity, he was in a
+      state of almost complete panic, when that happened which made his
+      outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was drawing near to
+      half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men and beautiful
+      ladies, the component parts of different luncheon parties were beginning
+      to assemble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one guest had
+      arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one was sufficient. It
+      was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed on the doors opening
+      from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with appeals, blessings, and
+      adoration, ran toward her. Her profile was toward him, and she could not
+      see him; but he could see her. And he noted that, as though seeking some
+      one, her eyes were turned searchingly upon each young man as he entered
+      and moved from one to another of those already in the lounge. Her
+      expression was eager and anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only,&rdquo; Philip exclaimed, &ldquo;she were looking for me! She certainly is
+      looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his
+      steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind? Why did he not
+      KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind upon the
+      waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: &ldquo;Of what
+      are you thinking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging from
+      Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and proffered it.
+      Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the half-burned
+      cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in that
+      mental process had Philip been conscious! The conclusion was only too
+      apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered
+      them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used his power to his own
+      advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the happiness
+      of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart the dishonesty
+      of a swindler, he had been all-powerful; but when he endeavored to bend it
+      to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood abashed and repentant,
+      Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the sight of him, there leaped
+      to them happiness and welcome and complete content. It was &ldquo;the look that
+      never was on land or sea,&rdquo; and it was not necessary to be a mind reader to
+      understand it. Philip sprang toward her as quickly as a man dodges a
+      taxi-cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came early,&rdquo; said Helen, &ldquo;because I wanted to talk to you before the
+      others arrived.&rdquo; She seemed to be repeating words already rehearsed, to be
+      following a course of conduct already predetermined. &ldquo;I want to tell you,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you that I
+      shall miss you very much.&rdquo; She paused and drew a long breath. And she
+      looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her to go
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you miss me,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;in the Row, where I used to wait among the
+      trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances, where I used to
+      hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss me at
+      night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the
+      railings of the Carlton Club, just to see you run across the pavement from
+      your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to see the
+      light go out, and to know that you are sleeping?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you use to do that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every night I do that,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;Ask the policemen! They arrested me
+      three times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; said Helen gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They thought I was a burglar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Why did you keep guard outside my
+      window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the policeman kept guard,&rdquo; said Philip. &ldquo;I was there only as a
+      burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience, or
+      else I knew my own unworthiness.&rdquo; There was a long pause. As both of them,
+      whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the Hungarian
+      band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the &ldquo;Grizzly Bear,&rdquo; and people
+      were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with a look of so
+      complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare of such savage
+      hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to last for many
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Helen said: &ldquo;Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew in
+      a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up at her
+      from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to the lady's
+      window, and she lifted him in and kissed him&mdash;because he had dared to
+      climb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
+      doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She was
+      delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At any moment,&rdquo; Philip said, &ldquo;I may know whether I owe two hundred and
+      twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am worth
+      about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at the exact
+      place where you last spoke&mdash;AFTER I know whether I am going to jail,
+      or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that was it!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You don't like my money. I was afraid
+      you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
+      will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long as
+      you don't dislike me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
+      many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with a
+      hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: &ldquo;Combine is announced,
+      shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
+      deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message three
+      times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own sanity, he
+      grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter of a million
+      dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound note. He
+      pushed the boy from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned or
+      denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence, Helen
+      said: &ldquo;Is it good news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends entirely upon you,&rdquo; replied Philip soberly. &ldquo;Indeed, all my
+      future life depends upon what you are going to say next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And&mdash;what am I going to say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I know that?&rdquo; demanded Philip. &ldquo;Am I a mind reader?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
+      chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
+      shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
+      taxi-cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
+      socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley line,
+      the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his son, and
+      the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his father; or,
+      if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone through
+      Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would not have
+      known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
+      innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon lose
+      them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for other
+      social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes and
+      ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to lay siege
+      to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York itself. A
+      widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had told them
+      not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent of a society
+      paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them that in New York
+      the waiting-list is already interminable, and that, if you hoped to break
+      into New York society, the clever thing to do was to lay siege to it by
+      way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If you went direct to New York
+      knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact, and the result would
+      be disastrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the
+      West, who, at the first dance to which they were invited, asked, &ldquo;Who is
+      the old lady in the wig?&rdquo; and that question argued them so unknown that it
+      set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the Keeps
+      with misgivings. They agreed with the lady correspondent that it was far
+      better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves in the
+      suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from Keepsburg,
+      which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long Island, or Westchester,
+      or Bordentown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In all of those places,&rdquo; explained the widow lady, &ldquo;our smartest people
+      have country homes, and at the country club you may get to know them.
+      Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+      Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them could
+      play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be fought and
+      won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. But the attack
+      did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear that the lady
+      correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although three months
+      had passed, and they had played golf together until they were as loath to
+      clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one, and no one knew
+      them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and if you lived at
+      Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you were not to be
+      found on any map.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens had
+      looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those days
+      the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so proud
+      that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, &ldquo;No horses allowed.
+      Take the other road.&rdquo; The other road was an earth road used by
+      tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and
+      automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden
+      estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+      occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of
+      people who occupy cemeteries&mdash;except &ldquo;Harry&rdquo; Van Warden, and she
+      lived in New York at the Turf Club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Harry, according to all local tradition&mdash;for he frequently motored
+      out to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat&mdash;and, according to
+      the newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or
+      unsociable. So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested
+      for overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his
+      front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden
+      Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but
+      because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,&rdquo;
+       sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, &ldquo;you would meet Harry Van Warden, and
+      he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I was to ride to hounds,&rdquo; returned her husband, &ldquo;the only thing I'd
+      break would be my neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the
+      purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The house
+      was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated fortune;
+      and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler, his pictures,
+      furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an eminence, was
+      heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its chief attraction
+      was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay directly below the
+      terrace of the house and also in full view from the road to Albany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood were
+      many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted these
+      born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer evenings,
+      small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the hedge, and
+      used the lake as a swimming-pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me nervous,&rdquo; complained Winnie. &ldquo;I don't like the idea of people
+      prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve hundred
+      convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are burglars, and
+      if they ever get out, our house is the very first one they'll break into.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house
+      yet,&rdquo; said Fred, &ldquo;and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was
+      just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October night had
+      fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows of close-clipped
+      box. A full moon was just showing itself above the tree-tops, turning the
+      lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his wicker chair and, crossing to
+      his young bride, touched her hair fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if we don't know anybody, Win,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and nobody knows us? It's
+      been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it that
+      way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon, to be
+      together, to be alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Winnie laughed shortly. &ldquo;They certainly have left us alone!&rdquo; she sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where else could we have been any happier?&rdquo; demanded the young
+      husband loyally. &ldquo;Where will you find any prettier place than this, just
+      as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing
+      the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake?
+      Where's there a better place for a honeymoon? It's a bower&mdash;a bower
+      of peace, solitude a&mdash;bower of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside the
+      shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It came as
+      sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage. Then, as
+      suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after a pause of
+      an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two sharp
+      blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream of
+      rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who heard
+      it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the name of Heaven!&rdquo; gasped Keep, &ldquo;what's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped, he
+      spoke as though he were announcing dinner. &ldquo;A convict, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;has
+      escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not understand the whistle. I
+      thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked Winnie Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The house is near the road, madam,&rdquo; said the butler. &ldquo;And there are so
+      many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here, and the keepers&mdash;there
+      was a fight.&rdquo; The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his wife on the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's time to dress for dinner, Win,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what are you going to do?&rdquo; demanded Winnie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to change.&rdquo;
+       He turned to the butler. &ldquo;And I'll have a cocktail, too I'll have it out
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the
+      terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely. &ldquo;Fred,&rdquo; she
+      begged, &ldquo;you&mdash;you're not going to poke around in the bushes, are you?&mdash;just
+      because you think I'm frightened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband laughed at her. &ldquo;I certainly am NOT!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And you're not
+      frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the
+      siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very door, to beat
+      and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to
+      her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't they stop it!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Why don't they give him a
+      chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge of the
+      terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his hands, sat staring down
+      at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees, had blotted the
+      lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the hedges with wavering
+      shadows. Somewhere near at hand a criminal&mdash;a murderer, burglar, thug&mdash;was
+      at large, and the voice of the prison he had tricked still bellowed in
+      rage, in amazement, still clamored not only for his person but perhaps for
+      his life. The whole countryside heard it: the farmers bedding down their
+      cattle for the night; the guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red
+      candle shades; the joy riders from the city, racing their cars along the
+      Albany road. It woke the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson.
+      The granite walls of the Palisades flung it back against the granite walls
+      of the prison. Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching
+      for him, pointing him out&mdash;stirring in the heart of each who heard it
+      the lust of the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the hunted thing
+      is a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find him!&rdquo; shrieked the siren. &ldquo;Find him! He's there, behind your hedge!
+      He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in the moonlight.
+      THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag him down! He's
+      mine! Mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the home
+      of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with his soul. Each,
+      clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful joy,
+      each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will the
+      hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled panting through the crisp October
+      night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows, staggering and
+      falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that wherever his feet
+      led him the siren still held him by the heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
+      adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing to
+      herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night, although
+      her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he heard no
+      singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour. Gridley, the
+      aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for twenty years had
+      been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and taken away the empty
+      glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts. They were entirely of
+      the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him and begged his aid, what
+      would he do? He knew quite well what he would do. He considered even the
+      means by which he would assist the fugitive to a successful get-away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his duty
+      to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had visited &ldquo;the
+      institution,&rdquo; as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers to speak of it,
+      he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping from Sing Sing and
+      not being at once retaken was one out of six thousand. So with Fred it was
+      largely a sporting proposition. Any man who could beat a
+      six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine himself
+      in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring to escape.
+      Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself of his tell-tale
+      clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in Westchester County a
+      naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in the purple-gray cloth of
+      the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He might hold up a passer-by,
+      and, if the passer-by did not flee from him or punch him into
+      insensibility, he might effect an exchange of garments; he might by
+      threats obtain them from some farmer; he might despoil a scarecrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
+      deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as he
+      sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was not
+      entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas awning.
+      Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats in the
+      lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He was a young
+      man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face smooth-shaven, and
+      above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He had the sharp, clever, rat-like
+      face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water dripped from him, and
+      either for that reason or from fright the young man trembled, and, like
+      one who had been running, breathed in short, hard gasps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It was
+      as though he had been waiting for the man, as though it had been an
+      appointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of his
+      visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and that the man, not
+      knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might
+      rush him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the
+      moonlight the two young men eyed each other warily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of
+      his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took a bath in your pond,&rdquo; he blurted forth, &ldquo;and&mdash;and they stole
+      my clothes! That's why I'm like this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative
+      how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid himself of
+      accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the stranger with
+      admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he could
+      not let him suppose that he was deceived by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of
+      shivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't a bath,&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;It was a bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A what!&rdquo; exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. &ldquo;A bet? Then you
+      are not alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am NOW&mdash;damn them!&rdquo; exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+      reluctantly. &ldquo;We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting here in
+      the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim across
+      your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed up on me
+      from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to where I'd
+      left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I got to the
+      hedge the car was gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Keep smiled encouragingly. &ldquo;The car!&rdquo; he assented. &ldquo;So you've been riding
+      around in the moonlight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them the
+      roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and came in
+      greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely,
+      and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of
+      coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him.
+      But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?&rdquo; he
+      stuttered. &ldquo;Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all right,&rdquo; he
+      added; reassuringly. &ldquo;I live near here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young
+      man continued less confidently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't blame you if you don't believe it,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;seeing me like
+      this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody around here knows me, and I
+      guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'm&mdash;that is, my name&mdash;&rdquo;
+       like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and the rat-like
+      eyes regarded Keep watchfully&mdash;&ldquo;my name is Van Warden. I'm the one
+      you read about&mdash;Harry&mdash;I'm Harry Van Warden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile
+      was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he could not longer
+      enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My boy!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!&rdquo; He
+      rose and made a peremptory gesture. &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but this isn't safe
+      for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and send you where you
+      want to go.&rdquo; He turned and whispered over his shoulder: &ldquo;Some day let me
+      hear from you. A man with your nerve&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room. First making
+      sure the library and hall were free of servants, Fred tiptoed to the
+      coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light. The
+      naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of damp footprints, followed at his
+      heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and
+      on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;They'll cover
+      you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you here while I
+      get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your
+      head. Just say you're waiting to see me&mdash;Mr. Keep. I won't be long.
+      Wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; snorted the stranger. &ldquo;You BET I'll wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself
+      violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt,
+      boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out for him, and he
+      snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer he
+      counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the
+      trousers pocket of the serge suit and with the bundle of clothes in his
+      arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coat-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't come out until I knock,&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he added in a
+      vehement whisper, &ldquo;don't come out at all unless you have clothes on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the
+      door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes. When the butler
+      had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coat-room door. The
+      stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at the
+      moment was carefully arranging the tie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry!&rdquo; commanded Keep. &ldquo;The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I
+      tell him to take you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning.
+      &ldquo;New York,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;fast as he can get there! Look here,&rdquo; he added
+      doubtfully, &ldquo;there's a roll of bills in these clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're yours,&rdquo; said Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger exclaimed vigorously. &ldquo;You're all right!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;I
+      won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the money back same time I
+      send the clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; said Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred
+      slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before it. After a
+      period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the
+      inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of the
+      width of a finger, and put his ear to the crack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?&rdquo; whispered the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the
+      chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had
+      gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy could be
+      trusted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're to take a man to New York,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or wherever he wants to go.
+      Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if YOU'RE questioned, you
+      can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps. As
+      he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still demanding its
+      prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow, the
+      youth jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where Keep
+      stood above him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you,&rdquo; said Keep, &ldquo;to ask no questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs toward
+      him. She had changed to one of the prettiest evening gowns of her
+      trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself and
+      the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he
+      was lost in admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the
+      door of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet the
+      stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly
+      appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp shriek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon the
+      visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you fix it?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his eyes
+      were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by Winnie
+      Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to nod his
+      head dully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; commanded Fred. &ldquo;The car is waiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a
+      woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood
+      still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn, Winnie
+      beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery, so overcome
+      by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and inarticulate. For
+      protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been intended
+      for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot reciting its
+      lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though he
+      had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as though a
+      stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced an
+      instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated excitement and delight.
+      How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of Scarboro
+      she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward him a glance
+      of deep and grateful devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she beamed upon the stranger. &ldquo;Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to dinner?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her husband emitted a howl. &ldquo;He will NOT!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;He's not that kind
+      of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that fixes the telephone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and dragged him
+      down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor stumbled
+      after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful lady. Fred
+      thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at the golf-cap
+      and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly twisting in his
+      hands, Fred whispered fiercely:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the
+      signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to throw in the
+      clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,
+      directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself upon
+      the gravel; something in a suit of purple-gray; something torn and
+      bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and crawled,
+      that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the glare of
+      the head-lights the white face and white hair of a very old, old man. The
+      kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in the pit of the
+      stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man stretched his
+      arms toward them. From long disuse his voice cracked and broke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm done!&rdquo; he sobbed. &ldquo;I can't go no farther! I give myself up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison siren
+      shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and
+      slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he flung it over the
+      suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's frightened
+      eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down over the white hair. With one arm he
+      lifted the convict, and with the other dragged and pushed him into the
+      seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he thrust the
+      roll of bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get him away!&rdquo; he ordered. &ldquo;It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut
+      line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a ticket to Boston. Go
+      through White Plains to Greenwich&mdash;and then you're safe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he
+      swung upon Fred. &ldquo;Am I right?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course!&rdquo; roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though
+      throwing him into space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get-to-hell-out-of-here!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being,
+      chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With a grinding of
+      gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking in
+      farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in
+      jeering notes of joy and victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed to
+      leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger remained motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the
+      stranger by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;How are you going to get away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step stood Winnie
+      Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to get away,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me
+      stay to dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so
+      that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly tell me,&rdquo; Fred demanded, &ldquo;who the devil you are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger exclaimed peevishly. &ldquo;I've BEEN telling you all evening,&rdquo; he
+      protested. &ldquo;I'm Harry Van Warden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dinner is served, madam,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. &ldquo;Hello, Gridley!&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if he'll ask me to
+      dinner, I won't steal the spoons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the privilege
+      of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the stranger fondly,
+      proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the affection of an
+      old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to Keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mr. Harry&mdash;Mr. Van Warden,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is to stay to dinner, might
+      I suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert, '84.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his
+      wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gridley coughed tentatively. &ldquo;Shall I open a bottle, sir?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open a case!&rdquo; he roared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of such
+      mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling each other by their
+      first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken from the
+      telephone. It was a long-distance call from Yonkers, sent by James, the
+      faithful chauffeur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred read it aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got that party the articles he needed,&rdquo; it read, &ldquo;and saw him safe on a
+      train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for speeding the car on
+      the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before he finally arrested him, &ldquo;Jimmie&rdquo; Sniffen had seen the man with the
+      golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+      unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill
+      where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew people
+      do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not deceived. He
+      guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to
+      &ldquo;stalk&rdquo; him. From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good
+      as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for &ldquo;stalking&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;path-finding,&rdquo; not to boast of others for &ldquo;gardening&rdquo; and &ldquo;cooking,&rdquo; can
+      outwit any spy. Even had, General Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and
+      not invented the boy scout, Jimmie Sniffen would have been one. Because,
+      by birth he was a boy, and by inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County
+      the Sniffens are one of the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a
+      Sniffen; and with Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to
+      when the acres of the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road
+      to the coach road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on
+      one of his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound
+      and rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+      great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+      deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+      weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+      Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+      cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+      familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not
+      see a Pease and Elliman &ldquo;For Sale&rdquo; sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see
+      in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe
+      into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before in
+      those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+      tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+      secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would
+      raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there ain't no panthers in Westchester,&rdquo; Jimmie would reassure
+      himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+      with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still Jimmie
+      remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that when he
+      raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. &ldquo;Mebbe dad told me it
+      happened to grandpop,&rdquo; Jimmie would explain, &ldquo;or I dreamed it, or, mebbe,
+      I read it in a story book.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;German spy&rdquo; mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+      scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the week
+      end with &ldquo;Squire&rdquo; Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides being a
+      justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of the Country
+      Club, was also a local &ldquo;councilman&rdquo; for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought
+      his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In deference to his
+      audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of
+      the part they were playing in the great war. It was his peroration that
+      made trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And any day,&rdquo; he assured his audience, &ldquo;this country may be at war with
+      Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You can
+      begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+      Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+      Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and then
+      they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven and New
+      York Central railroads, and march straight through this village. I haven't
+      the least doubt,&rdquo; exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet, &ldquo;that at this
+      moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as blackberries. They are
+      here to select camp sites and gun positions, to find out which of these
+      hills enfilade the others and to learn to what extent their armies can
+      live on the country. They are counting the cows, the horses, the barns
+      where fodder is stored; and they are marking down on their maps the wells
+      and streams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the door,
+      Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. &ldquo;Keep your eyes open!&rdquo; he commanded. &ldquo;Watch
+      every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your sheriff,
+      or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be prepared!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+      saw spiked helmets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next time you talk to my scouts,&rdquo; he declared, &ldquo;you'll talk on 'Votes for
+      Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who dares
+      open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away from
+      Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU are not!&rdquo; retorted his friend, &ldquo;you own half the county now, and
+      you're trying to buy the other half.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a justice of the peace,&rdquo; explained Van Vorst. &ldquo;I don't know WHY I am,
+      except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble. The
+      Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and I have
+      to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the Italians for
+      poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black Hand letters.
+      And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for a German spy who is
+      selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a millionaire who is tired
+      of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to 'own his own home' and his own
+      golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being arrested that he'll take his
+      millions to Long Island and try to break into the Piping Rock Club. And,
+      it will be your fault!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+      Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+      with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+      scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+      companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+      frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked to
+      pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile adversaries. It
+      was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the top of a hill and on
+      peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck was
+      a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie
+      and watch, off its guard, a rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a
+      crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made believe he was
+      eating venison. Sometimes he was a scout of the Continental Army and
+      carried despatches to General Washington. The rules of that game were that
+      if any man ploughing in the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even
+      approaching along the same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie
+      was taken prisoner, and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom
+      shot. Or else why on his sleeve was the badge for &ldquo;stalking.&rdquo; But always
+      to have to make believe became monotonous. Even &ldquo;dry shopping&rdquo; along the
+      Rue de la Paix when you pretend you can have anything you see in any
+      window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war
+      correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the
+      circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms,
+      to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in
+      which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he
+      waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot
+      field. The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy,
+      but the enemy of his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked the
+      part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and he
+      carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor from
+      the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian arrow-heads.
+      And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested
+      Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor to a secret cave of
+      his own, though on some one else's property, where one not only could dig
+      for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor was delighted, but for
+      Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week following Jimmie was again
+      disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting in
+      a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book, and his
+      runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+      blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+      planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New
+      York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing a shot,
+      New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk
+      of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he followed the
+      runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the mysterious
+      stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was the State
+      Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the Panama Canal.
+      Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From the heights of
+      Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man working alone upon
+      a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American, and already on
+      Jimmie's list of &ldquo;suspects.&rdquo; That for the use of the German artillery he
+      was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was only too evident. But
+      closer investigation proved that the concrete was only two inches thick.
+      And the hyphenated one explained that the basin was built over a spring,
+      in the waters of which he planned to erect a fountain and raise gold fish.
+      It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst
+      one day in the road he told him his troubles. The young judge proved
+      unsympathetic. &ldquo;My advice to you, Jimmie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is to go slow.
+      Accusing everybody of espionage is a very serious matter. If you call a
+      man a spy, it's sometimes hard for him to disprove it; and the name
+      sticks. So, go slow&mdash;very slow. Before you arrest any more people,
+      come to me first for a warrant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+      with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+      chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+      Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a new
+      barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young man
+      in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to be
+      always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and, from
+      the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie mistrusted
+      him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not been raining,
+      but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed that while the
+      dew was still on the leaves the young man had been forcing his way through
+      underbrush. The stranger must have remembered Jimmie, for he laughed and
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now, or
+      I'd hold you up. I'm starving!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie smiled in sympathy. &ldquo;It's early to be hungry,&rdquo; said Jimmie; &ldquo;when
+      did you have your breakfast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't,&rdquo; laughed the young man. &ldquo;I went out to walk up an appetite, and
+      I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the shortest way
+      back to Bedford?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first road to your right,&rdquo; said Jimmie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it far?&rdquo; asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+      evident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a half-hour's walk,&rdquo; said Jimmie
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I live that long,&rdquo; corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut him
+      from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance, and,
+      then, diving into the wood that lined the road, &ldquo;stalked&rdquo; him. From behind
+      a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one in the
+      road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a runner
+      stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he heard
+      the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who knew his
+      way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad shoulders of
+      the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by the noise of the
+      crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed the stranger had
+      reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered, that led to Middle
+      Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also reached it, and as now he
+      was close to where it entered the main road, he approached warily. But, he
+      was too late. There was a sound like the whir of a rising partridge, and
+      ahead of him from where it had been hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into
+      the highway. The stranger was at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of
+      dust, the car raced toward Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it
+      bore a Connecticut State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed
+      little V's, like arrow-heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty miles
+      he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him south, they
+      were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread tarvia.
+      Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as in his
+      copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he catch up
+      with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset as he
+      passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the skyline,
+      in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as a
+      flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+      offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until the
+      stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was in no
+      haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face east
+      toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to splash and
+      as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into the darkness.
+      And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it, there suddenly
+      flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from cover. It was no
+      longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time for caution had
+      passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top of the hill, and
+      found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone wall, forced his way
+      through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath to listen. Just beyond
+      him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was tripping and tumbling.
+      Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned hot. It sounded as though
+      from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie shook his fist at the
+      enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the coming storm and the tossing
+      tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over the
+      chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+      family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+      shirt buttoned his license to &ldquo;hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+      or other devices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested more
+      spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of the
+      head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen he
+      could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What he
+      had seen was his warrant&mdash;plus the shotgun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a &ldquo;pathfinder&rdquo; should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+      lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+      Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+      night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+      so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+      beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew
+      hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and Jimmie
+      broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the right, and
+      in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires had pressed
+      deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the car. It was
+      empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy on the nearest
+      hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car. Between lying in
+      ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did not climb the hill
+      nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked that hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before
+      him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away to
+      his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich. Directly
+      before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests, green fields,
+      gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash of white, that
+      quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had washed the air.
+      Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the glare of the August
+      sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as those in a colored
+      photograph; and as still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he moves,&rdquo; he sighed happily, &ldquo;I've got him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which he had
+      found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was crowned with
+      a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing an ancient
+      boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in poison-ivy. In
+      places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the sun, overhung the
+      wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the hill into sectors. He
+      began at the right, and slowly followed the wall. With his eyes he took it
+      apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised his head, Jimmie would have
+      seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like the reflection of the sun
+      upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie knew he had found his spy. A
+      pair of binoculars had betrayed him. Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on
+      the ground at the top of the hill opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak,
+      his back against the stone wall. With the binoculars to his eyes he had
+      leaned too far forward, and upon the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+      like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the contour
+      of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite. When
+      he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the
+      stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on
+      tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars
+      hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He
+      was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he hummed a tune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Throw up your hands!&rdquo; he commanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no sign
+      that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled valley.
+      They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed by some deep
+      and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the sun-filled valley
+      some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but still
+      smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his smile was
+      swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief. These were
+      followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm. &ldquo;Don't point
+      that thing at me!&rdquo; shouted the stranger. &ldquo;Is it loaded?&rdquo; With his cheek
+      pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length of the brown
+      barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open palms. They accented
+      his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to be exclaiming, &ldquo;Can
+      such things be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up!&rdquo; commanded Jimmie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With alacrity the stranger rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk over there,&rdquo; ordered the scout. &ldquo;Walk backward. Stop! Take off those
+      field-glasses and throw them to me.&rdquo; Without removing his eyes from the
+      gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed them to
+      the stone wall. &ldquo;See here!&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;if you'll only point that damned
+      blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my watch, and
+      clothes, and all my money; only don't&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie flushed crimson. &ldquo;You can't bribe me,&rdquo; he growled. At least, he
+      tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+      excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+      flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+      words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not trying to bribe you,&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;If you don't want anything,
+      why are you holding me up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not,&rdquo; returned Jimmie, &ldquo;I'm arresting you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he cried,
+      &ldquo;I see! Have I been trespassing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+      stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall. &ldquo;If
+      you try to rush me,&rdquo; he warned, &ldquo;I'll shoot you full of buckshot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. &ldquo;Don't worry about that,&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+      binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder, and
+      again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and menacing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The name on them&rdquo; he accused, &ldquo;is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?&rdquo;
+       The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, &ldquo;That's
+      the name of the firm that makes them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. &ldquo;Hah!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;made in Germany!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?&rdquo; With
+      polite insistence he repeated, &ldquo;Would you mind telling me why I am
+      arrested, and who you might happen to be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+      did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+      annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But the
+      penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he saw,
+      &ldquo;Correct range, 1,800 yards&rdquo;; &ldquo;this stream not fordable&rdquo;; &ldquo;slope of hill
+      15 degrees inaccessible for artillery.&rdquo; &ldquo;Wire entanglements here&rdquo;; &ldquo;forage
+      for five squadrons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+      gun motioned toward the base of the hill. &ldquo;Keep forty feet ahead of me,&rdquo;
+       he commanded, &ldquo;and walk to your car.&rdquo; The stranger did not seem to hear
+      him. He spoke with irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll have to explain to you about that map.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not to me, you won't,&rdquo; declared his captor. &ldquo;You're going to drive
+      straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger tossed his arms even higher. &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+      gratefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a willing
+      captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's he
+      exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie held the
+      shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating circumstance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a bag
+      of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+      climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to his
+      front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a gun,
+      the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him with
+      misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting German
+      spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was great.
+      And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the hands of
+      the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence of a
+      butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+      increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a feeling
+      of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a halt, he
+      breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+      not entirety successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got him!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What one?&rdquo; demanded Van Vorst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+      the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+      wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THAT one!&rdquo; cried Jimmie. &ldquo;He's a German spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+      indignation, anger, reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmie!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his &ldquo;Exhibit A.&rdquo; &ldquo;Look what
+      he's wrote,&rdquo; commanded the scout. &ldquo;It's all military words. And these are
+      his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been stalking
+      him for a week. He's a spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+      Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+      he was puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm only glad it's no
+      worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every stranger
+      he sees&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please!&rdquo; he begged, &ldquo;Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+      Might I speak with you&mdash;ALONE?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+      that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+      directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She must have been a
+      great loss to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was,&rdquo; said Van Vorst. &ldquo;The week before she broke her back, I refused
+      three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I brought you inside,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because I didn't want your servants to
+      hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+      boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+      threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been a
+      German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think he
+      has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit as
+      though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+      capture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Vorst pointed to the map. &ldquo;My bet is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you're an
+      officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I
+      right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're warm,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the
+      Real Thing.&rdquo; From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on
+      the table. &ldquo;I'm 'Sherry' McCoy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Captain of Artillery in the
+      United States Army.&rdquo; He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+      Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not picking
+      out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of defense for
+      Americans when the Germans come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My word!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;You're as bad as Jimmie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, sir,&rdquo; he retorted, &ldquo;are as bad as ninety million other
+      Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill,
+      when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe, you'll
+      believe THEN.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you serious?&rdquo; demanded Van Vorst. &ldquo;And you an army officer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why I am serious,&rdquo; returned McCoy. &ldquo;WE know. But when we try to
+      prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly&mdash;in underhand
+      ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and
+      accuse us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to
+      prepare under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like
+      a chicken thief. And,&rdquo; he added sharply, &ldquo;that's why that boy must not
+      know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at
+      Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Van Vorst moved to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never learn the truth from me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For I will tell him you
+      are to be shot at sunrise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; laughed the Captain. &ldquo;And tell me his name. If ever we fight over
+      Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And give him
+      this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+      captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. &ldquo;You mustn't,&rdquo; he
+      begged; &ldquo;I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if
+      I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot at
+      sunrise.&rdquo; At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook with
+      terror. &ldquo;Make it for twenty years,&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;Make it for ten,&rdquo; he
+      coaxed, &ldquo;but, please, promise you won't shoot him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+      who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave Jimmie your ten dollars,&rdquo; said Van Vorst, &ldquo;and made it twenty, and
+      he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to spare your
+      life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty years in a
+      fortress. I drink to your good fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; protested Captain McCoy, &ldquo;We will drink to Jimmie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs had
+      again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted to
+      depart; but he was again delayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other visitors were arriving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+      tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat were
+      white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+      indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+      swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it had
+      just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted at
+      Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot with
+      anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A gray touring-car,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;It stopped here. We saw it from that
+      hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, &ldquo;Captain McCoy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow,
+      silenced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Captain McCoy,&rdquo; assented the driver eagerly. &ldquo;Which way did he go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To New York,&rdquo; said Van Vorst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver shrieked at his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, he's doubled back,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;He's gone to New Haven.&rdquo; He stooped
+      and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want with him?&rdquo; he called &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the car
+      the words of the driver were flung back. &ldquo;We're Secret Service from
+      Washington,&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+      curtain of white, whirling dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
+      and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be the
+      kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
+      illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
+      Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church, after
+      luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding floating
+      in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the waits
+      singing &ldquo;God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in my
+      gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of whose
+      age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees, and
+      cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes
+      explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient
+      gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York
+      would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I
+      advised postponement. Having lived in lawful harmony with his appendix for
+      fifty years, I thought, for one week longer he might safely maintain the
+      status quo. But his cable in reply was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve,
+      instead of Hallam Hall and a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and
+      pitching off the coast of Ireland, and the only log on board was the one
+      the captain kept to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on
+      the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot,
+      or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier
+      conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner in
+      which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But, either
+      out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the fictitious
+      gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man in a
+      knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from dinner
+      time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and icicles,
+      was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+      inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers
+      testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room
+      crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I
+      met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.
+      All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that,
+      though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of his
+      years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have spent
+      much time, and according to himself much money, at the French
+      watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France I
+      had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to place.
+      Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked glibly, but
+      in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking the trouble
+      to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his talking about
+      himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object. I felt he was
+      presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might ask a
+      favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in New York
+      would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a banker, I could
+      not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in self-interest, I could
+      think of no other motive. The next evening I discovered the motive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled that
+      it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a bank at
+      baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: &ldquo;I saw you last summer at
+      Aix-les-Bains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for some
+      particular card.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was I doing?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With obvious relief he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he assented; &ldquo;jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money
+      there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em alone.&rdquo;
+       As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me to excuse
+      him, he smiled appealingly. &ldquo;Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like 'em
+      all,&rdquo; he rattled on, &ldquo;but they don't like me. So I stick to solitaire.
+      It's dull, but cheap.&rdquo; He shuffled the cards clumsily. As though making
+      conversation, he asked: &ldquo;You care for cards yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a
+      spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been
+      wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even of
+      irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had hurt
+      him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them I saw in
+      them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he was utterly
+      unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man facing a
+      crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry for him. In
+      me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of the few dollars
+      he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed his need was great.
+      Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck. When I returned an hour
+      later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game of poker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't scold, now,&rdquo; he laughed; &ldquo;you know I can't keep away from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends of
+      long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he thought I
+      had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered: &ldquo;Known him for
+      years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my right femur
+      'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my people swear
+      by him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met
+      mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see. &ldquo;What
+      would you draw?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him
+      and walk on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we
+      were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a
+      hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now,&rdquo; he assured me.
+      &ldquo;They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the
+      limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I take it you are not,&rdquo; I said stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile
+      died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm 'in bad,' doctor,&rdquo; he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered,
+      like that of a child. &ldquo;I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't
+      think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at the
+      door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't work,
+      and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could you&mdash;couldn't
+      give me something to keep my head straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob our
+      fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly dodged it.
+      I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him to the
+      ship's surgeon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't know HIM,&rdquo; he protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you certainly don't know me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know who you ARE,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;You and I&mdash;&rdquo; With a deprecatory
+      gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he stopped.
+      &ldquo;But the ship's surgeon!&rdquo; he protested, &ldquo;he's an awful bounder! Besides,&rdquo;
+       he added quite simply, &ldquo;he's watching me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a doctor,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;or watching you play cards?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play cards,&rdquo; the young man answered. &ldquo;I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon on
+      the P. &amp; O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I fancy
+      he remembers me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you mustn't tell me that,&rdquo; I protested. &ldquo;I can't have you making
+      trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here
+      to the captain?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a mock obeisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I claim the seal of your profession,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; I retorted.
+      &ldquo;It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that you
+      are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me
+      sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got to make expenses,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;And, besides, all card games are
+      games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway,&rdquo; he
+      repeated, as though disposing of all argument, &ldquo;I got to make expenses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat
+      waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find &ldquo;my
+      friend.&rdquo; I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance
+      only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want to give him his revenge,&rdquo; one of them volunteered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's losing, then?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man chuckled complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only loser,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't worry,&rdquo; I advised. &ldquo;He'll come for his revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on the
+      lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that with
+      difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm scared,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;scared!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent it
+      to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for
+      myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were
+      closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself in
+      his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been drinking?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In surprise he opened his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't drink,&rdquo; he answered simply. &ldquo;It's nerves and worry. I'm tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the
+      fingers lay open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God,&rdquo; he whispered, &ldquo;how tired I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his tan&mdash;and certainly he had led the out-of-door life&mdash;his
+      face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're crowdin' me,&rdquo; the boy whispered. &ldquo;They're always crowdin' me.&rdquo;
+       His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child complaining
+      of something beyond his experience. &ldquo;I can't remember when they haven't
+      been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved
+      me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut
+      me out of London. I opened a club there, very quiet, very exclusive, smart
+      neighborhood, too&mdash;a flat in Berkeley Street&mdash;roulette and
+      chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out; anyway, they came in
+      and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on this. It's my last
+      chance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This trip?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me to
+      live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back. I'm
+      coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the husks
+      that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that; want to
+      follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted calf.&rdquo; He
+      laughed sardonically. &ldquo;Like hell they will! They'd rather see ME killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning
+      repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure them.
+      I suggested as much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and they send a
+      wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he interrupted; &ldquo;but I got to chance that. I GOT to make enough
+      to go on with&mdash;until I see my family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they won't see you?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as
+      though for him the prospect held no terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And I won't be a bother to
+      anybody any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the
+      sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first
+      appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a healthy
+      picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit; ready for
+      any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so expert I
+      asked him to avoid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't be done!&rdquo; he assured me. &ldquo;I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow
+      morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the others who made the killing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was seated.
+      The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider semicircle were
+      passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's purser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the pockets of
+      his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long cigarette-holder
+      was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult of angry voices, and
+      the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly at least he met them with
+      complete indifference. The voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest
+      named Smedburg, was raised in excited accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the ship's surgeon first met you,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you called yourself
+      Lord Ridley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll call myself anything I jolly well like,&rdquo; returned Talbot. &ldquo;If I
+      choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my name
+      to every meddling busybody that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll give it to the police, all right,&rdquo; chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the
+      confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he
+      shouted: &ldquo;And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot
+      rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his
+      sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: &ldquo;Only too delighted to
+      keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not to escape with the last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;make
+      sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from
+      sharpers and swindlers&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go to the devil!&rdquo; he called, and walked out into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad business,&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;I understand they suspected him from the first&mdash;seems our
+      surgeon recognized him&mdash;and to-night they had outsiders watching him.
+      The outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of
+      the pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to call
+      himself Meyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They accused him of travelling under a false name,&rdquo; explained the purser,
+      &ldquo;and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters. Then he
+      said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems
+      Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was a silly
+      ass thing to do,&rdquo; protested the purser. &ldquo;Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a
+      brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got away with the
+      other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer
+      and to the police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he no other way of spending his money?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a confounded nuisance!&rdquo; growled the purser. &ldquo;He wants to show us he
+      knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means a
+      scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and,&rdquo; he added with disgust,
+      &ldquo;these smoking-room rows never helped any line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of a
+      collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry the
+      young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and then,
+      after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at his
+      cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief. But he
+      would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was &ldquo;all
+      right,&rdquo; wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the sleep he
+      claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness, and the next
+      morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine thrill. I found
+      him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly and trying to appear
+      unconscious of the glances&mdash;amused, contemptuous, hostile&mdash;that
+      were turned toward him. He would have passed me without speaking, but I
+      took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed quarantine and a
+      convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't depend on me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy little
+      body!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I
+      saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke in
+      a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident no
+      longer was of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were watching me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I knew they were, and besides, no
+      matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and
+      they'd never have seen it. But I didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't!&rdquo; he repeated stubbornly. &ldquo;I didn't have to! I was playing in
+      luck&mdash;wonderful luck&mdash;sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning.
+      But because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful
+      not to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the
+      cards they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I
+      could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the air,
+      shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to believe;
+      they didn't want the facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling the
+      truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather harshly,
+      I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer,
+      either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Talbot did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy laughed impudently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?&rdquo; he protested. &ldquo;It was a
+      good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are
+      Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you,&rdquo; I retorted impatiently, &ldquo;are not a Jew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not,&rdquo; said Talbot, &ldquo;but I've often SAID I was. It's helped&mdash;lots
+      of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer,
+      instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew.&rdquo; He smiled and
+      turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the
+      police, he began to enumerate:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic,
+      according to taste. Do you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it didn't work,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;I picked the wrong Jew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face grew serious. &ldquo;Do you suppose that Smedburg person has wirelessed
+      that banker?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what will Meyer do?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Will he drop it or make a fuss? What
+      sort is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew in
+      New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his own
+      race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then maybe,&rdquo; cried Talbot hopefully, &ldquo;he won't make a row, and my family
+      won't hear of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted, his
+      shoulders straightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;There, at the end of the wharf&mdash;the little Jew
+      in furs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected by
+      two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker,
+      philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face
+      of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad
+      business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot and
+      found him gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a growing
+      fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It seemed many
+      hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and dismantled, and
+      by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose Talbot were
+      seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other empty,
+      dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one gave
+      heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no one was in
+      a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the gangway, the
+      stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck to deck, down
+      lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced blindly, peering
+      into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men, pursuing some one
+      in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought, only to find he was
+      unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the last of the passengers
+      was leaving it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
+      white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
+      why I was wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ship's surgeon, sir,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;asks you please to hurry to the
+      sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
+      eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
+      Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
+      darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was HE sent for you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but he doesn't need you. Fortunately,
+      he's a damned bad shot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so tired,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Always moving me on. I was so tired!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar them
+      out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to one
+      side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable coat,
+      Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
+      staring at the face on the pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand of
+      the card-sharp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heine!&rdquo; he begged. &ldquo;Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
+      little brother Adolph!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Red Cross Girl by
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+The Red Cross Girl
+
+by Richard Harding Davis
+
+May, 1999  [Etext #1733]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Red Cross Girl
+by Richard Harding Davis
+#11 in our series by Richard Harding Davis
+******This file should be named rdcrg10.txt or rdcrg10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared by Aaron Cannon of Paradise, California
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+
+
+THE NOVELS AND STORIES OF RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Introduction by Gouverneur Morris
+
+1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+6. THE MIND READER
+
+7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+R. H. D.
+
+ "And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+unafraid."
+
+He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods
+loved him, and so he had to die young. Some people think that
+a man of fifty-two is middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived
+to be a hundred, he would never have grown old. It is not
+generally known that the name of his other brother was Peter
+Pan.
+
+Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the
+taking of sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester
+Hills for gunsites against the Mexican invasion. And we have
+made lists of guns, and medicines, and tinned things, in case
+we should ever happen to go elephant shooting in Africa. But
+we weren't going to hurt the elephants. Once R. H. D. shot a
+hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I think he
+never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a
+sportsman. Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said
+the last word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting Ground in
+"The Bar Sinister"?--"Where nobody hunts us, and there is
+nothing to hunt."
+
+Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most
+exciting of all sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He
+hunted for wounded men who were out in front of the trenches
+and still under fire, and found some of them and brought them
+in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary member of
+their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
+friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and
+he was another.
+
+To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever
+done a brave thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and
+he talked even better than he wrote (at his best he wrote
+like an angel), but I have dusted every corner of my memory
+and cannot recall any story of his in which he played a
+heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top
+speed, or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot
+of water (for hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was
+getting the worst of it. But about the other fellows he told
+the whole truth with lightning flashes of wit and character
+building and admiration or contempt. Until the invention of
+moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
+talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and
+prepared the slides, his words sent the light through them,
+and lo and behold, they were reproduced on the screen of your
+own mind, exact in drawing and color. With the written word
+or the spoken word he was the greatest recorder and reporter
+of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps, that ever
+lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners and
+customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be
+written truthfully without reference to the records which he
+has left, to his special articles and to his letters. Read
+over again the Queen's Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the
+March of the Germans through Brussels, and see for yourself
+if I speak too zealously, even for a friend, to whom, now
+that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the same again.
+
+But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter
+will come in due time before the unerring tribunal of
+posterity.
+
+One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into
+contact with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own
+use (he uses a good deal, because every day he does the work
+of five or six men), he distributes the inexhaustible
+remainder among those who most need it. Men go to him tired
+and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be alive, still
+gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil
+himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the
+same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could
+distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had
+some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping
+into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such
+times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there
+came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to
+sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and
+from the receiver there poured into you affection and
+encouragement.
+
+But the great times, of course, were when he came in person,
+and the temperature of the house, which a moment before had
+been too hot or too cold, became just right, and a sense of
+cheerfulness and well-being invaded the hearts of the master
+and the mistress and of the servants in the house and in the
+yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and the baby, who
+had been fretting because nobody would give her a double-
+barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about
+the disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+
+He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a
+little afraid of them. He was afraid perhaps that they
+wouldn't find out how much he loved them. But when they
+showed him that they trusted him, and, unsolicited, climbed
+upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then the
+loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that
+the great heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed
+with an exquisite bliss, akin to anguish.
+
+One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine
+received a telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And
+I thank God that little Miss Hope is too young to know what
+an appalling loss she has suffered....
+
+Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter
+was allowed to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could
+wait on the table (and though I say it, that shouldn't, she
+could do this beautifully, with dignity and without
+giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H. D.
+thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place
+and storm the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps
+the gardener was taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He,
+too, came in for praise. R. H. D. had never seen our Japanese
+iris so beautiful; as for his, they wouldn't grow at all. It
+wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the iris. And then
+back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
+adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and
+leaving behind him a cook to whom there had been issued a new
+lease of life, and a gardener who blushed and smiled in the
+darkness under the Actinidia vines.
+
+It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that
+he was with us most and we learned to know him best, and that
+he and I became dependent upon each other in many ways.
+
+Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very
+difficult and complicated. And he who had given so much
+friendship to so many people needed a little friendship in
+return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a time to live in a
+house whose master and mistress loved each other, and where
+there were children. Before he came that first year our house
+had no name. Now it is called "Let's Pretend."
+
+Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first
+days of the built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't
+draw all the time, but we pretended that it did, and with
+much pretense came faith. From the fireplace that smoked to
+the serious things of life we extended our pretendings, until
+real troubles went down before them--down and out.
+
+It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest
+spring I ever lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after
+Christmas. The spireas were in bloom, and the monthly roses;
+you could always find a sweet violet or two somewhere in the
+yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against gray
+cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom.
+It never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In
+the middle of the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and
+every morning we had a four for tennis and every afternoon we
+rode in the woods. And every night we sat in front of the
+fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and talked
+until the next morning.
+
+He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest
+pleasure not in looking backward or forward, but in what is
+going on at the moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it
+was forced upon his knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth
+(let us say), had been a good Tuesday. He knew it the moment
+he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the Tuesday sunshine making
+patterns of bright light upon the floor. The sunshine
+rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
+there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day
+began with attentions to his physical well-being. There were
+exercises conducted with great vigor and rejoicing, followed
+by a tub, artesian cold, and a loud and joyous singing of
+ballads.
+
+At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and,
+copied in marble, gone down the ages as "statue of a young
+athlete." He stood six feet and over, straight as a Sioux
+chief, a noble and leonine head carried by a splendid torso.
+His skin was as fine and clean as a child's. He weighed
+nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He was the
+weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but
+so tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his
+adolescent days that he could stand stiff-legged and lay his
+hands flat upon the floor.
+
+The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at
+his door you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly.
+He was hard at work, doing unto others what others had done
+unto him. You were a stranger to him; some magazine had
+accepted a story that you had written and published it.
+R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in that story
+(very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure to
+tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would
+send you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that
+you had drawn a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown
+golden promise in a half column of unsigned print, R. H. D.
+would find you out, and find time to praise you and help you.
+So it was that when he emerged from his room at sharp eight
+o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and whistled
+and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy,
+and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters
+and telegrams.
+
+Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a
+sullen, dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night
+before had rejoiced in each other's society. With him it was
+the time when the mind is, or ought to be, at its best, the
+body at its freshest and hungriest. Discussions of the latest
+plays and novels, the doings and undoings of statesmen,
+laughter and sentiment--to him, at breakfast, these things
+were as important as sausages and thick cream.
+
+Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the
+day's work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played
+with a free conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything
+connected with a newspaper, he would now pass by those on the
+hall-table with never so much as a wistful glance, and hurry
+to his workroom.
+
+He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you
+may say, he wrote walking up and down. Some people,
+accustomed to the delicious ease and clarity of his style,
+imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and he didn't.
+Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously human,
+flowed from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of
+corresponding, "The German March Through Brussels," was
+probably written almost as fast as he could talk (next to
+Phillips Brooks, he was the fastest talker I ever heard), but
+when it came to fiction he had no facility at all. Perhaps I
+should say that he held in contempt any facility that he may
+have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy and Joblike
+patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all. Every
+phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could
+think of, the fittest in his relentless judgment to survive.
+Phrases, paragraphs, pages, whole stories even, were written
+over and over again. He worked upon a principle of
+elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile turning
+in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description
+from which there was omitted no detail, which the most
+observant pair of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with
+reference to just such a turning. Thereupon he would begin a
+process of omitting one by one those details which he had
+been at such pains to recall; and after each omission he
+would ask himself: "Does the picture remain?" If it did not,
+he restored the detail which he had just omitted, and
+experimented with the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and
+so on, until after Herculean labor there remained for the
+reader one of those swiftly flashed, ice-clear pictures
+(complete in every detail) with which his tales and romances
+are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+
+But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of
+holiday, R. H. D. emerges from his workroom happy to think
+that he has placed one hundred and seven words between
+himself and the wolf who hangs about every writer's door. He
+isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He never
+was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but
+he has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes
+that under the circumstances they are the very best that he
+can do. Anyway, they can stand in their present order until--
+after lunch.
+
+A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death
+he had denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits.
+I have never seen him smoke automatically as most men do. He
+had too much respect for his own powers of enjoyment and for
+the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best Havana tobacco. At a
+time of his own deliberate choosing, often after many hours
+of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
+it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used
+all the smoke there was in it.
+
+He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the
+best Scotch whiskey. But these things were friends to him,
+and not enemies. He had toward food and drink the Continental
+attitude; namely, that quality is far more important than
+quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the fact that he
+was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps I
+shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he
+had a will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in
+whichever direction his conscience pointed; and, although
+that ever present and never obtrusive conscience of his made
+mistakes of judgment now and then, as must all consciences, I
+think it can never once have tricked him into any action that
+was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the heroes
+and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent
+young people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for
+any trait of virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of
+which his own life could not furnish examples.
+
+Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same
+conscience that he had for himself. His great gift of
+eyesight and observation failed him in his judgments upon his
+friends. If only you loved him, you could get your biggest
+failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without any
+trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made
+splendid mountains. He only interfered with you when he was
+afraid that you were going to hurt some one else whom he also
+loved. Once I had a telegram from him which urged me for
+heaven's sake not to forget that the next day was my wife's
+birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my own private
+affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
+liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to
+tell him so, he always kept at me till the letter was
+written.
+
+Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was
+away from her, he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift
+scrawl at that, for, no matter how crowded and eventful the
+day, he wrote her the best letter that he could write. That
+was the only habit he had. He was a slave to it.
+
+Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence.
+They threw their arms about each other and rocked to and fro
+for a long time. And it hadn't been a long absence at that.
+No ocean had been between them; her heart had not been in her
+mouth with the thought that he was under fire, or about to
+become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away upon a
+little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried
+treasure. We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's
+skull and a broken arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent
+from his mother for nearly two hours and a half.
+
+I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail
+to give more than a few hints of what he was like. There
+isn't much more space at my command, and there were so many
+sides to him that to touch upon them all would fill a volume.
+There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as much a part
+of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all
+those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers; those
+trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
+quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and
+dexterous exposures of this and that, from an absolutely
+unexpected point of view. He was a quickener of the public
+conscience. That people are beginning to think tolerantly of
+preparedness, that a nation which at one time looked yellow
+as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue is
+owing in some measure to him.
+
+R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He
+thought that peace at the price which our country has been
+forced to pay for it was infinitely worse. And he was one of
+those who have gradually taught this country to see the
+matter in the same way.
+
+I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the
+surface of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel
+keenly but which was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to
+say of those deplorable "personal interviews" which appear in
+the newspapers, and in which the important person interviewed
+is made by the cub reporter to say things which he never
+said, or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a fifteen-
+dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week
+brain."
+
+There is, however, one question which I should attempt to
+answer. No two men are alike. In what one salient thing did
+R. H. D. differ from other men--differ in his personal
+character and in the character of his work? And that question
+I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be sure
+that I am right.
+
+An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the
+Recording Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic
+to which even his brilliancy, his clarity of style, his
+excellent mechanism as a writer are subordinate; and to
+which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his powers of
+affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are
+subordinate, too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.
+
+The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has
+gone out of the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground
+where "Nobody hunts us and there is nothing to hunt."
+  GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new
+million-dollar wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for
+Convalescents, on the hills above Greenwich, the New York
+REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story, and with him
+Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day in
+October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the
+great lawn in front of the Home you could see half over
+Connecticut and across the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+
+Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted.
+When, the night previous, he had been given the assignment he
+had sulked, and he was still sulking. Only a year before he
+had graduated into New York from a small up-state college and
+a small up-state newspaper, but already he was a "star" man,
+and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+
+"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor.
+"With the speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two
+columns."
+
+"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect
+type-written speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger
+boy's job. Where's there any heart-interest in a Wall Street
+broker like Flagg waving a silver trowel and singing, 'See
+what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men in pinafores
+saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
+story in that?"
+
+"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to
+be glad to get a day in the country."
+
+"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If
+you'd wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did,
+you'd know that every minute you spend outside of New York
+you're robbing yourself."
+
+"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New
+York except cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage
+cans. You never see the sun in New York; you never see the
+moon unless you stand in the middle of the street and bend
+backward. We never see flowers in New York except on the
+women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the
+elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and down
+elevator shafts in department stores, in apartment houses, in
+office buildings. And we never see children in New York
+because the janitors won't let the women who live in
+elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a
+Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!"
+
+"How curious!" said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the
+street and made you a city editor. I don't agree with
+anything you say. Especially are you wrong about the women.
+They ought to be caged in elevators, but they're not.
+Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the
+tops of buses; they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi,
+across restaurant tables under red candle shades, when you
+offer them a seat in the subway. They are the only thing in
+New York that gives me any trouble."
+
+The city editor sighed. "How young you are!" he exclaimed.
+"However, to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble.
+There will be few women at the celebration, and they will be
+interested only in convalescents--and you do not look like a
+convalescent."
+
+Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed
+females and overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened
+to Flagg telling his assembled friends and sycophants how
+glad he was they were there to see him give away a million
+dollars.
+
+"Aren't you going to get his speech?", asked Redding, the
+staff photographer.
+
+"Get HIS speech!" said Sam. "They have Pinkertons all over
+the grounds to see that you don't escape with less than three
+copies. I'm waiting to hear the ritual they always have, and
+then I'm going to sprint for the first train back to the
+centre of civilization."
+
+"There's going to be a fine lunch," said Redding, "and
+reporters are expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and
+he said we were."
+
+Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick
+under his armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very
+thoughtful of his clothes and always treated them with
+courtesy.
+
+"You can have my share," he said. "I cannot forget that I am
+fifty-five minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving
+I would rather have a club sandwich in New York than a
+Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New Rochelle."
+
+He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the
+iron gates; but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the
+instant trouble barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing
+the blue cambric uniform of a nursing sister, with a red
+cross on her arm, with a white collar turned down, white
+cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet. A bow of
+white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had
+hair like golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a
+complexion of such health and cleanliness and dewiness as
+blooms only on trained nurses.
+
+She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her
+as swiftly as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+
+Reporters become star reporters because they observe things
+that other people miss and because they do not let it appear
+that they have observed them. When the great man who is being
+interviewed blurts out that which is indiscreet but most
+important, the cub reporter says: "That's most interesting,
+sir. I'll make a note of that." And so warns the great man
+into silence. But the star reporter receives the indiscreet
+utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does not
+know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning
+under screaming headlines.
+
+Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which
+was the official title of the nursing sister, would have
+fallen backward, or swooned, or gazed at her with soulful,
+worshipping eyes; or, were they that sort of beast, would
+have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now Sam, because he
+was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him was
+the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one
+would have guessed that he observed that--least of all Sister
+Anne. He stood in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked
+into the eyes of blue as impersonally and as calmly as though
+she were his great-aunt--as though his heart was not beating
+so fast that it choked him.
+
+"I am from the REPUBLIC," he said. "Everybody is so busy here
+to-day that I'm not able to get what I need about the Home.
+It seems a pity," he added disappointedly, "because it's so
+well done that people ought to know about it." He frowned at
+the big hospital buildings. It was apparent that the
+ignorance of the public concerning their excellence greatly
+annoyed him.
+
+When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in
+alarm--obviously she was upon the point of instant flight.
+
+"You are a reporter?" she said.
+
+Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a
+reporter because they hope he will print their names in black
+letters; a few others--only reporters know how few--would as
+soon place themselves in the hands of a dentist.
+
+"A reporter from the REPUBLIC," repeated Sam.
+
+"But why ask ME?" demanded Sister Anne.
+
+Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and
+explanation he glanced at her uniform.
+
+"I thought you were at work here," he said simply. "I beg
+your pardon."
+
+He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving
+that impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+
+"There was no other reason," persisted Sister Anne. "I mean
+for speaking to me?"
+
+The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam
+wondered whether this could be the height of innocence or the
+most banal coquetry. The hostile look in the eyes of the lady
+proved it could not be coquetry.
+
+"I am sorry," said Sam. "I mistook you for one of the nurses
+here; and, as you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give
+me some statistics about the Home not really statistics, you
+know, but local color."
+
+Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own.
+Apparently she was weighing his statement. She seemed to
+disbelieve it. Inwardly he was asking himself what could be
+the dark secret in the past of this young woman that at the
+mere approach of a reporter--even of such a nice-looking 
+reporter as himself--she should shake and shudder. "If that's
+what you really want to know," said Sister Anne doubtfully,"
+I'll try and help you; but," she added, looking at him as one
+who issues an ultimatum, "you must not say anything about
+me!"
+
+Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-
+organizing class will always say that to a reporter at the
+time she gives him her card so that he can spell her name
+correctly; but Sam recognized that this young woman meant it.
+Besides, what was there that he could write about her? Much
+as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with:
+"The Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the
+most beautiful of all living women." No copy editor would let
+that get by him. So, as there was nothing to say that he
+would be allowed to say, he promised to say nothing. Sister
+Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled, not
+because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the
+promise amused her. Sam wondered why.
+
+Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the
+wards of the hospital. He found that it existed for and
+revolved entirely about one person. He found that a million
+dollars and some acres of buildings, containing sun-rooms and
+hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated by Spencer
+Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne--only to
+exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart,
+the unselfishness of her nature.
+
+"Do you really scrub the floors?" he demanded--"I mean you
+yourself--down on your knees, with a pail and water and
+scrubbing brush?"
+
+Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+
+"We do that when we first come here," she said--"when we are
+probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?"
+
+"And these awful patients," demanded Sam--"do you wait on
+them? Do you have to submit to their complaints and whinings
+and ingratitude?" He glared at the unhappy convalescents as
+though by that glance he would annihilate them. "It's not
+fair!" exclaimed Sam. "It's ridiculous. I'd like to choke
+them!"
+
+"That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents,"
+said Sister Anne.
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean," said Sam. "Here are
+you--if you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid,
+healthy young person, wearing out your young life over a lot
+of lame ducks, failures, and cripples."
+
+"Nor is that quite the way we look at," said Sister Anne.
+
+"We?" demanded Sam.
+
+Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+
+"I'm not the only nurse here," she said "There are over
+forty."
+
+"You are the only one here," said Sam, "who is not! That's
+Just what I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I
+understand the ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not
+talking about anybody else; I'm talking about you--you are
+too young! Somehow you are different; you are not meant to
+wear yourself out fighting disease and sickness, measuring
+beef broth and making beds."
+
+Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Sam stiffly.
+
+"No--pardon me," said Sister Anne; "but your ideas of the
+duties of a nurse are so quaint."
+
+"No matter what the duties are," declared Sam; "You should
+not be here!"
+
+Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming
+shoulders--as delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+
+"One must live," said Sister Anne.
+
+They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the
+last rows of rigid white cots, and had come out into the
+sunshine. Below them stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn
+colors. Sister Anne seated herself upon the marble railing of
+the terrace and looked down upon the flashing waters of the
+Sound.
+
+"Yes; that's it," she repeated softly--"one must live."
+
+Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech
+difficult, looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that
+it was one of those occasions, only too frequent with him,
+when his indignant sympathy was heightened by the fact that
+"the woman. was very fair." He conceded that. He was not
+going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced by the
+outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his
+feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her
+profession, the gentlest and most gracious of all
+professions. He was honestly disturbed that this young girl
+should devote her life to the service of selfish sick people.
+
+"If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be
+arranged; for there are other ways of earning a living."
+
+The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere--and
+again she smiled.
+
+"Now what would you suggest?" she asked. "You see," she said,
+"I have no one to advise me--no man of my own age. I have no
+brothers to go to. I have a father, but it was his idea that
+I should come here; and so I doubt if he would approve of my
+changing to any other work. Your own work must make you
+acquainted with many women who earn their own living. Maybe
+you could advise me?"
+
+Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how
+far his salary would go toward supporting a wife. He was
+trying to remember which of the men in the office were
+married, and whether they were those whose salaries were
+smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy editors, he
+knew, was very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was
+married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office
+to take her to the theatre, and often Sam had thought she was
+extremely well dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so
+beautiful that what she might wear would be a matter of
+indifference; but then women did not always look at it that
+way. Sam was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life
+position that his silence had become significant; and to
+cover his real thoughts he said hurriedly:
+
+"Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The
+hours are not difficult."
+
+"And manicuring?" suggested Sister Anne.
+
+Sam exclaimed in horror.
+
+"You!" he cried roughly. "For you! Quite impossible!"
+
+"Why for me?" said the girl.
+
+In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into
+the gravel walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a
+deep grave. He did not see that the girl was smiling at him
+mockingly.
+
+"You?" protested Sam. "You in a barber's shop washing men's
+fingers who are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I
+Good Lord!" His vehemence was quite honest. The girl ceased
+smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the gravel walk, his
+profile toward her--and, unobserved, she could study his
+face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost
+illegally good-looking. It explained why, as , he had
+complained to the city editor, his chief trouble in New York
+was with the women. With his eyes full of concern, Sam turned
+to her abruptly. "How much do they give you a month?" "Forty
+dollars," answered Sister Anne. "This is what hurts me about
+it," said Sam.
+
+It is that you should have to work and wait on other people
+when there are so many strong, hulking men who would count it
+God's blessing to work for you, to wait on you, and give
+their lives for you. However, probably you know that better
+than I do."
+
+"No; I don't know that," said Sister Anne.
+
+Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so,
+but this statement gave him a sense of great elation, a
+delightful thrill of relief. There was every reason why the
+girl should not confide in a complete stranger--even to
+deceive him was quite within her rights; but, though Sam
+appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+
+"I think you are working too hard," he said, smiling happily.
+"I think you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day
+off! Do they ever give you a day off?"
+
+"Next Saturday," said Sister Anne. "Why?"
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "if you won't think it too
+presumptuous, I was going to prescribe a day off for
+you--a day entirely away from iodoform and white enamelled
+cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and a lunch
+where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh--or
+cry, if you like that better--and then, maybe, some fresh air
+in the park in a taxi; and after that dinner and more
+theatre, and then I'll see you safe on the train for
+Greenwich. Before you answer," he added hurriedly, "I want to
+explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself and doing
+all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any
+of the other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you
+will. Only, honestly, I hope you won't!"
+
+The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She
+did not say so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam
+she was almost laughing with happiness.
+
+"I think that would be quite delightful," said Sister Anne,"
+--quite delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive;
+even if I don't bring another girl, which I certainly would
+not, it would cost a great deal of money. I think we might
+cut out the taxicab--and walk in the park and feed the
+squirrels."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Sam in disappointment,--"then you know
+Central Park?"
+
+Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+
+"I once lived near there," she said.
+
+"In Harlem?"
+
+"Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young," said
+Sister Anne. "Since then I have always lived in the country
+or in--other places."
+
+Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+
+"It's so kind of you to consent," he cried. "Indeed, you are
+the kindest person in all the world. I thought so when I saw
+you bending over these sick people, and, now I know."
+
+"It is you who are kind," protested Sister Anne, "to take
+pity on me."
+
+"Pity on you!" laughed Sam. "You can't pity a person who can
+do more with a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his
+millions. Now," he demanded in happy anticipation," where are
+we to meet?"
+
+"That's it," said Sister Anne. "Where are we to meet?"
+
+"Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin
+too soon," said Sam; "and before then telephone me what
+theatre and restaurants you want and I'll reserve seats and
+tables. Oh," exclaimed Sam joyfully, "it will be a wonderful
+day--a wonderful day!"
+
+Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a
+little wistfully. She held out her hand.
+
+"I must go back to my duties," she said. "Good-by."
+
+"Not good-by," said Sam heartily, "only until Saturday--and
+my name's Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the
+REPUBLIC. What's your name?"
+
+"Sister Anne," said the girl. "In the nursing order to which
+I belong we have no last names."
+
+"So," asked Sam, "I'll call you Sister Anne?"
+
+"No; just Sister," said the girl.
+
+"Sister!" repeated Sam, "Sister!" He breathed the word rather
+than spoke it; and the way he said it and the way he looked
+when he said it made it carry almost the touch of a caress.
+It was as if he had said "Sweetheart! or "Beloved!" "I'll not
+forget," said Sam.
+
+Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+
+"Nor I," she said.
+
+Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing
+feverishly at his cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He
+was living the day over again and, in anticipation, the day
+off, still to come. He rehearsed their next meeting at the
+station; he considered whether or not he would meet her with
+a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her when
+they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the
+latter way would be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned
+the luncheon. It was to be the most marvellous repast he
+could evolve; and, lest there should be the slightest error,
+he would have it prepared in advance--and it should cost half
+his week's salary.
+
+The place where they were to dine he would leave to her,
+because he had observed that women had strange ideas about
+clothes--some of them thinking that certain clothes must go
+with certain restaurants. Some of them seemed to believe
+that, instead of their conferring distinction upon the
+restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them.
+He was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might
+be that she must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she
+would prefer not to be conspicuous; so he decided that the
+choice of where they would dine he would leave to her. He
+calculated that the whole day ought to cost about eighty
+dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then
+earning each week. That was little enough to give for a day
+that would be the birthday of his life! No, he contradicted--
+the day he had first met her must always be the birthday of
+his life; for never had he met one like her and he was sure
+there never would be one like her. She was so entirely
+superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult--in her
+manner there was something that rendered her
+unapproachable. Even her simple nurse's gown was worn with a
+difference. She might have been a princess in fancy dress.
+And yet, how humble she had been when he begged her to let
+him for one day personally conduct her over the great city!
+"You are so kind to take pity on me," she had said. He
+thought of many clever, pretty speeches he might have made.
+He was so annoyed he had not thought of them at the time that
+he kicked violently at the seat in front of him.
+
+He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was
+full of beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly
+was outrageous that one so glorious must work for her living,
+and for such a paltry living--forty dollars a month! It was
+worth that merely to have her sit in the flat where one could
+look at her; for already he had decided that, when they were
+married, they would live in a flat--probably in one
+overlooking Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of
+several attractive suites there at thirty-five dollars a
+week--or, if she preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his
+beloved New York and return to the country. In his gratitude
+to her for being what she was, he conceded even that
+sacrifice.
+
+When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought
+front-row seats at five dollars for the two most popular
+plays in town. He put them away carefully in his waistcoat
+pocket. Possession of them made him feel that already he had
+obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+
+After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the
+hospital to the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a
+raccoon coat, made her way to a waiting motor car and said,
+"Home!" to the chauffeur. He drove her to the Flagg family
+vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors called the
+pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
+Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to
+mariners on the Sound.
+
+There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and
+they greeted her noisily.
+
+"I have had a most splendid adventure!" said Sister Anne.
+"There were six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross
+nurses, and we gave away programmes. Well, one of the New
+York reporters thought I was a real nurse and interviewed me
+about the Home. Of course I knew enough about it to keep it
+up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry for
+me; and. . . . "
+
+One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who
+prided himself on knowing who's who in New York. He had met
+Sam Ward at first nights and prize fights. He laughed
+scornfully.
+
+"Don't you believe it!" he interrupted. "That man who was
+talking to you was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man
+in New York; he was just leading you on. Do you suppose
+there's a reporter in America who wouldn't know you in the
+dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper."
+
+Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+
+"He did not know me!" she protested. "It quite upset him that
+I should be wasting my life measuring out medicines and
+making beds."
+
+There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+
+"I told him," continued Sister Anne, "that I got forty
+dollars a month, and he said I could make more as a
+typewriter; and I said I preferred to be a manicurist."
+
+"Oh, Anita!" protested the admiring chorus.
+
+"And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me
+to be a manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with
+him and let him show me New York. And he offered, as
+attractions, moving-picture shows and a drive on a Fifth
+Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the park.
+And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the
+nurses. We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand
+Central Station. He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'"
+
+"Oh, Anita!" shrieked the chorus.
+
+Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed
+the American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to
+try to marry Anita Flagg, was amused.
+
+"What an awfully jolly rag!" he cried. "And what are you
+going to do about it?"
+
+"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making
+me ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back
+at one of them! "And," she added, "that's all there is to
+that!"
+
+That night, however, when the house party was making toward
+bed, Sister Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord
+Deptford: "I want to hear you call me Sister."
+
+"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you,"
+he whispered, "what I'd like to call you!"
+
+"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say
+Sister once. Say it as though you meant it."
+
+"But I don't mean it," protested his lordship. "I've said
+already what I. . . ."
+
+"Never mind what you've said already," commanded Miss Flagg.
+"I've heard that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once."
+
+His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+
+"Sister!" he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+
+Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders
+shivered as though she were cold.
+
+"Not a bit like it, Deptford," she said. "Good-night."
+
+Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a
+horse she was to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed
+but standing by the open window looking out toward the great
+city to the south.
+
+When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that
+caused that young woman to shriek with amazement.
+
+"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven's name
+can make you cry?"
+
+It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it
+kindly. She turned upon the tactless intruder.
+
+"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were
+worth forty dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly
+believed you were poor and worked for your living, and still
+said your smile was worth more than all of old man Flagg's
+millions, not knowing they were YOUR millions. Suppose he
+didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care of you, to
+slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain.
+Suppose you met that man among this rotten lot, what would
+you do? What wouldn't you do?"
+
+"Why, Anita!" exclaimed Miss Page.
+
+"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what
+you'd do: You'd go down on your knees to that man and say:
+'Take me away! Take me away from them, and pity me, and be
+sorry for me, and love me--and love me--and love me!"
+
+"And why don't you?" cried Helen Page.
+
+"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita
+Flagg. "Because I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying.
+Haven't I the right to cry?"
+
+At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a
+moral coward, in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the
+copy editor, was editing Sam's story' of the laying of the
+corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar was tilted near his
+left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine ready to
+fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in mid-
+air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the
+blue pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell
+softly to the desk and the blue pencil remained inactive. As
+he read, the voice of Collins rose in muttered ejaculations;
+and, as he continued to read, these explosions grew louder
+and more amazed. At last he could endure no more and,
+swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
+office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"
+
+The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters,
+frowned in impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs
+from the top of a table, was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped
+in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his clever, clean-cut
+features the expression was far-away and beatific. He came
+back to earth.
+
+"What's what?" Sam demanded.
+
+At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing
+through the room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs.
+He swung toward Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy.
+The story already was late--and it was important.
+
+"What's wrong?" he demanded. Over the room there fell a
+sudden hush.
+
+"Read the opening paragraph," protested Collins. "It's like
+that for a column! It's all about a girl--about a Red Cross
+nurse. Not a word about Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches!
+No news! It's not a news story at all. It's an editorial, and
+an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know what it is. And,
+what's worse," wailed the copy editor defiantly and to the
+amazement of all, "it's so darned good that you can't touch
+it. You've got to let it go or kill it."
+
+The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper
+shade, were racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the
+first page back at Collins.
+
+"Is it all like that?"
+
+"There's a column like that!"
+
+"Run it just as it is," commanded the managing editor. " Use
+it for your introduction and get your story from the flimsy.
+And, in your head, cut out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red
+Cross Girl.' And play it up strong with pictures." He turned
+on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+
+"What's the idea, Ward?" he said. "This is a newspaper--not a
+magazine!"
+
+The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of
+the pencils had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled
+cynically upon the star reporter. Sam shoved his hands into
+his trousers pockets and also smiled, but unhappily.
+
+"I know it's not news, Sir," he said; but that's the way I
+saw the story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the
+governor and the governor's staff and the clergy burning
+incense to Flagg; and inside, this girl right on the job--
+taking care of the sick and wounded. It seemed to me that a
+million from a man that won't miss a million didn't stack up
+against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I
+wanted to say," continued Sam stoutly "was that the moving
+spirit of the hospital was not in the man who signed the
+checks, but in these women who do the work--the nurses, like
+the one I wrote about; the one you called 'The Red Cross
+Girl.'"
+
+Collins, strong through many years of faithful service,
+backed by the traditions of the profession, snorted
+scornfully.
+
+"But it's not news!"
+
+"It's not news," said Elliott doubtfully; "but it's the kind
+of story that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of
+story that drives men out of this business into the arms of
+what Kipling calls 'the illegitimate sister.'"
+
+It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his
+whole heart to a girl and to be patted on the back by his
+managing editor; and it was this combination, and not the
+drinks he dispensed to the staff in return for its
+congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved
+his business, he was proud of his business; but never before
+had it served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the
+woman he loved, and incidentally a million other people, how
+deeply he honored her; how clearly he appreciated her power
+for good. No one would know he meant Sister Anne, save two
+people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and for him that
+was as many as should know. In his story he had used real
+incidents of the day; he had described her as she passed
+through the wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic;
+he had told of the little acts of consideration that endeared
+her to the sick people.
+
+The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he
+had written; and between the lines she would read that the
+man who wrote them loved her. So he fell asleep, impatient
+for the morning. In the hotel at which he lived the REPUBLIC
+was always placed promptly outside his door; and, after many
+excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the front
+page was his story, "The Red Cross Girl." It had the place of
+honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the
+headlines of his own story was one of Redding's, photographs.
+It was the one he had taken of Sister Anne when first she had
+approached them, in her uniform of mercy, advancing across
+the lawn, walking straight into the focus of the, camera.
+There was no mistaking her for any other living woman; but
+beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type,
+was a strange and grotesque legend.
+
+"Daughter of Millionaire Flagg," it read, "in a New Role,
+Miss Anita Flagg as The Red Cross Girl."
+
+For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding
+the paper so that the picture was hidden, he walked to the
+open window. From below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous
+greeting--cable cars jangled, taxis hooted; and, on the
+sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of shop-girls
+stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and
+affronted him. A girl he knew had died, had passed out of his
+life forever--worse than that had never existed; and yet the
+city went or just as though that made no difference, or just
+as little difference as it would have made had Sister Anne
+really lived and really died.
+
+At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of
+the house party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and
+riding-habited, sat alone at the breakfast table, their tea
+before them; and in the hands of Anita Flagg was the DAILY
+REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the table and,
+with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press,
+had pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was
+not looking at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or
+showing in her immediate surroundings any interest
+whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were fastened with
+fascination upon the column under the heading "The Red Cross
+Girl"; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of
+recent slumber, her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on
+her lovely cheeks the color flowed and faded and glowed and
+bloomed. When she had read as far as a paragraph beginning,
+"When Sister Anne walked between them those who suffered
+raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces to the
+rain," she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+
+"Any man," cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page
+and the servants, "who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away!
+I'm not like that and I know it; but if he thinks so that's
+all I want. And maybe I might be like that--if any man would
+help."
+
+She gave her attention to the telephone and "Information."
+She demanded to be instantly put into communication with the
+DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr. Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen
+Page.
+
+"I'm tired of being called a good sport," she protested, "by
+men who aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of
+being talked to about money--as though I were a stock-broker.
+This man's got a head on his shoulders, and he's got the
+shoulders too; and he's got a darned good-looking head; and
+he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint; and he put me
+up on a pedestal and made me dizzy--and I like being made
+dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!"
+
+
+"Be still!" implored Helen Page. "Any one might think you
+meant it!" She nodded violently at the discreet backs of the
+men-servants.
+
+"Ye gods, Parker!" cried Anita Flagg. "Does it take three of
+you to pour a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody
+that you all three caught me in the act of proposing to an
+American gentleman over the telephone and that the betting is
+even that I'll make him marry me!"
+
+The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door.
+"And what's more," Anita hurled after them, "get your bets
+down quick, for after I meet him the odds will be a hundred
+to one!"
+
+Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been
+at the office and might have gone to the telephone, and
+things might have happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC
+was a morning paper, the only person in the office was the
+lady who scrubbed the floors and she refused to go near the
+telephone. So Anita Flagg said, "I'll call him up later," and
+went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for
+all the beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+
+To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On
+this particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown
+and they met opposite the cathedral.
+
+"You're the very man I want," said Hollworthy joyously--
+"you've got to decide a bet."
+
+He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+
+"It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you
+didn't know who she was yesterday, and I said that was
+ridiculous. Of course you knew. I bet her a theatre party."
+
+To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh
+wound had even been dressed, it should be torn open by
+impertinent fingers; but he had no right to take offense. How
+could the man, or any one else, know what Sister Anne had
+meant to him?
+
+"I'm afraid you lose," he said. He halted to give Holworthy
+the hint to leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+
+"You don't say so!" exclaimed that young man. "Fancy one of
+you chaps being taken in like that. "I thought you were
+taking her in--getting up a story for the Sunday supplement."
+
+Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was
+not yet to escape. "And, instead of your fooling her,"
+exclaimed Holworthy incredulously, "she was having fun, with
+you!"
+
+With difficulty Sam smiled.
+
+"So it would seem," he said.
+
+"She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!" exclaimed
+Holworthy admiringly. "I thought she was making it up--she
+must have made some of it up. She said you asked her to take
+a day off in New York. That isn't so is it?"
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"By Jove!" cried Holworthy--and that you invited her to see
+the moving-picture shows?"
+
+Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his
+pocket, smiled pleasantly.
+
+"Did she say I said that--or you?" he asked
+
+"She did."
+
+"Well, then, I must have said it."
+
+Holworthy roared with amusement.
+
+"And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at
+the Zoo?"
+
+Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+
+"Yes; I said that too."
+
+"And I thought she was making it up!" exclaimed Holworthy.
+"We did laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself."
+
+Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+
+"You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with
+Anita Flagg--just as if she were nobody!"
+
+"I don't think," said Sam, "that was my idea." He waved his
+stick at a passing taxi. "I'm late," he said. He abandoned
+Hollis on the sidewalk, chuckling and grinning with delight,
+and unconscious of the mischief he had made.
+
+An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an
+assignment, the telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit
+with excitement.
+
+"You're wanted on the 'phone," he commanded. His voice
+dropped to an awed whisper. "Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak
+to you!"
+
+The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he
+remembered that this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak
+to him, but a woman he had never met.
+
+"Say you can't find me," he directed. The boy gasped, fled,
+and returned precipitately.
+
+"The lady says she wants your telephone number--says she must
+have it."
+
+"Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the
+rules--and hang up."
+
+Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest
+confidence, had informed every member of the local staff that
+Anita Flagg--the rich, the beautiful, the daring, the
+original of the Red Cross story of that morning--had twice
+called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been thrown
+down--and thrown hard!
+
+That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and
+when Sam entered his office he found also there Walsh, the
+foreign editor, with whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+
+Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+
+"Ward," he began abruptly, "I'm sorry to lose you, but you've
+got to go. It's on account of that story of this morning."
+
+Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had
+served so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him
+also that, considering the spirit in which the story had been
+written, it was causing him more kinds of trouble than was
+quite fair. The loss of position did not disturb him. In the
+last month too many managing editors had tried to steal him
+from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious as to the future.
+So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say without
+resentment:
+
+"Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+
+"I did," returned Elliott; "I liked it so much that I'm
+sending you to a bigger place, where you can get bigger
+stories. We want you to act as our special correspondent in
+London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work; and if you'll go
+you'll sail next Wednesday."
+
+After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home
+on air. He could not believe it was real--that it was
+actually to him it had happened; for hereafter he was to
+witness the march of great events, to come in contact with
+men of international interests. Instead of reporting what was
+of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh Street, he
+would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and
+the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one
+drawback only to his happiness--there was no one with whom he
+might divide it. He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he
+wanted to share it with some one who would understand how
+much it meant to him, who would really care. Had Sister Anne
+lived, she would have understood; and he would have laid
+himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to
+accept them--begged her to run away with him to this
+tremendous and terrifying capital of the world, and start the
+new life together.
+
+Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her
+place. Certainly Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not
+because she was rich, not because she had jeered at him and
+made him a laughing-stock, not because his admiration--and he
+blushed when he remembered how openly, how ingenuously he had
+shown it to her--meant nothing; but because the girl he
+thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted
+to marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what
+he offered, ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg,
+was not ridiculous when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-
+worn, overworked nurse in a hospital. It was because Anita
+Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make up to him
+for the girl he had lost, even though she herself had
+inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
+
+Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as
+unlike and as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for
+two people to be. His Anita Flagg he had created out of the
+things he had read of her in impertinent Sunday supplements
+and from the impression he had been given of her by the
+little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that. Ever
+since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants
+and flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and
+by men who wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it
+was because she got the motives of the latter two confused
+that she was so often hurt and said sharp, bitter things that
+made her appear hard and heartless.
+
+As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he
+was addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got
+nearer to the real Anita Flagg than had any other man. And
+so--when on arriving at the office the next morning, which
+was a Friday, he received a telegram reading, "Arriving to-
+morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot begin too
+soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg "--he
+was able to reply: " Extremely sorry; but promise made to a
+different person, who unfortunately has since died!"'
+
+When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her
+lovely eyes tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded
+feelings. She turned miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
+
+"But why does he do it to me?" Her tone was that of the
+bewildered child who has struck her head against the table,
+and from the naughty table, without cause or provocation, has
+received the devil of a bump.
+
+Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita
+Flagg had changed into a very angry young woman.
+
+"And what's more," she announced, "he can't do it to me!"
+
+She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word,
+but this time it was signed, Sister Anne."
+
+In an hour the answer came: "Sister Anne is the person to
+whom I refer. She is dead."
+
+Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his
+adventure. It was not in his nature to be rude--certainly not
+to a woman, especially not to the most beautiful woman he had
+ever seen. For, whether her name was Anita or Anne, about her
+beauty there could be no argument; but he assured himself
+that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could see in
+a well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was
+of no interest to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon
+continuing their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them,
+they showed only that she looked upon him as one entirely out
+of her world--as one with whom she could do an unconventional
+thing and make a good story about it later, knowing that it
+would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+
+He was determined he would not lend himself to any such
+performance. And, besides, he no longer was a foot-loose,
+happy-go-lucky reporter. He no longer need seek for
+experiences and material to turn into copy. He was now a man
+with a responsible position--one who soon would be conferring
+with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in
+marriage by the nobility of England, would understand the
+importance of a London correspondent. He hoped someone would
+tell her. He liked to think of her as being considerably
+impressed and a little unhappy.
+
+Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had
+purchased tickets. And he went alone, for the place that
+Sister Anne was to have occupied could not be filled by any
+other person. It would have been sacrilege. At least, so it
+pleased him to pretend. And all through dinner, which he ate
+alone at the same restaurant to which he had intended taking
+her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And at the
+theatre, where there was going forward the most popular of
+all musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the
+audience, appeared wastefully empty, was to him filled with
+her gracious presence. That Sister Anne was not there--that
+the pretty romance he had woven about her had ended in
+disaster--filled, him with real regret. He was glad he was,,
+leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing
+would remind him of her. And then he glanced up--and looked
+straight into her eyes!
+
+He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The
+seat Sister Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his
+right, and a few seats farther to his right rose the stage
+box and in the stage box, and in the stage box, almost upon
+the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights full in her
+face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him. There
+were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping
+plumes upon enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord
+Deptford and Holworthy; but the only person he distinguished
+clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was all in black velvet,
+which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing suit; round
+her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a
+bell, with the curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its
+brim Anita Flagg, sitting rigidly erect with her white-gloved
+hands resting lightly on her knee, was gazing down at him,
+smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with excitement.
+
+When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he
+recognized her, she bowed so violently and bent her head so
+eagerly that above her the ostrich plumes dipped and
+courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam neither bowed nor
+courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over his left
+shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him
+but some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes
+returned to the stage and did not again look toward her. It
+was not the cut direct, but it was a cut that hurt; and in
+their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly sought the stage.
+At the moment, the people in the audience happened to be
+laughing; and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her
+profile exposed pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights;
+saw her lips tremble like those of a child about to cry; and
+then saw the forced, hard smile--and heard her laugh lightly
+and mechanically.
+
+"That's all she cares." he told himself.
+
+It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything
+she did, she kept robbing him still further of all that was
+dear to him in Sister Anne.
+
+For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg
+maintained upon her lovely face a fixed and intent
+expression, and then slowly and unobtrusively drew back to a
+seat in the rear of the box. In the' darkest recesses she
+found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage by a
+barrier of women's hats.
+
+"Your friend Mr. Ward," she began abruptly, in a whisper, "is
+the rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to
+him the" other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he
+has behaved abominably--like a boor--like a sulky child. Has
+he no sense of humor? Because I played a joke on him, is
+that any reason why he should hurt me?"
+
+"Hurt you?" exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. "Don't
+be ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why should you care how
+rude he is? Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself.
+He's conceited. He's too good-looking; and a lot of silly
+women have made such a fuss over him. So when one of them
+laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the trouble. I
+could see that when I was telling him."
+
+"Telling him!" repeated Miss Flagg--"Telling him what?"
+
+"About what a funny story you made of it," explained
+Holworthy. "About his having the nerve to ask you to feed the
+monkeys and to lunch with him."
+
+Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+
+"Oh!" she said softly. "So-so you told him that, did you?
+And--what else did you tell him?" ,
+
+"Only what you told us--that he said 'the day could not begin
+too soon'; that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and
+wash the hands of men who weren't fit to wash the streets you
+walked on."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Did I tell you he said that?" breathed Anita Flagg.
+
+"You know you did," said Holworthy.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"I must have been mad!" said the girl.
+
+There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+
+"I'm afraid you are angry," he ventured.
+
+"Angry!" exclaimed Miss Flagg. "I should say I was
+angry, but not with you. I'm very much pleased with you. At
+the end of the act I'm going to let you take me out into the
+lobby."
+
+With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at
+the stage and seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself
+because Anita Flagg had destroyed his ideal of a sweet and
+noble woman--and he was sorry for Miss Flagg because a man
+had been rude to her. That he happened to be that man did not
+make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and,
+indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks,
+that his friends on the stage considered sending him a note,
+offering, if he would take himself out of the front row, to
+give him back his money at the box office. Sam certainly
+wished to take himself away; but he did not want to admit
+that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that the
+presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his evening--could, in
+the slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely
+wretched, feeling that he was in a false position; that if he
+were it was his own fault; that he had acted like an ass and
+a brute. It was not a cheerful feeling.
+
+When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew
+before the second act there was an interminable wait; but he
+did not want to chance running into Holworthy in the lobby
+and he told himself it would be rude to abandon Sister Anne.
+But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary Sister Anne
+as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they
+laughed at him--whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining
+them at his expense; again making his advances appear
+ridiculous. He was so sure of it that he flushed
+indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+
+And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a
+beautiful figure, all in black velvet, towered above him,
+then crowded past him, and sank into the empty seat at his
+side. He was too startled to speak--and Miss Anita Flagg
+seemed to understand that and to wish to give him time; for,
+without regarding him in the least, and as though to
+establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began
+calmly and deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This
+accomplished, she bent toward him, her eyes looking straight
+into his, her smile reproaching him. In the familiar tone of
+an old and dear friend she said to him gently:
+
+"This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've
+wasted quite enough of it?"
+
+Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of
+laughter or of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and
+appeal--and something else that, in turn, begged of him to be
+gentle.
+
+For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her,
+miserably, remorsefully.
+
+"It's not Anita Flagg at all," he said. "It's Sister Anne
+come back to life again!" The girl shook her head.
+
+"No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you
+thought you met and I did say all the, things Holworthy told
+you I said; but that was before I understood--before I read
+what you wrote about Sister Anne--about the kind of me you
+thought you'd met. When I read that I knew what sort of a man
+you were. I knew you had been really kind and gentle, and I
+knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
+there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you
+called me Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to
+hear it again. I wanted you to say it."
+
+She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near
+that her shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above
+them her friends, scandalized and amused, were watching her
+with the greatest interest. Half of the people in the now
+half-empty house were watching them with the greatest
+interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a
+lucky youth in the front row, there was no question of which
+to choose.
+
+The young people in the front row did not know they were
+observed. They were alone--as much alone as though they were
+seated in a biplane, sweeping above the clouds.
+
+"Say it again," prompted Anita Flagg "Sister."
+
+"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say
+this," he whispered: "I'll say you're the most wonderful, the
+most beautiful, and the finest woman who has ever lived!"
+
+Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent,
+she stared at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but that sounds just as good."
+
+When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her
+back to her box, so that he could meet her friends and go on
+with them to supper; but when they reached the rear of the
+house she halted.
+
+"We can see this act," she said, "or--my car's in front of
+the theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two
+or three. Which would you prefer?"
+
+"Don't make me laugh!" said Sam.
+
+As they sat all together at supper with those of the box
+party, but paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita
+Flagg sighed contentedly.
+
+"There's only one thing," she said to Sam, "that is making me
+unhappy; and because it is such sad news I haven't told you.
+
+It is this: I am leaving America. I am going to spend the
+winter in London. I sail next Wednesday."
+
+"My business is to gather news," said Sam, but in all my life
+I never gathered such good news as that."
+
+"Good news!" exclaimed Anita.
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "I am leaving, America--am
+spending the winter in England. I am sailing on Wednesday.
+No; I also am unhappy; but that is not what makes me
+unhappy."
+
+"Tell me," begged Anita.
+
+"Some day," said Sam.
+
+The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at
+sea--as they leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island
+disappear.
+
+"This is my unhappiness," said Sam--and he pointed to a name
+on the passenger list. It was: "The Earl of Deptford, and
+valet." "And because he is on board!"
+
+Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+
+"He is not on board," she said. "He changed to another boat."
+
+Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be
+lifted from his soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.
+
+"Why did he change?" he begged.
+
+Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with
+amused despair.
+
+"Is that all that is worrying you?" she said.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+Of some college students it has been said that, in order to
+pass their examinations, they will deceive and cheat their
+kind professors. This may or may not be true. One only can
+shudder and pass hurriedly on. But whatever others may have
+done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior year came up
+for those final examinations which, should he pass them even
+by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He
+may have been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter
+did not cheat. It was the professors who cheated.
+
+At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are
+examined you can score a possible hundred. That means
+perfection, and in, the brief history of Stillwater, which
+is a very, new college, only one man has attained it. After
+graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for the
+insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house,
+where he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his
+career and, lest they also should attain perfection, were
+afraid to study anything else. Among these Peter was by far
+the most afraid.
+
+The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the
+subjects in which you have been examined your marks added
+together give you an average of ninety, you are passed "with
+honors"; if of seventy-five, you pass "with distinction"; if
+Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike the grocer's
+nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The
+whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he
+would be lucky, but the professors and instructors of
+Stillwater 'were determined that, no matter what young
+Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would see that he
+passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of
+awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved
+him so much, but because each loved his own vine-covered
+cottage, his salary, and his dignified title the more. And
+each knew that that one of the faculty who dared to flunk
+the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater, who
+supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on
+supporting Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same
+time hand in his official resignation.
+
+Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date
+college president. If he did not actually run after money he
+went where money was, and it was not his habit to be
+downright rude to those who possessed it. And if any three-
+thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through a too strict
+respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose
+to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory,
+swimming-pool, or gymnasium, he was the sort of college
+president, who would see to it that the college lost also the
+services of that too conscientious instructor.
+
+He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before
+the June examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the
+faculty, he would inquire with kindly interest as to the
+standing of young Hallowell.
+
+"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than
+in anger. "Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his
+dear father's pride, and his father's heart is set upon his
+son's obtaining his degree. Let us hope he will pull
+through." For four years every professor had been pulling
+Peter through, and the conscience of each had become
+calloused. They had only once more to shove him through and
+they would be free of him forever. And so, although they did
+not conspire together, each knew that of the firing squad
+that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle would hold
+the blank cartridge.
+
+The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry
+Gilman. Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern
+history at Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He
+also was the author of those well-known text-books, "The
+Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and Fall of the Turkish
+Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had been not
+unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the
+Roman Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some
+thirty years back, the doctor had preserved, and would
+produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to
+visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always possessed
+a contemporary and news interest.
+
+"Here is a review of the history," he would say--he always
+referred to it as "the" history--"that I came across in my
+TRANSCRIPT."
+
+In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a
+period that it was as though the clipping had been printed
+the previous after-noon.
+
+The members of his class who were examined on the "Rise and
+Fall," and who invariably came to grief over it, referred to
+it briefly as the Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the. . . .
+Fall." The" history began when Constantinople was Byzantium,
+skipped lightly over six centuries to Constantine, and in the
+last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds with the downfall
+of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since Suleiman,
+Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.
+When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the
+Turkish Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he
+add a sixth volume that would cover the last three centuries.
+
+"In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book," said the
+chancellor, "I think the Russian-Turkish War should be
+included."
+
+Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed
+at him in mild reproach. "The war in the Crimea!" he
+exclaimed. "Why, I was alive at the time. I know about it.
+That is not history."
+
+Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the
+seventeenth century knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus
+Hallowell, of the meat-packers' trust, was not an imposing
+figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus Hallowell was but an
+ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history certainly had
+been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that
+in which he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and
+conscientiously, with malice toward none and, with no thought
+of the morrow, marked" five."
+
+Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter
+fifty. In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give
+the boy less, but they refused to be slaves to the extent of
+crediting him with a single point higher than was necessary
+to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five completely knocked out
+the required average of fifty, and young Peter was "found"
+and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only
+son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's
+own private college--the son of the man who had built the
+Hallowell Memorial, the new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell
+Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and the Hallowell Athletic
+Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim hall of the
+Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own
+disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-glass window
+cast upon his nose was of no sicklier a green than was the
+nose itself. Not that Peter wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not
+that he desired laurels he had not won, but because the young
+man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to be. Father
+arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that
+followed made Stillwater history.
+
+"My son is not an ass!" is what Hallowell senior is said to
+have said to Doctor Black. "And if in four years you and your
+faculty cannot give him the rudiments of an education, I will
+send him to a college that can. And I'll send my money where
+I send Peter."
+
+In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the
+fault of the son and not of the college; he could have said
+that where three men had failed to graduate one hundred and
+eighty had not. But did he say that? Oh, no, he did not say
+that! He was not that sort of, a college president. Instead,
+he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a conspirator in a
+comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He
+lowered his voice.
+
+"There has been contemptible work here, "he whispered--"spite
+and a mean spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret
+investigation, and I find that this blow at your son and you,
+and at the good name of our college was struck by one man, a
+man with a grievance--Doctor Gilman. Doctor Gilman has
+repeatedly desired me to raise his salary." This did not
+happen to be true, but in such a crisis Dotor Black could not
+afford to be too particular.
+
+"I have seen no reason for raising his salary--and there you
+have the explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But
+he overshot his mark. In causing us temporary embarrassment
+he has brought about his own downfall. I have already asked
+for his resignation."
+
+Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on
+this particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his
+self-esteem humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe
+anything rather than that his son was an idiot.
+
+"I don't want the man discharged," he protested, "just
+because Peter is lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by
+personal considerations, if he sacrificed my Peter in order
+to get even . . . ."
+
+"That," exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, "is exactly
+what he did! Your generosity to the college is well known.
+You are recognized all over America as its patron. And he
+believed that when I refused him an increase in salary it was
+really you who refused it--and he struck at you through your
+son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That
+in itself shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an
+insult! No one, certainly not your brilliant son--look how
+brilliantly he managed the glee-club and foot-ball tour--is
+stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman went too
+far. And he has been justly punished!"
+
+What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the
+chancellor told him, and his opinion of the matter as
+expressed to Peter, differed materially.
+
+"They tell me," he concluded, "that in the fall they will
+give you another examination, and if you pass then, you will
+get your degree. No one will know you've got it. They'll slip
+it to you out of the side-door like a cold potato to a tramp.
+The only thing people will know is that when your classmates
+stood up and got their parchments--the thing they'd been
+working for four years, the only reason for their going to
+college at all--YOU were not among those present. That's your
+fault; but if you don't get your degree next fall that will
+be my fault. I've supported you through college and you've
+failed to deliver the goods. Now you deliver them next fall,
+or you can support yourself."
+
+"That will be all right," said Peter humbly; "I'll pass next
+fall."
+
+"I'm going to make sure of that," said Hallowell senior. "To-
+morrow you will take those history books that you did not
+open, especially Gilman's 'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you
+have not even purchased, and you will travel for the entire
+summer with a private tutor . . . ."
+
+Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-
+ball teams over half of the Middle States and daily bullied
+and browbeat them, protested with indignation. "WON'T travel
+with a private tutor!"
+
+"If I say so," returned Hallowell senior grimly, "you'll
+travel with a governess and a trained nurse, and wear a
+strait jacket. And you'll continue to wear it until you can
+recite the history of Turkey backward. And in order that you
+may know it backward--and forward you will spend this summer
+in Turkey--in Constantinople--until I send you permission to
+come home."
+
+"Constantinople!" yelled Peter. "In August! Are you serious?"
+
+" Do I look it?" asked Peter's father. He did.
+
+"In Constantinople," explained Mr. Hallowell senior, "there
+will be nothing to distract you from your studies, and in
+spite of yourself every minute you will be imbibing history
+and local color."
+
+"I'll be imbibing fever,", returned Peter, "and sunstroke and
+sudden death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you
+send me to the island where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker.
+You don't have to go to Turkey to study about Turkey."
+
+"You do!" said his father.
+
+Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week.
+All day he hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving
+them away to e members of his class, who came to tell him
+what a rotten shame it was, and to bid him good-by. They
+loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him were loyally
+enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments, and
+to that end they planned a mock trial of the Rise and Fall,"
+at which a packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They
+planned also to hang Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with
+a rope round its neck was even then awaiting mob violence. It
+was complete to the silver-white beard and the gold
+spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations. He did
+not know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he
+protested that the horse-play of his friends would make him
+appear a bad loser. "It would look, boys," he said, "as
+though I couldn't take my medicine. Looks like kicking
+against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman fought fair. He
+gave me just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight more
+of him than do of that bunch of boot-lickers that had the
+colossal nerve to pretend I scored fifty!"
+
+Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the
+campus, gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not
+see. Since that morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of
+history at Stillwater College. They were retrenching, the
+chancellor had told him curtly, cutting down unnecessary
+expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black was too
+intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was
+far too innocent of evil, far too detached from college
+politics to suspect. He would remain a professor emeritus on
+half pay, but he no longer would teach. The college he had
+served for thirty years-since it consisted of two brick
+buildings and a faculty of ten young men--no longer needed
+him. Even his ivy-covered cottage, in which his wife and he
+had lived for twenty years, in which their one child had
+died, would at the beginning of the next term be required of
+him. But the college would allow him those six months in
+which to "look round." So, just outside the circle of light
+from his student lamp, he sat in his study, and stared with
+unseeing eyes at the bust of Socrates. He was not considering
+ways and means. They must be faced later. He was considering
+how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What
+eviction from that house would mean to her no one but he
+understood. Since the day their little girl had died, nothing
+in the room that had been her playroom, bedroom, and nursery
+had been altered, nothing had been touched. To his wife,
+somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given child was
+still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living
+presence. When at night the professor and his wife sat at
+either end of the study table, reading by the same lamp, he
+would see her suddenly lift her head, alert and eager, as
+though from the nursery floor a step had sounded, as though
+from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her. And when
+they would be forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some
+students' boarding-house, though they could take with them
+their books, their furniture, their mutual love and
+comradeship, they must leave behind them the haunting
+presence of the child, the colored pictures she had cut from
+the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls,
+the rambler roses that with her own hands she had planted and
+that now climbed to her window and each summer peered into
+her empty room.
+
+Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the
+campus, paper lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the
+evening breeze. In front of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire
+shot to the top of the tallest elms, and gathered in a circle
+round it the glee club sang, and cheer succeeded cheer-cheers
+for the heroes of the cinder track, for the heroes of the
+diamond and the gridiron , cheers for the men who had flunked
+especially for one man who had flunked. But for that man who
+for thirty years in the class room had served the college
+there were no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one
+student who had best reason to remember him. But this
+recollection Peter had no rancor or bitterness and, still
+anxious lest he should be considered a bad loser, he wished
+Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the
+celebration was at its height and just before train was due
+to carry him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the
+Gilman cottage say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage
+He went so far only as half-way up the garden walk. In the
+window of the study which opened upon the veranda he saw
+through frame of honeysuckles the professor and wife standing
+beside the study table. They were clinging to each other, the
+woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin,
+delicate, well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man
+comforted her awkward unhappily, with hopeless, futile
+caresses.
+
+Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed
+steadily away. What disaster had befallen the old couple he
+could not imagine. The idea that he himself might in any way
+connected with their grief never entered mind. He was certain
+only that, whatever the trouble was, it was something so
+intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to
+offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden
+walk and, avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned
+to his rooms. An hour later the entire college escorted him
+to the railroad station, and with "He's a jolly good fellow"
+and "He's off to Philippopolis in the morn--ing" ringing in
+his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car and gazed
+at the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life. And
+he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not
+the students, dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at
+the steps of the smoking-car fighting to shake his hand, but
+the man and woman alone in the cottage stricken with sudden
+sorrow, standing like two children lost in the streets, who
+cling to each other for comfort and at the same moment
+whisper words of courage.
+
+Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering
+from remorse over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat,
+and from fleas. And it not been for the moving-picture man,
+and the poker and baccarat at the Cercle Oriental, he would
+have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In the mornings with
+the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly forgot;
+and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-
+picture man through the bazaars and along the water-front he
+stalked suspects for the camera.
+
+The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had
+been a newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in
+vaudeville and in a moving-picture company. Now on his own
+account he was preparing an illustrated lecture on the East,
+adapted to churches and Sunday-schools. Peter and he wrote it
+in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed it with
+lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the
+tutor, and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to
+sell the young Turks very old battleships. Every other
+foreigner had fled the city, and the entire diplomatic corps
+had removed itself to the summer capital at Therapia.
+
+There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the
+absence of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter
+to become his guest. Stimson was most anxious to be polite to
+Peter, for Hallowell senior was a power in the party then in
+office, and a word from him at Washington in favor of a
+rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was afraid
+his father would consider Therapia "out of bounds."
+
+
+"He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he
+thinks I'm not playing the game the Lord only knows where he
+might send me next-and he might cut off my allowance."
+
+In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most
+generous. This was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and
+princes played it at he Cercle, was no game for cripples or
+children. But, owing to his letter-of-credit and his illspent
+life, Peter was able to hold his own against men three times
+his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of his father.
+Only they disposed of their wealth differently. On many
+hot evening Peter saw as much of their money scattered over
+the green table as his father had spent over the Hallowell
+athletic field.
+
+In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile--in the
+morning trying to fill his brain with names of great men who
+had been a long time dead, and in his leisure hours with
+local color. To a youth of his active spirit it was a full
+life without joy or recompense. A Letter from Charley Hines,
+a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived after
+Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him
+from boredom and gave life a real interest. It was a letter
+full of gossip intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its
+purpose. It read: "Old man Gilman has got the sack. The
+chancellor offered him up as a sacrifice to your father, and
+because he was unwise enough to flunk you. He is to move out
+in September. I ran across them last week when I was looking
+for rooms for a Freshman cousin. They were reserving one in
+the same boarding-house. It's a shame, and I know you'll
+agree. They are a fine old couple, and I don't like to think
+of them herding with Freshmen in a shine boardinghouse. Black
+always was a swine."
+
+Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+
+"Just learned," he cabled his father, "Gilman dismissed
+because flunked me consider this outrageous please see he
+is reinstated."
+
+The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy
+Peter. It read: "Informed Gilman acted through spite have no
+authority as you know to interfere any act of black."
+
+Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his
+laziness had befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the
+injustice had been hourly increasing. Nor had his banishment
+to Constantinople strengthened his filial piety. On the
+contrary, it had rendered him independent and but little
+inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next
+cable was not conciliatory.
+
+"Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite
+makes me appear contemptible Black is a toady will do as
+you direct please reinstate."
+
+To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+
+"If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black
+incident is closed."
+
+"Is it?" said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his
+aid and explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous
+cablegram of his distinguished contemporary: "Perdicaris
+alive and Raisuli dead!"
+
+Peter's paraphrase of this ran: "Gilman returns to Stillwater
+or I will not try for degree."
+
+The reply was equally emphatic:
+
+"You earn your degree or you earn your own living."
+
+This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his
+ultimatum: "Choose to earn my own living am leaving
+Constantinople."
+
+Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by
+steamer via Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very
+much, would have accompanied him had he not preferred to
+return home more leisurely by way of Paris and London.
+
+"You'll get there long before I do," said Peter, "and as soon
+as you arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor
+Gilman some souvenir of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've
+no hard feelings. He wouldn't accept money, but he can't
+refuse a present. I want it to be something characteristic of
+the country, Like a prayer rug, or a scimitar, or an
+illuminated Koran, or "
+
+Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from
+his pocket a flat morocco case and opened it. "What's the
+matter with one of these?" he asked.
+
+In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and
+silver gilt. To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+
+"That's the Star of the Crescent," said Peter. "Where did you
+buy it?"
+
+"Buy it!" exclaimed Stetson. "You don't buy them. The Sultan
+bestows them."
+
+"I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one," said Peter.
+
+"I'll bet," returned Stetson, "I've got something in my
+pocket that says he did."
+
+He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines
+of curving Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but
+still skeptical.
+
+"What does that say when it says it in English?" he asked.
+
+"It says," translated Stetson, "that his Imperial Majesty,
+the Sultan, bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author,
+lecturer, the Star of the Order of the Crescent, of the fifth
+class, for services rendered to Turkey."
+
+Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+
+"Never try to fool the fakirs, my son," he protested. "I'm a
+fakir myself. What services did you ever . . . ."
+
+"Services rendered," continued Stetson undisturbed, "in
+spreading throughout the United States a greater knowledge of
+the customs, industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire.
+That," he explained, "refers to my--I should say our--
+moving-picture lecture. I thought it would look well if, when
+I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish decoration, so I went
+after this one."
+
+Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+
+"But did they believe you," he demanded, "when you told them
+you were an author and educator?"
+
+Stetson closed one eye and grinned. "They believed whatever I
+paid them to believe."
+
+"If you can get one of those, "cried Peter, Old man Gilman
+ought to get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the
+longest and dullest history of their flea-bitten empire that
+was ever written. And he's a real professor and a real
+author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the five volumes
+with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?"
+
+"Two hundred dollars in bribes," said Stetson briskly, "and
+two months of diplomacy."
+
+"I haven't got two months for diplomacy," said Peter, "so
+I'll have to increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the
+decoration for Gilman, and you work the papers at home. No
+one ever heard of the Order of the Crescent, but that only
+makes it the easier for us. They'll only know what we tell
+them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever
+bestowed by a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If
+you tell the people often enough that anything is the best
+they believe you. That's the way father sells his hams.
+You've been a press-agent. From now on you're going to be my
+press-agent--I mean Doctor Gilman's press-agent. I pay your
+salary, but your work is to advertise him and the Order of
+the Crescent. I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at
+Stillwater. He sends out college news to a syndicate and he's
+the local Associated Press man. He's sore at their
+discharging Gilman and he's my best friend, and he'll work
+the papers as far as you like. Your job is to make Stillwater
+College and Doctor Black and my father believe that when they
+lost Gilman they lost the man who made Stillwater famous. And
+before we get through boosting Gilman, we'll make my father's
+million-dollar gift laboratory look like an insult."
+
+In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle
+burned fiercely, memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of
+his strategies and tactics in advertising soared before him.
+
+"It's great!" he exclaimed. "I've got your idea and you've
+got me. And you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-
+agent for politicians, actors, society leaders, breakfast
+foods, and horse-shows--and I'm the best! I was in charge of
+the publicity bureau for Galloway when he ran for governor.
+He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when
+I took hold of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made
+people believe Mrs. Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at
+Newport, when all she ever saw of Newport was Bergers and the
+Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that made the American
+People believe Russian dancers can dance!"
+
+"It's plain to see you hate yourself," said 'Peter. "You must
+not get so despondent or you might commit suicide. How much
+money will you want?"
+
+"How much have you got?"
+
+"All kinds," said Peter. "Some in a letter-of-credit that my
+father earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash
+that I won at poker from the pashas. When that's gone I've
+got to go to work and earn my living. Meanwhile your salary
+is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman and the
+Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman Defense,
+Publicity, and Development Committee, and you will begin by
+introducing me to the man I am to bribe."
+
+"In this country you don't need any introduction to the man
+you want to bribe," exclaimed Stetson; "you just bribe him!"
+
+
+That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and
+Stetson made their first move in the game of winning for
+Professor Gilman the Order of the Crescent. Stetson presented
+Peter to a young effendi in a frock coat and fez. Stetson
+called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign office and
+appeared to be "a friend of a friend of a friend" of the
+assistant third secretary.
+
+The five volumes of the "Rise and Fall" were spread before
+him, and Peter demanded to know why so distinguished a
+scholar as Doctor Gilman had not received some recognition
+from the country he had so sympathetically described. Osman
+fingered the volumes doubtfully, and promised the matter
+should be brought at once to the attention of the grand
+vizier .
+
+After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just
+as little chance of getting within speaking distance of the
+grand vizier as of the ladies of his harem.
+
+"It's like Tammany," said Stetson; "there are sachems,
+district leaders, and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled
+to trade or give away a few of these decorations, just as
+each district leader gets his percentage of jobs in the
+streetcleaning department. This fellow will go to his patron,
+his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he
+will put it up to a palace favorite, and they will divide
+your money.
+
+"In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your
+brevet and a hundred others, without knowing what he is
+signing; then you cable me, and the Star of the Crescent will
+burst upon the United States in a way that will make Halley's
+comet look like a wax match."
+
+The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter
+was left alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the
+Crescent. On the contrary, he found that the Order of the
+Crescent was pursuing him. He had not appreciated that, from
+underlings and backstair politicians, an itinerant showman
+like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus would
+receive very different treatment.
+
+Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard
+and diamond rings called with Osman to apologize for the
+latter. Osman, the fat man explained--had been about to make
+a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he had asked the Order of
+the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class that had been
+given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as
+an honor for a savant as distinguished as the friend of his.
+Hallowell, the fourth class would hardly be high enough. The
+fees, the fat man added, would Also be higher; but, he
+pointed out, it was worth the difference, because the fourth
+class entitled the wearer to a salute from all sentries.
+
+"There are few sentries at Stillwater," said Peter; "but I
+want the best and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class."
+
+The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from
+Stimson of the embassy. The secretary was considerably
+annoyed.
+
+"My dear Hallowell," he protested, "why the devil didn't you
+tell me you wanted a decoration? Of course the State
+department expressly forbids us to ask for one for ourselves,
+or for any one else. But what's the Constitution between
+friends? I'll get it for you at once--but, on two conditions:
+that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it."
+
+Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that
+the diplomat demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one
+of the Gilman Defense Committee.
+
+"Doctor Gilman's history," he said, "must be presented to the
+Sultan. You must have the five volumes rebound in red and
+green, the colors of Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling
+as they can carry. I hope," he added, they are not soiled."
+
+"Not by me," Peter assured him.
+
+"I will take them myself," continued Stimson, "to Muley
+Pasha, the minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to
+present them to his Imperial Majesty. He will promise to do
+so, but he won't; but he knows I know he won't so that is all
+right. And in return he will present us with the Order of the
+Crescent of the third class."
+
+"Going up!" exclaimed Peter. "The third class. That will cost
+me my entire letter-of-credit."
+
+"Not at all," said Stimson. "I've saved you from the
+grafters. It will cost you only what you pay to have the
+books rebound. And the THIRD class is a real honor of which
+any one might be proud. You wear it round your neck, and at
+your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a thousand
+soldiers."
+
+"I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers," said Peter, " and
+wear it longer round my neck What's the matter with our
+getting the second class or the first class?"
+
+At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+
+"The first class," he explained patiently, "is the Great
+Grand Cross, and is given only to reigning sovereigns. The
+second is called the Grand Cross, and is bestowed only on
+crowned princes, prime ministers, and men of world-wide
+fame . . . . "
+
+"What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide
+fame?" said Peter. "He will be some day, when Stetson starts
+boosting."
+
+"Some day," retorted Stimson stiffly, " I may be an
+ambassador. When I am I hope to get the Grand Cross of the
+Crescent, but not now. I'm sorry you're not satisfied," he
+added aggrievedly. "No one can get you anything higher than
+the third class, and I may lose my official head asking for
+that."
+
+"Nothing is too good for old man Gilman," said Peter, "nor
+for you. You get the third class for him, and I'll have
+father make you an ambassador."
+
+That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince
+Abdul, who had come from a reception at the Grand vizier 's
+and still wore his decorations. Decorations now fascinated
+Peter, and those on the coat of the young prince he regarded
+with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul with wide-eyed
+awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan, and
+because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst
+reputation in Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found
+Abdul charming, distinguished, courteous to the verge of
+humility, most cleverly cynical, most brilliantly amusing. At
+poker he almost invariably won, and while doing so was so
+politely bored, so indifferent to his cards and the cards
+held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his
+equal.
+
+In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a
+fresh pack, Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that
+nestled behind the lapel of Abdul's coat.
+
+"May I ask what that is?" said Peter.
+
+The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it
+annoyed him, and then smiled delightedly.
+
+"It is an order," he said in a quick aside, "bestowed only
+upon men of world-wide fame. I dined to-night," he explained,
+"with your charming compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson."
+
+"And Joe told?" said Peter.
+
+The prince nodded. "Joe told," he repeated; "but it is all
+arranged. Your distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater,
+will receive the Crescent of the third class."
+
+Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond
+sunburst.
+
+"Why," he demanded, "can't some one get him one like that?"
+
+As though about to take offense the prince raised his
+eyebrows, and then thought better of it and smiled.
+
+"There are only two men in all Turkey," he said, "who could
+do that."
+
+"And is the Sultan the other one?" asked Peter. The prince
+gasped as though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold
+shower, and then laughed long and silently.
+
+"You flatter me," he murmured.
+
+"You know you could if you liked!" whispered Peter stoutly.
+
+Apparently Abdul did not hear him. "I will take one card," he
+said.
+
+Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand
+francs in the pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had
+dropped out. "Will you divide?" asked the prince.
+
+"Why should I?" said Peter. "I've got you beat now. Do you
+raise me or call?" The prince called and laid down a full
+house. Peter showed four tens.
+
+"I will deal you one hand, double or quits," said the prince.
+
+Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+
+"You will pay me double what is on the table," he said, "or
+you quit owing me nothing."
+
+The prince nodded.
+
+"Go ahead," said Peter.
+
+The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards.
+Peter held a seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours.
+Hoping to draw another king, which might give him a three
+higher than the three held by Abdul, he threw away the seven
+and the lower pair. He caught another king. The prince showed
+three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his
+mouth.
+
+"I'll make you a sporting proposition," he murmured. "You owe
+me a hundred and fifty thousand francs. "I'll stake that
+against what only two men in the empire can give me."
+
+The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle
+of the table. But the puzzled glances of the other players
+showed that to them Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+
+The prince smiled cynically.
+
+"For yourself?" he demanded.
+
+"For Doctor Gilman," said Peter.
+
+"We will cut for deal and one hand will decide," said the
+prince. His voice dropped to a whisper. "And no one must ever
+know," he warned.
+
+Peter also could be cynical.
+
+"Not even the Sultan," he said.
+
+Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the
+hand he dealt Peter was the better one.
+
+The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE
+OFFICIALLY announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor
+emeritus of the University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the
+Sultan had been graciously pleased to confer the Grand Cross
+of the Order of the Crescent.
+
+Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him
+at Quarantine. It read: "Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get
+busy."
+
+But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity
+had been brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince
+Abdul, although pitchforked into the Gilman Defense
+Committee, proved himself one of its most enthusiastic
+members.
+
+"For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE," he declared.
+"If it is worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day
+the Sultan will command that the "Rise and Fall" be
+translated into Arabic, and that it be placed in the national
+library. Moreover, the University of Constantinople, the
+College of Salonica, and the National Historical Society have
+each elected Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed
+him, the Patriarch of Mesopotamia seconded him. And the
+Turkish ambassador in America has been instructed to present
+the insignia with his own hands."
+
+Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his
+press-work, and to further the idea that all Europe was now
+clamoring for the "Rise and fall," Peter paid an impecunious
+but over-educated dragoman to translate it into five
+languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed
+out that not since General Grant had passed through Europe
+had the Sultan so highly honored an American. He added he had
+been requested by the grand vizier --who had been requested
+by Prince Abdul--to request the State Department to inform
+Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from such a
+source was a command and, as desired, the State Department
+wrote as requested by the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and
+tendered congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from
+Washington by Associated Press. This official recognition by
+the Government and by the newspapers was all and more than
+Stetson wanted. He took off his coat and with a megaphone,
+rather than a pen, told the people of the United States who
+Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross
+was, and why America's greatest historian was not without
+honor save in his own country. Columns of this were paid for
+and appeared as "patent insides," with a portrait of Doctor
+Gilman taken from the STILLWATER COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a
+picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination, in eight
+hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western, and Eastern
+States. special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures
+of the Grand Cross followed, and, using Stillwater as his
+base, Stetson continued to flood the country. Young Hines,
+the local correspondent, acting under instructions by cable
+from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a traveller
+who lectured on Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer of
+the author of the "Rise and fall." Stetson, having studied it
+as a student crams an examination, begged that he might sit
+at the feet of the master. And for several evenings, actually
+at his feet, on the steps of the ivy-covered cottage,
+the disguised press-agent drew from the unworldly and
+unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life. To this,
+still in his character as disciple and student, he added
+photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's
+ivy-covered cottage, of his favorite walk across the campus,
+of the great historian at work at his desk, at work in his
+rose garden, at play with his wife on the croquet lawn. These
+he held until the insignia should be actually presented. This
+pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much to
+his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to
+Stillwater, Massachusetts, a place of which he had never
+heard, and present to a Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never
+heard, the Grand Cross of the Crescent. As soon as the
+insignia arrived in the official mail-bag a secretary brought
+it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador travelled
+down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary
+took the local train to Stillwater.
+
+The reception extended to him there is still remembered by
+the ambassador as one of the happiest incidents of his
+distinguished career. Never since he came to represent his
+imperial Majesty in the Western republic had its barbarians
+greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly approaching his
+own idea of what was his due.
+
+"This ambassador," Hines had explained to the mayor of
+Stillwater, who was also the proprietor of its largest
+department store, "is the personal representative of the
+Sultan. So we've got to treat him right."
+
+"It's exactly," added Stetson, "as though the Sultan himself
+were coming."
+
+"And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater," continued Hines,
+"that we ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as
+he comes to pay the highest honor known to Europe to one of
+our townsmen."
+
+The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+
+"What'd I better do?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Stetson here," Hines pointed out, "has lived in Turkey,
+and he knows what they expect. Maybe he will help us."
+
+"Will you?" begged the mayor.
+
+"I will," said Stetson.
+
+Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black
+and most of the faculty were on their vacations. But there
+were half a dozen professors still in their homes around the
+campus, and it was pointed out to them that the coming honor
+to one lately of their number reflected glory upon the
+college and upon them, and that they should take official
+action.
+
+It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they
+should wear their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these
+suggestions, with alacrity--partly because they all loved
+Doctor Gilman and partly because they had never been
+photographed by a moving-picture machine--they all agreed. So
+it came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and
+dusty stepped off the way-train at Stillwater station he
+found to his delighted amazement a red carpet stretching to a
+perfectly new automobile, a company of the local militia
+presenting arms, a committee, consisting of the mayor in a
+high hat and white gloves and three professors in gowns and
+colored hoods, and the Stillwater silver Cornet Band playing
+what, after several repetitions, the ambassador was
+graciously pleased to recognize as his national anthem.
+
+The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot
+that he was dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and
+perspiration. Here at last were people who appreciated him
+and his high office. And as the mayor helped him into the
+automobile, and those students who lived in Stillwater
+welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture
+machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with
+condescension. But inwardly he was ill at ease.
+
+inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his
+ignorance of America, failed to appreciate the importance of
+the man he had come to honor. When he remembered he had never
+even heard of Doctor Gilman he blushed with confusion. And
+when he recollected that he had been almost on the point of
+refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What
+might not the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+
+Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen
+in khaki, by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez,
+by a tremendous liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the
+entire town of Stillwater gathered outside his cottage. And
+inside, the old professor, trembling and bewildered and yet
+strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the ambassador
+slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only
+frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful
+embarrassment Doctor Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and
+then, as the delighted mayor of Stillwater shouted, "Speech,"
+in sudden panic he reached out his hand quickly and covertly,
+and found the hand of his wife.
+
+"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader. "Now,
+then, 'See the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the bandmaster.
+"Attention! Present arms!" yelled the militia captain; and
+the townspeople and the professors applauded and waved their
+hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and his wife, he
+frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of
+honeysuckles and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the
+ambassador so far unbent as to drink champagne, which
+appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the rear of the
+ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed,
+so often did he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile
+conveyed him back to the Touraine, he was sleeping happily
+and smiling in his sleep.
+
+Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the
+insignia, but Hines and Stetson would not let him show
+himself in Stillwater. They were afraid if all three
+conspirators foregathered they might inadvertently drop some
+clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+
+So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was
+anonymously to supply his father and Chancellor Black with
+All the newspaper accounts of the great celebration at
+Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he choked. Never
+before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently
+before the public, and never before had her president been so
+utterly and completely ignored. And what made it worse was
+that he recognized that even had he been present he could not
+have shown his face. How could he, who had, as every one
+connected with the college now knew, out of spite and without
+cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join in
+chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell
+senior, might not hear of Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell
+senior heard little of anything else. At his office, at his
+clubs, on the golf-links, every one he met congratulated him
+on the high and peculiar distinction that had come to his pet
+college.
+
+"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right
+horse," exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. "Now if I
+pay a hundred thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a
+bad copy worth thirty dollars, but you pay a professor three
+thousand and he brings you in half a million dollars' worth
+of free advertising. Why, this Doctor Gilman's doing as much
+for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns Hopkins or as
+Walter Camp does for Yale."
+
+Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as
+he was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each
+day his rage increased. It seemed as though there would never
+be an end to Doctor Gilman. The stone he had rejected had
+become the corner-stone of Stillwater. Whenever he opened a
+newspaper he felt like exclaiming: "Will no one rid me of
+this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall," in an
+edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being
+bought up by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a
+popular edition was on view in the windows of every book-
+shop; It was offered as a prize to subscribers to all the
+more sedate magazines, and the name and features of the
+distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a
+day passed but that some new honor, at least so the
+newspapers stated, was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced
+that he was to be the next exchange professor to Berlin; that
+in May he was to lecture at the Sorbonne; that in June he was
+to receive a degree from Oxford.
+
+A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the
+front by offering him the chair of history at that seat of
+learning at a salary of five thousand dollars a year. Some of
+the honors that had been thrust upon Doctor Gilman existed
+only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson, but this offer
+happened to be genuine.
+
+"Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the
+letter from the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+
+"We could not be happy away from Stillwater," he said. " We
+have only a month more in the cottage, but after that we
+still can walk past it; we can look into the garden and see
+the flowers she planted. We can visit the place where she
+lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and miserable
+for her, and she would be lonely for us."
+
+Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to
+leave Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern
+college at which Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to
+make him its president, his jealousy knew no bounds.
+
+He telegraphed to Black: "Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him
+six thousand--offer him whatever he wants, but make him
+promise for no consideration to leave Stillwater he is only
+member faculty ever brought any credit to the college if we
+lose him I'll hold you responsible."
+
+The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the
+Chancellor called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble
+pie that for a week he suffered acute mental indigestion. But
+little did Hallowell senior care for that. He had got what he
+wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished, was back in the
+faculty, and had made only one condition--that he might live
+until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+
+Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the
+history examination, which, should he pass it, would give him
+his degree, he found on every side evidences of the
+"worldwide fame" he himself had created. The newsstand at the
+depot, the book-stores, the drugstores, the picture-shops,
+all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing the ivy-
+covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor
+Gilman, advertisements of the different. editions of "the"
+history proclaimed his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success
+of his own handiwork, approached the ivy-covered cottage in a
+spirit almost of awe. But Mrs. Gilman welcomed him with the
+same kindly, sympathetic smile with which she always gave
+courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations, and
+Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle
+courtesy.
+
+The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in
+his papers Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once
+to know the result.
+
+"I should indeed!" Peter assured him.
+
+"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor,
+"that you have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark
+higher than five." In real sympathy the sage of Stillwater
+raised his eyes, but to his great astonishment he found that
+Peter, so far from being cast down or taking offense, was
+smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+the precocious act of a beloved child.
+
+"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer
+you did not work very hard for your degree!"
+
+Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I
+got working for something worth while--and I forgot about the
+degree."
+
+
+
+Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in
+1911 by the Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from
+Baron von Gottlieb, at the time military attach� of the
+German Government with the Russian army in the second
+Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
+Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me
+of his part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment
+of Tokio, on the ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching
+the walls of the paper houses below us glowing and smoking
+like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+
+Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb
+had been Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff
+Hotel at Cromer, and a spy.
+
+The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford,
+the London correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave
+me permission to tell it in any fashion I pleased, and it is
+here set down for the first time.
+
+In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least
+disturbed, for I have yet to find any one who will believe
+it.
+
+What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end
+guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of
+the Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it;
+and the fact that Ford attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had
+neither of these events taken place, the German flag might
+now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, it
+might not.
+
+As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel
+written by a very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a
+plan for the invasion of his country. According to this plan
+an army of infantry was to be embarked in lighters, towed by
+shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and despatched simultaneously
+from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles. From there
+they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred and
+forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast
+of Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact
+that this coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which
+at low water are dry, that England maintains no North Sea
+squadron, and that her nearest naval base is at Chatham, seem
+to point to it as the spot best adapted for such a raid.
+
+What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as
+soon as he read the book he mailed it to the German
+Ambassador in London, and under separate cover sent him a
+letter. In this he said: "I suggest your Excellency bring
+this book to the notice of a certain royal personage, and of
+the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want
+arms, take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow
+when you want ideas?"
+
+What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of
+history. This was in 1910. A year later, during the
+coronation week, Lester Ford went to Clarkson's to rent a
+monk's robe in which to appear at the Shakespeare Ball, and
+while the assistant departed in search of the robe, Ford was
+left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors and
+shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for
+Covent Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting,
+Ford gratified a long, secretly cherished desire to behold
+himself as a military man, by trying on all the uniforms on
+the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant
+returned, instead of finding a young American in English
+clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer
+in a spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the
+mirror. The assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford,
+conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to turn the
+tables by saying, " Does a German uniform always affect a
+Territorial like that?"
+
+The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"It did give me quite a turn," he said. "It's this talk of
+invasion, I fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast
+Guard, and you came along the beach dressed like that, I'd
+take a shot at you, just on the chance, anyway."
+
+"And, quite right, too!" said Ford.
+
+He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would
+stick at his post in London and dutifully forward the news to
+his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch
+the news in the making. So the words of Mr. Clarkson's
+assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major
+Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
+terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew,
+young Herbert, who was only five years younger than his
+uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in
+their third term at the university. After five years' service
+in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights" week at Oxford,
+and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
+undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious,
+given to study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he
+read Galsworthy; instead of "wines" he found pleasure in
+debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging,
+practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes, that once were wont to set
+England in a roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests
+combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms they declared
+unjust and without intelligence.
+
+"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil
+here, for example. I've roomed with him three years and I can
+testify that he has never opened a book. He never heard of
+Galsworthy until you spoke of him. And you can see for
+yourself his table manners are quite as bad as yours!"
+
+"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.
+
+"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as
+ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five
+hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never
+guessed they were listening to a man from Balliol?"
+
+"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What
+price that? When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and
+gave him seventeen guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried
+through by Oxford men. The country hasn't stopped laughing
+yet. You give us a rag!" challenged Herbert. " Make it as
+hard as you like; something risky, something that will make
+the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
+and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man
+or a dozen. Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty
+volunteers right here in town and all of them
+undergraduates."
+
+"Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time.
+"That's just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You
+lack initiative. It's the idea that counts. Anybody can do
+the acting. That's just amateur theatricals!"
+
+"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage
+fright is, just go on board a British battle-ship with your
+face covered with burnt cork and insist on being treated like
+an ambassador. You'll find it's a little different from a
+first night with the Simla Thespians!"
+
+Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking
+comfortably and with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging
+each disputant. But now he suddenly laid his cigar upon his
+plate, and, after glancing quickly about him, leaned eagerly
+forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace, and,
+as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
+departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below
+them, outside the open windows, were the trees of the
+embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the west by
+the great shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by
+the flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was still
+sitting.
+
+"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that
+is risky, that will make the country sit up, that ought to
+land you in Jail? Have you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"
+
+Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+
+" Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never
+reads anything! Go on!"
+
+"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what
+else is most talked about?" He answered his own question.
+"The landing of the Germans in Morocco and the chance of war.
+Now, I ask you, with that book in everybody's mind, and the
+war scare in everybody's mind, what would happen if German
+soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just where
+the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens
+of soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?"
+
+"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy
+Scouts would fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!"
+
+"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by
+the arm. "How?" he demanded breathlessly. "How are we to do
+it? It would take hundreds of men."
+
+"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car.
+I thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a
+lot of German uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story,
+as a trick to find out how prepared you people are to meet
+invasion. And when you said just now that you wanted a chance
+to go to jail --"
+
+"What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.
+
+"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.
+
+"We?" demanded Herbert. "Are you in this?"
+
+"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private
+invasion! I'm letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I
+don't go, there won t be any invasion!"
+
+The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly
+and then nodded.
+
+"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What's
+your plan?"
+
+In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other
+and then slapped the table with his open palm. His voice
+shook with righteous indignation.
+
+"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he
+demanded. "Do you suppose for one minute I will allow--"
+
+His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back
+his chair.
+
+"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on,
+Ford," he said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear
+us."
+
+Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the
+twenty-one miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven
+times. Each time this misfortune befell them one young man
+scattered tools in the road and on his knees hammered
+ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two occupants
+of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
+at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time
+the route by which they returned was different from the one
+by which they had set forth. Sometimes they followed the
+beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across
+the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of the cliff;
+sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car
+the procedure of each was alike--each produced a pencil and
+on the face of his "Half Inch" road map traced strange,
+fantastic signs.
+
+At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer
+and made numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf
+links. They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day
+of sea-bathing and golf; they were returning after dinner.
+The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them the
+information they desired. He was an intelligent head-waiter,
+young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing. In
+a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something
+even more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-
+master, a leader of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz
+hotel. But he was not above his station. He even assisted the
+porter in carrying the coats and golf bags of the gentlemen
+from the car to the coffee-room where, with the intuition of
+the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
+their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats,
+a road map fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor.
+Carl Schultz picked it up, and was about to replace it, when
+his eyes were held by notes scrawled roughly in pencil. With
+an expression that no longer was that of a head-waiter, Carl
+cast one swift glance about him and then slipped into the
+empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
+a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with
+anxiety, Carl presented the map to the tallest of the three
+strangers. It was open so that the pencil marks were most
+obvious. By his accent it was evident the tallest of the
+three strangers was an American.
+
+"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been
+playing hob with my map?"
+
+For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him
+with disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose
+and, with a glance, he signified the waiter.
+
+"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club
+asked us to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean
+that's where you can buy petrol."
+
+The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy
+countenance, he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that
+day, looked from the windows of the dining-room out over the
+tumbling breakers to the gray stretch of sea. As though
+fearful that his face would expose his secret, he glanced
+carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
+eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+
+In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining
+against long lines of scows, against the dead weight of
+field-guns, against the pull of thousands of motionless,
+silent figures, each in khaki, each in a black leather
+helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+
+In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+
+"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten to-night all will
+be dark. There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The
+very heavens fight for us, and by sunrise our outposts will
+be twenty miles inland!"
+
+At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited
+upon the three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup,
+thick or clear, of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He
+accepted their shillings gratefully, and when they departed
+for the links he bowed them on their way. And as their car
+turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he again allowed his
+eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed fishing-boats
+were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
+Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke.
+Save for these the sea was empty.
+
+By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an
+afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle
+and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the
+local constable, to the postman on his rounds, to the driver
+of the char � banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was well
+known and well liked.
+
+Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in
+Overstrand, the chimneys of a house showed above a thick
+tangle of fir-trees. Between the trees and the road rose a
+wall, high, compact, forbidding. Carl opened the gate in the
+wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding path hemmed in by
+bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the bushes new
+apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
+But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became
+rigid, his heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to
+his visor.
+
+Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a
+tiny lawn. In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a
+tennis court, there now stood a slim mast. From this mast
+dangled tiny wires that ran to a kitchen table. On the table,
+its brass work shining in the sun, was a new and perfectly
+good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on the
+key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his
+turn, Carl drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his
+hand stuck to his visor.
+
+"I have been in constant communication," said the man with
+the beard. "They will be here just before the dawn. Return to
+Cromer vand openly from the post-office telegraph your cousin
+in London: 'Will meet you to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.'
+On receipt of that, in the last edition of all of this
+afternoon's papers, he will insert the final advertisement.
+Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
+know the moment has come!"
+
+As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty
+gardens where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at
+tennis or, with pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking
+tea. Carl smiled grimly. High above him on the sky-line of
+the cliff he saw the three strangers he had served at
+luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
+balls.
+
+"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at
+their posts. They are fiddling while England falls!"
+
+Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the
+marsh, and was about to close the cow-barn door, when three
+soldiers appeared suddenly around the wall of the village
+church. They ran directly toward him. It was nine o'clock,
+but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore were
+unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many
+uniforms, and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest
+soldier snapped at Mr. Shutliffe fiercely in a strange
+tongue.
+
+"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo
+sind unsere Leute?" he demanded.
+
+"You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I
+am a trifle 'ard of 'earing."
+
+The soldier addressed him in English.
+
+"What is the name of this village?" he demanded.
+
+Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty
+years, recalled its name with difficulty.
+
+"Have you seen any of our people?"
+
+With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his
+head.
+
+"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights,
+and remain indoors. We have taken this village. We are
+Germans. You are a prisoner! Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe.
+"May I lock in the pigs first, sir?"
+
+One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and
+the two others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr.
+Shutliffe was still standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly
+concerned as to whether he should lock up the pigs or obey
+the German gentleman.
+
+The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+
+"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had
+to pick out the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take
+it like that, we had better pack up and go home."
+
+"The village inn is still open," said Ford. "We'll close It."
+
+They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of
+their rifles on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked
+over his ale and two fishermen removed their clay pipes and
+stared. The bar-maid alone arose to the occasion.
+
+"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come
+tumbling into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden
+tricks in here, young fellow, my lad, or --"
+
+The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
+interrupted her sharply.
+
+"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You
+are prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and
+yourselves lock in. If you into the street go, we will
+shoot!"
+
+He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed,
+that the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his
+meaning, and one shouldered his rifle, while the other
+brought his politely to a salute.
+
+"You ass!" muttered the tall German. " Get out!"
+
+As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a
+wild feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then
+silence, and an instant later the Ship Inn was buried in
+darkness.
+
+"That will hold Stiffkey for a while!" said Ford. "Now, back
+to the car."
+
+But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and
+impressive figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the
+deserted cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
+
+"The constable!" whispered Herbert. "He must see us, but he
+mustn't speak to us."
+
+For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of
+the street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman
+they had taken alarm, disappeared through an opening between
+two houses. Five minutes later a motor-car, with its canvas
+top concealing its occupants, rode slowly into Stiffkey's
+main street and halted before the constable. The driver of
+the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck
+to his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
+
+"Mr. Policeman," he began; " when I turned in here three
+soldiers stepped in front of my car and pointed rifles at me.
+Then they ran off toward the beach. What's the idea--
+manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--"
+
+"Yes, sir," the policeman assured him promptly; "I saw them.
+It's manoeuvres, sir. Territorials."
+
+"They didn't look like Territorials," objected the chauffeur.
+"They looked like Germans."
+
+Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort
+to conceal a grin.
+
+"Just Territorials, sir," he protested soothingly;
+"skylarking maybe, but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a
+look round, and warn 'em."
+
+A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+
+"I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or
+it's serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty to
+warn the Coast Guard."
+
+The constable considered deeply.
+
+"I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard," he
+protested; "not at this time of the night. But if any
+Germans' been annoying you, gentlemen, and you wish to lodge
+a complaint against them, you give me your cards--"
+
+"Ye gods!" cried the man in the rear of the car. "Go on!" he
+commanded.
+
+As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with
+disgust:
+
+"What's the use!" he protested. "You couldn't wake these
+people with dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home."
+
+"They little know of England who only Stiffkey know," chanted
+the chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait
+till we meet a live wire!"
+
+Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw,
+the job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up
+the hill. Ahead of him something heavy flopped from the bank
+into the road--and in the light of his acetylene lamp he saw
+a soldier. The soldier dodged across the road and scrambled
+through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was followed by
+another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+
+"Put out that light," he commanded. " Go to your home and
+tell no one what you have seen. If you attempt to give an
+alarm you will be shot. Our sentries are placed every fifty
+yards along this road."
+
+The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and
+followed his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw
+heard them sliding over the cliff's edge and the pebbles
+clattering to the beach below. Young Bradshaw stood quite
+still. In his heart was much fear--fear of laughter, of
+ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
+silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long
+hill he had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He
+had been reliably informed that in ambush at every fifty
+yards along the road to Blakeney, sentries were waiting to
+fire on him. And he proposed to run the gauntlet. He saw that
+it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer and later
+as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
+on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six
+inches of mud. As he threw his leg across his bicycle,
+Herbert, from the motor-car farther up the hill, fired two
+shots over his head. These, he explained to Ford, were
+intended to give " verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and
+unconvincing narrative." And the sighing of the bullets gave
+young Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he
+was not the victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight
+forward and, lifting his feet, coasted downhill at forty
+miles an hour into the main street of Blakeney. Ten minutes
+later, when the car followed, a mob of men so completely
+blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His
+head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious,
+sceptical, eager. A gentleman with a white mustache and a
+look of a retired army officer pushed his way toward Ford,
+the crowd making room for him, and then closing in his wake.
+
+"Have you seen any--any soldiers?" he demanded.
+
+"German soldiers!" Ford answered. "They tried to catch us,
+but when I saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you.
+They fired and--"
+
+"How many--and where?"
+
+"A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a
+regiment. We didn't know then they were Germans, not until
+they stopped us. You'd better telephone the garrison, and--"
+
+"Thank you!" snapped the elderly gentleman. "I happen to be
+in command of this district. What are your names?"
+
+Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+
+"I've no time for that!" he called. "We've got to warn every
+coast town in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the
+long distance!"
+
+As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+
+"We've got them guessing," he said. "Now, what we want is a
+live wire, some one with imagination, some one with authority
+who will wake the countryside."
+
+"Looks ahead there," said Birrell, "as though it hadn't gone
+to bed."
+
+Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley
+shone with lights. In the main street were fishermen,
+shopkeepers, "trippers" in flannels, summer residents. The
+women had turned out as though to witness a display of
+fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their escorts,
+shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion
+sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
+
+"What's this tale about Germans?" he demanded jocularly.
+
+"You can see their lights from the beach," said Ford.
+"They've landed two regiments between here and Wells.
+Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut all the wires south."
+
+The proprietor refused to be "had."
+
+"Let 'em all come!" he mocked.
+
+"All right," returned Ford. "Let 'em come, but don't take it
+lying down! Get those women off the streets, and go down to
+the beach, and drive the Germans back! Gangway," he shouted,
+and the car shot forward. "We warned you," he called, "And
+it's up to you to--"
+
+His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's
+voice rose with a roar like a rocket and was met with a
+savage, deep-throated cheer.
+
+Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung
+in his seat.
+
+"This thing is going to fail!" he cried petulantly. "They
+don't believe us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--
+in a dozen places."
+
+"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman.
+"Now, if this had happened in my native land--"
+
+He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car
+that spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles,
+tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down
+the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki
+clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying
+from its running boards. Before they could find their voices
+a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death were at
+the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
+into the night.
+
+"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop?
+As I said before, what we want is a live one."
+
+Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+
+"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of
+a mile from here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern
+Railroad, where we visit the night telegraph operator and
+give him the surprise party of his life."
+
+The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so
+quietly that, when the operator heard them, they already
+surrounded him. He saw three German soldiers with fierce
+upturned mustaches, with flat, squat helmets, with long brown
+rifles. They saw an an�mic, pale-faced youth without a coat
+or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply in
+his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+
+In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. "You are a
+prisoner," he said. "We take over this office in the name of
+the German Emperor. Get out!"
+
+As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence,
+the hand of the boy operator moved across the table to the
+key of his instrument. Ford flung his rifle upon it.
+
+"No, you don't!" he growled. "Get out!"
+
+With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a
+sitting posture.
+
+"My pay--my month's pay?" he stammered. "Can I take It?"
+
+The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+
+"Take it and get out," Ford commanded.
+
+With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader,
+the boy pulled open the drawer of the table before him and
+fumbled with the papers inside.
+
+"Quick!" cried Ford.
+
+The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like
+a snake, and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of
+the largest calibre issued by a civilized people. Birrell
+fell upon the boy's shoulders, Herbert twisted the gun from
+his fingers and hurled it through the window, and almost as
+quickly hurled himself down the steps of the tower. Birrell
+leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to shout:
+"Don't touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a
+message through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!"
+
+For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears
+strained, his heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs.
+Then, with his left arm raised to guard his face, he sank to
+his knees and, leaning forward across the table, inviting as
+he believed his death, he opened the circuit and through the
+night flashed out a warning to his people.
+
+When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched
+Ford on the shoulder.
+
+"Your last remark," he said, " was that what we wanted was a
+live one."
+
+"Don't mention it!" said Ford. "He jammed that gun half down
+my throat. I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?"
+
+"According to the route we mapped out this afternoon," said
+Herbert, "We are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the
+coast towns of Salthouse and Weybourne, but--"
+
+"Not with me!" exclaimed Birrell fiercely. "Those towns have
+been tipped off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy
+Scouts would club us to death. I vote we take the back roads
+to Morston, and drop in on a lonely Coast Guard. If a Coast
+Guard sees us, the authorities will have to believe him, and
+they'll call out the navy."
+
+Herbert consulted his map.
+
+"There is a Coast Guard," he said, "stationed just the other
+side of Morston. And," he added fervently, "let us hope he's
+lonely."
+
+They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again
+reached the coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark.
+There were no stars, nor moon, but after they had left the
+car in a side lane and had stepped out upon the cliff, they
+saw for miles along the coast great beacon fires burning
+fiercely.
+
+Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+
+"Since seeing those fires," he explained, "I feel a strange
+reluctance about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast
+Guard."
+
+"Coast Guards don't shoot!" mocked Birrell. "They only look
+at the clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles
+ought to be able to frighten one Coast Guard with a
+telescope."
+
+The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the
+edge of the cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the
+road. The door of the cabin was open and from it a shaft of
+light cut across a tiny garden and showed the white fence and
+the walk of shells. v
+
+"We must pass in single file in front of that light,"
+whispered Ford, "And then, after we are sure he has seen us,
+we must run like the devil!"
+
+"I'm on in that last scene," growled Herbert.
+
+"Only," repeated Ford with emphasis, "We must be sure he has
+seen us."
+
+Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many
+roars, many flashes, many bullets.
+
+"He's seen us!" yelled Birrell.
+
+After the light from his open door had shown him one German
+soldier fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing
+further. But judging from the shrieks of terror and the
+sounds of falling bodies that followed his first shot, he was
+convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he proceeded to
+sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
+emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear,
+now out to sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To
+the people a quarter of a mile away at Morston it sounded
+like a battle.
+
+After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell
+at full length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing
+from his person the last vestiges of a German uniform, he
+found Birrell. He also was puffing painfully.
+
+"What happened to Herbert?" panted Ford.
+
+"I don't know," gasped Birrell, "When I saw him last he was
+diving over the cliff into the sea. How many times did you
+die?"
+
+"About twenty!" groaned the American, "And, besides being
+dead, I am severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on
+my face, and each time I hit a rock!"
+
+A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
+head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping
+with water, and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He
+dragged out his kit bag and fell into his golf clothes.
+
+"Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform," he
+cried, "can have mine. I left it in the first row of
+breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway."
+
+The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car.
+The rifles and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were
+dropped in the open road, and five minutes later three
+gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris tweeds, and with golf clubs
+protruding from every part of their car, turned into the
+shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror to
+their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them
+was a regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at
+the " double." An officer sprang to the front of the car and
+seated himself beside Ford.
+
+"I'll have to commandeer this," he said. "Run back to
+Cromer. Don't crush my men, but go like the devil!"
+
+"We heard firing here," explained the officer " at the Coast
+Guard station. The Guard drove them back to the sea. He
+counted over a dozen. They made pretty poor practice, for he
+isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks as though some one
+had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder," exclaimed the officer
+suddenly, "if you are the three gentlemen who first gave the
+alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the other
+coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names."
+
+Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact
+were discovered, they would be suspected and investigated,
+and the worst might happen. So he replied that his friends
+and himself probably were the men to whom the officer
+referred. He explained they had been returning from Cromer,
+where they had gone to play golf, when they had been held up
+by the Germans.
+
+"You were lucky to escape," said the officer "And in keeping
+on to give warning you were taking chances. If I may say so,
+we think you behaved extremely well."
+
+Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into
+silence. With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he
+was forcing the car through lanes of armed men. They packed
+each side of the road. They were banked behind the hedges.
+Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+
+"Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!" exclaimed
+Ford admiringly.
+
+"MY regiment!" snorted the officer. "You've passed through
+five regiments already, and there are as many more in the
+dark places. They're everywhere!" he cried jubilantly.
+
+"And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires,"
+exclaimed Ford.
+
+"That's what the Germans think," said the officer. "It's
+working like a clock," he cried happily. "There hasn't been a
+hitch. As soon as they got your warning to Colonel Raglan,
+they came down to the coast like a wave, on foot, by trains,
+by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government took over all
+the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty
+miles. Down in London the Guards started to Dover and
+Brighton two hours ago. The Automobile Club in the first hour
+collected two hundred cars and turned them over to the Guards
+in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and eight of his
+air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron
+to head off the German convoy in the North Sea, and the
+torpedo destroyers have been sent to lie outside of
+Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on land
+every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast
+alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and
+from Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from
+Ipswich the R. H. A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-
+firing-guns, all kinds of guns spread out over every foot of
+ground from here to Hunstanton. They thought they'd give us a
+surprise party. They will never give us another surprise
+party!"
+
+On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the
+East Cliff Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden
+back of the house with the forbidding walls. From the road in
+front came unceasingly the tramp and shuffle of thousands of
+marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon, the clanking of
+their chains, the voices of men trained to command raised in
+sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless
+fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with
+lights. The night had been turned into day. The eyes of the
+two Germans were like the eyes of those who had passed
+through an earthquake, of those who looked upon the burning
+of San Francisco, upon the destruction of Messina.
+
+"We were betrayed, general," whispered the head-waiter.
+
+"We were betrayed, baron," replied the bearded one.
+
+"But you were in time to warn the flotilla."
+
+With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+
+"The last message I received over the wireless," he said,
+"before I destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We
+are returning. Our movements will be explained as manoeuvres.
+And," added the general, "The English, having driven us back,
+will be willing to officially accept that explanation. As
+manoeuvres, this night will go down into history. Return to
+the hotel," he commanded, "And in two months you can rejoin
+your regiment."
+
+On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic
+published a map of Great Britain that covered three columns
+and a wood-cut of Ford that was spread over five. Beneath it
+was printed: "Lester Ford, our London correspondent, captured
+by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to warn the
+English people."
+
+On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London,
+appeared this paragraph:
+
+"The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the
+eldest son of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell--
+both of Balliol College, Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the
+correspondent of the New York Republic. These gentlemen
+escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car
+over roads infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of
+Norfolk, warning the authorities. Should the war office fail
+to recognize their services, the people of Great Britain will
+prove that they are not ungrateful."
+
+A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of
+the Savoy.
+
+"Shall we, or shall we not," asked Herbert, "tell my uncle
+that we three, and we three alone, were the invaders?"
+
+"That's hardly correct," said Ford, "as we now know there
+were two hundred thousand invaders. We were the only three
+who got ashore."
+
+"I vote we don't tell him," said Birrell. "Let him think with
+everybody else that the Germans blundered; that an advance
+party landed too soon and gave the show away. If we talk," he
+argued, "We'll get credit for a successful hoax. If we keep
+quiet, everybody will continue to think we saved England. I'm
+content to let it go at that."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch
+Company. The manufacturing plant of the company was at
+Bridgeport, but in the New York offices there were working
+samples of all the punches, from the little nickel-plated hand
+punch with which conductors squeezed holes in railroad tickets,
+to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate as easily as
+into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these different
+punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the sons
+turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman.
+But David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he
+even succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of
+themselves as demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and
+bookkeepers laughed them out of it. They could not laugh David
+out of it. This was so, partly because he had no sense of humor,
+and partly because he had a great-great-grandfather. Among the
+salesmen on lower Broadway, to possess a great-great-grandfather
+is unusual, even a great-grandfather is a rarity, and either is
+considered superfluous. But to David the possession of a
+great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight. He had
+possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
+existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a
+doctor in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious,
+that David emerged as a Son of Washington.
+
+It was sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear
+a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary
+ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
+graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no
+less a person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with
+Washington at Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no
+doubt. That, later, on moving to New York, his descendants became
+peace-loving salesmen did not affect his record. To enter a
+society founded on heredity, the important thing is first to
+catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him, David entered
+the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors. He was
+not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
+without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to
+find himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted,
+underpaid salesman without a relative in the world, except a
+married sister in Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a
+direct descendant of "Neck or Nothing" Greene, a revolutionary
+hero, a friend of Washington, a man whose portrait hung in the
+State House at Trenton. David's life had lacked color. The day he
+carried his certificate of membership to the big jewelry store
+uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his two coats,
+was the proudest of his life.
+
+The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As
+Wyckoff, one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen,
+said, "All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great,
+or great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd
+rather have a live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a
+drink. What did your great-great dad ever do for you?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said David stiffly, "he fought in the War
+of the Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical
+England; he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the
+liberties of a free republic."
+
+"Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that," protested
+Wyckoff, "because I know better. There were a lot of others
+helped. I read about it in a book."
+
+"I am not grudging glory to others," returned David; "I am only
+saying I am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist."
+
+Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather
+photograph frame that folded like a concertina.
+
+"I don't want to be a descendant," he said; "I'd rather be an
+ancestor. Look at those." Proudly he exhibited photographs of
+Mrs. Wyckoff with the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs.
+David looked with envy at the children.
+
+"When I'm married," he stammered, and at the words he blushed, "I
+hope to be an ancestor."
+
+"If you're thinking of getting married," said Wyckoff, "you'd
+better hope for a raise in salary."
+
+The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when
+David showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt
+insignia with on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the
+other a Continental soldier, they admitted it was dead swell.
+They even envied him, not the grandfather, but the fact that
+owing to that distinguished relative David was constantly
+receiving beautifully engraved invitations to attend the monthly
+meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to erect
+monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
+joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul
+Jones; to inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be
+among those present at the annual "banquet" at Delmonico's. In
+order that when he opened these letters he might have an
+audience, he had given the society his office address.
+
+In these communications he was always addressed as "Dear
+Compatriot," and never did the words fail to give him a thrill.
+They seemed to lift him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway,
+and place him next to things uncommercial, untainted, high, and
+noble. He did not quite know what an aristocrat was, but be
+believed being a compatriot made him an aristocrat. When
+customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was overbearing,
+this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he
+would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the
+blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat
+me! How easily with a word could I crush them!"
+
+But few of the customers recognized the significance of the
+button. They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C.
+A. or was a teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale,
+ascetic face, was liable to give that impression.
+
+When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was
+because, although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to
+marry the person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This
+was Miss Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most
+efficient, and prettiest stenographers, and although David did
+not cut as dashing a figure as did some of the firm's travelling
+men, Miss Anthony had found something in him so greatly to admire
+that she had, out of office hours, accepted his devotion, his
+theatre tickets, and an engagement ring. Indeed, so far had
+matters progressed, that it had been almost decided when in a few
+months they would go upon their vacations they also would go upon
+their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and from
+a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
+
+The trouble befell when David discovered he had a great-
+great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
+as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask
+in another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an
+incentive to achieve glory for himself.
+
+From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from
+a descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She
+was a determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious
+young person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was
+disappointed. The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new
+horizon--had, in a way, raised the standard. She was as fond of
+David as always, but his tales of past wars and battles, his
+accounts of present banquets at which he sat shoulder to shoulder
+with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke with awe, touched
+her imagination.
+
+"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If
+you're a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."
+
+"I know I'm not worthy of you," David sighed.
+
+"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied
+indignantly. "It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be
+worthy of yourself, of your grandpa Hiram!"
+
+"But HOW?" complained David. "What chance has a twenty-five
+dollar a week clerk--"
+
+It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots
+of Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+
+"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba
+and help free it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my
+job, and we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done
+for me? All I know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and
+it made me ill."
+
+"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what
+have the American rebels ever done for me?"
+
+"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be
+selling automatic punches."
+
+"There's your trouble," declared Emily "You lack self-
+confidence. You're too humble, you've got fighting blood and you
+ought to keep saying to yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the
+first thing you know, it WILL tell! You might begin by going into
+politics in your ward. Or, you could join the militia. That takes
+only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to war with Spain,
+you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!"
+
+Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave
+David no pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+
+"Emily," he said, "you're going to be awfully disappointed in
+me."
+
+Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture.
+But when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind
+and eager.
+
+"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a
+career, and one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it
+for him."
+
+"I've often wished you would," said David.
+
+"Would what? Run your career for you?"
+
+"No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so."
+
+"Maybe I'd like you better," said Emily, "if you weren't so
+darned polite."
+
+A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected
+happened, and David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now
+was a travelling salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission
+on orders. It was a step forward, but as going on the road meant
+absence from Emily, David was not elated. Nor did it satisfy
+Emily. It was not money she wanted. Her ambition for David could
+not be silenced with a raise in wages. She did not say this, but
+David knew that in him she still found something lacking, and
+when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and completely
+unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in the
+office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
+that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be
+their honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting
+the days--at least she did not count them aloud.
+
+David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And,
+sooner than learn the truth that she had decided not to marry
+him, or that she was even considering not marrying him, he asked
+no questions, but in ignorance of her present feelings set forth
+on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt just as much as he had
+feared it would. He missed her, needed her, longed for her. In
+numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the frequency with
+which he moved, her letters never caught up with him. It was
+almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
+him.
+
+The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him
+close to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not
+unsuccessful, and at the end of the first month received from the
+firm a telegram of congratulation. This was of importance chiefly
+because it might please Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the
+great-great-grandson of Hiram Greene could not rest content with
+a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A year before she would have
+considered it a high honor, a cause for celebration. Now, he
+could see her press her pretty lips together and shake her pretty
+head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish more. He
+began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish Hiram
+Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+
+And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and
+spanked him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made
+him her favorite son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an
+abrupt and arbitrary manner.
+
+On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled
+to leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same
+minute, and they left exactly on time. As never before in the
+history of any Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it
+shows that when Dame Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent.
+She placed David on the train to Miami as the train he wanted
+drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the conductor looked
+at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped David over
+the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked back along
+the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
+find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going
+north. In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+
+There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was
+hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled
+forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of
+silver, and the next would be encompassed in a complete and
+bewildering darkness. He made his way from tie to tie only by
+feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a shed. Whether
+it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he
+did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
+and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat
+down under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for
+the train or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of
+him stretched a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its
+black water rose dead trees, naked of bark and hung with
+streamers of funereal moss. There was not a sound or sign of
+human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at
+night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to
+Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
+himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome
+it! For, in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he
+at least would have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his
+own species. Here his companions were owls, water-snakes, and
+sleeping buzzards.
+
+I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
+surrounded by alligators."
+
+And then he found he was not alone.
+
+In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from
+him there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went
+out and the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at
+some height above the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher
+even than that of the embankment. It was as though the man had
+been sitting on the limb of a tree. David crossed the tracks and
+found that on the side of the embankment opposite the shed there
+was solid ground and what once had been a wharf. He advanced over
+this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in
+the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a
+river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an
+ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting
+his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm
+engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's
+heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then
+something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious,
+secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from
+her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty.
+But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her
+funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
+uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or
+return to the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided
+for him. He had not considered that standing in the moonlight he
+was a conspicuous figure. The planks of the wharf creaked and a
+man came toward him. As one who means to attack, or who fears
+attack, he approached warily. He wore high boots, riding
+breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his movements
+were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily excited.
+He thrust himself close against David.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug. "How'd
+you get here?"
+
+"I walked," said David.
+
+"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.
+
+"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put
+me off about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag
+station. I'm going to wait here for the next train north."
+
+The little man laughed mockingly.
+
+"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just
+walk away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and
+peremptory gesture.
+
+"You walk!" he commanded.
+
+"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.
+
+As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily
+toward the tug.
+
+"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You WAIT,
+that's all, you WAIT!"
+
+David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
+property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag
+station the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a
+fight he judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He
+recrossed the tracks and sat down on his suit case in a dark
+corner of the shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he could see in
+the moonlight the approach of any other person.
+
+"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers.
+They're certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object
+to the presence of a perfectly harmless stranger?"
+
+Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+
+"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly? as
+though in answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the
+track he heard the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a
+flash David planned his course of action.
+
+The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by
+alligators and smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape,
+and he must escape by the train now approaching. To that end the
+train must be stopped. His plan was simple. The train was moving
+very, very slowly, and though he had no lantern to wave, in order
+to bring it to a halt he need only stand on the track exposed to
+the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David sprang
+between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his
+arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards
+distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
+head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly
+visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger
+coaches in the rear of the sightless engine were wrapped in
+darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying Dutchman of a
+train, a nightmare of a train. It was as unreal as the black
+swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly tug-boat
+tied to the rotting wharf.
+
+"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.
+
+He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming
+to a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it
+to the ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a
+confusion of calls and eager greeting and questions and sharp
+words of command.
+
+So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and
+in her mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he
+did not note the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these
+one was the little man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced
+Irish-American He wore no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn
+away from his hands by garters of pink elastic, his derby hat was
+balanced behind his ears, upon his right hand flashed an enormous
+diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had stopped
+sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the
+outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest man
+he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was
+his beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even
+in the mild moonlight it flamed like a torch.
+
+"What's your business?" demanded the man with the flamboyant
+hair.
+
+"I came here," began David, "to wait for a train--"
+
+The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+
+"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick
+out to wait for a train!"
+
+In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's
+glove. "Don't you lie to ME!" he bullied. "Do you know who I am?
+Do you know WHO you're up against? I'm--"
+
+The barkeeper person interrupted.
+
+"Never mind who you are," he said. "We know that. Find out who HE
+is."
+
+David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?" he protested. "I'm a
+travelling man--"
+
+"You won't travel any to-night," mocked the red-haired one.
+"You've seen what you came to see, and all you want now is to get
+to a Western Union wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave
+here to-night!"
+
+As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
+riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
+
+"Tie him to a tree!" he suggested.
+
+"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him
+back by the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any."
+
+"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who
+do you think I am?"
+
+"We know who you are," shouted the fiery-headed one. "You're a
+blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy,
+and whichever you are you don't get away to-night!"
+
+David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew
+his self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect
+rebelled.
+
+"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you
+like it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the
+devil!"
+
+Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away.
+It was a short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found
+himself curling up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong
+desire to sleep, but was conscious that a bed on a railroad
+track, on account of trains wanting to pass, was unsafe. This
+doubt did not long disturb him. His head rolled against the steel
+rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance, and in a strange
+sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
+"Nine--ten--and OUT!"
+
+When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of
+rope. In his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his
+eyes the glare of a lantern. The lantern was held by a
+pleasant-faced youth in a golf cap who was smiling
+sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed wildly about
+him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw that
+from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
+with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either
+side the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks
+studded with stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar
+of the surf.
+
+"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we
+drop the pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him."
+
+David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump
+as large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+
+"What happened to me?" he demanded.
+
+"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It
+was a raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot
+will land you at Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you
+to the railroad."
+
+"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What
+had I done? Who were those men who--"
+
+From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
+engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
+
+"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going
+ashore. Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the
+port side. Look where you're stepping. We can't show any lights,
+and it's dark as--"
+
+But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one
+throws an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from
+the tunnel into the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the
+tug was swept by the fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
+
+It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams,
+oaths, prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush
+of many men scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the
+ringing orders of one man. Above the tumult this one voice rose
+like the warning strokes of a fire-gong, and looking up to the
+pilot-house from whence the voice came, David saw the barkeeper
+still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby hat pushed back
+behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the
+engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+
+David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great
+leap. Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black,
+oily waves, the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her
+engines sobbed and quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash
+she raced for the open sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief
+is held in the circle of a policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of
+light followed and exposed her and held her in its grip. The
+youth in the golf cap was clutching David by the arm. With his
+free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great was the
+tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's ear.
+
+"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for
+us for three weeks, and now," he shrieked exultingly, "the old
+man's going to give her a race for it."
+
+From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were
+getting beyond his control.
+
+"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"
+
+"You don't!"
+
+"When he drops the pilot, don't I--"
+
+"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got
+to stick by the boat. So have you."
+
+David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood
+face to face.
+
+"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are
+you? What boat is this?"
+
+In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth
+staring at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a
+madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the
+pilot-house. Above it on a blue board in letters of gold-leaf a
+foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath
+left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his spine. The name
+he read was The Three Friends.
+
+"THE THREE FRIENDS!" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a
+pirate! Where're we going?
+
+"To Cuba!"
+
+David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+
+"What for?" he shrieked.
+
+The young man regarded him coldly.
+
+"To pick bananas," he said.
+
+"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid
+to sell machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if
+I'm not put ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--"
+
+David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought
+was that the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was
+bumping herself over a succession of coral reefs. She dipped,
+dived, reared, and plunged. Like a hooked fish, she flung herself
+in the air, quivering from bow to stern. No longer was David of a
+mind to sue the filibusters if they did not put him ashore. If
+only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he would have crawled
+on his knees. What followed was of no interest to David, nor to
+many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots. Their
+groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent
+Spanish, rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the
+pounding of the waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a
+brilliant sunlight the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor
+was he concerned in the tidings brought forward by the youth in
+the golf cap, who raced the slippery decks and vaulted the
+prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a hurdler on a cinder track.
+To David, in whom he seemed to think he had found a congenial
+spirit, he shouted Joyfully, "She's fired two blanks at us!" he
+cried; "now she's firing cannon-balls!"
+
+"Thank God," whispered David; "perhaps she'll sink us!"
+
+But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and
+so far as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks.
+It was like those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled
+through centuries of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of
+nausea, of his aching head, of the hard deck, of the waves that
+splashed and smothered him, David fell into broken slumber.
+Sometimes he woke to a dull consciousness of his position. At
+such moments he added to his misery by speculating upon the other
+misfortunes that might have befallen him on shore. Emily, he
+decided, had given him up for lost and married--probably a navy
+officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett and Sons had cast
+him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had caused them to
+suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as a defaulter,
+as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were being
+carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
+passed; to David it seemed many ages.
+
+On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
+motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper
+and fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had
+brought him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's
+galley bearing a bowl of smoking soup.
+
+David considered it a doubtful attention.
+
+But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to
+mix up with these pirates?"
+
+The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not
+mixed up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of
+Jimmy Doyle, the captain."
+
+"The barkeeper with the derby hat?" said David.
+
+"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and
+he's the greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you
+know Broadway, and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor
+once; sort of mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck
+I found out about this expedition. The government agents in New
+York found out I'd found out and sent for me to tell. But I
+didn't, and I didn't write the story either. Doyle heard about
+that. So, he asked me to come as his guest, and he's promised
+that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I can write as
+much about it as I darn please."
+
+"Then you're a reporter?" said David.
+
+"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've
+always dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the
+office say I dream too much. They're always guying me about it.
+But, haven't you noticed, it's the ones who dream who find their
+dreams come true. Now this isn't real war, but it's a near war,
+and when the real thing breaks loose, I can tell the managing
+editor I served as a war correspondent in the Cuban-Spanish
+campaign. And he may give me a real job!"
+
+"And you LIKE this?" groaned David.
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've
+a stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and lowered his voice.
+"Now, here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you
+read about in the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster,
+nobody knows it!"
+
+Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out,
+and the little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+
+"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If
+they knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall
+man calls himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on
+the Florida coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got.
+The other one is a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He
+says he's an English officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that
+he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says he's never been near
+enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the base
+hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans. The Junta thinks
+they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here to work the
+machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do will
+be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."
+
+A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box.
+They dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a
+screwdriver Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+
+Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching
+that part of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land
+her expedition, and that in case she was surprised by one of the
+Spanish patrol boats she was preparing to defend herself.
+
+"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and
+they're going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be
+tramping all over you.
+
+David shook his head feebly.
+
+"I can't move!" he protested. "I wouldn't move if it would free
+Cuba."
+
+For several hours with very languid interest David watched
+Lighthouse Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the
+deck and balance above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked
+very slowly, and to David, watching them from the lee scupper,
+they appeared extremely unintelligent.
+
+"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun
+together in his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never did,
+either, but I've put hundreds of automatic punches together, and
+I bet that gun won't work."
+
+"What's wrong with it?" said Carr.
+
+Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the
+attention of all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+
+Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room
+steward to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a
+sinking ship it never quite fails of its effect. A sweating
+stoker from the engine-room saw it first.
+
+"Land!" he hailed.
+
+The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their
+voices rose in a fierce chorus.
+
+"Cuba libre!" they yelled.
+
+The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line
+broken with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the
+peak of each topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and
+water courses like columns of marble rose the royal palms.
+
+"You MUST look!" Carr entreated David. "it's just as it is in the
+pictures!
+
+"Then I don't have to look," groaned David.
+
+The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like
+a sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the
+opposite shore of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a
+little band of Cubans waited to receive the filibusters. The goal
+was in sight. The dreadful voyage was done. Joy and excitement
+thrilled the ship's company. Cuban patriots appeared in uniforms
+with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of their straw sombreros.
+From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition of Mausers,
+rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box of
+shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+
+"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse
+Harry, "we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I
+ask," he cried mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a
+Spaniard!"
+
+His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only
+one Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one
+of the fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The
+Three Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She
+did not signal questions or extend courtesies. For her the name
+of the ocean-going tug was sufficient introduction. Throwing
+ahead of her a solid shell, she raced in pursuit, and as The
+Three Friends leaped to full speed there came from the gun-boat
+the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+
+With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a
+shell into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to
+aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open
+the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was
+untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate,
+with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+
+Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a
+hundred feet splashed into a wave.
+
+From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was
+far removed from any of the greater emotions.
+
+"It's no use!" he protested. "They can't do! It's not connected!"
+
+"WHAT'S not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He
+half-lifted, half-dragged him to his feet.
+
+"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he
+shouted, "or I'll--"
+
+David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For,
+on the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift
+insidiousness of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed
+his racked body, his jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made
+the harbor, and was gliding through water flat as a pond. But
+David did not know why the change had come. He knew only that his
+soul and body were at rest, that the sun was shining, that he had
+passed through the valley of the shadow, and once more was a
+sane, sound young man.
+
+With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry
+sprawling from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell
+upon its mechanism. He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset,
+readjusted it.
+
+Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw
+that his work was good.
+
+They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets
+drove them to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the
+superstructure, smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry
+wasps sang in a continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the
+gun, David worked feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it,
+and dragged it open, pulled on the trigger and found it gave
+before his forefinger.
+
+He shouted with delight.
+
+"I've got it working," he yelled.
+
+He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From
+beneath one of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of
+Colonel Beamish, the tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled
+behind a water butt. A shell splashed to port, a shell splashed
+to starboard. For an instant David stood staring wide-eyed at the
+greyhound of a boat that ate up the distance between them, at the
+jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her bow, at the
+figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing in volleys.
+
+To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had
+lived it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in
+David, something leaped to his throat and choked him, something
+rose in his brain and made him see scarlet. He felt rather than
+saw young Carr kneeling at the box of ammunition, and holding a
+shell toward him. He heard the click as the breech shut, felt the
+rubber tire of the brace give against the weight of his shoulder,
+down a long shining tube saw the pursuing gun-boat, saw her again
+and many times disappear behind a flash of flame. A bullet gashed
+his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his forearm, but he
+did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the engines,
+with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
+unceasingly:
+
+"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that
+the voice was his own.
+
+The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+
+"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"
+
+For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run
+herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a
+single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was
+the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been
+born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new
+"hero," a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
+
+They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and
+David, the patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon
+the coast of Cuba, and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and,
+having caught the Florida straits napping, smoothly toward Key
+West. Carr had just finished reading aloud his account of the
+engagement.
+
+You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the
+proud author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only
+a blind. You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you
+could explain your wish you were mistaken for a secret-service
+man, and hustled on board. That was just where you wanted to be,
+and when the moment arrived you took command of the ship and
+single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe Bay."
+
+Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainty did,
+Dave," protested the great man, "I seen you when you done it!"
+
+At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons
+kept David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame
+and features spread across the map of the United States.
+
+Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged
+their office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of
+lower Broadway tendered congratulations.
+
+"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would
+protest and wink heavily. "Of course, when the boy asked to be
+sent South we'd no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we
+wouldn't have let him go, would we?" Then again they would wink
+heavily. "I suppose you know," they would say, "that he's a
+direct descendant of General Hiram Greene, who won the battle of
+Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'" And then in a body
+every one in the club would move against the bar and exclaim:
+"Here's to Cuba libre!"
+
+When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in
+the Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands
+of them and all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an
+address of welcome.
+
+And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head
+in a bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they
+howled and surged toward him. But before they could reach their
+hero the courteous Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway
+for a young girl. She was travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist
+was disgracefully wrinkled, her best hat was a wreck. No one on
+Broadway would have recognized her as Burdett and Sons' most
+immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+
+She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to
+him. "David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll never, never do it
+again!"
+
+ 
+
+Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not
+a care in the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to
+the left; if it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it
+was entirely the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he
+turned, he smiled broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world
+was that of one who loved his fellowman. He had many brothers as
+like him as twins all over Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North
+Shore, smiling from the railings of verandas, from the roofs of
+bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces. Empaled on their
+little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
+languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a
+waltz, sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had
+he not been a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and
+stomach of pine, he would have been quite seasick. But the
+particular sailorman that Latimer bought for Helen Page and put
+on sentry duty carried on his shoulders most grave and unusual
+responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried treasure, the
+keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really asking
+a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+
+Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to
+Fair Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was
+their cow pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty
+or more, Helen Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the
+"season" opened; when she departed the local trades-people
+sighed and began to take account of stock. She was so popular
+because she possessed charm, and because she played no favorites.
+To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner was
+just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded youths who
+came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
+Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis
+with the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house
+with the matrons. To each her manner was always as though she
+were of their age. When she met the latter on the beach road, she
+greeted them riotously and joyfully by their maiden names. And
+the matrons liked it. In comparison the deference shown them by
+the other young women did not so strongly appeal.
+
+"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them,
+"and Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though
+I were twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not
+sitting beside her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man,
+who never wears a hat. Why does he never wear a hat? Because he
+knows he's good-looking, or because Helen drives so fast he can't
+keep it on?"
+
+"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new
+arrival. "That might help some."
+
+"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never
+leaves her."
+
+This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met
+them so many times a day driving together, motoring together,
+playing golf together, that you were embarrassed for them and did
+not know which way to look. But they gloried in their shame. If
+you tactfully pretended not to see them, Helen shouted at you.
+She made you feel you had been caught doing something indelicate
+and underhand.
+
+The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young
+Latimer. So many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in
+that inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that
+any strange young man who apparently succeeded where those who
+had been her friends for years had learned they must remain
+friends, could not hope to escape criticism. Besides, they did
+not know him: he did not come from Boston and Harvard, but from a
+Western city. They were told that at home, at both the law and
+the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully; but it was
+rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that he
+played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as
+for exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey and soda
+at two in the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark:
+"I find it does not tend toward efficiency." It was a remark that
+irritated and, to the minds of the men at the country clubs,
+seemed to place him. They liked to play polo because they liked
+to play polo, not because it kept their muscles limber and their
+brains clear.
+
+"Some Western people were telling me," said one of the matrons,
+"that he wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is
+very ambitious and very selfish."
+
+"Any man is selfish," protested one who for years had attempted
+to marry Helen, "who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he
+should wish to be a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an
+anticlimax. It makes one lose sympathy."
+
+Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The
+companionship of Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been
+working overtime and was treating himself to his first vacation
+in years--he was young--he was in love and he was very happy. Nor
+was there any question, either, that Helen Page was happy. Those
+who had known her since she was a child could not remember when
+she had not been happy, but these days she wore her joyousness
+with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings to old
+friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses.
+She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She
+told him she liked better to be with him than with any one
+else,--it would have been difficult to deny to him what was
+apparent to an entire summer colony,--but she explained that that
+did not mean she would marry him. She announced this when the
+signs she knew made it seem necessary. She announced it in what
+was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly that she did
+not intend to marry for several years.
+
+This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him
+remarks so eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep
+her own. She as though she had been caught in an undertow and was
+being whirled out to sea. When, at last, she had regained her
+breath, only because Latimer had paused to catch his, she shook
+her head miserably.
+
+"The trouble is," she complained, "there are so many think the
+same thing!"
+
+"What do they think?" demanded Latimer.
+
+"That they want to marry me."
+
+Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+
+"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this
+important difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry
+you, he can't LOVE you as I do!"
+
+"That's ANOTHER thing they think," sighed Helen.
+
+"I'm sorry to be so unoriginal," snapped Latimer.
+
+"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen. "I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm
+not unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to
+take it to heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see
+how miserable a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't
+make up her mind whether or not she wants to marry him. But when
+there's so many she just stops worrying; for she can't possibly
+marry them all."
+
+"ALL!" exclaimed Latimer. "It is incredible that I have
+undervalued you, but may I ask how many there are?"
+
+"I don't know," sighed Helen miserably. "There seems to be
+something about me that--"
+
+"There is!" interrupted Latimer. "I've noticed it. You don't have
+to tell me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned
+difficult habit to break!"
+
+It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At
+least, not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+
+One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the
+point on which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these
+excursions they explored a forgotten wood road and came out upon
+a cliff. The cliff overlooked the sea, and below it was a jumble
+of rocks with which the waves played hide and seek. On many
+afternoons and mornings they returned to this place, and, while
+Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a tree and
+toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose works
+he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to
+them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and
+into his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that
+from juries and mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and
+votes.
+
+But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was
+possible for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim
+excitedly: "Please excuse me for interrupting, but there is a
+large spider--" and the spell was gone.
+
+One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the
+"Oxford Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW?"
+
+"I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that
+Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs
+he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his
+mother only yesterday--"
+
+"I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer,
+"or in what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm
+a drowning man myself!"
+
+Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. "Men get over THAT
+kind of drowning," she said.
+
+"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer. "And don't tell
+me," he cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all
+say."
+
+"If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen. "If one could only be
+sure that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you
+marry him the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you
+could know that, it would help you a lot in making up your mind."
+
+"There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is
+to marry him. I mean, of course," he corrected hastily, "to marry
+me."
+
+One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood
+road, the man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him
+passed through the village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and
+carried him to their hiding-place. There he fastened him to the
+lowest limb of one of the ancient pine-trees that helped to
+screen their hiding-place from the world. The limb reached out
+free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman
+fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him,
+and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in
+each hand a tiny oar and smiling happily.
+
+"He has a friendly smile," said Helen; "I think he likes us."
+
+"He is on guard," Latimer explained. "I put him there to warn us
+if any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to
+frighten away trespassers. Do you understand?" he demanded of the
+sailorman. "Your duty is to protect this beautiful lady. So long
+as I love her you must guard this place. It is a life sentence.
+You are always on watch. You never sleep. You are her slave. She
+says you have a friendly smile. She wrongs you. It is a
+beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure when I look at
+her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways alike.
+I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I
+never sleep, at least not since I met her."
+
+From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the
+sailorman and frowned.
+
+"It is not a happy simile," she objected. "For one thing, a
+sailorman has a sweetheart in every port."
+
+"Wait and see," said Latimer.
+
+"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is
+anything on earth that changes its mind as often as a
+weather-vane, that is less CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--"
+
+"Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. "You come back
+here," he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the
+winds have beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow
+frozen him, and you will find him smiling at you just as he is
+now, just as confidently, proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because
+those who are your slaves, those who love YOU, cannot come to any
+harm; only if you disown them, only if you drive them away!
+
+The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw
+himself about in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their
+sockets like Indian clubs, his oars flashed in the sun, and his
+eyes and lips were fixed in one blissful, long-drawn-out,
+unalterable smile.
+
+When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow,
+and it was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he
+came to say good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope
+alive in him was to say that she was glad he cared. She added it
+was very helpful to think that a man such as he believed you were
+so fine a person, and during the coming winter she would try to
+be like the fine person he believed her to be, but which, she
+assured him, she was not.
+
+Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the
+world, to which she said: "Oh, indeed no!" and then, as though he
+were giving her a cue, he said: "Good-by!" But she did not take
+up his cue, and they shook hands. He waited, hardly daring to
+breathe.
+
+"Surely, now that the parting has come," he assured himself, "she
+will make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will
+write 'total' under the hours we have spent together, that will
+help to carry me through the long winter."
+
+But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that
+he really forced her to say: "Don't miss your train," which kind
+consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should.
+Nor, indeed, later did she herself recall the remark with
+satisfaction.
+
+With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine
+suitor attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they
+had over Latimer was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen
+daily, at dinners, dances, at the country clubs, in her own
+drawing-room. Like any sailor from the Charlestown Navy Yard and
+his sweetheart, they could walk beside her in the park and throw
+peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch dates and initials on the
+green benches; they could walk with her up one side of
+Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when
+the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges
+were beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They
+had known her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared
+many interests and friends in common; they talked the same
+language. Latimer could talk to her only in letters, for with her
+he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to choose
+between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in politics
+or of his love. To write to her of his affairs seemed wasteful
+and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had received
+what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he
+wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send
+you." Had he known it, his best letters were those he did not
+send. When in the morning mail Helen found his familiar
+handwriting, that seemed to stand out like the face of a friend
+in a crowd, she would pounce upon the letter, read it, and,
+assured of his love, would go on her way rejoicing. But when in
+the morning there was no letter, she wondered why, and all day
+she wondered why. And the next morning when again she was
+disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and
+speculations concerning him shut out every other interest. He
+became a perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her
+mind. And then he would spoil it all by writing her that he loved
+her and that of all the women in the world she was the only one.
+And, reassured upon that point, Helen happily and promptly would
+forget all about him.
+
+But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she
+had seen him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more
+gratefully, than that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom
+she had walked that same afternoon. Latimer could not know it,
+but of that anxious multitude he was first, and there was no
+second. At least Helen hoped, when she was ready to marry, she
+would love Latimer enough to want to marry him. But as yet she
+assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she was,
+life was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody
+invited her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers,
+and the object of each seemed to be to see that she enjoyed every
+hour of every day. Her nature was such that to make her happy was
+not difficult. Some of her devotees could do it by giving her a
+dance and letting her invite half of Boston, and her kid brother
+could do it by taking her to Cambridge to watch the team at
+practice.
+
+She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of
+fact, she was happy because she loved some one and that
+particular some one loved her. Her being "free" was only her
+mistaken way of putting it. Had she thought she had lost Latimer
+and his love, she would have discovered that, so far from being
+free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and soul.
+
+But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+
+Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch.
+The sun had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow
+had frozen upon his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He
+spun to the north, he spun to the south, and so rapidly did he
+scan the surrounding landscape that no one could hope to creep
+upon him unawares. Nor, indeed, did any one attempt to do so.
+Once a fox stole into the secret hiding-place, but the sailorman
+flapped his oars and frightened him away. He was always
+triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing rabbits he was
+a thing of terror. Once, when the air was still, an impertinent
+crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and with
+scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue
+reefer, his red cheeks. But when the wind suddenly drove past
+them the sailorman sprang into action and the crow screamed in
+alarm and darted away. So, alone and with no one to come to his
+relief, the sailorman stood his watch. About him the branches
+bent with the snow, the icicles froze him into immobility, and in
+the tree-tops strange groanings filled him with alarms. But
+undaunted, month after month, alert and smiling, he waited the
+return of the beautiful lady and of the tall young man who had
+devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy eyes.
+
+Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved
+her was the best thing that could come into his life. But to sit
+down and lament over the fact that she did not love him did not,
+to use his favorite expression, "tend toward efficiency." He
+removed from his sight the three pictures of her he had cut from
+illustrated papers, and ceased to write to her.
+
+In his last letter he said: "I have told you how it is, and that
+is how it is always going to be. There never has been, there
+never can be any one but you. But my love is too precious, too
+sacred to be brought out every week in a letter and dangled
+before your eyes like an advertisement of a motor-car. It is too
+wonderful a thing to be cheapened, to be subjected to slights and
+silence. If ever you should want it, it is yours. It is here
+waiting. But you must tell me so. I have done everything a man
+can do to make you understand. But you do not want me or my love.
+And my love says to me: 'Don't send me there again to have the
+door shut in my face. Keep me with you to be your inspiration, to
+help you to live worthily.' And so it shall be."
+
+When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did
+not know how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly
+she had grown very old, and that some one had turned off the sun,
+and that in consequence the world had naturally grown cold and
+dark. She could not see why the two hundred and forty-nine
+expected her to keep on doing exactly the same things she had
+been doing with delight for six months, and indeed for the last
+six years. Why could they not see that no longer was there any
+pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer that
+she found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not
+arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest?
+He said that he would always love her, but how could she now know
+that? Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing
+from a position which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps,
+he was even glad to escape? Were this true, and she wrote and
+said all those things that were in her heart, that now she knew
+were true, might she not hold him to her against his will? The
+love that once he had for her might no longer exist, and if, in
+her turn, she told him she loved him and had always loved him,
+might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel it was his
+duty to pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It was
+intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as day
+succeeded day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never
+wrote and was very unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he
+had his work, and Helen had none, and for her life became a game
+of putting little things together, like a picture puzzle, an hour
+here and an hour there, to make up each day. It was a dreary
+game.
+
+From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For,
+in his own State, he was an "Insurgent" making a fight, the
+outcome of which was expected to show what might follow
+throughout the entire West. When he won his fight much more was
+written about him, and he became a national figure. In his own
+State the people hailed him as the next governor, promised him a
+seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to take him further out
+of her life. She wondered if now she held a place even in his
+thoughts.
+
+At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with
+her about her politician. Then they considered Latimer of
+importance only because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him
+impersonally and over her head, as though she were not present,
+as a power, an influence, as the leader and exponent of a new
+idea. They seemed to think she no longer could pretend to any
+peculiar claim upon him, that now he belonged to all of them.
+
+Older men would say to her: "I hear you know Latimer? What sort
+of a man is he?"
+
+Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was
+a man who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book
+of verse, or halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+
+She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run
+down and needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own
+expense she agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to
+where they sent her, for she knew wherever she went she must
+still force herself to go on putting one hour on top of another,
+until she had built up the inexorable and necessary twenty-four.
+
+When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and
+returning unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse
+the thin spring sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took
+herself seriously to task. She assured herself it was weak-minded
+to rebel. The summer was coming and Fair Harbor with all its old
+delights was before her. She compelled herself to take heart, to
+accept the fact that, after all, the world is a pretty good
+place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as
+Latimer had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+
+Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself
+was not to think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking
+hours. Should she, as it sometimes happened, dream of him--should
+she imagine they were again seated among the pines, riding across
+the downs, or racing at fifty miles an hour through country
+roads, with the stone fences flying past, with the wind and the
+sun in their eyes, and in their hearts happiness and
+content--that would not be breaking her rule. If she dreamed of
+him, she could not be held responsible. She could only be
+grateful.
+
+And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he
+came East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her,
+but with a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as
+the guest of three cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to
+confer with party leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's
+country. He was due to speak in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the
+first of May, and that same night to leave for the West, and
+three days before his coming Helen fled from the city. He had
+spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York,
+and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that
+week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him
+exhorting cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms
+leaning forward to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes.
+And that during the time he was actually in Boston she might
+spare herself further and more direct attacks upon her feelings
+she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to remain until, on the first
+of May at midnight, he again would pass out of her life, maybe
+forever. No one saw in her going any significance. Spring had
+come, and in preparation for the summer season the house at Fair
+Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of
+some one of the Page family was easily explained.
+
+She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving
+it herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she
+doubted if it would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For
+she found that the memories of more than twenty summers at Fair
+Harbor had been wiped out by those of one summer, by those of one
+man. The natives greeted her joyously: the boatmen, the
+fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the village postmaster,
+the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though they were her
+vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she had
+exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and
+caused her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had
+lodged, and hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used
+to wait for him in the street, blowing noisily on her automobile
+horn, calling derisively to his open windows. Wherever she turned
+Fair Harbor spoke of him. The golf-links; the bathing beach; the
+ugly corner in the main street where he always reminded her that
+it was better to go slow for ten seconds than to remain a long
+time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where the schooners
+made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon; the
+wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies;
+the pond into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+
+On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these
+places purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way.
+They no longer distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort.
+They were old friends, who had known her in the days when she was
+rich in happiness.
+
+But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the
+opening among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the
+sea--she could not bring herself to visit. And then, on the
+afternoon of the third day when she was driving alone toward the
+lighthouse, her pony, of his own accord, from force of habit,
+turned smartly into the wood road. And again from force of habit,
+before he reached the spot that overlooked the sea, he came to a
+full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For hours,
+stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same
+branches patiently waiting.
+
+On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as
+one enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into
+the sacred circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had
+expected to find there she could not have told, but it was gone.
+The place was unknown to her. She saw an opening among gloomy
+pines, empty, silent, unreal. No haunted house, no barren moor,
+no neglected graveyard ever spoke more poignantly, more
+mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no sign of
+his or of her former presence. Across the open space something
+had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a
+trysting-place, a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she
+felt, for something that once had been brave, fine, and
+beautiful, but which now was dead. She had but one desire, to
+escape from the place, to put it away from her forever, to
+remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had
+remembered it, and as now she must always remember It. She turned
+softly on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.
+
+But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust
+of wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set
+the branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her
+ankles. And at the same instant from just above her head there
+beat upon the air a violent, joyous tattoo--a sound that was
+neither of the sea nor of the woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated
+sound, like the flutter of caged wings.
+
+Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes--and beheld the
+sailorman.
+
+Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of
+joy, calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him
+smiling down at her with the same radiant, beseeching,
+worshipping smile. In Helen's ears Latimer's commands to the
+sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer stood before her and
+had just spoken. Only now they were no longer a jest; they were a
+vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that brought to her peace,
+and pride, and happiness.
+
+"So long as I love this beautiful lady," had been his foolish
+words, "you will guard this place. It is a life sentence!"
+
+With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the
+sailorman stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of
+duty. With a joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the
+sailorman in both her hands and kissed the beseeching,
+worshipping smile.
+
+An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair
+Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray
+between his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save
+their lives by landing them in jail.
+
+At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching
+the dark places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen
+Page raced against time, against the minions of the law, against
+sudden death, to beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure
+the man she loved of the one thing that could make his life worth
+living.
+
+And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her
+great-coat, the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch
+over, his soul at peace, his duty well performed.
+
+ 
+
+Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+
+When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of
+undergraduate life suggested by things that had happened to
+himself and to men he knew. Under the title of "Tales of the
+Yard" they were collected in book form, and sold surprisingly
+well. After he was graduated and became a reporter on the New
+York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of which a reporter
+was the hero, and in which his failure or success in gathering
+news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines,
+and later in a book under the title of "Tales of the Streets."
+They also were well received.
+
+Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said:
+"There are two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction--men
+of genius and reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has
+seen in such a way that he can make the reader see it, too. A man
+of genius can describe something he has never seen, or any one
+else for that matter, in such a way that the reader will exclaim:
+'I have never committed a murder; but if I had, that's just the
+way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling tells us how a
+Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers; how a
+mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling
+has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he
+knows how each of them feels. He can do that because he is a
+genius; you cannot do it because you are not. At college you
+wrote only of what you saw at college; and now that you are in
+the newspaper business all your tales are only of newspaper work.
+You merely report what you see. So, if you are doomed to write
+only of what you see, then the best thing for you to do is to see
+as many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life. You
+must progress. You must leave New York, and you had better go to
+London."
+
+"But on the Republic," Endicott pointed out, "I get a salary. And
+in London I should have to sweep a crossing."
+
+"Then," said the literary editor, "you could write a story about
+a man who swept a crossing."
+
+It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had
+driven Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the
+daughter of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known
+her only one winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was
+that he had no money, and that she possessed so much of it that,
+unless he could show some unusual quality of mind or character,
+his asking her to marry him, from his own point of view at least,
+was quite impossible. Of course, he knew that no one could love
+her as he did, that no one so truly wished for her happiness, or
+would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him it did not
+seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was not
+able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or her food, who would
+have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a
+hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in birth and education
+and charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he came
+from New York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen
+Carey he had with him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That
+was all he possessed in the world; and unless the magazines
+bought his stories there was no prospect of his getting any more.
+
+Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well,
+it was easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to
+entertain modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate,
+Philip calculated he could stay three months. But he found that
+to know London well enough to be able to live there on three
+sovereigns a day you had first to spend so many five-pound notes
+in getting acquainted with London that there were no sovereigns
+left. At the end of one month he had just enough money to buy him
+a second-class passage back to New York, and he was as far from
+Helen as ever.
+
+Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor
+to marry. And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that
+when two people truly love each other it does not matter whether
+they have money or not. But when in London, with only a
+five-pound note, and face to face with the actual proposition of
+asking Helen Carey not only to marry him but to support him, he
+felt that money counted for more than he had supposed. He found
+money was many different things--it was self-respect, and proper
+pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking these
+things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not
+one for whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while
+he knew how he loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she
+loved him. She always seemed extremely glad to see him; but that
+might be explained in different ways. It might be that what was
+in her heart for him was really a sort of "old home week"
+feeling; that to her it was a relief to see any one who spoke her
+own language, who did not need to have it explained when she was
+jesting, and who did not think when she was speaking in perfectly
+satisfactory phrases that she must be talking slang.
+
+The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and,
+as a friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had
+sent him cards for dances at which Helen was to be one of the
+belles and beauties. And Helen herself had been most kind, and
+had taken early morning walks with him in Hyde Park and through
+the National Galleries; and they had fed buns to the bears in the
+Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They thought it was
+because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed. Later
+they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because they
+were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have
+laughed.
+
+On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to
+bed with his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound
+note to last him until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young
+man. He knew now that he loved Helen Carey in such a way that to
+put the ocean between them was liable to unseat his courage and
+his self-control. In London he could, each night, walk through
+Carlton House Terrace and, leaning against the iron rails of the
+Carlton Club, gaze up at her window. But, once on the other side
+of the ocean, that tender exercise must be abandoned. He must
+even consider her pursued by most attractive guardsmen,
+diplomats, and belted earls. He knew they could not love her as
+he did; he knew they could not love her for the reasons he loved
+her, because the fine and beautiful things in her that he saw and
+worshipped they did not seek, and so did not find. And yet, for
+lack of a few thousand dollars, he must remain silent, must put
+from him the best that ever came into his life, must waste the
+wonderful devotion he longed to give, must starve the love that
+he could never summon for any other woman.
+
+On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and
+completely miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and
+unrefreshed.
+
+And then the miracle came.
+
+Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in
+the house where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his
+breakfast. As he placed the eggs and muffins on the tables to
+Philip it seemed as though Prichard had said: "I am sorry he is
+leaving us. The next gentleman who takes these rooms may not be
+so open-handed. He never locked up his cigars or his whiskey. I
+wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits me, except across
+the shoulders."
+
+Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not
+moved. In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+
+"How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?"
+
+"I wouldn't take such a liberty," protested Prichard. "Not with
+any of our gentlemen's clothes."
+
+"How did you know I was talking about clothes," demanded Philip.
+"You didn't say anything about clothes, did you?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I--"
+
+"Were you thinking of clothes?"
+
+"Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was, answered the
+valet. "Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new,
+I thought "
+
+"It's mental telepathy," said Philip.
+
+"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Prichard.
+
+"You needn't wait," said Philip.
+
+The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the
+morning papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he
+had emerged into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The
+street was crowded with people; and as Philip stepped in among
+them, It was as though every one at whom he looked began to talk
+aloud. Their lips did not move, nor did any sound issue from
+between them; but, without ceasing, broken phrases of thoughts
+came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a crowd, snatches
+of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his debts;
+another of the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to
+his silk hat; another planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing
+over a telegram he had but that moment received. To himself he
+kept repeating the words of the telegram--"No need to come, out
+of danger." To Philip the message came as clearly as though he
+were reading it from the folded slip of paper that the stranger
+clutched in his hand.
+
+Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed
+he might consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge
+from the crowded street in the hallway of a building. His first
+thought was that for some unaccountable cause his brain for the
+moment was playing tricks with him, and he was inventing the
+phrases he seemed to hear, that he was attributing thoughts to
+others of which they were entirely innocent. But, whatever it was
+that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative that he should
+at once get at the meaning of it.
+
+The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight
+of stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and
+directly in front of the hallway a young woman of charming
+appearance had halted. Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at
+ease. To herself she kept repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be
+here at a quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will she get the
+telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it would be
+absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of Scots
+would look ridiculous!"
+
+Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although
+indeed she was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had
+distinguished the words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished
+them, he surely was going mad. It was a matter to be at once
+determined, and the young woman should determine it. He advanced
+boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, "but I believe you are waiting for your
+maid Hudson?"
+
+As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in
+silence.
+
+"I only wish to make sure," continued Philip, "that you are she
+for whom I have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to
+be photographed in fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?"
+
+"Well?" assented the girl.
+
+"And you telephoned Hudson," he continued, "to bring you your
+muff."
+
+The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+
+"Oh!" she protested; "I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff!
+I want my ruff."
+
+Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+
+"For the love of Heaven!" he exclaimed in horror; "it's true!"
+
+"What's true?" demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+
+"That I'm a mind reader," declared Philip. "I've read your mind!
+I can read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking
+now. You're thinking I'm mad!"
+
+The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct.
+With a gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs
+to the studio. Philip made no effort to follow and to explain.
+What was there to explain? How could he explain that which, to
+himself, was unbelievable? Besides, the girl had served her
+purpose. If he could read the mind of one, he could read the
+minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to his ordinary
+equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as, before
+that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal, he
+now could look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind.
+The thought was appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a
+key-hole. In his dismay his first idea was to seek medical
+advice--the best in London. He turned instantly in the direction
+of Harley Street. There, he determined, to the most skilled
+alienist in town he would explain his strange plight. For only as
+a misfortune did the miracle appear to him. But as he made his
+way through the streets his pace slackened.
+
+Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he
+possessed this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as
+a madman? Might they not place him under observation, or even
+deprive him of his liberty? At the thought he came to an abrupt
+halt His own definition of the miracle as a "power" had opened a
+new line of speculation. If this strange gift (already he was
+beginning to consider it more leniently) were concealed from
+others, could he not honorably put it to some useful purpose?
+For, among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not
+he--among all other men the only one able to read the minds of
+all other men--a god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its
+quiet length considering the possibilities that lay within him.
+
+It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless
+embarrassments. If it were once known that he possessed it, would
+not even his friends avoid him? For how could any one, knowing
+his most secret thought was at the mercy of another, be happy in
+that other's presence? His power would lead to his social
+ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might easily become
+a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the present he
+had best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+
+As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he
+regarded it with less aversion. He began to consider to what
+advantage he could place it. He could see that, given the right
+time and the right man, he might learn secrets leading to
+far-reaching results. To a statesman, to a financier, such a gift
+as he possessed would make him a ruler of men. Philip had no
+desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how could he
+bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to marry
+Helen Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet
+men who possessed money, who were making money. He would put
+questions to them. And with words they would give evasive
+answers; but their minds would tell him the truth.
+
+The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it
+was no better than reading other people's letters. But, he
+argued, the dishonor in knowledge so obtained would lie only in
+the use he made of it. If he used it without harm to him from
+whom it was obtained and with benefit to others, was he not
+justified in trading on his superior equipment? He decided that
+each case must be considered separately in accordance with the
+principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was
+determined to become rich. Did not the end justify the means?
+Certainly an all-wise Providence had not brought Helen Carey into
+his life only to take her away from him. It could not be so
+cruel. But, in selecting them for one another, the all-wise
+Providence had overlooked the fact that she was rich and he was
+poor. For that oversight Providence apparently was now
+endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic and
+roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift
+that could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the
+face of Providence? He decided to set about building up a
+fortune, and building it in a hurry.
+
+From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as
+Lady Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the
+Ritz, he turned in that direction. He was too early for luncheon;
+but in the corridor of the Ritz he knew he would find persons of
+position and fortune, and in reading their minds he might pass
+the time before luncheon with entertainment, possibly with
+profit. For, while pacing Bruton Street trying to discover the
+principles of conduct that threatened to hamper his new power, he
+had found that in actual operation it was quite simple. He
+learned that his mind, in relation to other minds, was like the
+receiver of a wireless station with an unlimited field. For,
+while the wireless could receive messages only from those
+instruments with which it was attuned, his mind was in key with
+all other minds. To read the thoughts of another, he had only to
+concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut off the
+thoughts of that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts
+elsewhere. But also he discovered that over the thoughts of those
+outside the range of his physical sight he had no control. When
+he asked of what Helen Carey was at that moment thinking, there
+was no result. But when he asked, "Of what is that policeman on
+the corner thinking?" he was surprised to find that that officer
+of the law was formulating regulations to abolish the hobble
+skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+
+As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in
+great distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the
+person of a young gentleman leaning against the park railing, he
+discovered the source from which the mental sufferings emanated.
+The young man was a pink-cheeked, yellow-haired youth of
+extremely boyish appearance, and dressed as if for the
+race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish face wore an
+expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was
+gazing at a house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the
+street. And his thoughts were these: "She is the best that ever
+lived, and I am the most ungrateful of fools. How happy were we
+in the house of yellow stucco! Only now, when she has closed its
+doors to me, do I know how happy! If she would give me another
+chance, never again would I distress or deceive her."
+
+So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an
+automobile of surprising smartness swept around the corner and
+drew up in front of the house of yellow stucco, and from it
+descended a charming young person. She was of the Dresden-
+shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of haunting beauty and
+innocence.
+
+"My wife!" exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And
+instantly he dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to
+a four-wheeler, was contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+
+With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow
+house and disappeared.
+
+The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act
+quickly. He shares the troubles of so many people that to the
+troubles of other people he becomes callous, and often will rush
+in where friends of the family fear to tread. Although Philip was
+not now acting as a reporter, he acted quickly. Hardly had the
+door closed upon the young lady than he had mounted the steps and
+rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he could not resist
+casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the outlawed
+husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from
+across the back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his
+clothes, of his general appearance, and of the manner in which he
+would delight to alter all of them, was quickly communicated to
+the American. They were thoughts of a nature so violent and
+uncomplimentary that Philip hastily cut off all connection.
+
+As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly
+announced:
+
+"Her ladyship is not receiving."
+
+"Her ladyship will, I think, receive me," said Philip pleasantly,
+"when you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his
+lordship."
+
+From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall
+there issued a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with
+joy; and in the hall the noble lady instantly appeared.
+
+When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought
+had been, "Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!" Philip
+felt no embarrassment whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab
+horse, was the erring but bitterly repentant husband; inside, her
+tenderest thoughts racing tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy
+child-wife begging to be begged to pardon.
+
+For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good
+manners, it was too easy.
+
+"I do not know you," said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she
+motioned to the butler to go away. "You must be one of his new
+friends." Her tone was one of envy.
+
+"Indeed, I am his newest friend," Philip assured her; "but I can
+safely say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are
+all of you!"
+
+The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she
+shook her head.
+
+"They tell me I must not believe him," she announced. "They tell
+me--"
+
+"Never mind what they tell you," commanded Philip. "Listen to ME.
+He loves you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks
+is the chance to tell you so. You cannot help but believe him.
+Who can look at you, and not believe that he loves you! Let me,"
+he begged, "bring him to you." He started from her when,
+remembering the somewhat violent thoughts of the youthful
+husband, he added hastily: "Or perhaps it would be better if you
+called him yourself."
+
+"Called him!" exclaimed the lady. "He is in Paris-at the
+races--with her!"
+
+"If they tell you that sort of thing," protested Philip
+indignantly, "you must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is
+not with her. There never was a her!"
+
+He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. "He is there--
+behind that ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell
+you that not only did he never do it; but, what is much more
+important, he will never do it again."
+
+The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then
+more boldly showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over
+the scarlet geraniums, she beckoned with both hands. The result
+was instantaneous. Philip bolted for the front door, leaving it
+open; and, as he darted down the steps, the youthful husband, in
+strides resembling those of an ostrich, shot past him. Philip did
+not cease running until he was well out of Berkeley Square. Then,
+not ill-pleased with the adventure, he turned and smiled back at
+the house of yellow stucco.
+
+"Bless you, my children," he murmured; "bless you!"
+
+He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the
+quieter entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered
+around it a considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red
+carpet that stretched down the steps of the hotel to a court
+carriage. A red carpet in June, when all is dry under foot and
+the sun is shining gently, can mean only royalty; and in the rear
+of the men in the street Philip halted. He remembered that for a
+few days the young King of Asturia and the Queen Mother were at
+the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen the young man who
+so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his own
+kingdom, Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+
+As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts
+of those about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of
+pity for the exiles; on the part of the policemen who had
+hastened from a cross street, of pride at their temporary
+responsibility; on the part of the coachman of the court
+carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount of his
+Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as
+the warm sunshine.
+
+And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts
+was shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was
+the thought of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was
+murder.
+
+"When they appear at the doorway," spoke the brain of the maniac,
+"I shall lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my
+head. I shall crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them
+and all of these people into eternity and me with them. But I
+shall LIVE--a martyr to the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!"
+
+Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for
+a tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing
+close to the open door of the court carriage. From the rear
+Philip seized him around the waist and locked his arms behind
+him, elbow to elbow. Philip's face, appearing over the man's
+shoulder, stared straight into that of the policeman.
+
+"He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!" yelled Philip. "I can
+hold him while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop
+it!" Philip turned upon the crowd. "Run! all of you!" he shouted.
+"Run like the devil!"
+
+At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still
+young and beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that
+her robes of mourning could not intensify, appeared in the
+doorway.
+
+"Go back, sir!" warned Philip. "He means to kill you!"
+
+At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady
+swayed helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang
+protectingly in front of her. But the danger was past. A second
+policeman was now holding the maniac by the wrists, forcing his
+arms above his head; Philip's arms, like a lariat, were wound
+around his chest; and from his pocket the first policeman
+gingerly drew forth a round, black object of the size of a glass
+fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved his free hand
+warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no one
+remaining to observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling
+and biting in the grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other
+policeman unhappily holding the bomb at arm's length, Philip
+sought to escape into the Ritz. But the young King broke through
+the circle of attendants and stopped him.
+
+"I must thank you," said the boy eagerly; "and I wish you to tell
+me how you came to suspect the man's purpose."
+
+Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of
+fiction, began to improvise fluently.
+
+"To learn their purpose, sir," he said, "is my business. I am of
+the International Police, and in the secret service of your
+Majesty."
+
+"Then I must know your name," said the King, and added with a
+dignity that was most becoming, "You will find we are not
+ungrateful."
+
+Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+
+"I said in your secret service," he repeated. "Did even your
+Majesty know me, my usefulness would be at an end." He pointed
+toward the two policemen. "If you desire to be just, as well as
+gracious, those are the men to reward."
+
+He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials
+into the hall and on into the corridor.
+
+The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through
+the heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact
+that they had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the
+corridor were still ignorant. The members of the Hungarian
+orchestra were arranging their music; a waiter was serving two
+men of middle age with sherry; and two distinguished-looking
+elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were talking in
+leisurely whispers.
+
+One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a
+reporter had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on
+matters concerning the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a
+Pennsylvania Dutchman from Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a
+foreman of the night shift in the same mills he now controlled.
+But with a roar and a spectacular flash, not unlike one of his
+own blast furnaces, he had soared to fame and fortune. He
+recognized Philip as one of the bright young men of the Republic;
+but in his own opinion he was far too self-important to betray
+that fact.
+
+Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a
+fountain in imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour,
+and ordered what he knew would be an execrable imitation of an
+American cocktail. While waiting for the cocktail and Lady
+Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip, from where he sat, could not
+help but overhear the conversation of Faust and of the man with
+him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features and a pointed
+beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American many-time
+millionaire on having that morning come into possession of a rare
+and valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently
+discovered portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+
+Philip sighed enviously.
+
+"Fancy," he thought, "owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to
+yourself! It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be
+poor!"
+
+The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in
+tones of rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and
+solemnity.
+
+"I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust," he said. "In no gallery
+in Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another
+Velasquez. This is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing
+Spain. You are robbing her of something worth more to her than
+Cuba. And I tell you, so soon as it is known that this Velasquez
+is going to your home in Pittsburgh, every Spaniard will hate you
+and every art-collector will hate you, too. For it is the most
+wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain, Mr. Faust!
+What a bargain!"
+
+To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust
+glanced in the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard,
+frowned importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he
+also raised his voice.
+
+"Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron," he said, "that costs
+three hundred thousand dollars!"
+
+Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly
+that Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So
+he obligingly assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored
+to mingle simulations of surprise, awe, and envy.
+
+The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his
+features.
+
+Mr. Faust continued. "If you will come upstairs," he said to the
+picture-dealer, "I will give you your check; and then I should
+like to drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the
+picture."
+
+"I am sorry," the Baron said, "but I have had it moved to my art
+gallery to be packed."
+
+"Then let's go to the gallery," urged the patron of art. "We've
+just time before lunch." He rose to his feet, and on the instant
+the soul of the picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+
+In actual words he said: "The picture is already boxed and in its
+lead coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am
+sorry." But his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were:
+"Fancy my letting this vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop!
+Even HE would know that old masters are not found in a
+half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames and canvases. Fancy my
+letting him see those two half-completed Van Dycks, the new Hals,
+the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own copy of
+Velasquez next to the one exactly like it--the one MacMillan
+finished yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next
+year, in a convent, we shall 'discover' it."
+
+Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight
+at the situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud.
+The two men, who had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young
+man laughing at nothing, turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+
+"Pardon me," he said to Faust, "but you spoke so loud I couldn't
+help overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter
+on the Republic."
+
+The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+
+"Really!" he protested irritably, "you reporters butt in
+everywhere. No public man is safe. Is there no place we can go
+where you fellows won't annoy us?"
+
+"You can go to the devil for all I care," said Philip, "or even
+to Pittsburgh!"
+
+He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation
+cocktail, and moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the
+reporter would escape him, hastily changed his tone. He spoke
+with effective resignation.
+
+"However, since you've learned so much," he said, "I'll tell you
+the whole of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of
+international importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?"
+
+"Do you?" asked Philip.
+
+The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+
+"I think I do," he said. "And to prove it, I shall tell you
+something that will be news to you. I have just bought a
+Velasquez that I am going to place in my art museum. It is worth
+three hundred thousand dollars."
+
+Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite
+as bad as he had expected.
+
+"Now, I shall tell you something," he said, "that will be news to
+you. You are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez
+than this hair oil is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a
+few dollars."
+
+"How dare you!" shouted Faust. "Are you mad?"
+
+The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+
+"Who is this insolent one?" he sputtered.
+
+"I will make you a sporting proposition," said Philip. "You can
+take it, or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will
+drive to this man's studio in Tate Street. You will find your
+Velasquez is there and not on its way to Liverpool. And you will
+find one exactly like it, and a dozen other 'old masters'
+half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm right! And I'll
+bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE YOU TO
+HIS STUDIO!"
+
+"Indeed, I will not," roared the German. "It would be to insult
+myself."
+
+"It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too," said
+Philip.
+
+"How dare you insult the Baron?" demanded Faust. "What makes you
+think--"
+
+"I don't think, I know!" said Philip. "For the price of a
+taxi-cab fare to Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds."
+
+"We will all three go at once," cried the German. "My car is
+outside. Wait here. I will have it brought to the door?"
+
+Faust protested indignantly.
+
+"Do not disturb yourself, Baron," he said; "just because a fresh
+reporter--"
+
+But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop
+there. They saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly,
+spring into a taxi, and shout excitedly to the driver. The next
+moment he had disappeared.
+
+"That's the last you'll see of him," said Philip.
+
+"His actions are certainly peculiar," gasped the millionaire. "He
+did not wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think,
+after all, I had better go to Tate Street."
+
+"Do so," said Philip, "and save yourself three hundred thousand
+dollars, and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me
+here at lunch. If I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds."
+
+"You should come with me," said Faust. "It is only fair to
+yourself."
+
+"I'll take your word for what you find in the studio," said
+Philip. "I cannot go. This is my busy day."
+
+Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and
+stick, and, in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+
+Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette.
+Save for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was
+still empty, and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his
+head sadly.
+
+"Surely," Philip thought, "the French chap was right who said
+words were given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world
+it would be if every one possessed my power. Deception would be
+quite futile and lying would become a lost art. I wonder," he
+mused cynically, "is any one quite honest? Does any one speak as
+he thinks and think as he speaks?"
+
+At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly
+gentlemen had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet
+from him.
+
+"I sincerely hope, Sir John," said one of the two, "that you have
+no regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the
+best interests of all?"
+
+"I do, indeed," the other replied heartily "We shall be thought
+entirely selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done
+is for the benefit of the shareholders."
+
+Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old
+gentlemen ran hand in hand with his spoken words. "Here, at
+least," he said to himself, "are two honest men."
+
+As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+
+"And I hope," continued the one addressed as Sir John, "that you
+approve of my holding back the public announcement of the combine
+until the afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better
+chance. Had we given out the news in this morning's papers the
+stockbrokers would have--"
+
+"It was most wise," interrupted the other. "Most just."
+
+The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other
+still standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind
+his back, his chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at
+nothing, his thoughts far away.
+
+Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were
+concerned with three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them
+separately; and Philip saw the emblems painted clearly in colors,
+fluttering and flattened by the breeze. Again, the gentleman
+considered them in various combinations; but always, in whatever
+order his mind arranged them, of the three his heart spoke always
+to the same flag, as the heart of a mother reaches toward her
+firstborn.
+
+Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old
+gentleman was watching the launching of a little schooner from a
+shipyard on the Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags--a
+flag with a red cross on a white ground. With thoughts tender and
+grateful, he followed her to strange, hot ports, through
+hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her return again and again to
+the London docks, laden with odorous coffee, mahogany, red
+rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her wake
+to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place
+of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great
+ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no
+village is equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of
+electric lamps, suite after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with
+the floating harps that vibrate to a love message three hundred
+miles away, to the fierce call for help from a sinking ship. But
+at the main of each great vessel there still flew the same
+house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now in the
+arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+
+Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down
+the corridor to the telephone.
+
+Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend
+and a stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never
+before addressed him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the
+telephone.
+
+Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+
+"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want
+you to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of
+the Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle."
+
+He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+
+"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called. "It has
+fallen through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds."
+
+Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a
+five-pound note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+
+"I don't care what they are," he shouted. "The combine is already
+signed and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour
+everybody will know it!"
+
+"What makes you think you know it?" demanded the broker.
+
+"I've seen the house-flags!" cried Philip. "I have--do as I tell
+you," he commanded.
+
+There was a distracting delay.
+
+"No matter who's back of you," objected Maddox, "it's a big order
+on a gamble."
+
+"It's not a gamble," cried Philip. "It's an accomplished fact.
+I'm at the Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when
+you've got a thousand of each, stop!"
+
+Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth;
+so for half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself
+to read the illustrated papers. When he found he had read the
+same advertisement five times, he returned to the telephone. The
+telephone boy met him half-way with a message.
+
+"Have secured for you a thousand shares of each," he read, "at
+fifteen. Maddox."
+
+Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate
+the horror of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was
+sufficiently horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for
+them, he had bought shares in three steamship lines, which
+shares, added together, were worth two hundred and twenty five
+thousand dollars. He returned down the corridor toward the
+lounge. Trembling at his own audacity, he was in a state of
+almost complete panic, when that happened which made his
+outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was drawing near
+to half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men and
+beautiful ladies, the component parts of different luncheon
+parties were beginning to assemble.
+
+Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one
+guest had arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one
+was sufficient. It was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes
+fixed on the doors opening from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart
+singing with appeals, blessings, and adoration, ran toward her.
+Her profile was toward him, and she could not see him; but he
+could see her. And he noted that, as though seeking some one, her
+eyes were turned searchingly upon each young man as he entered
+and moved from one to another of those already in the lounge. Her
+expression was eager and anxious.
+
+"If only," Philip exclaimed, "she were looking for me! She
+certainly is looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?"
+
+As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted
+in his steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind?
+Why did he not KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip
+fixed his mind upon the waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally
+Philip demanded of him: "Of what are you thinking?"
+
+There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette
+hanging from Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and
+proffered it. Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing
+the half-burned cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary
+match. And of no step in that mental process had Philip been
+conscious! The conclusion was only too apparent. His power was
+gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+
+Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he
+considered them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used
+his power to his own advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had
+exerted it for the happiness of the two lovers, to save the life
+of the King, to thwart the dishonesty of a swindler, he had been
+all-powerful; but when he endeavored to bend it to his own uses,
+it had fled from him. As he stood abashed and repentant, Helen
+turned her eyes toward him; and, at the sight of him, there
+leaped to them happiness and welcome and complete content. It was
+"the look that never was on land or sea," and it was not
+necessary to be a mind reader to understand it. Philip sprang
+toward her as quickly as a man dodges a taxi-cab.
+
+"I came early," said Helen, "because I wanted to talk to you
+before the others arrived." She seemed to be repeating words
+already rehearsed, to be following a course of conduct already
+predetermined. "I want to tell you," she said, "that I am sorry
+you are going away. I want to tell you that I shall miss you very
+much." She paused and drew a long breath. And she looked at
+Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her to go
+on.
+
+Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+
+"Will you miss me," he asked, "in the Row, where I used to wait
+among the trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances,
+where I used to hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing
+by? Will you miss me at night, when you come home by sunrise, and
+I am not hiding against the railings of the Carlton Club, just to
+see you run across the pavement from your carriage, just to see
+the light on your window blind, just to see the light go out, and
+to know that you are sleeping?"
+
+Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+
+"Did you use to do that?" she asked.
+
+"Every night I do that," said Philip. "Ask the policemen! They
+arrested me three times."
+
+"Why?" said Helen gently.
+
+But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+
+"They thought I was a burglar."
+
+Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+
+"You know what I mean," she said. "Why did you keep guard outside
+my window?"
+
+"It was the policeman kept guard," said Philip. "I was there only
+as a burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a
+conscience, or else I knew my own unworthiness." There was a long
+pause. As both of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward,
+always remembered, the Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence,
+was playing the "Grizzly Bear," and people were trying to speak
+to Helen. By her they were received with a look of so complete a
+lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare of such savage
+hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to last for
+many years.
+
+At last Helen said: "Do you know the story of the two roses? They
+grew in a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One
+looked up at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the
+other climbed to the lady's window, and she lifted him in and
+kissed him--because he had dared to climb."
+
+Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not
+mind his doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled
+with tears. She was delighted to find that she was making it very
+hard for him, too.
+
+"At any moment," Philip said, "I may know whether I owe two
+hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay,
+or whether I am worth about that sum. I should like to continue
+this conversation at the exact place where you last spoke--AFTER
+I know whether I am going to jail, or whether I am worth a
+quarter of a million dollars."
+
+Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+
+"I knew that was it!" she cried. "You don't like my money. I was
+afraid you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give
+it away, or I will give it to you to keep for me. The money does
+not matter, so long as you don't dislike me."
+
+What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a
+page in many buttons rushed at him with a message from the
+telephone, and with a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It
+read: "Combine is announced, shares have gone to thirty-one,
+shall I hold or sell?"
+
+That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt
+Helen deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the
+message three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to
+his own sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth
+almost a quarter of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his
+last and only five-pound note. He pushed the boy from him.
+
+"Run!" he commanded. "Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!"
+
+He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be
+questioned or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to
+break the silence, Helen said: "Is it good news?"
+
+"That depends entirely upon you," replied Philip soberly.
+"Indeed, all my future life depends upon what you are going to
+say next."
+
+Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+
+"And--what am I going to say?"
+
+"How can I know that?" demanded Philip. "Am I a mind reader?"
+
+But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they
+both chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns,
+which they shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+
+Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for
+the taxi-cab.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning
+dynasty, socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of
+the trolley line, the telephone company, and the Keep National
+Bank. But Fred, his son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit
+the business ability of his father; or, if he did, he took pains
+to conceal that fact. Fred had gone through Harvard, but as to
+that also, unless he told people, they would not have known it.
+Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told him.
+
+When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of
+the innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg
+would soon lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each
+had sighed for other social worlds to conquer, and when they
+combined their fortunes and ambitions they found Keepsburg
+impossible, and they left it to lay siege to New York. They were
+too crafty to at once attack New York itself. A widow lady they
+met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had told them not to
+attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent of a
+society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them
+that in New York the waiting-list is already interminable, and
+that, if you hoped to break into New York society, the clever
+thing to do was to lay siege to it by way of the suburbs and the
+country clubs. If you went direct to New York knowing no one, you
+would at once expose that fact, and the result would be
+disastrous.
+
+She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and
+from the West, who, at the first dance to which they were
+invited, asked, "Who is the old lady in the wig?" and that
+question argued them so unknown that it set them back two years.
+It was a terrible story, and it filled the Keeps with misgivings.
+They agreed with the lady correspondent that it was far better to
+advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves in the
+suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from
+Keepsburg, which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long
+Island, or Westchester, or Bordentown.
+
+"In all of those places," explained the widow lady, "our smartest
+people have country homes, and at the country club you may get to
+know them. Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the
+city."
+
+The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of
+them could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish
+should be fought and won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow
+Country Club. But the attack did not succeed. Something went
+wrong. They began to fear that the lady correspondent had given
+them the wrong dope. For, although three months had passed, and
+they had played golf together until they were as loath to clasp a
+golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one, and no one knew
+them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and if you
+lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you
+were not to be found on any map.
+
+Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van
+Wardens had looked down upon the river that bears his name, and
+ever since those days the Van Wardens had looked down upon
+everybody else. They were so proud that at all their gates they
+had placed signs reading, "No horses allowed. Take the other
+road." The other road was an earth road used by tradespeople from
+Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and automobiles,
+was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden estate
+the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the
+sort of people who occupy cemeteries--except "Harry" Van Warden,
+and she lived in New York at the Turf Club.
+
+Harry, according to all local tradition--for he frequently
+motored out to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat--and,
+according to the newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no
+sense cold or unsociable. So far as the Keeps read of him, he was
+always being arrested for overspeeding, or breaking his
+collar-bone out hunting, or losing his front teeth at polo. This
+greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden Koopf; not because
+Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but because it
+dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+
+"If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing
+golf," sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, "you would meet Harry
+Van Warden, and he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we
+could break in anywhere."
+
+"If I was to ride to hounds," returned her husband, "the only
+thing I'd break would be my neck."
+
+The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and
+for the purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was
+perfect. The house was one they had rented from a man of charming
+taste and inflated fortune; and with it they had taken over his
+well-disciplined butler, his pictures, furniture, family silver,
+and linen. It stood upon an eminence, was heavily wooded, and
+surrounded by many gardens; but its chief attraction was an
+artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay directly below
+the terrace of the house and also in full view from the road to
+Albany.
+
+This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the
+neighborhood were many Italian laborers, and on several nights
+the fish had tempted these born poachers to trespass; and more
+than once, on hot summer evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and
+Ossining had broken through the hedge, and used the lake as a
+swimming-pool.
+
+"It makes me nervous," complained Winnie. "I don't like the idea
+of people prowling around so near the house. And think of those
+twelve hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of
+them are burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the
+very first one they'll break into."
+
+"I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our
+house yet," said Fred, "and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!"
+
+They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake.
+It was just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful
+October night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens,
+the rows of close-clipped box. A full moon was just showing
+itself above the tree-tops, turning the lake into moving silver.
+Fred rose from his wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride,
+touched her hair fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+
+"What if we don't know anybody, Win," he said, "and nobody knows
+us? It's been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just
+look at it that way, it works out all right. We came here really
+for our honeymoon, to be together, to be alone--"
+
+Winnie laughed shortly. "They certainly have left us alone!" she
+sighed.
+
+"But where else could we have been any happier?" demanded the
+young husband loyally. "Where will you find any prettier place
+than this, just as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and
+silent? There's nothing the matter with that moon, is there?
+Nothing the matter with the lake? Where's there a better place
+for a honeymoon? It's a bower--a bower of peace, solitude
+a--bower of--"
+
+As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping
+countryside the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous,
+virulent, insulting. It came as sharply as a scream of terror, it
+continued in a bellow of rage. Then, as suddenly as it had cried
+aloud, it sank to silence; only after a pause of an instant, as
+though giving a signal, to shriek again in two sharp blasts. And
+then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream of rage,
+insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who
+heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+
+"In the name of Heaven!" gasped Keep, "what's that?"
+
+Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he
+stopped, he spoke as though he were announcing dinner. "A
+convict, sir," he said, "has escaped from Sing Sing. I thought
+you might not understand the whistle. I thought perhaps you would
+wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors."
+
+"Why?" asked Winnie Keep.
+
+"The house is near the road, madam," said the butler. "And there
+are so many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here,
+and the keepers--there was a fight." The man glanced at Keep.
+Fred touched his wife on the arm.
+
+"It's time to dress for dinner, Win," he said.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" demanded Winnie.
+
+I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to
+change." He turned to the butler. "And I'll have a cocktail, too
+I'll have it out here."
+
+The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from
+the terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely.
+"Fred," she begged, "you--you're not going to poke around in the
+bushes, are you?--just because you think I'm frightened?"
+
+Her husband laughed at her. "I certainly am NOT!" he said. "And
+you're not frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a
+minute."
+
+But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night
+the siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very
+door, to beat and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and
+held her fingers to her ears.
+
+"Why don't they stop it!" she whispered. "Why don't they give him
+a chance!"
+
+When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the
+edge of the terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his
+hands, sat staring down at the lake. The moon had cleared the
+tops of the trees, had blotted the lawns with black, rigid
+squares, had disguised the hedges with wavering shadows.
+Somewhere near at hand a criminal--a murderer, burglar, thug--was
+at large, and the voice of the prison he had tricked still
+bellowed in rage, in amazement, still clamored not only for his
+person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside heard it:
+the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the guests
+of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red candle shades; the joy
+riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It
+woke the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The
+granite walls of the Palisades flung it back against the granite
+walls of the prison. Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted
+him, reaching for him, pointing him out--stirring in the heart of
+each who heard it the lust of the hunter, which never is so cruel
+as when the hunted thing is a man.
+
+"Find him!" shrieked the siren. "Find him! He's there, behind
+your hedge! He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in
+the moonlight. THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop
+him! Drag him down! He's mine! Mine!"
+
+But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made
+the home of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with
+his soul. Each, clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling
+with a fearful joy, each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the
+strength of his will the hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled
+panting through the crisp October night, bewildered by strange
+lights, beset by shadows, staggering and falling, running like a
+mad dog in circles, knowing that wherever his feet led him the
+siren still held him by the heels.
+
+As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the
+room adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly
+singing to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on
+this night, although her room was directly above where he sat
+upon the terrace, he heard no singing. He had been on the terrace
+for a quarter of an hour. Gridley, the aged butler who was rented
+with the house, and who for twenty years had been an inmate of
+it, had brought the cocktail and taken away the empty glass. And
+Keep had been alone with his thoughts. They were entirely of the
+convict. If the man suddenly confronted him and begged his aid,
+what would he do? He knew quite well what he would do. He
+considered even the means by which he would assist the fugitive
+to a successful get-away.
+
+The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh
+his duty to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when
+he had visited "the institution," as a somewhat sensitive
+neighborhood prefers to speak of it, he was told that the chance
+of a prisoner's escaping from Sing Sing and not being at once
+retaken was one out of six thousand. So with Fred it was largely
+a sporting proposition. Any man who could beat a
+six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+
+And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine
+himself in the place of the man who at that very moment was
+endeavoring to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he
+decided, rid himself of his tell-tale clothing. But that would
+leave him naked, and in Westchester County a naked man would be
+quite as conspicuous as one in the purple-gray cloth of the
+prison. How could he obtain clothes? He might hold up a
+passer-by, and, if the passer-by did not flee from him or punch
+him into insensibility, he might effect an exchange of garments;
+he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might
+despoil a scarecrow.
+
+But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The
+question deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe
+himself? And as he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a
+naked man emerged. He was not entirely undraped. For around his
+nakedness he had drawn a canvas awning. Fred recognized it as
+having been torn from one of the row-boats in the lake. But,
+except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He was a young
+man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face
+smooth-shaven, and above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He
+had the sharp, clever, rat-like face of one who lived by evil
+knowledge. Water dripped from him, and either for that reason or
+from fright the young man trembled, and, like one who had been
+running, breathed in short, hard gasps.
+
+Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least
+surprised. It was as though he had been waiting for the man, as
+though it had been an appointment.
+
+Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid
+himself of his visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and
+that the man, not knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state
+to commit murder, might rush him. But the stranger made no
+hostile move, and for a moment in the moonlight the two young men
+eyed each other warily.
+
+Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the
+chattering of his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+
+"I took a bath in your pond," he blurted forth, "and--and they
+stole my clothes! That's why I'm like this!"
+
+Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious
+narrative how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid
+himself of accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He
+regarded the stranger with admiration. But even though he
+applauded the other's invention, he could not let him suppose
+that he was deceived by it.
+
+"Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?" he said.
+
+As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent
+fit of shivering.
+
+"It wasn't a bath," he gasped. "It was a bet!"
+
+"A what!" exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. "A bet?
+Then you are not alone?"
+
+"I am NOW--damn them!" exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+reluctantly. "We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting
+here in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip
+and swim across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now
+it was framed up on me from the start. For when I was swimming
+back I saw them run to where I'd left my clothes, and then I
+heard them crank up, and when I got to the hedge the car was
+gone!"
+
+Keep smiled encouragingly. "The car!" he assented. "So you've
+been riding around in the moonlight?"
+
+The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon
+them the roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper
+rage, and came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the
+naked one cursed fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further
+questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking,
+he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his
+anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of Keep.
+
+"You--you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?" he
+stuttered. "Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all
+right," he added; reassuringly. "I live near here."
+
+With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look,
+the young man continued less confidently.
+
+"I don't blame you if you don't believe it," he stammered,
+"seeing me like this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody
+around here knows me, and I guess you've read about me in the
+papers, too. I'm--that is, my name--" like one about to take a
+plunge he drew a short breath, and the rat-like eyes regarded
+Keep watchfully--"my name is Van Warden. I'm the one you read
+about--Harry--I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but
+his smile was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he
+could not longer enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+
+"My boy!" he exclaimed, "you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a
+genius!" He rose and made a peremptory gesture. "Sorry," he said,
+"but this isn't safe for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress
+you up and send you where you want to go." He turned and
+whispered over his shoulder: "Some day let me hear from you. A
+man with your nerve--"
+
+In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+
+The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room.
+First making sure the library and hall were free of servants,
+Fred tiptoed to the coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on
+the electric light. The naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of
+damp footprints, followed at his heels.
+
+Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from
+hooks, and on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+
+"Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes," he commanded. "They'll
+cover you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you
+here while I get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt
+in, don't lose your head. Just say you're waiting to see me--Mr.
+Keep. I won't be long. Wait."
+
+"Wait!" snorted the stranger. "You BET I'll wait!'
+
+As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing
+himself violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+
+In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis
+shirt, boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out
+for him, and he snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money
+in his bureau drawer he counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully
+he slipped the money in the trousers pocket of the serge suit and
+with the bundle of clothes in his arms raced downstairs and
+shoved them into the coat-room.
+
+"Don't come out until I knock," he commanded. "And," he added in
+a vehement whisper, "don't come out at all unless you have
+clothes on!"
+
+The stranger grunted.
+
+Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around
+to the door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes.
+When the butler had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the
+coat-room door. The stranger had draped himself in the
+underclothes and the shirt, and at the moment was carefully
+arranging the tie.
+
+"Hurry!" commanded Keep. "The car'll be here in a minute. Where
+shall I tell him to take you?"
+
+The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be
+returning. "New York," he whispered, "fast as he can get there!
+Look here," he added doubtfully, "there's a roll of bills in
+these clothes."
+
+"They're yours," said Fred.
+
+The stranger exclaimed vigorously. "You're all right!" he
+whispered. "I won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the
+money back same time I send the clothes."
+
+"Exactly!" said Fred.
+
+The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and
+Fred slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before
+it. After a period which seemed to stretch over many minutes
+there came from the inside a cautious knocking. With equal
+caution Fred opened the door of the width of a finger, and put
+his ear to the crack.
+
+"You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?" whispered the
+stranger.
+
+Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda,
+hailed the chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy,
+and when Keep had gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him.
+Keep knew the boy could be trusted.
+
+"You're to take a man to New York," he said, "or wherever he
+wants to go. Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if
+YOU'RE questioned, you can say you know nothing. That's for your
+own good!"
+
+The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the
+steps. As he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still
+demanding its prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit
+him a physical blow, the youth jumped. He turned and lifted
+startled, inquiring eyes to where Keep stood above him.
+
+"I told you," said Keep, "to ask no questions.
+
+As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the
+stairs toward him. She had changed to one of the prettiest
+evening gowns of her trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was
+the combination of herself and the gown that her husband's
+excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he was lost in
+admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the door
+of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet
+the stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men
+suddenly appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp
+shriek.
+
+With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon
+the visitor
+
+"Did you fix it?" he demanded.
+
+The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration,
+his eyes were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision
+presented by Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient
+presence of mind to nod his head dully.
+
+"Come," commanded Fred. "The car is waiting."
+
+Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before
+seen a woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a
+trance, he stood still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his
+eyes. In her turn, Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like
+a groom out of livery, so overcome by her mere presence as to be
+struck motionless and inarticulate. For protection she moved in
+some alarm toward her husband.
+
+The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been
+intended for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a
+parrot reciting its lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+
+"My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden."
+
+He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as
+though he had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as
+though a stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+
+But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words
+produced an instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated
+excitement and delight. How her husband had succeeded in
+capturing the social prize of Scarboro she could not imagine,
+but, for doing so, she flashed toward him a glance of deep and
+grateful devotion.
+
+Then she beamed upon the stranger. "Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to
+dinner?" she asked.
+
+Her husband emitted a howl. "He will NOT!" he cried. "He's not
+that kind of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that
+fixes the telephone!"
+
+He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and
+dragged him down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the
+visitor stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at
+the beautiful lady. Fred thrust him into the seat beside the
+chauffeur. Pointing at the golf-cap and automobile goggles which
+the stranger was stupidly twisting in his hands, Fred whispered
+fiercely:
+
+"Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what
+to do."
+
+With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting
+for the signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to
+throw in the clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge
+beside the driveway, directly in front of the wheels, something
+on all fours threw itself upon the gravel; something in a suit of
+purple-gray; something torn and bleeding, smeared with sweat and
+dirt; something that cringed and crawled, that tried to rise and
+sank back upon its knees, lifting to the glare of the head-lights
+the white face and white hair of a very old, old man. The
+kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in the pit
+of the stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man
+stretched his arms toward them. From long disuse his voice
+cracked and broke.
+
+"I'm done!" he sobbed. "I can't go no farther! I give myself up!"
+
+Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the
+prison siren shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+
+It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred,
+and slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he
+flung it over the suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped
+upon the old man's frightened eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down
+over the white hair. With one arm he lifted the convict, and with
+the other dragged and pushed him into the seat beside the
+chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he thrust the roll of
+bills.
+
+"Get him away!" he ordered. "It's only twelve miles to the
+Connecticut line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a
+ticket to Boston. Go through White Plains to Greenwich--and then
+you're safe!"
+
+As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the
+car, he swung upon Fred. "Am I right?" he demanded.
+
+"Of course!" roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as
+though throwing him into space.
+
+"Get-to-hell-out-of-here!" he shouted.
+
+The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human
+being, chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With
+a grinding of gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its
+ruby rear lamp winking in farewell, its tiny siren answering the
+great siren of the prison in jeering notes of joy and victory.
+
+Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict
+proposed to leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger
+remained motionless.
+
+Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized
+the stranger by the arm.
+
+"But you?" he demanded. "How are you going to get away?"
+
+The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step
+stood Winnie Keep.
+
+"I don't want to get away," he said. "I was hoping, maybe, you'd
+let me stay to dinner."
+
+A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He
+moved so that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of
+the stranger.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," Fred demanded, "who the devil you
+are?"
+
+The stranger exclaimed peevishly. "I've BEEN telling you all
+evening," he protested. "I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+
+"Dinner is served, madam," he said.
+
+The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. "Hello, Gridley!"
+he cried. "Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if
+he'll ask me to dinner, I won't steal the spoons."
+
+Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the
+privilege of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the
+stranger fondly, proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship,
+with the affection of an old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to
+Keep.
+
+"If Mr. Harry--Mr. Van Warden," he said, "is to stay to dinner,
+might I suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert,
+'84."
+
+Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then
+at his wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly
+happy.
+
+Gridley coughed tentatively. "Shall I open a bottle, sir?" he
+asked.
+
+Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+
+"Open a case!" he roared.
+
+At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a
+state of such mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling
+each other by their first names, Gridley brought in a written
+message he had taken from the telephone. It was a long-distance
+call from Yonkers, sent by James, the faithful chauffeur.
+
+Fred read it aloud.
+
+"I got that party the articles he needed," it read, "and saw him
+safe on a train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for
+speeding the car on the way down. Please send money. I am in a
+cell in Yonkers."
+
+
+
+Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man
+with the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three
+times. Twice, unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road
+and once on Round Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch
+the sunset. Jimmie knew people do not climb hills merely to look
+at sunsets, so he was not deceived. He guessed the man was a
+German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to "stalk" him.
+From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good as
+dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for "stalking"
+and "path-finding," not to boast of others for "gardening" and
+"cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had, General Baden-Powell
+remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
+Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and
+by inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are
+one of the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen;
+and with Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to
+when the acres of the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston
+post road to the coach road to Albany, and when the first
+Gouverneur Morris stood on one of his hills and saw the Indian
+canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and rejoiced that all the
+land between belonged to him.
+
+If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and
+hunted deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where
+Jimmie hunted weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain
+why to Jimmie, from Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the
+roads, the woods, and the cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs
+hidden in the woods were as familiar as his own kitchen garden,
+
+Nor explain why, when you could not see a Pease and Elliman "For
+Sale" sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see in the highest
+branches a last year's bird's nest.
+
+Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his
+scout's axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt
+that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same
+Indian, and with his own tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes
+when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the
+autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing
+to see a panther facing him.
+
+But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would
+reassure himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile
+climbing a hill with the muffler open would seem to suggest he
+was right. But still Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt
+at that same spring, and that when he raised his eyes he had
+faced a crouching panther. "Mebbe dad told me it happened to
+grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed it, or, mebbe, I
+read it in a story book."
+
+The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the
+boy scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was
+spending the week end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young
+Van Vorst, besides being a justice of the peace and a Master of
+Beagles and President of the Country Club, was also a local
+"councilman" for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought his guest to a
+camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In deference to his audience,
+Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of
+the part they were playing in the great war. It was his
+peroration that made trouble.
+
+"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at
+war with Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to
+do his bit. You can begin now. When the Germans land it will be
+near New Haven, or New Bedford. They will first capture the
+munition works at Springfield, Hartford, and Watervliet so as to
+make sure of their ammunition, and then they will start for New
+York City. They will follow the New Haven and New York Central
+railroads, and march straight through this village. I haven't the
+least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet, "that at
+this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
+blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun
+positions, to find out which of these hills enfilade the others
+and to learn to what extent their armies can live on the country.
+They are counting the cows, the horses, the barns where fodder is
+stored; and they are marking down on their maps the wells and
+streams."
+
+As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind
+the door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. "Keep your eyes open!" he
+commanded. "Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get
+word quick to your sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember
+the scouts' motto, 'Be prepared!'"
+
+That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and
+hayrick they saw spiked helmets.
+
+Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+
+"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, you'll talk on
+'Votes for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate
+agent who dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to
+drive people away from Westchester, we're trying to sell them
+building sites."
+
+"YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now,
+and you're trying to buy the other half."
+
+"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know
+WHY I am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it
+is trouble. The Italians make charges against my best friends for
+overspeeding and I have to fine them, and my best friends bring
+charges against the Italians for poaching, and when I fine the
+Italians, they send me Black Hand letters. And now every day I'll
+be asked to issue a warrant for a German spy who is selecting gun
+sites. And he will turn out to be a millionaire who is tired of
+living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to 'own his own home' and
+his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being arrested that
+he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break into the
+Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!"
+
+The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as
+Jimmie Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had
+filled one mind with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a
+holiday had been to spend it scouting in the woods. In this
+pleasure he was selfish. He did not want companions who talked,
+and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they frightened the
+wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked to
+pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
+adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to
+the top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat
+woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two
+hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie and watch,
+off its guard, a rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a
+crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made
+believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he was a scout of the
+Continental Army and carried despatches to General Washington.
+The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in the
+fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along
+the same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken
+prisoner, and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom
+shot. Or else why on his sleeve was the badge for "stalking." But
+always to have to make believe became monotonous. Even "dry
+shopping" along the Rue de la Paix when you pretend you can have
+anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but
+unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out
+German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a week
+at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect
+his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in
+which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer
+need he waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy
+rabbit rob a carrot field. The game now was his fellow-man and
+his enemy; not only his enemy, but the enemy of his country.
+
+In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man
+looked the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising
+spectacles, and he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned
+out to be a professor from the Museum of Natural History, who
+wanted to dig for Indian arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened
+to arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie
+escaped only by leading the professor to a secret cave of his
+own, though on some one else's property, where one not only could
+dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor was delighted,
+but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week following
+Jimmie was again disappointed.
+
+On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was
+acting in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes
+in a book, and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road
+was stuffed with blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to
+guess his purpose. He was planning to blow up the Kensico dam,
+and cut off the water supply of New York City. Seven millions of
+people without water! With out firing a shot, New York must
+surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk of
+his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he followed
+the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
+mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico
+dam, was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large
+part of the Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more
+successful. From the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a
+hilltop below him a man working alone upon a basin of concrete.
+The man was a German-American, and already on Jimmie's list of
+"suspects." That for the use of the German artillery he was
+preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was only too evident.
+But closer investigation proved that the concrete was only two
+inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin was
+built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect a
+fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
+discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told
+him his troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. "My
+advice to you, Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing
+everybody of espionage is a very serious matter. If you call a
+man a spy, it's sometimes hard for him to disprove it; and the
+name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before you arrest any more
+people, come to me first for a warrant."
+
+So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+
+Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a
+handy man with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying
+shingles along a blue chalk line, few were as expert. It was
+August, there was no school, and Jimmie was carrying a
+dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a new barn. He
+made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young man
+in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed
+to be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply
+tanned, and, from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so,
+at once, Jimmie mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met
+him again. It had not been raining, but the clothes of the young
+man were damp. Jimmie guessed that while the dew was still on the
+leaves the young man had been forcing his way through underbrush.
+The stranger must have remembered Jimmie, for he laughed and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it
+now, or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"
+
+Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said
+Jimmie; "when did you have your breakfast?"
+
+"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an
+appetite, and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite.
+Which is the shortest way back to Bedford?"
+
+"The first road to your right," said Jimmie.
+
+"Is it far?" asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very
+hungry was evident.
+
+"It's a half-hour's walk," said Jimmie
+
+"If I live that long," corrected the young man; and stepped out
+briskly.
+
+Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would
+shut him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that
+distance, and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road,
+"stalked" him. From behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and
+look back, and seeing no one in the road behind him, also leave
+it and plunge into the woods.
+
+He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like
+a runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead
+of him he heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving
+rapidly as one who knew his way. At times through the branches
+Jimmie could see the broad shoulders of the stranger, and again
+could follow his progress only by the noise of the crackling
+twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed the stranger had
+reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered, that led to
+Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also reached
+it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road, he
+approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like
+the whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it
+had been hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The
+stranger was at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust,
+the car raced toward Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that
+it bore a Connecticut State license; that in the wheel-ruts the
+tires printed little V's, like arrow-heads.
+
+For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and
+dusty miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they
+lured him south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust,
+and fresh-spread tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran
+before. In his sleep as in his copy-book, he saw endless chains
+of V's. But not once could he catch up with the wheels that
+printed them. A week later, just at sunset as he passed below
+Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the skyline, in
+silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as a
+flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round
+Hill offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a
+skull. Until the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And
+the stranger was in no haste. The sun sank and from the west
+Jimmie saw him turn his face east toward the Sound. A storm was
+gathering, drops of rain began to splash and as the sky grew
+black the figure on the hilltop faded into the darkness. And
+then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it, there
+suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
+cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling.
+The time for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie
+raced to the top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down
+it, vaulted a stone wall, forced his way through a tangle of
+saplings, and held his breath to listen. Just beyond him, over a
+jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was tripping and tumbling.
+Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned hot. It sounded
+as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie shook his
+fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the coming
+storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+
+"You wait!" he shouted. "I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring
+a gun."
+
+Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering
+over the chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his
+borrowing the family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in
+the pocket of his shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and
+kill, to take with traps or other devices."
+
+He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he
+arrested more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an
+impatient shake of the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from
+him. After what he had seen he could not possibly be again
+mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What he had seen was his
+warrant--plus the shotgun.
+
+As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where
+he had lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a
+warmer trail. Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp
+from the rain of the night before, two lines of little
+arrow-heads pointed the way. They were so fresh that at each
+twist in the road, lest the car should be just beyond him, Jimmie
+slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew hot. The
+tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and Jimmie
+broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
+right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But
+the tires had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the
+wood, he found the car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways.
+Should he seek the spy on the nearest hilltop, or, until the
+owner returned, wait by the car. Between lying in ambush and
+action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did not climb the hill
+nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked that hill.
+
+Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless.
+Before him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys.
+Six miles away to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red
+roofs of Greenwich. Directly before him were no signs of
+habitation, only green forests, green fields, gray stone walls,
+and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash of white, that quivered
+in the heat. The storm of the night before had washed the air.
+Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the glare of
+the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
+those in a colored photograph; and as still.
+
+In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+
+"If he moves," he sighed happily, "I've got him!"
+
+Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of
+which he had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but
+the top was crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as
+though establishing an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall,
+moss-covered and wrapped in poison-ivy. In places, the branches
+of the trees, reaching out to the sun, overhung the wall and hid
+it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the hill into sectors. He
+began at the right, and slowly followed the wall. With his eyes
+he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised his head,
+Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
+the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed,
+Jimmie knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had
+betrayed him. Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at
+the top of the hill opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his
+back against the stone wall. With the binoculars to his eyes he
+had leaned too far forward, and upon the glass the sun had
+flashed a warning.
+
+Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear.
+Backward, like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and
+hidden by the contour of the hill, raced down it and into the
+woods on the hill opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of
+the oak beneath which he had seen the stranger, he stood erect,
+and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on tip-toe to the
+wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars hung from
+a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He was
+marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he hummed a tune.
+
+Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered
+him.
+
+"Throw up your hands!" he commanded.
+
+The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he
+gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little
+sun-filled valley. They were half closed as though in study, as
+though perplexed by some deep and intricate problem. They
+appeared to see beyond the sun-filled valley some place of
+greater moment, some place far distant.
+
+Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff,
+but still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the
+boy, his smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement,
+and disbelief. These were followed instantly by an expression of
+the most acute alarm. "Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the
+stranger. "Is it loaded?" With his cheek pressed to the stock and
+his eye squinted down the length of the brown barrel, Jimmie
+nodded. The stranger flung up his open palms. They accented his
+expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to be exclaiming,
+"Can such things be?"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Jimmie.
+
+With alacrity the stranger rose.
+
+"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take
+off those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing
+his eyes from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his
+neck and tossed them to the stone wall. "See here!" he pleaded,
+"if you'll only point that damned blunderbuss the other way, you
+can have the glasses, and my watch, and clothes, and all my
+money; only don't--"
+
+Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At
+least, he tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or
+because he was excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With
+mortification, Jimmie flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger
+was not amused. At Jimmie's words he seemed rather the more
+amazed.
+
+"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want
+anything, why are you holding me up?"
+
+"I'm not," returned Jimmie, "I'm arresting you!"
+
+The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he
+cried, "I see! Have I been trespassing?"
+
+With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and
+the stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over
+the wall. "If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you
+full of buckshot."
+
+The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. "Don't worry about
+that," he exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?"
+
+Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted
+the binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his
+shoulder, and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now
+stern and menacing.
+
+"The name on them" he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your
+name?" The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied
+gravely, "That's the name of the firm that makes them."
+
+Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. "Hah!" he cried, "made in Germany!"
+
+The stranger shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "Where WOULD a Weiss glass be
+made?" With polite insistence he repeated, "Would you mind
+telling me why I am arrested, and who you might happen to be?"
+
+Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map,
+and as he did so, for the first time the face of the stranger
+showed that he was annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps.
+They told him nothing. But the penciled notes on this one made
+easy reading. At his first glance he saw, "Correct range, 1,800
+yards"; "this stream not fordable"; "slope of hill 15 degrees
+inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here"; "forage
+for five squadrons."
+
+Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and
+with the gun motioned toward the base of the hill. "Keep forty
+feet ahead of me," he commanded, "and walk to your car." The
+stranger did not seem to hear him. He spoke with irritation.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "I'll have to explain to you about that
+map."
+
+"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to
+drive straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!"
+
+The stranger tossed his arms even higher. "Thank God!" he
+exclaimed gratefully.
+
+With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made
+a willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van
+Vorst's he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear
+seat Jimmie held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an
+extenuating circumstance.
+
+They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst
+and a bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house.
+Seeing the car climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile
+led from his lodge to his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing
+in the tonneau brandishing a gun, the Judge hastily descended.
+The sight of the spy hunter filled him with misgiving, but the
+sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting German spies for
+a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was great. And
+now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the hands
+of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added
+presence of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic
+looking chauffeur increased his sense of security. Their presence
+seemed to afford a feeling of security to the prisoner also. As
+he brought the car to a halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh
+of deep relief.
+
+Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph,
+he was not entirety successful.
+
+"I got him!" he cried. "I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!"
+
+"What one?" demanded Van Vorst.
+
+Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious
+expression the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his
+head. He seemed to wish to assure himself that it was still
+there.
+
+"THAT one!" cried Jimmie. "He's a German spy!"
+
+The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation
+was indignation, anger, reproach.
+
+"Jimmie!" he cried.
+
+Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A."
+"Look what he's wrote," commanded the scout. "It's all military
+words. And these are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're
+made in GERMANY! I been stalking him for a week. He's a spy!"
+
+When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced
+at it. Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes
+they showed that he was puzzled.
+
+But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+
+"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only
+glad it's no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the
+idea that every stranger he sees--"
+
+The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+
+"Please!" he begged, "Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely
+well. Might I speak with you--ALONE?" he asked.
+
+Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the
+smoking-room, that served also as his office, and closed the
+door. The stranger walked directly to the mantelpiece and put his
+finger on a gold cup.
+
+"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must
+have been a great loss to you?"
+
+"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I
+refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+
+"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your
+servants to hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's
+feelings. He's a fine boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew
+he was following me and I threw him off twice, but to-day he
+caught me fair. If I really had been a German spy, I couldn't
+have got away from him. And I want him to think he has captured a
+German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit as though he
+had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+capture."
+
+Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're
+an officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall
+manoeuvres. Am I right?"
+
+The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+
+"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres.
+It's the Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card
+and laid it on the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain
+of Artillery in the United States Army." He nodded to the hand
+telephone on the table.
+
+"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his
+aide, Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM.
+I'm not picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out
+positions of defense for Americans when the Germans come!"
+
+Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+
+"My word!" he exclaimed. "You're as bad as Jimmie!"
+
+Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+
+"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other
+Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this
+hill, when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons,
+maybe, you'll believe THEN."
+
+"Are you serious?" demanded Van Vorst. "And you an army officer?"
+
+"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "WE know. But when we
+try to prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in
+underhand ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and
+ridicule us, and accuse us of trying to drag the country into
+war. That's why we have to prepare under cover. That's why I've
+had to skulk around these hills like a chicken thief. And," he
+added sharply, "that's why that boy must not know who I am. If he
+does, the General Staff will get a calling down at Washington,
+and I'll have my ears boxed."
+
+Van Vorst moved to the door.
+
+"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will
+tell him you are to be shot at sunrise."
+
+"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we
+fight over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of
+scouts. And give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform.
+Tell him it comes from you."
+
+But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon
+his captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. "You
+mustn't," he begged; "I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't
+have caught him, if I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I
+thought he was going to be shot at sunrise." At the prospect of
+unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook with terror. "Make it
+for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for ten," he coaxed, "but,
+please, promise you won't shoot him."
+
+When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the
+butler who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was
+trying not to smile.
+
+"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it
+twenty, and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he
+begged me to spare your life, and that your sentence has been
+commuted to twenty years in a fortress. I drink to your good
+fortune."
+
+"No!" protested Captain McCoy, "We will drink to Jimmie!"
+
+When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf
+clubs had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once
+more attempted to depart; but he was again delayed.
+
+Other visitors were arriving.
+
+Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on
+a flat tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the
+front seat were white with dust; their faces, masked by
+automobile glasses, were indistinguishable. As though preparing
+for an immediate exit, the car swung in a circle until its nose
+pointed down the driveway up which it had just come. Raising his
+silk mask the one beside the driver shouted at Judge Van Vorst.
+His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot with anger.
+
+"A gray touring-car," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it
+from that hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way.
+Where did he go?"
+
+"Who?" demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, "Captain McCoy?"
+
+The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his
+elbow, silenced him.
+
+"Yes, Captain McCoy," assented the driver eagerly. "Which way did
+he go?"
+
+"To New York," said Van Vorst.
+
+The driver shrieked at his companion.
+
+"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He
+stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+
+A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+
+"What do you want with him?" he called "Who are you?"
+
+Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar
+of the car the words of the driver were flung back. "We're Secret
+Service from Washington," he shouted. "He's from their embassy.
+He's a German spy!"
+
+Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in
+a curtain of white, whirling dust.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in
+Suffolk, and every one in London assured me that at their house
+there would be the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about
+but see only in the illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised
+mistletoe, snapdragon, and Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas
+morning we would walk to church, after luncheon we would shoot,
+after dinner we would eat plum pudding floating in blazing
+brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the waits singing
+"God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay."
+
+To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine.
+And in my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her
+children, of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of
+Gamage's dolls, skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers
+that, when you pull them, sometimes explode. But it was not to
+be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient gained sufficient
+courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York would
+permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable
+I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful harmony with his
+appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week longer he might
+safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply was an
+ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of Hallam Hall and a
+Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of
+Ireland, and the only log on board was the one the captain kept
+to himself.
+
+I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have
+been on the principle that misery loves company that I
+foregathered with Talbot, or rather that Talbot foregathered with
+me. Certainty, under happier conditions and in haunts of men more
+crowded, the open-faced manner in which he forced himself upon me
+would have put me on my guard. But, either out of deference to
+the holiday spirit, as manifested in the fictitious gayety of our
+few fellow-passengers, or because the young man in a knowing,
+impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from dinner
+time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and
+icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry
+Christmas.
+
+Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the
+passengers testified that I belonged to a different profession,
+the smoking-room crowd would have quarantined me as his
+accomplice. On the first night I met him I was not certain
+whether he was English or giving an imitation. All the outward
+and visible signs were English, but he told me that, though he
+had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of his
+years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to
+have spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the
+French watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it
+was in France I had already seen him, but where I could not
+recall. He was hard to place. Of people at home and in London
+well worth knowing he talked glibly, but in speaking of them he
+made several slips. It was his taking the trouble to cover up the
+slips that first made me wonder if his talking about himself was
+not mere vanity, but had some special object. I felt he was
+presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might
+ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or
+in New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to
+a banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me,
+except in self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The
+next evening I discovered the motive.
+
+He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I
+recalled that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and
+that he held a bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I
+said: "I saw you last summer at Aix-les-Bains."
+
+His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it
+for some particular card.
+
+"What was I doing?" he asked.
+
+"Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs."
+
+With obvious relief he laughed.
+
+"Oh, yes," he assented; "jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of
+money there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't
+leave 'em alone." As though for this weakness, so frankly
+confessed, he begged me to excuse him, he smiled appealingly.
+"Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like 'em all," he rattled on,
+"but they don't like me. So I stick to solitaire. It's dull, but
+cheap." He shuffled the cards clumsily. As though making
+conversation, he asked: "You care for cards yourself?"
+
+I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a
+club and a spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he
+found he had been wasting time on me, I expected him to show some
+sign of annoyance, even of irritation, but his disappointment
+struck far deeper. As though I had hurt him physically, he shut
+his eyes, and when again he opened them I saw in them distress.
+For the moment I believe of my presence he was utterly
+unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man facing
+a crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry
+for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the
+loss of the few dollars he might have won should so deeply
+disturb him showed his need was great. Almost at once he
+abandoned me and I went on deck. When I returned an hour later to
+the smoking-room he was deep in a game of poker.
+
+As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+
+"Don't scold, now," he laughed; "you know I can't keep away from
+it."
+
+From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were
+friends of long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his
+chair, but he thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the
+players answered: "Known him for years; he's set me right many a
+time. When I broke my right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the
+saddle in six weeks. All my people swear by him."
+
+One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his
+eyes met mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards
+for me to see. "What would you draw?" he asked.
+
+His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare
+at him and walk on.
+
+When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as
+though we were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+
+"Sorry," he said. "Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my
+taking a hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now,"
+he assured me. "They think you vouched for me, and to-night
+they're going to raise the limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy
+mark."
+
+"And I take it you are not," I said stiffly.
+
+He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then
+the smile died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite
+weariness, and fear.
+
+As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came
+closer.
+
+"I'm 'in bad,' doctor," he said. His voice was frightened,
+bewildered, like that of a child. "I can't sleep; nerves all on
+the loose. I don't think straight. I hear voices, and no one
+around. I hear knockings at the door, and when I open it, no one
+there. If I don't keep fit I can't work, and this trip I got to
+make expenses. You couldn't help me, could you--couldn't give me
+something to keep my head straight?"
+
+The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier
+rob our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I
+meanly dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I
+should leave him to the ship's surgeon.
+
+"But I don't know HIM," he protested.
+
+Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected
+strenuously:
+
+"Well, you certainly don't know me."
+
+My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+
+"I know who you ARE," he returned. "You and I--"With a
+deprecatory gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who
+we were, he stopped. "But the ship's surgeon!" he protested,
+"he's an awful bounder! Besides," he added quite simply, "he's
+watching me."
+
+"As a doctor," I asked, "or watching you play cards?"
+
+"Play cards," the young man answered. "I'm afraid he was ship's
+surgeon on the P. & O. I came home on. There was trouble that
+voyage, and I fancy he remembers me."
+
+His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+
+"But you mustn't tell me that," I protested. "I can't have you
+making trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go
+straight from here to the captain?"
+
+As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+
+He made a mock obeisance.
+
+"I claim the seal of your profession," he said. "Nonsense," I
+retorted. "It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of
+hand, but that you are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with
+a priest."
+
+For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far,
+looked at me sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+
+"I got to make expenses," he muttered. "And, besides, all card
+games are games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the
+chances. Anyway," he repeated, as though disposing of all
+argument, "I got to make expenses."
+
+After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party
+sat waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could
+find "my friend." I should have said then that Talbot was a
+steamer acquaintance only; but I hate a row, and I let the
+chance pass.
+
+"We want to give him his revenge," one of them volunteered.
+
+"He's losing, then?" I asked.
+
+The man chuckled complacently.
+
+"The only loser," he said.
+
+"I wouldn't worry," I advised. "He'll come for his revenge."
+
+That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I
+switched on the lights and saw him standing at the foot of my
+berth. I saw also that with difficulty he was holding himself in
+hand.
+
+"I'm scared," he stammered, "scared!"
+
+I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion
+and sent it to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I
+wanted it for myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the
+sofa. His eyes were closed, and as though he were cold he was
+shivering and hugging himself in his arms.
+
+"Have you been drinking?" I asked.
+
+In surprise he opened his eyes.
+
+"I can't drink," he answered simply. "It's nerves and worry. I'm
+tired."
+
+He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his
+sides; the fingers lay open.
+
+"God," he whispered, "how tired I am!"
+
+In spite of his tan--and certainly he had led the out-of-door
+life--his face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn,
+finished.
+
+"They're crowdin' me," the boy whispered. "They're always
+crowdin' me." His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like
+that of a child complaining of something beyond his experience.
+"I can't remember when they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me
+on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved me out of India,
+then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut me out
+of London. I opened a club there, very quiet, very exclusive,
+smart neighborhood, too--a flat in Berkeley Street--roulette and
+chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out; anyway, they
+came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on this.
+It's my last chance!"
+
+"This trip?"
+
+"No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They
+paid me to live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their
+takin' me back. I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of
+filling my belly with the husks that the swine do eat; reformed
+character, repentant and all that; want to follow the straight
+and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted calf." He laughed
+sardonically. "Like hell they will! They'd rather see ME killed."
+
+It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were
+returning repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not
+help to reassure them. I suggested as much.
+
+"If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it," I said, "and they
+send a wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people
+would hardly--"
+
+"I know," he interrupted; "but I got to chance that. I GOT to
+make enough to go on with--until I see my family."
+
+"If they won't see you?" I asked. "What then?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief,
+as though for him the prospect held no terror.
+
+"Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'" he said. "And I won't be a
+bother to anybody any more."
+
+I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave
+him the sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+
+It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his
+first appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once
+more a healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen,
+smart, and fit; ready for any exercise or sport. The particular
+sport at which he was so expert I asked him to avoid.
+
+"Can't be done!" he assured me. "I'm the loser, and we dock
+to-morrow morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing."
+
+It was the others who made the killing.
+
+I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was
+seated. The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider
+semicircle were passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the
+ship's purser.
+
+Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the
+pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long
+cigarette-holder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a
+tumult of angry voices, and the eyes of all were turned upon him.
+Outwardly at least he met them with complete indifference. The
+voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was
+raised in excited accusation.
+
+"When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called 
+yourself Lord Ridley."
+
+"I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot.
+"If I choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have
+to give my name to every meddling busybody that--"
+
+"You'll give it to the police, all right," chortled Mr. Smedburg.
+In the confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd
+is with him, he shouted: "And in the meantime you'll keep out of
+this smoking-room!"
+
+The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded.
+Talbot rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette
+ashes from his sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called
+back: "Only too delighted to keep out. The crowd in this room
+makes a gentleman feel lonely."
+
+But he was not to escape with the last word.
+
+His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+
+"And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer," he
+shouted, "make sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one
+to protect him from sharpers and swindlers--"
+
+Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil!" he called, and walked out into the night.
+
+The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook
+his head.
+
+"Bad business," he exclaimed.
+
+"What happened?" I asked.
+
+"I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the
+pack," he said. "I understand they suspected him from the
+first--seems our surgeon recognized him--and to-night they had
+outsiders watching him. The outsiders claim they saw him slip
+himself an ace from the bottom of the pack. It's a pity! He's a
+nice-looking lad."
+
+I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not
+to call himself Meyer.
+
+"They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained
+the purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news
+reporters. Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer,
+the banker; but it seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he
+called him hard! It was a silly ass thing to do," protested the
+purser. "Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't
+made THAT break he might have got away with the other one. But
+now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer and to
+the police."
+
+"Has he no other way of spending his money?" I asked.
+
+"He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser. "He wants to
+show us he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an
+obligation. It means a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk;
+and," he added with disgust, "these smoking-room rows never
+helped any line."
+
+I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the
+verge of a collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself,
+because I was sorry the young man had come to grief. I searched
+the snow-swept decks, and then, after threading my way through
+faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at his cabin. The sound of his
+voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief. But he would not
+admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was "all right,"
+wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the sleep he
+claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness, and the
+next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine
+thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself
+nonchalantly and trying to appear unconscious of the
+glances--amused, contemptuous, hostile--that were turned toward
+him. He would have passed me without speaking, but I took his arm
+and led him to the rail. We had long passed quarantine and a
+convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.
+
+"Doesn't depend on me," he said. "Depends on Smedburg. He's a
+busy little body!"
+
+The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the
+flippancy I saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to
+tell me. He spoke in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as
+though for him the incident no longer was of interest.
+
+"They were watching me," he said. "But I knew they were, and
+besides, no matter how close they watched I could have done what
+they said I did and they'd never have seen it. But I didn't."
+
+My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+
+"I didn't!" he repeated stubbornly. "I didn't have to! I was
+playing in luck--wonderful luck--sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't
+HELP winning. But because I was winning and because they were
+watching, I was careful not to win on my own deal. I laid down,
+or played to lose. It was the cards they GAVE me I won with. And
+when they jumped me I told 'em that. I could have proved it if
+they'd listened. But they were all up in the air, shouting and
+spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to believe; they
+didn't want the facts."
+
+It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling
+the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So,
+rather harshly, I said:
+
+"They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph
+Meyer, either. Why did you think you could get away with anything
+like that?"
+
+Talbot did not answer.
+
+"Why?" I insisted.
+
+The boy laughed impudently.
+
+"How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?" he protested.
+"It was a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were
+in the game are Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought
+they might stick by me."
+
+"But you," I retorted impatiently, "are not a Jew!"
+
+"I am not," said Talbot, "but I've often SAID I was. It's
+helped--lots of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or
+Selinsky, or Meyer, instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought
+I was a Jew." He smiled and turned his face toward me. As though
+furnishing a description for the police, he began to enumerate:
+
+"Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or
+Hebraic, according to taste. Do you see?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But it didn't work," he concluded. "I picked the wrong Jew."
+
+His face grew serious. "Do you suppose that Smedburg person has
+wirelessed that banker?"
+
+I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+
+"And what will Meyer do?" he asked. "Will he drop it or make a
+fuss? What sort is he?"
+
+Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest
+Hebrew in New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the
+betterment of his own race.
+
+"Then maybe," cried Talbot hopefully, "he won't make a row, and
+my family won't hear of it!"
+
+He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been
+lifted, his shoulders straightened.
+
+And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+
+"Look!" he whispered. "There, at the end of the wharf--the little
+Jew in furs!"
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock,
+protected by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the
+great banker, philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was
+waiting.
+
+We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set;
+the face of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without
+question, of a bad business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I
+turned to speak to Talbot and found him gone.
+
+His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a
+growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know.
+It seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was
+empty and dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any
+desperate purpose Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there
+now were hundreds of other empty, dismantled cabins in which he
+might hide. To my inquiries no one gave heed. In the confusion of
+departure no one had observed him; no one was in a humor to seek
+him out; the passengers were pressing to the gangway, the
+stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck to
+deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I
+raced blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through
+groups of men, pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to
+be the man I sought, only to find he was unknown to me. When I
+returned to the gangway the last of the passengers was leaving
+it.
+
+I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when
+a white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look
+told me why I was wanted.
+
+"The ship's surgeon, sir," he stammered, "asks you please to
+hurry to the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!"
+
+On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed,
+shocked eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his
+chest lay bare. Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a
+tiny sponge which quickly darkened.
+
+I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+
+"It was HE sent for you," he said, "but he doesn't need you.
+Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!"
+
+The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he
+spoke.
+
+"I was so tired," he whispered. "Always moving me on. I was so 
+tired!"
+
+Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to
+bar them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They
+shoved me to one side and through the passage made for him came
+the Jew in the sable coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+
+For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like
+eyes, staring at the face on the pillow.
+
+Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the
+hand of the card-sharp.
+
+"Heine!" he begged. "Don't you know me? It is your brother
+Adolph; your little brother Adolph!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Red Cross Girl by Richard Harding
+Davis
+
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