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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Golden Stories, by Various
+
+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: Golden Stories
+       A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2006 [EBook #19356]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOLDEN STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Melissa Er-Raqabi
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+Following each author's name was a notice: "All rights reserved." This
+book is currently in the public domain, and the notices have been
+removed, but are mentioned here in the interest of completeness.
+
+Many inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been
+normalized. Others remain as in the original. Any deviation from the
+author's intent is solely the responsibility of the transcriber.
+
+This book seems to have been bound in two sections, each with stories
+numbered I-XII.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Golden Stories
+
+
+A SELECTION OF THE BEST FICTION
+BY THE FOREMOST WRITERS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE SHORT STORIES COMPANY
+1909
+
+
+
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
+LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1908-1909, BY THE SHORT STORIES COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE NIGHT EXPRESS
+
+The Story of a Bank Robbery
+
+By FRED M. WHITE
+
+
+A PELTING rain volleyed against the great glass dome of the terminus, a
+roaring wind boomed in the roof. Passengers, hurrying along the
+platform, glistened in big coats and tweed caps pulled close over their
+ears. By the platform the night express was drawn up--a glittering mass
+of green and gold, shimmering with electric lights, warm, inviting, and
+cozy.
+
+Most of the corridor carriages and sleeping berths were full, for it was
+early in October still, and the Scotch exodus was not just yet. A few
+late comers were looking anxiously out for the guard. He came presently,
+an alert figure in blue and silver. Really, he was very sorry. But the
+train was unusually crowded, and he was doing the best he could. He was
+perfectly aware of the fact that his questioners represented a Cabinet
+Minister on his way to Balmoral and a prominent Lothian baronet, but
+there are limits even to the power of an express guard, on the Grand
+Coast Railway.
+
+"Well, what's the matter with this?" the Minister demanded. "Here is an
+ordinary first-class coach that will do very well for us. Now, Catesby,
+unlock one of these doors and turn the lights on."
+
+"Very sorry, my lord," the guard explained, "but it can't be done. Two
+of the carriages in the coach are quite full, as you see, and the other
+two are reserved. As a matter of fact, my lord, we are taking a body
+down to Lydmouth. Gentleman who is going to be buried there. And the
+other carriage is for the Imperial Bank of Scotland. Cashier going up
+north with specie, you understand."
+
+It was all plain enough, and disgustingly logical. To intrude upon the
+presence of a body was perfectly impossible; to try and force the hand
+of the bank cashier equally out of the question. As head of a great
+financial house, the Minister knew that. A platform inspector bustled
+along presently, with his hand to his gold-laced cap.
+
+"Saloon carriage being coupled up behind, my lord," he said.
+
+The problem was solved. The guard glanced at his watch. It seemed to him
+that both the bank messenger and the undertaker were cutting it fine.
+The coffin came presently on a hand-truck--a black velvet pall lay over
+it, and on the sombre cloth a wreath or two of white lilies. The door of
+the carriage was closed presently, and the blinds drawn discreetly
+close. Following behind this came a barrow in charge of a couple of
+platform police. On the barrow were two square deal boxes, heavy out of
+all proportion to their size. These were deposited presently to the
+satisfaction of a little nervous-looking man in gold-rimmed glasses. Mr.
+George Skidmore, of the Imperial Bank, had his share of ordinary
+courage, but he had an imagination, too, and he particularly disliked
+these periodical trips to branch banks, in convoy, so to speak. He took
+no risks.
+
+"Awful night, sir," the guard observed. "Rather lucky to get a carriage
+to yourself, sir. Don't suppose you would have done so only we're taking
+a corpse as far as Lydmouth, which is our first stop."
+
+"Really?" Skidmore said carelessly. "Ill wind that blows nobody good,
+Catesby. I may be overcautious, but I much prefer a carriage to myself.
+And my people prefer it, too. That's why we always give the railway
+authorities a few days' notice. One can't be too careful, Catesby."
+
+The guard supposed not. He was slightly, yet discreetly, amused to see
+Mr. Skidmore glance under the seats of the first-class carriage.
+Certainly there was nobody either there or on the racks. The carriage
+at the far side was locked, and so, now, was the door next the platform.
+The great glass dome was brilliantly lighted so that anything suspicious
+would have been detected instantly. The guard's whistle rang out shrill
+and clear, and Catesby had a glimpse of Mr. Skidmore making himself
+comfortable as he swung himself into his van. The great green and gold
+serpent with the brilliant electric eyes fought its way sinuously into
+the throat of the wet and riotous night on its first stage of over two
+hundred miles. Lydmouth would be the first stop.
+
+So far Mr. Skidmore had nothing to worry him, nothing, that is, except
+the outside chance of a bad accident. He did not anticipate, however,
+that some miscreant might deliberately wreck the train on the off chance
+of looting those plain deal boxes. The class of thief that banks have to
+fear is not guilty of such clumsiness. Unquestionably nothing could
+happen on this side of Lydmouth. The train was roaring along now through
+the fierce gale at sixty odd miles an hour, Skidmore had the carriage to
+himself, and was not the snug, brilliantly lighted compartment made of
+steel? On one side was the carriage with the coffin; on the other side
+another compartment filled with a party of sportsmen going North.
+Skidmore had noticed the four of them playing bridge just before he
+slipped into his own carriage. Really, he had nothing to fear. He lay
+back comfortably wondering how Poe or Gaboriau would have handled such a
+situation with a successful robbery behind it. There are limits, of
+course, both to a novelist's imagination and a clever thief's process of
+invention. So, therefore....
+
+Three hours and twenty minutes later the express pulled up at Lydmouth.
+The station clock indicated the hour to be 11.23. Catesby swung himself
+out of his van on to the shining wet platform. Only one passenger was
+waiting there, but nobody alighted. Catesby was sure of this, because he
+was on the flags before a door could be opened. He came forward to give
+a hand with the coffin in the compartment next to Skidmore's. Then he
+noticed, to his surprise, that the glass in the carriage window was
+smashed; he could see that the little cashier was huddled up strangely
+in one corner. And Catesby could see also that the two boxes of bullion
+were gone!
+
+Catesby's heart was thumping against his ribs as he fumbled with his
+key. He laid his hand upon Skidmore's shoulder, but the latter did not
+move. The fair hair hung in a mass on the side of his forehead, and here
+it was fair no longer. There was a hole with something horribly red and
+slimy oozing from it. The carpet on the floor was piled up in a heap;
+there were red smears on the cushions. It was quite evident that a
+struggle had taken place here. The shattered glass in the window
+testified to that. And the boxes were gone, and Skidmore had been
+murdered by some assailant who had shot him through the brain. And this
+mysterious antagonist had got off with the bullion, too.
+
+A thing incredible, amazing, impossible; but there it was. By some
+extraordinary method or another the audacious criminal had boarded an
+express train traveling at sixty miles an hour in the teeth of a gale.
+He had contrived to enter the cashier's carriage and remove specie to
+the amount of eight thousand pounds! It was impossible that only one man
+could have carried it. But all the same it was gone.
+
+Catesby pulled himself together. He was perfectly certain that nobody at
+present on the train had been guilty of this thing. He was perfectly
+certain that nobody had left the train. Nobody could have done so after
+entering the station without the guard's knowledge, and to have
+attempted such a thing on the far side of the river bridge would have
+been certain death to anybody. There was a long viaduct here--posts and
+pillars and chains, with tragedy lurking anywhere for the madman who
+attempted such a thing. And until the viaduct was reached the express
+had not slackened speed. Besides, the thief who had the courage and
+intelligence and daring to carry out a robbery like this was not the man
+to leave an express train traveling at a speed of upwards of sixty miles
+an hour.
+
+The train had to proceed, there was no help for it. There was a hurried
+conference between Catesby and the stationmaster; after that the
+electric lamps in the dead man's carriage were unshipped, and the blinds
+pulled down. The matter would be fully investigated when Edinburgh was
+reached, meanwhile the stationmaster at Lydmouth would telephone the
+Scotch capital and let them know there what they had to expect. Catesby
+crept into his van again, very queer and dizzy, and with a sensation in
+his legs suggestive of creeping paralysis.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Naturally, the mystery of the night express caused a great sensation.
+Nothing like it had been known since the great crime on the South Coast,
+which is connected with the name of Lefroy. But that was not so much a
+mystery as a man hunt. There the criminal had been identified. But here
+there was no trace and no clue whatever. It was in vain that the
+Scotland Yard authorities tried to shake the evidence of the guard,
+Catesby. He refused to make any admissions that would permit the police
+even to build up a theory. He was absolutely certain that Mr. Skidmore
+had been alone in the carriage at the moment that the express left
+London; he was absolutely certain that he had locked the door of the
+compartment, and the engine driver could testify that the train had
+never traveled at a less speed than sixty miles an hour until the bridge
+over the river leading into Lydmouth station was reached; even then
+nobody could have dropped off the train without the risk of certain
+death. Inspector Merrick was bound to admit this himself when he went
+over the spot. And the problem of the missing bullion boxes was quite as
+puzzling in its way as the mysterious way in which Mr. Skidmore had met
+his death.
+
+There was no clue to this either. Certainly there had been a struggle,
+or there would not have been blood marks all over the place, and the
+window would have remained intact. Skidmore had probably been forced
+back into his seat, or he had collapsed there after the fatal shot was
+fired. The unfortunate man had been shot through the brain with an
+ordinary revolver of common pattern, so that for the purpose of proof
+the bullet was useless. There were no finger marks on the carriage door,
+a proof that the murderer had either worn gloves or that he had
+carefully removed all traces with a cloth of some kind. It was obvious,
+too, that a criminal of this class would take no risks, especially as
+there was no chance of his being hurried, seeing that he had had three
+clear hours for his work. The more the police went into the matter, the
+more puzzled they were. It was not a difficult matter to establish the
+bona fides of the passengers who traveled in the next coach with
+Skidmore, and as to the rest it did not matter. Nobody could possibly
+have left any of the corridor coaches without attracting notice; indeed,
+the very suggestion was absurd. And there the matter rested for three
+days.
+
+It must not be supposed that the authorities had been altogether idle.
+Inspector Merrick spent most of his time traveling up and down the line
+by slow local trains on the off-chance of hearing some significant
+incident that might lead to a clue. There was one thing obvious--the
+bullion boxes must have been thrown off the train at some spot arranged
+between the active thief and his confederates. For this was too big a
+thing to be entirely the work of one man. Some of the gang must have
+been waiting along the line in readiness to receive the boxes and carry
+them to a place of safety. By this time, no doubt, the boxes themselves
+had been destroyed; but eight thousand pounds in gold takes some moving,
+and probably a conveyance, a motor for choice, had been employed for
+this purpose. But nobody appeared to have seen or heard anything
+suspicious on the night of the murder; no prowling gamekeeper or watcher
+had noticed anything out of the common. Along the Essex and Norfolk
+marshes, where the Grand Coast Railway wound along like a steel snake,
+they had taken their desolate and dreary way. True, the dead body of a
+man had been found in the fowling nets up in the mouth of the Little
+Ouse, and nobody seemed to know who he was; but there could be no
+connection between this unhappy individual and the express criminal.
+Merrick shook his head as he listened to this from a laborer in a
+roadside public house where he was making a frugal lunch on bread and
+cheese.
+
+"What do you call fowling nets?" Merrick asked.
+
+"Why, what they catches the birds in," the rustic explained. "Thousands
+and thousands of duck and teel and widgeon they catches at this time of
+year. There's miles of nets along the road--great big nets like fowl
+runs. Ye didn't happen to see any on 'em as ye came along in the train?"
+
+"Now I come to think of it, yes," Merrick said thoughtfully. "I was
+rather struck by all that netting. So they catch sea birds that way?"
+
+"Catches 'em by the thousand, they does. Birds fly against the netting
+in the dark and get entangled. Ducks they get by 'ticing 'em into a sort
+of cage with decoys. There's some of 'em stan's the best part of half a
+mile long. Covered in over the top like great cages. Ain't bad sport,
+either."
+
+Merrick nodded. He recollected it all clearly now. He recalled the wide,
+desolate mud flats running right up to the railway embankment for some
+miles. At high tide the mud flats were under water, and out of these the
+great mass of network rose both horizontally and perpendicular. And in
+this tangle the dead body of a man had been found after the storm.
+
+There was nothing really significant in the fact that the body had been
+discovered soon after the murder of Mr. George Skidmore. Still, there
+might be a connection between the two incidents. Merrick was going to
+make inquiries; he was after what looked like a million to one chance.
+But then Merrick was a detective with an imagination, which was one of
+the reasons why he had been appointed to the job. It was essentially a
+case for the theoretical man. It baffled all the established rules of
+the game.
+
+Late the same afternoon Merrick arrived at Little Warlingham by means of
+a baker's cart. It was here that the body of the drowned man lay
+awaiting the slim chances of identity. If nothing transpired during the
+next eight and forty hours, the corpse would be buried by the parish
+authorities. The village policeman acted as Merrick's guide. It was an
+event in his life that he was not likely to forget.
+
+"A stranger to these parts, I should say, sir," the local officer said.
+"He's in a shed at the back of the 'Blue Anchor,' where the inquest was
+held. If you come this way, I'll show him to you."
+
+"Anything found on the body?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing, sir. No mark on the clothing or linen, either.
+Probably washed off some ship in the storm. Pockets were quite empty,
+too. And no signs of foul play. _There_ you are, sir!"
+
+Casually enough Merrick bent over the still, white form lying there. The
+dead face was turned up to the light, Rembrandtesque, coming through the
+door. The detective straightened himself suddenly, and wiped his
+forehead.
+
+"Stranger to you, sir, of course?" the local man said grimly.
+
+"Well, no," Merrick retorted. "I happen to know the fellow quite well.
+I'm glad I came here."
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Until it was quite too dark to see any longer Merrick was out on the mud
+flats asking questions. He appeared to be greatly interested in the
+wildfowlers and the many methods of catching their prey. He learned,
+incidentally, that on the night of the express murder most of the nets
+and lures had been washed away. He took minute particulars as to the
+state of the tide on the night in question; he wanted to know if the
+nets were capable of holding up against any great force. For instance,
+if a school of porpoises came along? Or if a fish eagle or an osprey
+found itself entangled in the meshes?
+
+The fowlers smiled. They invited Merrick to try it for himself. On that
+stormy east coast it was foolish to take any risks. And Merrick was
+satisfied. As a matter of fact, he was more than satisfied.
+
+He was really beginning to see his way at last. By the time he got back
+to his headquarters again he had practically reconstructed the crime. As
+he stood on the railway permanent way, gazing down into the network of
+the fowlers below, he smiled to himself. He could have tossed a biscuit
+on to the top of the long lengths of tarred and knotted rigging. Later
+on he telephoned to the London terminus of the Grand Coast Railway for
+the people there to place the services of Catesby at his disposal for a
+day or two. Could Catesby meet him at Lydmouth to-morrow?
+
+The guard could and did. He frankly admitted that he was grateful for
+the little holiday. He looked as if he wanted it. The corners of his
+mouth twitched, his hands were shaky.
+
+"It's nerves, Mr. Merrick," he explained. "We all suffer from them at
+times. Only we don't like the company to know it, ye understand? To tell
+the truth, I've never got over that affair at the Junction here eight
+years ago. I expect you remember that."
+
+Merrick nodded. Catesby was alluding to a great railway tragedy which
+had taken place outside Lydmouth station some few years back. It had
+been a most disastrous affair for a local express, and Catesby had been
+acting as guard to the train. He spoke of it under his breath.
+
+"I dream of it occasionally even now," he said. "The engine left the
+line and dragged the train over the embankment into the river. If you
+ask me how I managed to escape, I can't tell you. I never come into
+Lydmouth with the night express now without my head out of the window of
+the van right away from the viaduct till she pulls up at the station.
+And what's more, I never shall. It isn't fear, mind you, because I've as
+much pluck as any man. It's just nerves."
+
+"We get 'em in our profession, too," Merrick smiled. "Did you happen to
+be looking out of the window on the night of the murder?"
+
+"Yes, and every other night, too. Haven't I just told you so? Directly
+we strike the viaduct I come to my feet by instinct."
+
+"Always look out the same side, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, on the left. That's the platform side, you understand."
+
+"Then if anybody had left the train there----"
+
+"Anybody left the train! Why we were traveling at fifty miles an hour
+when we reached the viaduct. Oh, yes, if anybody _had_ left the train I
+should have been bound to see them, of course."
+
+"But you can't see out of both windows at once."
+
+"Nobody could leave the train by the other side. The stone parapet of
+the viaduct almost touches the footboard, and there's a drop of ninety
+feet below that. Of course I see what you are driving at, Mr. Merrick.
+Now look here. I locked Mr. Skidmore in the carriage myself, and I can
+_prove_ that nobody got in before we left London. That would have been
+too dangerous a game so long as the train was passing any number of
+brilliantly lighted stations, and by the time we got into the open we
+were going at sixty miles an hour. That speed never slackened till we
+were just outside Lydmouth, and I was watching at the moment that our
+pace dropped. I had my head out of the window of my van till we pulled
+up by the platform. I am prepared to swear to all this if you like. Lord
+knows how the thing was done, and I don't suppose anybody else ever
+will."
+
+"You are mistaken there," said Merrick drily. "Now, what puzzles you,
+of course, is the manner in which the murderer left the train."
+
+"Well, isn't that the whole mystery?"
+
+"Not to me. That's the part I really do know. Not that I can take any
+great credit to myself, because luck helped me. It was, perhaps, the
+most amazing piece of luck I have ever had. It was my duty, of course,
+to take no chances, and I didn't. But we'll come to that presently. Let
+it suffice for the moment that I know how the murderer left the train.
+What puzzles me is to know how he got on it. We can dismiss every other
+passenger in the train, and we need not look for an accomplice. There
+_were_ accomplices, of course, but they were not on the express. Why
+didn't Mr. Skidmore travel in one of the corridor coaches?"
+
+"He was too nervous. He always had a first-class carriage to himself. We
+knew he was coming, and that was why we attached an ordinary first-class
+coach to the train. We shouldn't do it for anybody, but Lord Rendelmore,
+the chairman of Mr. Skidmore's bank, is also one of our directors. The
+coach came in handy the other night because we had an order from a
+London undertaker to bring a corpse as far as here--to Lydmouth."
+
+"Really! You would have to have a separate carriage for that."
+
+"Naturally, Mr. Merrick. It was sort of killing two birds with one
+stone."
+
+"I see. When did you hear about the undertaking job?"
+
+"The same morning we heard from the bank that Mr. Skidmore was going to
+Lydmouth. We reserved a coach at once, and had it attached to the
+Express. The other carriages were filled with ordinary passengers."
+
+"Why didn't I hear of this before?" Merrick asked.
+
+"_I_ don't know. It doesn't seem to me to be of much importance. You
+might just as well ask me questions as to the passengers' baggage."
+
+"Everything is of importance," Merrick said sententiously. "In our
+profession, there are no such things as trifles. I suppose there will
+be no difficulty in getting at the facts of this corpse business. I'll
+make inquiries here presently."
+
+So far Merrick professed himself to be satisfied. But there were still
+difficulties in the way. The station people had a clear recollection of
+the receipt of a coffin on the night of the tragedy, and, late as it
+was, the gruesome thing had been fetched away by the people whom it was
+consigned to. A plain hearse, drawn by one horse, had been driven into
+the station yard, the consignment note had been receipted in the usual
+way, and there was an end of the matter. Lydmouth was a big place, with
+nearly a quarter of a million of inhabitants, and would necessarily
+contain a good many people in the undertaking line. Clearly it was no
+business of the railway company to take this thing any further.
+
+Merrick admitted that freely enough. It was nearly dark when he came
+back to the station, profoundly dissatisfied with a wasted afternoon.
+
+"No good," he told Catesby. "At the same time there are consolations.
+And, after all, I am merely confirming my suspicions. I suppose your
+people here are on the telephone. If so, I should like to send a message
+to your head office. I want the name of the firm in London who consigned
+the coffin here. I suppose the stationmaster could manage this for me."
+
+An hour or so later the information came. Merrick, at the telephone,
+wanted a little further assistance. Would the Grand Coast Railway call
+up the undertaker's firm whilst he held the line and ask the full
+particulars as to the body sent from London to Lydmouth. For half an
+hour Merrick stood patiently there till the reply came.
+
+"Are you there? Is that Inspector Merrick? Oh, yes. Well, we have called
+up Lincoln & Co., the undertakers. We got on to the manager himself. He
+declares that the whole thing is a mistake. They have not sent a corpse
+over our trunk system for two months. I read the manager the letter
+asking for special facilities, a letter on the firm's own paper. The
+manager does not hesitate to say the whole thing is a forgery. I think
+he is right, Inspector. If we can do anything else for you----"
+
+Merrick hung up the receiver and smiled as if pleased with himself. He
+turned to his companion, Catesby.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "Is there any way we can get back to London
+to-night? The whole thing is perfectly plain, now."
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Though Merrick returned to London thoroughly satisfied, he knew that the
+sequel was not just yet. There was much conjuring work to be done before
+it would be possible to place all the cards on the table. The Christmas
+holidays had arrived before Merrick obtained a couple of warrants, and,
+armed with these, he went down to Brighton on Boxing Day, and put up at
+the Hotel Regina, registering himself as Colonel Beaumont, sometime of
+the United States Field Forces. Merrick could pose as an authority on
+Cuba, for on one occasion he had been there for six months on the
+lookout for a defaulting bank manager. He had made certain changes in
+his appearance, and just now he bore little resemblance to Inspector
+Merrick of New Scotland Yard.
+
+The big hotel on the front was full. There was a smart dance that same
+night, preceded by a children's party and Christmas tree. The house
+swarmed with young folks, and a good many nationalities were
+represented. On occasions like these somebody generally takes the lead,
+and by common consent the part of the chief of the events had been
+allotted to the Marquis de Branza.
+
+To begin with, he was immensely rich. He had vast estates in Italy. He
+had been staying at the Regina for the past month, and it was whispered
+that his bill had reached three figures. He entertained lavishly; he was
+the soul of hospitality; he was going to buy a palace in Kings' Gardens,
+and more or less settle down in Brighton.
+
+In addition to all this the Marquis was a handsome man, very
+fascinating, and a prime favorite with all the boys and girls at the
+Regina. He had his little peculiarities, of course--for instance, he
+paid for everything in gold. All his hotel bills were met with current
+coin.
+
+Merrick had gleaned all this before he had been a day at the Regina.
+They were quite a happy family, and the Colonel speedily found himself
+at home. The Marquis welcomed him as if he owned the hotel, and as if
+everybody was his guest. The dance was a great success, as also were the
+presents in connection with the cotillon promoted by the Marquis.
+
+At two o'clock the following morning the Marquis was entertaining a
+select party in the smoking-room. The ladies had all vanished by this
+time. The Marquis was speaking of his adventures. He really had quite a
+talent in that direction. Naturally, a man of his wealth was certain to
+be the mark for swindlers. Merrick listened with an approving smile. He
+knew that most of these stories were true, for they had all been
+recorded from time to time at Scotland Yard.
+
+"You would have made an excellent detective, Marquis," he said. "You
+have made it quite clear where the police blundered over that Glasgow
+tragedy. I suppose you read all about the Grand Coast Railway murder."
+
+The Marquis started ever so slightly. There was a questioning look in
+his eyes.
+
+"Did you?" he said. "Naturally one would, Colonel. But a matter the most
+inexplicable. I gave him up. From the very first I gave him up. If the
+guard Catesby was not the guilty person, then I admit I have no theory."
+
+One by one, the smoking-room company faded away. Presently only Merrick
+and the Marquis remained, save one guest who had fallen asleep in his
+chair. A sleepy waiter looked in and vanished again. The hotel was
+absolutely quiet now. Merrick, however, was wide awake enough; so,
+apparently, was the Marquis. All the same, he yawned ostentatiously.
+
+"Let us to bed," he said. "To-morrow, perhaps----"
+
+"No," Merrick said somewhat curtly. "I prefer to-night. Sit down."
+
+The last two words came crisply and with a ring of command in them. The
+Marquis bowed as he dropped into a chair and lighted a fresh cigarette.
+A little red spot glowed on either of his brown cheeks, his eyes
+glittered.
+
+"You want to speak to me, Colonel?" he said.
+
+"Very much indeed. Now, you are an exceedingly clever man, Marquis, and
+you may be able to help me. It happens that I am deeply interested in
+the Grand Coast Express murder; in fact, I have devoted the last two
+months to its solution."
+
+"With no success whatever, my dear Colonel?" the Marquis murmured.
+
+"On the contrary, my dear Marquis, with absolute satisfaction. I am
+quite sure that you will be interested in my story."
+
+The Marquis raised his cigarette graciously.
+
+"You are very good to give me your confidence," he said. "Pray proceed."
+
+"Thank you. I will not bore you with any preliminary details, for they
+are too recent to have faded from your memory. Sufficient that we have a
+murder committed in an express train; we have the disappearance of eight
+thousand pounds in gold, without any trace of the criminal. That he was
+on the train at the start is obvious. That he was not in any of the
+carriages conveying ordinary passengers is equally obvious. It is also
+certain that he left the train after the commission of the crime.
+Doubtless you read the evidence of the guard to prove that nobody left
+the train after the viaduct leading to Lydmouth station was reached.
+Therefore, the murderer contrived to make his escape when the express
+was traveling at sixty miles per hour."
+
+"Is not all this superfluous?" the Marquis asked.
+
+"Well, not quite. I am going to tell you how the murderer joined the
+train and how he left it after the murder and the robbery."
+
+"You are going to tell me that! Is it possible?"
+
+"I think so," Merrick said modestly. "Now, Mr. Skidmore had a
+compartment to himself. He was locked in the very last thing, and nobody
+joined the train afterward. Naturally a--well--an amateur detective like
+myself wanted to know who was in the adjoining compartments. Three of
+these could be dismissed at once. But in the fourth there was a
+corpse----"
+
+"A corpse! But there was no mention of that at the inquest."
+
+"No, but the fact remains. A corpse in a coffin. In a dark compartment
+with the blinds down. And, strangely enough, the firm of undertakers who
+consigned, or were supposed to consign, the body to Lydmouth denied the
+whole business. Therefore, it is only fair to suppose that the whole
+thing was a put-up job to get a compartment in the coach that Mr.
+Skidmore traveled by. I am going to assume that in that coffin the
+murderer lay concealed. But let me give you a light--your cigarette is
+out."
+
+"I smoke no more," the Marquis said. "My throat, he is dry. And
+then----"
+
+"Well, then, the first part is easy. The man gets out of the coffin and
+proceeds to fill it with some heavy substance which has been smuggled
+into the carriage under the pall. He screws the lid down and presently
+makes his way along the footboard to the next compartment. An athlete in
+good condition could do that; in fact, a sailor has done it in a drunken
+freak more than once. Mind you, I don't say that murder was intended in
+the first instance; but will presume that there was a struggle. The
+thief probably lost his temper, and perhaps Mr. Skidmore irritated him.
+Now, the rest was easy. It was easy to pack up the gold in leather bags,
+each containing a thousand sovereigns, and to drop them along the line
+at some spot previously agreed upon. I have no doubt that the murderer
+and his accomplices traveled many times up and down the line before the
+details were finally settled. Any way, there was no risk here. The
+broken packing cases were pitched out also, probably in some thick wood.
+Or they might have been weighted and cast into a stream. Are you
+interested?"
+
+The Marquis gurgled. He had some difficulty in speaking.
+
+"A little dangerous," he said. "Our ingenious friend could not possibly
+screw himself down in the coffin after returning to his compartment. And
+have you perceived the danger of discovery at Lydmouth?"
+
+"Precisely," Merrick said drily. "It is refreshing to meet with so
+luminous a mind as yours. There were many dangers, many risks to take.
+The train might have been stopped, lots of things might have happened.
+It would be far better for the man to leave the express. And he did so!"
+
+"The express at top speed! Impossible!"
+
+"To the ordinary individual, yes. But then, you see, this was not an
+ordinary individual. He was--let us suppose--an acrobat, a man of great
+nerve and courage, accustomed to trapeze work and the use of the diving
+net."
+
+"But Colonel, pardon me, where does the net come in?"
+
+"The net came in at a place near Little Warlingham, on the Norfolk
+coast. There are miles of net up there, trap and flight nets close by
+the side of the line. These nets are wide and strong; they run many
+furlongs without supports, so that an acrobat could easily turn a
+somersault on to one of these at a given spot without the slightest
+risk. He could study out the precise spot carefully beforehand--there
+are lightships on the sands to act as guides. I have been down to the
+spot and studied it all out for myself. The thing is quite easy for the
+class of man I mean. I am not taking any great credit to myself, because
+I happened to see the body of the man who essayed that experiment. I
+recognized him for----"
+
+"You recognized him! You knew who he was?"
+
+"Certainly. He was Luigi Bianca, who used to perform in London years
+ago, with his brother Joseph, on the high trapeze. Then one of them got
+into trouble and subsequently embarked, as the papers say, on a career
+of crime. And when I saw the body of Luigi I knew at once that he had
+had a hand in the murder of Mr. Skidmore. When the right spot was
+reached the fellow took a header in the dark boldly enough, but he did
+not know that the storm had come with a very high October tide, and
+washed the nets away. He fell on the sands and dislocated his neck. But
+I had something to go on with. When I found out about the bogus corpse I
+began to see my way. I have been making careful inquiries ever since for
+the other criminal----"
+
+"The other criminal! You mean to insinuate----"
+
+"I insinuate nothing," Merrick said coldly; "naturally enough I wanted
+to find Joseph Bianca. He was the man who picked up the gold; he was the
+man who hired a car in London from Moss & Co., in Regent Street, for a
+week. This was to recover the gold and incidentally also to take up the
+thief who stole it. I wanted to find Joseph Bianca, and _I've done it!_"
+
+The Marquis leaped to his feet. As he did so the man in the distant
+chair woke up and moved across the room.
+
+"Don't make a fuss!" Merrick said quietly. "You will be able to explain
+presently--perhaps what you are doing here posing as a Marquis, and
+where you got all that ready money from. Meanwhile, let me inform you
+that I am Inspector Merrick, of Scotland Yard, and that this is Sergeant
+Matthews. Joseph Bianca, you are my prisoner, and I have a warrant for
+your arrest as an accessory before and after the fact for the murder of
+Mr. George Skidmore. Ask them to call us a cab, Matthews!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+OVER THE GARDEN WALL
+
+The Story of a Vacation
+
+By LOUISE HAMILTON MABIE
+
+
+THE impression, which floated vaguely as a perfume in the wake of the
+departing Mr. and Mrs. Jasper Prentiss, adapted itself pleasingly to any
+point of view. Generally, it was thought that Katrina Prentiss was to
+remain at home under the eye of Grandfather McBride. Particularly, was
+this Grandfather McBride's reading of the unspoken word. But Miss
+Prentiss, herself, thought so otherwise that the situation completely
+reversed itself. To Miss Prentiss, Grandfather McBride was left
+absolutely under her eye.
+
+Meanwhile the Jasper Prentisses, characteristically explaining nothing,
+commanding nothing, leaving events to work themselves out somehow, as
+events have been known to do, were off for their month's fishing without
+undue worry.
+
+"Grandfather will smoke his pipe all over the house," remarked Mrs.
+Prentiss easily, as they drove away.
+
+"Oh, Katrina will manage somehow," returned Mr. Prentiss, as easily.
+"They'll come to terms. By the way, Kitty, we mustn't forget that
+marmalade." And, absorbed in their list of supplies, the Jasper
+Prentisses disappeared from view.
+
+Grandfather McBride, eighty-one, dependent, save in moments of
+excitement, upon his knotted stick, hard-featured, with a rusty beard
+and a shabby black hat, departed slowly for his own quarters. Miss
+Prentiss, twenty-one, hazel-eyed and graceful, with a wonderful creamy
+skin, under a crown of auburn braids, sank dreamily upon the broad
+porch step and gazed across the green lawn into the future.
+
+"A whole month," thought Miss Prentiss, "of doing as I
+please--consulting nobody, ordering things, going to places, and coming
+home to--freedom." Miss Prentiss spread out her hands with a sigh of
+content. "Not that I'm interfered with--ever," she added, reproaching
+herself, "but now--well, I'm it."
+
+She rose swiftly and turned up the steps. In the wide doorway stood
+Grandfather McBride, stick in hand, hat jammed down, and in his mouth,
+at a defiant angle, a battered black pipe. A red flag, backed up by a
+declaration of the rights of man, could not have spoken more plainly.
+Miss Prentiss drew back; Mr. McBride stepped forward. Their eyes met.
+Then the old gentleman flung down his challenge. He removed the pipe and
+held it poised in his hand.
+
+"What you goin' to do to-day, Triny?" he asked, briskly. "When you goin'
+over to see the Deerings' parrot? There ain't another such bird in
+America. You go over there this morning and see that parrot. Don't loll
+about the house. Don't be lazy!" Whereupon, with less profanity, but as
+much of autocracy as was ever displayed by an Irish boss whipping into
+shape the lowliest of his Italian gang, Mr. McBride replaced his pipe
+elaborately, and walked off with the honors. Katrina, utterly
+astonished, stared after him, then shrugged, then smiled.
+
+"Poor Grandfather," she reached at length, "in minor matters I'll let
+him have his way."
+
+The next day, Grandfather McBride smoked his pipe on the porch. On the
+third morning he smoked it in the drawing-room--out of sheer defiance,
+for he never entered the room save under compulsion. Katrina, reminding
+herself that peace was to be desired above victory, shrugged once more,
+smiled, and went for a ride. When she swept in, an hour or so later,
+Grandfather McBride was in the back garden with John, and the smoke of a
+huge bonfire obscured the sunlight. This was revolution, simple and
+straightforward, and Katrina went at once to the back garden.
+
+"John," she said, "what is the meaning of this? Don't you know that Mr.
+Prentiss never allows bonfires? The rubbish is to be carted away, _not_
+set on fire."
+
+John, apologetic, perturbed, nodded toward the old gentleman. "Yes,
+miss, I know. I told Mr. McBride, miss----"
+
+Grandfather McBride turned coldly upon Katrina. "I ordered this
+bonfire," he said.
+
+"But, Grandfather, you know the old orders. Father never allows them."
+
+"I allow them," said Mr. McBride. "Your father's away fishing, and I'm
+in charge. This is my bonfire. I order bonfires when I please. I like
+'em. I like the smell of 'em, I like the smoke----" Here an unexpected
+cough gave Katrina a word.
+
+"But, Grandfather," she began again, only to be cut short.
+
+"When the folks are home, I sit still and mind my own business. Now
+they're away, I'm goin' to do things. I'm on a vacation myself," said
+Mr. McBride, "and I'll have a bonfire on the front lawn if I say so. You
+go back to the house, Katriny, and read Gibson."
+
+"Ibsen," flashed Katrina.
+
+"I don't care what his Dutch name is--read him. Or else"--a grim light
+of humor in his hard gray eye--"go over and see that parrot."
+
+Katrina almost stamped her foot. "I loathe parrots," she cried, "and I
+came out to talk about this bonfire."
+
+"I know you did," said Mr. McBride, "but this parrot ain't like other
+parrots. It's a clown. It would make a rag baby laugh."
+
+Katrina, flushed, angry, at a loss what to say, decided to say nothing.
+The sight of John, discreetly gazing at the roof of the chicken house,
+the grimness of Grandfather's face, the discomfort of the choking
+smoke, urged a dignified retreat. She turned abruptly and left them,
+overwhelmed at the exhibition furnished by Mr. McBride, confounded at
+his sudden leap into activity after years of serene floating and
+absolutely in the dark as to any method of controlling him in the
+future.
+
+For a week, his pipe and his daily bonfire contented Mr. McBride.
+Between himself and Katrina, relations were polite but not cordial.
+Katrina preserved a dignity which deceived neither of them. Both knew
+that she was awaiting something sensational, and the fact worried the
+old gentleman, for already he had exhausted his possibilities. He longed
+for new ideas in this matter of revolution, but none came. He began to
+be bored by bonfires, and the lack of opposition to them. Even the
+parrot failed to amuse, and he was sinking into dull monotony, when a
+walk down the long lane behind the back garden one sunny afternoon
+changed the horizon of his world.
+
+He was gone for two hours; but Katrina was away from the house herself,
+and did not notice. The next afternoon he disappeared for three, finally
+dragging in weary in body, but high in spirit. Twice at dinner he
+chuckled audibly, and three times he recommended the parrot across the
+street to Katrina. The next day he vanished after luncheon, and was late
+for dinner. At this, Katrina decided to take a hand.
+
+"Grandfather," she said abruptly at dessert, after a long interval of
+silence on both sides, "it's all very well to take a vacation, but there
+is such a thing as overdoing it. I'm sure you would do nothing that
+would alarm mother, and I know that if she were at home she would worry
+over you. For days you have had no nap. Please rest to-morrow. Don't go
+walking. Let me drive you to the club for luncheon."
+
+The old gentleman glanced up at Katrina quickly. "I declare if I hadn't
+forgot all about that fellow till this minute," he said. "Speaking of
+the club, how's Sparks, Katriny?"
+
+Katrina sat suddenly erect and her color deepened. "Do you by any chance
+mean Mr. Willoughby Park, Grandfather? If so, I know nothing whatever
+about him. I haven't seen him for a week." This with a jerk.
+
+"Don't you marry that chap, Katriny," went on Mr. McBride, unimpressed,
+"and don't you let him come around here. He's no good. A fellow that
+hangs around a country club when he ain't hangin' around a girl, is
+always no good. You marry a chap with brains, Katriny, even if he ain't
+so long on the cash. Why, I know a young fellow----" Mr. McBride pulled
+himself up short. "You dash in for brains, Triny, and I'll take out my
+pocket book." Here he nodded, as if concluding a bargain, but Katrina
+was already upon her feet.
+
+"Grandfather McBride, you are growing insufferable," she cried. "Simply
+because I mention the club, you assume that I am--angling--for a man
+that--that has been decently polite to me. I have never been invited to
+marry Mr. Park. And you give me low advice about laying traps for some
+other sort of a man. And you mention pocket books! And you go off alone
+for hours and come home worn out. And you smoke your horrible old pipe
+and build your sickening bonfires, just to spite me! I think you are a
+wretch, and I've worried over you every day since mother left." Here she
+stopped suddenly, with a catch in her throat.
+
+The old gentleman looked at her silently. Then he got up and came around
+the table. Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder. Katrina sat down.
+
+"I'm glad you don't like Sparks, my dear," said Mr. McBride, leaning on
+his stick. "And don't worry your heart over Grandfather, Triny.
+Grandfather's no fool. He ain't had so much fun in years." Mr. McBride
+winked just here, and put on an air of profound mystery.
+
+"I wonder where you do disappear to," said Katrina. "I think I'll go
+along."
+
+"Don't you do that," spoke up Mr. McBride alertly. "Don't you do that!
+A man can't stand a woman tagging at his heels. He's got to have room,
+and air to breathe."
+
+"Smoke, you mean," put in Katrina, with returning spirit, "and I warn
+you, Grandfather, that if you make fires off our place, you'll be
+arrested."
+
+"Pooh! Fires!" said Mr. McBride contemptuously. "Amusement for children.
+I ain't a-makin' fires these days, Katriny. I've got other things to
+do." And, with a final pat upon her shoulder, and a last most telling
+wink, Grandfather McBride dragged himself wearily, but triumphantly, to
+bed.
+
+When Katrina, on the lookout next afternoon, saw Mr. McBride join John
+in the back garden, hold with him a whispered consultation broken by
+many stealthy glances toward the house, and finally disappear with him
+down the lane, behind a wheelbarrow laden with boards, she gave orders
+that she was not at home, waited half an hour, and followed.
+
+The lane wound coolly green and deserted from the Prentiss place into
+the heart of the country. Katrina, walking steadily, passed her own,
+passed the Graham and the Haskell boundaries, and stopped in surprise.
+At a branching path hung a new and conspicuous sign. "Private Road! No
+Trespassing, Under Penalty of the Law."
+
+It was a churlish sign. The people of the neighborhood--a summer
+settlement of friends and pleasant informalities--were used to no such
+signs. And Katrina, knowing Grandfather McBride, turned at once into the
+branching path. At some distance in, she passed a similar sign, with
+every mark of disdain. Finally, she was brought up short by a wire
+fence, with a gate, high, wooden, and new, that stretched across the
+path. She tried the gate, but it did not budge. From the wood beyond
+came the sound of voices and the strokes of a hammer. With a quick
+glance behind her, and a determined set to her chin, she began to climb
+the gate.
+
+She was descending upon the other side in safety, when Grandfather
+McBride came upon her. His hat was pushed back upon his head, his stick
+was forgotten. He descended upon her as might a hungry lion upon its
+prey. He roared--in fact, he bellowed.
+
+"Katrina Prentiss, get back over that fence. Climb back over that gate;
+you're trespassing. Didn't you see the signs? Are you blind? Can't you
+read? What do you mean by coming in here where you don't belong? Climb
+back there and go home at once!"
+
+Katrina, unprepared for battle and aware of being at a disadvantage,
+swallowed hard and obeyed. She climbed back over the gate. Once upon
+solid earth, however, and she glared as fiercely at Grandfather McBride
+as he stared ferociously at her.
+
+"I'm not a child," she said furiously, when he stopped to breathe, "to
+be ordered about and sent home and insulted. I have never been so
+treated in my life and I give you fair warning, Grandfather, that I'll
+stand it no longer. After this I'll do as I please." Whereupon Katrina,
+having woman-like, in the act of obedience, said her say, retreated with
+dignity and dispatch. Behind her, Mr. McBride waved his recovered stick
+over the gate and shouted, but she did not turn nor attempt an answer.
+
+He came home within an hour, slowly, leaning heavily upon his stick.
+John followed with the empty wheelbarrow. They parted at the barn and
+Mr. McBride went at once to his room and shut the door. Katrina, sitting
+at her own window, looked thoughtfully into space and swung a key upon
+her forefinger. After a time she stood up, smoothed her hair and pinned
+on her wide, rose-laden hat. Then she went down the hall quietly,
+stopped before Mr. McBride's door, and listened a moment. A gentle snore
+proclaimed Mr. McBride's occupation. Katrina fitted the key into the
+lock and turned it, took it out again and slipped it beneath a corner of
+the rug, listened a further moment and then walked down the stairs, out
+through the back garden, and, with a final glance behind her, turned
+once more into the green and deserted lane.
+
+It must be confessed that Katrina started upon her quest in a spirit far
+removed from that of your single-minded explorer. She was urged by a
+variety of causes. Among them was a determination to disobey Grandfather
+McBride, to serve him with his own medicine, to pay him in his own coin,
+and to do it as quickly and as frankly as possible. Her rapidly
+increasing curiosity concerning the region he guarded with so much
+mystery counted as well, but the paramount force--for Katrina was young
+enough to take her responsibility seriously--was anxiety over the old
+gentleman himself. In fact, Katrina departed, as did Lot's wife, with
+her face and her thought turned backward, a policy not conducive to
+brilliant success in exploration.
+
+This time, however, she was stopped by no one. She passed the gate
+safely, penetrated the wood and came at length upon a part of Mr.
+McBride's secret. It was a rough little flight of steps, made with the
+help of John, the wheelbarrow, and the boards, which led to the top of a
+high brick wall. The wall astounded Katrina even more than did the
+steps, which is saying a good deal. The whole elaborate contrivance for
+keeping people away, puzzled Katrina. It was some time before she
+mounted the steps and looked over the wall, but when she finally did so,
+she ceased to be merely puzzled. She became lost in a maze of wonder.
+
+Stretching before her, was a wide expanse of green. Just opposite stood
+a long, low building of workmanlike appearance. At the left was a very
+presentable rose garden. At the right, a rustic summer-house.
+Surrounding all was the high brick wall. But it was none of these things
+that amazed Katrina.
+
+Moving toward her, from the door of the long building, came a little
+procession--men and women, walking slowly, sedately dressed in old-time
+silks and finery, decked with plumes, jewels, laces, bouquets of
+flowers. Arrived at a broad space near the summer-house, the company,
+after a series of low and preliminary bows, launched forth into a
+stately dance. Katrina, conscious of music, descried an individual in
+very modern blue overalls, who manipulated a phonograph. A voice from
+beyond the summer-house, called forth instructions at intervals, with a
+huskiness vaguely suggestive of old Coney.
+
+"More side-play there, Miss Beals. Just imagine he's a young hobo you're
+in love with and yer father won't let him up the steps. You're doing the
+Merry Widow act while the old man's not looking. Don't bow so low you
+hide your face, Mr. Peters. Your face is worth money to us all. And
+everybody get a move on! You're too slow! Hit it up a bit, Jim."
+
+The overalls, thus adjured, accelerated the time of his machine, and a
+new spirit animated the group. Katrina leaned far over the wall in order
+to miss nothing. At length, the dance, moving toward a finale, reached
+it with a succession of stirring chords, and a flourish of curtseys, and
+the group dissolved.
+
+"That'll do for to-day. You can knock off now," began the husky voice,
+when Jim, glancing up from his phonograph, beheld Katrina in her
+rose-laden hat, leaning far over the wall. If he had stopped to reflect,
+he might have ignored the vision, for he was but man, and the vision a
+guilelessly pretty one, but he did not stop to reflect. With Jim, to see
+a thing was to proclaim it abroad. Immediately, he yelled:
+
+"Hey! Get on to the lady on the wall! Hey! Mr. Connor, come around here.
+There's somebody on the wall. Hey!"
+
+At once Katrina, to her utmost discomfort, became the centre of the
+stage. Everybody turned, saw her, and began to stare. The silken ladies,
+the velvet gentlemen, delayed their return to modern apparel, and took
+her in. Jim stared clamorously. Mr. Connor, rounding the summer-house,
+glared angrily. To Katrina, even the long building blinked its windows
+at her, and she thought, with sudden longing, of Grandfather McBride.
+She wished she had not come. Most of all, she wished to go, but she did
+not quite dare.
+
+At once, Mr. Connor took charge of the situation. "Say, young lady," he
+demanded, in a truculent manner, "what do you mean by gettin' into these
+grounds and rubberin' at us over our wall? Don't you know you can be run
+in for passin' those signs? Didn't you see that gate?"
+
+"Oh, yes," faltered Katrina; "yes--I saw the gate."
+
+"Well, how'd you get past that gate and them signs," Mr. Connor wanted
+to know.
+
+"I--I climbed the gate," hesitated Katrina.
+
+Clearly this was not what Mr. Connor expected. Such simplicity must
+cover guile. A suppressed smile glimmered through the group and Mr.
+Connor became more suspicious of Katrina.
+
+"I don't want no kiddin' now, do you hear?" he burst forth. "You're in a
+tight place, young woman, and you may as well wake up to the fact at
+once. The Knickerbocker is doin' things on a plane of high art, and our
+methods are our own. Now, I want to know who you represent? And
+freshness don't go, d'you see?"
+
+Katrina hardly heard Mr. Connor. Her mind was occupied with the freedom
+that lay clear behind her, and the possible patrol-wagons and police
+stations before her. Perhaps she might conciliate this red-faced man by
+allowing him to talk, by being mild and meek and polite. Perhaps a
+chance might come for a desperate attempt at escape. But Mr. Connor,
+conversing fluently, read her very soul.
+
+"Bring that there light ladder, Jim," he interrupted himself to order,
+"and if you try to get away, young woman, it'll be the worse for you.
+Now, I want to know what yellow sheet you represent?"
+
+"Yellow--why do you take me for a newspaper woman?" cried Katrina. "I'm
+not. I'm nothing of the sort. I've never been inside a newspaper office
+in my life."
+
+"Of course not," observed Mr. Connor, ironically. "They never have.
+Always society ladies that can't write their own names. You stand just
+where you are, miss, till that ladder arrives. Then I'm coming up to
+confiscate any little sketches and things you may have handy.
+
+"You are a brute," said Katrina, lips trembling but head held high. "I
+am Miss Prentiss. I live near here, and you will not dare to detain me."
+
+"Oh, won't I?" returned Mr. Connor. "I have a picture of myself letting
+you go. And where the deuce is Jim?" He turned impatiently toward the
+building across the lawn, then somewhat relaxed his frown. "Oh, well, I
+can take an orchestra chair," observed Mr. Connor. "Here comes the
+boss."
+
+Katrina, with deepening concern, glanced from Mr. Connor toward the long
+building. A young man was sprinting across the stretch of green--a
+clean-cut young man in gray flannels. At the first sight of him, Katrina
+caught her breath sharply and blushed. It was Katrina's despair that she
+blushed so easily. As the young man neared them the spectators achieved
+the effect of obliterating themselves from the landscape. They melted
+into space. There remained the young man, Mr. Connor, and a divinely
+flushed Katrina.
+
+The young man looked up at her without smiling. He bowed to her gravely.
+Then he turned to Mr. Connor. With a few low-spoken words, he wilted Mr.
+Connor. Katrina, gazing at the rose-garden, heard something in spite of
+herself. She heard her name, and caught Mr. Connor's articulate
+amazement. She heard mentioned some "old gentleman." She heard a
+recommendation to Mr. Connor to go more slowly in the future and to mend
+his manners at all times. After a hint to Mr. Connor to look up Jim and
+the ladder, she heard that gentleman withdraw much more quietly than he
+had come, and her eyes finally left the rose-garden and looked straight
+down into those of warm gray, belonging to the young man below her.
+
+"Will you mind--waiting--just a moment longer?" he asked. "This is more
+luck than I've had lately."
+
+Katrina smiled tremulously. "It's in my power to go, then," she said.
+
+"No," said the young man, firmly, "it isn't. On second thoughts, you are
+to stay just where you are till that blockhead brings the ladder. I've
+a good deal to say. I'm going to walk home with you."
+
+"Oh," said Katrina. "And what will become of your fancy-dress party?"
+
+"My fancy-dress party," returned the young man, "will catch the next
+trolley for New York. Oh! Here labors the trusty henchman across the
+green. Right you are, Jim! No, the lady is not to come down. I'm to go
+up." And go up he did, in the twinkling of an eye, and in less than
+another the rose-wreathed hat and the young man's gray cap had
+disappeared from view together.
+
+"Well, what do you know about that?" observed Jim, under his breath,
+staring at the top of the wall. He whistled softly. Then he grinned.
+"Hypnotized, by thunder," concluded Jim, returning with the ladder.
+
+Meanwhile, the two lingered homeward through the deepening twilight. The
+gate opened easily to a key from the young man's pocket; the signs
+glimmered dimly. They talked lightly, but what they said proved to both
+simply an airy veil for what they did not say. Katrina spoke of the club
+and the tennis tournament.
+
+"Of course, we lost," she said. "Our best man," with a sidelong look,
+"did not enter. The committee said that he was away--on business. I see
+now that they were misinformed."
+
+"But they weren't," said the young man, eagerly, "if you mean me. I am
+'away on business.' Why, do you know it's seven days since I've seen
+you?"
+
+Katrina regarded her neat brown shoes.
+
+"The fact is," continued the young man, diffidently, "I've been trying a
+new method with you. I've been endeavoring to be missed. And I'm afraid
+to hear that I haven't been."
+
+"A little wholesome fear is good for anyone," observed Katrina,
+judicially, "but I can truthfully say that I rejoiced at the sight of
+you this afternoon. That red-faced man was about to drag me off the wall
+by the hair."
+
+"Oh, Connor," said the young man. "Connor's not polished, but in his
+line, he's a jewel. He used to be a stage manager, and considered in
+that light, he's really mild."
+
+"Is he?" said Katrina, drily. "Does he stage manage for you?"
+
+"Practically that. Don't scoff--please. You see, there's a big future in
+this business. My father growled at first, but he's come clean around.
+The land was mine, and we are using it this way. The American public are
+going in for this thing. They want amusement and they want it quick. And
+the thing is to provide them with what they want, when they want it."
+
+"Oh," said Katrina. "And you are providing the American public with what
+they want--back there?" with a tilt of her head behind her.
+
+"Exactly," he answered. "That's our plant. We are the Knickerbocker Film
+Manufacturing Company."
+
+"Oh," said Katrina, again. "And the fancy-dress people?"
+
+"We are getting up 'Romeo and Juliet,'" said the young man. "Please
+don't laugh. It's been proven that the moving picture audiences like
+Shakespeare canned."
+
+"Moving picture audiences," repeated Katrina in surprise, and then as
+the light broke, she stopped short and looked at the young man.
+
+"Why, didn't you guess?" he queried. "The summer-house--why, of course,
+the summer-house must have hidden the camera." He looked at her
+dejectedly. "I've wanted you so much to know all about it," he said,
+"and now that you do, it sounds--oh, drivelling."
+
+"But it doesn't," cried Katrina, eyes shining. "It sounds splendid. It
+sounds thrilling. I'm sure it will be a success. You're bound to make it
+one. I congratulate you. You've left out a good deal. You've told your
+story very badly, but I'm good at filling in. The fact is, I'm proud to
+know you, and you may shake hands with me if you wish to."
+
+"Oh, Katrina," murmured the young man, and they clasped hands. It was
+just here that Grandfather McBride turned into the lane from the back
+garden and came upon them. When they became aware of him, leaning
+heavily upon his stick and frowning at them through the dusk, Katrina
+braced herself to meet whatever might come. But, suddenly, to her
+intense surprise, Mr. McBride beamed upon them radiantly.
+
+"Well, well, Katriny," he said, in high good humor, "so you've been over
+that gate again, eh? Been lookin' over that wall, eh? I knew you would,
+my dear, I knew you would. There's some of the McBride spirit in you
+after all, thank God. I meant to take you myself, but you got ahead of
+me." Here he shook hands with the young man. "Glad to see you again, my
+boy," said Grandfather McBride. "Brought my little girl home, eh?"
+
+"Well, we were on the way," admitted the young man with enthusiasm. "I
+see you got the steps up, sir."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. McBride, "oh, yes. I'm much obliged to you for the
+permission. It's as good as any vaudeville, and it's a sight nearer
+home. You're bound to make money. I tell my granddaughter," with a
+triumphant nod to the lady in question, "to bank on brains and energy
+and American push. I tell her," with a profound wink to Katrina, "to let
+this old family nonsense and society racket go hang. I'm glad she met
+you."
+
+"But we mustn't stand here in the lane, Grandfather," put in Katrina,
+hurriedly. "It's getting damp."
+
+"That's so," agreed Mr. McBride, "and it's getting late." He hooked his
+cane about the young man's arm. "Come in and have dinner with us," he
+said.
+
+Katrina stared in amazement at Mr. McBride. The young man looked eagerly
+at Katrina. "If Miss Prentiss will allow me----" he began.
+
+"Huh! Miss Prentiss," spoke up Mr. McBride. "What's she got to say about
+it? I allow you." And as Katrina, behind Mr. McBride's back, smiled and
+nodded, the young man accepted promptly.
+
+Together the three went through the back garden and up to the house.
+Arrived there, Katrina disappeared. Grandfather McBride, after settling
+his guest, came straight upstairs and stopped at her door.
+
+"Little cuss," beamed Mr. McBride, "goin' off, locking up her old
+grandfather and meetin' young chaps. Say, Katriny," he remarked
+casually, "he's a fine fellow, ain't he?"
+
+Katrina, busy with her hair, nodded.
+
+"Now, if I was a girl," continued Mr. McBride, diplomatically, "and a
+fellow like that took a shine to me I'd show a glimmer of sense. I'd up
+and return it."
+
+"Would you?" remarked Katrina. "I'm glad you like him. You see,
+Grandfather, you are too smart for me. I didn't know until just now that
+you had even met Mr. Park."
+
+Mr. McBride's smile stiffened, then froze, finally disappeared. He
+opened his mouth, and shut it. He swallowed hard. At last, he got it
+out. "Katriny--Katriny, is _that_ Sparks--that fellow downstairs? Is
+that _Sparks_?"
+
+"Hush," said Katrina. "Of course, that is Willoughby Park. Why,
+Grandfather, didn't you ask his name?"
+
+"No," said Mr. McBride, "I didn't. I just saw he was a fine, likely----"
+He stopped abruptly. "Well, I'll be damned," said Mr. McBride.
+
+Katrina came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. Mr. McBride
+looked into space. Standing so, he spoke once more. "Do you--do you
+really like him, Triny?" he asked, and although he looked into space,
+Mr. McBride saw Katrina's blush. He patted her hand once, and left her.
+
+On his way downstairs, the grimness of Mr. McBride's face relaxed. In
+the lower hall, he went so far as to chuckle. When he joined Mr. Park on
+the porch, he grinned at him amiably.
+
+"I'm a good sport," remarked Mr. McBride, irrelevantly, "but I know when
+to retire to my corner and stay there. Say," continued Mr. McBride,
+unconscious of discrepancies between thought and action, "after dinner
+I'm goin' to take you children across the street to see that parrot."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+RURAL INSURANCE
+
+The Story of a Wayside Halt
+
+By CLOTILDE GRAVES
+
+
+EXHAUSTED by the effort involved in keeping the thermometer of the
+closing day of August at an altitude intolerable to the human kind and
+irksome to the brute, a large, red-hot sun was languidly sinking beyond
+an extensive belt of dusky-brown elms fringing the western boundary of a
+seventy acre expanse of stubbles diagonally traversed by a parish
+right-of-way leading from the village of Bensley to the village of
+Dorton Ware. A knee-deep crop of grasses, flattened by the passage of
+the harvest wains, clothed this strip of everyman's land, and a narrow
+footpath divided the grass down the middle, as a parting divides hair.
+
+A snorting sound, which, accompanied by a terrific clatter of old iron
+and the crunching of road-mendings, had been steadily growing from
+distant to near, and from loud to deafening, now reached a pitch of
+utter indescribability; and as a large splay-wheeled, tall-funneled,
+plowing engine rolled off the Bensley highroad and lumbered in upon the
+right-of-way, the powerful bouquet of hot lubricating oil nullified all
+other smells, and the atmosphere became opaque to the point of solidity.
+As the dust began to settle it was possible to observe that attached to
+the locomotive was a square, solid, wooden van, the movable residence of
+the stoker, the engineer, and an apprentice; that a Powler cultivator, a
+fearsome piece of mechanism, apparently composed of second-hand anchors,
+chain-cables, and motor driving-wheels, was coupled to the back of the
+van, and that a bright green water-cart brought up the rear. Upon the
+rotund barrel of this water-cart rode a boy.
+
+The plowing-engine came to a standstill, the boy got down from the
+water-cart and uncoupled the locomotive from the living-van. During the
+operations, though the boy received many verbal buffets from both his
+superiors, it was curiously noticeable that the engineer and stoker,
+while plainly egging one another on to wreak physical retribution upon
+the body of the neophyte, studiously refrained from personally
+administering it.
+
+"Hook off, can't ye, hook off!" commanded the engineer. "A 'ead like a
+dumpling, that boy 'as!" he commented to the stoker, as Billy wrought
+like a grimy goblin at the appointed task.
+
+"A clout on the side of it 'ud do 'im good!" pronounced the stoker, who
+was as thin and saturnine as the engineer was stout and good-humored.
+"Boys need correction."
+
+"I'll allow you're right," said the engineer. "But it ain't my business
+to 'it Billy for 's own good. Bein' own brother to 'is sister's
+'usband--it's plainly your place to give 'im wot for if 'e 'appens to
+need it."
+
+The stoker grunted and the clock belonging to the Anglo-Norman church
+tower of the village struck six. Both the engineer and his subordinate
+wiped their dewy foreheads with their blackened hands, and
+simultaneously thought of beer.
+
+"Us bein' goin' up to Bensley for a bit, me an' George," said the
+engineer, "an' supposin' Farmer Shrubb should come worritin' along this
+way and ask where us are, what be you a-going to tell 'im, Billy boy?"
+
+"The truth, I 'ope," said the stoker, with a vicious look in an eye
+which was naturally small and artificially bilious.
+
+"Ah, but wot is the truth to be, this time?" queried the engineer.
+"Let's git it settled before we go. As far as I'm consarned, the answer
+Billy's to give in regards to my question o' my whereabouts is:
+'Anywhere but in the tap o' the Red Cow.'"
+
+"And everythink but decently drunk," retorted the stoker.
+
+"That's about it," assented the unsuspecting engineer.
+
+The stoker laughed truculently, and Billy ventured upon a faint echo of
+the jeering cachinnation. The grin died from the boy's face, however, as
+the engineer promptly relieved a dawning sense of injury by cuffing him
+upon one side of the head, while the stoker wrung the ear upon the
+other.
+
+"Ow, hoo," wailed Billy, stanching his flowing tears in the ample sleeve
+of his coat, "Ow, hoo, hoo!"
+
+"Stop that blubberin', you," commanded the stoker, who possessed a
+delicate ear, "and make th' fire an' git th' tea ready against Alfred
+and me gits back. You hear me?"
+
+"Yes, plaize," whimpered Billy.
+
+"An' mind you warms up the cold bacon pie," added the stoker.
+
+"And don't you forget to knock in the top of that tin o' salmon," added
+the engineer, "an' set it on to stew a bit. An' don't you git pickin'
+the loaf wi' they mucky black fingers o' yours, Billy, my lad, or you'll
+suffer for it when I comes home."
+
+"Yes, plaize," gasped Billy, bravely swallowing the recurrent hiccough
+of grief. "An' plaize where be I to build fire?"
+
+"The fire," mused the engineer. He looked at the crimson ball of the
+sun, now drowning in a lake of ruddy vapors behind the belt of elms; he
+nodded appreciatively at the palely glimmering evening star and pointed
+to a spot some yards ahead. "Build it there, Billy," he commanded
+briefly.
+
+The stoker hitched his thumbs in his blackened leather waist-strap and
+spat toward the rear of the van. "You build the fire nigh th' hedge
+there," he ordered, "so as us can sit wi' our faces to'rds yon bit o'
+quick an' hev th' van to back of us, an' git a bit o' comfort outside
+four walls fur once. D' ye hear, boy?"
+
+"Yes, George," quavered Billy.
+
+The sleepy eye of the engineer had a red spark in it that might have
+jumped out of his own engine-furnace as he turned upon the acquiescent
+Billy. "Didn't you catch wot I said to you just now, my lad?" he
+inquired with ill-boding politeness.
+
+"Yes, Alfred," gasped the alarmed Billy.
+
+"If the boy doesn't mind me," came from the stoker, who was thoroughly
+roused, "and if I don't find a blazin' good fire, an' victuals welding
+hot, ready just in the place I've pointed out to 'im, when I've 'ad my
+pipe and my glass at the 'Red Cow,' I'll----" A palpably artificial fit
+of coughing prevented further utterance.
+
+"You'll strap 'im within an inch of 'is life, I dursay," hinted the
+engineer. "You pipe what George says, Billy?" he continued, as Billy
+applied his right and left coat cuffs to his eyes in rapid succession.
+"He's give you his promise, and now I give you mine. If I don't find a
+roarin' good fire and the rest to match, just where I've said they're to
+be when I come back from where I've said I'm a-goin'----"
+
+"You'll wallop 'im a fair treat, I lays you will," said the stoker,
+revealing a discolored set of teeth in a gratified smile. "We'll bide by
+wot the boy does then," he added. "Knowin' that wot 'e gits from either
+of us, he'll earn. An' your road is my road, Alfred, leastways as far as
+the 'Red Cow.'"
+
+The engineer and the stoker walked off amicably side by side. The sun
+sank to a mere blot of red fire behind the elms, and crowds of
+shrilly-cheering gnats rose out of the dry edges and swooped upon the
+passive victim, Billy, who sat on the steps of the living van with his
+knuckles in his eyes.
+
+"Neither of 'em can't kill me, 'cos the one what did it 'ud 'ave to be
+'ung," he reflected, and this thought gave consolation. He unhooked a
+rusty red brazier from the back of the living van, and dumping it well
+into the hedge at the spot indicated by the stoker, filled it with dry
+grass, rotten sticks, coals out of the engine bunker, and lumps of oily
+cotton waste. Then he struck and applied a match, saw the flame leap
+and roar amongst the combustibles, filled the stoker's squat tea-kettle
+with water from the green barrel, put in a generous handful of Tarawakee
+tea, and, innocent of refinements in tea-making, set it on to boil.
+
+"George is more spitefuller nor wot Alfred is," Billy Beesley murmured,
+as the kettle sent forth its first faint shrill note. Then he added with
+a poignant afterthought, "But Alfred is a bigger man than wot George
+be."
+
+The stimulus of this reflection aided cerebration. Possessed by an
+original idea, Billy rubbed the receptacle containing it, and his mouth
+widened in an astonished grin. A supplementary brazier, temporarily
+invalided by reason of a hole in the bottom, hung at the back of the
+living-van. The engineer possessed a kettle of his own. Active as a
+monkey, the small figure in the flapping coat and the baggy trousers
+sped hither and thither. Two hearths were established, two fires blazed,
+two tea-kettles chirped. Close beside the stoker's brazier a bacon pie
+in a brown earthen dish nestled to catch the warmth, a tin of Canadian
+salmon, which Billy had neglected to open, leaned affectionately against
+the other. Suddenly the engineer's kettle boiled over, and as Billy
+hurried to snatch it from the coals, the salmon-tin exploded with an
+awe-inspiring bang, and oily fragments of fish rained from the bounteous
+skies.
+
+"He'll say I did it a purpose, Alfred will!" the aggrieved boy wailed,
+as he collected and restored to the battered tin as much of its late
+contents as might be recovered. While on all fours searching for bits
+which might have escaped him, and diluting the gravy which yet remained
+in the tin with salt drops of foreboding, a scorching sensation in the
+region of the back brought his head round. Then he yelled in earnest,
+for the roaring flame from the other brazier had set the quickset hedge,
+inflammable with drought, burning as fiercely as the naphtha torch of a
+fair-booth, while a black patch, widening every moment, was spreading
+through the dry, white grasses under the clumsy wheels of the
+living-van, whose brown painted sides were beginning to blister and
+char, as Billy, rendered intrepid by desperation, grabbed the broken
+furnace-rake handle, usually employed as a poker, and beat frantically
+at the encroaching fire. As he beat he yelled, and stamped fiercely upon
+those creeping yellow tongues. There was fire from side to side of the
+field pathway now, the straggling hedge on both sides was crackling
+gaily. And realizing the unconquerable nature of the disaster, Billy
+dropped the broken furnace-rake, uttered the short, sharp squeal of the
+ferret-pressed rabbit, and took to his heels, leaving a very creditable
+imitation of a prairie conflagration behind him.
+
+It was quite dark by the time the engineer and his subordinate returned
+from the "Red Cow," and their wavering progress along the field pathway
+was rendered more difficult, after the first hundred yards or so, by the
+unaccountable absence of the hedge. It was a singularly oppressive
+night, a brooding pall of hot blackness hung above their heads, clouds
+of particularly acrid and smothering dust arose at every shuffle of
+their heavy boots, even the earth they trod seemed glowing with heat,
+and they remarked on the phenomenon to one another.
+
+"It's thunder weather, that's wot it be," said the engineer, mopping his
+face. "I'm like my old mother, I feel it coming long before it's 'ere.
+Phew!"
+
+"Uncommon strong smell o' roast apples there is about 'ere," commented
+the stoker, sniffing.
+
+"That beer we 'ad must 'ave bin uncommon strong," said the engineer in a
+low, uneasy voice. "I seem to see three fires ahead of us, that's what I
+do."
+
+"One whopping big one to the left, one little one farther on, right
+plumb ahead, and another small one lower down on my right 'and. I see
+'em as well as you," confirmed the stoker in troubled accents. "And
+that's how that young nipper thinks to get off a licking from one of
+us----"
+
+"By obeying both," said the engineer, quickening his pace indignantly.
+"This is Board School, this is. Well, you'll learn 'im to be clever, you
+will."
+
+"You won't leave a whole bone in his dirty little carcase once you're
+started," said the stoker confidently.
+
+By this time they were well upon the scene of the disaster. Before their
+dazed and horrified eyes rose the incandescent shell of what had been,
+for eight months past, their movable home, and a crawling crisping
+rustle came from the pile of ashes that represented the joint property
+of two men and one boy.
+
+"Pinch me, Alfred," said the stoker, after an interval of appalled
+silence.
+
+"Don't ask me," said the engineer, in a weak voice, "I 'aven't the power
+to kill a flea."
+
+"There ain't one left living to kill," retorted the stoker, as he
+contemplated the smoking wreck. "There was 'undreds in that van, too,"
+he added as an afterthought.
+
+"Burned up the old cabin!" moaned the engineer, "an' my Sunday rig-out
+in my locker, an' my Post Office Savings Bank book sewed up in the
+pillar o' my bunk, along o' my last week's wages what I 'adn't paid in."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if Government 'ung on to they savings o' yourn,"
+said the stoker, shaking his head. "It's a pity, but you'd invested
+yours as I 'ave mine," he added.
+
+"In public 'ouses?" retorted the engineer.
+
+"Some of it 'as went that way," the stoker admitted, "but for three
+weeks past I've denied myself to put a bit into a concern as I think is
+going to prove a paying thing."
+
+"Owch!" exclaimed the engineer, who had been restlessly pacing in the
+velvety darkness round the still glowing wreck of the living-van.
+
+"Don't you believe wot I've told you?" demanded the stoker haughtily.
+
+"You don't always lie, George," said the engineer, gently. "Wot made me
+shout out like that just now," he explained, "was treading on something
+queer, down by the near side wheels. Somethink brittle that cracked like
+rotten sticks under my 'eel, an' then I slid on something round an'
+squashy. An' the smell like roast apples, what I noticed before, is
+stronger than ever."
+
+"'Ave you a match about you?" asked the stoker eagerly.
+
+"One," said the engineer, delicately withdrawing a solitary "kindler"
+from the bottom of his waistcoat pocket.
+
+The stoker received the match, and struck it on his trousers. A blue
+glimmer resulted, a faint s-s-s! followed, and the match went out.
+
+"On'y a glim," said the stoker in a satisfied tone, "but it showed me as
+I've made my money. An' made it easy, too."
+
+"'Ow much 'ave you pulled orf, then?" asked the engineer.
+
+"Double the value," replied the stoker, smiling broadly through the
+darkness, "of the property what I've lost in this here conflagration."
+
+"That 'ud bring you in about eighteenpence," retorted the engineer
+bitterly.
+
+The stoker laughed pleasantly.
+
+"Wot do you say to three pun' seventeen?" he demanded.
+
+"Better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick," said the engineer.
+"Wot did you say was the concern you invested in?"
+
+The stoker felt in the darkness for his superior's arm, grasped it, and
+putting his mouth close to where he thought his ear ought to be, said
+loudly:
+
+"A boy."
+
+"Look 'ere, mate," began the engineer, hotly, "if you're trying a joke
+on me----"
+
+"It ain't no joke," responded the stoker cheerfully. "Leastways not for
+the boy, it ain't. But Lord! when I think 'ow near I come to lettin' the
+policy fall through." He chuckled. "It's three weeks gone since I took
+it out," he said contentedly, "an' paid three weeks' money in advance,
+an' at threepence a week, that makes ninepence, an' the thought o' them
+nine half-pints I might 'ave 'ad out o' money 'as drove me 'arf wild
+with thirst, over an' over. I should 'ave 'ad to pay again come Monday,
+if only 'e 'ad 'ave lived."
+
+"If only 'e 'ad lived--" repeated the engineer in a strange far-away
+tone, "Oo's 'e?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"You know old Abey Turner as keeps the little sweet-an'-tobaccer shop
+over to Dorton Ware?" pursued the stoker. "Old Abey is a agint for the
+Popular Thrifty Life Insurance Company----"
+
+"I know 'e is," confirmed the engineer.
+
+"Abey 'as bin at me over an' over again to insure my life," explained
+the stoker, "but I told 'im as I didn't 'old with laying out good money
+wot wouldn't never come 'ome to roost-like, until I was dead. Then Abey
+leans over the counter an' ketches me by the neck 'andkerchief an' says,
+'Think of the worst life you know, an' 'ave a bit on that.' Naturally,
+talkin' o' bad lives, you're the first chap whose name comes into my
+'ead."
+
+"Me!" ejaculated the engineer, starting.
+
+"But it wasn't wickedness old Abey meaned," continued the stoker, "only
+un'ealthiness in general. Somebody wot wasn't likely to live long,
+that's the sort o' man or woman 'e wanted me to insure. 'A child'll do,'
+says 'e, smiling, an' tells me 'ow a large family may be made a source
+of blessing to parents 'oo are wise enough to insure in the Popular
+Thrifty. Then it comes into my mind all of a sudden as 'ow Billy 'ud do
+a treat, an' I names 'im to Old Abey. 'That young shaver!' calls out old
+Abey, disgusted like. 'Why, 'e's as 'ard as nails. Wot's likely to
+'appen to 'im?' 'If you was to see the 'andling 'e gets when my mate is
+in 'is tantrums,' I says to old Abey, 'you'd put your bit o' money on
+'im cheerful an' willin'.' 'Is Alfred Evans such a savage in 'is drink?'
+says old Abey, quite surprised----"
+
+"I'll surprise 'im!" muttered the engineer, "when I meets 'im!"
+
+The stoker continued: "So the long an' the short is, I insured Billy,
+an' Billy's dead!"
+
+"You don't really think so?" cried the engineer, in shocked accents.
+
+"I don't think," said the stoker, in a hard, high tone, "I knows 'e is."
+
+"Not--burned with the van!" gasped the engineer.
+
+"Burned to cinders," said the stoker comfortably. "'Ow about that smell
+o' roasting you kep' a sniffing as we came along, an' wot were it if not
+cooked boy? Wot was it your foot crashed into when you called out awhile
+back? 'Is ribs, 'im being overdone to a crisp. Wot was it you slipped
+on----?"
+
+"Stop!" shuddered the engineer. "'Old 'ard! I can't bear it."
+
+"I can," said the stoker, following his comrade as he gingerly withdrew
+from the immediate scene of the tragedy. "I could if it was twice as
+much."
+
+"It will be that to me!" sighed the engineer, seating himself upon the
+parish boundary stone, over which he had stumbled in his retreat, and
+sentimentally gazing at the star-jewelled skies. "Twice three pound is
+six, an' twice seventeen bob is one-fourteen. Seven pounds fourteen is
+wot that pore boy's crool end 'as dropped into my pocket, and I'd 'ad
+those best clothes ever since I got married; an' there was only eight
+an' fourpence in the piller o' the bunk, an----"
+
+The engineer stopped short, not for lack of words, but because the
+stoker was clutching him tightly by the windpipe.
+
+"You don't durst dare to tell me," the frenzied mechanic shouted, "as
+wot you went an' insured Billy too?"
+
+"That's just wot I 'ave done," replied the half-strangled engineer. Then
+as the dismayed stoker's arms dropped helplessly by his side, he added,
+"you ought to be grateful, George, you 'ad no 'and in it. I couldn't
+'ave enjoyed the money properly, not if you'd 'ad to be 'ung for the
+boy's murder. That's wot I said to old Abey two weeks back, when I told
+'im as 'ow Billy's life went more in danger than anyone else's what I
+could think of, through your being such a brutal, violent-tempered,
+dangerous man."
+
+"An' wot did that old snake in the grass say to that bloomin' lie?"
+demanded the stoker savagely.
+
+"'E said life was a uncertain thing for all," sniggered the engineer,
+gently. "An' I'd better 'ave a bit on the event an' turn sorrow into
+joy, as the saying is. So I give Abey a shillin', bein' two weeks in
+advance, an' the Company sent me the policy, an' 'ere I am in for the
+money."
+
+"Like wot I am, an' with clean 'ands for both of us," said the stoker in
+a tone of cheerful self-congratulation. "I 'aven't laid a finger on that
+boy, not since I insured 'im."
+
+"Nor I ave'n't," said the engineer. "It's wonderful how I've bin able to
+keep my temper since I 'ad the policy to take care of at the same time."
+
+"Same with me," said the stoker happily. "Why, wot's wrong?" he added,
+for a tragic cry had broken from the engineer.
+
+"Mate," he stammered tremulously, "where did you keep your policy?"
+
+"Meanin' the bit o' blue-printed paper I 'ad from the Popular Thrifty?
+Wot do you want to know for?" snapped the stoker suspiciously.
+
+"It just come into my 'ead to arsk," said the engineer, in faltering
+accents.
+
+"In my little locker in the van, since you're so curious," said the
+stoker grudgingly.
+
+"I 'ad mine stitched up in the piller o' my bunk with my Post Office
+Savin's book," said the engineer in the deep, hollow voice of a funeral
+bell. "An' it's burned to hashes, an' so is yours!"
+
+"Then it's nineteen to one the company won't pay up," said the stoker
+after an appalled silence.
+
+"Ten 'underd to one," groaned the engineer.
+
+Another blank silence was broken by the stoker's saying, with a savage
+oath:
+
+"I wish that boy was alive, I do."
+
+"I know your feeling," agreed the engineer sympathetically. "It 'ud be
+a comfort to you to kick 'im--or any-think else weak and small wot
+didn't durst to kick back."
+
+"If I was to give you a bounce on the jor," inquired the stoker,
+breathing heavily, "should you 'ave the courage to land me another?"
+
+The engineer promptly hit out in the darkness, and arrived safe home on
+the stoker's chin. With a tiger-like roar of fury, the stoker charged,
+and on the engineer's dodging conjecturally aside, fell heavily over the
+parish boundary-stone. He rose, foaming, and a pitched battle ensued, in
+which the combatants saw nothing but the brilliant showers of stars
+evoked by an occasional head-blow, and the general advisability of
+homicide. Toward dawn fatigue overcame them. The stoker lay down and
+declined to get up again and the engineer even while traveling on all
+fours in search of him, lost consciousness in slumber.
+
+A yellow glare in the east heralded the rising of the orb of day, as the
+figures of an aged man and a ragged boy moved from the shelter of the
+belt of elms that screened the village of Dorton Ware, and proceeded
+along the right-of-way.
+
+"It's burned, right enough, Billy, my boy," said the old man, shading
+his bleared eyes with his horny hand as he gazed at the blackened
+skeleton of the living-van. "An' all considered, you can't be called to
+blame."
+
+Billy whistled.
+
+"If you'd bin asleep inside the van when that theer blaze got started,"
+said old Abey, rebukingly, as he hobbled along by the boy's side, "you
+wouldn't be whistlin' 'My Own Bluebell' now; your pore widowed mother,
+what lives in that theer little cottage o' mine at Porberry End--and 'om
+I persuaded to insure you in the Popular Thrifty--would 'ave 'ad a bit
+o' money comin' in 'andy for 'er Michaelmas rent, an' one or two other
+people would be a penny o' th' right side, likewise." He paused, and
+shading his bleared eyes under his gnarled hand, looked steadfastly at
+two huddled, motionless, grimy figures, lying in the charred grass
+beside the pathway. "Dang my old eyes!" he cried. "'Tis George an'
+Alfred--Alfred an' George--snatched away i' their drink an' neither of
+'em insured. I'll lay a farden. Here's a judgment on their lives, what
+wouldn't listen to Old Abey an' put into the Popular Thrifty. Here's a
+waste of opportunity--here's----"
+
+Old Abey's voice quavered and broke off suddenly as the corpse of the
+engineer, opening a pair of hideously blood-shot eyes, inquired
+ferociously what in thunder he meant by making such a blamed row, while
+the body of the stoker rolled over, yawned, revealing a split lip, and
+sat up staring.
+
+"We--we thought you was dead, mates," faltered Old Abey. "Didn't us,
+Billy?"
+
+"At first I did," Billy admitted, "an' then I----"
+
+"Then you wot?" repeated the engineer, bending his brows sternly above a
+nose swollen to twice its usual size.
+
+"Out with it!" snarled the stoker, whose lip was painful.
+
+"I was afraid as it couldn't be true," stuttered Billy.
+
+The stoker exchanged a look with the engineer.
+
+"The van's burnt, an' we've both lost our property, to say nothin' of
+our prospects, mate," he said with a sardonic sneer, "but one comfort's
+left us, Billy's alive!"
+
+A little later the plowing engine with its consort was at work under the
+hot September sky. As the Powler cultivator traveled to and fro, ripping
+up the stubbles, the boy who sat on the iron seat and manipulated the
+guiding-wheel, snivelled gently, realizing that the brief but welcome
+interval of icy aloofness on the part of his superiors had passed, never
+to return; and that the injunction of the Prophet would thenceforth be
+scrupulously obeyed.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+HIS HONOR, THE DISTRICT JUDGE
+
+A Tale of India
+
+By JOHN LE BRETON
+
+
+HIS Honor, Syed Mehta, the District Judge of Golampore, had dined with
+the Malcolms, and he was the first of the Collector's guests to leave
+the bungalow. He sauntered down the drive, lifting his contemplative
+gaze to the magnificence of the starry heavens. Behind him, the lamp-lit
+rooms sent long thrusts of light, sword-wise, into the hot darkness.
+Joan Malcolm had taken up her violin, and the sweet, wailing notes of it
+came sighing out on to the heavy air. Ruddy, broad-faced young Capper,
+of the Police, lounged by the open window, eating her up with adoring
+eyes.
+
+His Honor smoked his cigar tranquilly, but at heart, he smouldered.
+Harrow and Lincoln's Inn backed his past, the High Courts awaited him in
+the future. For the present he was a Civil Servant of excellent position
+and recognized ability, a Mohammedan gentleman who had distinguished
+himself in England as well as in the land of his birth. Also, he was of
+less account in the eyes of Joan Malcolm than Capper, a blundering
+English Acting-Superintendent of Police, with a pittance of six hundred
+rupees per mensem.
+
+Possibly Capper had not intended to be offensive, but it is not given to
+the young and the British to entirely conceal all consciousness of
+superiority when speaking with a native. His courtesy was that of a man
+who considered it to be beneath his dignity to use less ceremony. His
+civility was due to his respect for himself, not for the person whom he
+honored with his unintellectual conversation.
+
+The Judge flipped the ash off his cigar, and his slender hand was cool
+and leisurely. His dark, straight-featured face was impassive as carven
+stone. Mentally, he was cursing Capper with curses of inexhaustible fire
+and venom.
+
+Malcolm, the Collector, had a right to speak loudly, and to say this or
+that without cause, for he was Collector; but Capper, a mere
+Superintendent of the Police, a cub of twenty-three, was on a very
+different footing. Yet, not even as an equal had he borne himself toward
+a District Judge.
+
+His Honor's bungalow was on the outskirts of the town, and as he paced
+along the dusty road, he came to a footpath that ran down the hill,
+through dense jungle, to the native village in the valley. There was a
+swarm of dark-skinned fellow-men down there, to whom his name stood for
+all that is highest in authority. They would have loaded him with gifts
+had he permitted them to approach him. To them, it seemed that he was
+placed far above as a god, holding their lives and their fate 'twixt
+finger and thumb, in mid-air. In the unfathomed depths of the Judge's
+educated, well-ordered mind stirred a craving for solace. Galled by the
+brutish indifference of the Englishmen, there was yet left to him the
+reverence of his own people. He looked sharply up and down the road
+before he dived into the moist heat beneath the trees. He knew all that
+he was risking for a mere escapade. He had never trodden that path
+before, excepting when he had gone on a shooting expedition with the
+Collector. There were strange noises in the darkness, stealthy
+rustlings, small, unfamiliar cries. He heard nothing but Capper's
+comment on his carefully reasoned prediction that the day must come when
+India would govern herself.
+
+"Oh! you think so?"
+
+Stupid, unmeaning, absurd, but--successful.
+
+Then, immediately Capper was talking to Miss Malcolm about tennis, and
+she was listening, smiling and intent. The Judge was a crack tennis
+player. He loathed the game, but he had made himself proficient in it,
+because it is one of the things that people expect of a man. He was
+impelled to challenge Capper, and the answer was a drawled excuse.
+
+The Judge was well down the hill now, descending the last precipitous
+slope, and the countless odors of the Indian village rose to his
+nostrils. There was a dull murmurous commotion afar off, such as bees
+make when they are hiving. He listened, without curiosity, as he pressed
+forward. Suddenly he halted. The murmur boomed out into a long,
+thunderous roar. Then silence, and out of the silence a single voice,
+deep and ringing.
+
+"An infernal protest meeting," the Judge's British training informed
+him.
+
+He went forward again, moving noiselessly, and reached the outskirts of
+the crowd, sheltering himself between the bushes that fringed the
+jungle. Torches flared, and smoked, and shed a ruddy, uncertain light on
+hundreds of rapt, upturned faces. The orator stood tall and straight
+above them, fully revealed by purposely clustered lights. He volleyed
+reproach and insult upon his listeners, he gave them taunts instead of
+persuasion. They stood enthralled by the passionate voice, and bitter
+words found their mark, and rankled poisonously.
+
+"These _soors_ of Feringhi, whom you call your masters, beat you, and
+they use your brothers to be their sticks. But for your brothers, who
+wear the uniform of the Feringhi, and carry their guns, these worthless
+masters would be trodden into the dust beneath your feet. The men who
+hedge them in with steel must turn that steel against them."
+
+The roar of voices thundered among the trees, and died away suddenly, so
+that no word from the speaker might be lost.
+
+"They are cunning, these Feringhi, my brothers. They steal the wisest
+from among us while yet they are children, and bear them away to their
+own land, and give them over to their own teachers. Thus come back your
+own, with power and authority to scourge you. Your sons, your brothers
+come back to you, learned, praised greatly, having striven against the
+Feringhi in their own schools, and won what they desired.
+Collector-sahib, Judge-sahib, yea, even padre-sahib, come they back to
+you--not to lift you to honor and happiness beside them, but to side
+with those that oppress you, to grind taxes from you who starve, to
+imprison you who would be free. Sons of unspeakable shame! They drink
+your blood, they fatten on your misery, and they have their reward. _We_
+curse, them, brothers! The Feringhis smile upon them, they eat bread and
+salt in their company, but they spit when they have passed by!"
+
+Something in the scornful voice rang familiarly on the Judge's ears, and
+incautiously he changed his position and tried to get a clearer view of
+the treasonmonger. Instantly the man's bare brown arm shot out, and
+pointed him to public notice.
+
+"Here is one," pealed out the trumpet-voice, "has he come as our
+brother? Or comes he as the slave of our masters, to spy upon our
+meetings, and to deal out punishment to those who dare to be free? O
+brother, do you walk to Calcutta, where the High Courts be, over our
+bodies, and the bodies of our children? Will you go to the
+Collector-sahib with tales of a native rising, and call up our brothers
+of the police to kill and maim us? Or come you to offer us a great
+heart?"
+
+The Judge stood there, a motionless figure, flaring against the dark
+jungle in his spotless, white linen evening dress. There was a broad
+silk cummerband about his lean waist, and a gold signet-ring gleamed on
+his left hand. Half a dozen Englishmen, thread for thread in similar
+garb, still lounged in the Collector's drawing-room. He appeared the
+very symbol of Anglicized India. The brown, half-naked mob surged and
+struggled to look at him. The brown, half-naked orator still pointed at
+him, and waited for reply. Meanwhile, he had been recognized.
+
+"Iswar Chandra--by Jove," muttered the Judge.
+
+The last time they had met was in a London drawing-room. Iswar Chandra,
+the brilliant young barrister-at-law had discoursed to a philanthropic
+peeress upon the social future of his native land, whilst an admiring
+circle of auditors hung upon his words. The fate of India's women, he
+had said, lay at the feet of such fair and noble ladies as her Grace.
+The Judge remembered that people were saying that evening of Iswar
+Chandra that he was a fascinating and earnest man, and that he would be
+the pioneer of great things in the country of his birth.
+
+The eyes of the half-naked savage challenged the Judge over the sea of
+moving heads, and drove away the supercilious smile from his lips.
+
+"Brother, we claim you! You are of our blood, and we need such as you to
+lead us. The Feringhi have sharpened a sword to cut us down, but it
+shall turn to destroy them. Brother, we suffer the torments of
+hell--will you deliver us? Brother, we starve--will you give us food?
+Will you deal out to us life or death, you whose fathers were as our
+fathers? Choose now between great honor and the infamy that dies not!
+You are the paid creature of the British Raj, or you are a leader of
+free men. Brother, speak!"
+
+As in a dream the Judge approached the waiting crowd. His mouth was
+parched, his heart beat fitfully. He wanted that piercing voice to wake
+the echoes again, to take up the story of the old blood-feud, to goad
+him into doing that which he had not the courage to do. Vanished was his
+pride of intellect, and of fine achievement. He was a native, and he
+tugged and crawled at the stretch of the British chain.
+
+"The Feringhi are few, and we are many. Shall the few rule the many?
+Shall we be servants and poor while yet in the arms of our own golden
+mother? In their own country do the Feringhi not say that the word of
+the majority shall be law? So be it! We accept their word. The majority
+shall rule! O brother, skilled in the Feringhi craft, high-placed to
+administer justice to all who are brought before thee, do I not speak
+the truth?"
+
+The Judge threw away the dead end of his cigar, and shouldered his way
+into the inmost circle.
+
+"Peace, thou," he said, thickly; "this is folly. Ye must wait awhile for
+vengeance."
+
+Chandra threw up his arms, writhing in a very ecstasy of fury.
+
+"We have waited--have we not waited?--beside our open graves. Death to
+the Feringhi! Let them no longer desecrate our land. Let us forget that
+they ever were. They be few, and we be many. Brothers! To-night,
+to-night!"
+
+The Judge was tearing off his clothes, he was trampling them beneath his
+feet, he was crying out in a strange, raucous voice; and all the swaying
+crowds were taking up his words, maddening themselves and their fellows
+with the intoxicating sounds.
+
+"Death to the Feringhi! To-night, to-night! Our land for ourselves!"
+
+All but a few torches were extinguished. Secret places were torn up, and
+out came old guns, old swords sharpened to razor-like edges, great
+pistols, clubs, skinning-knives, daggers. Then, up and up through the
+dark jungle they thronged, hordes of them in the grip of a red and
+silent frenzy. Chandra was in the forefront, but the leader was his
+Honor the District Judge, a glassy-eyed, tight-lipped Mussulman in a
+loincloth and a greasy turban.
+
+The lights of the Collector's bungalow came in view, and the leader
+thought of young Capper, and rushed on, frothing like a madman, waving
+his sword above his head. Then he paused, and ran back to meet the
+laggards of a yard or two.
+
+"Only the men!" he shouted.
+
+Chandra mocked at him as the press bore him onward again, with scarcely
+an instant's halt.
+
+"Only the men, my brother!" he echoed.
+
+A few of the native police stood guard at the Collector's gates, but
+they turned and fled before the overwhelming numbers of the attacking
+force. Up the long drive the dark wave poured, and into the wide, bright
+rooms. The bungalow was deserted. Some fleet-footed servant had brought
+warning in time, and the British were well out of the town by the other
+road, with young Capper and a score of his men guarding their rear.
+
+The mob howled with disappointment. The next instant it was screaming
+with triumph as it settled down to sack and burn and destroy.
+
+The Judge went into the dining-room, and looked at the long table still
+decked with silver, and glass, and flowers. He looked at the chair on
+which he had sat, with Joan Malcolm at his side, and he picked it up and
+dashed it with all his might into a great ivory-framed mirror, and
+laughed aloud at the crash, and the ruin, and the rain of jagged
+splinters.
+
+"India must pass into the hands of the Indians!"
+
+"Oh! _you_ think so--you think so--you think so...."
+
+He overthrew a couple of standard lamps, and watched the liquid fire run
+and eat up their silken shades, and run again and leap upon the snowy
+curtains, and so, like lightning, spring to the ceiling, and lick the
+dry rafters with a thousand darting tongues. Then, he was out in the
+night again, the night of his life, the wonderful night that was calling
+for blood, and would not be denied.
+
+There was no lack of light now to make clear the path to vengeance. The
+Collector's bungalow roared red to the very heavens, and flames shot up
+in a dozen different parts of the town. The bazaar was looted, and
+English-made goods were piled upon bonfires in the street. A greater mob
+than had entered the town poured out of it, swift on the road to
+Chinsurah where thousands of their brothers lay, lacking only courage
+and leaders.
+
+At the midway turn of the road where the giant trees rear themselves at
+the side of the well, came a sudden check, and the mob fell back upon
+itself, and grew dead silent. Those in the rear could only wait and
+guess what had happened. The forefront saw that the road was barred. The
+moon had risen, and well out in the white light, was Capper Sahib. Some
+of his men were behind him. There were soldiers there, too, how many
+could not be seen, for they were grouped in the velvety black shadows
+which the trees flung across the road. There might have been only
+fifty--or five hundred.
+
+Young Capper came forward with his hands in his pockets, and stared at
+them. They saw that he was not afraid. He spoke to them in Maharattee,
+bluntly and earnestly, so that some of them wavered, and looked back. He
+said they were fools, led by a few rotten schemers who had only personal
+gain in view.
+
+"Take good advice," he said, "go to your homes while ye may. Ignorant,
+and greatly daring that ye are, the _bandar-log_, or such thievish scum
+among ye, drive ye with idle words and chatterings even to the brink of
+death. So far have ye come, but no farther----"
+
+The Judge had snatched a villager's gun, and fired. Capper Sahib fell,
+unspoken words upon his lips. His fair head draggled in the dust, and a
+red stain showed suddenly upon the white linen over his breast.
+
+A triumphant roar swept the mob from end to end. British rifles cracked
+out the answer, and the bullets went home surely, into the rioting mass.
+Amid shrill screams of pain and fury the leaders rallied their men, and
+charged forward. A second volley stopped them, before young Capper's
+prostrate body could be reached. Few had joined the attack, but now they
+were fewer, and neither of the leaders stood among them.
+
+That was the end. Bearing their dead and wounded, the rebels returned,
+wailing as they went. Before daylight the townsmen were in their houses,
+and the villagers had passed through the jungle, and regained their
+homes. Arms were concealed with all haste. The dead were buried, the
+wounded, for the most part, were hidden. Prisoners had been taken, but
+only an inconsiderable number. Before daylight also, the headman of the
+village, and a native surgeon came stealthily from the Judge's bungalow,
+and went their ways. They had their order, and they went to spread it
+abroad. The order was--_Silence!_ The headman had bowed himself to the
+earth when it was given, for he understood all that it meant. Prisoners
+would be brought before a brother, not only to-day, but to-morrow, and
+for many morrows. So much had the night given them.
+
+At noon His Honor came stiffly into the court-room, leaning upon the arm
+of his native servant. The Collector, who was awaiting him there, feared
+that he had been injured by the rioters on the previous night; but he
+was quickly reassured. The Judge, it seemed, had sprained his knee
+shortly after leaving the Malcolm's hospitable roof. It was nothing. A
+mere trifle, though indisputably painful.
+
+The Collector seated himself near the bench, and talked in a low voice.
+The ladies were all safe. No Europeans had been killed, and few injured.
+Capper had been shot by some cowardly dog while parleying with the
+rioters, but there were good hopes of him.
+
+The Judge was most truly concerned to hear of the calamity which had
+befallen Mr. Capper--immensely thankful to know that things were no
+worse with him.
+
+His Honor had heard little or nothing of what had happened during the
+riot, being laid by the leg, as it were, in his own room.
+
+The first batch of prisoners was brought in. At first the Judge did not
+look at them. Afterward his eyes sought their gaze, and held it, and
+they knew him for their brother. They heard his soft voice speaking of
+them compassionately, as wayward children whom mercy would win over,
+though harshness might confirm them in their foolish resistance to
+authority. The Collector seemed to protest, but with gentle courtesy
+his objections were put aside. He leaned back in his chair, flushed and
+angry, as one after another, the sullen-looking rebels were fined, and
+having paid what was demanded, were set at liberty.
+
+When the Judge looked up again, a single prisoner stood before him, a
+wounded, hawk-faced native, whose eyes blazed hate and contempt. The
+Collector drew his chair closer to the bench, and began to speak in
+gruff undertones.
+
+"A ring-leader. Man of some education, I understand--qualified as a
+barrister, and has taken to journalism. Must make an example of
+him--eh?"
+
+The Judge, straining in agony of mind and body, was aware of sudden
+relief from the pain of his wound. The bandage had slipped, and blood
+was cooling the torturing fire. A deathly faintness was upon him, and
+through it he spoke distinctly--again of mercy.
+
+"They were all blind. The leaders were blind. The blind leading the
+blind. Blind--blind----"
+
+The Collector sprang up with a startled exclamation. A thin stream of
+blood trickled from behind His Honor's desk, and went a twisting way
+down to the well of the court. He caught the Judge in his arms as he
+fell forward, and lowered him gently to the ground. Then it was seen
+that the unconscious man's clothes were saturated with blood.
+
+Instantly the court was cleared. A military surgeon cut away the
+blood-stained clothing from the Judge's thigh, and laid bare the clean
+wound made by a British bullet. A look passed between him and the
+Collector, but never a word. Syed Mehta's life had ebbed with his blood,
+and so he passed, unawakened, from swoon to death.
+
+The English, as their way is, betrayed nothing. It was His Honor, the
+District Judge of Golampore, who had died, and they gave him burial the
+next day with due regard to the high position which he had held in the
+service of H.M. the King and Emperor.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A FOG-HORN CONCLUSION
+
+The Story of a Gramophone
+
+By FOX RUSSELL
+
+
+THE _Saucy Sally_ was a vessel of renown. No blustering liner, no fussy
+tug, no squattering steamer, she; but a bluff-bowed, smartly painted,
+trim-built sailing barge, plying chiefly from the lower reaches of the
+Thames to ports west of Dover. She had no equal of her class, at any
+point of sailing, and certainly her Master, Mr. Joseph Pigg, was not the
+man to let her fair fame suffer for want of seamanship.
+
+"Cap'n Pigg," as he insisted upon being called, was a great, hairy-faced
+man, with brawny muscles and a blood-shot eye. And in these respects,
+his mate, Bob Topper, greatly favored him--in fact, their physical
+resemblance was rather marked; but their tastes were in no way similar;
+'the Cap'n' was fond of his glass, whilst the mate was a blue-ribbon
+man; Joseph Pigg couldn't bear music, in any form, whilst the total
+abstainer had a weakness for the flute and would not infrequently burst
+into song; the Skipper hated women, whereas the mate was, what he
+himself called "a bit of a gay Lathero." But notwithstanding these
+dissimilarities of tastes and disposition, they got along fairly well
+together, and both met on the common ground of getting as much work out
+of the two "hands" as was ordinarily possible. The Skipper didn't drink
+alcoholic liquors before the mate, and the mate returned the compliment
+by refraining from any musical outrage in the hearing of his superior
+officer.
+
+One hot summer afternoon, when the _Saucy Sally_ was taking in cargo and
+the Skipper was ashore, Mr. Topper, seated on the coamings of the
+hatchway, abandoned himself to the melancholy pleasures of Haydn's
+"Surprise," the tune being wrung out of a tarnished German-silver flute.
+"Kittiwake Jack," one of the crew, was seated as far as possible
+for'ard, vainly trying to absorb his tea and stop his ears, at one and
+the same time, whilst his fellow-sufferer, Bill Brown, having hastily
+dived below, lay in his bunk, striving to deaden the weird, wailing
+sounds that filled the ship. And just as Haydn's "Surprise" was half way
+through, for the seventh time, the Skipper walked on board.
+
+The flutist stopped short, and stared up at him.
+
+"Didn't expect you back so soon, Cap'n," he said in confused tones.
+
+"No. What's that 'owlin' row you're making?"
+
+"I dunno about no 'owlin' row, but----"
+
+"Well, I do. I s'pose, accordin' to you, I ain't got no musical h'ear,"
+sneered Cap'n Pigg.
+
+"This--this here tune----"
+
+"Yes. This disgustin' noise--what is it?"
+
+The mate looked sulky.
+
+"This is Haydn's 'Surprise,'" he growled.
+
+"So I should think. I dunno who the bloke was, but it must have given
+Haydn quite a turn! Don't let's 'ave no more of it."
+
+"Well, I don't see as there's no 'arm in music. And I didn't loose it
+off when you was about. I know you don't like it, so I studied your
+pecooliarities. Fact is, I studies yer too much," and the mate looked
+mutinous.
+
+Cap'n Pigg scowled.
+
+"You shet yer 'ead," he grunted as he stamped off below. He went to a
+small cupboard in the corner of the cabin, and mixed himself a stiff
+"go" of gin and water, which he tossed off at one gulp, saying:
+
+"Haydn's 'S'prise,' eh? Haydn's S'prise be d--dished! 'E don't come no
+s'prises 'ere while I'm master of the _Saucy Sally_!"
+
+After this slight breeze, things quickly settled down again on the old
+lines between master and mate, and the voyage to Chichester Harbor was
+entirely uneventful, the barge bringing up at a snug anchorage near
+Emsworth.
+
+The next day Mr. Topper had undressed and gone overboard for a swim.
+After this, climbing up the bobstay, he regained the deck, and proceeded
+to dry his hairy frame on an ancient flannel shirt. In the midst of this
+occupation, temporarily forgetful of his superior officer's prejudices,
+he broke into song.
+
+Thirty seconds after he had let go the first howl, the Skipper's head
+was thrust up the companion-way.
+
+"Wodjer want to make all that row about? Anything disagreed with yer? If
+so, why don't yer take something for it?"
+
+"It's a funny thing yer carn't let a man alone, when all 'e's a doin' is
+making a bit of 'armony on board," replied the mate, pausing in the act
+of drying his shock head.
+
+"'Armony be d--driven overboard!" cried Mr. Pigg, wrathfully. "Now, look
+'ere, Bob Topper, I ain't a onreasonable man in my likes and dislikes,
+but it ain't fair to sing at a feller creature with the voice nature
+fitted you out with! I never done you no 'arm."
+
+Next day the _Saucy Sally_ shipped some shingle ballast, got under weigh
+on the first of the ebb tide, and safely threading her way past the
+shallows and through the narrow channels of the harbor, emerged into the
+open sea, and turned her bluff-bowed stem eastwards.
+
+The following afternoon, as Bob Topper took his trick at the wheel, he
+ruminated on the mutability of human affairs in general, and the
+"contraryness" of skippers in particular.
+
+"Won't 'ave no music, won't he? Well, I reckon it's like religion when
+the missionaries is a shovin' of it into the African niggers--they just
+jolly well got to 'ave it! An' so it'll be with the ole man. I'll jest
+fix up a scheme as'll do 'im a treat."
+
+He smiled broadly; and when Bob Topper smiled, the corners of his mouth
+seemed to almost meet at the back of his head.
+
+And as soon as the _Saucy Sally_ had pitched and tossed her way up
+channel--for she was light as a cork in ballast--and dropped anchor a
+little way off Gravesend, Bob Topper sculled himself ashore. Twenty
+minutes after stepping out of the boat, he was seated in the back-parlor
+of a friend, a musical-instrument maker.
+
+When Mr. Topper went aboard again, he carried under his arm a large
+brown paper package, which he smuggled below, without encountering the
+Skipper, who was in his cabin at the time, communing with a bill of
+lading and a glass of Hollands neat. And, soon after the mate had come
+aboard, "the Cap'n" went ashore.
+
+And then Mr. Topper laid himself out for some tranquil enjoyment, on
+quite an unusual scale. He unfastened the package, produced a
+gramophone, brought it on to the deck, and started "The Washington
+Post."
+
+"Kittiwake Jack" and Bill Brown immediately fled below.
+
+The mate sat on the edge of the hatch and gazed lovingly at the new
+instrument of torture, as he beat time to the inspiring strains, with a
+belaying pin. When the "Washington Post," was finished, he laid on
+"Jacksonville," with a chorus of human laughter, which sounded quite
+eerie. And so intent was he on this occupation, that he never even
+noticed the approach of Cap'n Pigg's boat until it was almost alongside.
+
+The Skipper clambered aboard, looking black as thunder. This new outrage
+was not to be borne. Just as his foot touched the deck the instrument
+gave forth its unholy cachinnation of "Ha! Ha! Ha!" in the high nasal
+tones peculiar to its kind.
+
+Cap'n Pigg was not easily disconcerted, but this ghostly "Ha! Ha! Ha!"
+was a distinct trial to his nerves; he thrust his hands deep into his
+coat pockets, glared at the mate, and then growled:
+
+"Wodjer got there? More 'armony?"
+
+"Grammarphone," was the mate's brief reply. He was getting sulky.
+
+"Grammar be blowed! Worst grammar I ever 'eard," returned Pigg. "Turn
+the bloomin' thing off--and turn it off at the main. Enough to give any
+respectable, law-abidin' sailor-man the 'ump!"
+
+He proceeded two steps down the companion; then hurled this parting shot
+at the offending mate:
+
+"You oughter be 'ead of a laundry where the 'andle of the mangle turns a
+pianer-horgan as well--work and play!" he concluded scornfully, as he
+disappeared from the musician's sight below.
+
+The mate whistled softly; then he stopped the offending instrument and
+conveyed it below.
+
+"P'raps the old man'll be glad of it, one o' these days," he muttered
+mysteriously.
+
+The next trip of the _Saucy Sally_ was a more eventful one. She left
+Tilbury in a light haze, which first thickened into a pale-colored fog,
+and then, aided by the smoke from the tall chimneys, to a regular
+"pea-souper." The mate, taking advantage of the Captain's spell below,
+brought up a long yard of tin, which looked remarkably like the _Saucy
+Sally's_ fog-horn, and quietly slipped it overboard.
+
+As they got lower and lower down the river, the fog increased, and both
+Cap'n Pigg and Topper experienced a certain amount of anxiety as, first
+another barge, then a tramp steamer, and finally, a huge liner, all
+sounding their fog-horns loudly, passed them considerably too close for
+comfort. The Skipper himself was at the wheel and, coughing the raw,
+damp fog out of his throat, he shouted hoarsely to Topper:
+
+"Better get our fog-horn goin', mate."
+
+"Aye, aye, Skipper. It's in your cabin, ain't it?"
+
+"Yes, in the first locker."
+
+The mate descended the companion-steps, with a mysterious smile on his
+face, and his dexter optic closed. The casual observer might have
+thought that Mr. Topper was actually indulging in a wink.
+
+After a time, he reappeared on deck, walked aft, and said:
+
+"Fog-horn don't seem nowheres about, Skipper. Thought you always kept
+her in your charge."
+
+Cap'n Pigg whisked the wheel round just in time to escape a tug, fussing
+up-stream, and feeling her way through the fog at half-speed, and then
+he grunted sourly:
+
+"So I do. What the d--delay in findin' it is, I can't understand. 'Ere,
+ketch 'old o' the spokes, and I'll go; always got to do everything
+myself on this old tank, seems to me."
+
+And thus grumbling, Cap'n Pigg went below--not altogether unwillingly,
+as, being a man who understood the importance of economizing time, he
+combined his search for the fog-horn with the quenching of a highly
+useful thirst. But when he came on deck again, wiping his mouth with the
+back of his hand, he was unaccompanied by the fog-horn.
+
+"Where the blamed thing's got to, I dunno, more'n the dead. I see it
+there, myself, not two days ago, but it ain't nowheres to be found now."
+
+"Rather orkard, Skipper, ain't it, in all this maze o' shippin'?"
+returned Mr. Topper with a half turn at the wheel.
+
+"Yes, I don't more'n 'arf like it," returned the Cap'n uneasily. "My
+nerves arn't quite what they was. An' a fog's a thing as I never could
+abide."
+
+On glided the _Saucy Sally_, almost the only one on the great water way
+which spoke not, in the midst of a babel of confusing sounds. Syrens
+whooped, steam whistles shrieked hoarsely; the raucous voices of
+fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and
+down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along,
+ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving no intimation of her
+proximity.
+
+Then it was that Mr. Bob Topper's moment for action arrived. In casual
+tones, he observed to the Skipper:
+
+"Pity, we ain't got something as'll make a sound o' some kind, so's to
+let people know as we 're a-comin'."
+
+Cap'n Pigg said nothing: but the anxiety deepened perceptibly in his
+face.
+
+"Where the blank blank are yer comin' to?" roared the voice of another
+bargeman, as, tooting loudly on a fog-horn, one of the "Medway flyers,"
+shaved past them.
+
+"Near thing, that," observed the mate, calmly.
+
+Cap'n Pigg went a shade paler beneath the tan on his weather-beaten
+face.
+
+"Cuss 'im! careless 'ound!" he muttered. "Might a' sunk us."
+
+"'Ad no proper lookout, I expect," returned Mr. Topper, "even if 'e 'ad,
+'e couldn't see anything, and we got no fog-'orn to show 'em where we
+was, yer see."
+
+"No. An' p'raps we shall go to the bottom, all along o' our 'aving lost
+our ole bit o' tin. It's a orful thing to think of, ain't it?" said
+Cap'n Pigg solemnly.
+
+The mate appeared to be in a brown study. Then, as though he had
+suddenly been inspired, he exclaimed:
+
+"What about the grammarphone, Skipper?"
+
+Even in the midst of his perturbation, Cap'n Pigg looked askance at
+mention of the hated instrument. But it was a case of 'any port in a
+storm,' and, with a grim nod, he relieved the mate at the wheel, and
+said:
+
+"Fetch the bloomin' consarn up."
+
+Mr. Topper obeyed, with alacrity in his step, and a wink in his eye. The
+'consarn' was quickly brought on deck, and the 'Washington Post' let
+loose on the astonished ears of fog-smothered mariners, right and left
+of them.
+
+One old shell-back, coming up river on a Gravesend shrimper, listened in
+blank astonishment for a minute, and then confided huskily to his mate
+that he thought their time had come.
+
+"'Eavenly, strains! It's wot they calls 'the music o' the spears,'" he
+said mysteriously, "Hangels' music wot comes just before a bloke's
+time's up. We better prepare for the wust."
+
+His mate, less superstitious and with more common sense, rejoined:
+
+"Garn! 'Music o' the spears' be blowed! It's more like a pianer-horgan
+or a 'urdy-gurdy."
+
+The shrimper glided on, and a tramp steamer, going dead slow, just
+shaved past the musical barge. Its master roared derisively from the
+bridge:
+
+"'Ullo, barge, ahoy! Wot yer got there? Punch and Judy show aboard?"
+
+Which cost Cap'n Pigg a nasty twinge. He had always prided himself on
+his seaman-like ways, and to proceed thus, down the great river, like a
+mountebank, or a Cockney out on a Bank Holiday, hurt his feelings more
+than he could say.
+
+Yet another insult was to be hurled at the _Saucy Sally_, for
+"Jacksonville," with its weird human chorus, having been turned on--when
+the "Ha! Ha! Ha!" rang out on the ears of a passing tug's captain, that
+outraged gentleman, thinking he was being personally derided, shouted,
+as the tide swept them out of sight:
+
+"Yah! 'Oo yer larfin' at? Set o' bloomin' monkeys!"
+
+But the gramophone was certainly playing a useful part in warning others
+off the _Saucy Sally_, down that fog-laden river. And, when, at the end
+of their day's slow journey, they let go their anchor, the "Washington
+Post" was again nasally shrieking out its march-time glories.
+
+The mate stopped the machine and carried it tenderly below, then,
+returning to the deck, he observed.
+
+"Good job as we 'ad the grammarphone aboard, Cap'n."
+
+Cap'n Pigg swallowed a lump in his throat, and looked like a child
+confronted with a dose of nauseous medicine, as he gruffly replied:
+
+"It's better n' nothin' when yer wants a row made."
+
+A pause ensued, and then the Skipper went on:
+
+"In future, I don't object--not very much--to the
+dammarphone--grammarphone, I mean--If you can stand music, well, so can
+I. But you can't contrarst the beauty o' the two instruments, and I'm
+goin' ashore, straight away, to buy myself a good, old-fashioned
+fog-'orn. The tone of that is altogether more 'armonious and more
+soothin' to the hear, than that there beastly grammarphone ever could
+be!"
+
+The mate heaved a deep sigh and sorrowfully went below. In the effort to
+ram music into his superior officer he had to admit himself defeated.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+MARY JANE'S DIVERSION
+
+A Western Tale
+
+By CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER
+
+
+TEXAS RANKIN stood in the street in front of the High Card Saloon, his
+lank body trembling with surprise, indecision, and indignation; his face
+alight with the fire of outraged dignity. Three long paces from him
+stood Sheriff Webster, indifferently fondling an ivory-handled .45.
+
+The sheriff was nonchalantly deliberative in his actions, betraying only
+a negative interest in Rankin's movements--for Rankin's holster yawned
+with eloquent emptiness. With his empty holster dragging on his desires,
+it seemed to Rankin that to await the sheriff's pleasure was his most
+logical course.
+
+And so he waited.
+
+The sheriff had come upon him, when, in an incautious moment, he had
+emerged from the High Card Saloon, having forgotten the very important
+fact that the sheriff was looking for him. This forgetfulness had been
+the cause of his undoing, for at the instant he had turned to go down
+the street the sheriff had reached for his gun. The empty holster was
+evidence of his success.
+
+After that there was no use in getting excited. True, Texas had flashed
+around in his tracks when he had felt the gun leaving its holster, and
+had made a lightning movement with his hand to prevent such a
+disgraceful occurrence. But he might just as well have reached for a
+rainbow. As he had faced about, rage-flushed and impotent, he saw his
+gun swinging loosely in Webster's left hand, while in Webster's right
+hand another big six-shooter had reached a foreboding level.
+
+The distance between the two men approximated ten feet; for Webster had
+wisely stepped back, knowing Rankin's reluctance toward submission.
+
+And now, over the ten feet of space, captive and captor surveyed one
+another with that narrowing of the eyes which denotes tension and warns
+of danger.
+
+"I reckon I was too quick for you, Texas," said Webster, with a
+gentleness that fell too softly to be genuine.
+
+Rankin gazed dolefully at his empty holster. The skin tensed over his
+teeth in a grinning sneer.
+
+"I ain't sayin' that you took a mean advantage," he said, raising his
+eyes and allowing them an expression of mild innocence that contrasted
+strangely with his drawn lips, "but you might have given me a chance to
+fight it out square. I wouldn't have took your gun, Jim."
+
+Knowing Texas less intimately, the sheriff might have been misled by
+this crude sentiment; but the sheriff's fingers only drew more closely
+around the ivory handle of his .45. And there came a glint of humor into
+his eyes.
+
+"I ain't sayin' you would, Texas. But as sheriff of Socorro County I
+ain't takin' any chances. I wanted to talk to you, an' I knew if I had
+your gun I'd feel easier."
+
+"Which means that you didn't want me to have a chance," complained Texas
+glumly. "Socorro's always been meaner'n ----"
+
+"'T ain't Socorro's fault," interrupted the sheriff with a sudden
+coldness; "you've been cuttin' didoes in Socorro for so long a time that
+you've disgraced yourself. You've gambled an' shot yourself into
+disfavor with the _elite_. You've been as ornery an' as compromisin' as
+it's possible for any human maverick to get without havin' to
+requisition the unwillin' mourners."
+
+"Not that I'm sayin' you're naturally bad, Texas. It's that you've got
+an overdose of what them modern brain specialists call exaggerated ego;
+which us common critters would call plain swell head. That there
+disease is listed an' catalogued in the text books of the New York
+Medical Institoot as bearin' a close relationship to the geni Loco;
+which is a scientific way of sayin' that you've got buzzers in your
+attic."
+
+Texas smiled, showing his teeth in wan sarcasm.
+
+"You wouldn't say that if I had my gun, Jim. It ain't like you to pour
+out your blackguardisms on a man what ain't armed."
+
+"I ain't blackguardin' you none," said Webster easily. "It's the naked
+truth, an' you know it. Takin' your gun was part of my official duty.
+Personally I could have talked to you without trampling down any of the
+niceties of etiquette, but officially I had to have your gun."
+
+Rankin's face lengthened with a deep melancholy. With this expression he
+intended to convey the impression that he was suffering a martyrdom. But
+the sheriff's acquaintance with Texas was not recent.
+
+"An' now that you've got the gun," said Texas, after an embarrassed
+silence, "what's the next thing on the programme?"
+
+"Takin' your gun," said the sheriff heavily, "was a preliminary; like
+they say in the sporting papers. The big event is that you're goin' to
+say your adoos to Socorro without bein' allowed to make any farewell
+announcement. The reason is that you an' Socorro is incongruous--like a
+side-saddle on a razor-back hog. Socorro won't stand for you a minute
+longer. You're a Public Favorite which has lost its popularity an' which
+has become heterogeneous to the established order of things. In other
+words, you're an outlaw; a soft-spoken, lazy, good-for-nothin'
+road-agent. An' though Socorro ain't never had anything on you before,
+it knows you had a hand in robbin' the express office last night. An'
+it's----"
+
+"You're a damn ----"
+
+"----like playin' a king-full against three deuces that you done the
+trick. You was seen goin' toward the station about an hour before Budd
+Tucker found Ridgely, the agent, stretched out on the floor of the
+office, a bullet from a .45 clean through him. An' there's five thousand
+dollars in gold gone, an' no trace of it. An' there's been no strangers
+in town. An' here's your gun, showin' plain that it's been shot off
+lately, for there's the powder smudge on the cylinder an' the barrel.
+That's a pay streak of circumstantial evidence or I ain't sheriff of
+Socorro!"
+
+Rankin's eyes had flashed with an unusual brilliancy as the sheriff had
+spoken of him being seen going toward the station previous to the
+finding of the agent's body, but they glazed over with unconcern during
+the rest of the recital. And as the sheriff concluded, Rankin gazed
+scornfully at him, sneering mildly:
+
+"I couldn't add nothin' to what you've just said." He idly kicked the
+gray dust that was mounded at his feet, standing loose and inert, as
+though he cared little what might be the outcome of this impromptu
+interview. And then, suddenly, his blue eyes twinkled humorously as he
+raised them to meet the sheriff's.
+
+"Give you time you might tell me where I spent the money," he said
+drily. "There's no tellin' where your theorizin' might end."
+
+The sheriff ignored this, but he eyed his prisoner meditatively.
+
+"There's been a rumor," he said coldly, "that you've got cracked on my
+daughter, Mary Jane. But I ain't never been able to properly confirm it.
+I meant to tell you some time ago that while I ain't had no objection to
+livin' in the same town with you, I'm some opposed to havin' you for a
+son-in-law. But now, since the express robbery, it won't be necessary
+for me to tell you not to nose around my house, for you're goin' to ride
+straight out of Socorro County, an' you ain't comin' back any more. If
+you do, I reckon you'll discover that Socorro's present leniency ain't
+elastic enough to be stretched to cover your home-comin'."
+
+"I ain't sayin' nothin'," said Texas, glancing with pensive eyes to a
+point far up the sun-baked street where his gaze rested upon a
+pretentious house in a neatly-fenced yard where there were green things
+that gave a restful impression. "Circumstantial evidence is sure
+convincin'." he sighed deeply. "I reckon you knowed all along that I
+thought a heap of Mary Jane. That's the reason you picked me out for the
+express job."
+
+He scowled as his eyes took in the meagre details of Socorro's one
+street. Because of long association these details had become mental
+fixtures. Socorro had been his home for ten years, and in ten years
+things grow into a man's heart. And civic pride had been his one great
+virtue. If in the summer the alkali dust of the street formed into
+miniature hills of grayish white which sifted into surrounding hollows
+under the whipping tread of the cow-pony's hoofs, Texas likened it unto
+ruffled waters that seek a level. The same condition in another town
+would have drawn a curse from him. If in the winter the huge windrows of
+caked mud stretched across the street in unlovely phalanx, Texas was
+reminded of itinerant mountain ranges. The stranger who would be so
+unwary as to take issue with him on this point would regret--if he
+lived. The unpainted shanties, the huddled, tottering dives, the
+tumble-down express station--all, even the maudlin masquerade of the
+High Card Saloon--were institutions inseparable from his thoughts,
+inviolable and sacred in the measure of his love for them.
+
+And now! Something caught in his throat and gave forth a choking sound.
+
+"But I reckon it's just as well," he said resignedly. "I sure ain't of
+much account." He hesitated and smiled weakly at the sheriff. "I ain't
+croakin'," he said apologetically; "there's the circumstantial
+evidence." He hesitated again, evidently battling a ponderous question.
+"You didn't happen to hear Mary Jane say anything about the express
+job?" he questioned with an expression of dog-like hopefulness.
+"Anything that would lead you to believe she knowed about it?"
+
+"I don't see what----"
+
+"No, of course!" He shuffled his feet awkwardly. "An' so she don't know
+anything. Didn't mention me at all?" The hopefulness was gone from his
+eyes, and in its place was the dull glaze of puzzled wonder. "Not that
+it makes any difference," he added quickly, as he caught a sudden sharp
+glance from the sheriff's eyes.
+
+"An' so I'm to leave Socorro." He looked dully at the sheriff. "Why, of
+course, there's the circumstantial evidence." His eyes swept the
+shanties, the street, the timber-dotted sides of the mountains that rose
+above the town--familiar landmarks of his long sojourn; landmarks that
+brought pleasant memories.
+
+"I've lived here a long time," he said, with abrupt melancholy, his
+voice grating with suppressed regret. "I won't forget soon."
+
+There ensued a silence which lasted long. It brought a suspicious lump
+into the sheriff's throat.
+
+"I wouldn't take it so hard, Texas," he said gently. "Mebbe it'll be the
+best for you in the long run. If you get away from here mebbe you make a
+man----"
+
+"Quit your damn croakin'!" flashed back Texas. "I ain't askin' for none
+of your mushy sentiment!" He straightened up suddenly and smiled with
+set lips. "I guess I've been a fool. If you'll hand over that
+six-shooter I'll be goin'. I've got business in San Marcial."
+
+"I'll walk up to the station platform an' lay the gun there," said the
+sheriff coldly; for Texas was less dangerous at a distance; "an' when
+you see me start away from the platform you can start for the gun. I'm
+takin' your word that you'll leave peaceable."
+
+And so, with his gun again in its holster, Texas threw himself astride
+his Pinto pony and loped down toward the sloping banks of the Rio Grande
+del Norte.
+
+A quarter of a mile from town he halted on the bare knob of a low hill
+and took a lingering look at the pretentious house amid the green
+surroundings.
+
+Near the house was something he had not seen when he had looked
+before--the flutter of a white dress against the background of green. As
+he looked the white figure moved rapidly through the garden and
+disappeared behind the house.
+
+"She didn't say a word," said Texas chokingly.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Ten hours out of Socorro Texas Rankin rode morosely into San Marcial.
+Into San Marcial the unbeautiful, with its vista of unpainted shanties
+and lurid dives. For in San Marcial foregathered the men of the mines
+and the ranges; men of forgotten morals, but of brawn and muscle, whose
+hearts beat not with a yearning for high ideals, but with a lust for
+wealth and gain--white, Indian, Mexican, half-breed; predatory spirits
+of many nations, opposed in the struggle for existence.
+
+For ten hours Texas had ridden the river trail, and for ten hours his
+ears had been burdened with the dull beat of his pony's hoofs on the
+matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of his wooden stirrups against the
+chaparral growth. And for ten hours his mind had been confused with a
+multitude of perplexities and resentments.
+
+But all mental confusions reach a culminating point when the mind
+finally throws aside the useless chaff of thought and considers only the
+questions that have to do with the heart. Wherefore, Texas Rankin's mind
+dwelt on Mary Jane. Subconsciously his mind harbored rebellion against
+her father, who had judged him; against Socorro, which had misunderstood
+him; against Fate, which had been unjust. All these atoms of personal
+interest were elements of a primitive emotion that finally evolved into
+one great concrete determination that he would show Jim Webster,
+Socorro, Mary Jane--the world, that he was not the creature they had
+thought him. Tearing aside all mental superfluities, there was revealed
+a new structure of thought:
+
+"I am goin' to be a man again!"
+
+And so Texas rode his tired pony in the gathering dusk; down the wide
+street that was beginning to flicker with the shafts of light from grimy
+windows; down to the hitching rail in front of the Top Notch
+Saloon--where he dismounted and stood stiffly beside his beast while he
+planned his regeneration.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later Texas sat opposite a man at a card table in the rear
+of the Top Notch Saloon.
+
+The man conversed easily, but it was noticeable that he watched Texas
+with cat-like vigilance, and that he poured his whiskey with his left
+hand.
+
+Ordinarily Texas would have noticed this departure from the polite
+rules, but laboring under the excitement that his new determination
+brought him he was careless. For he had planned his regeneration, and
+his talk with the man was the beginning.
+
+"You lifted the express box at Socorro, Buck!" said Texas, so earnestly
+that the table trembled.
+
+Buck Reible, gambler, outlaw, murderer, pushed back his broad-brimmed
+hat with his hand--always he used his left--and gazed with level,
+menacing eyes at Texas. His lips parted with a half-sneer.
+
+"If a man does a job nowadays, there's always some one wants in on it!"
+he declared, voicing his suspicion of Rankin's motive in bringing up the
+subject. "Because you was lucky in bein' close when the game come off is
+the reason you want a share of the cash," he added satirically. "How
+much----"
+
+"Go easy, Buck," said Texas. "I ain't no angel, but I never played your
+style. I ain't askin' for a share."
+
+"Then what in----"
+
+"It's a new deal," declared Texas heavily. "A square deal. You took five
+thousand dollars out of Socorro, an' you salivated the agent doin' it.
+Jim Webster thought it was me, an' I was invited to a farewell
+performance in which I done the starrin'. Some night-prowler saw me
+down near the station just before you made your grand entree, an'----"
+
+"Serves you right for spoonin' with a female so close to where gentlemen
+has business," said Buck. "I saw her when you come toward me shootin'."
+
+"An' what makes it more aggravatin'," continued Texas, unmoved by the
+interruption; "is that the lady was Jim Webster's daughter, an' we was
+thinkin' of gettin' married. But we didn't want Jim to know just then,
+an' she told me to keep mum, seein' that Jim was opposed. She said we'd
+keep it secret until----"
+
+"I admire the lady's choice," said Buck, sneering ironically.
+
+"----until I braced up an' was a man again," went on Texas, with
+bull-dog persistency.
+
+"Then you wasn't thinkin' of gettin' married soon," slurred Buck.
+
+"I reckon we was," returned Texas coldly; "that's why I came here. I'm
+goin' to take that five thousand back to Socorro with me!"
+
+And now Buck used his right hand. But quick as he was, he was late.
+Rankin's gun gaped at him across the table the while his own weapon
+lagged tardily half-way in its holster.
+
+"I'm goin' to be a man again," said Texas. There was a positiveness in
+his voice that awoke thoughts of death and violence.
+
+"You damn----" began Buck.
+
+"I'll count ten," said Texas frigidly. "If the money ain't on the table
+then I reckon you won't care what becomes of it!"
+
+"One!--Two!"
+
+With a snarl of rage and hate Buck rose from his chair and sprang clear,
+his gun flashing to a level with the movement, its savage roar
+shattering the silence.
+
+Texas did not wince as the heavy bullet struck him, but his face went
+white. He had been a principal in more than one shooting affray, and
+experience had taught him the value of instantaneous action. And so,
+even with the stinging pain in his left shoulder, his hand swept his gun
+lightly upward, and before it had reached a level he had begun to pull
+the trigger. But to his astonishment only the metallic click, click of
+the hammer striking the steel of the cylinder rewarded his efforts.
+Once, twice, thrice; so rapidly that the metallic clicks blended.
+
+And now he saw why he was to meet his death at the muzzle of Buck's gun.
+Fearing him, Jim Webster had removed the cartridges from his weapon
+before returning it to him that morning. He had committed a fatal error
+in not examining it after he had received it from Webster's hand. The
+Law, in judging him, had removed his chance of life.
+
+But he smiled with bitter irony into Buck's eyes as the latter, still
+snarling and relentless, deliberately shot again; once, twice.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+According to the ancient custom--which has many champions--and to the
+conventions--which are not to be violated with impunity--Texas should
+have recovered from his wounds to return to Mary Jane and Socorro. No
+narrative is complete without the entire vindication of the brave and
+the triumph of the honorable. But to the chronicler belongs only the
+simple task of true and conscientious record.
+
+Therefore is the end written thus:
+
+Came to Jim Webster's home in Socorro a week later a babbler from San
+Marcial, who told a tale:
+
+"There was a man by the name of Texas Rankin came down to San Marcial
+last week an' went gunnin' for Buck Reible. Quickest thing you ever saw.
+Buck peppered him so fast you couldn't count; an' I'm told Texas wasn't
+no slouch with a gun, either."
+
+"Dead?" questioned Webster.
+
+"As a door nail," returned the babbler.
+
+"Socorro's bad man," said Webster, sententiously. "Wasn't a bit of good
+in him. Gamblin', shootin', outlaw. Best job Buck ever done."
+
+He found Mary Jane in the kitchen, singing over the supper dishes.
+
+"Texas Rankin is dead over at San Marcial," he said, with the importance
+of one communicating delectable news.
+
+Mary Jane continued with her dishes, looking at her father over her
+shoulder with a mild unconcern.
+
+"At San Marcial?" she said wonderingly. "I didn't know he had left
+Socorro!"
+
+"A week now," returned Webster with much complacence. "Fired him from
+Socorro for doin' that express job. Socorro's bad enough without
+Texas----"
+
+His mouth opened with dumb astonishment as Mary Jane whirled around on
+him with a laugh on her lips.
+
+"Why, dad! Texas Rankin didn't do that job! It was Buck Reible. Texas
+told me the night it happened. We were walking down near the station and
+we heard some shooting. I wasn't close enough to see plainly, but Texas
+said he could recognize Buck by the flash of his gun. And so Texas is
+dead!"
+
+"I thought," said Webster feebly, "that you was pretty sweet on Texas."
+
+"Sweet!" said Mary Jane, blushing with maidenly modesty. "Socorro is so
+dull. A young lady must have some diversion."
+
+"Then you don't care----"
+
+"Why, dad! You old sobersides. To think--why I was only fooling with
+him. It was fun to see how serious----"
+
+"In that case----" began Webster. And then he went out and sat on the
+front stoop.
+
+Far into the night he sat, and always he stared in the direction of San
+Marcial.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+BETWEEN FRIENDS
+
+A Story of the Italian Quarter
+
+By ADRIANA SPADONI
+
+
+VINCENZA looked from the three crisp dollar bills to her husband, and
+back again, wonderingly and with fear in her eyes.
+
+"I understand nothing, Gino, and I am afraid. Perhaps it will bring the
+sickness, the money--it is of the devil, maybe----"
+
+Luigi laughed, but a little uneasily. "It is time, then, that the devil
+went to paradise; he makes better for us than the saints, to whom you
+pray so----"
+
+"S-sh!" Vincenza crossed herself quickly. "That is a great wickedness."
+
+Luigi picked up the bills, examining them closely. Apparently they were
+good. Nevertheless he put them down again, and went on carving a wooden
+cow for the little Carolina, with a puzzled look in his black eyes.
+
+"Gino," Vincenza stopped undressing the baby suddenly when the thought
+came to her. "Go thou and ask Biaggio. He has been many years in this
+country, and, besides, he is also a Genovese. He will tell thee."
+
+Luigi's eyes cleared, but he condescended to make no reply. It is not
+for a man to take the advice of a woman. But when it was dark, and
+Vincenza had gone to lie down with the Little One, Luigi took his hat
+and went over to the shop of Biaggio Franchini.
+
+Biaggio listened attentively; his pudgy hands, crossed on his stomach,
+rose and fell with the undulations of the rolls of flesh beneath. From
+time to time he ceased for a moment the contemplation of the strings of
+garlic and sausage that hung from the fly-specked ceiling of his
+diminutive shop, and turned his little black eyes sharply on Luigi.
+
+"So," he said at last, "to-day a lady came to thy house, and after to
+ask many questions left these three dollars. It was in this way?"
+
+"Just so," replied Luigi, "and questions the most marvelous I have ever
+heard. And in this country, where everyone asks the questions. How long
+that I do not work, and if we have to eat?" Luigi laughed; "of a surety,
+Biaggio, she asked that. She sees that we live--and she asks if we
+eat--_ma! che!_ And then, if we have every day the meat? When I said
+once, sometimes twice in the week--thou knowest it is not possible to
+have more often, when one waits to buy the house--then it was she put on
+the table the three dollars, and gave me a paper to sign----"
+
+"Thou didst sign nothing?" Biaggio spoke eagerly.
+
+"No. Once I signed the paper in English and it cost me two dollars; not
+again. I said I could not write, and she wrote for me."
+
+"_Bene_," Biaggio nodded approval. "It is not thy writing. It can do
+nothing."
+
+"Perhaps it is because I voted twice at the election last week? But
+already I have taken the money for that. It was one only dollar. I----"
+
+"Non, non, it is not that. Listen!" Slowly Biaggio shut both eyes, as if
+to keep out the tremendous light that had dawned upon him, and nodded
+his head knowingly. Then he opened them, shifted his huge bulk upright,
+and clapped Luigi on the knee.
+
+"Thou art in great luck friend," he cried, "and it is well that thou
+hast asked me. If thou hadst gone to another, to a man not honest, who
+knows? Listen. In our country when a rich man dies, he leaves always
+something for the poor, but he leaves it to the church and it is the
+fathers who give away the money. Corpo di Bacco! what that means thou
+knowest well. Sometimes a little gets to the poor. Sometimes---- But in
+this country it is not so. He leaves to a society. There are many. And
+they pay the women, and sometimes the men, to give away the money----"
+
+"Santo Cristo," gasped Luigi, "they pay to give away the money?"
+
+"For them it is a job like any other. Didst think it was for love of
+thee or the red curls of thy Vincenza?"
+
+"Marvelous, most marvelous," murmured Luigi, "and it is possible then
+for all people to get----"
+
+"Ma, that no one can explain," and Biaggio shrugged his shoulders; in a
+gesture of absolute inability to solve the problem.
+
+"She will come then again, this lady?" Luigi leaned forward eagerly. He
+was beginning to grasp it.
+
+"It is for thee to say stop, my son, if thou hast in thy head anything
+but fat. But thou art a Genovese. Only I say," Biaggio laid a grimy
+thumb across his lips and winked knowingly--"Tell to none."
+
+"Thanks, many thanks friend," Luigi's voice was deeply grateful,
+"perhaps some day I can do for thee----?"
+
+"It is nothing--nothing," insisted Biaggio, patting the air with his
+pudgy hands in a gesture of denial, "a little kindness between friends."
+
+At great inconvenience to himself, Biaggio held the door open to give
+Luigi more light in crossing the street. As he closed it and turned out
+the gas, he smiled to himself. "And each bottle of oil will cost thee
+ten cents more, friend. Business is business, and yesterday thy Vincenza
+returned the carrots because they were not fresh. Ecco!"
+
+Back in his own room, Luigi folded the three notes neatly, while
+Vincenza watched him, her gray eyes wide with wonder.
+
+"Marvelous, marvelous," she whispered just as Luigi had done, "to-night
+I thank the Virgin."
+
+As Biaggio had foretold, the Lady in Fur came every day. Luigi did not
+understand all that she said, but he always listened politely and
+smiled, with his dark eyes and his lips and his glistening white teeth.
+It made her feel very old to see Luigi smile like that, when he had to
+live in one room with a leaking water pipe and a garbage can outside the
+door. Sometimes she was almost ashamed to offer the three dollars, and
+she was grateful for the gentle, sweet way Luigi accepted it.
+
+Then one day when the air was thick with snow, and the air in the
+tenement halls cut like needles of ice and the lamps had to be lit at
+two o'clock, the Lady in Brown Fur came unexpectedly. She had found work
+for Luigi. She kissed the Little One, patted Vincenza's shoulder and
+shook hands with Luigi. Again and again she made him repeat the name and
+address to make sure he had it quite right. The Lady in Brown Fur was
+very happy. When she went Vincenza leaned far over the banisters with
+the lamp while Luigi called out in his soft, broken English, directions
+for avoiding the lines of washing below and the refuse piled in dark
+turns of the stairs. When the Lady in Brown Fur had disappeared Vincenza
+turned to Luigi.
+
+"Of a surety, cara, the saints are good. Never before didst thou work
+before April. In the new house we will keep for ourselves two rooms.
+
+"These people have the 'pull' even more than the alderman, Biaggio
+says," replied Luigi with a dreamy look in his eyes. "It may be that
+from this work I shall take three dollars each day."
+
+"Madonna mia," gasped Vincenza, "it is beyond belief."
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+For five days Luigi stood four hours each afternoon, bent forward, to
+the lifting of a cardboard block, while Hugh Keswick painted, as he had
+not painted for months, the tense muscles under the olive skin, the
+strong neck and shoulders. The Building of the Temple advanced rapidly.
+And Luigi's arms and back ached so that each night Vincenza had to rub
+them with the oil which now cost ten cents more in the shop of Biaggio.
+
+On the Sixth day Luigi refused to go.
+
+"I tell thee it is a stupidness--to stand all day with the pain in the
+back. For what? Fifty cents. It is a work for old men and children----"
+
+"But thou canst not make the money, sitting in thy chair, with thy feet
+on the stove, like now----"
+
+"Dost thou wish then that I have every night the knives in my back? If
+so----"
+
+"Not so, caro, but----"
+
+"Listen. You understand nothing and talk as a woman. A lady comes to my
+house. She says--you have no work, here is money. Then she comes and
+says--here is work. But at this work I make not so much as before she
+gave; and in addition, I have the pain in the back. Ecco, when she comes
+again, I no longer have the work. It is her job to give away the money.
+She is not a fool, that Lady in Brown Fur. It is that I make her a
+kindness. Not so?"
+
+"As thou sayest," and Vincenza went on with her endless washing.
+
+But when the week passed and the Lady in Brown Fur did not come, Luigi's
+forehead wrinkled with the effort to understand. When the second had
+gone, Luigi was openly troubled. When the third was half over, he again
+took his hat and went over to the shop of Biaggio.
+
+As before Biaggio listened attentively, his eyes closed, until Luigi had
+finished. Then he opened them, made a clicking noise with his tongue,
+and laid one finger along the side of his nose.
+
+"Holy Body of Christ," he said softly, "in business thou hast the head
+like a rock. In one curl of thy Vincenza there is more sense than in all
+thy great body. Did I not tell thee to be careful, and it would stop
+only when thou didst wish. And now, without to ask my advice, you make
+the stupidness, bah----"
+
+"Ma, Dio mio," Luigi's hands made angry protest against the invective of
+Biaggio, "I said only like a man of sense. It is her job, it make no
+difference----"
+
+"Blood of the Lamb! Thou hast been in America eight months, and thou
+dost not know that they are mad, all quite mad, to work? Never do they
+stop. Even after to have fifty years, think, fifty years, still they
+work. They work even with the children old enough to keep them. For many
+months The Skinny One, she who gives milk to the baby of Giacomo, had
+the habit to find him such work, like the foolishness of your painter.
+And Giacomo has already three children more than fifteen. Ma----"
+Biaggio snorted his contempt. Then suddenly his manner changed. He
+leaned back in his chair, and apparently dismissed the subject with a
+wave of his fat hand.
+
+"And the little Carolina she is well in this weather of the devil?" But
+Luigi did not answer. He was thinking with a pucker between his black
+eyes. Biaggio watched him narrowly. At last he spoke, looking fixedly at
+the sausages above his head.
+
+"Of course--it--is--possible--you have made a--mistake--but----"
+
+Luigi leaned forward eagerly. "It is possible then to----"
+
+"All things are possible," Biaggio nodded his head at the sausages,
+blinking like a large, fat owl. Then he stopped.
+
+"Perhaps, you will tell--to me," Luigi was forced to it at last.
+
+Biaggio gave a little grunt as if he were being brought back from a deep
+meditation. "There is a way," he said slowly. "If thou write to her of
+the Brown Fur that thou art sick and cannot do the work----"
+
+"But never in my life was I better. Only last week Giacomo said I have
+grown fat. How the----"
+
+"It is possible," replied Biaggio wearily, "to be sick of a sickness
+that makes one neither thin nor white. With a sickness--of the legs like
+the rheumatism, for example, one eats, one sleeps, only one cannot walk
+or stand for many hours."
+
+In spite of his efforts to the contrary, the wonder and admiration grew
+deeper in Luigi's eyes. "Thou thinkest the----?"
+
+"I am sure," now that Luigi was reduced to the proper state of humility
+Biaggio gave up his attitude of distant oracle, and leaned close. "Thou
+hast made a mistake, but it is not too late. If thou dost wish I will
+write it for thee."
+
+"If thou sayest," replied Luigi and now it was his turn to gaze at the
+strings of garlic, "if you will do this favor."
+
+"With pleasure," Biaggio's fat hands made little gestures of willingness
+to oblige. "Of a truth it is not much, but when one wishes to buy the
+house, and already the family is begun, two dollars and a half each
+week----"
+
+Luigi glanced at him sharply. "Two and----"
+
+Biaggio drew the ink to him and dipped his pen. "Two and a half for
+thee, and for me----"
+
+"Bene, bene," Luigi interrupted quickly, "it is only just."
+
+"Between friends," explained Biaggio as he began to write.
+
+"Between friends," echoed Luigi, and added to himself, "closer than the
+skin of a snake art thou--friend."
+
+The Lady in the Brown Fur came next day. She had been very angry and
+disappointed in Luigi, too angry and disappointed to go near him. Now
+she felt very sorry and uncomfortable when she saw his right leg
+stretched out before, so stiff that he could not bend it. He smiled and
+made the motion of getting up, but could not do it, and sank back again
+with a gesture of helplessness more eloquent than words. When the Lady
+in Brown Fur had gone, Vincenza found an extra bill, brand new, tucked
+into the pocket of the little Carolina.
+
+Luigi waited until he was quite sure that Biaggio would be alone. There
+was a look of real sorrow in his dark eyes as he slipped a shiny quarter
+across the counter. "She left only two," he explained, "the reason I do
+not know. Perhaps next time----"
+
+"It is nothing, nothing between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter
+into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi.
+But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes
+were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns
+quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time.
+Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of oil, goes up--between
+friends."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE HAMMERPOND BURGLARY
+
+The Story of an Artist
+
+By H.G. WELLS
+
+
+IT is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a
+trade, or an art. For a trade the technique is scarcely rigid enough,
+and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary
+element that qualifies triumphs. On the whole it seems to be most justly
+ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated,
+and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner.
+It was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable
+extinction of two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.
+
+The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and
+other personal _bric-a-brac_ belonging to the newly married Lady
+Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only
+daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to
+Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and
+quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to
+be spent at Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes
+created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr. Teddy
+Watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied
+by a duly qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond
+in his professional capacity.
+
+Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins
+determined to make his visit _incog_, and, after due consideration of
+the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the role of a landscape
+artist, and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant,
+who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his
+stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the
+prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive,
+the flint-built church, with its tall spire nestling under the down, is
+one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods
+and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are
+singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call "bits."
+So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a
+brand-new easel, a paint-boy, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder
+made in sections; (after the pattern of that lamented master, Charles
+Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion
+and some curiosity by half a dozen other brethren of the brush. It
+rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it
+inflicted upon him a considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for
+which he was very imperfectly prepared.
+
+"Have you exhibited very much?" said young Porson in the bar-parlor of
+the "Coach and Horses," where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating
+local information on the night of his arrival.
+
+"Very little," said Mr. Watkins; "just a snack here and there."
+
+"Academy?"
+
+"In course. _And_ at the Crystal Palace."
+
+"Did they hang you well?" said Porson.
+
+"Don't rot," said Mr. Watkins; "I don't like it."
+
+"I mean did they put you in a good place?"
+
+"Whatyer mean?" said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. "One 'ud think you were
+trying to make out I'd been put away."
+
+Porson was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist, and he did not
+know what being "put away" meant, but he thought it best to explain
+that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed
+a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a
+little.
+
+"Did you do figure work at all?"
+
+"No, never had a head for figures," said Mr. Watkins. "My miss--Mrs.
+Smith, I mean, does all that."
+
+"She paints too!" said Porson. "That's rather jolly."
+
+"Very," said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and,
+feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added:
+"I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight."
+
+"Really!" said Porson. "That's rather a novel idea."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Watkins, "I thought it rather a good notion when it
+occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night."
+
+"What! You don't mean to paint in the open, by night?"
+
+"I do, though."
+
+"But how will you see your canvas?"
+
+"Have a bloomin' cop's----" began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the
+question, and then realizing this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another
+glass of beer. "I'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he
+said to Porson.
+
+"But it's about new moon now," objected Porson. "There won't be any
+moon."
+
+"There'll be the house," said Watkins, "at any rate. I'm goin', you see,
+to paint the house first and the moon afterward."
+
+"Oh!" said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.
+
+Toward sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very
+considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant
+pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his
+apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was
+observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a
+study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson's
+account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing
+nocturnal art.
+
+Mr. Watkins was mixing color with an air of great industry. Sant,
+approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the color in question was
+as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine.
+Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to color from his earliest
+years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first
+glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.
+
+"What on earth are you going to do with that _beastly_ green?" said
+Sant.
+
+Mr. Watkins realized that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the
+butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked
+at Sant and hesitated.
+
+"Pardon my rudeness," said Sant; "but, really, that green is altogether
+too amazing. It came as a shock. What _do_ you mean to do with it?"
+
+Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the
+situation but decision. "If you come here interrupting my work," he
+said, "I'm a-goin' to paint your face with it."
+
+Sant retired, for he was a humorist and a peaceful man. Going down the
+hill he met Porson and Wainwright. "Either that man is a genius or he is
+a dangerous lunatic," said he. "Just go up and look at his green." And
+he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant
+anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and
+the shedding of much green paint.
+
+But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and
+explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his
+picture. It was, he admitted, in response to a remark, an absolutely new
+method, invented by himself.
+
+Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. The rooks amid
+the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into
+slumberous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its
+architecture and became a dark gray outline, and then the windows of
+the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and
+here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had any one approached the
+easel in the park it would have been found deserted. One brief uncivil
+word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr. Watkins
+was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined
+him from the carriage-drive.
+
+Mr. Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious
+device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the
+sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. "That's the
+dressing-room," he said to his assistant, "and, as soon as the maid
+takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we'll call in. My! how
+nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all
+its windows and lights! Swop me, Jim, I almost wish I _was_ a
+painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the
+laundry?"
+
+He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the
+dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He
+was too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim
+was reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins
+in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Some one
+had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He
+heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr. Watkins, like all
+true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his
+folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He
+was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied
+that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In
+another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery,
+and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.
+
+It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was
+a loosely built man and in good training, and he gained hand over hand
+upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr.
+Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The
+other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of
+surprise. "It's not Jim," thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the
+stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins's knees, and they were
+forthwith grappling on the ground together. "Lend a hand, Bill," cried
+the stranger, as the third man came up. And Bill did--two hands, in
+fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had
+apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any
+rate, he did not join the trio.
+
+Mr. Watkins's memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is
+extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the
+corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its
+safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman
+answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hair. He was also
+kicked in a great number of different places, and apparently by a vast
+multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee
+below Mr. Watkins's diaphragm and tried to curl him up upon it.
+
+When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf,
+and eight or ten men--the night was dark, and he was rather too confused
+to count--standing around him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He
+mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made
+some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his
+internal sensations disinclined him to speech.
+
+He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a
+flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little--it was
+such unexpected kindness.
+
+"He's a-comin' round," said a voice which he fancied he recognized as
+belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.
+
+"We've got 'em, sir, both of 'em," said the Hammerpond butler, the man
+who had handed him the flask. "Thanks to _you_."
+
+No one answered his remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.
+
+"He's fair dazed," said a strange voice; "the villain's half-murdered
+him."
+
+Mr. Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better
+grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round
+him stood side by side with a dejected air, and there was something in
+the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye
+hands that were bound together. In a flash he rose to his position. He
+emptied the little flask and staggered--obsequious hands assisting
+him--to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.
+
+"Shake hands, sir, shake hands," said one of the figures near him.
+"Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to you. It
+was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these
+scoundrels to the house."
+
+"Very glad to make your lordship's acquaintance," said Teddy Watkins.
+
+"I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped
+down on them?"
+
+"That's exactly how it happened," said Mr. Watkins.
+
+"You should have waited till they got in at the window," said Lord
+Aveling; "they would get it hotter if they had actually committed the
+burglary. And it was lucky for you two of the policemen were out by the
+gates, and followed up the three of you. I doubt if you could have
+secured the two of them--though it was confoundedly plucky of you, all
+the same."
+
+"Yes, I ought to have thought of all that," said Mr. Watkins; "but one
+can't think of everything."
+
+"Certainly not," said Lord Aveling. "I am afraid they have mauled you a
+little," he added. The party was now moving toward the house. "You walk
+rather lame. May I offer you my arm?"
+
+And instead of entering Hammerpond House by the dressing-room window,
+Mr. Watkins entered it--slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to
+cheerfulness again--on the arm of a real live peer, and by the front
+door. "This," thought Mr. Watkins, "is burgling in style!" The
+"scoundrels," seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs
+unknown to Mr. Watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and
+there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded
+guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of
+their removal to Hazelhurst police-station. Mr. Watkins was made much of
+in the salon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return
+to the village that night. Lady Aveling was sure he was brilliantly
+original, and said her idea of Turner was just such another rough,
+half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. Some one brought up a
+remarkable little folding-ladder that had been picked up in the
+shrubbery, and showed him how it was put together. They also described
+how wires had been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed there to
+trip up unwary pursuers. It was lucky he had escaped these snares. And
+they showed him the jewels.
+
+Mr. Watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any
+conversational difficulty fell back on his internal pains. At last he
+was seized with stiffness in the back and yawning. Everyone suddenly
+awoke to the fact that it was a shame to keep him talking after his
+affray, so he retired early to his room, the little red room next to
+Lord Aveling's suite.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+The dawn found a deserted easel bearing a canvas with a green
+inscription, in the Hammerpond Park, and it found Hammerpond House in
+commotion. But if the dawn found Mr. Teddy Watkins and the Aveling
+diamonds, it did not communicate the information to the police.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+A FO'C'S'LE TRAGEDY
+
+An Ancient Mariner's Yarn
+
+By PERCY LONGHURST
+
+
+"YEH may gas about torpedoes an' 'fernal machines an' such like, but yeh
+can't learn me nothin'; onct I had t' do wi' suthin' o' th' sort that
+turned th' heads o' a dozen men from black ter white in 'bout ten
+minutes," and the ancient mariner looked at me with careful
+impressiveness.
+
+"Bad, eh?" I inquired.
+
+"Sh'd think it was--for them poor chaps."
+
+"Didn't turn your hair white, Uncle?"
+
+"Gue-e-ss not," and the ancient mariner had a fit of chuckling that
+nearly choked him.
+
+When he recovered he told me the yarn. I had heard several of old
+Steve's yarns, and I considered that his fine talents were miserably
+wasted; he ought to have been a politician or a real estate agent. This
+yarn, however, might very well have been true.
+
+"It was 'bout nineteen years ago," Steve commenced, "an' I'd jest taken
+up a job as cook on the _Here at Last_, a blamed old Noah's Ark of a
+wind-jammer from New York to Jamaica. She did th' trip in 'bout th' same
+time as yeh'd walk it. She was a beauty--an' th' crew 'bout fitted her.
+Where th' old man had gathered 'em from th' Lord on'y knows; but they
+was th' most difficult lot I've ever sailed with, which is sayin' a deal
+consid'rin' that, man an' boy, I've been a sailor for forty years. They
+was as contrairy as women, an' as stoopid as donkeys. I couldn't do
+nothin' right for 'em. They complained of the coffee, grumbled at th'
+biscuit, an' swore terrible at th' meat. But most of all they swore at
+me."
+
+"'It all lies in th' cookin',' an old one-eyed chap, named Barton, used
+ter say. 'Any cook that is worth his salt can do wonders wi' th' worst
+vittles'; an' he told me how he'd once sailed with a cook as c'd make a
+stewed cat taste better'n a rabbit. An', durn me, when I went ashore
+next, an' at great risk managed to lay holt of a big tom and cooked it
+for em, hopin' to please 'em, an' went inter th' fo'c's'le arter dinner
+an' told 'em what I'd done, ef that self-same chap, Barton, didn't hit
+me over th' head wi' his tin can for tryin' ter poison 'em, as he said.
+They complained to th' old man, too, which was worse; for when we got t'
+th' next port my leave ashore was stopped, an' all for tryin' to please
+'em. Rank ingratitood, I call it.
+
+"Another time I tried to give the junk--it really was bad, but as I hadn't
+bought th' stores, that wasn't no fault o' mine--a bit of a more
+pleasant flavor by bilin' with it a packet o' spice I found in th'
+skipper's cabin. One o' th' sailors comes into my galley in a towerin'
+rage arter dinner.
+
+"'Yer blamed rascal,' he said, an' there was suthin' like murder in his
+starin' eyes. 'Yeh blamed rascal, whatcher been doin' ter our grub now?'
+
+"'What's th' trouble, Joe?' I asks quietly.
+
+"'Trouble, yeh skunk,' he howls; 'our throats is hot as hell, all th'
+skin's comin' off 'em; Bill Tomson's got his lips that blistered he
+can't hold his pipe between 'em. What yeh been doin?'
+
+"'Hold hard a jiffy,' I said, an' looks at what was left o' th' spice
+I'd used. I nearly had a fit.
+
+"'Go 'way,' I says, pullin' myself together; ''t ain't nuthin'.'
+
+"An' it wasn't nuthin'; but there was such an almighty run on th' water
+barrel that arternoon th' old man was beginnin' ter think a teetotal
+revival had struck th' _Here at Last_. But though cayenne pepper drives
+a chap ter water pretty often while th' effect lasts, it don't have no
+permanent result, as th' old man found out. Course it was a mistake o'
+mine; but ain't we all liable to go a bit astray?
+
+"I'm jest givin' yeh these few examples t' show yeh that things wasn't
+altogether O.K. 'tween me an' the crew. They was always swearin' at me,
+an' callin' of me names, an' heavin' things at me head, because I'd done
+or hadn't done suthin' or other. An angel from heaven wouldn't have
+pleased 'em; an' as I never held much stock in the angelic trust yeh kin
+easily understand we was most times very much at sixes an' sevens.
+
+"One evenin' I was sittin' in th' fo'c's'le patiently listenin' ter th'
+horrible language in which they reproached me because one o' 'em had
+managed t' break a front tooth in biting a bit o' th' salt pork they'd
+had for dinner, which was certainly no fault o' mine, when one of 'em,
+an English chap he was, an' the worst grumbler of all, suddenly cries:
+
+"'Jeerusalem, wouldn't I give somethin' fer a drop of beer just now.
+Strike me pink if I ain't a'most forgotten what the taste o' it's like.'
+
+"'Me, too,' said Harry Towers, the carpenter. 'A schooner o' lager an'
+ale! Sakes! Wouldn't it jest sizzle down a day like this?'
+
+"'My aunt! I'd give a month's pay f'r a quart,' the surly Britisher says
+fiercely.
+
+"'A quart, why don't yeh ask for a barrel while yeh're about it; then
+I'd help yeh drink it,' I says.
+
+"'Yer, yer blighted, perishin' idiot,' he shouts--it was him that'd
+broken his tooth. 'What, waste good beer on yer that's fit fer nothin'
+but cuttin' up into shark bait!'
+
+"'That ain't th' way t' talk to a man as is always ready an' willin' t'
+help yeh,' I says reproachfully.
+
+"The chap glares at me like a tiger with the colic. His language was
+awful. 'Lord 'elp us,' he finishes up with, 'why, yer've done nuthin'
+but try ter pizen us ever since we come aboard. Ain't I right, mates?'
+
+"'Righto,' they choruses; an' I begin t' think they'd soon be gittin' up
+to mischief.
+
+"'P'raps I might help yeh t' git some beer if yer was more respectful,'
+I says hurriedly.
+
+"'Beer!' they all yells, an' looks up at me all to onct as if I was a
+dime museum freak.
+
+"'Yes, beer,' I says quietly.
+
+"'An' where'd you be gittin' it from?' asks one.
+
+"'Never yeh mind that,' I answers. 'I've a dozen or two bottles of
+English stout I brought aboard, an' since yeh're so anxious to taste a
+drop o' beer, I don't mind lettin' yeh have some--at a price, o'
+course.'
+
+"'What's the figure?' Towers inquires suspiciously. He was a Michigan
+man.
+
+"'A dollar th' bottle.'
+
+"'What!' shouts th' man as was ready t' give a month's pay fer a quart.
+'A dollar th' bottle! Why, yer miserable old skinflint!'
+
+"'A dollar th' bottle. That's the terms, take 'em or leave 'em,' says I,
+very firmly.
+
+"They talked a lot, and they swore a lot more, but finally seem' as I
+wasn't t' be moved, and that they couldn't get the beer except at my
+price, the hull ten of 'em agreed to have a bottle apiece.
+
+"'Money down,' I stipulates; an' after a lot o' trouble they collects
+seven dollars between 'em, an' tells me it's all they've got, an' if I
+didn't bring up th' ten bottles mighty quick they'd knock me on th' head
+an' drop me overboard.
+
+"'Mind,' I said, as I goes off to th' galley, money in my hand; 'don't
+yeh let th' officers see yeh drinkin' it or they'll think yeh've been
+broachin' cargo, an' that's little short o' mutiny.'
+
+"'Bring up that beer,' growls the Britisher, almost foamin' at th'
+mouth.
+
+"When I came back with th' ten bottles o' stout in a basket they all
+looked so pleased an' happy it did my heart good ter look at 'em.
+
+"'Hand it over,' they shouts impatiently.
+
+"'I'm afraid it's gone a bit flat,' I said, as I handed th' bottles
+round. 'But I've tried to pull it round.'
+
+"Flat or not, they weren't goin' to kick; an' they was jest 'bout to
+unscrew the stoppers when the second mate suddenly shoves his head down
+the hatchway an' yells out:
+
+"'On deck, yer lazy, skulking, highly colored lubbers. Tumble up at
+once, an' git a lively move on, or I'll be down an' smarten ye up!'
+
+"McClosky, the second mate, was not a fellow who stood any nonsense, an'
+th' men weren't long before they was out o' th' fo'c's'le, grumblin'
+an' swearin' as only men who've lost their watch below can. They just
+stayed long enough t' shove th' unopened bottles o' stout well out o'
+sight underneath th' mattresses o' their bunks an' then they was up on
+deck working like niggers. A squall had struck the _Here at Last_;
+mighty inconvenient, these squalls in the Caribbean Sea are, an' th'
+_Here at Last_ wasn't best calc'lated t' weather 'em. For two mortal
+hours everyone was hard at it, takin' in sail, doublin' ropes, an'
+makin' all ready for what promised t' be a dirty night. All thoughts o'
+beer was driven out o' their heads. An' when everythin' was ship-shape
+an' they came below again, soakin' wet an' dog-tired, they just climbed
+into their berths without stoppin' to think of th' precious bottles o'
+stout.
+
+"'Bout two o'clock in th' mornin', I was woke up by what sounded like a
+pistol shot in th' fo'c's'le, an' before I c'd rub th' sleep out er my
+eyes, there was another, an' another an' another, an' I saw four sailors
+tumble outer their bunks an' fall on th' floor shriekin' as if they'd
+been attacked by th' most awful pain. Everyone else in th' fo'c's'le
+sits up, wide awake, an' starin' at th' sufferin' wretches on th' floor.
+
+"'Wot th' 'ell's up?' asks th' Britisher; but no one knew, an' th' nex'
+second there was another explosion, an' he suddenly gave a scream that
+lifted th' hair on my scalp, an' leaps outer his bunk as if he'd been
+suddenly prodded in a tender spot wi' a red hot poker.
+
+"'My Gawd!' he screeches; 'th' bunk's exploded an' I'm bleedin' ter
+death;' an' he starts yellin' like a catamount, runnin' up an' down th'
+gangway, an' tramplin' upon th' four shriekin', cursin', prayin' sailors
+who'd been attacked fust.
+
+"'It's an infernal machine, an' it's blowed a hole in me back,' the
+Britisher yelled; an' we who was lookin' on c'd certainly hear suthin'
+drippin' from th' bunk he'd just got out of.
+
+"'Owch! I'm blowed t' bits. I'm bein' murdered. I'm dyin', Lord help
+me,' Harry Towers, the carpenter, wails; an' there was another terrific
+bang, an' outer his bunk Harry shot, landin', on th' chest o' one o' th'
+moanin' squirmin' sailors. Th' poor fellow, findin' himself thus
+flattened out, an' not knowin' what it was had fallen on him, gives a
+gaspin' sort er yell, an' drives Towers in th' back wi' his fist.
+
+"Th' row goin' on was suthin' terrible; a' 'sylum full o' ravin'
+lunatics on th' rampage couldn't have made more noise; an' them that
+hadn't been hurt was beginnin' t' feel as bad as them that was, when
+someone scrambles down th' companionway.
+
+"It was McClosky, th' second mate, whose watch on deck it was. He'd
+heard th' row--an' no wonder--an' thinkin', I dessay, that murder or
+mutiny was goin' on, came forward to investigate. He was a red-headed,
+hot-tempered Irishman, an' c'd handle a crew in rare style.
+
+"'What th' dickens----' he commences, when one o' th' men on th' floor,
+seein' th' gun in his hand, an' not recognizin' him, shouted, 'They're
+comin' t' finish us,' an' grabs th' mate round th' legs wi' th' grip of
+a boa constrictor.
+
+"Th' mate, sure it was mutiny, lets off his gun permiscuous. A clip on
+the jaw made th' sailor let go, an' th' mate, seein' Towers groanin' on
+th' floor quite close, kicks him hard an' asks what's th' matter.
+
+"'We're blown up, sir,' Towers whimpers.
+
+"'Blown up, ye fool, what d' ye mean? Who's blowin' ye up?' demands
+McClosky.
+
+"'Dunno, sir,' Harry stammered; an' just then there was two more
+explosions, an' a couple more o' the seamen bundled headlong out er
+their berths, utterin' doleful shrieks that'd make yer heart stand
+still.
+
+"Th' mate was kickin', swearin', and shoutin' like a demon, th' men all
+th' while keepin' up their row as if they was bein' paid a dollar a
+minute to yell. Then th' skipper put in an appearance. His face was
+white as chalk, but his hands, in each o' which was a big Colt, were
+steady as rocks, an' he come down th' ladder like a man who reckons he's
+in for a good fight.
+
+"'What's all this mean, Mr. McClosky?' he asks, pausin' when he sees
+there's no fightin' goin' on.
+
+"Whatever th' mate said was drowned by th' row th' sailors was makin',
+though he bellowed like a frisky bull. Th' old man didn't seem a bit
+frightened; droppin' one o' th' Colts inter his pocket, he roars,
+'Silence'; and steps over to th' berth where Joe Harper, th' bo'sun, was
+sittin' upright, stiff as a poker, an' his eyes fairly startin' out er
+his head wi' terror.
+
+"'Now, then, Harper,' he says, an' judgin' by his face th' skipper was
+'bout as mad as a bear with a sore head. 'What th' blazes does it mean?
+Have yeh all gone mad?'
+
+"But th' bo'sun, he was too scared to do more than gape at th' skipper
+like a codfish three days out er water, an th' old man gits a bit
+madder.
+
+"'Answer, yeh damn rascal,' he shouted; an' he grabs Harper by th'
+shoulder an' shakes him until his teeth fairly rattled. But th' bo'sun
+couldn't say a word.
+
+"'If this ain't enough t' drive a man crazy,' th' skipper yells;
+'McClosky, have yeh lost yer senses like all these condemned rascals
+here? What's th' meanin' o' it?'
+
+"'Don't know, sir; I heard 'em ravin' an' screamin' like lunatics, but I
+can't get a word out of 'em. Think they must all have become mad,' an'
+th' mate kicked Towers again t' relieve his feelin's.
+
+"He'd just finished speakin' when suthin' busted underneath th' bo'sun.
+Harper screams, th' skipper gives a jump an' lets go of his arm, an'
+Harper falls out er his berth as if he'd been suddenly shot dead, only
+he was makin' a row like a man suddenly attacked wi' D.T.'s. And at that
+all th' other miserable wretches on th' floor starts worse than ever.
+
+"Th' skipper pulls himself together, an' goin' t' th' bo'sun's bunk,
+leans over an' examines it. He poked about f'r a bit, put his fingers
+into a stream of suthin' that was fallin' from th' bunk to th' floor,
+an' then by th' light o' th' swingin' oil lamp, I see his face turn a
+blazin' crimson. I see him take suthin' outer th' bed, an' then he
+swings round an' faces th' men.
+
+"'Yeh low down, thievin', chicken-hearted, blank, blank scoundrels,' he
+yells, an' his voice was that loud an' so full o' passion th' sailors
+were scared into quietness. 'Yeh miserable sneakin' apologies for men!
+So this is what's th' matter, is it? By gum! If I don't have every
+mother's son of ye clapped into jail soon as we reach Kingstown, call me
+a crimson Dutchman. Blown up, are ye? I wish t' th' Lord some of ye had
+been. Sailors, yeh calls yeh-selves! Why, by gosh! yeh haven't enough
+spirit t' rob a mouse. What's that yeh say, Towers? Infernal machines,
+eh? Dyin'! If yeh don't all get a move on ye in double quick time, some
+of yeh will be. Git out o' my sight, ye blubberin' babies; I'm sick an'
+ashamed of ye.'
+
+"A more sick an' unhappy lookin' drove I never saw when th' men got on
+their legs again an' found out they weren't hurt a little bit; an'
+discovered what it was had caused th' explosions. They wouldn't look at
+each other; an' they daren't speak or else there'd have been fightin'.
+
+"I went about in fear of my life for days, but they did nothin'; though
+if they'd known that I--quite innocent o' mischief, yeh understand--had
+put a dozen grains or so of rice inter every bottle o' stout--amazin'
+stuff rice for causin' fermentation in hot climates--they wouldn't have
+stopped short at mere profanity. My life wouldn't have been worth a
+moment's purchase."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE ADOPTED SON
+
+A Tale of Peasant Life
+
+From the French of GUY de MAUPASSANT
+
+
+THE two cottages stood side by side at the foot of a hill near a little
+seaside resort. The two peasants labored hard on the unproductive soil
+to rear their little ones, of which each family had four.
+
+In front of the adjoining doors the whole troop of urchins sprang and
+tumbled about from morning till night. The two eldest were six years
+old, and the two youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and
+afterward the births, having taken place nearly simultaneously in both
+families.
+
+The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the
+lot, and as for the fathers, they were altogether at sea. The eight
+names danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up; and
+when they wished to call one child, the men often called three names
+before getting the right one.
+
+The first of the two dwellings, coming from the direction of the
+sea-bath, Belleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls
+and one boy; the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and
+three boys.
+
+They all subsisted with difficulty on soup, potatoes, and the open air.
+At seven o'clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o'clock in
+the evening, the housewives got their nestlings together to give them
+their food, as the goose-herds collect their charges. The children were
+seated, according to age, before the wooden table, varnished by fifty
+years of use; the mouths of the youngest hardly reaching the level of
+the table. Before them was placed a deep dish filled with bread, soaked
+in the water in which the potatoes had been boiled, half a cabbage, and
+three onions; and the whole line ate until their hunger was appeased.
+The mother herself fed the smallest.
+
+A little meat, boiled in a soup, on Sunday, was a feast for all; and the
+father on this day sat longer over the repast, repeating: "I should like
+this every day."
+
+One afternoon, in the month of August, a light carriage stopped suddenly
+in front of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses,
+said to the gentleman sitting at her side:
+
+"Oh, look, Henri, at all those children! How pretty they are, tumbling
+about in the dust, like that!"
+
+The man did not answer, being accustomed to these outbursts of
+admiration, which were a pain and almost a reproach to him. The young
+woman continued:
+
+"I must hug them! Oh, how I should like to have one of them--that one
+there--the little bit of a one!"
+
+Springing down from the carriage, she ran toward the children, took one
+of the two youngest--that of the Tuvaches, and lifting it up in her
+arms, she kissed him passionately on his dirty cheeks, on his frowzy
+hair daubed with earth, and on his little hands, which he swung
+vigorously, to get rid of the caresses which displeased him.
+
+Then she got up into the carriage again, and drove off at a lively trot.
+But she returned the following week, and seating herself on the ground,
+took the youngster in her arms, stuffed him with cakes, gave bon-bons to
+all the others, and played with them like a young girl, while the
+husband waited patiently in the frail carriage.
+
+She returned again; made the acquaintance of the parents, and reappeared
+every day with her pockets full of dainties and of pennies.
+
+Her name was Madame Henri d'Hubieres.
+
+One morning, on arriving, her husband alighted with her, and without
+stopping with the children, who now knew her well, she entered the
+peasants' cottage.
+
+They were busy splitting wood to cook the soup. They straightened up,
+much surprised, offered chairs, and waited expectantly.
+
+Then the woman, in a broken, trembling voice, began:
+
+"My good people, I have come to see you, because I should like--I should
+like to take--your little boy with me----"
+
+The country people, too stupefied to think, did not answer.
+
+She recovered her breath, and continued: "We are alone, my husband and
+I. We should keep it--Are you willing?"
+
+The peasant woman began to understand. She asked:
+
+"You want to take Charlot from us? Oh, no, indeed!"
+
+Then M. d'Hubieres intervened:
+
+"My wife has not explained clearly what she means. We wish to adopt him,
+but he will come back to see you. If he turns out well, as there is
+every reason to expect, he will be our heir. If we, perchance, should
+have children, he will share equally with them; but if he should not
+reward our care, we should give him, when he comes of age, a sum of
+twenty thousand francs, which shall be deposited immediately in his
+name, with a notary. As we have thought also of you, we should pay you,
+until your death, a pension of one hundred francs a month. Have you
+quite understood me?"
+
+The woman had arisen, furious.
+
+"You want me to sell you Charlot? Oh, no, that's not the sort of thing
+to ask of a mother! Oh, no! That would be an abomination!"
+
+The man, grave and deliberate, said nothing; but approved of what his
+wife said by a continued nodding of his head.
+
+Mme. d'Hubieres, in dismay, began to weep, and turning to her husband,
+with a voice full of tears, the voice of a child used to having all its
+wishes gratified, she stammered:
+
+"They will not do it, Henri, they will not do it."
+
+Then he made a last attempt: "But, my friends, think of the child's
+future, of his happiness, of----"
+
+The peasant woman, however, exasperated, cut him short:
+
+"It's all considered! It's all understood! Get out of this, and don't
+let me see you here again--the idea of wanting to take away a child like
+that!"
+
+Then Mme. d'Hubieres bethought herself that there were two children,
+quite little, and she asked, through her tears, with the tenacity of a
+wilful and spoiled woman:
+
+"But is the other little one not yours?"
+
+Father Tuvache answered: "No, it is our neighbors'. You can go to them,
+if you wish." And he went back into his house whence resounded the
+indignant voice of his wife.
+
+The Vallins were at table, in the act of slowly eating slices of bread
+which they parsimoniously spread with a little rancid butter on a plate
+between the two.
+
+M. d'Hubieres recommenced his propositions, but with more insinuations,
+more oratorical precautions, more guile.
+
+The two country people shook their heads, in sign of refusal, but when
+they learned that they were to have a hundred francs a month, they
+considered, consulting one another by glances, much disturbed. They kept
+silent for a long time, tortured, hesitating. At last the woman asked:
+"What do you think about it, man?" In a sententious tone he said: "I say
+that it's not to be despised."
+
+Then Mme. d'Hubieres, trembling with anguish, spoke of the future of
+their child, of his happiness, and of the money which he could give them
+later.
+
+The peasant asked: "This pension of twelve hundred francs, will it be
+promised before a notary?"
+
+M. d'Hubieres responded: "Why, certainly, beginning with to-morrow."
+
+The woman, who was thinking it over, continued:
+
+"A hundred francs a month is not enough to deprive us of the child. That
+child would be working in a few years; we must have a hundred and twenty
+francs."
+
+Stamping with impatience, Mme. d'Hubieres granted it at once, and as she
+wished to carry off the child with her, she gave a hundred francs as a
+present, while her husband drew up a writing. And the young woman,
+radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wished-for
+knick-knack from a shop.
+
+The Tuvaches, from their door, watched her departure; mute, severe,
+perhaps regretting their refusal.
+
+Nothing more was heard of little Jean Vallin. The parents went to the
+notary every month to collect their hundred and twenty francs, and they
+were angry with their neighbors, because Mother Tuvache grossly insulted
+them, repeating without ceasing from door to door, that one must be
+unnatural to sell one's child; that it was horrible, nasty, and many
+other vile expressions. Sometimes she would take her Chariot in her arms
+with ostentation, exclaiming, as if he understood:
+
+"I didn't sell _you_, I didn't! I didn't sell _you_, my little one! I'm
+not rich, but I don't sell my children!"
+
+The Vallins lived at their ease, thanks to the pension. That was the
+cause of the inappeasable fury of the Tuvaches, who had remained
+miserably poor. Their eldest son went away into service; Charlot alone
+remained to labor with his old father, to support the mother and two
+younger sisters which he had.
+
+He had reached twenty-one years, when, one morning, a brilliant carriage
+stopped before the two cottages. A young gentleman, with a gold watch
+chain, got out, giving his hand to an aged, white-haired lady. The old
+lady said to him: "It is there, my child, at the second house." And he
+entered the house of the Vallins, as if he were at home.
+
+The old mother was washing her aprons; the infirm father slumbered at
+the chimney-corner. Both raised their heads, and the young man said:
+
+"Good morning, papa; good morning, mamma!"
+
+They both stood up, frightened. In a flutter, the peasant woman dropped
+her soap into the water, and stammered:
+
+"Is it you, my child? Is it you, my child?"
+
+He took her in his arms and hugged her, repeating: "Good morning,
+mamma," while the old man, all in a tremble, said, in his calm tone
+which he never lost: "Here you are, back again, Jean," as if he had seen
+him a month before.
+
+When they had got to know one another again the parents wished to take
+their boy out through the neighborhood, and show him. They took him to
+the mayor, to the deputy, to the cure, and to the schoolmaster.
+
+Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass.
+
+In the evening, at supper, he said to the old people: "You must have
+been stupid to let the Vallins's boy be taken."
+
+The mother answered, obstinately: "I wouldn't sell _my_ child."
+
+The father said nothing. The son continued:
+
+"It is unfortunate to be sacrificed like that." Then Father Tuvache, in
+an angry tone, said:
+
+"Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?" And the young man
+said, brutally:
+
+"Yes, I reproach you for having been such simpletons. Parents like you
+make the misfortune of their children. You deserve that I should leave
+you."
+
+The old woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the
+spoonfuls of soup, half of which she spilled: "One may kill one's self
+to bring up children."
+
+Then the boy said, roughly: "I'd rather not have been born than be what
+I am. When I saw the other my heart stood still. I said to myself: 'See
+what I should have been now!'" He arose: "See here, I feel that I would
+do better not to stay here, because I should bring it up against you
+from morning till night, and I should make your life miserable. I shall
+never forgive you that, you know!"
+
+The two old people were silent, downcast, in tears.
+
+He continued: "No, the thought of that would be too hard. I'd rather go
+look for a living somewhere else."
+
+He opened the door. A sound of voices entered. The Vallins were
+celebrating the return of their child.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+PROVIDENCE AND MRS. URMY
+
+The Story of an International Marriage
+
+By ARMIGER BARCLAY and OLIVER SANDYS
+
+
+LADY HARTLEY (_nee_ Miss Persis Van Ness) gave a little gasp. In her
+excitement the paper rustled noisily to her knee.
+
+"O-h! Have you seen this?" She shot the _Morning Post_ across the
+breakfast table to Mrs. Rufus P. Urmy, with her finger marking a
+paragraph.
+
+Mrs. Urmy glanced at it. "I guess it ought to corral him right away,"
+she said, with the merest suspicion of embarrassment. "You see, it's
+Jeannette's last chance. Two seasons in England and never a catch, so
+I----"
+
+"_You_ did it?" Lady Hartley looked at her friend in round-eyed wonder.
+
+"I--I had to do something," allowed Mrs. Urmy, with a dawning suspicion
+that perhaps she had, after all, run afoul of British conventions, which
+she found as difficult of comprehension as her regular morning study of
+Debrett.
+
+"But Jeannette!"
+
+"That's so. Jeannette'll raise Cain." Mrs. Urmy got up from the table.
+"It's this a-way, Persis. I reckon I fixed your little affair up with
+Lord Hartley to home, and you've got to thank me for it. Now, I'm trying
+to do the same for my girl. She can't, or she won't, play her own hand.
+Every chance she's had she's let slide, and I allow she's got to marry a
+title before I go back to the States. Some one's got to hustle when
+Providence isn't attending to business, and as there's nobody else to do
+it, I've taken on the contract." She pointed to the paragraph. "I own
+up I don't see just how, but there wasn't much time, and it was the best
+I could do."
+
+Lady Hartley slowly reread the incriminating paragraph:
+
+"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place between the
+Earl of Chilminster, of Sapworth Hall, Wilts, and Miss Jeannette L.
+Urmy, of Boston, Massachusetts."
+
+"It knocks me out!" she murmured, lapsing into the Western idiom which a
+whole week spent in the society of her bosom friend was bound to call
+up. "But why Lord Chilminster?" She pronounced the name Chilster.
+
+"Why won't he do? Isn't he the real thing? I picked him out in my sample
+book of the aristocracy, and when I fitted the name on to Jeannette--the
+Countess of Chilminster--it sounded quite elegant."
+
+"Then it wasn't because you knew I knew him?" demanded Mrs. Urmy's
+hostess with growing amazement.
+
+Mrs. Urmy's face took on a blank expression.
+
+"You've heard me mention the name. That's how it's pronounced,"
+explained Lady Hartley. "His place isn't far from here."
+
+"You don't say! The way these British titles are pronounced is enough to
+make you doubt your own eyesight. I didn't know. But if he's a friend of
+yours that'll likely make it all the easier."
+
+"Lord Chilminster!" Lady Hartley spoke in an awed tone.
+
+She felt it would be useless to make Mrs. Urmy understand the enormity
+of her offence against good taste, and presently her astonishment gave
+way to amusement.
+
+"Lavinia," she rippled, "as a matchmaker you take the cake! I don't
+believe----" She paused, listening. "Hush! Here's Jeannette!"
+
+Miss Jeannette Urmy came in through the open French window. She was
+dressed in a natty little cotton frock, looked fresh and chic, and only
+pleasantly American. Perhaps she inherited her good looks and refined
+tastes from "popper" Urmy, deceased, in which case that gentleman must
+have committed one serious error of taste and judgment when he selected
+Jeannette's mother for his better half.
+
+"My! You're late, Jeannette!" observed Mrs. Urmy, shooting a quick
+glance at Lady Hartley.
+
+At the same moment, both ladies, by common consent, sauntered toward the
+door. They knew Jeannette's temperament. A crisis, such as the
+announcement in the _Morning Post_ was sure to evoke, was one at which
+they were not anxious to assist.
+
+"Oh, I'm ahead of time," answered Jeannette. "I've been up since six
+looking for eggs."
+
+"Eggs?" echoed Lady Hartley.
+
+"Yes; I collect birds' eggs." She picked up the newspaper and let her
+eye wander along the items in the Court Circular. "But getting up early
+makes me homesick. The best time of my life was when I was a kid, when I
+hadn't an idea beyond the woods on the old Massachusetts farm, when
+popper kept his store, and--Oh!"
+
+She had reached the fatal announcement, and sat with parted lips, rigid
+as stone, while the world seemed toppling about her ears. There was a
+long pause. Jeannette's lips gradually tightened, and her firm hand
+crumpled up the paper.
+
+"Mommer!" she exclaimed. "Here, Mommer!" But Mrs. Urmy and Lady Hartley
+had beaten a diplomatic retreat. Jeannette jumped to her feet, the color
+flaming in her face, her eyes snapping with indignation. "Oh!" she
+cried, impotently. "I'll--I'll--oh! what can I do? It must come out! He
+must apologize. Who did it? Oh, I don't even know him, the--wretch!"
+
+The "chuff-chuff" of a motor-car coming up the drive interrupted her
+outburst, and she looked up to see it being driven up and halted before
+the entrance. Lady Hartley had a perfect fleet of cars. Jeannette at
+once jumped to the conclusion that this was one of them. She had a
+sudden inspiration. It was running free--ready to start. There was
+temptation in the soft purr of its engine. The driver, quietly dressed,
+but not in livery, she appraised as one of Lady Hartley's motor-men.
+
+"Shall I?" she whispered. "Dare I? I can set things straight at once if
+I do. Persis will be wild with me for going off without a word, but
+I'll--I'll chance it!"
+
+She ran into the hall, slipped into her motoring coat, and, throwing
+discretion to the winds, walked out to the front of the house and
+quickly up to the car.
+
+"How soon can you drive me to Sapworth Hall?" she asked, getting in and
+pulling the rug around her.
+
+The barefaced appropriation of his car by an unknown young woman almost
+took Lord Chilminster's breath away. He had, at much inconvenience to
+himself, motored all the way to Lady Hartley's to contradict and sift an
+amazing and annoying report that he had discovered in the _Morning
+Post_. He had heard Lady Hartley mention the name of Urmy as that of a
+friend of hers, and naturally decided that she was the proper person to
+consult. But before he had time to get out of his car and ring the bell
+here was a young person, springing from goodness knows where, mistaking
+him for a motor-man, and ordering him about. For a moment he was
+speechless. Then, as the humor of the situation began to appeal to him,
+so did the good looks of the girl.
+
+"Really," he began. "You see I----"
+
+"Don't talk, get under way!" commanded Jeannette. "Quick! Her ladyship
+has altered her mind about going out. You've got to take me to Sapworth
+Hall. It's thirty miles. I want to be there by lunch-time. Do you know
+the way?"
+
+"I--I think so," stammered Chilminster.
+
+Her bewildering eagerness to be off was infectious. The noble owner of
+the car felt it. But apart from that, he was quite ready for an
+adventure in such pleasant company. He forgot all about the object of
+his visit. Without another word he let in the clutch and started.
+
+Jeannette sank back with a sigh of relief. She credited herself with
+having secured Persis's car very neatly. The man might, perhaps, get
+into trouble, but she could make that up to him by a generous tip. Her
+one idea was to contradict and confute the disgraceful announcement at
+its fountain-head. It was providential that the unknown Lord
+Chilminster's place was so near; but had it been ten times as far off,
+Jeannette, boiling with justifiable indignation, and with her mind made
+up to exact reparation, would have gone there.
+
+"It's awful! It's unheard of! I--I won't have it! Who can have done it?"
+she kept repeating through white teeth set viciously. "I'll have it
+contradicted in large print by this time to-morrow, or the American
+Ambassador shall----"
+
+She was not quite sure what ambassadors did under similar circumstances,
+and she left the mental threat unfinished. Anyhow, it was a disgrace to
+herself, and her sex, if not a slight on her country, and it redoubled
+her determination to "get even" with the perpetrator of it. She leaned
+forward to make herself heard.
+
+"Set a killing pace," she called. "I'll make it up to you."
+
+Chilminster nodded, hid a smile, and let the car out to the top of its
+speed. It ate up mile after mile; and as it came to Jeannette that each
+one brought her nearer and nearer to the hateful person whose name had
+been so scandalously bracketed with her own, she experienced a feeling
+of nervousness. The boldness of her escapade began to alarm her. What
+should she say? How express in words her view of an intolerable
+situation which no self-respecting girl could even calmly think about?
+
+Lord Chilminster's mind was almost similarly engaged. He was wondering
+who Miss Jeannette L. Urmy could be, and whether she was aware of the
+obnoxious paragraph in the paper. He did not do her the injustice to
+suppose that she had inspired it (he had an open mind on that point),
+but as he was not responsible for it himself, he had a suspicion that
+she might be. Chilminster had met very few unmarried American girls, but
+like most Englishmen, he was aware of their capacity for resolution in
+most matters. Then, again, it was leap year. Suppose---- For a little
+while he did a lot of hard thinking.
+
+"I say," he called suddenly, looking over his shoulder. "Isn't there a
+Miss Urmy staying at the White House?"
+
+Jeannette drew herself up and fixed him with a stony stare.
+
+"I am Miss Urmy," she answered frigidly.
+
+The start that Chilminster gave unconsciously affected the
+steering-wheel, and the car swerved sharply.
+
+"What are you doing? You're driving disgracefully!" exclaimed Jeannette.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," faltered Chilminster. "I thought you were her
+lady's maid."
+
+He felt he owed her that one. A girl who could announce her approaching
+marriage with a stranger (Chilminster no longer gave her the benefit of
+the doubt) and follow up that glaring indiscretion by a visit to her
+victim, was---- The imminence of such a thing alarmed him. Was she
+coming to propose--to molest him? He got hot thinking of it.
+
+The situation had undergone a complete change since he had started out
+in a rage, and some trepidation, to confront Miss Urmy herself, if need
+be. Now trepidation over-balanced all his other emotions. Miss Urmy was
+behind him, in his own automobile, and he was meekly driving her at a
+cracking speed to his own house! It was too late to turn back now. The
+thing had to be seen through. Besides, he could not help feeling a
+curiosity to know what was in his passenger's mind, and to discover her
+bewildering plan of action.
+
+Neither spoke for the rest of the journey, and at length the car passed
+through the lodge gates, swept up the drive, and stopped at the entrance
+to Sapworth Hall. Jeannette got out.
+
+"You had better go round to the stables and ask for something to eat. I
+may be some time," was all she volunteered as she rang the bell.
+
+Rather staggered by the order, but foreseeing a bad quarter of an hour
+ahead of him, Chilminster was glad of the respite. He opened the
+throttle and slid out of sight as Jeannette was admitted.
+
+His lordship was out, the butler informed her. Then she would wait--wait
+all day, if necessary, she said decisively, following the man into the
+library. No, she was in no need of refreshment, but her _chauffeur_, who
+had gone round to the stables, might be glad of something in the
+servants' hall.
+
+With a foot impatiently tapping the polished floor, she sat summoning up
+all her determination whilst awaiting the ordeal before her. For, by
+this time had come the inevitable reaction, and the sudden impulse that
+had made her act as she had seemed, somehow, out of relation to the
+motive that had inspired it. Not that she regretted having come: her
+self-respect demanded that sacrifice; but she wished the unpleasant
+affair over.
+
+An intolerable ten minutes passed. The beautiful seventeenth century
+room, like a reflection on the spirit of democracy, was getting on
+Jeannette's nerves. The strain of listening, watching the big mahogany
+door for the expected entrance of Lord Chilminster, at last reduced her
+to a state of apathy, and when he did come quietly in she was taken by
+surprise.
+
+"I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," he said.
+
+Jeannette stared. Bareheaded, gaiterless, minus his driving coat, very
+self-contained and eminently aristocratic, the supposed motor-man
+advanced into the room.
+
+"You see, you told me to take the car round to the stables," he
+proceeded, with a touch of apology in his tone.
+
+"You--you are the Earl of Chilminster?" she gasped.
+
+"Of Sapworth Hall, Wilts," he augmented, like one who quotes. "And you
+are Miss Jeannette L. Urmy, of Boston, Massachusetts, I believe."
+
+There was quite a long silence.
+
+"You knew all along," she flushed angrily.
+
+Chilminster raised a hand in protest. "Not until you told me."
+
+"Then why didn't you stop? You ought to have taken me back immediately
+you knew who I was."
+
+"So I would have if----"
+
+"You mean you didn't believe me. You thought I was a lady's maid!"
+Jeannette interrupted indignantly.
+
+"That was an error of judgment for which I humbly apologize. We are all
+liable to make mistakes sometimes. You, Miss Urmy, for instance, took me
+for a motor-man. You also appropriated my car, and commanded me to bring
+you here at a murderous--no, a killing pace. And I think you added that
+you would make it up to me."
+
+Jeannette's face tingled. She had come to accuse, and, instead, found
+herself patiently listening to a recital of her indiscretions. But if
+Lord Chilminster was a strategist, Jeannette was a tactician. She
+appreciated the danger of a passive defense, and conversely, of the
+value of a vigorous aggression. Without a moment's hesitation she began
+a counter attack.
+
+"In to-day's _Morning Post_----" she commenced.
+
+"Ah, the _Morning Post_!" echoed Chilminster, also changing front.
+
+"There was a disgraceful announcement."
+
+"Half of it certainly was--irksome."
+
+"Which half?" asked Jeannette suspiciously.
+
+"I have no conscientious scruples about matrimony in the abstract,"
+parried Chilminster.
+
+"But I have. I object altogether to the paragraph. I resent it."
+
+"Then you did not insert it?"
+
+"I insert it? _I?_" flamed Jeannette. She drew herself up as haughtily
+as a pretty woman can under the disadvantage of being seated in a
+yielding easy chair. "Do you mean to assert, Lord Chilminster, that
+I----?"
+
+She was interrupted by the entrance of the butler.
+
+"Luncheon is served, my lord," he announced.
+
+"You will take off your coat?"
+
+Lord Chilminster turned to Miss Urmy, and advanced a step in
+anticipation. The butler--with a well-trained butler's promptness--was
+behind her, and before she could frame a word of objection, the
+fur-lined garment had slipped from her shoulders.
+
+Thus must martyrs have marched to the stake, was one of Jeannette's
+bewildered reflections as she preceded her host out of the room, and, as
+in a dream, found herself a few minutes later facing him across the
+luncheon table. Outwardly, the meal proceeded in well-ordered calm. Lord
+Chilminster made no further reference to the debatable topic; only
+talked lightly and pleasantly on a variety of non-committal subjects.
+
+As the lady's host that, of course, was the only attitude he could
+adopt; but the fact remains that he did so _de bonne volonte_. Perhaps
+because, so far, he had scored more points than his opponent in the
+morning's encounter; perhaps, also, because of her undeniable good
+looks, his irritation, due to the circumstances that had prompted that
+encounter, began to lessen with _truites en papilotte_, was almost
+forgotten in face of a _mousse de volaille_, and entirely vanished among
+_asperges vertes mousseline_.
+
+Miss Jeannette L. Urmy, with her veil lifted, and relieved of her
+voluminous coat, was, he had to admit, distractingly pretty; not at all
+the type he had pictured as the original of the name. Young, pretty, and
+charming women (he was convinced that _au fond_ she was charming) ought
+to have no obstinate prejudices against marriage. He even ventured to
+think that Miss Urmy's mind had become obscured on that point by
+those--well, indiscreet lines in the _Morning Post_. They had upset him;
+then why not her? They were so--premature.
+
+As for Jeannette, in spite of Lord Chilminster's effortless ease, her
+powers of conversation were frozen. She was reduced to monosyllables,
+and she ate in proportion. It was a humiliating experience to be
+accepting the hospitality of the enemy; one, moreover, that made it
+awkward for her to prolong hostilities. Having broken bread in his
+tents (a Puritan strain was responsible for the illustration) she felt
+disarmed. Besides, she was rather ashamed of her maladroitness in
+mistaking Lord Chilminster for a common motor-man. It argued
+_gaucherie_. Perhaps he thought her unconventional call a violation of
+good taste--considered her forward! He had plainly shown his annoyance
+about that obnox--that embarrassing paragraph, and that fact spiked most
+of her batteries. He might, after all, prove to be quite----
+
+"Do you mind if I smoke?"
+
+Lord Chilminster's voice startled her out of her reverie. The servants
+had noiselessly retired, and they were alone.
+
+"I--I feel ready to sink through the floor," she rejoined
+inconsequently.
+
+He returned his cigarette case to his pocket, looking quite concerned.
+"I'm so sorry. I ought not to have----"
+
+"No, no. Please smoke. It isn't that," stammered Jeannette.
+
+"It's the _Morning Post_?"
+
+Jeannette evaded his eye.
+
+"Yes; it does put us in rather a tight place," mediated Chilminster.
+
+Nothing was said for a moment.
+
+"Engaged!" he murmured.
+
+Jeannette raised her eyes and noted his reflective attitude.
+
+"Who can have put it in?" he went on.
+
+"I can't imagine."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"It does seem strange," admitted Jeannette in a detached tone.
+
+"It's not as if we were----"
+
+"No," she interposed hurriedly.
+
+"Well, what ought we to do about it? Of course, we can contradict it,
+but----"
+
+"But what?" she asked, filling his pause.
+
+"I hate advertisement--that is, _unnecessary_ advertisement,"
+Chilminster corrected himself. "It would make us--I mean me--look so--so
+vacillating."
+
+He looked up rather suddenly, and just missed Jeannette's eyes by the
+thousandth of a second.
+
+What could he mean? she asked herself, while her heart pumped
+boisterously. Was he magnanimous enough to be thinking of accepting a
+compromising situation to save her? What he had said sounded very
+unselfish. Of course, she couldn't allow him to. What a pity he was not
+an American--or something quite ordinary. Then she might----
+
+"There's nothing for it but to write to the paper, I suppose?" he said
+ruefully.
+
+"I--I suppose not." The comment was dragged from Jeannette in a tone as
+unconsciously reluctant as his was rueful.
+
+Chilminster sighed. "It's so rough on you."
+
+Jeannette felt a consuming anxiety to know whether his sympathy was
+occasioned by the announcement or the suggested denial of it.
+
+"And on you, too," she admitted. "What were you thinking--how did you
+propose to phrase it?"
+
+"I?" he asked apprehensively. "To be quite frank. I haven't got as far
+as that. Never wrote to the papers in my life," he added
+pusillanimously.
+
+"But _I_ can't," argued Jeannette. Her determination of two hours ago
+had vanished into the Ewigkeit.
+
+Chilminster had an inspiration. "What do you say if we do it together?"
+
+While she digested this expedient he fetched paper and pencil, and then
+sat gazing at the ceiling for inspiration.
+
+"Well?" she queried at the end of a minute.
+
+"How ought one to begin these things?" asked the desperate man.
+
+Jeannette cogitated deeply. "It's so difficult to say what one wants to
+a stranger in a letter, isn't it?" she hesitated. "Wouldn't a telegram
+do?"
+
+"By Jove! Yes; and simply say: 'Miss Urmy wishes to deny----'"
+
+"In _my_ name!" exclaimed Jeannette.
+
+"Well--you are the person aggrieved."
+
+"I really don't think it's fair to put the whole of the responsibility
+on my shoulders," she demurred.
+
+"No, I suppose not," Chilminster admitted grudgingly. "How would this
+do: 'Miss Urmy and Lord Chilminster wish to contradict their
+engagement----'"
+
+"But that implies that there _was_ an engagement!"
+
+Chilminster pondered the deduction. "So it does. I see. People would
+jump to the conclusion that we were in a desperate hurry to alter our
+minds!"
+
+"And, of course, we haven't."
+
+"Y-es. I don't know how you feel about it, but if there's one thing I
+dislike it's tittle-tattle about my private affairs."
+
+"Horrid!" shivered Jeannette. "What _are_ we to do?"
+
+Her tone was so hopeless, so full of tears, that it melted Chilminster.
+Susceptibilities that had been simmering within him for an hour past
+came unexpectedly to the boil; and as they did so the difficulty
+vanished.
+
+"Why need we bother at all about it?" he asked impulsively.
+
+For a world of moments, Jeannette stared at him, revolving the question.
+Then a faint radiance came into her face, and grew and grew until it
+burned. Jeannette bit her lip. Jeannette looked down.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked in confusion.
+
+"Don't--don't you think we had better--take the consequences?" said
+Chilminster, as he reached across the table and let his hand fall on
+hers.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Urmy stood at the window looking with lack-lustre eyes across the
+park. She had had six solid hours in which to reflect on that risky
+communication of hers to the _Morning Post_, and Jeannette's
+disappearance since breakfast time provided a gloomy commentary on it.
+She fidgeted uneasily as she recalled her daughter's scared look when
+reading the paper, and maternal forebodings discounted her interest in
+an automobile that showed at intervals between the trees of the drive as
+it approached the White House.
+
+But two moments later it occurred to her that it was Jeannette who sat
+on its front seat beside the driver; and, as the car drew up, her
+experienced eye detected something in the demeanor of the pair that
+startled but elated her.
+
+"Here's Jeannette!" she called over her shoulder to Lady Hartley. "In an
+auto with a young man. Say, Persis, who is he?"
+
+Lady Hartley hurried to the window, gave one look, and doubted the
+evidence of her eyes.
+
+"Lavinia, it's Lord Chilminster!" she cried, with a catch in her voice.
+
+The two women flashed a glance brimful of significance at one another.
+Lady Hartley's expressed uncertainty; Mrs. Urmy's triumph--sheer,
+complete, perfect triumph.
+
+"Didn't I say it was a sure thing?" she shrilled excitedly. "It's fixed
+them up! Come right ahead and introduce me to my future son-in-law!"
+
+As she raced to the door she added half to herself: "I don't want to
+boast, but, thank the Lord, I've got Jeannette off this season!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE MILLION DOLLAR FREIGHT TRAIN
+
+The Story of a Young Engineer
+
+By FRANK H. SPEARMAN
+
+
+IT WAS the second month of the strike, and not a pound of freight had
+been moved. Things did look smoky on the West End. The General
+Superintendent happened to be with us when the news came. "You can't
+handle it, boys," said he nervously. "What you'd better do is to turn it
+over to the Columbian Pacific."
+
+Our contracting freight agent on the Coast at that time was a fellow so
+erratic that he was nicknamed "Crazy-horse." Right in the midst of the
+strike Crazy-horse wired that he had secured a big silk shipment for New
+York. We were paralyzed. We had no engineers, no firemen, and no motive
+power to speak of. The strikers were pounding our men, wrecking our
+trains, and giving us the worst of it generally; that is, when we
+couldn't give it to them. Why the fellow displayed his activity at that
+particular juncture still remains a mystery. Perhaps he had a grudge
+against the road; if so, he took an artful revenge. Everybody on the
+system with ordinary railroad sense knew that our struggle was to keep
+clear of freight business until we got rid of our strike. Anything
+valuable or perishable was especially unwelcome. But the stuff was
+docked, and loaded, and consigned in our care before we knew it. After
+that, a refusal to carry it would be like hoisting the white flag; and
+that is something which never yet flew over the West End.
+
+"Turn it over to the Columbian," said the General Superintendent; but
+the General Superintendent was not looked up to on our division. He
+hadn't enough sand. Our head was a fighter, and he gave tone to every
+man under him. "No," he thundered, bringing down his fist. "Not in a
+thousand years. We'll move it ourselves. Wire Montgomery (the General
+Manager) that we will take care of it. And wire him to fire
+Crazy-horse--and to do it right off." And before the silk was turned
+over to us Crazy-horse was looking for another job. It is the only case
+on record where a freight hustler was discharged for getting business.
+
+There were twelve carloads; it was insured for $85,000 a car; you can
+figure how far the title is wrong, but you never can estimate the worry
+the stuff gave us. It looked as big as twelve million dollars' worth. In
+fact, one scrub car-link, with the glory of the West End at heart, had a
+fight over the amount with a skeptical hostler. He maintained that the
+actual money value was a hundred and twenty millions; but I give you the
+figures just as they went over the wire, and they are right.
+
+What bothered us most was that the strikers had the tip almost as soon
+as we had it. Having friends on every road in the country, they knew as
+much about our business as we ourselves. The minute it was announced
+that we should move the silk, they were after us. It was a defiance; a
+last one. If we could move freight--for we were already moving
+passengers after a fashion--the strike might be well accounted beaten.
+
+Stewart, the leader of the local contingent, together with his
+followers, got after me at once. "You don't show much sense, Reed," said
+he. "You fellows here are breaking your necks to get things moving, and
+when this strike's over, if our boys ask for your discharge, they'll get
+it. This road can't run without our engineers. We're going to beat you.
+If you dare try to move this silk, we'll have your scalp when it's over.
+You'll never get your silk to Zanesville, I'll promise you that. And if
+you ditch it and make a million-dollar loss, you'll get let out anyway,
+my buck."
+
+"I'm here to obey orders, Stewart," said I. What was the use of more? I
+felt uncomfortable; but we had determined to move the silk; there was no
+more to be said.
+
+When I went over to the round-house and told Neighbor the decision, he
+said never a word; but he looked a great deal. Neighbor's task was to
+supply the motive power. All that we had, uncrippled, was in the
+passenger service, because passengers should be taken care of first of
+all. In order to win a strike, you must have public opinion on your
+side.
+
+"Nevertheless, Neighbor," said I, after we had talked awhile, "we must
+move the silk also."
+
+Neighbor studied; then he roared at his foreman. "Send Bartholomew
+Mullen here." He spoke with a decision that made me think the business
+was done. I had never happened, it is true, to hear of Bartholomew
+Mullen in the department of motive power; but the impression the name
+gave me was of a monstrous fellow, big as Neighbor, or old man Sankey,
+or Dad Hamilton. "I'll put Bartholomew ahead of it," said Neighbor
+tightly.
+
+I saw a boy walk into the office. "Mr. Garten said you wanted me, sir,"
+said he, addressing the Master Mechanic.
+
+"I do, Bartholomew," responded Neighbor.
+
+The figure in my mind's eye shrunk in a twinkling. Then it occurred to
+me that it must be this boy's father who was wanted.
+
+"You have been begging for a chance to take out an engine, Bartholomew,"
+began Neighbor coldly; and I knew it was on.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You want to get killed, Bartholomew."
+
+Bartholomew smiled as if the idea was not altogether displeasing.
+
+"How would you like to go pilot to-morrow for McCurdy? You to take the
+44 and run as first Seventy-eight. McCurdy will run as second
+Seventy-eight."
+
+"I know I could run an engine all right," ventured Bartholomew, as if
+Neighbor were the only one taking the chances in giving him an engine.
+"I know the track from here to Zanesville. I helped McNeff fire one
+week."
+
+"Then go home, and go to bed; and be over here at six o'clock to-morrow
+morning. And sleep sound, for it may be your last chance."
+
+It was plain that the Master Mechanic hated to do it; it was simply
+sheer necessity. "He's a wiper," mused Neighbor, as Bartholomew walked
+springily away. "I took him in here sweeping two years ago. He ought to
+be firing now, but the union held him back; that's why he don't like
+them. He knows more about an engine now than half the lodge. They'd
+better have let him in," said the Master Mechanic grimly. "He may be the
+means of breaking their backs yet. If I give him an engine and he runs
+it, I'll never take him off, union or no union, strike or no strike."
+
+"How old is that boy?" I asked.
+
+"Eighteen; and never a kith or a kin that I know of. Bartholomew
+Mullen," mused Neighbor, as the slight figure moved across the flat,
+"big name--small boy. Well, Bartholomew, you'll know something more by
+to-morrow night about running an engine, or a whole lot less: that's as
+it happens. If he gets killed, it's your fault, Reed."
+
+He meant that I was calling on him for men when he couldn't supply them.
+
+"I heard once," he went on, "about a fellow named Bartholomew being
+mixed up in a massacre. But I take it he must have been an older man
+than our Bartholomew--nor his other name wasn't Mullen, neither. I
+disremember just what it was; but it wasn't Mullen."
+
+"Well, don't say I want to get the boy killed, Neighbor," I protested.
+"I've got plenty to answer for. I'm here to run trains--when there are
+any to run; that's murder enough for me. You needn't send Bartholomew
+out on my account."
+
+"Give him a slow schedule, and I'll give him orders to jump early;
+that's all we can do. If the strikers don't ditch him, he'll get through
+somehow."
+
+It stuck in my crop--the idea of putting that boy on a pilot engine to
+take all the dangers ahead of that particular train; but I had a good
+deal else to think of besides. From the minute the silk got into the
+McCloud yards, we posted double guards around. About twelve o'clock that
+night we held a council of war, which ended in our running the train
+into the out freight-house. The result was that by morning we had a new
+train made up. It consisted of fourteen refrigerator cars loaded with
+oranges which had come in mysteriously the night before. It was
+announced that the silk would be held for the present and the oranges
+rushed through at once. Bright and early the refrigerator train was run
+down to the icehouses, and twenty men were put to work icing the
+oranges. At seven o'clock, McCurdy pulled in the local passenger with
+engine 105. Our plan was to cancel the load and run him right out with
+the oranges. When he got in, he reported that the 105 had sprung a tire;
+this threw us out entirely. There was a hurried conference in the
+round-house.
+
+"What can you do?" asked the Superintendent in desperation.
+
+"There's only one thing I can do. Put Bartholomew Mullen on it with the
+44, and put McCurdy to bed for Number Two to-night," responded Neighbor.
+
+It was eight o'clock. I looked into the locomotive stalls. The
+first--the only--man in sight was Bartholomew Mullen. He was very busy
+polishing the 44. He had good steam on her, and the old tub was wheezing
+away as if she had the asthma. The 44 was old; she was homely; she was
+rickety; but Bartholomew Mullen wiped her battered nose as deferentially
+as if she had been a spick-span, spider-driver, tail-truck mail-racer.
+She wasn't much--the 44. But in those days Bartholomew wasn't much:
+and the 44 was Bartholomew's.
+
+"How is she steaming, Bartholomew?" I sang out; he was right in the
+middle of her. Looking up, he fingered his waste modestly and blushed
+through a dab of crude-petroleum over his eye. "Hundred and thirty
+pounds, sir. She's a terrible free steamer, the old 44. I'm all ready
+to run her out."
+
+"Who's marked up to fire for you, Bartholomew?"
+
+Bartholomew Mullen looked at me fraternally. "Neighbor couldn't give me
+anybody but a wiper, sir," said Bartholomew, in a sort of a
+wouldn't-that-kill-you tone.
+
+The unconscious arrogance of the boy quite knocked me: so soon had
+honors changed his point of view. Last night a despised wiper; at
+daybreak, an engineer; and his nose in the air at the idea of taking on
+a wiper for fireman. And all so innocent.
+
+"Would you object, Bartholomew," I suggested gently, "to a train-master
+for fireman?"
+
+"I don't--think so, sir."
+
+"Thank you; because I am going down to Zanesville this morning myself,
+and I thought I'd ride with you. Is it all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir--if Neighbor doesn't care."
+
+I smiled: he didn't know whom Neighbor took orders from; but he thought,
+evidently, not from me.
+
+"Then run her down to the oranges, Bartholomew, and couple on, and we'll
+order ourselves out. See?"
+
+The 44 looked like a baby-carriage when we got her in front of the
+refrigerators. However, after the necessary preliminaries, we gave a
+very sporty toot, and pulled out. In a few minutes we were sailing down
+the valley.
+
+For fifty miles we bobbed along with our cargo of iced silk as easy as
+old shoes; for I need hardly explain that we had packed the silk into
+the refrigerators to confuse the strikers. The great risk was that they
+would try to ditch us.
+
+I was watching the track as a mouse would a cat, looking every minute
+for trouble. We cleared the gumbo cut west of the Beaver at a pretty
+good clip, in order to make the grade on the other side. The bridge
+there is hidden in summer by a grove of hackberries. I had just pulled
+open to cool her a bit when I noticed how high the back-water was on
+each side of the track. Suddenly I felt the fill going soft under the
+drivers; felt the 44 wobble and slew. Bartholomew shut off hard, and
+threw the air as I sprang to the window. The peaceful little creek ahead
+looked as angry as the Platte in April water, and the bottoms were a
+lake.
+
+Somewhere up the valley there had been a cloudburst, for overhead the
+sun was bright. The Beaver was roaring over its banks, and the bridge
+was out. Bartholomew screamed for brakes: it looked as if we were
+against it--and hard. A soft track to stop on; a torrent of storm-water
+ahead, and ten hundred thousand dollars' worth of silk behind, not to
+mention equipment.
+
+I yelled at Bartholomew, and motioned for him to jump; my conscience is
+clear on that point. The 44 was stumbling along, trying like a drunken
+man to hang to the rotten track.
+
+"Bartholomew!" I yelled; but he was head out and looking back at his
+train while he jerked frantically at the air-lever. I understood: the
+air wouldn't work; it never will on those old tubs when you need it. The
+sweat pushed out on me. I was thinking of how much the silk would bring
+us after the bath in the Beaver. Bartholomew stuck to his levers like a
+man in a signal-tower, but every second brought us closer to open water.
+Watching him intent only on saving his first train--heedless of his
+life--I was actually ashamed to jump. While I hesitated he somehow got
+the brakes to set; the old 44 bucked like a bronco.
+
+It wasn't too soon. She checked her train nobly at the last, but I saw
+nothing could keep her from the drink. I gave Bartholomew a terrific
+slap, and again I yelled; then turning to the gangway, I dropped into
+the soft mud on my side: the 44 hung low, and it was easy lighting.
+
+Bartholomew sprang from his seat a second later; but his blouse caught
+in the teeth of the quadrant. He stooped quick as thought, and peeled
+the thing over his head. Then he was caught fast by the wristbands, and
+the ponies of the 44 tipped over the broken abutment. Pull as he would
+he couldn't get free. The pilot dipped into the torrent slowly. But
+losing her balance, the 44 kicked her heels into the air like
+lightning, and shot with a frightened wheeze plump into the creek,
+dragging her engineer with her.
+
+The head car stopped on the brink. Running across the track, I looked
+for Bartholomew. He wasn't there; I knew he must have gone down with his
+engine. Throwing off my gloves, I dived, just as I stood, close to the
+tender, which hung half submerged. I am a good bit of a fish under
+water, but no self-respecting fish would be caught in that yellow mud. I
+realized, too, the instant I struck the water, that I should have dived
+on the upstream side. The current took me away whirling; when I came up
+for air, I was fifty feet below the pier. I scrambled out, feeling it
+was all up with Bartholomew; but to my amazement, as I shook my eyes
+open the train crew were running forward, and there stood Bartholomew on
+the track above me, looking at the refrigerator. When I got to him, he
+explained how he was dragged under and had to tear the sleeve out of his
+blouse under water to get free.
+
+The surprise is how little fuss men make about such things when they are
+busy. It took only five minutes for the conductor to hunt up a coil of
+wire and a sounder for me, and by the time he got forward with it,
+Bartholomew was half-way up a telegraph pole to help me cut in on a live
+wire. Fast as I could, I rigged a pony, and began calling the McCloud
+despatcher. It was rocky sending, but after no end of pounding, I got
+him and gave orders for the wrecking gang, and for one more of
+Neighbor's rapidly decreasing supply of locomotives.
+
+Bartholomew, sitting on a strip of fence which still rose above water,
+looked forlorn. To lose in the Beaver the first engine he ever handled
+was tough, and he was evidently speculating on his chances of ever
+getting another. If there weren't tears in his eyes, there was
+storm-water certainly. But after the relief engine had pulled what was
+left of us back six miles to a siding, I made it my first business to
+explain to Neighbor, who was nearly beside himself, that Bartholomew not
+only was not at fault, but that by his nerve he had actually saved the
+train.
+
+"I'll tell you, Neighbor," I suggested, when we got straightened
+around. "Give us the 109 to go ahead as pilot, and run her around the
+river division with Foley and the 216."
+
+"What'll you do with Number Six?" growled Neighbor. Six was the local
+passenger west.
+
+"Annul it west of McCloud," said I instantly. "We've got this silk on
+our hands now, and I'd move it if it tied up every passenger train on
+the division. If we can get the stuff through, it will practically beat
+the strike. If we fail, it will beat the company."
+
+By the time we had backed to Newhall Junction, Neighbor had made up his
+mind my way. Mullen and I climbed into the 109, and Foley, with the 216,
+and none too good a grace, coupled on to the silk, and flying red
+signals, we started again for Zanesville over the river division.
+
+Foley was always full of mischief. He had a better engine than ours, and
+he took great satisfaction the rest of the afternoon in crowding us.
+Every mile of the way he was on our heels. I was throwing the coal, and
+have reason to remember. It was after dark when we reached the Beverly
+Hill, and we took it at a lively pace. The strikers were not on our
+minds then; it was Foley who bothered.
+
+When the long parallel steel lines of the upper yards spread before us,
+flashing under the arc lights, we were away above yard speed. Running a
+locomotive into one of those big yards is like shooting a rapid in a
+canoe. There is a bewildering maze of tracks, lighted by red and green
+lamps, which must be watched the closest to keep out of trouble. The
+hazards are multiplied the minute you pass the throat, and a yard wreck
+is a dreadful tangle; it makes everybody from road-master to flagman
+furious, and not even Bartholomew wanted to face an inquiry on a yard
+wreck. On the other hand, he couldn't afford to be caught by Foley, who
+was chasing him out of pure caprice.
+
+I saw the boy holding the throttle at a half and fingering the air
+anxiously as we jumped over the frogs; but the roughest riding on track
+so far beats the ties as a cushion, that when the 109 suddenly stuck her
+paws through an open switch we bounced against the roof of the cab like
+footballs. I grabbed a brace with one hand, and with the other reached
+instinctively across to Bartholomew's side to seize the throttle. But as
+I tried to shut him off, he jerked it wide open in spite of me, and
+turned with lightning in his eye. "No!" he cried, and his voice rang
+hard. The 109 took the tremendous shove at her back, and leaped like a
+frightened horse. Away we went across the yard, through the cinders, and
+over the ties; my teeth have never been the same since. I don't belong
+on an engine, anyway, and since then I have kept off. At the moment, I
+was convinced that the strain had been too much, that Bartholomew was
+stark crazy. He sat clinging like a lobster to his levers and bouncing
+clear to the roof.
+
+But his strategy was dawning on me; in fact, he was pounding it into me.
+Even the shock and scare of leaving the track and tearing up the yard
+had not driven from Bartholomew's noddle the most important feature of
+our situation, which was, above everything, to _keep out of the way of
+the silk train_.
+
+I felt every moment more mortified at my attempt to shut him off. I had
+done the trick of the woman who grabs the reins. It was even better to
+tear up the yard than to stop for Foley to smash into and scatter the
+silk over the coal chutes. Bartholomew's decision was one of the traits
+which make the runner: instant perception coupled to instant resolve.
+The ordinary dub thinks what he should have done to avoid disaster after
+it is all over; Bartholomew thought before.
+
+On we bumped, across frogs, through switches, over splits, and into
+target rods, when--and this is the miracle of it all--the 109 got her
+forefeet on a split switch, made a contact, and after a slew or two,
+like a bogged horse, she swung up sweet on the rails again, tender and
+all. Bartholomew shut off with an under cut that brought us up
+stuttering, and nailed her feet with the air right where she stood. We
+had left the track and plowed a hundred feet across the yards and jumped
+on to another track. It is the only time I ever heard of its happening
+anywhere, but I was on the engine with Bartholomew Mullen when it was
+done.
+
+Foley choked his train the instant he saw our hind lights bobbing. We
+climbed down, and ran back. He had stopped just where we should have
+stood if I had shut off.
+
+Bartholomew ran to the switch to examine it. The contact light (green)
+still burned like a false beacon; and lucky it did, for it showed that
+the switch had been tampered with and exonerated Bartholomew Mullen
+completely. The attempt of the strikers to spill the silk in the yards
+had only made the reputation of a new engineer. Thirty minutes later,
+the million-dollar train was turned over to the East End to wrestle
+with, and we breathed, all of us, a good bit easier.
+
+Bartholomew Mullen, now a passenger runner who ranks with Kennedy and
+Jack Moore and Foley and George Sinclair himself, got a personal letter
+from the General Manager complimenting him on his pretty wit; and he was
+good enough to say nothing whatever about mine.
+
+We registered that night and went to supper together: Foley, Jackson,
+Bartholomew, and I. Afterward we dropped into the despatcher's office.
+Something was coming from McCloud, but the operator to save his life
+couldn't catch it. I listened a minute; it was Neighbor. Now, Neighbor
+isn't great on despatching trains. He can make himself understood over
+the poles, but his sending is like a boy's sawing wood--sort of uneven.
+However, though I am not much on running yards, I claim to be able to
+take the wildest ball that ever was thrown along the wire, and the chair
+was tendered me at once to catch Neighbor's extraordinary passes at the
+McCloud key. They came something like this:
+
+"To Opr. Tell Massacree"--that was the word that stuck them all, and I
+could perceive that Neighbor was talking emphatically. He had apparently
+forgotten Bartholomew's last name, and was trying to connect with the
+one he had "disremembered" the night before. "Tell Massacree," repeated
+Neighbor, "that he is al-l-l right. Tell hi-m I give him double mileage
+for to-day all the way through. And to-morrow he gets the 109 to
+keep.--NEIGHB-B-OR."
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE BULLDOG BREED
+
+A Story of the Russo-Japanese War
+
+By AMBROSE PRATT
+
+
+"WHAT do you make of her, Maclean?" asked Captain Brandon anxiously.
+
+First mate Hugh Maclean did not reply at once. Embracing a stanchion of
+the S.S. _Saigon's_ bridge in order to steady himself against the
+vessel's pitching, he was peering with strained eyes through the
+captain's binoculars at two small brown needle-points, set very close
+together, that stabbed the northeastern horizon.
+
+At length, however, he lowered the glass, and resumed the perpendicular.
+
+"You were right, sir," he declared. "She has altered her course, and our
+paths now converge."
+
+"Which proves that she is one of those d----d Russian volunteer
+pirates."
+
+"Or else a Japanese cruiser, sir."
+
+"Nonsense! The Jap cruisers have only one mast."
+
+"So they have, sir. I was forgetting that."
+
+"What to do!" growled the captain, and he fell to frowning and cracking
+his long fingers--his habit when perplexed. He was a short, thick-set
+man, with a round, red face, keen blue eyes, and strong, square jaws: a
+typical specimen of the old-time British sailor. Hugh Maclean, on the
+other hand, was a lean and lank Australian, of evident Scottish
+ancestry. His long, aquiline nose and high cheek-bones were tightly
+covered with a parchment-like skin, bronzed almost to the hue of
+leather. He wore a close-cropped, pointed beard, and the deep-set gray
+eyes that looked out from under the peak of his seaman's cap twinkled
+with good health and humor.
+
+"We might alter our course, too, sir," he suggested.
+
+"Ay!" snapped the other, "and get pushed for our pains on to the
+Teraghlind Reef. We are skirting those rocks more closely than I like
+already."
+
+"You know best, sir, of course. But I meant that we might slip back
+toward Manila, and try the other channel after we have given that fellow
+the go-by."
+
+"What!" snorted the captain, his blue eyes flashing fire, "run from the
+Russian! I'll be ---- first. We haven't a stitch of contraband aboard,"
+he added more calmly a moment later. "He daren't do more than stop and
+search us."
+
+But Maclean shook his head. "One of them took and sunk the _Acandaga_
+last month, sir, and she carried no contraband either."
+
+"Russia will have to foot the bill for that."
+
+"May be, sir. But Captain Tollis--as fine a chap as ever breathed,
+sir--has lost his ship, and the Lord knows if he'll ever get another."
+
+"Are you trying to frighten me, Maclean?" asked Captain Brandon,
+stormily.
+
+The mate shrugged his shoulders. "No, sir; but I am interested in this
+venture, and if the _Saigon_ gets back all right to Liverpool I'm due to
+splice Mr. Keppel's niece, and the old gentleman, as you know, has
+promised me a ship."
+
+"And hasn't it entered your thick skull that to return as you suggest
+would cost fifty pounds' worth of coal? How do you suppose old Kep would
+like that?"
+
+"Better burn a few tons of coal than risk losing the _Saigon_, sir, and
+mark time till God knows when in a Russian prison."
+
+Captain Brandon shut his mouth with a snap, and muttered something about
+Scottish caution that was distinctly uncomplimentary to the Caledonian
+race. Then, to signify the end of the argument, he strode to the ladder,
+and prepared to descend. Maclean, however, was of an equally stubborn
+character. "About the course, sir?" he demanded, touching his cap with
+ironical deference.
+
+"Carry on!" snarled the captain, and he forthwith disappeared.
+
+Two hours afterward Hugh Maclean knocked at the door of the captain's
+cabin, and was hoarsely bidden enter. Captain Brandon was seated before
+a bottle of whisky, which was scarce half full.
+
+"Have a nip?" he hospitably inquired.
+
+Maclean nodded, and half filled a glass.
+
+"Thank you, sir. Queer thing's happened," he observed, as he wiped his
+lips. "The Russian----"
+
+"I know," interrupted the captain. "I've been watching her through the
+port. She's the _Saigon's_ twin-sister ship, that was the _Saragossa_
+which old Kep sold to Baron Dabchowski six months ago. Much good it
+would have done us to run. She has the heels of us. Old Kep had just put
+new triple-expansion engines into her before she changed hands. But
+they've killed the look of her, converting her into a cruiser. She's
+nothing but a floating scrap-heap now."
+
+"But she has six guns," observed Maclean. "Don't you think you'd better
+come up, sir? She is almost near enough to signal."
+
+"Well, well," said the captain, and putting away the whisky bottle, he
+led the way to the bridge.
+
+Some half-dozen miles away, steaming at an angle to meet the _Saigon_ at
+a destined point, there plowed through the sea a large iron steamer of
+about three thousand tons' burden. She exactly resembled the _Saigon_ in
+all main points of build, and except for the fact that two guns were
+mounted fore and aft on her main deck above the line of steel bulwarks,
+and that her masts were fitted with small fighting tops, she might very
+well have passed for an ordinary merchantman.
+
+For twenty minutes or thereabouts the two officers watched her in
+silence, taking turn about with the binoculars; then, quite suddenly,
+the vessel, now less than two miles distant, luffed and fell slightly
+away from her course.
+
+"She is going to speak," said Captain Brandon, who held the glasses.
+"Look out!"
+
+Maclean smiled at the caution; but next instant a bright flash quivered
+from the other vessel's side, and involuntarily he ducked his head, for
+something flew dipping and shrieking over the _Saigon_. In the following
+second there was heard the clap of the distant cannon and the splash of
+a shell striking the sea close at hand. Invisible hands unfolded and
+shook out three balls of bunting at the truck of the war-ship's signal
+boom. They fluttered for awhile, and then spread out to the breeze. The
+arms of Russia surmounted two lines of symbolic letters.
+
+"Quartermaster!" shouted Captain Brandon.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" rang out a sailor's voice, and the _Saigon's_ number
+raced a Union Jack to the mast-head.
+
+"Well, Mac?" cried the captain, with his hand on the engine-room
+signal-bell.
+
+Maclean looked up from the book. "His Imperial Majesty of Russia, by the
+commander of the converted cruiser _Nevski_, orders us to stop."
+
+Captain Brandon pressed the lever, and before ten might be counted the
+shuddering of the _Saigon's_ screw had ceased.
+
+"What next?" he muttered.
+
+As if in answer, another flag fluttered up the _Nevski's_ halliards.
+
+"He will send a boat," interpreted Maclean.
+
+A short period of fret and fume ensued, then a small steam launch
+rounded the _Nevski's_ bows, and sped like a gray-hound across the
+intervening space. The _Nevski_ now presented her broadside to the
+_Saigon_, and all of her six guns were trained upon the English
+steamer's decks. The launch was crammed with men. Captain Brandon
+ordered a gangway to be lowered, and although the tars sprang to the
+task with great alacrity, it was hardly completed before the launch
+touched the _Saigon's_ side. An officer, bedizened with gold lace, and
+accompanied by two glittering subordinates, climbed aboard, and Captain
+Brandon met him on the main deck. Hugh Maclean, from the bridge,
+watched them file into the captain's cabin. Ten minutes later they
+emerged, and without waiting a moment the Russians hurried back into the
+launch. Captain Brandon's face was purple. He hurriedly mounted to the
+bridge, and leaning over the rail cursed the departing launch at the top
+of his voice in five different languages.
+
+"What's the trouble, sir?" asked Maclean when his superior appeared at
+last to be exhausted.
+
+"They want our coal. C----t them to ---- for all eternity," gasped the
+frenzied captain. "And they'll blow us out of the water if we don't
+follow them to Tramoieu."
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"It's a little island off the Cochin coast, a hundred miles from
+anywhere, with a harbor. By ---- they'll smart for this!"
+
+"Not they," said Maclean. "That is, if you obey. They'll gut and scuttle
+the _Saigon_, and then kill every mother's son of us. Dead men tell no
+tales. We'll be posted at Lloyds as a storm loss."
+
+"But what can we do?"
+
+"Full speed ahead, and ram her while she's picking up the launch! Chance
+the guns!"
+
+"By ----! I'll do it!" shrieked the captain, and he sprang to the
+signal-bell. But even as he grasped the lever with his hand, he paused.
+
+"What now?" demanded the mate, his face tense with passion. "Hurry's the
+word, sir. Hurry!"
+
+The captain, however, turned and looked him in the eye. "You've
+counseled me to murder--wholesale murder, Maclean. Avast there, man!
+Keep your mouth shut. This is my bridge, and I'll not hear another word
+from you."
+
+The mate bit his lips and shrugged his shoulders. His eyes were blazing
+with contempt and rage, but he kept his self-control, and was rewarded
+by a dozen sympathetic glances from those of the crew grouped upon the
+deck who had heard the controversy. From that moment he was their idol.
+The second mate, too, who was standing by the wheel, turned and nodded
+to him as he passed.
+
+The captain, who missed nothing of this by-play, felt himself to have
+been absolutely isolated. But he was a strong man, and he knew that he
+acted rightly. Five minutes later four thunderous reports rang out, and
+shells splashed the sea on all sides of the _Saigon_. Then the
+machine-guns began to speak, and a perfect storm of bullets tore through
+the vessel's rigging, some directed so low that they pierced the top rim
+of the funnel smoke-stack. The display lasted sixty seconds. When it was
+over, a very sheepish looking lot of men arose from the recumbent
+attitudes they had assumed. Of the whole ship's company on deck, Captain
+Brandon, Hugh Maclean, and the chief engineer had alone remained
+standing.
+
+There was a new flag at the _Nevski's_ truck. "Follow at full speed!" it
+commanded. The _Saigon_ instantly obeyed. Before night fell, the moon
+rose, three-quarters full. It lighted the procession into dawn. Sunrise
+brought them to a rock-bound coast, and so nicely had the _Nevski's_
+navigator steered, that the first headland circumvented made room for
+the revelation of a little bay. It was enclosed on three sides with gray
+hills, and across the mouth was stretched a broken line of
+hungry-looking surf-crowned reefs. The _Nevski_ steamed boldly through
+the first opening, and dropped her anchor in smooth water three-quarters
+of a mile beyond. The _Saigon_, currishly obedient to the Russian's
+signals, followed suit, bringing up within a biscuit cast of her consort
+and captor. An hour later Hugh Maclean, the engineer, and the lesser
+officers and thirty-two men of the _Saigon's_ company and some two score
+of Russian sailors were working like slaves transferring, under the
+supervision of a strong guard, the _Saigon's_ coal and cargo into the
+_Nevski's_ boats.
+
+Captain Brandon was not among the toilers. He would have been, perhaps,
+but for the circumstance that he had permitted himself the liberty of
+striking a Russian officer in the face. A marine having retorted with
+the butt end of a carbine, the Englishmen had helplessly watched their
+captain being carried off, bleeding and insensible, and dumped with a
+sickening thud into the Russian launch. The incident encouraged them so
+much that they worked without complaint throughout the day, and they did
+not even grumble at the rations which their taskmasters served out to
+them. Shortly before dusk the breeze that had been blowing died away,
+and the Russians took advantage of the calm to warp the vessels
+together. After that the business in hand proceeded at such a pace that
+by dawn the _Saigon_ was completely gutted, and she rode the water like
+a swan, the greater part of her bulk in air. The weary Englishmen were
+thereupon driven like sheep upon the _Nevski's_ deck, and forced to
+descend the small after-hold, which was almost empty. The hatches were
+then fastened over them for their greater security, and they were left
+in darkness. But they were too worn out to care. Within five minutes
+every man of them was sleeping dreamlessly, lying listlessly stretched
+out upon the ship's false bottom, excepting only Hugh Maclean. He was
+too tired to sleep. He was, therefore, the only one who heard an hour
+later the muffled boom of a distant explosion and a faint cheer on deck.
+
+"They have sunk the poor old _Saigon_," muttered Maclean. "There goes
+the last hope of my captaincy and Nellie Lane." He uttered a low groan,
+and covered his face with his grimy paws. Maclean was very much in love,
+but he was too young and of too strenuous a temperament to rest for long
+the victim of despair. Moreover, contempt for foreigners, particularly
+Russians, served him instead of a religion, when not ashore, and he soon
+fell to wondering just where was the weak spot in his captor's armor,
+and how he could find and put his finger on it. That there was a weak
+spot he did not doubt at all. He searched his pockets and found half a
+plug of tobacco, but not his meerschaum. A Russian sailor had
+confiscated that some hours before. Maclean consigned the thief to
+perdition, and with some trouble bit off a plug. Then he lay back to
+chew and think. "There's only one thing to do," was the result of his
+reflections. "We'll have to take this boat from the Russians somehow."
+
+But exhausted nature would not be denied, and before he knew it Maclean
+was in the land of dreams. He was awakened by the noisy removal of a
+portion of the hatch. He looked up and saw the moon, also a couple of
+bearded faces looking down at him.
+
+"Good Lord!" he groaned, "I've slept the day out."
+
+"You hingry--men--like--eat?" observed a hoarse voice. And Maclean saw
+an immense steaming pan descending toward him on a line. He caught it
+deftly. A can of water and a tin of biscuits followed. He was instantly
+surrounded by the _Saigon's_ company, who attacked the contents of the
+pan like wolves. He seized a lump of fat meat from the mess, also a
+couple of biscuits, and retired apart. The darkness renewed itself a
+second later, and for some time the hold buzzed with the noise of
+crunching jaws and guttural exclamations.
+
+Of a sudden someone near him struck a match, and Maclean looked over the
+flame into the eyes of Robert Sievers, the _Saigon's_ chief engineer.
+
+"Hello, Mac," said Sievers.
+
+"Good evening, Sievers," replied Maclean politely. "We're still at
+anchor."
+
+"I've remarked it. What do you suppose they intend to do with us?"
+
+"Maroon us, likely, if we let them, on the island yonder."
+
+"How can we prevent them? But I think not. It's my belief this meat is
+poisoned!"
+
+"Tastes vile enough," agreed Maclean, but he went on eating, and Robert
+Sievers, after a momentary hesitation, followed suit.
+
+"We're in the devil of a hole!" he muttered, his mouth full of biscuit.
+Then he swore horribly, for the match had burned his fingers.
+
+Maclean stood up. "Any of you men happen to have a bit of candle in your
+pockets?" he demanded.
+
+Silence for a minute, then a Norwegian fireman spoke up. "Bout dree
+inches," he said.
+
+"He eats 'em," cried another voice, and a roar of laughter greeted the
+announcement.
+
+"Pass it here," commanded Maclean.
+
+Sievers struck another match, and presently the steady flame of a candle
+stump showed Maclean a picture such as Gustave Dore would have loved to
+paint. He glanced at the begrimed faces of the _Saigon's_ wild and
+ghastly looking company, and beyond them for a moment, then stumbled
+over the coal, followed by Sievers, until he was brought up by the iron
+partition of the hold. He made, however, straight for the bulkhead, and
+stooping down, held the candle close to the line of bolts covering the
+propeller's tunnel.
+
+"By Jingo!" cried Sievers. "I see your game. Let me look, Maclean! This
+is my trade."
+
+He bent forward, wrenched at a shoot-bolt, and with a cry of
+satisfaction threw back a plate. The _Saigon's_ company crowded round
+the man-hole thus revealed, muttering with excitement.
+
+"One moment, Sievers!" cried Maclean, for the engineer had one leg
+already in the tunnel. Then he turned to the men. "My lads," he said,
+"it's a case of our lives or the Russians', for I firmly believe the
+accursed pirates mean to kill us. We must take this ship by hook or by
+crook, and I think I see the way to do it!" He concluded with some
+precise instructions, and a few savage sentences, in which he promised
+an unmentionable fate to the unfortunate who made a sound or failed to
+follow to the letter his instructions.
+
+A second later, in a silence that could be felt, he blew out the light,
+and followed Sievers into the tunnel. A few cave-black yards, crawled
+painfully on hands and knees, slipping and slithering along the
+propeller shaft, brought the leaders to the edge of a wider space.
+Sievers struck a match, and a well-like, vertical opening was revealed.
+High overhead towered and threatened an enormous steel crank. Before
+their feet lay a deep pool of slime. The heat was horrible.
+
+"It should be hereabouts," whispered Sievers, and his fingers searched
+the wall. For a moment nothing could be heard but the deep breathing of
+the _Saigon's_ company. Then came a slight but terrifying clang.
+
+"I've got it!" whispered Sievers. "Are you ready?"
+
+"Right!"
+
+Maclean's eyes were dazzled of a sudden with a hot flare of light, and
+the deafening thud of the condensers smote in his ears. He never quite
+coherently remembered that which immediately ensued, for something
+struck him on the head.
+
+When he came to his full senses again he was lying on a grating beside
+the body of the Russian cleaner he had strangled. The _Saigon's_ men
+were all around him. He arose, gasping for breath. Sievers thrust a bar
+into his hand and pointed to a line of ladders. Maclean nodded, crossed
+the grating, and began to climb. Sievers, armed with a hammer, followed
+at his heels.
+
+There were three men in the engine-room, an engineer and two cleaners.
+They took the climbers for stokers, and went on with their occupations.
+Maclean sidled to the door across the grating and closed it in the
+twinkling of an eye. The engineer, who was reading a newspaper, heard
+the noise and looked up. Sievers struck him with the hammer and flew at
+one of the cleaners. Maclean rushed at the other with his spade. It was
+all over in a moment, and without any noise that the thudding of the
+donkey-engine did not drown. Maclean changed coats and caps with the
+insensible Russian engineer, while Sievers called the _Saigon's_ men
+from below. He then strapped on the man's dirk, and put his revolver in
+his pocket.
+
+"What next?" asked Sievers.
+
+Maclean glanced at the engine-room clock. The hands pointed to
+seven-fifteen. "Captain and officers are just about half through their
+dinner," he reflected.
+
+"Wait here," he said aloud: "I'm going to reconnoitre. Just keep the
+door ajar when I leave. Let anyone come in that wants to, but crack him
+over the skull once he gets inside."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!"
+
+Maclean opened the door and stepped out leisurely upon the deck. Before
+him rose the captain's cabin, the officers' quarters, and the bridge
+above. Beyond that stretched the main deck, with the forecastle far
+forward. An officer paced the bridge; some two score sailors were
+grouped about the forecastle door drinking tea, and the rattle of knives
+and forks, the clink of glasses, and sounds of talk and laughter
+proceeding from the saloon astern sufficiently located the leaders of
+his enemies. Maclean thought hard for a moment, then pulling his cap
+over his eyes walked underneath the bridge and looked up. As he had
+expected, and ardently hoped, he perceived the muzzle of a machine-gun
+protruding from the very centre of the iron rampart. Thanking Providence
+for two years spent in the service of the New South Wales Naval Brigade
+in his younger days, he returned to the engine-room door, and after a
+cautious whisper stepped inside.
+
+"Sievers," said he, "the officers are all at dinner astern. Take this
+revolver, and when you hear me knock three times on the railing of the
+bridge, sneak out with all the men and rush the cabin. Most of the crew
+are forward. I'll look after them; there's a Nordenfeldt on the bridge."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!"
+
+"Give me your hammer!"
+
+"Good luck to you, sir!"
+
+Maclean took the hammer, slipped it under his jacket, and once more
+sought the deck. A steward passed him at a run, and two stokers
+proceeding toward the engine-house saluted his uniform. He pulled his
+cap over his eyes, and began to climb the ladder. The _Nevski_ was
+swinging softly at her anchor, her nose pointing to the land. On the
+distant beach a small fire was burning, and at this the officer of the
+watch was gazing through his telescope. He was quite alone, and standing
+in a shaded corner of the bridge. "What sort of a watch can one man
+keep?" muttered Maclean who had served on an Australian gunboat. He
+stepped to the officer's side, seized the telescope in his left hand,
+and as the startled man turned, he dealt him a terrible blow on the nape
+of his neck with the hammer. The officer fell into his arms sighing out
+his breath. Maclean laid him gently on the floor, and relieved him of
+his revolver. Then he slid softly to the machine-gun, and uttered a low,
+irrepressible cry of joy to find that it was stored with cartridges and
+prepared for action. A moment later its muzzle commanded the deck before
+the forecastle. One of the sailors had just commenced a song. He had a
+fine tenor voice, and the others listened entranced. Maclean, however,
+rapped three times very loudly on the railing with his hammer, and the
+song ceased.
+
+Someone called to him in Russian, but he would not have answered even if
+he understood. His every sense was strained to listen. He counted
+twenty, the song commenced again. Thirty, forty. Then a wild scream
+resounded through the vessel.
+
+"Sievers is dealing with the watch on the after-hold," muttered Maclean.
+"Hurry!" he whispered. "Hurry! Sievers, hurry!"
+
+The sailors forward were now afoot, exclaiming aloud and glancing
+questioningly at one another. A great many more, too, poured out every
+second from the forecastle, made curious by the noise. Maclean grasped
+the crank firmly and gave them every scrap of his attention. There woke
+an increasing buzz of shouts and cries astern. It culminated presently
+in the crack of a revolver, a shriek of pain, and a wild British cheer.
+Then all over the din a loud, insistent whistle shrilled. The sailors
+forward rushed for their stacked arms, and formed in ranks with the
+speed of magic. A petty officer shouted a command, and down the deck
+they started at the double.
+
+"Halt!" Maclean shouted, and he turned the crank of the Nordenfeldt. The
+effect was horrible. A dozen fell at the first discharge. The rest
+halted, and after one dazed instant's wavering, threw down their arms,
+broke and fled for the cover of the forecastle. The air was filled with
+the sound of groans. The deck was like a shambles. Maclean watched three
+or four poor wounded creatures crawl off on their hands and knees for
+shelter and he shuddered violently.
+
+He was already sick to death of war. But the fight was not yet over. He
+heard footsteps on the ladder behind him, and turned just in time to
+escape a sweeping sword stroke. Next instant he was locked in a deadly
+struggle with the captain of the _Nevski_, a brave man, who, it seems,
+had refused to surrender, and had cut his way through all Sievers's men
+in the desperate resolve to retrieve the consequences of his own
+carelessness. Maclean, however, was a practised wrestler, and although
+lean almost as a lath, the muscles he possessed were as strong as steel
+bands. Even as they fell he writhed uppermost, and baffling with an
+active elbow the captain's last effort to transfix him, he dashed his
+adversary's head upon the boards. A second later he arose, breathless,
+but quite uninjured.
+
+Sievers was calling to him: "Maclean! Maclean! I say!"
+
+"Hallo, there!" he gasped back, hoarsely.
+
+"Look out for the captain. He escaped us!"
+
+"I've got him!" croaked Maclean, with a grim glance at his unconscious
+foe. "How about the rest?"
+
+"All sigarnio! What shall I do?"
+
+"Drive them forward to the foc'sle."
+
+Sievers obeyed, and very soon five splendidly upholstered, but
+shamefaced-looking gentlemen, three stewards, and four sailors were
+standing underneath the beacon light before the forecastle companion.
+Maclean noted that already many of the _Saigon's_ men carried swords and
+carbines. He watched the rest arm themselves with the _Nevski_ sailors'
+discarded weapons as they marched their prisoners along the deck. His
+breast began to swell with pride.
+
+"Any casualties?" he demanded.
+
+"Two of ours have crossed over," replied Sievers, "and some of us are
+hurt a bit. But we can't grumble. There are four Russian corpses aft,
+and I see you've bagged seven."
+
+"Damned pirates!" commented Maclean. "I've a mind to shoot the rest of
+them out of hand."
+
+"Just give the word, sir."
+
+"No," said Maclean, "we'll maroon them instead. Lower away all the
+boats but one, Sievers, and bring them under the bows. I can look after
+these dogs!"
+
+"Ay, ay, sir. But first three cheers for Captain Maclean, lads!"
+
+The cheers were given with hearty good-will, and then the men tramped
+off to carry out their new task.
+
+Maclean, whose face was still flushed from the compliment that had been
+paid him, leaned over the machine-gun and surveyed the prisoners.
+
+"Can any of you pirate scum speak English?" he demanded truculently.
+
+"I have that privilege, sir," replied a swart-faced lieutenant.
+
+"Then kindly inform your friends that at the first sign of any monkey
+trick I'll send you all to kingdom come."
+
+The officer complied presumably with this command, and when he had
+finished, addressed Maclean:
+
+"You cannot intend to maroon us, sir?" he cried. "The island yonder is
+totally uninhabited."
+
+"You're a liar!" retorted Maclean. "Fires don't light themselves. Look
+yonder."
+
+The officer choked back an oath. "Have a care what you are doing, sir,"
+he muttered in a strangled voice. "This will lead to a war between your
+country and mine."
+
+"I guess not--not even if I hanged the lot of you--you dirty pirates.
+But if it did, what then?"
+
+"You should see, sir."
+
+"And so would you--see that Englishmen can fight a durned sight better
+than the Japs. I guess you know how _they_ fight by this."
+
+"I have always heard that the English are generous foes, sir----"
+
+"None of your blarney," interrupted Maclean. "Short shrift to pirates,
+is an English motto. You sank our ship: we take yours. Fair exchange is
+no robbery. You should be thankful to get off with your skins."
+
+"At least permit us to take with us our personal belongings."
+
+"Not a match."
+
+"Some provisions?"
+
+"Not a biscuit."
+
+"Some arms, then, to defend ourselves against the natives, if we are
+attacked?"
+
+"Not a penknife."
+
+"Sir, you condemn us to death!"
+
+"Sir, we have but forestalled your intention in regard to us!"
+
+"As God hears me, sir----"
+
+"Shut up!" cried Maclean, "your voice hurts my ears."
+
+Nevertheless, when all was ready, Maclean commanded Sievers to stock the
+boats with water and provisions, and to throw some fifty swords and
+bayonets aboard. Then began the debarkation. Using the officer who could
+speak English as his mouthpiece, Maclean commanded the crew of the
+_Nevski_ to file out one by one from the forecastle, and slide down a
+rope over the vessel's bows into the waiting boats. They numbered one
+hundred and thirty-three all told, but not a man offered to resist, and
+within an hour the last boat had sheered off, carrying with its hale
+company the still unconscious bodies of the Russian captain and the
+officer of the watch. Maclean's next business was to bury the dead,
+which done, he searched the ship. He made two discoveries: He found in
+the captain's cabin a chest containing no less than fifteen thousand
+golden rubles; and locked away in one of the disused bathrooms astern,
+inhumanly disposed of in a tub, the silent form of Captain Brandon. But
+the tough little bulldog of an Englishman was by no means dead, and when
+some three days later the ghost of what had been the _Nevski_ steamed
+out of the bay of Tramoieu, he was already so far recovered from the
+terrible blow that had laid him low, but which had, nevertheless, failed
+to shatter his hard skull, as to be engaged in a confused but constant
+effort to remember. On the following morning he insisted upon getting
+up, and was helped afterward by a steward to the bridge.
+
+Maclean greeted him with a genial smile.
+
+"Well done, sir," he cried heartily. "Glad to see you up again and
+looking so fit. The old _Saigon_ has been as dull as a coffin-ship
+without you."
+
+Captain Brandon nodded, frowned, and glanced around him. A carpenter
+close by was busily at work painting _S.S. Saigon_ upon a row of
+virgin-white life buoys. The captain wondered and glanced up at the
+masts. They were just ordinary masts in the sense that they had no
+fighting tops, but they gleamed with wet paint. He frowned again, and,
+wondering more and more, looked forward. There was not the slightest
+trace of a cannon to be seen--but the deck in one place had a canvas
+covering. He began to crack his fingers, his old habit, but a moment
+later he abruptly turned and faced the mate.
+
+"Maclean," said he.
+
+The eyes of the two men met.
+
+"This is not the _Saigon_, Maclean," said Captain Brandon.
+
+"You'll see it in iron letters on her bows, sir, if you look."
+
+"Come into the chart-room."
+
+Maclean obeyed, chuckling under his breath.
+
+"Tell me how you did it," commanded the captain as he took a chair.
+
+"It was as easy as rolling off a log, sir," replied the first mate. "The
+blighters clapped us into the small after-hold, but totally forgot there
+was such a thing there as a propeller tunnel. We got into the stoke-hole
+and collared the engine-room while the Russians were at dinner. Then,
+while I covered the sailors forward with the machine-gun on the bridge,
+Sievers took the gold-laced crowd aft with a rush. The rest is not worth
+telling, for you know it. All that is to say, barring the fact that
+we're the richer by 15,000 rubles and triple-expansion engines, and the
+poorer by two of our crew the Russian captain killed."
+
+Captain Brandon drew a deep breath.
+
+"What course are we steering," he demanded.
+
+"Straight for Kobe, sir, to carry out our charter. We've every stick of
+the old cargo aboard--the pirates saw to that--also our books and
+papers. The guns are all at the bottom of the sea. We'll be a bit late,
+but we can easily rig up a yarn to explain."
+
+"But the Russians will talk."
+
+"No fear, sir: they'd be too ashamed to own up the truth; ay, and afraid
+as well, for what they did was piracy on the high seas--nothing less.
+You take my tip for it, sir, one of these days we'll hear that the
+_Nevski_ struck a reef."
+
+"We'll have to tell the owners, though--what will they say?"
+
+Maclean closed one eye. "The new _Saigon_ has triple-expansion engines,
+sir. If I know anything of Mr. Keppel, he'll be better pleased with a
+ship in the hand than a cause of action against the Russian Government."
+
+"But our own men?"
+
+"Why, sir, we have 7,000 rubles to share among them. They'll be made for
+life."
+
+"But I thought you said just now there were 15,000?"
+
+"So I did, sir; but there's only you and Sievers and myself know how
+much there is exactly: there was no call to shout it all over the ship.
+And I've figured it out this way: You, as captain, are entitled to the
+most, and you'll want all of four thousand to heal up the memory of that
+crack you got on your skull properly. That'll leave two for Sievers to
+do with as he likes, and two for me to buy Nellie--that's Mrs. Maclean
+that is to be--just the sort of house she's set her heart on these ages
+back. What do you say, sir?"
+
+"What do I say, Maclean?" cried Captain Brandon, his eyes big with
+excitement and surprise, too, perhaps. "Why, I say this: You are that
+rare thing, a sensible, honest man! Tip us your flipper!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+ICE IN JUNE
+
+A Playwright's Story
+
+By FRED M. WHITE
+
+
+"THAT," said Ethel Marsh judicially, "is the least stupid remark you
+have made during our five weeks' acquaintance."
+
+"Which means that I am improving," John Chesney murmured. "There is hope
+even for me. You cannot possibly understand how greatly I
+appreciate----"
+
+The sentence trailed off incoherently as if the effort had been all too
+much. It was hard to live up to the mental brilliance of Ethel Marsh.
+She had had the advantage, too, of a couple of seasons in town, whilst
+Chesney was of the country palpably. She also had the advantage of being
+distractingly pretty.
+
+Really, she had hoped to make something of Chesney. It seemed to her
+that he was fitted for better things than tennis-playing and riding and
+the like. It seemed strange that he should prefer his little cottage to
+the broader delights of surveying mankind from China to Peru.
+
+The man had possibilities, too. For instance, he knew how to dress.
+There was an air about his flannels, a suggestion in his Norfolk suits.
+He had the knack of the tie so that it sat just right, and his boots....
+A clean-cut face, very tanned; deep, clear gray eyes, very steady. He
+was like a dog attached very much to a careless master. The thing had
+been going on for five weeks.
+
+Ethel was staying with the Frodshams. They were poor for their position,
+albeit given to hospitality--at a price. Most people call this kind of
+thing taking in paying guests. It was a subject delicately veiled.
+Ethel had come down for a fortnight, and she had stayed five weeks.
+Verily the education of John Chesney was a slow process. Chesney was a
+visitor in the neighborhood, too; he had a little furnished cottage just
+by the Goldney Park lodge gates, where a house-keeper did for him. As
+for the rest he was silent. He was a very silent man.
+
+It was too hot for tennis, so the two had wandered into the woods. A
+tiny trout stream bubbled by, the oak and beech ferns were wet with the
+spray of it. Between the trees lances of light fell, shafts of sunshine
+on Ethel's hair and face. It was at this point that Chesney made the
+original remark. It slipped from him as naturally as if he had been
+accustomed to that kind of thing.
+
+"I am afraid you got that from Mr. John Kennedy," Ethel said. "I am sure
+that you have seen Mr. Kennedy's comedy 'Flies in Ointment.' Confess
+now!"
+
+"Well, I have," Chesney confessed accordingly. "I--I saw it the night it
+was produced. On the whole it struck me as rather a feeble thing."
+
+"Oh, really? We are getting on, Mr. Chesney. Let me tell you that I
+think it is the cleverest modern comedy I have ever seen."
+
+"Yes! In that case you like the part of 'Dorothy Kent?'"
+
+Ethel's dainty color deepened slightly. She glanced suspiciously at the
+speaker. But he was gazing solidly, stolidly, into space--like a man who
+had just dined on beef. The idea was too preposterous. The idea of John
+Chesney chaffing her, chaffing anybody.
+
+"I thought perhaps you did," Chesney went on. "Mr. Kent is a bit of a
+butterfly, a good sort at the bottom, but decidedly of the species
+lepidopterae----"
+
+"Stop!" Ethel cried. "Where did you get that word from? Whence comes it
+in the vocabulary of a youth--a youth? Oh, you know what I mean."
+
+"I believe it is a general name for insects," Chesney said humbly. "Mrs.
+Kent is a good sort, but a little conceited. Apt to fancy herself, you
+know. Young widows of her type often do. She is tired of the artificial
+existence of town, and goes off into the country, where she leads the
+simple life. She meets a young man there, who, well, 'pon my word, is
+rather like me. He was a bit of an ass----"
+
+"He was nothing of the kind," Ethel cried indignantly. "He was splendid.
+And he made that woman love him, he made her acknowledge that she had
+met her match at last. And he turned out to be one of the most
+brilliant----"
+
+"My dear Miss Ethel, after all it was only a play. You remind me of
+'Mrs. Kent,' and you say that I remind you of the hero of the play
+who----"
+
+"I didn't, Mr. Chesney. I said nothing of the kind. It is unfair of
+you----"
+
+"When the likeness is plain enough," Chesney said stubbornly. "You are
+'Mrs. Kent,' and I am the hero of the comedy. Do you think that there is
+any possibility that some day you and--of course not yet, but----"
+
+Miss Marsh sat there questioning the evidence of her coral-pink ears.
+She knew that she was furiously angry because she felt so cool about it.
+She knew that the more furious one was, the more calm and self-contained
+the senses become. The man meant nothing, either--one could see that by
+the respectful expression of his eye. Still----
+
+"You are quite wrong," Ethel said. "You have altogether misunderstood
+the _motif_ of the play. I presume you know what a _motif_ is?"
+
+"I think so," Chesney said humbly. "It is a word they apply in music
+when you don't happen to understand what the composer--especially the
+modern composer--is driving at."
+
+"Oh, let it pass," Ethel said hopelessly. "You have misunderstood the
+gist of the play, then! 'Walter Severn' in the comedy is a man of
+singular points. He is a great author. Instead of being that woman's
+plaything, he is her merciless analyst. The great scene in the play
+comes when she finds this out. Now, you do not for a moment presume to
+put yourself on a level with 'Walter Severn,' do you?"
+
+Chesney was bound to admit the height of his audacity. His eyes were
+fixed humbly on his Minerva; he was Telemachus seated at the feet of the
+goddess. And even yet he did not seem really cognizant of the enormity
+of his offence. He saw the sunlight on that sweetly serious face, he saw
+the beams playing with the golden meshes of her hair. No doubt he was
+fully conscious of his own inferiority, for he did not speak again. It
+was for him to wait. The silence deepened; in the heart of the wood a
+blackbird was piping madly on a blackthorn.
+
+"Before you go away," Chesney hazarded, "I should very much like----"
+
+"But I am not going away, at least not yet. Besides, I have a purpose to
+serve. I am waiting until those impossible people leave Goldney Park. I
+understand that they have already gone, but on that head I am not sure.
+I want to go over the house. The late owner, Mr. Mainbrace, was a great
+friend of my family. Before he died he was so good as to express a wish
+that the heir to the property should come and see us and--but that part
+is altogether too ridiculous. And as an only daughter----"
+
+"I see," Chesney said reflectively. "The heir and yourself. It sounds
+ridiculous. Now, if you had been in the least like the romantic type of
+young woman, perhaps----"
+
+"How do you know that I am not? Am I like Byron's woman: 'Seek roses in
+December, ice in June'? Well, perhaps you are right. After all, one
+doesn't find ice in June. However, the heir to the Goldney Park estate
+and myself never met. He let the place to those awful Gosway people for
+three years and went abroad. There was not even the suspicion of a
+romance. But I am curious to see the house, all the same."
+
+"Nothing easier, Miss Marsh. Let us go and see it after luncheon. The
+Gosways have gone, you may take my word for that, and only a caretaker
+is in possession. Will you come with me this afternoon?"
+
+The prospect was not displeasing. Miss Marsh poised it in her mind for a
+few moments. There was Chesney's education to be thought of as well. On
+the whole, she decided that there might be less pleasant ways of
+spending a hot August afternoon.
+
+"I think I'll come," she said. "I want to see the old furniture and the
+pictures. I love old furniture. Perhaps if the heir to the property had
+gone on his knees whilst I was seated on a priceless Chippendale settee,
+I might----"
+
+"You might, but I don't think you would," Chesney interrupted. "Whatever
+your faults may be I am sure you are not mercenary."
+
+"Really! How good of you! The thing that we are apt to call
+depravity----"
+
+"Is often another name for the promptings of poor human nature."
+
+Miss Marsh turned and stared at the speaker. Really, his education was
+progressing at a most amazing rate. Without the least sign of mental
+distress he had delivered himself of an epigram. There was quite a
+flavor of Piccadilly about it. And Chesney did not appear in the least
+conscious of his achievement. Ethel rose and shook out the folds of her
+dainty muslin dress.
+
+"Isn't it getting late?" she asked. "I'm sure it is lunch time. You can
+walk as far as the gate with me, and I will meet you here at three
+o'clock."
+
+She passed thoughtfully across the lawn to the house, her pretty brows
+knitted in a thoughtful frown. Was she giving her pupil too much
+latitude? Certainly he had begun to show symptoms of an audacious
+presumption, which in the earlier days had been conspicuous by its
+absence. Whereupon Miss Marsh sighed three times without being in the
+least aware of the painful fact.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+"This," said Chesney, "is the Norman Tower, built by John Mainbrace, who
+was the original founder of the family. The first two trees in the
+avenue of oaks that leads up to the house were planted by Queen
+Elizabeth. She also slept on several occasions in the house; indeed, the
+bedroom she occupied is intact to this day. The Virgin Queen seemed to
+pass most of her time, apart from affairs of state, in occupying
+bedrooms, so that the descendants of her courtiers might be able to
+boast about it afterward. Those who could not give the royal lady a
+shakedown had special bedrooms fitted up and lied about them. It was an
+innocent deception."
+
+Miss Marsh eyed her pupil distrustfully. The educational progress was
+flattering, and at the same time a little disturbing. She had never seen
+Chesney in this gay and frivolous, not to say excited, mood before. The
+man was positively glib. There were distinct flashes of wit in his
+discourse, too. And where did he get so close and intimate a knowledge
+of the old house from?
+
+He knew every nook and corner. He took her through the grand old park
+where the herd of fallow deer were grazing; he showed her the Dutch and
+Italian gardens; he knew even the history of the sundial on the terrace.
+And yet they had not been within the house, though the great hall door
+stood hospitably open. They moved at length out of the glare of the
+sunshine into the grateful shadows. Glint of armor and gleam of canvas
+were all there. Ethel walked along in an ecstasy of quiet enjoyment.
+Rumor had not lied as to the artistic beauties of Goldney Park. The
+Mainbraces must have been a tasteful family. They had it all here, from
+the oaken carvings of the wandering monks down through Grinling Gibbons
+and Pugin, and away to Chippendale and Adam, and other masters of the
+Georgian era. They came at length to the chamber sacred to the Virgin
+Queen; they contemplated the glorious view from the window in silent
+appreciation tinged with rapture.
+
+"It's exquisite," Ethel said in a low voice. "If this were my house I
+should be very much tempted to commit an act of sacrilege. I should want
+this for my own room. I'm afraid I could not resist such an
+opportunity."
+
+"Easily done," said Chesney. "No trouble to discover from the family
+archives that a mistake had been made, and that Elizabeth of blessed
+memory had not slept in this room. Being strong-minded she preferred a
+north aspect, and this is due south. You would get a reputation for
+sound historical knowledge as well."
+
+Certainly the education was progressing. But Ethel let it pass. She was
+leaning out of the latticed windows with the creamy roses about her
+hair; she was falling unconsciously under the glamour of the place.
+
+"It is exquisite," she sighed. "If this were only mine!"
+
+"Well, it is not too late. The heir will be here before long, probably.
+You have only to introduce the name of Mr. Mainbrace and say who you
+are, and then----"
+
+"Oh, no. If I happened to be in love with a man--what am I saying? Of
+course, no girl who respects herself could possibly marry a man for the
+sake of his position. Even 'Mrs. Dorothy Kent,' to whom you compared me
+this morning, was above that kind of thing. She married the man she
+loved after all, you know. But I forget--you did not think much of the
+comedy."
+
+"I didn't. I thought it was vague and incomplete. I am certain of it
+now. This is the real thing; the other was merely artificial. And when
+the hero brought 'Dorothy Kent' to the home of his ancestors he already
+knew that she loved him. And I am glad to know that you would never
+marry a man like that because it gives me courage----"
+
+"Gives you courage! Whatever for?"
+
+"Why, to make a confession. You laughed at me just now when I presumed
+to criticize your favorite modern comedy. As a matter of fact, I have
+every right to criticize it. You see, I happen to be the author. I am
+'John Kennedy'! I have been writing for the stage, or trying to write
+for the stage, for years. I got my new idea from that old wish of my
+uncle's that you and I should come together. It struck me as a pretty
+suggestion for a comedy."
+
+"Stop, stop," Ethel cried. "One thing at a time, if you please.
+Positively you overwhelm me with surprise. In one breath you tell me you
+are 'John Kennedy,' and then, without giving a poor girl a chance, you
+say you are the owner of Goldney Park."
+
+"But I didn't," Chesney protested. "I never said anything of the kind."
+
+"No, but you inferred it. You say you got the idea from your uncle--I
+mean the suggestion that you and I--oh, I really cannot say it."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm but a poor dramatist after all," Chesney said lamely. "I
+intended to keep that confession till after I had--but no matter. At any
+rate, there is no getting away from the fact that my pen name is 'John
+Kennedy.'"
+
+"And you wrote 'Flies in Ointment'? And you have been laughing at me all
+this time? You were amused because I took you for a simple countryman,
+you whom men call the Sheridan of to-day! After all the pains I took
+with your education."
+
+Ethel's voice rose hysterically. Points of flame stood out from the
+level of her memory of the past five weeks and scorched her. How this
+man must have been amused, how consumedly he must have laughed at her!
+And she had never guessed it, never once had she had an inkling of the
+truth.
+
+"You have behaved disgracefully, cruelly," she said unsteadily.
+
+"I don't think so," Chesney said coolly. "After all is said and done, we
+were both posing, you know. You were playing 'Mrs. Kent' to my hero. It
+seemed a pity to disturb so pleasant a pastoral. And no harm has been
+done."
+
+Ethel was not quite so sure of that. But then for the nonce she was
+regarding the matter from a strictly personal point of view.
+
+"I hardly think you were playing the game," she said.
+
+"Why not? I come down here where nobody knows me. It is my whim to keep
+quiet the fact that Goldney Park belongs to me. As to my dramatic
+tastes, they don't concern anybody but myself. I take a cottage down
+here until those tenants of mine are ready to go. They are such utter
+bounders that I have no desire to disclose my identity to them. And so
+it falls about that I meet you. Then I recollect all that my uncle has
+said about you. I cultivate your acquaintance. It wasn't my fault that
+you took me for a countryman with no idea beyond riding a horse and
+shooting a pheasant. Your patronage was very pretty and pleasing, and I
+am one of those men who always laugh or cry inside. It is perhaps a
+misfortune that I can always joke with a grave face. But don't forget
+that the man who laughs inside is also the man who bleeds inside, and
+these feel the worst. Come, Ethel, you are not going to be angry because
+you have lost the game playing with your own weapons."
+
+The education was finished, the schoolmaster was abroad--very much
+abroad. In his cool, masterful way Chesney had taken matters into his
+own hands. He was none the less handsome because he looked so stern, so
+sure of his ground.
+
+"You are a man and I am a woman," she faltered.
+
+"Of course. How could the comedy proceed otherwise? Now where shall we
+move these Elizabethan relics? After what you said just now they could
+not possibly remain here. Among the family archives I dare say----"
+
+Chesney paused; he was conscious of the fact that two large diamond
+drops were stealing down Ethel's cheeks. It seemed the most natural
+thing in the world for him to cross over and take her hands in his.
+
+"My dear child, what have I said to pain you," he said. "I am truly
+sorry."
+
+"You--you take too much for granted," Ethel sobbed. "You make me feel so
+small and silly. And you have no right to assume that I--I could care
+for anybody simply because he happens to possess a p--p--place like
+Goldney Park."
+
+"But, my darling, I didn't. I was delighted when you said just now that
+you would never marry a man you did not care for, even if he could give
+you Chippendale for breakfast, so to speak. I watched your face then. I
+am sure that you were speaking from the bottom of your heart. I have
+been watching you for the last five weeks, my sweetheart. And they have
+been the happiest weeks in my life.
+
+"Laughing at me, I suppose! It's all the same if you do laugh inside."
+
+"No, I don't think I laughed," Chesney said thoughtfully. "I only know
+that I have been very much charmed. And besides, see how useful it has
+been to me to be in a position to hear all the weak points in my
+literary armor. When I come to write my next comedy, it will be far in
+advance of 'Flies in Ointment.' I have learned so much of human nature,
+you see."
+
+Ethel winked the tears from her lids; her eyes were all the brighter for
+the passing shower, like a sky in April, Chesney thought. A smile was on
+her face, her lips were parted. As a lover Chesney was charming. She
+wondered how she was playing her part. But she need not have had any
+anxiety. There was nothing wanting in the eyes of the man opposite, and
+his face said so.
+
+"You are going to put me into it?" she asked.
+
+"Why, of course. There is no other woman so far as I can see. Why are
+you pulling my roses to pieces like that? Do you know that that rose
+tree was planted a hundred years ago by Thomas a Becket after the battle
+of Agincourt? My dear, I am so happy that I could talk nonsense all day.
+And I say, Ethel----"
+
+The girl broke off one of the creamy roses and handed it shyly to
+Chesney.
+
+"_Vae victis_," she said with a flushing smile. "It is yours. You have
+conquered."
+
+"Yes, but I want all the fruits of victory. I ask for a hand and you
+give me--a rose. Am I not going to have the hand as well as the rose,
+dear?"
+
+He had the hand and the rose and the slender waist; he drew her toward
+him in his strong, masterful way, and his lips lay on hers in a
+lingering pressure. It was a long time before the girl looked up; then
+her eyes were full of shy happiness.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DITTY-BOX
+
+A Pawnbroker's Story
+
+By OWEN OLIVER
+
+
+IN THE course of our dealings over the curiosities that my brother sent
+home from Burma, Mr. Levy and I became very good friends. When we had
+finished one of our deals we generally had a chat in the quaint little
+room behind his queer little shop in the old-world alley frequented by
+sailormen. On one of these occasions he mentioned that the cigar which
+he had given me was the brand which he always smoked; and the quality of
+the cigar suggested opulence.
+
+"If you can afford cigars like this," I remarked, "you must make some
+pretty good bargains with your curiosities!"
+
+"Good and bad," he said. "That's the way in business--in life, if you
+come to that!" He was a bit of a philosopher.
+
+"You make more good bargains than bad ones, I'll be bound," I asserted.
+
+"Yes," he agreed; "but it isn't so much that. The bad aren't very bad,
+as a rule; and some of the good are very good. That's where I get my
+profit."
+
+"What was the best bargain you ever made?" I asked.
+
+He filled his glass and pushed the decanter toward me.
+
+"The best bargain I ever made," he said, "was over a ditty-box."
+
+I helped myself to a little whiskey.
+
+"A ditty-box? I thought they were ordinary sailors' chests that they
+keep their clothes in?"
+
+"Not exactly chests," he corrected. "They're smallish boxes that they
+keep their needles and thread in, and their money, and anything else
+that they set store by--their letters or their sweethearts' photos, or
+their wives'--or other people's! There's no profit in them, and I don't
+deal in them in a general way. I got my gain out of this one in a
+roundabout fashion; but it was handsome. If you've got half an hour to
+spare I'll tell you about it."
+
+This was his story:
+
+It was eight years ago, and I'd had Isaac for seven years, and concluded
+that he was to be trusted. So I took it into my head to have a
+fortnight's holiday and leave him in charge of the shop. Everything was
+in order when I came back, and the books balanced to a penny. Business
+had been pretty good, he told me, but nothing out of the ordinary.
+
+"Unless," he said, "I've stumbled on a good thing by accident. It's a
+ditty-box; rather a superior one, and a good bit bigger than usual;
+almost a chest; brass bound and a nice bit of poker-work on it; a girl's
+head. I've put it in your bedroom."
+
+"Ah!" I said. "Ah-h!" He wouldn't make this fuss over a bit of
+poker-work, I knew.
+
+"The mate of the _Saucy Jane_ brought it here," he went on. "It belonged
+to the captain. George Markby, the name was; and that's poker-work on
+it, too. He sickened of a fever over at Rotterdam and died at sea; and
+they sold off his things to send the money to his widow. I gave a
+sovereign for it. There's a tray inside with a lock-up till. Keys all
+complete. Ought to fetch thirty-five shillings."
+
+"As much as that?" I said. I knew there must be a good deal more in it
+than appeared, but it's no use hurrying Isaac. He likes to tell things
+his own way.
+
+"I thought it might suit you to lock up your books and papers. That was
+all--till the day before yesterday. Then a ginger-haired sailor came in.
+North countryman. Wanted a ditty-box, he said. I told him we weren't
+marine outfitters, and he'd better try Barnard's, round the corner. He
+said he didn't want the ordinary sort, but something out of the common;
+extra large size; brass-bound; tray with a lock-up till. 'Mind if it
+was a trifle old?' I asked. 'Carved or cut about a bit? You know how
+some chaps use their knives on them, just to pass the time.' He said he
+didn't care for things that were hacked about, but he wouldn't object to
+a bit of poker-work on it. I told him I'd look through the warehouse and
+let him know in the morning, and he went. Byles, the dock policeman, was
+standing outside. I went and asked him who the chap was. He said he was
+cook on the _Anne Traylor_, just come in, and he believed he'd done
+time. If he hadn't I'll swear he ought to have, from the look of him.
+
+"About half an hour afterward in walks an oldish chap with a stoop and a
+gray goat's beard. He wanted a ditty-box, too; something extra large and
+old, and strong, and a tray with a lock-up till in it. He was a fireman
+on the _Anne Traylor_, I found; a shifty sort of chap that couldn't look
+you in the face. He offered to go to a couple of pounds for the right
+thing. I told him I'd look through our stuff and let him know if we had
+one of the sort.
+
+"Just as I was closing, a smart young fellow swaggered in. He was second
+mate of the _Anne Traylor_, and he'd heard of the death of her old
+captain on the _Saucy Jane_, and that we'd bought some of his effects,
+and he'd like to have a memento; just a matter of sentiment, he
+explained. I asked him what form the sentiment took, and he said a
+ditty-box; and if we had the one that belonged to the old man he'd give
+two pounds five for it. I put him off like the others.
+
+"Two Swedish sailors came in after the shutters were up, while the door
+was still open. They wanted a ditty-box of the identical description. I
+told them I'd look for it, same as I told the rest. You always brought
+me up not to close too soon with a customer who was keen on a thing."
+
+"Very good, Isaac," I said. "Very good! Go on!"
+
+"In the evening I made inquiries at the 'Duke of Wellington,' where the
+dock policemen go, and the two-penny-halfpenny money lenders and such;
+and old Mrs. Higgins, the landlady, knows more about the crews that come
+here than anyone. Lots of them knew old Markby, it seemed; a very
+respectable old chap and a favorite with his men, but a bit of a miser,
+and a trifle queer in his ways. He boasted that he didn't believe in
+banks and such things, and he'd got his money hidden where even his wife
+didn't know. And the conclusion I've come to is that those chaps believe
+it's in the ditty-box, and they mean to have it."
+
+"Ah!" I said. "We'll have something to say to that, Isaac! You told them
+we hadn't got it, of course."
+
+"Of course," he said; "and of course they didn't believe me! I had a
+rare bother with the ginger-haired man yesterday morning, and had to
+send the boy for a policeman before he'd go. And in the afternoon the
+Swedes tried to sneak through the shop into the warehouse, but I jumped
+out of the shop parlor and hustled them off. I've put longer screws in
+the bars to the windows; but I'd be easier if you'd let me sleep here."
+
+Isaac always thought that he could look after me better than I could
+look after myself!
+
+"I'm all right, Isaac," I said; "but we'll have a look at the box before
+you go. It might be worth a bit more if it had a secret drawer, eh?"
+
+When the shop was closed we went upstairs and laid the box on my bed,
+and turned it over and tapped it, and put a lamp inside, and examined
+every inch. We couldn't find a trace of a secret drawer, or anything
+scratched on it to say where the old captain had hidden his long
+stocking. So I concluded that the talk was the usual nonsense, and I
+daresay I'd have sold it and thought no more about it, if the
+goat's-beard man hadn't come in the first thing the next morning. He
+didn't beat about the bush, but said he wanted Captain Markby's ditty-box
+that we'd bought, and he'd give two pounds ten for it. I told him I
+wished I'd got it to sell, since he was so generous, but ditty-boxes
+weren't in my line.
+
+The others that Isaac had spoken of came in too. I was tempted to sell
+it to the mate for three pounds, but I couldn't quite make up my mind,
+and told him to come again the next morning. That very night the two
+Swedes broke into the shop. The police caught them. They're always on
+the look-out round my place, knowing that it's a fiver to them on the
+quiet if they catch anyone breaking in. The Swedes got three months
+apiece.
+
+That made up my mind. I showed the mate an ordinary box when he called,
+and he went off grumbling that it was nothing like the one he'd asked
+about, and I'd played the fool with him. I never saw him again, or the
+Swedes either; but the old man and the ginger-headed chap were always
+looking in the window. They seemed to have chummed up. I had an
+anonymous letter that I put down to them--written in red ink that I
+suppose they meant me to take for blood. It warned me against keeping "a
+ditty-box that others have a better claim to, and is like to cost you
+dear." D-e-r-e they spelt it, and one t in ditty.
+
+Two days later they called to ask if the box had come my way yet. "Yes,"
+I said, "and I'm going to keep it. It's got two blackguards three
+months, and it will get two others a good hiding if they don't mind.
+Clear out, and don't come here again." They didn't, but we often saw
+them hanging round, and when I went out one of them generally followed
+me. I didn't worry about that, for I could have settled the two of them
+easily if I wasn't taken unaware. I was always a bit obstinate, and I'd
+sooner have chopped the chest up for firewood than have been bullied
+into letting them have it; but I was sorry that I hadn't taken the
+mate's offer, for Isaac and I had measured it all over inside and out,
+and calculated that there wasn't space anywhere for a secret drawer.
+
+I'd had it about three months; and then a young girl, about twenty, came
+into the shop one afternoon, when Isaac was at tea. She was a pale slip
+of a young thing, and her clothes looked as if they'd been worn all
+through the summer, and it was autumn then; and she hesitated as if she
+was half afraid of me.
+
+"Well, little missie," I said. "What is it?" I spoke to her with the
+smooth side of my tongue uppermost, as a big, rough chap generally does
+to a girl of that sort, if there's anything decent about him.
+
+"My father was Captain Markby," she said, and I liked the way she spoke.
+"He died at sea, and they sold his things here. I want to find something
+of his, and I thought that perhaps you might have bought it?"
+
+I knew directly what she meant, but I looked very innocent.
+
+"If it was anything in the curiosity line, I might have," I answered.
+"You see the sort of things I deal in." I waved my hand round the place.
+
+"No," she said. "It wasn't a curiosity. It was an oak chest with brass
+corners. I think they call it a ditty-box."
+
+"A ditty-box," I said. "They're too common to be curious. Was there
+anything special about it?"
+
+"It had a tray in it, and he'd drawn a head on it with a red-hot iron; a
+girl's head. He meant it for me; but I don't expect you'd recognize me
+by it. I hope not!" She smiled faintly.
+
+"I hope not," I agreed, "judging from what I've seen of such figures." I
+laughed, and she laughed a little, too. "And you want to buy it, if you
+can find it?"
+
+"Ye-es," she said. "At least--I haven't very much money; but I would pay
+you as soon as I could, if--I suppose you wouldn't be so kind--so very
+kind--as to agree to that?"
+
+"Umph!" I said. "I don't generally give credit; but as it was your
+father's, I might stretch a point for once if I should find that I have
+it."
+
+"Oh, _thank_ you!" she said with a flush. "It is a kindness that I have
+no right to expect. _Thank_ you!"
+
+"I'll have a look round among my things," I promised. "I haven't bought
+such a box myself; but my assistant might have; or I might be able to
+find it for you in some of the shops round here. I'll see what I can
+do." I meant to let her have it, but I wanted to find out more about it
+first.
+
+"How kind you are!" she cried. "I--you see I want it very particularly,
+Mr. Levy."
+
+"Being associated with your father," I said, "naturally you would.
+Perhaps if I don't come across the ditty-box, I might find something
+else of his that would do, eh?"
+
+"No-o," she said. "It wouldn't. You see we--my mother and I--aren't well
+off. We knew that father had some money, but we couldn't find it, or
+learn anything about it; and we think it must be in the box, or a paper
+telling us about it."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"There's no paper in any box that I have," I assured her. "We always go
+through the things that we buy very carefully."
+
+"You wouldn't find it," she explained eagerly. "There was a secret
+place. He showed it to me when I was a little girl. I don't expect he
+thought I would remember, but I did. You take off the brass corners on
+top, and then the lower part of the lid drops out. The lid's in two
+pieces and you could put papers--or bank notes--in between."
+
+I couldn't help smiling.
+
+"Aren't you rather foolish to tell me?" I suggested.
+
+She looked at me appealingly.
+
+"Am I?" she asked.
+
+"No," I said. "As it happens, you aren't; but I wouldn't tell anyone
+else, if I were you. They _might_ think they'd like those bank notes for
+themselves. _I_ might if--well, if you weren't a good deal younger and
+more in need of them than I am."
+
+"I think you are a very good and kind man, Mr. Levy," she said solemnly.
+
+"I'm afraid not, little missie," I told her; "but there are some a good
+deal worse; and some of them have an inkling of what may be in that box,
+if I'm not mistaken. They've been inquiring after it."
+
+"Oh!" She started. "There were two horrid men who seemed to be watching
+me when I came in here. I half thought I remembered one of them: an old
+man with a stoop. I believe I must have seen him aboard my father's
+ship. I felt rather nervous--because it's such a dark alley." She looked
+anxiously at the door.
+
+"It is a bit dark," I agreed. "Would you feel safer if I saw you to a
+main thoroughfare?"
+
+"I should feel _quite_ safe then," she declared, and she smiled like a
+child does. "I really don't know _how_ to thank you enough for your
+goodness to me."
+
+I called Isaac to look after the shop, and put on my hat and walked off
+with her. She was a bright little creature to talk to, and when she was
+excited she looked very pretty. I found that she was going to walk all
+the way, so I said that I would see her right to her road. She seemed
+pleased to have my company, and jabbered nineteen to the dozen. It was
+such a change to have someone to talk to, she said, because they had
+moved and knew nobody here. She told me that she tried to earn money by
+teaching music and by painting. I said that I was badly in want of a few
+little sketches, and she promised to bring some for me to look at.
+
+"I would ask you to accept them," she said, with a flush, "if we weren't
+so poor."
+
+"If it weren't for that," I said, "I should ask you to have some tea
+before I leave you, without fear that you would be too proud to accept.
+It would be a pleasure to me. Will you?" We were just outside a good
+place, and I stopped.
+
+"It is very kind of you," she said, "but I don't think--I suppose I _am_
+foolishly proud." She laughed an uneasy laugh.
+
+"You mustn't let your pride spoil my pleasure," I told her, and grinned
+at myself for talking like a book. "You can repay me when you find your
+fortune, if you insist; but I hope you won't."
+
+She looked up at me quickly.
+
+"No," she said. "I couldn't treat your kindness like that. Thank you,
+Mr. Levy."
+
+So we went in, and I ordered tea and chicken and cakes. The poor little
+thing was positively hungry, I could see; and when she mentioned her
+mother the tears came into her eyes. I understood what she was thinking,
+and I had some meat patties put up in a package. When I left her at the
+corner of her road I put the package into her hands, and boarded a 'bus
+with a run before she had time to object. She shook her head at me when
+I was on top of the 'bus; but when I took off my hat she waved her hand,
+and laughed as if she was a great mind to cry. It's hard for an old
+woman and a young girl when they're left like that.
+
+I had the corners of that ditty-box off as soon as Isaac had gone for
+the night. The lid was double, as she had said. Between the two boards I
+found a portrait of an elderly woman--her mother, no doubt--and three
+photos of herself; two in short frocks and one with her hair in a plait
+when she was about seventeen. She looked stouter and jollier then, poor
+girl. There was one other thing: a half sheet of note-paper. "Memo in
+case of accident. Money up chimney in best bedroom. Geo. Markby, sixth
+of April, 1897."
+
+I started to change my clothes to go there and tell them; but just as I
+had taken off my waistcoat I altered my mind. The money wouldn't be in
+the rooms where they lived then, but in their old house; and that was
+probably occupied by someone else now, and even if the money was still
+there she would not be able to get it. It was no use raising her hopes,
+just to disappoint her. I would try to get the money before I spoke, I
+decided.
+
+She came at eleven the next morning, and timidly produced a few little
+sketches, mostly copies of things. I'd like to say that they were good,
+but I can't. It was just schoolgirl painting, nothing else. She wanted
+to give me some, but I wouldn't hear of that. She had sold a few for
+eighteenpence apiece, she said. I said that I wanted four to frame for
+ships' cabins, and I'd give twelve-and-six for them, and that would
+leave me a fair margin. I was afraid to offer more, for fear she would
+suspect me; and as it was she was dubious.
+
+"You're sure you _will_ get a profit?" she asked.
+
+"You ask anyone round here about me," I said. "They'll soon tell you
+that I look out sharp for that. They'll look very nice when they're
+framed; and I make a good bit out of the frames, you see. Now about this
+ditty-box. I've got on the track of one that might turn out right; but
+there's a difficulty that I'd like to put to you. Suppose that there's
+no money in it, only a clue to where your father hid it. Wouldn't that
+be likely to be somewhere where you can't get at it? On board his ship,
+for example? Or in your old house?
+
+"If it's in the house," she said, "I could get in. At least it was empty
+a week ago. Mother heard from an old neighbor. But perhaps it would be
+better to get someone else to go, and say that they wanted to look at
+the house?" She glanced at me doubtfully.
+
+"You mean me?" She nodded slowly. "You are afraid that I might keep some
+of it?"
+
+She stared at me in sheer amazement.
+
+"Why, of course not!" she cried. "I was only thinking that it was a long
+way to ask you to go; and that I must not impose on your kindness."
+
+"Give me the address," I said, "in case I should want it any time."
+
+She gave me an address in Andeville. Then I changed the subject. I
+walked part of the way home with her. Then I had my dinner and went off
+to Andeville.
+
+It was about an hour by train. By the time that I had found the agent
+and got the key it was growing dusk. I was some time arguing with him,
+because he wanted to send a man with me to lock up afterward. "We've had
+tramps get in several times," he explained, "and they've done a lot of
+damage; torn up the flooring and such senseless mischief." It occurred
+to me directly that the tramps were some of the men who had come after
+the ditty-box.
+
+I persuaded him at last that I'd lock up all right and he let me go
+alone. I soon spotted what would be the best bedroom. I fumbled up the
+chimney and lit a match or two, and found a heavy canvas bag and a
+smaller one that rustled like notes. I was just looking for the last
+time when I heard soft steps behind me. I glanced round and saw two men
+before the match flickered out. The light caught the face of the
+foremost. It was the old man with the goat's beard. Then I was struck on
+the head and knocked senseless.
+
+It was about six when I came to and lit another match and looked at my
+watch. The bags were gone, of course. I never saw them again or the two
+men. It was as well for them I didn't!
+
+It was no use telling the agent or anybody. I never thought about that,
+only what I was to do about the girl and her mother. I didn't think very
+much about the mother, if you come to that. It seemed to me that I'd
+made a mess of it and lost their money, and I couldn't bear to think of
+the girl's disappointment. What upset me most was that I knew she'd
+believe every word of my story, and never dream that I'd taken the money
+myself, as some people would. She was such a trusting little thing,
+and--well, I may as well own up that I liked her. If I hadn't been
+fifteen years older than she was, and felt sure that she'd never look at
+a Jew--and a much rougher chap then than I am now--I should have had
+serious thoughts of courting her. And so--well, I knew that a hundred
+pounds was what they hoped for; and it didn't make very much odds to me.
+I took out the paper that night and put in twenty five-pound notes, and
+did it up again. A bit of folly that you wouldn't have suspected me of,
+eh? Then you think me a bigger fool than most people do! At the same
+time, it was only fair and honest. I'd had her money and lost it, you
+see.
+
+I was going to take the chest to their lodgings in a cab the next
+morning, but she called in early to ask if I had found it. I had an
+unhappy sort of feeling when I saw her come smiling into the shop,
+thinking that she wouldn't need to come any more. It's queer how a man
+feels over a little slip of a girl when he's knocked about all over the
+world and known hundreds of women and thought nothing of them!
+
+I'd carried it down into this room, and I took her in and showed it.
+Her delight was pretty to see. She fidgeted about at my elbow like a
+child while I was taking the corners off; and when she saw the notes she
+danced and clapped her hands; and when I gave them to her she sat down
+and hugged them and laughed and cried.
+
+"If you knew how poor we've been!" she said, wiping her eyes. "How
+lonely and worried and miserable! Your kindness has been the only nice
+thing ever since father died. Twenty times five! That's a hundred.
+They're real notes aren't they? I haven't seen one for ages."
+
+"They're real enough," I told her. "I'll give you gold for them, if you
+like."
+
+"I'd rather have their very selves," she said with a laugh. She studied
+one carefully; and suddenly she dropped them with a cry and sprang to
+her feet. Her face had gone white.
+
+"Mr. Levy!" she cried. "Oh, Mr. Levy! _You put them there!_"
+
+I told her a lie right out; and I'm not ashamed of it. I was a hard man
+of business, I said; and a Jew; and she was a silly sentimental child,
+or she'd never take such an idea into her head; and she needn't suppose
+I kept my shop for charity, and she'd know better when she was older.
+She heard me out. Then she put her hand on my shoulder.
+
+"Dear kind friend," she said, "father died in May this year. The note
+that I looked at was dated in June!" And I stood and stared at her like
+a fool. I suppose I looked a bit cut up, for she stroked my arm gently.
+
+"You dear, good fellow!" she said. She seemed to have grown from a child
+into a woman in a few minutes. "I can't take them, but it will help me
+to be a better girl, to have known someone like you!"
+
+"Like me!" I said, and laughed. "I'm just--just a rough, money-grubbing
+Jew. That's all I am."
+
+She shook her head like mad.
+
+"You may say what you like," she told me; "but you can't alter what I
+think. You're good--good--good!"
+
+Then I told her just what had happened.
+
+"So, you see, you owe me nothing," I wound up.
+
+She wiped her eyes and took hold of me by the sleeve.
+
+"I will tell you what I owe you," she said. "Food when I was hungry;
+kindness when I was wretched; your time, your care--yes, and the risk of
+your life. If you had had your way you would have given me all that
+money. You--Mr. Levy, you say that it is just a matter of business. What
+profit did you expect to make?"
+
+"I expected--to make you happy," I said; and she looked up at me
+suddenly; and I saw what I saw. "Little girl!" I cried. "May I try? In
+another way."
+
+I held out my arms, and she dropped into them.
+
+"My profits!" I said.
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "I hope so. I will try--try--try!"
+
+Mr. Levy offered me a fresh cigar and took another himself.
+
+"It's a class of profit that's difficult to estimate," he remarked. "I
+had a difficulty with Isaac over the matter. You see he has 5 per cent.
+over the business that he introduces, but that was only meant for small
+transactions, I argued. He argued that there were no profits at all; not
+meaning any disrespect to her, but holding that there was no money in
+it; or, if there was, it was a loss because I'd have to keep her, and
+nobody knew how a wife would turn out. She held much the same, except
+that she was sure she was going to turn out good; but she thought I
+ought to find some plan of doing something for Isaac. We settled it that
+way. He wanted to get married, so I gave him a rise and let them have
+the rooms over the shop to live in; and there they are now."
+
+"And how do you reckon the profits yourself?" I asked.
+
+"Well," he said "in these last eight years I've cleared forty thousand
+pounds, though you wouldn't think it in this little shop. I reckon that
+I cleared a good bit more over that ditty-box. Come round to my house
+one evening, and I'll introduce you to her."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE YELLOW CAT
+
+An Idyll of the Summer
+
+By ANNIE E.P. SEARING
+
+
+THE minister of Blue Mountain Church, and the minister's wife, were
+enjoying their first autumn fire, and the presence of the cat on the
+hearth between them.
+
+"He came home this afternoon," the minister's wife was saying, "while I
+was picking those last peppers in the garden, and he jumped on my
+shoulder and purred against my ear as unconcernedly as if he'd only been
+for a stroll in the lower pasture, instead of gone for three months--the
+little wretch!"
+
+"It does seem extraordinary"--the minister unbent his long legs and
+recrossed them carefully, in order to remove his foot from the way of
+the tawny back where it stretched out in blissful elongation--"very
+extraordinary, that an animal could lead that sort of double life,
+disappearing completely when summer comes and returning promptly with
+the fall. I daresay it's a reversion to the old hunting instinct. No
+doubt we could find him if we knew how to trail him on the mountains."
+
+"The strangest thing about it is that this year and last he came back
+fat and sleek--always before, you know, he has been so gaunt and starved
+looking in the fall." She leaned over and stroked the cat under his
+chin; he purred deeply in response, and looked up into her eyes, his own
+like wells of unfathomed speech. "I have an eerie feeling," she said,
+"that if he could talk he'd have great things to tell."
+
+The minister laughed, and puffed away at his corncob pipe. "Tales of the
+chase, my dear, of hecatombs of field-mice and squirrels!"
+
+But she shook her head. "Not this summer--that cat has spent these last
+two summers with human beings who have treated him as a kind of
+fetich--just as we do!" As she rubbed his ear she murmured regretfully:
+"To think of all you've heard and seen and done, and you can't tell us
+one thing!"
+
+The Yellow Cat's eyes narrowed to mere slits of black across two amber
+agates; then he shook his ears free, yawned, and gave himself up to
+closed lids and dreams. If he could have told it all, just as it
+happened, not one word of it could those good souls have
+comprehended--and this was the way of it.
+
+It was near the close of a June day when the cat made his entrance into
+that hidden life of the summers from which his exits had been as sudden,
+though less dramatic. In the heart of the hills, where a mountain
+torrent has fretted its way for miles through a rocky gorge, there is a
+place where the cleft widens into a miniature valley, and the stream
+slips along quietly between banks of moss before it plunges again on its
+riotous path down the mountain. Here the charcoal-burners, half a
+century ago, had made a clearing, and left their dome-shaped stone kiln
+to cover itself with the green velvet and lace of lichen and vine. The
+man who was stooping over the water, cleaning trout for his supper, had
+found it so and made it his own one time in his wandering quest for
+solitude. The kiln now boasted a chimney, a door, and one wide window
+that looked away over the stream's next plunge, over other mountains and
+valleys to far horizons of the world of men. This was the hermitage to
+which he brought his fagged-out nerves from the cormorant city that
+feeds on the blood and brains of humans. Here through the brief truce of
+summer he found time to fish and hunt enough for his daily wants, time
+to read, to write, time to dream and to smoke his evening pipe, to think
+long thoughts, and more blessed than all--to sleep! When autumn came he
+would go back with renewed life and a pile of manuscript to feed to his
+hungry cormorant. He was chewing the cud of contentment as he bent to
+his fish cleaning, when, glancing to one side where the fire, between
+stones, was awaiting his frying-pan, he caught sight among the bushes of
+two gleaming eyes, and then the sleek back and lashing tail of the
+Yellow Cat. The man, being a cat lover was versed in their ways, so for
+a time he paid no attention, then began to talk softly.
+
+"If you'd come out of that," he said, as he scraped the scales, "and not
+sit there watching me like a Comanche Indian, I'd invite you to supper!"
+
+Whether it was the tone of his voice or the smell of the fish that
+conquered, the tawny creature was suddenly across the open with a rush
+and on the stooping shoulders. That was the beginning of the
+companionship that lasted until fall. The next season brought the animal
+as unexpectedly, and they took up the old relation where it had left off
+the previous summer. They trudged together through miles of forest,
+sometimes the cat on the man's shoulder, but often making side
+excursions on his own account and coming back with the proud burden of
+bird or tiny beast. Together they watched the days decline in red and
+gold glory from the ledge where the stream drops over the next height,
+or when it rained, companioned each other by the hearth in the hut.
+There was between them that satisfying and intimate communion of
+inarticulate speech only possible between man and beast.
+
+There came a day when the man sat hour after hour over his writing,
+letting the hills call in vain. The cat slept himself out, and when paws
+in the ink and tracks over the paper proved of no avail, he jumped down
+and marched himself haughtily off through the door and across the
+clearing to the forest, tail in air. Late that afternoon the man was
+arrested midway of a thought rounding into phrase by the sudden
+darkness. There was a fierce rush of wind, as if some giant had sighed
+and roused himself. The door of the hut slammed shut and the blast from
+the window scattered the papers about the floor. As he went to pull down
+the sash the cat sprang in, shaking from his feet the drops of rain
+already slanting in a white sheet across the little valley. At the same
+moment there was a "halloo" outside, and a woman burst open the door,
+turning quickly to shut out behind her the onrush of the shower and the
+biting cold of the wind. She stood shaking the drops from her hair, and
+then she looked into the astonished face of the man and laughed.
+
+She was as slim and straight as a young poplar, clad in white
+shirt-waist and khaki Turkish trousers with gaiters laced to the knee.
+Her hair was blown about in a red-gold snarl, and her eyes looked out as
+unabashed as a boy's. The two stared at each other for a time in
+silence, and finally it was the woman who spoke first.
+
+"This isn't exactly what I call a warm welcome--not just what the cat
+led me to expect! It was really the cat who brought me--I met him over
+on Slide Mountain--he fled and I pursued, and now here we are!"
+
+She made a hasty survey of the hut, and then of its owner, putting her
+head on one side as she looked about her with a quick, bird-like
+movement, he still staring in stupefaction.
+
+"Of course you detest having me here, but you won't put me out in the
+rain, again, will you?"
+
+At once he was his courteous self. With the same motion he dumped the
+astonished cat from the cushioned chair by the writing table, and drew
+it forward to the fire. Then he threw on a fresh stick of pine that
+flared up in a bright blaze, and with deferring gentleness took the
+sweater that hung from her shoulders and hung it to dry over a section
+of tree-trunk that served as a chimney seat.
+
+"You are as welcome to my hut as any princess to her palace," he smiled
+on her, "indeed, it is yours while you choose to stay in it!"
+
+"Don't you think," she made reply, as he drew another chair up opposite
+to her, "that under the circumstances we might dispense with fine
+speeches? It is hardly, I suppose, what one would call a usual
+situation, is it?"
+
+He looked at her as she stretched her small feet comfortably to the
+blaze, her face quite unconcerned.
+
+"No," he acquiesced, "it certainly is not usual--or I should hate
+it--the 'usual' is what I fly from!"
+
+She threw back her head, clasping her hands behind it as she laughed.
+She seemed to luxuriate as frankly in the heat and the dryness as the
+cat between them.
+
+"And I"--she turned the comprehension of her eyes upon him--"I cross the
+ocean every year in the same flight!"
+
+The storm drove leaves and flying branches against the window, while
+they sat, for what seemed a long time, in contented silence. He found
+himself as openly absorbing her charm as if she had been a tree or a
+mountain sunset, while she was making further tours of inspection with
+her eyes about the room.
+
+"It is entirely adorable," she smiled at him, "but it piques my
+curiosity!'
+
+"Ask all the questions you wish--no secrets here."
+
+"Then what, if you please, is the object I see swung aloft there in the
+dome?"
+
+"My canvas hammock which I lower at night to climb into and go to bed,
+and pull up in the daytime to clear the decks."
+
+"And the big earthen pot in the fireplace--it has gruesome suggestions
+of the 'Forty Thieves!'"
+
+"Only a sort of perpetual hot-water tank. The fire never quite goes out
+on this domestic hearth, and proves a very acceptable companion at this
+high altitude. There is always the kettle on the crane, as you see it
+there, but limitless hot water is the fine art of housekeeping--but,
+perhaps you don't know the joy there is to be found in the fine art of
+housekeeping?"
+
+"No, I do not," her eyes took on a whimsical expression, "but I'd like
+to learn--anything in the way of a new joy! In the way of small joys I
+am already quite a connoisseur, indeed I might call myself a collector
+in that line--of _bibelot_ editions, you understand, for thus far I seem
+to have been unable to acquire any of the larger specimens! Would you be
+willing to take me on as a pupil in housekeeping?"
+
+"It would add to my employment a crowning joy--not a _bibelot_!"
+
+"Pinchbeck fine speeches again," she shrugged. "Do you stop here all the
+long summer quite alone?"
+
+"All the 'short summer,'" he corrected, "save for the society of the
+cat, who dropped down last year from nowhere. He must have approved of
+the accommodations, for he has chosen me, you see, a second time for a
+summer resort."
+
+"Yes--I think he was trying to protest about you being his exclusive
+find, when I invited myself to follow him down the mountain--leading and
+eluding are so much alike, one is often mistaken, is it not so?"
+
+She was sitting forward now, chin in hands, elbows on her knees, gazing
+into the flames where a red banner waved above the back log. When she
+turned to him again the westering sun had broken through the clouds and
+was sending a flare of rosy light in at the window. Studying her face
+more fully, he saw that she was years--fully ten years--older than he
+had supposed. The boyish grace that sat so lightly was after all the
+audacious ease of a woman of the world, sure of herself.
+
+"I, too, am living the hermit life for the summer. I am the happy
+possessor of a throat that demands an annual mountain-cure. Switzerland
+with its perpetual spectacular note gets on my nerves, so last year we
+found this region--I and my two faithful old servitors. Do you know the
+abandoned tannery in the West Branch Clove? That has been fitted up for
+our use, and there we live the simple life as I am able to attain
+it--but you have so far outdone me that you have filled my soul with
+discontent!"
+
+"Alas," said the man, "you have served me the very same trick! I could
+almost wish--"
+
+"That I had not come!"
+
+"Say, rather, that you would come again!"
+
+She stood up and reached for her sweater, waiting for him to open the
+door. The round of the little valley was a glittering green bowl filled
+with pink cloud scuds. They stepped out into a jubilant world washed
+clean and freshly smiling. She put out her hand in good-bye.
+
+"I almost think I shall come again! If you were a person with whom one
+could be solitary--who knows!"
+
+When she appeared the next time she found him by the noise of his
+chopping. They climbed to the top of the moss-covered boulder that hangs
+poised over the ledge where the stream leaps into the abyss. Below them
+the hills rolled in an infinite recession of leaf-clad peaks to the sky
+line, where they melted to a blur of bluish-green mist.
+
+"Oh, these mountains of America!" she cried, "their greenness is a thing
+of dreams to us who know only bare icy and alps!"
+
+"Far lovelier," he said, "to look down upon than to look up to, I think.
+To be a part of the height comes pretty near to being happy, for the
+moment."
+
+She turned from the view to study her companion. The lines in the
+corners of his kind, tired eyes, the lean, strong figure, hair graying
+about the temples. He grew a little impatient under it before she spoke.
+
+"Do you know," she said slowly, "I am going to like you! To like you
+immensely--and to trust you!"
+
+"Thank you, I shall try to be worthy"--even his derision was gentle--"I
+seem to remember having been trusted before by members of your sex--even
+liked a little, though not perhaps 'immensely'! At any rate this
+certainly promises to be an experience quite by itself!"
+
+"Quite by itself," she echoed.
+
+"Wouldn't it be as well for you to know my name, say, as a beginning?"
+
+"No," she nodded, "that's just what I don't want! I only want to know
+you. Names are extraneous things--tags, labels--let us waive them. If I
+tell you how I feel about this meeting of ours will you try to
+understand me?"
+
+The answer was less in words than in the assent of his honest gray eyes.
+
+"I have been surfeited all my life," she went on, "with love--I want no
+more of it! The one thing I do want, more than anything else, is a man
+friend. I have thought a great deal about such a friendship--the give
+and take on equal terms, the sexless companionship of mind--what it
+could be like!"
+
+He brushed the twigs from the lichens between them and made no answer.
+
+"Fate--call the power what you will"--she met the disclaimer that
+puckered the corners of his mouth--"fate brought us together. It was the
+response to my longing for such a friendship!"
+
+"It was the Yellow Cat!"
+
+"The Yellow Cat plus fate! While I sat there by your fire I recognized
+you for that friend!"
+
+Far below over the tree tops cloud shadows and sunlight were playing
+some wonderful game of follow-my-leader; a hawk hung poised on tilting
+wings; and on the veil of mist that was the spirit of the brook where it
+cast itself from the ledge curved the arch of a rainbow. The man pointed
+to the augury.
+
+"You might try me," he said, and they shook hands on the compact,
+laughing half shamefacedly at their own solemnity.
+
+"As woman to woman," he offered.
+
+"Let it be rather as man to man," she shrugged.
+
+"As you like--as women we should have to begin by explaining ourselves."
+
+"Precisely, and men companion each other on impersonal grounds."
+
+"Then it is a man's friendship?"
+
+"Better still," she mused, "we'll pattern it after the ideals of the
+disembodied! We'll make this summer, you and I together, a gem from the
+heart of life--I will have it so!"
+
+So it came about that like two children they played together, worked,
+walked, or read and talked by the open fire when cold storms came. Every
+morning she came over the wood-road that led by winding ways from her
+valley, and at sunset she went back over the trail alone. He might go as
+far as the outlook half way over the mountain where the path begins to
+go down, but no farther; as for any fear, she seemed to know nothing of
+its workings, and the revolver she wore in a case that hung from her
+belt was a mere convention.
+
+One morning she came with eyes dancing--it was to be an especial day--a
+fete--and the gods had smiled on her planning and given them perfect
+weather. Never such sunshine, such crystal air, such high-hung clouds!
+Breakfast over, they hurried about the miniature housework, and packed
+the kit for a long day's tramp. Then they started forth, the cat
+following, tail aloft. Beyond a dim peak, where the clove opens
+southward, by the side of a tiny lake they lunched and took their
+noonday rest. She watched the smoke curl up from his pipe where he lay
+at peace with the scheme of things.
+
+"Do you know, Man, dear," she said, "I am glad I don't in the least
+guess who you are! I have no doubt you write the most delightful stories
+in the world--but never put me in one, please!"
+
+He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at her long before he
+replied.
+
+"Woman, dear," he said, "I have put you in a place--your own place--and
+it is not in my novels!"
+
+She scrambled to her feet laughing.
+
+"It's very well to make stories, but it is really more diverting to live
+them! Come, I must lead you now with your eyes shut tight to my
+surprise!"
+
+So hand in hand they went along a smooth green wood-road until she
+stopped him.
+
+"Look," she cried, "now look!"
+
+Straight away till the road narrowed to a point of light against the sky
+where the mountain dipped down, banks of mountain laurel rose on either
+side in giant hedges of rose and white, while high above them waved the
+elms and beeches of the forest.
+
+"It is the gardening of the gods!"
+
+"It is my own treasure-trove! I found it last year and I have been
+waiting to bring you to it on my fete--what you call birthday! And now
+wish me some beautiful thing--it may come true! There is a superstition
+in my country--but I shall not tell you--unless the wish comes true!"
+
+He broke off a spray of the waxen buds and crowned her solemnly where
+she stood.
+
+"I have already wished for you--the most beautiful thing in the world!"
+
+She shook her head, sorrowful. "Man, dear, the only thing in all the
+world I still want is the impossible!"
+
+"Only the impossible is worth while--and I have wished!"
+
+She shook her head again, laughing a little ruefully. "It could not
+arrive--my impossible--and yet you almost tempt me to hope!"
+
+"Anything--everything may arrive! You once thought that such a
+friendship as this of ours could not, and lo, we have achieved it!"
+
+"I wonder"--her eyes seemed fixed on some far prospect, a world beyond
+the flowery way--"I wonder if we have! And I wonder why you have never
+made a guess about my world when you have at least let me get a peep now
+and then into yours?"
+
+"I don't care a rap about your 'world,'" he smiled into her eyes, "while
+I have you!"
+
+"No curiosity about my--my profession?"
+
+"Not a bit--though it was clear enough from the first that it was the
+stage!"
+
+She made an odd little outcry at his powers of divination.
+
+"Then I must look it--before the footlights from my birth! Since you are
+so clever, Mr. Man, will you also be merciful when you come to weigh me
+in those scales you try to hide beneath the garment of your kindness?
+Think, when you judge me, what it is for a woman never to be
+herself--always to have to play a part!"
+
+He reached and took her hand suddenly, drawing her to him with a
+movement that was almost rough.
+
+"This is no play acting--this is real! No footlights--no audience--only
+you and me in all this world!"
+
+But she drew away, insistently aloof. She would have none of his
+caresses.
+
+"This, too," she said, as she moved apart and stood waiting for him to
+follow, "is a part of the play--I do not deceive myself! When I go back
+to my world--my trade, I shall remember this little time that you and I
+have snatched from the grudging grasp of life as an act--a scene only!
+It's a perfect pastoral, Man, dear, but unreal--absurdly unreal--and we
+know it ourselves while we play the game!"
+
+Down through the flower-bordered vista the cat went stalking his prey,
+his sinuous body a tawny streak winding along the green path. These
+trivial humans, with their subtle attractions and compunctions, were as
+though they never had been when the chase was on--the real business and
+purpose of life!
+
+For the rest of the time they were together they avoided the personal.
+Each felt the threat in the air and tacitly averted it. For that one
+perfect day there should be no past, no future, nothing but the golden
+present.
+
+Swinging in his breeze-rocked hammock between door and window the man
+lay awake through the long watches of the night, thinking, thinking,
+while his heart sang. Toward dawn he fell into a deep sleep from which
+he was only awakened by the cat springing up to lick his face in
+reminder of breakfast.
+
+It was when he came back from his plunge in the pool that he first
+noticed a paper pinned to his door-post. Within its folds his doom was
+penned!
+
+"Even you, dear Man, could not wish me the impossible! That superstition
+of my country is that to come true it must be the first wish of your
+fete day--and by one who loves you! Alas, my old servant had already
+wished--that he might get me started for home to-day! Clever
+Friedrich--for he had also packed! When you read this I shall be far on
+my way. You could never find me though you searched the earth--but you
+will never try! It is well as it is, for you see--it was not friendship
+after all!"
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+And yet there was a sequel. During the following year there dropped to
+the man in his hard-pressed literary life, one of those errant plums
+from the political tree that now and then find their way to the right
+basket. He was named for an excellent diplomatic post. His friends
+congratulated him and talked a good deal about "material" and
+opportunities for "unique local color;" his wife chattered unceasingly
+about gowns and social details, while he armed himself, with the
+listless reticence that was become habit, to face new responsibilities
+and rather flavorless experiences. He had so withdrawn himself of late
+to the inner creative life that he moved in a kind of phantasmagoria of
+outer unrealities. It was the nearest to a comfortable adjustment for
+the mis-mating of such a marriage as his, but it was not the best of
+preparations for the discharge of public duties, and he walked toward
+his new future with reluctant feet, abstractedly. In some such mood as
+this, his mind bent on a problem of arrangement of fiction puppets,
+seeing "men as trees walking," he found himself one day making his bows
+at a court function. Along the line of royal highnesses and grand
+duchesses with his wife he moved, himself a string-pulled puppet,
+until--but who, in heaven's name is this?
+
+For one mad moment, as he looked into her eyes, he thought the tightened
+cord he sometimes felt tugging at his tired brain had snapped, and the
+images of sight and memory gone hopelessly confused. She stood near the
+end of the line with the princesses of secondary rank, and the jewels in
+her hair were not more scintillant than her eyes as he bent over her
+hand. She went a little pale, but she greeted him bravely, and when they
+found themselves unobserved for a moment she spoke to him in her soft,
+careful English:
+
+"You recognized me, you remember, for a play actor, and now you are come
+from the world's end to see me perform on my tiny stage! Alas, dear
+critic, since my last excursion, I am no longer letter perfect in my
+part!"
+
+They met but once again. It was in the crush of guests in the great hall
+where her old Prince, in the splendor of his decoration-covered coat,
+was waiting to hand her to her carriage. There was a brief time in which
+to snatch the doubtful sweetness of a few hurried words. She was leaving
+in the early morning for the petty Balkan province where her husband
+held a miniature sway, over a handful of half-savage subjects. Hardly
+more than a renewal of greeting and a farewell, and she was gone!
+
+As the old Prince wrapped her more carefully in her furs, and the
+carriage rolled away in the darkness, he spoke to her, somewhat puzzled:
+
+"I should be sorry to think the American Ambassador has been taking too
+much wine--as you well know, my knowledge of the barbarous English
+tongue is but limited, and yet--I thought, as I joined you, he was
+talking some farrago of nonsense about a _Yellow Cat_!"
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+That year the Yellow Cat came home lean and gaunt, a chastened, humble
+creature, as one who has failed in a long quest, and is glad to stretch
+his weary length before the hearth and reap the neglected benefits of
+the domestic life.
+
+"It is really very odd" said the minister, quite as if he were saying
+something he had never thought of saying before, "where that cat goes in
+the summer!"
+
+"Isn't it?" responded the minister's wife--just as she always did. "It
+fires the imagination! He walks off some fine morning and completely
+shuts the door on our life here--as if he gave us notice not to pry into
+his movements. But this time"--she was leaning to stroke the tawny sides
+with a pitying touch--"this time you may be sure something very sad and
+disappointing happened to him--something in that other life went quite
+wrong! How I wish we could understand what it was!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+A COCK AND POLICEMAN
+
+A Tale of Rural England
+
+By RALPH KAYE ASSHETON
+
+
+IT HAPPENED up in Lancashire, and the truth can be vouched for by at
+least half a hundred spectators. It fell in this wise: Bob O' Tims owned
+a game-cock which was the envy of the whole street for lustre of
+coloring and soundness of wind. Its owner was almost unduly proud of his
+possession, and would watch it admiringly as it stalked majestically
+about among its family of hens.
+
+"There's a cock for you!" he would say, with a little wave of his pipe.
+"There's not many cocks like that one. The king himself has got nothing
+like it down at Windsor Castle."
+
+Now, Jimmy Taylor had always been a rival of Bob O' Tims's. Jimmy's
+grandfather had fought at the Battle of Waterloo. This gave him great
+prestige, and it was almost universally believed, in Chellowdene, that
+the preeminence of the British Empire was mainly due to the battle-zeal
+of Jimmy's ancestry. But whenever Jimmy talked about his grandfather,
+Bob skilfully turned the conversation to his game-cock. This made Jimmy
+testy, and one day he told Bob, in contemptuous tones, that "he'd be
+even wi' him yet, in the matter o' game-cocks, as well as everything
+else."
+
+That was one Monday evening, and the following Wednesday Bob O' Tims's
+cock disappeared. When Bob discovered his loss, his face went quite pale
+with anger. Without a word, he flung on his cap and set off for Jimmy
+Taylor's cottage.
+
+When he reached it, he went still whiter. For Jimmy was sitting at the
+door, and up and down the yard in front of him strutted a magnificent
+game-cock.
+
+Bob O' Tims stretched out his forefinger, pointed at the cock, and with
+a stubborn look forming about his mouth and jaw, observed:
+
+"Yon's mine."
+
+"It isn't," responded Jimmy. "It's mine."
+
+"I tell thee, yon's mine. Yo've prigged it."
+
+"It's mine! I bought it at th' fair."
+
+"Thee never bought yon cock at any fair. It's mine, I tell thee."
+
+Words grew high between the disputants, as the cock, in all its bronze
+and golden splendor, marched up and down the yard, until the argument
+between the two men terminated in a quarrel so violent that half-a-dozen
+neighbors came in to see what was the matter. It ended in Bob O' Tims
+insisting that he would take the matter into court. He was as good as
+his word, and the next time that the bench met, Bob O' Tims summoned
+Jimmy Taylor on a charge of having stolen his game-cock.
+
+The magistrates listened to the witnesses on either side. Half-a-dozen
+people were ready to swear that the cock belonged to Bob. But Jimmy
+brought up a couple of witnesses to testify that they had seen him buy a
+similar animal at Turton Fair. The cock was then brought into court. It
+clucked and choked indignantly, and the partisans of Bob and Jimmy swore
+against each other as hard as ever they could. The bench appeared
+perplexed; and it was owing to their inability to come to any decision
+that the magistrate's clerk made his famous suggestion.
+
+"The case appears to me impossible to prove as it stands, your
+worships," he said to the bench. "I would suggest, if I may be allowed,
+that you direct an officer of the court to take the cock to some spot at
+an equal distance between the houses of the plaintiff and of the
+defendant. If he is there placed upon the ground, and left to his own
+devices, he is pretty sure to make his way straight home."
+
+The magistrates accepted the suggestion of the clerk, and gave judgment
+accordingly. A policeman was ordered to carry out their instructions.
+Now, this officer was young and raw, and had only recently been enrolled
+in the constabulary. He was a fat, rosy man, with an air of
+self-importance. He set out from the court with the cock under his arm.
+An excited crowd streamed after the policeman, who stalked on with no
+little pomposity. When he reached the common, which lay between the
+houses of the rival claimants, he stood still for a minute or two,
+grasping the cock and looking judiciously from one side of the broken
+land to the other.
+
+The crowd eagerly commenced to give information.
+
+"You're a bit nearer Bob O' Tims's than you are to Jimmy's!" cried one.
+
+"Nay! Nay!" interposed another spectator, who was a partisan of Bob O'
+Tims. "There's a corner to turn afore you get to Bob's. It's not fair,
+not to make allowance for that."
+
+"Stand back!" cried the policeman majestically--"Stand back, every man
+of you. The critter will be too much put about to go anywhere if you
+don't keep still tongues in your heads."
+
+The officer still stood, with his legs wide apart, turning his head
+slowly from side to side. Once he made a pace in the direction of Jimmy
+Taylor's; then, changing his mind, he took a couple of steps toward Bob
+O' Tims's. Finally, he decided that he had fixed upon the exact locality
+commanded by the law, and with a magisterial air, he again waved back
+the crowd and deposited the cock upon the ground in front of him.
+
+Everybody held their breath. The first thing that the cock did was to
+shake himself until he resembled nothing so much as a living mop. Then
+he began to smooth his feathers down again. Then he stretched his neck,
+flapped his wings and crowed. Finally, with a blink of his bright eyes,
+which almost appeared like a wink to the hushed and expectant crowd, he
+made two solemn steps with his slender legs in the direction of Jimmy
+Taylor's cottage.
+
+"He's going to Jimmy's!" exclaimed the crowd with one voice.
+
+"Can't you all be quiet for a moment or two," interposed the policeman,
+indignantly. "I tell you, if you don't keep still, you'll upset the
+critter's mind, and make the magistrates' decision just good for
+nothing."
+
+The crowd appeared ashamed and relapsed once more into silence.
+
+The policeman stood erect and tall, a few paces in front of them,
+watching the cock with great solemnity. It was standing still now,
+jerking its neck a little. Then it looked round, and, retracing its
+paces, began stepping slowly off in the opposite direction.
+
+"It's going to Bob's!" cried the crowd.
+
+But the cock was doing no such thing; it paused again, scratching in an
+imaginary dust-heap, and then, with a loud crow, stretched its wings and
+flew up into a small tree.
+
+This was disconcerting. The policeman turned with anger upon the crowd.
+
+"I told you you were not giving the critter a chance!" he exclaimed.
+"You'd best be off home. Come, move on! Move on!"
+
+The crowd retreated, but it had no intention of going home. Some of
+those less interested strolled away, but the partisans of Bob and Jimmy
+remained at a little distance, eagerly watching to see what would happen
+next.
+
+The cock, after jerking his head round several times, settled down
+comfortably among his feathers, and went to sleep in the tree.
+
+This was altogether beyond the expectancy of the policeman. Not knowing
+what else to do, he sat down on a broken bit of fence under the tree and
+waited.
+
+The day advanced. The cock slept on and the policeman began to doze. Now
+and then he awoke with a start, and looked up at the obstinate biped
+above his head. Presently the man got down from the fence and shook
+himself.
+
+The partisans of Bob and Jimmy still remained at a discreet distance,
+watching the progress of events. The policeman stood still for a few
+moments, staring at the cock; then he approached the small, stumpy tree
+and clapped his hands vigorously.
+
+The cock woke up, gurgled, and went to sleep again.
+
+The policeman clapped his hands a second time, and then with shrill
+indignation the creature flew down from the tree, and set off in the
+direction of the distant moors.
+
+The proceedings promptly assumed the aspect of a hunt. The cock ran
+along with outstretched wings and neck, and the policeman and the crowd
+ran after it. At last it reached a small cottage, belonging to a widow
+of the name of Gammer. Exerting a final effort, it flew up toward her
+open window and ensconced itself on the top of the good woman's
+tester-bed.
+
+Now Mrs. Gammer was a woman of character. She heard the noise outside;
+and when the breathless policeman arrived at the door of her kitchen,
+she was wiping the soapsuds off her plump red arms, ready for any
+dispute or fray. She stood with her arms held akimbo, as the man in blue
+explained his errand. When he had finished his recital she looked at him
+defiantly.
+
+"And I should like to know what you call yourself, policeman or no
+policeman, to be chasing a poor harmless critter across 'em blazing
+commons on a day like this! You want to go and poke him down from my
+tester-bed, do you? Well, you can just go back and tell the magistrates
+as Mrs. Gammer's got him, and if they want him they must come for him
+themselves."
+
+This was direct defiance of the law, and the policeman commenced a
+remonstrance. His remarks were, however, cut short by Mrs. Gammer.
+
+"I have always said as magistrates was as ignorant as babies, and I only
+wish that they was as harmless," she persisted, in open contempt of the
+government of her country. "You can go back, and tell 'em as Mrs. Gammer
+says so. My house is my house, magistrate or no magistrate, and I won't
+have any policeman messing about on the top of my tester-bed."
+
+The policeman was not certain whether the authority which had been
+entrusted to him in the matter would justify his making a deliberate
+prisoner of Mrs. Gammer. And, as she showed every sign of resorting to
+violence, should he attempt to pass the door, which she barred with her
+stout figure, he decided upon beating a retreat. He went outside again
+and reasserted his shattered dignity by once more driving away the
+crowd; then, not knowing what else to do, he returned to the police
+station and reported the matter to the chief constable.
+
+The chief laughed, and so did everybody else who heard the story. The
+policeman was directed to return to Mrs. Gammer's cottage later in the
+day, and serve her with an order requiring her to give up the cock
+immediately. But when he handed Mrs. Gammer the official paper, she
+laughed in his face.
+
+"You can look round the house for the cock now if you like," she said
+contemptuously, slapping down the order upon the table, "and you can see
+if you can find him."
+
+"Is he still on the top of your tester-bed?" demanded the policeman.
+
+"Go and look," responded Mrs. Gammer, with a snort. "You can take the
+turk's-head brush and brush him down!"
+
+So, armed with the turk's-head brush, the policeman ascended Mrs.
+Gammer's small, steep staircase. When he reached her bedroom, he poked
+into every cranny and corner with the handle of his brush. But no cock
+was to be found.
+
+He descended the stairs, and stood again in the little kitchen. A savory
+smell of cooking arose from a stew-pan on the fire.
+
+"Where's the critter gone to?" he demanded.
+
+"How should I know?" replied Mrs. Gammer testily.
+
+The policeman, still standing in the kitchen, wished that Mrs. Gammer
+would give him an invitation to supper. The widow glanced up sharply at
+him and saw what was in his mind.
+
+"You'd like some supper, I make no doubt, after your wild-goose chase,"
+she said. "Sit down at t' table and take a bit o' stew."
+
+The policeman seated himself with alacrity. The stew which Mrs. Gammer
+placed before him consisted of a mixture of barley, onions and some
+white meat. He ate a hearty supper, and when he stood up he drew his
+hands across his mouth.
+
+"Thank you kindly," he said. "I must be off now, and see where that cock
+has gone to."
+
+Then it was that Mrs. Gammer gave a short and derisive laugh. She began
+to pile up the empty plates and to put the spoons and forks in the basin
+by the sink.
+
+"If you go a-chasing of that cock until you are black and blue in the
+face," she said, "you'll never find him. And the reason why, is that you
+have just helped to eat him up."
+
+"I have eat him up!" he gasped.
+
+"Aye," responded Mrs. Gammer, with brevity. "I made him into soup!"
+
+The policeman remained open-mouthed, staring at the impenitent widow.
+
+"You'd no business ever to do such a thing," he said. "The cock belonged
+to the Law."
+
+"I care nowt for your Law," retorted Mrs. Gammer. "Anyway you've helped
+to eat him!"
+
+A vague sense of cannibalism was haunting the policeman's mind; he felt
+almost as dismayed as if he had made a hearty supper off the
+magistrate's clerk himself.
+
+"You're a very wicked woman," he said to Mrs. Gammer. "And--and----"
+
+He broke off, entirely nonplussed by the situation in which he found
+himself. Mrs. Gammer continued to wash up the spoons and forks with
+utter indifference to his consternation.
+
+"The cock's eat up, and there's an end of it," she said. "You'd best go
+and tell the magistrates all about it."
+
+Sheepish and disconcerted, the policeman slunk home. The next morning
+the chief asked him if he had served the order on Mrs. Gammer.
+
+"I--served it," said he, scratching his head.
+
+"And did you get the bird given up?" demanded his superior officer.
+
+"No, I can't say as I did," replied the policeman.
+
+"Was it still on the top of the tester-bed?" pursued his awkward
+questioner.
+
+"No. It was not on the tester-bed," replied the policeman.
+
+"Then where was it?" insisted the chief.
+
+For several seconds the policeman was silent, then he told a lie.
+
+"I canna say," he answered, "it war gone."
+
+The chief shrugged his shoulders, and sent the man about the business of
+the day. The next time that the magistrates met, the question of Bob O'
+Tims's cock was again brought into court. The magistrate's clerk
+demanded if the case were settled.
+
+To the great relief of the policeman, who was waiting in attendance, Bob
+O' Tims spoke up from the spot where he stood.
+
+"Jim hadna stolen my cock after all, sir," he said, "for it came home
+the next morning."
+
+"Then what happened to the cock that was brought into court on Tuesday?"
+demanded the magistrate's clerk. But nobody seemed to know.
+
+Only, people used to wonder why Widow Gammer almost always gave a
+peculiar kind of snort when she spoke of Police Constable X, and why
+that worthy officer avoided her cottage ever after, and invariably
+turned down a side street if he saw the widow within speaking distance
+of him.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+PRISONERS IN THE TOWER
+
+An Episode of Travel
+
+By LUCY COPINGER
+
+
+"IN THE words of Macaulay this, ladies and gentleman, is the saddest
+spot on earth." The white-haired old Tower guard in charge of the little
+chapel of Saint Peter waved his hand impressively toward the open door.
+"Through that door"--the heads of the American tourists who were doing
+the Tower all turned in unison--"you may see the block upon which many a
+royal head has rested, and beneath these very stones lie buried two
+dukes between two queens--Dukes of Northumberland and of Somerset, with
+the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard--all beheaded."
+
+The chapel was a crypt-like place, windowless, dark, and musty, and at
+this mournful climax one of the tourists who was nervous moved suddenly
+off that particular stone upon which she had been standing; the school
+teachers out for self-improvement began to write it all in their
+note-books, while a stout matron evidently of good old Dutch stock
+looked sadly down at the flat, gray stones. "Poor things!" she murmured,
+"and there ain't one of them got a respectable white tombstone with a
+wreath carved on it." Then, in their usual two-by-two line, the party
+moved down the aisle wearily, but triumphant in the fact that they had
+succeeded in doing the Tower, the Abbey, and the Museum all in one day.
+Peggy Wynne, in demurely severe blue suit and jaunty panama, lagged at
+the end of the line while she looked critically at her compatriots.
+
+    "The animals went out two by two,
+    The elephant and the kangaroo,"
+
+she murmured to herself, "and I'm so tired of playing Noah's Ark or a
+Christian Association out for a lark," she continued in unconscious
+poetical despair. Then, warned by the attitude of the guard, that
+wonderful attitude of the haughty Briton in hopes of a tip, she opened
+her ridiculously tiny gold-linked purse and gave herself up to the
+absorbing question as to which of the pieces therein was a shilling.
+Having at last decided this, she presented it to the guard with a
+dazzling smile. It had been so long since Peggy had had an opportunity
+to smile at anything masculine that the smile was unusually bright.
+
+She had already passed through the little door when she suddenly turned
+back. The other tourists, noses in Baedekers, were hurrying on before,
+the guard was busily counting his sixpences, and she slipped back into
+the dim chapel unperceived.
+
+"They'll think I've gone back to those dingy lodgings," she reflected,
+as she groped her way between the benches into an even more shadowy
+corner--a little recess, with a tiny niche in the wall, that had
+probably been the sanctuary of some pious king. She seated herself
+comfortably behind the pillar in the corner and gazed pensively at the
+stones.
+
+"Tombs and tombs and tombs!" she murmured mournfully, "even in Paris,
+instead of Maxim's and the cafes, nothing but tombs! The next time I want
+to see where anybody is buried I will just go out to the cemetery instead
+of coming across that dreadful ocean. Oh, just to have one adventure
+before I go home!" she continued with a long sigh, "a real adventure with
+a real man in it--not a horrid, womanish Frenchman or a stolid, conceited
+Britisher, but a nice, safe American--like--like--like--my American."
+
+Then the dimple in her right cheek that was probably responsible for the
+calling her Peggy, in spite of her many protests for her rightful
+dignity of "Margaret," came out suddenly as it always did when she
+thought of her American. She had called him that from the time when, in
+the midst of the perplexities of the English luggage system, she had
+looked up and found him watching her. The cut of his gray suit and his
+shoes had told her his nationality at once, and they had looked for a
+moment at each other with that peculiar friendliness that compatriots in
+a strange land always feel. She had forgotten him until, leaning from a
+taxi-cab in the Rue de la Paix, she had met the same eyes, this time so
+unrefrainedly joyful in their recognition that she had suddenly blushed.
+When, a week later at Calais, as she stood by the rail of the departing
+Channel steamer she caught a glimpse of him on the dock, he had seemed
+like an old friend, and before she had thought she had smiled in answer
+to his lifted hat. She had grown so sure of seeing him that now when
+they had been in London a week and he had not appeared she found herself
+suddenly sick of tombs and tourists.
+
+Peggy's day had been a strenuous one of trams, motor-busses, abbeys, and
+galleries, and though she realized an adventure might probably await her
+outside, it was pleasant to sit for awhile in the dimness of the quiet
+chapel. From her recess she could look out through the open doors upon
+the tragic Tower Green, where in the sunlight two sparrows were
+frivolously flirting. Even as she watched, the sparrows grew dim, her
+ridiculously tiny purse slipped from her hand, her head with its thick
+dark hair dropped against the pillar, and her lashes touched her cheek.
+After awhile a cautious footfall sounded in the chapel, then somewhere a
+heavy door closed, and all was still.
+
+When Peggy sat up indignantly with the queer sensation that she had been
+violently shaken, darkness surrounded her, a darkness so deep that she
+could not see her hand as she ran it along the bench in front of her.
+With the movement came remembrance of her surroundings, and also a
+realization in strained and aching muscles that a stone pillar is not a
+wise choice for a head-rest.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped painfully.
+
+"Don't be frightened," entreated a voice quite near to her, and out of
+the lesser darkness a tall black figure rose suddenly.
+
+"I am not at all frightened," said Peggy at once. In spite of the
+bigness of the figure there was something reassuring in the voice with
+its crisp, humorous note and its intonation that Peggy at once
+recognized as American.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she continued, inhospitably addressing the
+darkness before her.
+
+"I went to sleep" the voice explained, "on the other side of the
+pillar."
+
+"How silly!" said Peggy, severely, "didn't you see me here?"
+
+"It was a little dim," the voice apologized and, Peggy's silence still
+condemning, "you should have snored," it continued extenuatingly.
+
+Peggy arose with a dignity that she hoped penetrated the darkness. Then
+she groped along the bench.
+
+"My purse," she explained anxiously, "and it had a sixpence for tea and
+two shillings for tips," she continued with an unconscious epitome of
+the joys of traveling. As she groped along bench and floor she was
+conscious of assistance from her companion, and just as she grasped the
+discovered purse she felt purse and hand caught and retained in a firm
+grip.
+
+"I apologize," he said at once, still however, holding on to her hand,
+"I thought it was the purse."
+
+Peggy jerked her hand loose indignantly, and speechless with wrath she
+hurried toward the door only to find that she had mistaken her
+direction. In her effort to recover her bearings she become hopelessly
+confused, stumbled noisily over a bench, and fell headlong into the arms
+of her companion.
+
+"You had better sit down again," he remarked coolly as he returned her
+to her seat and sat down calmly beside her. As he did so Peggy noted
+curiously the dim attractive silhouette of his head and the remarkably
+good line from ear to shoulder.
+
+"I am going at once," she said haughtily, but without moving.
+
+"You can't," the man beside her replied, "and if you promise not to cry
+or fall over any more benches I will tell you why--although I myself do
+not object to the latter," he continued judicially, "but for the sake of
+your own bones, merely."
+
+Peggy ignored the last.
+
+"Why can't I go?" she said defiantly.
+
+"Because the door is locked," he explained succinctly.
+
+"We can both scream or you can throw a bench through the window," said
+Peggy triumphantly.
+
+The unseen laughed a nice laugh that Peggy liked.
+
+"In that latter case, beside the fact that there is no window, we would
+surely be had up before the head-warden of this old jail. Besides, do
+you know what time it is?"
+
+"About tea time," said Peggy who had lunched frugally at one of the
+tea-shops on a cup of tea and a jam roll.
+
+"Just before you woke up," said her companion, "I used my last match--it
+always is the last in a case like this--to look at my watch. It was
+half-past twelve. Remember, you promised----" at a warning gurgle from
+Peggy.
+
+Then suddenly a laugh rang out sweet and clear in the darkness of the
+musty chapel, a laugh that echoed into the recesses of the old
+tombs--perhaps in its musical cadences stirring pleasantly the haughty
+slumber of their noble occupants.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" said the voice suspiciously.
+
+"An adventure at last!" Peggy cried, clapping her hands applaudingly.
+
+"I am glad you take it so cheerfully," returned her companion. "There is
+only one thing to do," he continued practically, "I thought it out for
+myself before you woke up and complicated matters by your appearance. Of
+course with sufficient yelling we can arouse the barrack sentry, and for
+our pains we'd probably have the whole barrack out to arrest us. There
+is no way in which you can offend the noble and independent Briton more
+deeply than by treating lightly his worship of royalty, dead or alive,
+and we would probably be held for committing _lese majeste_ by getting
+ourselves locked up with the numerous relicts of Henry the Eighth. But
+if we wait until morning we can run good chances of slipping out
+unperceived with the first crowd of tourists."
+
+"I feel just like the little princes in the Tower, or Queen Mary or
+Charlotte Corday," murmured Peggy in ecstatic historical confusion, "or
+somebody noble and romantic and beheaded. I think I shall play at being
+Queen Mary. I once learned a piece about her. It was very sad, but I
+always stuck at the fifth line and had to sit down. Since we have to
+stay here till morning we might as well amuse ourselves and you may be
+Rizzio."
+
+"Who was he?" asked her companion sceptically, "sounds like one of those
+Italian fellows."
+
+"He was Queen Mary's chaperon," Peggy explained vaguely, "and he sang
+her love songs."
+
+"Good," said the voice agreeably.
+
+"Can't you think of something else for me?" said the unseen, gloomily
+appalled by the prospect of having doughnut recipes pronounced over his
+remains.
+
+"How would you like to be Darnley?" said Peggy. "He was her husband."
+"I'll be Darnley," came from the darkness so decidedly that Peggy
+jumped.
+
+"You have to get blown-up right off," she hastened to add. "Darnley
+did."
+
+"Oh he did, did he?" the voice spoke with deeper gloom.
+
+"Queen Mary did it," added Peggy.
+
+"Well, even in the Dark Ages matrimony seems to have given your sex the
+same privileges," philosophized her companion cynically.
+
+"How mean!" said Peggy coldly, "I shall play at being Elizabeth all
+alone."
+
+"It wouldn't suit you," said her discarded leading man, "not with your
+voice."
+
+"Why not?" said Peggy.
+
+"Because it's not hard and cold and metallic enough. Because it has too
+much womanly sweetness in it and not enough harsh masculinity."
+
+"What a good dramatic critic you would make!" said Peggy a little
+spitefully, "and since you are reading voices I can tell quite well by
+yours that you are fat and red faced."
+
+The man laughed.
+
+"And by the same token you are all sweetness and blue eyes and dearness
+and dimples," he punished her. Then the banter in his tones died
+suddenly out.
+
+"There's something I want to tell you," he said abruptly, with a
+movement that seemed in the darkness like a sudden squaring of his
+shoulders. "But first I want you to tell me your name."
+
+"What a sudden descent from romance and poetry to mere stupid facts,"
+hedged Peggy. "Think, in this atmosphere of royalties if it should be
+Bridget, or, still more horrible, Mamie."
+
+"Please," the voice persisted in its gravity, "we have been
+fellow-prisoners, you know, and you should be kind."
+
+Peggy told him with the full three-syllabled dignity of the "Margaret."
+
+"Mine," he continued, "is John Barrett."
+
+"Now," cried Peggy, "if this were a proper adventure we have reached the
+place when I should be able to say, 'Why! not the Jack Barrett that
+Brother Billy knew at Harvard?' Then you would cry, 'And this is my old
+chum William's little sister Peggy that used to send him fudge!' and
+then everything would be all right. But I haven't any brother at all,"
+she finished regretfully.
+
+"And Harvard wasn't my college," said her companion. "However," he went
+on, "it would take more than the conventional backing of many brother
+Billies to put me right with you after I've told you what I have to tell
+you."
+
+"Then don't do it," said Peggy softly.
+
+"If I didn't know you'd find it out in a very few minutes I wouldn't,"
+he confessed shamelessly. "But before I tell you I want you to know what
+finding you here meant to me. You've got to realize the temptation
+before you can understand the fall. You always got away from me, from
+that first time in Liverpool----"
+
+"Oh!" said Peggy with a gasp.
+
+"And at Paris and at Calais when you smiled adorably at me----"
+
+"I didn't" said Peggy, blushing in the darkness.
+
+"When you didn't smile adorably at me, then," pursued the voice
+relentlessly. "It was always the same. I found you and you were
+gone--snatched away by an unkind fate in the form of your man from
+Cook's. When you sailed away from me at Calais I was booked to leave
+that same day from Antwerp, but I came on here after you instead. London
+is small--the American tourist London, that is--the Abbey, the Museum,
+the galleries, and the Tower, but I seemed to miss you everywhere. It
+was fate again that sent me here to find you asleep in the corner."
+
+"Now I know you are going to tell something very foolish," said Peggy
+reflectively, "when people begin to talk about fate like that you always
+find they are just trying to shift the responsibility."
+
+"I want you to know it wasn't premeditated, however," pursued the voice.
+"It wasn't till the guard shut the door that I thought of it. You will
+believe that, won't you?" he pleaded.
+
+The dimple appeared suddenly in Peggy's cheek. There came an echo from
+without of many footsteps.
+
+"And so," she took up the tale quickly, "having nicely planned it all
+out you shook me rudely to wake me up, told me the door was locked, and
+that it was midnight when it was only four in the afternoon. And it
+wasn't at all necessary to shake me so hard," she continued, "because I
+woke up when you came in."
+
+"Peggy you knew!" the voice cried with a sudden realization, "you knew
+and you stayed!" He caught her hand, and in the darkness she could feel
+his nearness. Then suddenly the door opened letting into the chapel a
+flood of bright sunlight. "Ladies and gentlemen," the sonorous voice of
+the old guard came to them, "this, in the words of Macaulay, is the
+saddest spot on earth," continued the mournful recital, even as, in
+happy contradiction, Peggy and her American, secure in their little
+recess, looked blissfully into each other's eyes.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SANKEY'S DOUBLE-HEADER
+
+A Winter's Tale
+
+By FRANK H. SPEARMAN
+
+
+THE oldest man in the train service didn't pretend to say how long
+Sankey had worked for the company. Pat Francis was a very old conductor;
+but old man Sankey was a veteran when Pat Francis began braking. Sankey
+ran a passenger train when Jimmie Brady was running--and Jimmie
+afterward enlisted and was killed in the Custer fight.
+
+There was an odd tradition about Sankey's name. He was a tall, swarthy
+fellow, and carried the blood of a Sioux chief in his veins. It was in
+the time of the Black Hills excitement, when railroad men, struck by the
+gold fever, were abandoning their trains even at way-stations and
+striking across the divide for Clark's Crossing. Men to run the trains
+were hard to get, and Tom Porter, trainmaster, was putting in every man
+he could pick up without reference to age or color. Porter (he died at
+Julesburg afterward) was a great "jollier," and he wasn't afraid of
+anybody on earth. One day a war party of Sioux clattered into town and
+tore around like a storm. They threatened to scalp everything, even to
+the local tickets. They dashed in on Tom Porter, sitting in the
+despatcher's office upstairs, while the despatcher was hiding below,
+under a loose plank in the baggage-room floor. Tom, being bald as a
+sand-hill, considered himself exempt from scalping parties anyway. He
+was working a game of solitaire when they bore down on him, and got them
+interested in it. That led to a parley, which ended by Porter's hiring
+the whole band to brake on freight trains. Old man Sankey was said to
+have been one of that original war party.
+
+Now this is merely a caboose story, told on winter nights when trainmen
+get stalled in the snow that drifts down from the Sioux country. But
+what follows is better attested.
+
+Sankey, to start with, had a peculiar name--an unpronounceable,
+unspellable, unmanageable name. I never heard it, so I can't give it to
+you; but it was as hard to catch as an Indian pony, and that name made
+more trouble on the payrolls than all the other names put together.
+Nobody at headquarters could handle it; it was never turned in twice
+alike, and they were always writing Tom Porter about the thing. Tom
+explained several times that it was Sitting Bull's ambassador who was
+drawing that money, and that he usually signed the pay-roll with a
+tomahawk. But nobody at Omaha ever knew how to take a joke. The first
+time Tom went down, he was called in very solemnly to explain again
+about the name, and being in a hurry and very tired of the whole
+business, Tom spluttered: "Hang it, don't bother me any more about that
+name! If you can't read it make it Sankey, and be done with it."
+
+They took Tom at his word. They actually did make it Sankey; and that's
+how our oldest conductor came to bear the name of the famous singer. And
+more I may tell you: good name as it was--and is--the Sioux never
+disgraced it.
+
+I suppose every old traveler on the system knew Sankey. He was not only
+always ready to answer questions; but, what is more, ready to answer the
+same question twice. It is that which makes conductors gray-headed and
+spoils their chances for heaven--answering the same questions over and
+over again. Children were apt to be startled a bit at first sight of
+Sankey, he was so dark. But Sankey had a very quiet smile that always
+made them friends after the first trip through the sleepers, and they
+sometimes ran about asking for him after he had left the train. Of late
+years--and this hurts a bit--these very same children, grown ever so
+much bigger, and riding again to or from California or Japan or
+Australia, will ask, when they reach the West End, about the Indian
+conductor. But the conductors who now run the overland trains pause at
+the question, checking over the date limits on the margins of the coupon
+tickets, and handing the envelopes back, look at the children, and say
+quietly: "He isn't running any more."
+
+If you have ever gone over our line to the mountains or to the coast,
+you may remember at McCloud, where they change engines and set the diner
+in or out, the pretty little green park to the east of the depot, with a
+row of catalpa trees along the platform line. It looks like a glass of
+spring water. If it happened to be Sankey's run and a regular West End
+day, sunny and delightful, you would be sure to see standing under the
+catalpas a shy, dark-skinned girl of fourteen or fifteen years, silently
+watching the preparations for the departure of the Overland. And after
+the new engine had been backed champing down, and harnessed to its long
+string of vestibuled sleepers; after the air-hose had been connected and
+examined; after the engineer had swung out of his cab, filled his cups,
+and swung in again; after the fireman and his helper had disposed of
+their slice-bar and shovel and given the tender a final sprinkle, and
+after the conductor had walked leisurely forward, compared time with the
+engineer, and cried, "All Abo-o-o-ard!" then, as your coach moved slowly
+ahead, you might notice, under the receding catalpas, the little girl
+waving a parasol or a handkerchief at the outgoing train. That is, at
+Conductor Sankey; for she was his daughter, Neeta Sankey. Her mother was
+Spanish, and died when Neeta was a wee bit. Neeta and the Limited were
+Sankey's whole world.
+
+When Georgie Sinclair began pulling the Limited, running west opposite
+Foley, he struck up a great friendship with Sankey. Sankey, though he
+was hard to start, was full of early-day stories. Georgie, it seemed,
+had the faculty of getting him to talk; perhaps because when he was
+pulling Sankey's train he made extraordinary efforts to keep on time;
+time was a hobby with Sankey. Foley said he was so careful of it that he
+let his watch stop when he was off duty just to save time. Sankey loved
+to breast the winds and the floods and the snows, and if he could get
+home pretty near on schedule, with everybody else late, he was happy;
+and in respect of that, as Sankey used to say, Georgie Sinclair could
+come nearer gratifying Sankey's ambition than any engine-runner we had.
+Even the firemen used to observe that the young engineer, always neat,
+looked still neater on the days when he took out Sankey's train.
+
+By and by there was an introduction under the catalpas. After that it
+was noticed that Georgie began wearing gloves on the engine--not kid
+gloves, but yellow dogskin; and black silk shirts--he bought them in
+Denver. Then--such an odd way engineers have of paying compliments--when
+Georgie pulled into town on Number Two, if it was Sankey's train, the
+big sky-scraper would give a short, hoarse scream, a most peculiar note,
+just as it drew past Sankey's house, which stood on the brow of the hill
+west of the yards. Thus Neeta would know that Number Two and her father,
+and naturally Mr. Sinclair, were in again, and all safe and sound.
+
+When the railway trainmen held their division fair at McCloud there was
+a lantern to be voted to the most popular conductor--a gold-plated
+lantern with a green curtain in the globe. Cal Stewart and Ben Doton,
+who were very swell conductors and great rivals, were the favorites, and
+had the town divided over their chances for winning it. But at the last
+moment Georgie Sinclair stepped up to the booth and cast a storm of
+votes for old man Sankey. Doton's friends and Stewart's laughed at
+first; but Sankey's votes kept pouring in amazingly. The two favorites
+got frightened; they pooled their issues by throwing Stewart's vote to
+Doton. But it wouldn't do. Georgie Sinclair, with a crowd of
+engineers--Cameron, Kennedy, Foley, Bat Mullen, and Burns--came back at
+them with such a swing that in the final five minutes they fairly
+swamped Doton. Sankey took the lantern by a thousand votes. But I
+understood it cost Georgie and his friends a pot of money.
+
+Sankey said all the time that he didn't want the lantern, but just the
+same he always carried that particular lantern, with his full name,
+Sylvester Sankey, ground into the glass just below the green mantle.
+Pretty soon, Neeta being then eighteen, it was rumored that Sinclair was
+engaged to Miss Sankey, and was going to marry her. And marry her he
+did; though that was not until after the wreck in the Blackwood gorge
+after the Big Snow.
+
+It goes by just that name on the West End yet; for never were such a
+winter and such a snow known on the plains and in the mountains. One
+train on the northern division was stalled six weeks that winter, and
+one whole coach was chopped up for kindling wood. The great and
+desperate effort of the company was to hold open the main line, the
+artery which connected the two coasts. It was a hard winter on trainmen.
+Week after week the snow kept falling and blowing. The trick was not to
+clear the line; it was to keep it clear. Every day we sent out trains
+with the fear that we should not see them again for a week. Freight we
+didn't pretend to move; local passenger business had to be abandoned.
+Coal, to keep our engines and our towns supplied, we had to carry; and
+after that all the brains and muscle and motive power were centered on
+keeping One and Two, our through passenger trains, running.
+
+Our trainmen worked like Americans; there were no cowards on our rolls.
+But after too long a strain men become exhausted, benumbed, indifferent;
+reckless, even. The nerves give out, and will-power seems to halt on
+indecision; but decision is the life of the fast train. None of our
+conductors stood the hopeless fight like Sankey. He was patient,
+taciturn, untiring; and in a conflict with the elements, ferocious. All
+the fighting blood of his ancestors seemed to course again in that
+struggle with the winter king. I can see him yet, on bitter days,
+standing alongside the track in a heavy pea-jacket and Napoleon boots, a
+sealskin cap drawn snugly over his straight black hair, watching,
+ordering, signaling, while Number One, with its frost-bitten sleepers
+behind a rotary, tried to buck through ten and twenty-foot cuts which
+lay bank-full of snow west of McCloud.
+
+Not until April did it begin to look as if we should win out. A dozen
+times the line was all but choked on us. And then, when snow-plows were
+disabled and train crews desperate, there came a storm that discounted
+the worst blizzard of the winter. As the reports rolled in on the
+morning of the 5th, growing worse as they grew thicker, Neighbor,
+dragged out, played out, mentally and physically, threw up his hands. It
+snowed all day the 6th, and on Saturday morning the section men reported
+thirty feet in the Blackwood canyon. It was six o'clock when we got the
+word, and daylight before we got the rotary against it. They bucked away
+till noon without much headway, and came in with their gear smashed and
+a driving-rod fractured. It looked as if we were at last beaten. Number
+One pulled into McCloud that day eighteen hours late; it was Sankey's
+and Sinclair's run west.
+
+There was a long council in the round-house. The rotary was knocked out;
+coal was running low in the chutes. If the line wasn't kept open for the
+coal from the mountains, it was plain we should be tied until we could
+ship it from Iowa or Missouri. West of Medicine Pole there was another
+big rotary working east, with plenty of coal behind her; but she was
+reported stuck fast in the Cheyenne Hills. Foley made suggestions, and
+Dad Sinclair made suggestions. Everybody had a suggestion left. The
+trouble was, Neighbor said, they didn't amount to anything, or were
+impossible. "It's a dead block, boys," announced Neighbor sullenly after
+everybody had done. "We are beaten unless we can get Number One through
+to-day. Look there: by the holy poker, it's snowing again."
+
+The air was dark in a minute with whirling clouds. Men turned to the
+windows and quit talking. Every fellow felt the same--hopeless; at
+least, all but one. Sankey, sitting back of the stove, was making
+tracings with a piece of chalk. "You might as well unload your
+passengers, Sankey," said Neighbor. "You'll never get 'em through this
+winter."
+
+And it was then that Sankey proposed his double-header.
+
+He devised a snow-plow which combined in one monster ram about all the
+good material we had left, and submitted the scheme to Neighbor.
+Neighbor studied it, and hacked at it all he could, and brought it over
+to the office. It was like staking everything on the last cast of the
+dice, but we were in the state of mind which precedes a desperate
+venture. It was talked over an hour, and orders were finally given by
+the superintendent to rig up the double-header and get against the snow
+with it.
+
+All that day and most of the night Neighbor worked twenty men on
+Sankey's device. By Sunday morning it was in such shape that we began to
+take heart. "If she don't get through, she'll sure get back again, and
+that's what most of 'em don't do," growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey
+showed the new ram to the engineers.
+
+They had taken the 566, George Sinclair's engine, for one head, and
+Burns's, the 497, for the other. Behind these were Kennedy, with the
+314, and Cameron, with the 296. The engines were set in pairs, headed
+each way, and buckled up like pack mules. Over the pilots and stacks of
+the head engines rose the tremendous plows, which were to tackle the
+worst drifts ever recorded, before or since, on the West End. The ram
+was designed to work both ways. Under the coal, each tender was loaded
+with pig-iron.
+
+The beleaguered passengers on Number One, side-tracked in the yards,
+eagerly watched the preparations Sankey was making to clear the line.
+Every amateur on the train had his camera out taking pictures of the
+ram. The town, gathered in a single great mob, looked silently on, and
+listened to the frosty notes of the sky-scrapers as they went through
+their preliminary manoeuvers. Just as the final word was given by
+Sankey, conductor in charge, the sun burst through the fleecy clouds,
+and a wild cheer followed the ram out of the western yard; it was looked
+on as a sign of good luck to see the sun again.
+
+Little Neeta, up on the hill, must have seen them as they pulled out.
+Surely she heard the choppy ice-bitten screech of the 566; for that was
+never forgotten, whether the service was special or regular. Besides,
+the head cab of the ram carried this time not only Georgie Sinclair, but
+her father as well. Sankey could handle a slice-bar as well as a punch,
+and rode on the head engine, where, if anywhere, the big chances would
+come. What Sankey was not capable of in the train-service we never knew,
+because he rose superior to every emergency that ever confronted him.
+
+Bucking snow is principally brute force; there is very little coaxing.
+West of the bluffs there was a volley of sharp tooting, like code
+signals between a fleet of cruisers, and in just a minute the four
+ponderous engines, two of them in the back motion, fires white and
+throats bursting, steamed wildly into the canyon. Six hundred feet from
+the first cut, Sinclair's whistle signaled again. Burns and Cameron and
+Kennedy answered; and then, literally turning the monster ram loose
+against the dazzling mountain, the crews settled themselves for the
+shock.
+
+At such a moment there is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong,
+eternity is too close to consider. There came a muffled drumming on the
+steam-chests; a stagger and a terrific impact; and then the recoil, like
+the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shot into the air fifty feet, and
+the wind carried a cloud of fleecy confusion over the ram and out of the
+cut. The cabs were buried in white, and the great steel frames of the
+engines sprung like knitting-needles under the frightful force of the
+blow. Pausing for hardly a breath, they began the signaling again; then
+backed up and up and up the line; and again the massive machines were
+hurled screaming into the cut. "We're getting there, Georgie," cried
+Sankey when the rolling and lurching had stopped.
+
+No one else could tell a thing about it, for it was snow and snow and
+snow; above and behind and ahead and beneath. Sinclair coughed the
+flakes out of his eyes and nose and mouth like a baffled collie. He
+looked doubtful of the claim until the mist had blown clear and the
+quivering monsters were again recalled for a dash. Then it was plain
+that Sankey's instinct was right; they were gaining.
+
+Again they went in, lifting a very avalanche over the stacks, packing
+the banks of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again, as the drivers
+stuck, they raced in a frenzy, and into the shriek of the wind went the
+unearthly scrape of the overloaded safeties. Slowly and sullenly the
+machines were backed again. "She's doing the work, Georgie," cried
+Sankey. "For that kind of a cut she's as good as a rotary. Look
+everything over now while I go back and see how the boys are standing
+it. Then we'll give her one more, and give it the hardest kind."
+
+And they did give her one more; and another. Men at Santiago put up no
+stouter fight than these men made that Sunday morning in the canyon of
+the Blackwood. Once they went in, and twice. And the second time the
+bumping drummed more deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, and
+gained against the white wall; heaved and stumbled ahead; and with a
+yell from Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the double-header shot
+her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine
+flew past the divided walls each cab took up the cry; it was the wildest
+crowd that ever danced to victory. Through they went and half-way across
+the bridge before they could check their monster catapult. Then, at a
+half full, they shot it back again at the cut, for it worked as well one
+way as the other.
+
+"The thing is done," declared Sankey, when they got into position up the
+line for a final shoot to clean out the eastern cut and get head for a
+dash across the bridge and into the west end of the canyon, where there
+lay another mountain of snow to split. "Look the machines over pretty
+close, boys," said he to the engineers. "If nothing's sprung, we'll take
+a full head across the gorge--the bridge will carry anything--and buck
+the west cut. Then after we get Number One through this afternoon,
+Neighbor can put his baby cabs in here and keep 'em chasing all night.
+But it's done snowing," he added, looking at the leaden sky.
+
+He had the plans all figured out for the master mechanic, the shrewd,
+kindly old man. I think, myself, there's no man on earth like a good
+Indian; and, for that matter, none like a bad one. Sankey knew by a
+military instinct just what had to be done and how to do it. If he had
+lived, he was to have been assistant superintendent. That was the word
+that leaked from headquarters afterward. And with a volley of jokes
+between the cabs and a laughing and yelling between toots, down went
+Sankey's double-header again into the Blackwood gorge.
+
+At the same moment, by an awful misunderstanding of orders, down came
+the big rotary from the west end with a dozen cars of coal behind. Mile
+after mile it had wormed east toward Sankey's ram, and it now burrowed
+through the western cut of the Blackwood, crashed through the drift
+Sankey was aiming for, and whirled out into the open, dead against him,
+at forty miles an hour. Each train, in order to make the grade and the
+blockade against it, was straining the cylinders.
+
+Through the swirling snow that half hid the bridge and interposed
+between the rushing plows Sinclair saw them coming. He yelled. Sankey
+saw them a fraction of a second later, and while Sinclair struggled with
+the throttle and the air, Sankey gave the alarm through the whistle to
+the poor fellows in the blind pockets behind. But the track was at the
+worst. Where there was no snow there were "whiskers"; oil itself
+couldn't have been worse to stop on. It was the old and deadly peril of
+fighting blockades from both ends on a single track. The great rams of
+steel and fire had done their work, and with their common enemy
+overcome, they dashed at each other like madmen across the Blackwood
+gorge.
+
+The fireman at the first cry shot out the side. Sankey yelled at
+Sinclair to jump. But Georgie shook his head: he never would jump.
+Without hesitating, Sankey picked him from the levers in his arms,
+planted a sure foot, and hurled him like a coal shovel through the
+gangway far out into the gorge. The other cabs were already empty. But
+the instant's delay in front cost Sankey his life. Before he himself
+could jump the rotary crashed into the 566. They reared like mountain
+lions, pitched sideways and fell headlong into the creek, fifty feet.
+Sankey went under them. He could have saved himself; he chose to save
+George. There wasn't time to do both; he had to choose, and to choose
+instantly. Did he, maybe, think in that flash of Neeta and of whom she
+needed most--of a young and a stalwart protector rather than an old and
+failing one? I do not know; I know only what he did. Every one who
+jumped got clear. Sinclair lit in ten feet of snow, and they pulled him
+out with a rope: he wasn't scratched. Even the bridge was not badly
+strained. Number One pulled over it next day.
+
+Sankey was right; there was no more snow; not even enough to cover the
+dead engines that lay on the rocks. But the line was open: the fight was
+won.
+
+There never was a funeral in McCloud like Sankey's. George Sinclair and
+Neeta followed first, and of the mourners there were as many as there
+were spectators. Every engine on the division carried black for thirty
+days.
+
+Sankey's contrivance for fighting snow has never yet been beaten on the
+high line. It is perilous to go against a drift behind it: something has
+to give. But it gets there, as Sankey got there--always; and in time of
+blockade and desperation on the West End they still send out Sankey's
+double-header; though Sankey, as the conductors tell the children,
+traveling east or traveling west--Sankey isn't running any more.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+AUNT MARY TELEGRAPHS
+
+A Comedy of Everyday Life
+
+By LLOYD E. LONERGAN
+
+
+     "AUNTIE left on the six-o'clock train last night. Meet her at the
+     depot.--CLARA."
+
+This telegram, dated New York, greeted Frank Carey when he reached his
+pleasant little home on Indiana Avenue, Chicago.
+
+"Aunt Mary will be here to-night," he said to his wife, "my rich aunt
+from New York, you know. I am to meet her at the depot."
+
+"When does she arrive?" fluttered pretty little Mrs. Carey, a bride of a
+few months. "Cannot I go with you to the depot?"
+
+Mr. Carey said she could, then he thought for a moment, then he put his
+doubts into words after a second reading of the telegram.
+
+"I wonder what road she is coming in on?" he said.
+
+"'Twas stupid of her," replied his wife, "but call up the railroads and
+find out which one has a six-o'clock train from New York. Silly!"
+
+Mr. Carey kissed his wife and remarked that she was the brightest little
+girl in the world, after which he gaily telephoned, listened intently to
+someone on the other end of the line, made numerous notes, and turned to
+his wife in despair.
+
+"Bless Clara!" he said devoutly.
+
+His wife looked surprised, so he hastily explained.
+
+"There is a six o'clock train from New York on the Pennsylvania, also on
+the Lake Shore, likewise on the Michigan Central, and the Lehigh
+Valley, and the Grand Trunk, and the West Shore, and the B. &. O.!"
+
+"Which one is auntie coming on?" inquired Mrs. Carey with interest.
+
+"All of them," replied her husband wrathfully. "She is sitting on the
+cow-catcher of each and every train, and if I'm not there to meet her
+she'll disinherit me. Haven't you any sense?"
+
+Whereupon there were tears, apologies, and finally a council of war. It
+was Mrs. Carey who solved the problem.
+
+"All we have to do," she cried, "is to meet all the trains. Won't it be
+cute?"
+
+Carey didn't think so, but was afraid to express himself. He simply
+tried to look impressed and listened.
+
+"There are only seven trains," she continued. "Now you," counting on her
+fingers, "are one, and I am two and Mr. and Mrs. Haines next door, who
+belong to my whist club, are four; and Ella Haines is five; and I just
+saw Mr. What's-his-name go in to call on Ella--and he'll be six; and
+that horrid man on the next block who is in your lodge will have to be
+seven."
+
+The "train meeters" were gathered together inside of an hour. Mrs. Carey
+overruled all objections and laughed away all difficulties. She told
+them it would be a lark, and they believed it--at the time! As none of
+them had met Mrs. Smith (Aunt Mary), Carey was called upon for a
+description.
+
+"Aunt Mary," he said, "is of medium height, dark complexion and usually
+dresses in black. She is fifty-eight years old, but tells people she is
+under fifty. You cannot miss her." And with this they were compelled to
+be satisfied.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Ella Haines was assigned to the Pennsylvania depot and arrived late. All
+the New York passengers had disembarked, but an old woman was standing
+at the entrance and looking anxiously at the passers-by.
+
+"Mrs. Smith?" said Ella, inquiringly.
+
+"Thank heaven, you have come," was the joyous reply.
+
+"Here," and she stepped to one side and revealed a little girl who was
+gazing out at the tracks. "I've had such a time with that brat and I'll
+never travel with another again. I've just got time to catch my train
+for St. Paul. Good-bye!" Whereupon, disregarding Ella's cries and her
+protestations, the woman rushed madly to the other end of the depot and
+disappeared through a gate which closed behind her with a slam. It was
+the last call for the St. Paul train.
+
+Naturally, Ella did not know what to do. She hung around the depot for
+half an hour, hoping someone would claim the child. Then she put the
+little one in a cab and gave the Careys' address in Indiana Avenue.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Walter Haines went to the Lake Shore depot. One of the first passengers
+to emerge from the New York train was a female, who seemed to answer the
+general description furnished by Carey. She was breathless as if from
+running faster than an old woman should run. As she reached Haines, she
+stopped and glared at him.
+
+"Mrs. Smith?" he inquired, lifting his hat.
+
+The woman grabbed him by the arm. "I knew you would be here, but hurry,
+that man is after me!"
+
+"What man?" asked Haines in surprise.
+
+"Hush, we cannot talk now," was the reply. "Get a carriage and drive
+fast, fast; we must escape him."
+
+"George couldn't come, he sent me. My name is Haines," said the puzzled
+escort.
+
+"I don't care if your name is Beelzebub" was the impatient retort. "You
+get that carriage or I'll write to Roosevelt." And Mr. Haines, very much
+astonished, complied.
+
+He thought as he drove away that he heard someone shouting, but was not
+sure; in fact, he paid no attention, for he was too busy thinking what a
+queer old aunt his friend Carey had.
+
+The "horrid man who belonged to the lodge" was named Perkins. He reached
+the B. & O. depot half an hour ahead of time, so he went across the
+street and had a drink. When he returned he discovered that No. 7 was
+late, and so had another. Also, several more. By the time the train did
+arrive he was in such a mellow state that he couldn't tell a parlor car
+from a lake steamer--and he didn't care! He had likewise forgotten what
+George's aunt looked like, but that, too, was a trivial matter. So he
+stood at the gate, beaming blandly at every person that appeared.
+
+"Are you Georsh's saunt?" he inquired of a tall man with white
+side-whiskers and garbed in ministerial black. His answer was a look of
+horror, but it had no effect on Perkins, who repeated his question at
+intervals without result. His lack of success finally drove him to
+tears.
+
+"Poor Georsh!" he sobbed. "Dear old Georsh! Must have an naunt! Break
+hish heart if he don't have an naunt! Can't fine his naunt! Get him one
+myself!"
+
+A gang of immigrants were passing at the time. Perkins grabbed one of
+them by the arm.
+
+"Be nish fellow," he said persuasively, "be Georsh's aunt."
+
+The immigrant was obdurate, but Perkins was persistent. He drew a roll
+of bills from his pocket and peeled off a five. This he pressed upon his
+new-found friend.
+
+"Be a good aunt," he said, "be a nish aunt, and I'll give you two more
+like thish!"
+
+The Italian, overcome by the sight of so much wealth, fell captive to
+the eloquence of Perkins. The latter was delighted. He escorted his
+victim to a saloon across the street and hurled six drinks into him in
+rapid succession. The immigrant beamed and forgot all his troubles. He
+lit a fifteen-cent cigar and puffed away as if he were used to it.
+
+"Be your-a aunt," he said, "be-a anybody's aunt. You good-a feller."
+
+This sentiment led to another round of drinks, and then the pair tumbled
+into a cab, singing discordantly in two languages. Perkins fortunately
+remembered the address of Haines, and was able to mumble it so that the
+hackman could understand. Therefore there was no bar to his enjoyment.
+
+Of course they stopped en route, for Perkins was brimming over with
+gratitude and the cabman was included in their rejoicing. Long before
+they reached Indiana Avenue, everybody was drunk except the horse.
+
+In the meantime there was all sorts of trouble in the modest residence
+of George Carey. The head of the household had fumed and fretted about
+the Michigan Central depot, and finally started home, auntless. There he
+met his wife, Mrs. Haines and Ella's young man with similar stories.
+Five minutes later a carriage drove up and Ella and her charge alighted.
+
+"Isn't she a dear little girl?" gurgled Miss Haines, who, being petite
+and worried, didn't know anything else to do under the circumstances
+except to gurgle.
+
+Carey gazed at the young woman with distinct disapproval for the first
+time in his life.
+
+"I know the popular impression is that old ladies shrink," he said, "but
+Aunt Mary could never have shrunk to that size. Where did you get her
+and why?"
+
+Falteringly, Miss Haines explained. Then she cried. The child, who had
+regarded them gravely up to this point, took it for a signal. She
+screamed, then she roared. Nobody could comfort her or find out who she
+was.
+
+The arrival of another cab distracted their attention. The bell rang
+loudly. As Carey opened the door, an old woman bounded in. Her hat was
+on one side of her head and her eyes gleamed madly.
+
+"Safe at last!" she cried. Then she ran upstairs, entered Mrs. Haines's
+room, and locked the door. Through the panels came the sound of
+hysterical laughter.
+
+Walter Haines entered the house at this moment. His attitude was
+distinctly apologetic.
+
+"Remarkable old lady, isn't she?" he ventured.
+
+"Who?" asked Mr. Carey.
+
+"Why your aunt, of course; didn't you see her come in?"
+
+Carey choked down his wrath out of respect to the ladies, but it was
+hard work.
+
+"I never saw that woman before," he remarked; "you brought her here
+uninvited, now you take her away."
+
+Naturally this provoked argument. Mrs. Haines sided with her husband,
+Mrs. Carey flew to the aid of her worser half, Miss Haines wept, and the
+little girl screamed. Upstairs, the bogus Aunt Mary was still laughing.
+
+None of the interested parties could tell afterward how long the talk
+continued. A louder noise outside drew them all to the front porch. In
+front of the house was a hansom cab drawn by a disgusted-looking horse.
+He looked and acted like one who had been compelled against his will to
+mingle with disreputable associates.
+
+The driver descended from his seat and fell full length upon the
+pavement. He didn't try to get up, but chanted in a husky tone, "Hail!
+hail! the gang's all here!!!"
+
+Then the door of the cab opened and Mr. Perkins appeared. Nobody could
+deny that he was very much the worse for wear. But Mr. Perkins bore
+himself like a conqueror. He advanced hastily and embraced Carey with
+enthusiasm. Carey recoiled.
+
+"Dear Georsh," said Perkins. "Got you an naunt!"
+
+Apprehensively, Carey ran to the carriage. Huddled upon the floor was an
+object that moved faintly. From the atmosphere Sherlock Holmes would
+have deduced that a whisky refinery had exploded in that cab a few hours
+before. The onlooker gingerly touched the object. It rolled over, then
+it rolled out of the cab and lay on the sidewalk beside the driver.
+
+Perkins kept on smiling. "Your naunt," he remarked, blandly. "Couldn't
+get you what you wanted. Got you thish one!"
+
+At this moment, Carey remembered that he had a telephone. He spurned his
+"aunt" with his foot and passed into the house. He called up Police
+Headquarters. His friend, Sergeant Bob O'Rourke, was on duty, which made
+it easier for him.
+
+"Bob," he said, after greetings had been exchanged, "have you an alarm
+out for a little girl kidnapped from the Pennsylvania station?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And does anybody want a crazy woman, last seen on a Lake Shore train?"
+
+"Yes; her keeper was here half an hour ago," was the reply. "He was
+taking her to Kankakee and she made a get-away. What do you know about
+her?"
+
+"They are both here," was the reply. "Send the wagon, and just for good
+measure I'll throw in an Italian immigrant who came in over the B. & O.
+and a cab-driver. They are both drunk, very drunk, and please take the
+cab away too."
+
+The next half hour gave Indiana Avenue residents plenty to talk about
+for a month. But finally the combat was over, and Carey and his friends
+sat down exhausted.
+
+"But what I would like to know," remarked the head of the house, "where,
+oh where is Aunt Mary?"
+
+It was a messenger-boy who brought the answer--a telegram dated Niagara
+Falls, current date and reading:
+
+     "Stopped over here. Isn't the view from Goat Island wonderful? Leave
+     for Chicago on the first train. Meet me."
+
+There was a sudden painful silence.
+
+"Does anybody know how many trains there are from Niagara Falls?"
+inquired Mrs. Carey, speaking to the company generally. She didn't dare
+to address her husband.
+
+"Just about as many as there are from New York," replied Haines, with a
+woebegone look. "But--"
+
+"Don't finish it," returned Carey, "I am not going to ask you to try
+again, and I am not going to do so myself. Aunt Mary can leave her money
+to anybody she pleases. If I had another night like this the executors
+would be compelled to mail me my cheque to an asylum."
+
+And the next evening Aunt Mary, unattended, reached her nephew's house
+without any trouble at all. She didn't disinherit him; in fact, she felt
+so sorry because of his troubles that she bought Mrs. Carey a complete
+spring outfit regardless of cost.
+
+It's a good thing to have an Aunt Mary, even if she is indefinite in her
+telegrams.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE VENGEANCE OF THE WOLF
+
+A Drama in Wales
+
+By J. AQUILA KEMPSTER
+
+
+IN THE great stone hall of Llangarth, Daurn-ap-Tavis, the old Welsh Wolf
+lay dying. Outside was the night and a sullen gale whose winds came
+moaning down the hills and clung about the house with little bodeful
+whispers that grew to long-drawn eerie wails, while pettish rain-squalls
+spent their spite in futile gusts on door and casement.
+
+And through the night from time to time a horseman came, spurring hard
+and spitting out strange Welsh oaths at the winds that harried him. Five
+had passed the door since sun-down, four worthy sons and a nephew of the
+Wolf. They stood now booted and spurred about the old man's couch, a
+rough-looking crew with the mud caking them from head to foot, while the
+leaping flames from the log fire flung their shadows black and distorted
+far up among the rafters.
+
+They hung around him sullenly, but as he looked them up and down the
+sick man's eyes took on a new keenness and a low, throaty laugh that was
+half a growl escaped him.
+
+"Well, Cedric, man, what devil's game have you been playing of late?
+and, Tad, you black rascal--ah, 'twas a pity you were born to Gruffydd
+instead of me. Well, well, boys, the old Wolf's cornered at last,
+cornered at last, and Garm, Levin, Rhys--the Cadwallader's going to live
+and laugh, aye, he's going to live and laugh while a Tavis roasts in
+hell."
+
+Garm started with a low growl, while Cedric kicked savagely at a hound
+that lay beside the logs.
+
+"Aye, Ced, kick the old dog, but it won't stop the Cadwallader's laugh."
+
+Cedric clenched his fists at the taunt and his face grew purple in the
+fire glow, but old Daurn went on remorselessly: "Twenty years he's
+laughed at the Wolf and his whelps, an' think you he'll stop now? He was
+always too lucky for me. I thought when my lads grew strong---- But
+there, he laid me low, the only man that ever did, curse him! There's
+the mark, boys; see the shamed blood rise to it?"
+
+He loosened his shirt with a fretful jerk and they bent over and
+glowered at the red scar which ran across his chest. They had all seen
+it times before, knew the dark quarrel and the darker fight, had tingled
+with shame again and again, but to-night it seemed to hold an added
+sting, for the Wolf was going out with his debt unpaid.
+
+Cedric, the elder, gaped and shuddered, then fell to cursing again, but
+Daurn drew back the quilt and went on talking: "I swore by the body of
+God to get even, and day and night I've watched my chance. I tried at
+Tredegar, and that night ye all mind at Ebbu Vale. Yes, I tell you a
+dozen times, but he's a fox, curse him! a sly old fox, and now the
+Wolf's teeth are broken. What's that, Ced? Look to him, Tad--aye, look
+to all thy cousins. Fine grown lads, big, brave, and fierce, but the
+Cadwallader still lives and laughs; yes, laughs at old Daurn and his
+boys. My God! to think of it."
+
+"Curse me! choke me!" Cedric stormed out in spluttering fury, gripping
+his sword with one hand while he dragged at his coat with the other.
+"I'll cut--cut his bl-black gizzard, blast him. I'm a c-c-coward, eh!
+Right in my t-teeth! Well, wait till th'-th' dawn an' see."
+
+He had crammed his hat over his eyes and with coat buttoned all awry was
+half way to the door before Tad caught and held him, whispering in his
+ear: "Steady, Ced, steady. He's got some plan or I'm a fool. Come back
+an' wait a bit, an' if I'm mistaken I'll surely ride along with ye."
+
+Cedric yielded, doubtful and sullen, but Daurn greeted him bravely:
+"God's truth, lad, you've the spirit of the Wolf at least, but you've
+got no brains to plan. Come close an' listen, an' if ye truly want a
+fight thy father'll never balk thee."
+
+Then with faltering breath but gleaming eyes he unfolded the plan he had
+conceived to make his dying a thing of greater infamy than all his
+bloody days.
+
+The beginnings of the feud between the House of the Wolf and that of
+Llyn Gethin, the Cadwallader, were so remote that probably both had
+forgotten, if they ever knew them, for the old Welsh chieftains passed
+their quarrels on from generation to generation and their hot blood
+rarely cooled in the passing. Llyn was about the only man in the country
+who had been able to hold his own against "the Tavis," but hold it he
+had with perhaps a trifle to spare. Indeed, of late years he had let
+slip many an opportunity for reprisals, and thrice had made overtures of
+peace which had been violently rejected. Llyn had fought fair at least,
+even if he had struck hard, but the life of the Wolf had been as
+treacherous as it was bloody. And day by day and year by year, as
+Daurn's strength began to fail and brooding took the place of action,
+the bitterness of his hatred grew, and out of this at last the plan. It
+was simple.
+
+Daurn was old, dying, and weary of the strife. He would pass at peace
+with the world and particularly with his ancient foe. A messenger should
+be sent inviting Llyn and his sons to Llangarth. They would suspect
+nothing, for all Wales knew the Wolf lay low--would probably come
+unarmed and needs must, as time was short, travel by night. Well, there
+was a convenient and lonely spot some three miles from Llangarth--did
+the lads understand? Aye, they understood, but their breath came heavily
+and they glanced furtively each at the other, while the youngest, Rhys,
+shivered and drew closer to Tad.
+
+Daurn's burning eyes questioned them one by one, and one by one they
+bowed their heads but spake never a word.
+
+"Ye'll swear to it, lads," he whispered hoarsely, and drew a long dagger
+from beneath his pillow. For answer there came the rattle of loosened
+steel, and as he again bared his breast they drew closer in a half
+circle, laying their blades flat above his heart, his own dagger adding
+to the ring of steel.
+
+And then they swore by things unknown to modern men to wipe out the
+shame that had lain so long upon their house, and that before their
+father died.
+
+As their voices ceased the wind outside seemed to take up the burden of
+their bloody oath as if possessed, for it shrieked and wailed down the
+great chimney like some living thing in pain. And then, in a little lull
+following on the sobbing cry, there came a curious straining push that
+shook the closed oak door.
+
+They stood transfixed, for a moment daunted, with their swords half in
+and half out their scabbards, till with a warning gesture to his
+cousins, Black Tad stole softly across the floor and, lifting the heavy
+bar cautiously, opened the door.
+
+He paused an instant on the lintel, motionless and rigid to the point of
+his sword, his eyes fixed on the white face of a girl who was cowered
+back against the further wall. For a fraction of time he hesitated, but
+the awful anguish of the face and the mute, desperate appeal of the
+whole pose settled him. With a rough clatter he sprang into the dim
+passage, rattling his sword and stamping his feet, at the same time
+giving vent with his lips to the yelp of a hound in pain, and following
+it with rough curses and vituperation. Then, without another glance at
+the girl, he re-entered the hall and slammed to the door, grumbling at
+Rhys for not keeping his dogs tied up.
+
+By one o'clock the great hall was still. The men were lying scattered
+about the house, for the most part sleeping as heavily as many jorums of
+rum made possible.
+
+But the firelight flickering in the hall caught ever an answering gleam
+from the old Wolf's eyes as he lay there gray, shaggy, and watchful.
+From time to time his bony fingers plucked restlessly at his beard, and
+now and again his lips stretched back over yellow teeth in an evil smile
+as he gloated over the details of his coming vengeance.
+
+And out in a chill upper hall Gwenith, the fair daughter of a black
+house, sat in a deep embrasure, her arms clinging to the heavy oak bars
+desperately. The wind moaned and sighed about her while her white
+terrified lips echoed the agony of her heart. And the burden of her
+whispered cry was ever, "Davy!--Davy!" and then: "For the Christ's sake!
+Davy!--Davy!--Davy!"
+
+So the night drew on with the men and dogs sleeping torpidly; with the
+old Wolf chuckling grimly as the shadows closed about him, and with the
+child in the cold above sobbing out pitiful prayers for her lover, for
+only yesterday she had plighted her troth to Davy Gethin, the
+Cadwallader's youngest son.
+
+These two had met in the early days when she wandered free over the
+rolling hills, a wild young kilted sprite, fearful of nothing save her
+father and his grim sons. And Davy had wooed her ardently, though in
+secret from the first. It had been charming enough in the past despite
+the fear that ever made her say him nay. Then yesterday he had won her
+from her tears and fears, won her by his brave and tender front, and she
+had placed her little hands on his breast and sworn to follow him
+despite all else when once her father had passed away. And now, twelve
+short hours after her fingers had touched him, her fear had caught her
+by the throat, for they would kill him surely, her prince, the only joy
+she had ever known.
+
+So went the night, with desperate distracted plans, and the dumb agony
+of cold despair. And in the very early dawn, when men and things cling
+close to sleep, she heard a gentle stirring--a muffled footfall on the
+stairs, and Black Tad stood at her side, a great shadow, questioning
+her.
+
+"Mistress, what heard you?"
+
+And she answered quick with loathing: "All! all the vile, shameful
+thing!"
+
+"They are our foes" he muttered moodily.
+
+"Foes! Foes! Nay, none of you are worthy any foe--save the hangman! Ah,
+God will curse you! Cruel! Cruel!"
+
+She leaned out of her seat toward him, her panting breath and fierce
+words lashing him so that he stepped back a pace, dazed--she was ever
+such a gentle child.
+
+"What would you, Gwen?"
+
+"What would I! My God!--a fair fight at least. Oh, Tad, and I thought
+you were a brave man."
+
+"I--I--damme, I, what can I do?--and what does it matter?"
+
+"Matter?--a foul blot!--matter to you and Ced and father--nothing!
+Murderers! I hate you all! What has the Cadwallader done? All Wales
+knows 'twas ever father set on him, not he on father--Always!--always, I
+say! Aye, I remember that bloody night at Ebbu Vale. Shame! Shame! And
+the harrying and burning at Rhyll, when the mother and her babes
+perished. No, you weren't there, Tad, but you know and I know who was.
+Ah, Tad, she's crying to God--that mother, and holding the little dead
+things in her hands, close up to his face. And now you'd murder Llyn,
+for all he's ever been for peace."
+
+"Hush-s-sh! not so loud, Gwen."
+
+"Not so loud! not so loud!" she jibed bitterly. "If you fear my poor
+voice now, what will it be when all Wales is ringing with this last foul
+deed?"
+
+Tad breathed hard, then caught her wrists suddenly, crushing them in his
+fierceness: "Listen, Gwenith. After all I'm no Tavis--I'm Gruffydd, and
+I love you."
+
+She shrank away with wide, fearful eyes, her breath coming in little
+painful gasps.
+
+"What--what do you mean, Tad?"
+
+"I love you, Gwen."
+
+"And----?"
+
+"Well, I'm no Tavis--I'm Gruffydd."
+
+Slowly the meaning which he himself hardly understood dawned on her.
+
+"You'll save them, Tad?"
+
+"Na, na. A fair fight is what you said. 'Tis all I can do."
+
+"And you will?"
+
+"I love you," he persisted stubbornly.
+
+She closed her eyes tightly and leaned back against the wooden shutter,
+her hands still held close in his grasp. And she strove to see clearly
+through the mist of horror and pain. It was a chance, at least a
+fighting chance, to save Davy, her prince; the only chance, the only
+way, and outside that what else mattered?
+
+Her eyes opened and her lips trembled; then she got her strength back
+and faced him in the dim dawn.
+
+"My life for theirs, Tad,--is that it?"
+
+Her eyes and her question shamed him, but he clung to his text doggedly,
+for he had loved her long and hopelessly in his wild, stubborn way, and
+this was his first and only desperate chance.
+
+"I love ye, Gwenith, I love ye!"
+
+There came a stir in the far hall, a long-drawn yawn; and at the sound
+the girl whispered fiercely: "Well, it's a bargain; give them fair
+warning and I'll--I'll do--give you your will. Yes, I swear it by the
+dear Saint David. Quick! let me go--no, not now!--Tad, I command you,
+I--I--Quick! that's Garm's voice; let me go."
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+"Llyn Gethin! a word in your ear before we ride on."
+
+It was Tad who spoke to the old Cadwallader out in the moonlight. Llyn
+had answered Daurn's urgent message for peace, and a few miles north of
+Llangarth had met Tad. At the words the old man looked at him curiously,
+but reined his horse in, while his sons watched the pair suspiciously,
+for they were young, their blood and their hate still ran hotly, and
+save for their father would have had none of this death-bed
+reconciliation.
+
+"Well, lad, what is it?" asked Llyn, when they were out of earshot.
+
+"A word of warning, sir--from one who hates you."
+
+"Ah! You were ever a good hater, boy. What is it?"
+
+"'Tis a trick o 'mine, sir--this visit--and you'd better ride back."
+
+"I think not, Tad."
+
+"Well, have your way, but if you ride with me you ride to hell."
+
+"We ride with you, Tad."
+
+"Your blood be on you and your sons, then, Llyn Gethin. You're safe to
+the stone bridge; after that fend for yourself. I--I'm a cursed traitor,
+but, by David, I strike with my house. There, I've warned you, and God
+forgive me."
+
+"Amen, lad! Will you shake hands before we ride?"
+
+"No, choke me! I'd sooner ding my dagger in your neck."
+
+So they rejoined the waiting group and rode forward, Tad moodily in
+advance, Llyn and his sons in a whispering bunch some yards behind. It
+had been Tad's own suggestion that he ride forward and meet the Gethins
+so they might be lured the more easily to the turn beyond the bridge.
+Now they followed on till they saw the white masonry gleaming in the
+moonlight, and then the dark form of Tad's horse crossing it, when there
+was a halt and a grim tightening of belts and loosening of swords. And
+as the man on the bridge threw up his arm, Llyn answered the sign
+hoarsely: "God keep thee, son of Gruffydd!" he cried. Then as his sons
+closed in he turned on them sternly: "Remember, lads! who touches him
+touches me. Ah! steady now! Forward!"
+
+Even as they clattered on the bridge Tad's challenge and signal to his
+kinsmen rang out furiously:
+
+"The Wolf! The Wolf and Saint David!"
+
+Then came a rush of horse and steel and wild-eyed men, which but for
+their preparation would have swept the Gethins down. As it was they met
+it fiercely as it came. They had not come unarmed--perhaps wise old Llyn
+distrusted such late penitence even as did his sons. Be that as it may,
+the cry of "Cadwallader!" rose against "The Wolf!" and bore it back, for
+even in the first wild rush, Cedric fell away before a long, swift
+thrust, and a moment later Rhys, the youngest of the house went down and
+died beneath the stamping iron hoofs.
+
+When Llyn saw this he called to stop the fight, but Tad, in a frenzy of
+horror and remorse, flung on again with Garth and Levin striking wild
+beside him. 'Twas a wicked rush, but now the fight stood five to three,
+and in the crash Levin slipped and got a dagger in his throat, while Tad
+spurred through an open way. Then as he reined and turned, the end was
+come, for Garm's shrill death-cry tore the air, and he was left alone.
+
+Thrice he charged like a wounded boar, shouting hoarsely for the house
+he had betrayed. "The Wolf! The Wolf! Saint David and the Wolf!"
+
+And ever he found that open way and ever their steel avoided him.
+
+At last he reined in his sweating mare and fell to cursing, his face
+distraught with agony and wet with blood and sweat and tears. So he
+stood, desperate--at bay, and taunted them with every vileness his
+furious tongue could frame. Then faltered at last with a great
+heartbroken sob, for they sat silent and still and would not give him
+fight.
+
+On the road at his horse's feet Cedric lay and Rhys, and over yonder in
+the grass the other two. He swayed weakly as he looked, then slid from
+his saddle and stooping, kissed his cousins one by one, with those grim,
+silent figures looking on. He broke his sword across his knee--his
+father, Gruffydd's sword--and flung the pieces with an oath at Llyn.
+Then, ere they could guess his meaning, his dagger flashed, and with a
+last weak cry for "the Wolf," he fell with the men of his House.
+
+       *        *       *       *       *
+
+Back at Llangarth the great hall was aglow and Daurn chuckled and waited
+and plucked at his beard, till, just past midnight, there came a sudden
+commotion and the heavy tramp of horses in the outer court. Then Gwenith
+ran in white and wild, and kneeling, buried her sobs in the drapery of
+the couch. And ere her father could question her a group of sombre
+figures filled the doorway.
+
+'Twas a dream--surely 'twas a fearful dream! Or were they ghosts? Yes,
+that was it; see the blood on them! He was either dreaming or these were
+the very dead.
+
+They drew up to the couch, Llyn and his tall, stern sons. Daurn knew
+them well and strove to curse them, but the Cadwallader's grave voice
+hushed him to a sudden fear.
+
+"Peace be with thee, Daurn-ap-Tavis, we come--to bid thee farewell."
+
+Daurn gasped and stuttered, his fingers clawing fearfully while a cold
+sweat broke out over his forehead. But ere he found his voice two of
+Llyn's sons, David and Sion, drew away to the door, and later, Llewellen
+and Pen. They came back heavily and laid their burdens gently by the
+fire logs and returned, then came again and went. Five times in all. And
+an awful fear was in Daurn's eyes as he glared at those still, muffled
+shapes lying close beside him in the firelight.
+
+Then Llyn spoke, slow and sorrowfully, as he stooped and one by one drew
+the face-cloths from the dead.
+
+"Peace be with thee, Daurn-ap-Tavis; thy son Cedric--bids thee farewell.
+
+"Rhys--bids thee farewell.
+
+"Also Tad, thy brother's son--bids thee farewell."
+
+But the end was come, for Daurn, with a little childish cry, had gone to
+seek his sons. Llyn stooped and gently closed the old Wolf's eyes, then
+with bent head and weary step passed from the room.
+
+But young Davy stole back softly and knelt near the stricken girl at the
+foot of the couch.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE WOOING OF BETTINA
+
+A Story of Finance
+
+By W.Y. SHEPPARD
+
+
+MR. PAUL STRUMLEY stood on the veranda of Mr. Richard Stokes's sumptuous
+home in the fashionable suburb of Lawrenceville and faced the daughter
+of the house indignantly. The daughter of the house was also plainly
+perturbed. Their mutual agitation was sharply accentuated by the fresh
+calmness of the spring morning, which seemed to hover like a north-bound
+bird over the wide, velvety lawn.
+
+"Bettina," announced Mr. Strumley suddenly, "your father is--is----"
+
+"An old goose."
+
+"No, a brute!"
+
+This explosion appeared momentarily to relieve his state of mind. But in
+his breast there was still left a sufficiency of outraged dignity to
+warm his cheeks hotly, and not by any means without an abundance of
+cause. Scarcely an hour before he had nervously, yet exultantly,
+alighted from his big touring car in front of the Commercial Bank, to
+seek the president of that institution in the sanctity of his private
+office. There, briefly but eloquently, he announced the engagement of
+Miss Bettina Stokes to Mr. Paul Strumley, and naively requested for the
+happy young people a full share of the parental sanction and blessing.
+And his callow confidence can hardly be condemned on recalling that he
+was one of the wealthiest and most popular young swains in the city. Mr.
+Stokes, however, did not seem to take this into consideration. On the
+contrary, he rose to the occasion with an outburst of disapprobation too
+inflammatory to be set on paper, and quickly followed it with a
+picturesque and uncompromising ultimatum. In the confused distress of
+the unexpected Mr. Strumley found himself unable to marshal a single
+specimen of logical refutation. He could only retreat in haste, to
+recover, if possible, at leisure.
+
+But this leisure, the time it had taken him to hurl the machine across
+town to Bettina, had proven sadly insufficient. When he rushed up the
+steps to the veranda, where sat the object of his affections rocking in
+beautiful serenity, he was still choking from indignation, and had found
+it hard to tell her in coherent sentences that her father had
+energetically refused the honor of an alliance with the highly
+respectable Strumley family.
+
+The grounds, however, on which had been based this unreasonable
+objection were of all things under the sun the most preposterous. Mr.
+Stokes had emphatically declared that his daughter's happiness was too
+dear to him to be foolishly entrusted to one who could not even manage
+his own affairs, let alone the affairs of a wife, and, presumably later,
+of a family. Mr. Strumley was rich at present, so much was readily
+conceded; but he was not capable himself of taking care of what a
+thrifty parent had laid by for him. He in his weak-mindedness was
+compelled to hire the brains of a mere substitute, a manager, if you
+prefer. Should anything happen, and such things happen every day, where
+would Mr. Strumley be? And where, pray, would be his wife and family? In
+the poorhouse!
+
+"My daughter is too good for a man who cannot manage his own concerns,"
+the irate father had summed up. "When you have shown yourself capable,
+my lad, of competing in the world with grown-up intellects, then there
+will be time enough for you to contemplate matrimony--and not until
+then. Good morning to you, Mr. Strumley."
+
+"And he snapped his jaws together like a vise," recalled Paul, coming
+out from his gloomy retrospection.
+
+"If he shut them so," and Bettina worked her pretty chin out to its
+farthest extension, "well, that means he is like the man from Missouri;
+you've got to show him before he changes his mind one iota."
+
+"I ought to have been humping over a desk from the start," regretted Mr.
+Strumley, feeling his bulging biceps dolefully. "It's all right stroking
+a crew, and heaps of fun, too, but it doesn't win you a wife. Now
+there's your dad, he couldn't pull a soap box across a bath tub; but he
+can pull through a 'deal' I couldn't budge with a hand-spike."
+
+Miss Bettina sighed sympathetically, and smiled appreciatively. She felt
+deeply for her lover, and was justly proud of such a capable parent.
+"Every one does say papa is an excellent business man," she remarked;
+"and he certainly can swing some wonderful deals. Only yesterday I
+accidentally overheard him telling Mr. Proctor that he held an option--I
+think that was the word--from Haynes, Forster & Company on thousands and
+thousands of acres of timber land in Arkansas. He said it would expire
+to-day at two o'clock, but that he was going to buy the land for
+cash--'spot cash' he said was what they demanded."
+
+Mr. Strumley smiled ruefully. "And I guess it will be some of my 'spot
+cash,'" he ruminated. "I am not saying anything against your father,
+Bettina, but if it wasn't for such idle good-for-nothings as myself, who
+let their money accumulate in his bank, I doubt if he could swing many
+of these 'big deals.' If we were like he wanted us to be, we'd be
+swinging them ourselves."
+
+After Mr. Strumley had finished his bit of philosophy, he fell to
+communing with himself. Apparently his own wisdom had stirred a new
+thought within his breast. It had. He was beginning to wonder what would
+happen if Bettina's father suddenly found himself bereft of sufficient
+"spot cash" to take advantage of this option. Anyone having a second
+call on same might be fortunate enough to swing the "big deal"--and
+profit by it, according to his intentions!
+
+"Paul," Bettina broke in upon his meditations, a little note of hopeful
+pleading in her voice, "it might not be too late for you to--to
+reform?"
+
+Mr. Strumley aroused himself with difficulty, and looked into her
+bewitching face before replying. Then: "Maybe you are right," he mused;
+"at any rate I have an idea." And kissing her thoughtfully, he strode
+down the steps toward where encouragingly panted his car.
+
+The car proudly bore Mr. Strumley and his idea to the brand-new offices
+of a certain young friend of his who had himself only recently
+metamorphosed from the shell to the swivel chair. Mr. Greenlee looked up
+in mute surprise. But Mr. Strumley ignored it and came to the point with
+a rush. Did Mr. Greenlee have twenty thousand dollars in cash to spare?
+He did? Good! Would he lend it to Mr. Strumley on gilt-edge collateral?
+Never mind exclamations; they had no market value. Eight per cent. did.
+Then Mr. Greenlee was willing to make the loan? That was talking
+business; and Mr. Strumley with the securities would call in two hours
+for the cash. That would give Mr. Greenlee ample time in which to get it
+from his bank--the Commercial.
+
+When outside Mr. Strumley allowed himself to smile. Suddenly this
+evidence of inward hilarity broadened into a heartily exploded greeting,
+as a familiar figure turned the corner and advanced directly toward him.
+It was another wealthy customer of the aforesaid bank.
+
+"I was just on my way to your office, Mr. Proctor," Paul announced
+pleasantly, at the same time cautiously drawing to one side the customer
+of the Commercial. "I intend investing heavily in real estate," he
+vouchsafed with admirable sang-froid; "and need, right away, in spot
+cash, about thirty thousand dollars. Have you got that much to spare at
+8 per cent., on first class security?"
+
+Eight per cent! Mr. Proctor's expression expanded. He made his living by
+lending money for much less. If dear Mr. Strumley would call at his
+office within two hours he should have it every cent--just as soon as he
+could get a check cashed at the Commercial.
+
+Next the faithful machine whirled Paul to the rooms of his staid
+attorney and general manager, Mr. John Edwards.
+
+That elderly gentleman welcomed him with his nearest approach to a
+smile. But the young man was in no mood for an elaborate exchange of
+exhilarations. Without preface he inquired the amount of his deposit
+subject to check in the Commercial Bank. Fifty thousand dollars! A most
+delightful sum. He needed it every cent within an hour. Also he wanted
+from his safe-deposit box enough A1 collateral to secure loans of twenty
+and thirty thousand, respectively. But first would Mr. Edwards kindly
+call up and get second option on all Arkansas timber lands represented
+by Haynes, Forster & Company? Mr. Strumley believed that the first
+option was held by a local party. Furthermore he knew it expired to-day;
+and had reasons to believe that a local party would not be able to take
+advantage of it, and he, Mr. Strumley, thought that he could handle the
+property to a good purpose.
+
+For the first time Mr. Edwards learned that his young client had a will
+of his own. After a few fruitless exhortations he rose to obey, but
+remarking: "Right much money in these hard times to withdraw in a lump
+from the bank." Then, with a sidelong glance at the grave, boyish face,
+he added significantly: "Know you would not do anything to jeopardize
+Mr. Stokes's financial standing."
+
+"Oh, a bagatelle like that wouldn't embarrass as shrewd and resourceful
+a business man as he," assured Paul breezily.
+
+"Money is pretty tight," mused the lawyer. But he called up Haynes,
+Forster & Company without further remonstrances and afterward went out
+to perform his commissions. Soon Mr. Strumley lighted a cigar and
+followed. There would be something doing in the way of entertainment
+presently in the neighborhood of the musty old Commercial Bank.
+
+In front of that institution he had the good fortune to meet the town
+miser, who seldom strayed far from the portals behind which reposed his
+hoard. Mr. Strumley halted to liberally wish the local celebrity an
+abundance of good health and many days of prosperity. Incidentally he
+noted through the massive doors that his three cash-seeking friends were
+in the line before the paying teller's window, the lawyer being last
+and Mr. Greenlee first. When the latter came out, still busily trying to
+cram the packages of bills properly in the satchel he carried, Paul
+remarked confidentially to his companion:
+
+"Must be something doing to-day. The big guns are drawing all of theirs
+out."
+
+The old fellow gave a start as the suggestion shot home. Before Paul
+could nurse it further, he had sprinted off up the street like mad,
+chattering to himself about the desirability of returning immediately
+with his certificates of deposit.
+
+It is an old adage that no one knows the genesis of a "run on the bank."
+Maybe Mr. Strumley was the exception which proves the validity of the
+rule. At any rate he considered with large satisfaction the magical
+gathering of a panic-inoculated crowd, which, sans courage, sans reason,
+sans everything but a thirst for the touch of their adored cash,
+clamored loudly, despairingly, for the instant return of their dearly
+beloved.
+
+At last through the meshes of the mad throng appeared the shiny pate of
+Mr. John Edwards. He uttered an exclamation of relief at the sight of
+his calm client.
+
+"Hope you got it before the storm broke?" Mr. Strumley greeted amiably.
+
+"S-s-sh!" cautioned the attorney dramatically. "I was about to go in
+search of you." Then he added in even a lower key: "Mr. Stokes asked me
+to persuade you not to withdraw the money until he had had a chance to
+get the flurry well in hand."
+
+"But the money is mine, and I want it now," expostulated the young man.
+
+"Come with me, please, and listen to reason," beseeched the lawyer,
+drawing him resolutely in the direction of a side entrance. "It would be
+a dire misfortune, sir, a calamity to the community, if the bank were
+forced to close its doors. So far, however, it is only the small
+depositors who are clamoring; but the others will quickly enough follow
+if you do not let your fifty thousand remain to help wipe out this
+first rush. The bank, though, is as sound as a dollar."
+
+In another instant they were through the door, and before Mr. Strumley
+could reply, for the second time that morning he stood in the presence
+of Bettina's father.
+
+"As Mr. Edwards will tell you," explained Paul, unable altogether to
+suppress his nervousness, "I hold second option for to-day on large
+timber tracts in Arkansas, represented by Messrs. Haynes, Forster &
+Company. The first option, I was advised, will expire at two o'clock;
+and my party was of the belief it would not be closed. It is a big deal,
+Mr. Stokes,"--Mr. Stokes winced perceptibly--"and I was extremely
+anxious to swing it, because--er--well, because it's my first big
+venture and much depends on its success."
+
+"Yes," mused Mr. Stokes sadly, "it is quite probable the first option
+may be allowed to lapse, and I understand good money is to be made in
+Arkansas timber." His face had grown a trifle ashy. "Of course, this
+being the case, I feel in honor bound, Mr. Strumley, to instantly recall
+my request."
+
+Paul gave a gasp of admiration. He was glad Bettina's father was "game."
+So was Bettina. In the up-boiling of his feelings he emphatically vetoed
+the determination of the banker. Indeed, so well and eloquently did he
+argue for the retention and use of his funds by the Commercial, that
+even the self-effacing man of "deals" could not resist the onslaught. He
+rose with unconcealed emotion and grasped the hand of the young man
+whose generosity would save the credit of the old financial institution.
+
+Later, flushed with victory, Mr. Strumley returned to the cushions of
+his touring car; and the jubilantly chugging machine whizzed him off in
+the direction where, surrounded by cash, awaited the 8 per cent.
+expectations of Messrs. Proctor and Greenlee. Later still he descended
+with said cash upon the offices of Haynes, Forster & Company. And even
+later, after an exhilarating spin in the country, he arrived safe and
+blithesome at his well-appointed rooms in the Hotel Fulton, ready to
+remove with good soap and pure aqua the stains of mart and road before
+calling on Miss Bettina Stokes.
+
+The first thing that attracted his eyes on entering his little sitting
+room was a neatly wrapped parcel on the table. On the top of it reclined
+a dainty, snowy envelope. Mr. Strumley approached suspiciously. Then he
+recognized the handwriting and uttered an exclamation of joy. It was
+from Bettina.
+
+In the short time he held the missive poised reverently in his hand Paul
+permitted a glow of satisfaction to permeate his being. He had done well
+and was justly entitled to a moment of self laudation. Mr.
+Stokes--Bettina's father--would no longer be against him, for who could
+not say he was not capable of competing in the world-arena with
+full-grown, gladiatorial intellects? He had even successfully crossed
+blades with Mr. Stokes's own best brand of Damascene gray matter. And he
+had won the fray, for the everlasting good and happiness of all parties
+concerned. In anticipation he already felt himself thrilling proudly
+beneath the crown of Bettina's love and her father's benediction.
+
+The crackle of the delicate linen beneath his grasp brought him sweetly
+back to the real. What delicious token could Bettina be sending him? Of
+course her father had told her all. How happy she, too, must be! Mr.
+Strumley broke the seal of the envelope and read:
+
+"MR. PAUL STRUMLEY,
+City.
+
+"DEAR SIR:
+
+     "I herewith return your letters, photographs, etc. Papa has told me
+     all. It was at first impossible to believe you capable of taking such
+     a base advantage of my confidence about the Arkansas option; but I am
+     at last thoroughly convinced that you incited the run on the bank to
+     embarrass poor papa and compel him to let the deal fall into your
+     traitorous hands. And the by-play of yours in returning the money you
+     did not really need, though it has completely deceived him, has in
+     my eyes only added odium to your treachery. I trust that I have made
+     it quite clear that in the future we can meet only as strangers.
+
+"BETTINA STOKES."
+
+Mr. Strumley let the letter slip unnoticed through his palsied fingers.
+He sat down with heavy stupefaction. So this was the sud-spray of his
+beautiful bubble? It was incomprehensible! Bettina! Bettina! Oh, how
+could she? Where was her faith? No small voice answered from within the
+depths of his breast; and Mr. Strumley got clumsily to his feet. He was
+painfully conscious that he must do something--think something. But what
+was he to do? What was he to think? Could he ever make her understand?
+Make her believe? At least he could go and try.
+
+Mr. Strumley finished his toilet nervously; and repaired to the home of
+Bettina, to cast his hope on the waters of her faith and charity. The
+butler courteously informed him that she was "not in." But Mr. Stokes
+was in the library. Would Mr. Strumley like to see him? Mr. Strumley
+thought not.
+
+It was a bad night for Paul. From side to side he tossed in search of
+inspiration. Day came; and he rolled wearily over to catch the first
+beams of the gladsome spring sunshine. From its torrid home ninety-three
+million miles afar it hurried to his bedside. It shimmered in his face
+and laughed with warm invigoration into the torpid cells of his brain.
+It awakened them, filled them with new life, hope--inspiration!
+
+Mr. Strumley leaped from his bed to the bath-tub, and fluttered
+frolicsomely in the crystal tide. When he sprang out there was the flush
+of vigorous young manhood on his skin and the glow of an expectant
+lover's ardency in his breast. Everything was arranged satisfactorily in
+the space beneath Mr. Strumley's water-tousled hair, wherein sat the
+goddess of human happiness--reason.
+
+Mr. Strumley, after a hurried stop-over at the office of his astounded
+charge d'affaires, reached the Commercial Bank before the messenger
+boys. While waiting in the balm of the spring morning for the doors to
+open he circumnavigated the block nine times--he counted them. Coming
+in on the last tack he sighted the portly form of the banker careening
+with dignified speed around the corner. Another instant he had crossed
+the mat and disappeared into his financial harbor. Mr. Strumley steered
+rapidly in his wake.
+
+Again he stood in the presence of Bettina's father. This time, however,
+he was calm. In fact, the atmosphere about the two men was heavily
+charged with the essence of good fellowship. Mr. Stokes held out his
+hand cordially. The younger man pressed its broad palm with almost
+filial veneration. He noted, too, with a slight touch of remorse, that
+the banker's countenance was harassed. Evidently his heart still ached
+for the lost Arkansas timber. Mr. Strumley smiled philanthropically.
+
+He had something to say to Mr. Stokes, and began to say it with the easy
+enunciation of one who rests confident in the sunshine of righteousness.
+He spoke evenly, fluently. Of course Mr. Stokes at first might be a
+trifle perplexed. But please bear with him, hear him through, then he
+himself should be the sole judge.
+
+He, Mr. Strumley, did not care a rap--no, not a single rap, for every
+tree that grew in the entire state of Arkansas. What he wanted to do was
+to show Mr. Stokes--Bettina's father--that he was worth the while. That
+is, he wanted to demonstrate--it was a good word--to demonstrate that he
+had brains in his cranium as good as many another variety that boasted a
+trade mark of wider popularity. Had he done it? And if what he had done
+did not concur with the elements of high finance, he would like Mr.
+Stokes--Bettina's father--to tell him what it did concur with. Now,
+there was the whole story from its incipiency. And as conclusive proof
+that he did not mean to profit by the deal financially, would Mr. Stokes
+kindly examine those papers?
+
+Mr. Stokes looked at the documents tossed on the desk before him; and
+saw that they were several warranty deeds, conveying to Richard Stokes,
+his heirs and assigns forever, all titles and claims of all kinds
+whatsoever in certain therein-after described tracts or parcels of land
+in the state of Arkansas, for value received.
+
+Mr. Strumley leaned back and contentedly watched a flush overspread the
+banker's face. His automobile waited at the door to whisk him to
+Bettina, and he was ready to carry on the campaign there the moment her
+father had finished his effusions of gratitude. Meanwhile the flush
+deepened; and, all impatience to fly to his lady-love, Paul egged on the
+speech.
+
+"You will note, Mr. Stokes," he volunteered, "that the price is exactly
+the same you had proposed paying. At your convenience, of course, you
+can remit this amount to my attorney, Mr. Edwards."
+
+Mr. Stokes rose slowly. The flush had become apoplectic.
+
+"Mr. Strumley," he began, his large voice trembling, "this trick of
+yours is unworthy of an honorable man. Here, sir, take these papers and
+leave my office immediately."
+
+Mr. Strumley rose also. Like the banker's voice, he, too, was trembling.
+
+"But, sir----" he commenced to expostulate.
+
+"Go!" thundered the father of Bettina.
+
+Dazed, confused by the suddenness of the blast, Paul groped his way
+through the bank to the refuge of his car. Mechanically he put one hand
+on the lever and glanced ahead for obstacles. Crossing the street, not
+twenty yards ahead, tripped the most dangerous one conceivable--the
+beautiful Bettina herself!
+
+Mr. Strumley's hand fell limply to his knee. Fascinated he watched her
+reach the curb and with a little skip spring to the pavement. Then she
+came straight toward him; but he could see she was blissfully oblivious
+of his nearness. Suddenly an odd wave of emotion surged through his
+brain. His heart leaped with primitive savagery of love, and every fibre
+in him rebelled fiercely against the decrees and limitations of modern
+courtship. He had failed in the game as governed and modified by the
+rules of polite society and high finance. The primogenital man-spirit in
+him cried out for its inning. Mr. Strumley, as umpire, hearkened to its
+clamor.
+
+"Bettina!" he called, as that young lady came calmly abreast of the car,
+"wait a moment. I must speak with you."
+
+She started with a half-frightened exclamation; but met his look, at
+first defiantly, scornfully, then hesitatingly, faltering as she tried
+to take another step onward.
+
+"Bettina!" Mr. Strumley's voice vibrated determinedly, "I said I wished
+to speak with you. I can explain--everything."
+
+She halted reluctantly, and partly turned. In a moment he was at her
+side, his hand upon her arm. His glance had in it all the compelling
+strength of unadulterated, pristine manhood. She seemed to feel its
+potency, and without remonstrance suffered him to lead her toward the
+machine.
+
+For a moment, for a single moment, Mr. Strumley was exhilaratingly
+conscious of being borne aloft on a great wave of victorious gladness.
+Then the waters of triumph let him down with a shock.
+
+"Bettina!"
+
+At the word they both pivoted like pieces of automata. Mr. Stokes, large
+and severe, was standing between the portals of his financial
+fortification.
+
+"Bettina!" His voice was almost irresistible in the force of its
+parental summons.
+
+At the sound of it the primeval lover, newly renascent in Mr. Strumley's
+breast, cowed before the power of genitorial insistency. Then it came
+back into its own exultantly.
+
+"Bettina, my darling, get in," he commanded.
+
+She faltered, turned rebelliously, turned again and obeyed.
+
+"Bettina!" The voice of the childless banker faded off in the distance,
+its last echo drowned in the full-throated: "Bettina, we are going to be
+married at once," that broke joyously from Mr. Strumley's lips. "I have
+followed the example of the Romans, and taken me a wife from the
+Sabines."
+
+Bettina peeped up at him from beneath the dark screens of her lashes.
+"Then I, like the wise Sabian ladies, shall save the day for peace and
+for Rome," she smiled archly.
+
+And the machine laughed "Chug-chug!"
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE JAM GOD
+
+A Tale of Nigeria
+
+By H.M. EGBERT
+
+
+LIEUTENANT PETERS, of the Royal Nigerian Service, was lying upon the
+ground face downward, under a prickly tree. The sun was nearly vertical,
+and the little round shadow in which he reclined was interlaced with
+streaks of hot light. As the sun moved, Peters rolled into the shade
+automatically. His eyes were shut, and he was in that hot borderland
+which is the nearest approach to sleep at noontide in Nigeria.
+
+The flies were pestering him, and he was thirsty--not with that thirst
+of the mouth which may be quenched with a long draught, but with the
+thirst of the throat that sands and sears. He felt thirsty all over. He
+had been thirsty, like this, ever since he struck the bend of the Niger.
+What made it worse, every night he dreamed of fruits that were snatched
+away, like the food of Tantalus, as he approached to grasp them. Two
+nights before he had been wandering knee-deep in English strawberry
+beds; the night before he had been shaking down limes and oranges from
+groves of trees set with green leaves and studded with golden fruit.
+Once he had dreamed of a new fruit, a cross between a pear and a
+watermelon; but when he cut into it he found nothing but hard, small
+seeds, with a pineapple flavor, which he detested.
+
+Peters was dreaming now, for he twined his fingers in the long grass and
+tossed uneasily.
+
+"I'll pick them all," he muttered sleepily. "All mixed together, with
+ten or twelve pounds of damp, brown sugar, and boiled into jam."
+
+He woke and felt his teeth for the hundredth time, to note whether any
+untoward looseness betokened the advent of the dreaded scurvy.
+Reassured, he stretched his limbs and rolled over into the shade of the
+tree.
+
+"When I get back to a white man's country," he murmured--"when I get
+home to England what is it I am going to do? Why, I shall go into a
+restaurant and order some rich brown soup. Then I shall have _pate de
+foie gras_ sandwiches. Then scrambled eggs, chocolate, and muffins
+buttered with whipped cream. Then half a dozen cans of jam. I shall
+either begin with strawberry and conclude with apricot, or else I shall
+begin with apricot and wind up with raspberry. It doesn't matter much;
+any kind of jam will do except pineapple."
+
+He opened his eyes, brushed away the flies that swarmed noisily round
+him, took out his hard-tack, and opened a small can of dried beef. He
+munched for a while, sipping occasionally from the tepid water in his
+canteen. When he had finished he put the can-opener back in the pocket
+of his tunic and rose, his face overspread with a look of resolution.
+
+"I believe," he cried, "I believe that I could eat even a can of
+pineapple!"
+
+He rose, the light of his illusion still in his eyes, and began
+staggering weakly under the blazing sun in the direction of his camp. He
+was weaker than he had thought, and when he reached the shelter of his
+tent he sank down exhausted upon the bed. Through the open flap he could
+see, five hundred yards away, the round, beehive-shaped huts of the
+native village and, in their centre, the square palace of King
+Mtetanyanga, built of sticks and Niger mud, surrounded by its stockade,
+the royal flag, a Turkish bath-towel stained yellow and blue, floating
+proudly above.
+
+Lieutenant Peters had been sent by the Nigerian Government along the
+upper Niger to conclude treaties with the different kings and sweep them
+within the British sphere of interest. The French were out upon a
+similar errand, for in this region the two nations possessed only a
+vague and very indeterminate boundary line. Peters had been successful
+until he came to the village of King Mtetanyanga, who had balked at
+affixing his cross to the piece of mysterious parchment on the ground
+that it was unlawful to do so during the festival of the great Ju-Ju,
+whose worshipers could be heard wailing and beating tom-toms nightly in
+some unknown part of the jungle. What this Ju-Ju fetish was nobody could
+tell; it had come into the village recently, from the coast, men
+whispered; it possessed awful and mysterious potency; was guarded
+zealously by some score of priests, who veiled its awful vision; and it
+was the greatest Ju-Ju for hundreds of miles along the Niger, tribes
+from distant regions frequently arriving to sacrifice pigs to it.
+
+However, Lieutenant Raguet, the French commissioner, had been equally
+unsuccessful in inducing the dusky monarch to affix his signature to the
+French treaty, and the ambassadors of the rival nations were both
+encamped near the village, waiting for the Ju-Ju festivities to reach
+their plethoric conclusion before the king sobered up and attended to
+business.
+
+Raguet, strolling into his rival's camp that evening, found Peters in
+his tent, flushed, and breathing heavily.
+
+"Tcht! tcht! you are seeck," said the Frenchman sympathetically. "That
+ees too bad. Have you quinine?"
+
+"Quinine be hanged," cried Peters huskily. "I've taken the stuff until
+I've floated in it. There's only one thing can cure me, Raguet. I've
+been living on crackers and canned beef for over a month, and I'm pining
+for jam. Have you got any jam?"
+
+"Dsham, dsham?" repeated Raguet with a puzzled expression.
+
+"Yes, les preserves--le fruit et le sugar, bouilli--you know what I
+mean."
+
+"Ah, ze preserve!" said the Frenchman, with an expression of
+enlightenment. "Ze preserve, I have him not."
+
+"I tell you what, Raguet," said Peters irritably, "I've got to get some
+jam somewhere or I shall kick the bucket. I'm craving for it, man. If I
+had one can of the stuff it would put me upon my feet instantly, I can
+feel it. Now it's ten to one I'll be too sick to see the king after the
+ceremonies are over, and he'll sign your treaty instead of mine. And
+I've given him three opera hats, a phonograph, and a gallon of rum,
+curse the luck! What did you give him, Raguet?"
+
+"Me? I give him a umbrella with ze gold embroider," the Frenchman
+answered.
+
+"My government won't let me give the little kings umbrellas," said
+Peters in vexation. "It makes the big chiefs jealous. I say, Raguet," he
+rambled on, sitting up dizzily, "what is this Ju-Ju idol of theirs?"
+
+"I know not," said the French lieutenant. "Only ze king and ze priests
+have seen him. If zey tell, zey die--ze idol keel zem."
+
+"I suppose they'll be keeping up these infernal tom-toms for another
+week," grumbled the sick man, lying back and half closing his eyes from
+weariness. "Well, I'll have to try to get well in time."
+
+The Frenchman resisted the impulse to leap back in surprise, but his
+eyes narrowed till they were slits in his face. So! This Englishman did
+not know that this had been the last day of the sacrifices, that at
+midnight a hecatomb of pigs was to be killed and eaten in the bush in
+honor of the Ju-Ju. Nor that the king, when he had broached and drunk
+the cask of rum, would be in a mood to discuss the treaty. Peters
+evidently was unaware how much his majesty had been affronted by his
+failure to present him with an umbrella. La! la! Fortune was evidently
+upon his side. All this flashed through the Frenchman's mind in an
+instant. A solitary chuckle escaped him, but he turned it into an
+exclamation of grief, sighed deeply, seated himself upon the bed, and
+kissed Peters affectionately on either cheek.
+
+"My Peters, my poor friend," he began, "you must not theenk of leaving
+your tent for ze next two, t'ree days. Ze fever, he is very bad onless
+you receive him in bed. I shall take care of you."
+
+"You're a good fellow, Raguet," said Peters, wiping his face
+surreptitiously with the backs of his hands. When his visitor had left
+he turned over and sank into a half-delirious doze that lasted until the
+sun sank with appalling suddenness, and night rushed over the land.
+Tossing upon his bed, all through the velvet darkness he was dimly
+conscious, through his delirious dreams, of tom-toms beaten in the bush.
+His throat was parched, and in his dreams he drank greedily from his
+canteen; but each time that he awoke he saw it hanging empty from the
+tent flap. Presently a large, bright, yellow object rose up in front of
+him. Greedily he set his teeth into it; and even as he did so it
+disappeared, and he awoke, gasping and choking under the broiling
+blackness.
+
+"I'll have to take that canteen down to the stream and fill it," he
+muttered, rising unsteadily and proceeding toward the bank. To his
+surprise he found that rain had fallen. He was treading in ooze, which
+rose higher and higher until it clogged his footsteps. He struggled, but
+now it held him fast, and he was sinking slowly, but persistently, now
+to the waist, now to the shoulders. Frantically he thrust his hands
+downward to free himself, and withdrew them sticky with--jam! He scooped
+up great handsful greedily; and even as he raised it to his mouth it
+vanished, and he awoke once more in his tent.
+
+He flung himself out of bed with an oath, took down his canteen, and
+started toward the river. The noise of the tom-toms was louder than
+ever, proceeding, apparently, from some point in the bush a little to
+the left of the king's palace. Scrambling and struggling through the
+thorn thickets, he reached the sandy bed of the stream, filled his
+water-bottle at a pool, and drank greedily.
+
+It was that still hour of night when the many-voiced clamor of the bush
+grows hushed, because the lions are coming down to drink at the waters.
+The rising moon threw a pale light over the land. The tom-toms were
+still resounding in the bush, but to Peters's distorted mind they took
+on the sound of ripe mangoes falling to the ground and bursting open as
+they struck the soil. He counted, "one, two, three," and waited. He
+counted again. There must be thousands of them. Peters began to edge
+his way through the reeds in the direction of the sound. After a while
+he came to a wall of rocks perpendicular and almost insurmountable. He
+paused and considered, licking his lips greedily as the thud, thud
+continued, now, apparently, directly in front of him. All at once his
+eyes, curiously sensitive to external impressions, discovered a little,
+secret trail between two boulders. He followed it; a great stone
+revolved at his touch, and he found himself inside the sacred groves. He
+went on, gulping greedily in anticipation of the feast which awaited
+him.
+
+Suddenly he stopped short. He had seen something that brought back to
+him with a rush the realization of his whereabouts. Seated in the
+shelter of a cactus tree, not fifty yards away, was King Mtetanyanga,
+wearing his three opera hats, one upon another, in the form of a triple
+crown, and drinking his own rum with Raguet, under the shade of Raguet's
+umbrella. Prone at their feet crouched Tom, the interpreter.
+
+"His Majesty say, 'How you fix him Ju-Ju?'" translated Tom.
+
+"Tell His Majesty, my Ju-Ju stronger than the Englishman's Ju-Ju,"
+answered the Frenchman. "My Ju-Ju eat up his Ju-Ju. He very sick. If I
+choose, he die."
+
+"Ugh!" grunted the king, when this explanation was vouchsafed,
+apparently impressed.
+
+"Tell His Majesty my Ju-Ju stronger than his own Ju-Ju. If he no sign
+treaty, eat up his Ju-Ju," Raguet went on.
+
+A flow of language came from the king's lips.
+
+"His Majesty say, he bring his Ju-Ju, see whose greater," said the
+interpreter.
+
+Vaguely aware that treachery was impending, but crazed now by the
+falling mangoes, Peters left them palavering and followed the trail. All
+at once he emerged into a tiny clearing and stood blinking at a fire,
+round which a group of men--priests, as he knew, from their buffalo
+horns and crane feathers--were reclining, hammering upon tom-toms and
+shouting in various stages of intoxication. The firelight blinded their
+eyes. Peters stood still uncertainly. Then his eyes fell upon a
+sawed-off tree-trunk, in the hollow of which lay something wrapped in a
+white cloth, surrounded with snake-skins. He had come by this secret
+road into the actual presence of the great Ju-Ju.
+
+Curiously he inserted his hand, lifted the object out, and examined it.
+Inside was something of a strange, yet familiar shape, oval, and
+flattened at the ends. He lifted it out of its wrappings, and there, in
+his hand, he saw a can, bearing the legend:
+
+     GREENAWAY'S BEST JAM.
+
+He looked at it in solemn and holy meditation; then, sitting down, he
+drew the can-opener from his tunic and wiped it clean upon his sleeve.
+
+After awhile a babel of sound broke in upon his ears. Men had come
+running up, brandishing spears, stopped, flung themselves upon the
+ground prostrate in front of him. The priests were there, frantically
+abasing themselves; Mtetanyanga, his opera hats rolling, unheeded, on
+the ground. Their cries ceased; they veiled their eyes. Then from the
+dust came the feeble tones of the interpreter.
+
+"His Majesty say, you eat him Ju-Ju--yours greatest Ju-Ju, he want to
+sign treaty."
+
+But Peters, waving the empty can over his head, shouted:
+
+"I've eaten jam, I've eaten jam! It's pineapple--and I don't care!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHEN FATHER WORKED
+
+A Suburban Story
+
+By CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM
+
+
+    "H'everybody works but Fadher,
+    H'and 'e sets 'round h'all diy----"
+
+THUS in chorus shrilled the infant Cadges like the morning stars singing
+together, but still more like the transplanted little cockneys they
+were.
+
+The placid brow of Mr. Thomas Cadge was darkened with disapproval, he
+shifted his stubby brier pipe to the other corner of his mouth, edged a
+little from his seat on the sunny front stoop and, craning his neck
+around the corner of his house, revealed an unwashed area extending from
+collarbone to left ear.
+
+"Shet up, you kids!" he barked. "Wot for? Becos I say so, that's why. I
+don't like that song, 'taint fit for Sunday."
+
+With a soothing consciousness that he had upheld the sacred character of
+the Sabbath, Mr. Cadge settled back to the comfort of his sun-bath and
+smoke. But he had scarcely emitted three puffs before the piping voice
+of Arabella Cadge was again wafted to his ears. She sang solo this time,
+and the selection was of a semi-devotional nature, more in keeping with
+the day:
+
+    "Oh fadher, dear fadher, come 'ome wid me now,
+    De clock on de steeple strikes----"
+
+"Shet up, drat you!" again commanded her parent. "If I has to get up and
+go arter you----"
+
+The balance of this direful threat may never be known, for at that
+moment Mr. Job Snavely, garbed in the black broadcloth which he wore one
+day out of seven, paused in front of Mr. Cadge's door and bade him good
+morning.
+
+"Mornin'," responded the ruffled father.
+
+"Your little girl is quite a song bird," continued Mr. Snavely, with his
+usual facility in making well-meant small-talk more irritating than a
+hurled brick.
+
+"She sings too much," commented Mr. Cadge, shortly, "I likes people wot
+knows when to 'old their tongues."
+
+"Very true, very true!" amiably replied Mr. Snavely, "but for all that,
+there is nothing sweeter than the artless babble of babes; I declare it
+almost brought the tears to my eyes when I heard them prattling,
+'Everybody works but father,' it is so very, very appro----"
+
+Mr. Snavely checked himself abruptly, for the light in the small, green
+eyes of Thomas Cadge was baleful, and his square jaw protruded
+menacingly. The kindly critic of music had a vague feeling that the
+subject might be changed to advantage.
+
+"Been to church this morning, I suppose?" he inquired briskly with the
+assurance of a man just returning from that duty.
+
+"No I 'asn't," retorted Cadge, "and wot's more the old woman 'asn't, and
+the kids 'asn't neither. 'Cos why? 'Cos in this 'ere free country of
+yours, a laboring man can't make a living for 'is family, workin' 'ard
+as I does, Sundays, nights, and h'all the time. The missus and the kids
+stays from church 'cos their duds ain't fit, and I stays 'ome 'cos I've
+got to work like a slave to pay you for seven dollars' worth of spoiled
+vegetables and mouldy groceries. That's the reason I works on Sundays,
+if you've got to know."
+
+"Work on Sundays!" gasped the grocer. "Work! work?" and he stared at the
+reclining figure of Mr. Cadge in unfeigned astonishment.
+
+"Yes, work. This 'ere construction company wot's doing the job of
+grading this vacant block, employs me to sort of look after things,
+their shovels, scoops, and the like. A kind of private police officer,
+I am," he concluded, drawing himself up a little and puffing into the
+air.
+
+"And when are you on duty?" asked Mr. Snavely.
+
+"Nights," replied Cadge, "nights and Sundays, when the tools ain't in
+use."
+
+"I hope they pay you well for it?"
+
+"Ah, but they don't. 'Ow much do you think I get for stayin' awake
+nights and doin' without my church on Sunday? Three measly dollars a
+week and the rent of this 'ere 'ouse, if you can call it a 'ouse."
+
+It would have been difficult to determine just what name to give the
+residence of Mr. Thomas Cadge. It would hardly be called a cottage,
+though not because it was more spacious than the name implied; nor was
+it a piano-box, in spite of the fact that a piano would have fitted
+snugly within its walls, for no manufacturer would have trusted a
+valuable instrument in so flimsy a shell. It was not a real-estate
+office, as the sign which decorated its entire front proclaimed it to
+be, for through a jagged hole in the window facing the street projected
+a rusty iron stovepipe, which was wired to the facade of the building,
+and emitted the sooty smoke that had almost totally obscured and
+canceled the legend, "Suburban Star Realty Syndicate."
+
+Moreover, a litter of tin cans, impartially distributed at the front and
+back doors, indicated the domestic use to which this temporary office
+had been put. A smell of steaming suds that pervaded the place likewise
+indicated the manner in which Mrs. Cadge eked out her lord's stipend.
+This impression was confirmed by the chorus of irrepressible little
+Cadges proclaiming:
+
+    "Mother tikes in washin',
+    H'and so does sister h'Ann,
+    H'everybody works at our 'ouse,
+    But my old----"
+
+--a burst of melody which was abruptly checked with a tomato can hurled
+like a hand-grenade by their unmusical father.
+
+"Look here, Cadge," said Mr. Snavely, with the air of proprietorship one
+adopts to hopeless debtors, "three dollars a week is not going to keep
+your family, to say nothing of paying up that seven dollars. I can't
+carry you forever, you know. Why don't you get a daylight job?"
+
+"Ah, that is easy enough said," protested that injured individual.
+"'Aven't I tramped the streets day after day, lookin' for work?"
+
+"Them as 'as a good paying business don't know wot it means to look for
+a job," pursued Cadge bitterly.
+
+"Yes they do," asserted the grocer cheerfully. "I was given work at
+sweeping floors in the very store I now own. The fact is, I am sorry for
+you, Cadge, and I have been looking around to get you a job."
+
+Mr. Cadge seemed depressed.
+
+"And I am glad to say," chirruped Mr. Snavely, "that I have found a
+small piece of work for you, which will be worth a dollar and a half a
+day."
+
+Cadge's brow was still gloomy.
+
+"Of course, it is real work," added his kind-hearted creditor, briskly,
+"no sitting in the sun and watching other people's shovels; but a
+customer of mine, a widow lady, that lives along Catnip Creek, wants a
+man to pile up a wall of loose stones to keep her land from washing away
+in high water."
+
+Thomas Cadge shook his head with the air of Caesar virtuously refusing
+the crown.
+
+"No, no, Snavely, it wouldn't do," he said. "I can see that it would
+interfere with my present h'occupation, and I can't afford to risk
+losing this 'ere job. Supposin' my family was to be turned out of
+doors!"
+
+"Nonsense! It will only take you about four days to build the wall, and
+at one-fifty per day, that will be six dollars, twice your week's wages
+right there, and almost enough to pay what you owe me."
+
+"I am afraid it can't be done, Snavely; the company might not like it;
+you see, I would be competing with them, that's their line."
+
+"They wouldn't handle so small a job. You know that, Cadge."
+
+"Yes, but a man can't draw pay for two positions at once; 't ain't
+honest."
+
+"Why, this is not a regular situation," protested the upright Snavely,
+who saw his bill still unpaid; "you could work on it at odd times if you
+like. She'll pay you by the piece, I am pretty sure, and you will get
+your six dollars cash when the wall is done."
+
+The furtive eyes of the hunter of work avoided those of his benefactor.
+He was pondering a new excuse when he happened to notice Master Cadge,
+aged nine, Thomas Cadge, Jr., aged eight, and Arabella Cadge, whose
+years were six, busily constructing a fort of cobblestones, and an idea
+struck him.
+
+"Very well," he said, loftily waving his pipe, "I'll drop in Monday and
+talk this over with you, Snavely. Then if the job suits me I may take
+it. I don't like to talk business on Sunday, you know."
+
+Thus rebuked, Mr. Snavely resumed his homeward way.
+
+The following Monday Cadge overslept; Tuesday found him with a headache
+as a result, which by Wednesday had settled in a tooth; Thursday he felt
+so much better that he feared to do anything which might check his
+convalescence; Friday was an unlucky day, but so desirous was he of work
+that he manfully conquered his superstitious qualms and strolled over to
+the little shop where Mr. Job Snavely dealt in groceries and vegetables.
+
+The details regarding the work were furnished with cheerful alacrity,
+the tradesman going so far as to accompany his protege to the home of
+their patron, Mrs. Pipkin, a withered little lady who lived with her
+cats on the bank of the creek.
+
+The work to be performed demanded more brawn than brain and no vast
+amount of either. All that was required was to pile up the boulders and
+cobblestones which littered the bed of the stream, as a rough,
+unmortared wall, along the sloping bank of Mrs. Pipkin's property.
+
+It was evident that Mrs. Pipkin herself had not the slightest notion of
+how much a wall should cost, as she was ignorant of the two factors
+which determined it, namely, the wages of day-laborers and the time
+required to build the wall; therefore she requested Mr. Snavely, as a
+man of affairs, to make the bargain for her.
+
+It was well that she did so, for Mr. Cadge's ideas on the subject were
+as boundless as hers were limited. Day wages, he affirmed, ranged from
+two dollars up for common labor, and as building a wall was highly
+skilled labor he thought three and a half or four dollars per diem would
+be about right, going on the basis of at least six days of eight hours
+each.
+
+Mr. Snavely, on the contrary, after looking over the ground declared
+that four days' steady work would build a wall running the entire length
+of the widow's lot. Furthermore, that a dollar and a quarter a day was
+fair wages for such employment, while laborers would scramble for the
+job at a dollar and a half. As a concession to Mr. Cadge, he was willing
+to allow him to take his own time and agreed to pay six dollars when the
+wall should be completed.
+
+Mr. Cadge waxed indignant and very voluble, while Mr. Snavely was a mild
+man of few words; but the simple laborer was no match for a man who made
+his living by small chaffering. He was forced to give in, and Saturday
+morning, bright and early, he appeared on the banks of Catnip Creek
+accompanied by Master Cadge, Thomas Cadge, Jr., and Arabella Cadge.
+
+"Daddy's going to give you kids a treat to-day," he announced. "My eye!
+wot larks we will 'ave. Nothing to do all day long but play building a
+stone fort right on the brook, and Daddy will show you 'ow to build it."
+
+The little Cadges were perfectly charmed at this condescension on the
+part of their sire, who seldom acknowledged their presence except with a
+cuff in passing. They were eager to begin, and as they had no need to
+strip their legs, which were always bare, the work proceeded apace.
+
+Cadge, Sr., ensconced himself in the sunniest nook of the bank, and
+directed his offspring what stones to select and where to place them,
+and above all, to make haste, since the enemy would soon appear to
+attack the fort.
+
+Before their Saturday holiday was over, the children had discovered that
+their father was a strenuous playfellow. In vain they suggested fishing,
+hunting Injuns, or gathering wild flowers; they had set out to build a
+fort on Catnip Creek, and build it they must.
+
+They entertained hopes of sneaking off alone when they should go home
+for lunch, but Mr. Cadge had provided for this contingency. His wife
+appeared at noon with slices of bread and butter for the Cadgelings, to
+which was added a cold beefsteak and a bucket of beer for the support of
+their house. Having already lunched at home, she was permitted to lay a
+tier of heavier stones along the wall while waiting for her family to
+finish the repast.
+
+It was an arduous day for the tribe of Cadge, excepting, of course, its
+head. Not until the first star came out and the owls began to hoot along
+the Catnip did he declare himself satisfied with the day's work and
+proceed homeward to supper. Widow Pipkin's wall was half finished.
+
+Not until Saturday was the patient father able to enlist once more the
+services of his offspring, for, "What if they are your own kids!"
+retorted Mrs. Cadge from her wash-board. "I've rubbed my 'ands raw to
+give 'em the eddication you and me lacks, and to school they go. You
+build that wall yourself, or wait until the week's end for your pay."
+
+The former alternative was not to be thought of, and the Widow Pipkin
+wondered mildly whether the half finished wall was ever to be completed.
+
+But Saturday at dawn Cadge once more appeared, driving before him three
+tear-stained and reluctant Cadgelets. They had inherited part of their
+father's disposition in regard to real work, likewise his unwillingness
+to be imposed upon. Constructing fortifications along the Catnip was
+well enough for one Saturday, but their backs still ached from their
+exertions, and they had only disdain for the restricted paternal
+imagination which suggested that this time they build stone castles.
+
+Their sire waxed eloquent over the art of castle building and the sport
+of imprisoning ogres in them, but was finally compelled to assume the
+attitude of an ogre himself, and threatened to skin them alive if they
+did not do as they were bid.
+
+It was a long, hard day for the whole Cadge family. The little Cadges
+worked like galley-slaves in fear of the lash; their mother, out of pity
+for them, laid two tiers of cobbles when she came at noon, and even
+Cadge himself was tempted on one or two occasions to descend from his
+nook and lend a hand, but restrained himself.
+
+Again the owls hooted along the stream and bullfrogs croaked from the
+reedy places. Cadge knocked the dottle out of his pipe and arose,
+stretching his short, muscular limbs, which had become cramped from
+sitting still so long.
+
+"Run along 'ome, kiddies," he said, "and tell the old woman not to wait
+supper for me. There's a man down town as wants to see me about a job.
+I'll 'ave a bite with 'im."
+
+The little Cadges disappeared in the twilight and their father presented
+himself at the Widow Pipkin's door to receive his hard-earned wages.
+
+"Oh, dear me! I can't pay you to-night," answered Mrs. Pipkin. "I never
+keep any money in the house."
+
+Cadge grumbled something about, a check would do. He was pretty sure
+that the barkeeper at Spider Grogan's place would cash it.
+
+"Oh, but mine is a savings account, and I will have to go down to the
+bank myself and get the money; but, never mind, you shall have it first
+thing Monday morning."
+
+The thirsty man could find no solution to this problem and, although he
+urged the Widow Pipkin to think of a way, as his "missus needed the
+medicine something orful," that kind-hearted old lady could suggest
+nothing more to the point than going at once with a mustard poultice to
+the sufferer.
+
+Old women are so set in their notions that the anxious husband was a
+full half hour dissuading her, and, when he reached home with both hands
+in his empty pockets, Mrs. Cadge was washing the dishes.
+
+"Did the man give you a job?" inquired his wife brightly.
+
+"Wot man? Wot job? Where's my supper?" snapped Cadge. Then, as the
+ingenious ruse occurred to him, a flood of language rose to his lips and
+would not be dammed, though everything else was.
+
+"Gone and hogged all the supper, did you!" he growled. "H'it's a nice
+state of affairs, when a man comes 'ome from a 'ard day's work to a
+h'empty table."
+
+"But it was such a little steak, Tom," urged his wife, "and the children
+were so hungry that I let them finish it."
+
+There was no money in the house, and Snavely, the only credit grocer,
+had closed his shop, so Mr. Cadge's supper that night was bread and
+cheese without kisses.
+
+Sunday was a long-remembered day of misery for Cadge's wife and
+children, who played the scapegoat for Mr. Snavely and whipping-boy for
+Mrs. Pipkin.
+
+Monday morning the head of the house arose early and, before Mrs. Pipkin
+had finished her beauty sleep, that hard-working man was at the door
+demanding his pay. An hour was all the time she required for dressing.
+Mr. Cadge wished he had broken his fast before leaving home.
+
+"Really, I don't know whether I ought to pay you," replied Widow Pipkin
+when she finally answered his last, desperate ring. "Mr. Snavely made
+the bargain, and I should like to have him see the work before settling
+with you."
+
+She jingled some silver in her plump chain purse as she spoke.
+
+Aha, the widow had deceived him! It was eight o'clock, the bank would
+not open for an hour, she had had the money in the house all the time.
+The deceitfulness of women!
+
+Mr. Cadge's blood rose to his head. His little green eyes smouldered.
+Fortunately for the widow, Mr. Snavely drove up at that moment on his
+delivery wagon, and cheerfully agreed to appraise the work.
+
+"Oh, come now, Cadge, my man, you don't call that a finished job, I
+hope? Why, it is three foot short at each end and lacks a tier at the
+top. You had better pitch in for an hour or two and make a fair job of
+it, and then you'll get your money."
+
+"Wot do you call a fair job, I should like to know?" replied the heated
+Cadge; "look at them 'ere boulders, as I fished out of the h'icy water
+at peek o' day! Look at all them little stones, h'every one of them as
+cost me backache and sweat. H'if that job ain't worth six dollars it
+ain't worth six cents."
+
+"Mebbe so, mebbe so, my good man," responded the grocer, genially, "but
+whatever it's worth, I don't pay for a job until it's finished."
+
+At this point Cadge's torrent of eloquence swept away all punctuating
+pauses and he became slightly incoherent, but the drift of his harangue
+was that because he had worked like a slave and finished the wall in two
+days they wanted to rob him of his money. "I'll 'ave the six dollars for
+my work, or I'll 'ave the lor on you," he concluded.
+
+The amiable but tactless Snavely saw a happy solution of the problem.
+"Never mind, Mrs. Pipkin," he said, "there shall be no lawsuit. You pay
+me the six dollars, and I will write Cadge a receipt for the seven
+dollars he owes me. I lose a dollar that way, to be sure, but then it is
+just the same as finding six."
+
+"Ho! that's your game is it?" snarled Cadge, gasping with indignation.
+"That's 'ow you two plot against a poor 'ard-workin' man with a family,
+to beat him out of 'is pay. H'it's a put-up job, that's wot h'it is! But
+you don't get the best of Tom Cadge that way. I'll 'ave a h'orficer 'ere
+if I don't get my money, you bloomin' old plotters, you!"
+
+"Yes, you had better call an officer," agreed Mr. Snavely. "I saw one
+around the corner as I passed; the same one your brats were pelting from
+behind a fence last week."
+
+Mr. Cadge tacked adroitly. "No, I ain't going to spend my money with the
+loryers, as'd want twelve dollars to get you back six. I'll tear down
+the wall, that's wot I'll do. If I don't get my pay the loidy don't get
+her wall, and you can tike your measly job and give it to some poor man
+wot needs it."
+
+Mr. Snavely had one foot on the wheel and swung lightly into his cart.
+"Have it your own way, Cadge," he responded cheerfully. "You can finish
+the wall and get your six dollars cash, or you can leave it as it stands
+and take my receipt for seven, or you can tear it down and have your
+labor for your pains; but mind, if the police catch you destroying
+property, you will get a month in the chain gang."
+
+"I don't care if I get sixty days!" screamed the outraged laborer. "The
+city can look after my missus and the kids if their nateral provider is
+took from them. That wall is comin' down! I'm h'only a workin'-man, and
+I don't mind bein' spit on once in a while, but I won't stand for it
+bein' rubbed in."
+
+It was a sultry June day, the first of the summer vacation, and toward
+noon Mrs. Cadge set out to take her husband a bite of lunch. The little
+Cadges accompanied her, eager to exhibit the noble castle which they had
+completed on Catnip Creek. When they came to that charming stream, their
+eyes flew open in amazement and their jaws dropped.
+
+"Why, mamma, look at daddy!" they cried in unison. "Daddy's workin'!"
+
+Incredible though it seemed, it was true indeed. Father worked. Mrs.
+Cadge wondered whether she, too, was to have a vacation, after her years
+of drudgery.
+
+Cadge worked furiously, his rage uncooled by the waters of the Catnip
+which flowed through his shoes. He had discarded coat, vest, and hat,
+and was hurling rocks with the strength of a maddened giant, clear
+across the stream. What splendid muscles he had!
+
+A tier or two of Mrs. Pipkin's wall was already down. The telephone
+within her cottage was ringing madly.
+
+Even as the Cadgelings watched their parent sweating at his toil, a
+blue-coated figure ran swiftly down the bank, caught the hard-working
+man by the collar, and firmly led him away to where steady work awaited
+him.
+
+Mrs. Cadge watched him go with mingled feelings. She had seen him depart
+thus before, and remembered how much easier it was that month to feed
+four mouths instead of five. Besides, the exercise on the rock pile
+would do him good, poor man. A night-watchman's position was so
+confining.
+
+Mr. Snavely had driven up to the curb, and the Widow Pipkin ran out all
+of a flutter. They sympathetically related to Mrs. Cadge the events of
+the morning which had led to her husband's arrest.
+
+"And there was only an hour's work to be done on the job," said Mr.
+Snavely judicially.
+
+"I would gladly pay six dollars cash to have it just as it was this
+morning," added the tremulous Widow Pipkin, "and I'd make it ten if it
+were done as Mr. Snavely says."
+
+"And I'd still be willing to write a receipt for the full seven dollars
+for six dollars cash," interposed that astute philanthropist.
+
+Mrs. Cadge's shrewd, birdlike eyes were half closed in mental
+computation; ten dollars for the wall and one dollar discount on the
+grocery bill, that would make eleven dollars clear.
+
+"Come along, kiddies," she said, "you and me will pitch in and finish
+that wall to the queen's taste in an hour or two!" And she did.
+
+Eleven dollars clear, and the watchman's pay still going on, Cadge on
+the rock pile, hence the biggest mouth of the family fed by the city.
+Indeed, indeed, the little Cadges were not the only ones who enjoyed a
+vacation when father worked!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Golden Stories, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOLDEN STORIES ***
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