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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of New Burlesques, by Bret Harte
+
+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: New Burlesques
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2278]
+Release Date: August, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW BURLESQUES ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW BURLESQUES
+
+
+by
+
+Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  RUPERT THE RESEMBLER [After Rupert of Hentzau and Prisoner of Zenda]
+
+  THE STOLEN CIGAR CASE By A. CO--N D--LE
+
+  GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN, OR THE MINX AND THE MANXMAN By H-LL C--NE
+
+  THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN LONGBOWE, YEOMAN
+    BEING A MODERN-ANTIQUE REALISTIC ROMANCE
+    (COMPILED FROM SEVERAL EMINENT SOURCES)
+
+  DAN'L BOREM BY E. N---S W--T---T
+
+  STORIES THREE BY R-DY--D K-PL--G
+
+  "ZUT-SKI" THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED FEME SOLE BY M-R-E C-R-LLI
+
+
+
+
+
+RUPERT THE RESEMBLER
+
+By A--TH--Y H-PE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+RUDOLPH OF TRULYRURALANIA
+
+When I state that I was own brother to Lord Burleydon, had an income of
+two thousand a year, could speak all the polite languages fluently, was
+a powerful swordsman, a good shot, and could ride anything from an
+elephant to a clotheshorse, I really think I have said enough to
+satisfy any feminine novel-reader of Bayswater or South Kensington that
+I was a hero.  My brother's wife, however, did not seem to incline to
+this belief.
+
+"A more conceited, self-satisfied little cad I never met than you," she
+said.  "Why don't you try to do something instead of sneering at others
+who do?  You never take anything seriously--except yourself, which
+isn't worth it.  You are proud of your red hair and peaked nose just
+because you fondly believe that you got them from the Prince of
+Trulyruralania, and are willing to think evil of your ancestress to
+satisfy your snobbish little soul.  Let me tell you, sir, that there
+was no more truth about that than there was in that silly talk of her
+partiality for her husband's red-haired gamekeeper in Scotland.  Ah!
+that makes you start--don't it?  But I have always observed that a mule
+is apt to remember only the horse side of his ancestry!"
+
+Whenever my pretty sister-in-law talks in this way I always try to
+forget that she came of a family far inferior to our own, the
+Razorbills.  Indeed, her people--of the Nonconformist stock--really had
+nothing but wealth and rectitude, and I think my brother Bob, in his
+genuine love for her, was willing to overlook the latter for the sake
+of the former.
+
+My pretty sister-in-law's interest in my affairs always made me believe
+that she secretly worshiped me--although it was a fact, as will be seen
+in the progress of this story, that most women blushed on my addressing
+them.  I used to say it "was the reflection of my red hair on a
+transparent complexion," which was rather neat--wasn't it?  And subtle?
+But then, I was always saying such subtle things.
+
+"My dear Rose," I said, laying down my egg spoon (the egg spoon really
+had nothing to do with this speech, but it imparted such a delightfully
+realistic flavor to the scene), "I'm not to blame if I resemble the
+S'helpburgs."
+
+"It's your being so beastly proud of it that I object to!" she replied.
+"And for Heaven's sake, try to BE something, and not merely resemble
+things!  The fact is you resemble too much--you're ALWAYS resembling.
+You resemble a man of fashion, and you're not; a wit, and you're not; a
+soldier, a sportsman, a hero--and you're none of 'em.  Altogether,
+you're not in the least convincing.  Now, listen!  There's a good
+chance for you to go as our attache with Lord Mumblepeg, the new
+Ambassador to Cochin China.  In all the novels, you know, attaches are
+always the confidants of Grand Duchesses, and know more state secrets
+than their chiefs; in real life, I believe they are something like a
+city clerk with a leaning to private theatricals.  Say you'll go!  Do!"
+
+"I'll take a few months' holiday first," I replied, "and then," I added
+in my gay, dashing way, "if the place is open--hang it if I don't go!"
+
+"Good old bounder!" she said, "and don't think too much of that
+precious Prince Rupert.  He was a bad lot."
+
+She blushed again at me--as her husband entered.
+
+"Take Rose's advice, Rupert, my boy," he said, "and go!"
+
+And that is how I came to go to Trulyruralania.  For I secretly
+resolved to take my holiday in traveling in that country and trying, as
+dear Lady Burleydon put it, really to be somebody, instead of
+resembling anybody in particular.  A precious lot SHE knew about it!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN WHICH MY HAIR CAUSES A LOT OF THINGS
+
+You go to Trulyruralania from Charing Cross.  In passing through Paris
+we picked up Mlle. Beljambe, who was going to Kohlslau, the capital of
+Trulyruralania, to marry the Grand Duke Michael, who, however, as I was
+informed, was in love with the Princess Flirtia. She blushed on seeing
+me--but, I was told afterwards, declined being introduced to me on any
+account.  However, I thought nothing of this, and went on to Bock, the
+next station to Kohlslau.  At the little inn in the forest I was
+informed I was just in time to see the coronation of the new king the
+next day.  The landlady and her daughter were very communicative, and,
+after the fashion of the simple, guileless stage peasant, instantly
+informed me what everybody was doing, and at once explained the
+situation.  She told me that the Grand Duke Michael--or Black Michael
+as he was called--himself aspired to the throne, as well as to the hand
+of the Princess Flirtia, but was hated by the populace, who preferred
+the young heir, Prince Rupert; because he had the hair and features of
+the dynasty of the S'helpburgs, "which," she added, "are singularly
+like your own."
+
+"But is red hair so very peculiar here?" I asked.
+
+"Among the Jews--yes, sire!  I mean yes, SIR," she corrected herself.
+"You seldom see a red-headed Jew."
+
+"The Jews!" I repeated in astonishment.
+
+"Of course you know the S'helpburgs are descended directly from
+Solomon--and have indeed some of his matrimonial peculiarities," she
+said, blushing.
+
+I was amazed--but recalled myself.  "But why do they call the Duke of
+Kohlslau Black Michael?" I asked carelessly.
+
+"Because he is nearly black, sir.  You see, when the great Prince
+Rupert went abroad in the old time he visited England, Scotland, and
+Africa.  They say he married an African lady there--and that the Duke
+is really more in the direct line of succession than Prince Rupert."
+
+But here the daughter showed me to my room.  She blushed, of course,
+and apologized for not bringing a candle, as she thought my hair was
+sufficiently illuminating.  "But," she added with another blush, "I do
+SO like it."
+
+I replied by giving her something of no value,--a Belgian nickel which
+wouldn't pass in Bock, as I had found to my cost.  But my hair had
+evidently attracted attention from others, for on my return to the
+guest-room a stranger approached me, and in the purest and most precise
+German--the Court or 'Olland Hof speech--addressed me:
+
+"Have you the red hair of the fair King or the hair of your father?"
+
+Luckily I was able to reply with the same purity and precision: "I have
+both the hair of the fair King and my own.  But I have not the hair of
+my father nor of Black Michael, nor of the innkeeper nor the
+innkeeper's wife.  The red HEIR of the fair King would be a son."
+
+Possibly this delicate mot on the approaching marriage of the King was
+lost in the translation, for the stranger strode abruptly away. I
+learned, however, that the King was actually then in Bock, at the
+castle a few miles distant, in the woods.  I resolved to stroll thither.
+
+It was a fine old mediaeval structure.  But as the singular incidents I
+am about to relate combine the romantic and adventurous atmosphere of
+the middle ages with all the appliances of modern times, I may briefly
+state that the castle was lit by electricity, bad fire-escapes on each
+of the turrets, four lifts, and was fitted up by one of the best West
+End establishments.  The sanitary arrangements were excellent, and the
+drainage of the most perfect order, as I had reason to know personally
+later.  I was so affected by the peaceful solitude that I lay down
+under a tree and presently fell asleep.  I was awakened by the sound of
+voices, and, looking up, beheld two men bending over me.  One was a
+grizzled veteran, and the other a younger dandyfied man; both were
+dressed in shooting suits.
+
+"Never saw such a resemblance before in all my life," said the elder
+man.  "'Pon my soul! if the King hadn't got shaved yesterday because
+the Princess Flirtia said his beard tickled her, I'd swear it was he!"
+
+I could not help thinking how lucky it was--for this narrative--that
+the King HAD shaved, otherwise my story would have degenerated into a
+mere Comedy of Errors.  Opening my eyes, I said boldly:
+
+"Now that you are satisfied who I resemble, gentlemen, perhaps you will
+tell me who you are?"
+
+"Certainly," said the elder curtly.  "I am Spitz--a simple colonel of
+his Majesty's, yet, nevertheless, the one man who runs this whole
+dynasty--and this young gentleman is Fritz, my lieutenant. And you
+are--?"
+
+"My name is Razorbill--brother to Lord Burleydon," I replied calmly.
+
+"Good heavens! another of the lot!" he muttered.  Then, correcting
+himself, he said brusquely: "Any relation to that Englishwoman who was
+so sweet on the old Rupert centuries ago?"
+
+Here, again, I suppose my sister-in-law would have had me knock down
+the foreign insulter of my English ancestress--but I colored to the
+roots of my hair, and even farther--with pleasure at this proof of my
+royal descent!  And then a cheery voice was heard calling "Spitz!" and
+"Fritz!" through the woods.
+
+"The King!" said Spitz to Fritz quickly.  "He must not see him."
+
+"Too late," said Fritz, as a young man bounded lightly out of the
+bushes.
+
+I was thunderstruck!  It was as if I had suddenly been confronted with
+a mirror--and beheld myself!  Of course he was not quite so
+good-looking, or so tall, but he was still a colorable imitation! I was
+delighted.
+
+Nevertheless, for a moment he did not seem to reciprocate my feeling.
+He stared at me, staggered back and passed his hand across his
+forehead.  "Can it be," he muttered thickly, "that I've got 'em agin?
+Yet I only had--shingle glash!"
+
+But Fritz quickly interposed.
+
+"Your Majesty is all right--though," he added in a lower voice, "let
+this be a warning to you for to-morrow!  This gentleman is Mr.
+Razorbill--you know the old story of the Razorbills?--Ha! ha!"
+
+But the King did not laugh; he extended his hand and said gently, "You
+are welcome--my cousin!"  Indeed, my sister-in-law would have probably
+said that--dissipated though he was--he was the only gentleman there.
+
+"I have come to see the coronation, your Majesty," I said.
+
+"And you shall," said the King heartily, "and shall go with us! The
+show can't begin without us--eh, Spitz?" he added playfully, poking the
+veteran in the ribs, "whatever Michael may do!"
+
+Then he linked his arms in Spitz's and mine.  "Let's go to the hut--and
+have some supper and fizz," he said gayly.
+
+We went to the hut.  We had supper.  We ate and drank heavily.  We
+danced madly around the table.  Nevertheless I thought that Spitz and
+Fritz were worried by the King's potations, and Spitz at last went so
+far as to remind his Majesty that they were to start early in the
+morning for Kohlslau.  I noticed also that as the King drank his speech
+grew thicker and Spitz and Fritz exchanged glances.  At last Spitz said
+with stern significance:
+
+"Your Majesty has not forgotten the test invariably submitted to the
+King at his coronation?"
+
+"Shertenly not," replied the King, with his reckless laugh.  "The King
+mush be able to pronounsh--name of his country--intel-lillil-gibly:
+mush shay (hic!): 'I'm King of--King of--Tootoo-tooral-looral-anyer.'"
+He staggered, laughed, and fell under the table.
+
+"He cannot say it!" gasped Fritz and Spitz in one voice.  "He is lost!"
+
+"Unless," said Fritz suddenly, pointing at me with a flash of
+intelligence, "HE can personate him, and say it.  Can you?" he turned
+to me brusquely.
+
+It was an awful moment.  I had been drinking heavily too, but I
+resolved to succeed.  "I'm King of Trooly-rooly--" I murmured; but I
+could not master it--I staggered and followed the King under the table.
+
+"Is there no one here," roared Spitz, "who can shave thish dynasty, and
+shay 'Tooral--'?  No! ---- it!  I mean 'Trularlooral--'" but he, too,
+lurched hopelessly forward.
+
+"No one can say 'Tooral-looral--'" muttered Fritz; and, grasping Spitz
+in despair, they both rolled under the table.
+
+How long we lay there, Heaven knows!  I was awakened by Spitz playing
+the garden hose on me.  He was booted and spurred, with Fritz by his
+side.  The King was lying on a bench, saying feebly: "Blesh you, my
+chillen."
+
+"By politely acceding to Black Michael's request to 'try our
+one-and-six sherry,' he has been brought to this condition," said Spitz
+bitterly.  "It's a trick to keep him from being crowned.  In this
+country if the King is crowned while drunk, the kingdom instantly
+reverts to a villain--no matter who.  But in this case the villain is
+Black Michael.  Ha! What say you, lad?  Shall we frustrate the rascal,
+by having YOU personate the King?"
+
+I was--well!--intoxicated at the thought!  But what would my
+sister-in-law say?  Would she--in her Nonconformist
+conscience--consider it strictly honorable?  But I swept all scruples
+aside.  A King was to be saved!  "I will go," I said.  "Let us on to
+Kohlslau--riding like the wind!"  We rode like the wind, furiously,
+madly.  Mounted on a wild, dashing bay--known familiarly as the "Bay of
+Biscay" from its rough turbulence--I easily kept the lead. But our
+horses began to fail.  Suddenly Spitz halted, clapped his hand to his
+head, and threw himself from his horse.  "Fools!" he said, "we should
+have taken the train!  It will get there an hour before we will!"  He
+pointed to a wayside station where the 7.15 excursion train for
+Kohlslau was waiting.
+
+"But how dreadfully unmediaeval!--What will the public say?" I began.
+
+"Bother the public!" he said gruffly.  "Who's running this dynasty--you
+or I?  Come!"  With the assistance of Fritz he tied up my face with a
+handkerchief to simulate toothache, and then, with a shout of defiance,
+we three rushed madly into a closely packed third-class carriage.
+
+Never shall I forget the perils, the fatigue, the hopes and fears of
+that mad journey.  Panting, perspiring, packed together with cheap
+trippers, but exalted with the one hope of saving the King, we at last
+staggered out on the Kohlslau platform utterly exhausted.  As we did so
+we heard a distant roar from the city. Fritz turned an ashen gray,
+Spitz a livid blue.  "Are we too late?" he gasped, as we madly fought
+our way into the street, where shouts of "The King!  The King!" were
+rending the air.  "Can it be Black Michael?"  But here the crowd
+parted, and a procession, preceded by outriders, flashed into the
+square.  And there, seated in a carriage beside the most beautiful
+red-haired girl I had ever seen, was the King,--the King whom we had
+left two hours ago, dead drunk in the hut in the forest!
+
+
+
+CHAPTERS III TO XXII (Inclusive)
+
+IN WHICH THINGS GET MIXED
+
+We reeled against each other aghast!  Spitz recovered himself first.
+"We must fly!" he said hoarsely.  "If the King has discovered our
+trick--we are lost!"
+
+"But where shall we go?" I asked.
+
+"Back to the hut."
+
+We caught the next train to Bock.  An hour later we stood panting
+within the hut.  Its walls and ceiling were splashed with sinister red
+stains.  "Blood!" I exclaimed joyfully.  "At last we have a real
+mediaeval adventure!"
+
+"It's Burgundy, you fool," growled Spitz; "good Burgundy wasted!" At
+this moment Fritz appeared dragging in the hut-keeper.
+
+"Where is the King?" demanded Spitz fiercely of the trembling peasant.
+
+"He was carried away an hour ago by Black Michael and taken to the
+castle."
+
+"And when did he LEAVE the castle?" roared Spitz.
+
+"He never left the castle, sir, and, alas! I fear never will, alive!"
+replied the man, shuddering.
+
+We stared at each other!  Spitz bit his grizzled mustache.  "So," he
+said bitterly, "Black Michael has simply anticipated us with the same
+game!  We have been tricked.  I knew it could not be the King whom they
+crowned!  No!" he added quickly, "I see it all--it was Rupert of
+Glasgow!"
+
+"Who is Rupert of Glasgow?" I cried.
+
+"Oh, I really can't go over all that family rot again," grunted Spitz.
+"Tell him, Fritz."
+
+Then, taking me aside, Fritz delicately informed me that Rupert of
+Glasgow--a young Scotchman--claimed equally with myself descent from
+the old Rupert, and that equally with myself he resembled the King.
+That Michael had got possession of him on his arrival in the country,
+kept him closely guarded in the castle, and had hid his resemblance in
+a black wig and false mustache; that the young Scotchman, however,
+seemed apparently devoted to Michael and his plots; and there was
+undoubtedly some secret understanding between them.  That it was
+evidently Michael's trick to have the pretender crowned, and then, by
+exposing the fraud and the condition of the real King, excite the
+indignation of the duped people, and seat himself on the throne!
+"But," I burst out, "shall this base-born pretender remain at Kohlslau
+beside the beautiful Princess Flirtia? Let us to Kohlslau at once and
+hurl him from the throne!"
+
+"One pretender is as good as another," said Spitz dryly.  "But leave
+HIM to me.  'Tis the King we must protect and succor!  As for that
+Scotch springald, before midnight I shall have him kidnaped, brought
+back to his master in a close carriage, and you--YOU shall take his
+place at Kohlslau."
+
+"I will," I said enthusiastically, drawing my sword; "but I have done
+nothing yet.  Please let me kill something!"
+
+"Aye, lad!" said Spitz, with a grim smile at my enthusiasm. "There's a
+sheep in your path.  Go out and cleave it to the saddle. And bring the
+saddle home!"
+
+My sister-in-law might have thought me cruel--but I did it.
+
+
+
+CHAP XXIII AND SOME OTHER CHAPS
+
+I know not how it was compassed, but that night Rupert of Glasgow was
+left bound and gagged against the door of the castle, and the
+night-bell pulled.  And that night I was seated on the throne of the
+S'helpburgs.  As I gazed at the Princess Flirtia, glowing in the
+characteristic beauty of the S'helpburgs, and admired her striking
+profile, I murmured softly and half audibly: "Her nose is as a tower
+that looketh toward Damascus."
+
+She looked puzzled, and knitted her pretty brows.  "Is that poetry?"
+she asked.
+
+"No" I said promptly.  "It's only part of a song of our great
+Ancestor."  As she blushed slightly, I playfully flung around her fair
+neck the jeweled collar of the Order of the S'helpburgs--three golden
+spheres pendant, quartered from the arms of Lombardy---with the ancient
+Syric motto, El Ess Dee.
+
+She toyed with it a moment, and then said softly: "You have changed,
+Rupert.  Do ye no ken hoo?"
+
+I looked at her--as surprised at her dialect as at the imputation.
+
+"You don't talk that way, as you did.  And you don't say, 'It WILL be
+twelve o'clock,' when you mean, 'It IS twelve o'clock,' nor 'I will be
+going out,' when you mean 'I AM.'  And you didn't say, 'Eh, sirs!' or
+'Eh, mon,' to any of the Court--nor 'Hoot awa!' nor any of those
+things.  And," she added with a divine little pout, "you haven't told
+me I was 'sonsie' or 'bonnie' once."
+
+I could with difficulty restrain myself.  Rage, indignation, and
+jealousy filled my heart almost to bursting.  I understood it all; that
+rascally Scotchman had made the most of his time, and dared to get
+ahead of me!  I did not mind being taken for the King, but to be
+confounded with this infernal descendant of a gamekeeper--was too much!
+Yet with a superhuman effort I remained calm--and even smiled.
+
+"You are not well?" said the Princess earnestly.  "I thought you were
+taking too much of the Strasbourg pie at supper!  And you are not
+going, surely--so soon?" she added, as I rose.
+
+"I must go at once," I said.  "I have forgotten some important business
+at Bock."
+
+"Not boar hunting again?" she said poutingly.
+
+"No, I'm hunting a red dear," I said with that playful subtlety which
+would make her take it as a personal compliment, though I was only
+thinking of that impostor, and longing to get at him, as I bowed and
+withdrew.
+
+In another hour I was before Black Michael's castle at Bock.  These are
+lightning changes, I know--and the sovereignty of Trulyruralania WAS
+somewhat itinerant--but when a kingdom and a beautiful Princess are at
+stake, what are you to do?  Fritz had begged me to take him along, but
+I arranged that he should come later, and go up unostentatiously in the
+lift.  I was going by way of the moat.  I was to succor the King, but I
+fear my real object was to get at Rupert of Glasgow.
+
+I had noticed the day before that a large outside drain pipe, decreed
+by the Bock County Council, ran from the moat to the third floor of the
+donjon keep.  I surmised that the King was imprisoned on that floor.
+Examining the pipe closely, I saw that it was really a pneumatic
+dispatch tube, for secretly conveying letters and dispatches from the
+castle through the moat beyond the castle walls.  Its extraordinary
+size, however, gave me the horrible conviction that it was to be used
+to convey the dead body of the King to the moat.  I grew cold with
+horror--but I was determined.
+
+I crept up the pipe.  As I expected, it opened funnel-wise into a room
+where the poor King was playing poker with Black Michael.  It took me
+but a moment to dash through the window into the room, push the King
+aside, gag and bind Black Michael, and lower him by a stout rope into
+the pipe he had destined for another.  Having him in my power, I
+lowered him until I heard his body splash in the water in the lower
+part of the pipe.  Then I proceeded to draw him up again, intending to
+question him in regard to Rupert of Glasgow. But this was difficult, as
+his saturated clothing made him fit the smooth pipe closely.  At last I
+had him partly up, when I was amazed at a rush of water from the pipe
+which flooded the room.  I dropped him and pulled him up again with the
+same result.  Then in a flash I saw it all.  His body, acting like a
+piston in the pipe, had converted it into a powerful pump.  Mad with
+joy, I rapidly lowered and pulled him up again and again, until the
+castle was flooded--and the moat completely drained!  I had created the
+diversion I wished; the tenants of the castle were disorganized and
+bewildered in trying to escape from the deluge, and the moat was
+accessible to my friends.  Placing the poor King on a table to be out
+of the water, and tying up his head in my handkerchief to disguise him
+from Michael's guards, I drew my sword and plunged downstairs with the
+cataract in search of the miscreant Rupert.  I reached the drawbridge,
+when I heard the sounds of tumult and was twice fired at,--once, as I
+have since learned, by my friends, under the impression that I was the
+escaping Rupert of Glasgow, and once by Black Michael's myrmidons,
+under the belief that I was the King.  I was struck by the fact that
+these resemblances were confusing and unfortunate!  At this moment,
+however, I caught sight of a kilted figure leaping from a lower window
+into the moat.  Some instinct impelled me to follow it.  It rapidly
+crossed the moat and plunged into the forest, with me in pursuit.  I
+gained upon it; suddenly it turned, and I found myself again confronted
+with MYSELF--and apparently the King!  But that very resemblance made
+me recognize the Scotch pretender, Rupert of Glasgow.  Yet he would
+have been called a "braw laddie," and his handsome face showed a
+laughing good humor, even while he opposed me, claymore in hand.
+
+"Bide a wee, Maister Rupert Razorbill," he said lightly, lowering his
+sword, "before we slit ane anither's weasands.  I'm no claimin' any
+descent frae kings, and I'm no acceptin' any auld wife's clavers
+against my women forbears, as ye are!  I'm just paid gude honest siller
+by Black Michael for the using of ma face and figure--sic time as his
+Majesty is tae worse frae trink!  And I'm commeesioned frae Michael to
+ask ye what price YE would take to join me in performing these
+duties--turn and turn aboot.  Eh, laddie--but he would pay ye mair than
+that daft beggar, Spitz."
+
+Rage and disgust overpowered me.  "And THIS is my answer," I said,
+rushing upon him.
+
+I have said earlier in these pages that I was a "strong" swordsman. In
+point of fact, I had carefully studied in the transpontine theatres
+that form of melodramatic mediaeval sword-play known as "two up and two
+down."  To my disgust, however, this wretched Scotchman did not seem to
+understand it, but in a twinkling sent my sword flying over my head.
+Before I could recover it, he had mounted a horse ready saddled in the
+wood, and, shouting to me that he would take my "compleements" to the
+Princess, galloped away. Even then I would have pursued him afoot, but,
+hearing shouts behind me, I turned as Spitz and Fritz rode up.
+
+"Has the King escaped to Kohlslau?" asked Fritz, staring at me.
+
+"No," I said, "but Rupert of Glasgow"--
+
+"--Rupert of Glasgow," growled Spitz.  "We've settled him!  He's gagged
+and bound and is now on his way to the frontier in a close carriage."
+
+"Rupert--on his way to the frontier?" I gasped.
+
+"Yes.  Two of my men found him, disguised with a handkerchief over his
+face, trying to escape from the castle.  And while we were looking for
+the King, whom we supposed was with you, they have sent the rascally
+Scotchman home."
+
+"Fool!" I gasped.  "Rupert of Glasgow has just left me!  YOU HAVE
+DEPORTED YOUR OWN KING."  And overcome by my superhuman exertions, I
+sank unconscious to the ground.
+
+When I came to, I found myself in a wagon lit, speeding beyond the
+Trulyruralania frontier.  On my berth was lying a missive with the seal
+of the S'helpburgs.  Tearing it open I recognized the handwriting of
+the Princess Flirtia.
+
+
+MY DEAR RUPERT,--Owing to the confusion that arises from there being so
+many of you, I have concluded to accept the hand of the Duke Michael.
+I may not become a Queen, but I shall bring rest to my country, and
+Michael assures me in his playful manner that "three of a kind," "even
+of the same color," do not always win at poker.  It will tranquilize
+you somewhat to know that the Lord Chancellor assures me that on
+examining the records of the dynasty he finds that my ancestor Rupert
+never left his kingdom during his entire reign, and that consequently
+your ancestress has been grossly maligned.  I am sending typewritten
+copies of this to Rupert of Glasgow and the King.  Farewell.
+
+FLIRTIA.
+
+
+Once a year, at Christmastide, I receive a simple foreign hamper via
+Charing Cross, marked "Return empty."  I take it in silence to my own
+room, and there, opening it, I find--unseen by any other eyes but my
+own--a modest pate de foie gras, of the kind I ate with the Princess
+Flirtia.  I take out the pate, replace the label, and have the hamper
+reconveyed to Charing Cross.
+
+
+
+
+THE STOLEN CIGAR CASE
+
+By A. CO--N D--LE
+
+I found Hemlock Jones in the old Brook Street lodgings, musing before
+the fire.  With the freedom of an old friend I at once threw myself in
+my usual familiar attitude at his feet, and gently caressed his boot.
+I was induced to do this for two reasons: one, that it enabled me to
+get a good look at his bent, concentrated face, and the other, that it
+seemed to indicate my reverence for his superhuman insight.  So
+absorbed was he even then, in tracking some mysterious clue, that he
+did not seem to notice me.  But therein I was wrong--as I always was in
+my attempt to understand that powerful intellect.
+
+"It is raining," he said, without lifting his head.
+
+"You have been out, then?" I said quickly.
+
+"No.  But I see that your umbrella is wet, and that your overcoat has
+drops of water on it."
+
+I sat aghast at his penetration.  After a pause he said carelessly, as
+if dismissing the subject: "Besides, I hear the rain on the window.
+Listen."
+
+I listened.  I could scarcely credit my ears, but there was the soft
+pattering of drops on the panes.  It was evident there was no deceiving
+this man!
+
+"Have you been busy lately?" I asked, changing the subject.  "What new
+problem--given up by Scotland Yard as inscrutable--has occupied that
+gigantic intellect?"
+
+He drew back his foot slightly, and seemed to hesitate ere he returned
+it to its original position.  Then he answered wearily: "Mere
+trifles--nothing to speak of.  The Prince Kupoli has been here to get
+my advice regarding the disappearance of certain rubies from the
+Kremlin; the Rajah of Pootibad, after vainly beheading his entire
+bodyguard, has been obliged to seek my assistance to recover a jeweled
+sword.  The Grand Duchess of Pretzel-Brauntswig is desirous of
+discovering where her husband was on the night of February 14; and last
+night"--he lowered his voice slightly--"a lodger in this very house,
+meeting me on the stairs, wanted to know why they didn't answer his
+bell."
+
+I could not help smiling--until I saw a frown gathering on his
+inscrutable forehead.
+
+"Pray remember," he said coldly, "that it was through such an
+apparently trivial question that I found out Why Paul Ferroll Killed
+His Wife, and What Happened to Jones!"
+
+I became dumb at once.  He paused for a moment, and then suddenly
+changing back to his usual pitiless, analytical style, he said: "When I
+say these are trifles, they are so in comparison to an affair that is
+now before me.  A crime has been committed,--and, singularly enough,
+against myself.  You start," he said.  "You wonder who would have dared
+to attempt it.  So did I; nevertheless, it has been done.  I have been
+ROBBED!"
+
+"YOU robbed!  You, Hemlock Jones, the Terror of Peculators!" I gasped
+in amazement, arising and gripping the table as I faced him.
+
+"Yes!  Listen.  I would confess it to no other.  But YOU who have
+followed my career, who know my methods; you, for whom I have partly
+lifted the veil that conceals my plans from ordinary humanity,--you,
+who have for years rapturously accepted my confidences, passionately
+admired my inductions and inferences, placed yourself at my beck and
+call, become my slave, groveled at my feet, given up your practice
+except those few unremunerative and rapidly decreasing patients to
+whom, in moments of abstraction over MY problems, you have administered
+strychnine for quinine and arsenic for Epsom salts; you, who have
+sacrificed anything and everybody to me,--YOU I make my confidant!"
+
+I arose and embraced him warmly, yet he was already so engrossed in
+thought that at the same moment he mechanically placed his hand upon
+his watch chain as if to consult the time.  "Sit down," he said.  "Have
+a cigar?"
+
+"I have given up cigar smoking," I said.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+I hesitated, and perhaps colored.  I had really given it up because,
+with my diminished practice, it was too expensive.  I could afford only
+a pipe.  "I prefer a pipe," I said laughingly. "But tell me of this
+robbery.  What have you lost?"
+
+He arose, and planting himself before the fire with his hands under his
+coattails, looked down upon me reflectively for a moment.  "Do you
+remember the cigar case presented to me by the Turkish Ambassador for
+discovering the missing favorite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth
+chorus girl at the Hilarity Theatre?  It was that one. I mean the cigar
+case.  It was incrusted with diamonds."
+
+"And the largest one had been supplanted by paste," I said.
+
+"Ah," he said, with a reflective smile, "you know that?"
+
+"You told me yourself.  I remember considering it a proof of your
+extraordinary perception.  But, by Jove, you don't mean to say you have
+lost it?"
+
+He was silent for a moment.  "No; it has been stolen, it is true, but I
+shall still find it.  And by myself alone!  In your profession, my dear
+fellow, when a member is seriously ill, he does not prescribe for
+himself, but calls in a brother doctor.  Therein we differ.  I shall
+take this matter in my own hands."
+
+"And where could you find better?" I said enthusiastically.  "I should
+say the cigar case is as good as recovered already."
+
+"I shall remind you of that again," he said lightly.  "And now, to show
+you my confidence in your judgment, in spite of my determination to
+pursue this alone, I am willing to listen to any suggestions from you."
+
+He drew a memorandum book from his pocket and, with a grave smile, took
+up his pencil.
+
+I could scarcely believe my senses.  He, the great Hemlock Jones,
+accepting suggestions from a humble individual like myself!  I kissed
+his hand reverently, and began in a joyous tone:
+
+"First, I should advertise, offering a reward; I should give the same
+intimation in hand-bills, distributed at the 'pubs' and the
+pastry-cooks'.  I should next visit the different pawnbrokers; I should
+give notice at the police station.  I should examine the servants.  I
+should thoroughly search the house and my own pockets. I speak
+relatively," I added, with a laugh.  "Of course I mean YOUR own."
+
+He gravely made an entry of these details.
+
+"Perhaps," I added, "you have already done this?"
+
+"Perhaps," he returned enigmatically.  "Now, my dear friend," he
+continued, putting the note-book in his pocket and rising, "would you
+excuse me for a few moments?  Make yourself perfectly at home until I
+return; there may be some things," he added with a sweep of his hand
+toward his heterogeneously filled shelves, "that may interest you and
+while away the time.  There are pipes and tobacco in that corner."
+
+Then nodding to me with the same inscrutable face he left the room. I
+was too well accustomed to his methods to think much of his
+unceremonious withdrawal, and made no doubt he was off to investigate
+some clue which had suddenly occurred to his active intelligence.
+
+Left to myself I cast a cursory glance over his shelves.  There were a
+number of small glass jars containing earthy substances, labeled
+"Pavement and Road Sweepings," from the principal thoroughfares and
+suburbs of London, with the sub-directions "for identifying
+foot-tracks."  There were several other jars, labeled "Fluff from
+Omnibus and Road Car Seats," "Cocoanut Fibre and Rope Strands from
+Mattings in Public Places," "Cigarette Stumps and Match Ends from Floor
+of Palace Theatre, Row A, 1 to 50." Everywhere were evidences of this
+wonderful man's system and perspicacity.
+
+I was thus engaged when I heard the slight creaking of a door, and I
+looked up as a stranger entered.  He was a rough-looking man, with a
+shabby overcoat and a still more disreputable muffler around his throat
+and the lower part of his face.  Considerably annoyed at his intrusion,
+I turned upon him rather sharply, when, with a mumbled, growling
+apology for mistaking the room, he shuffled out again and closed the
+door.  I followed him quickly to the landing and saw that he
+disappeared down the stairs.  With my mind full of the robbery, the
+incident made a singular impression upon me.  I knew my friend's habit
+of hasty absences from his room in his moments of deep inspiration; it
+was only too probable that, with his powerful intellect and magnificent
+perceptive genius concentrated on one subject, he should be careless of
+his own belongings, and no doubt even forget to take the ordinary
+precaution of locking up his drawers.  I tried one or two and found
+that I was right, although for some reason I was unable to open one to
+its fullest extent.  The handles were sticky, as if some one had opened
+them with dirty fingers.  Knowing Hemlock's fastidious cleanliness, I
+resolved to inform him of this circumstance, but I forgot it, alas!
+until--but I am anticipating my story.
+
+His absence was strangely prolonged.  I at last seated myself by the
+fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I
+fell asleep.  I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague
+semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets--no
+doubt induced by the story of the robbery.  When I came fully to my
+senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side of the hearth,
+his deeply concentrated gaze fixed on the fire.
+
+"I found you so comfortably asleep that I could not bear to awaken
+you," he said, with a smile.
+
+I rubbed my eyes.  "And what news?" I asked.  "How have you succeeded?"
+
+"Better than I expected," he said, "and I think," he added, tapping his
+note-book, "I owe much to YOU."
+
+Deeply gratified, I awaited more.  But in vain.  I ought to have
+remembered that in his moods Hemlock Jones was reticence itself.  I
+told him simply of the strange intrusion, but he only laughed.
+
+Later, when I arose to go, he looked at me playfully.  "If you were a
+married man," he said, "I would advise you not to go home until you had
+brushed your sleeve.  There are a few short brown sealskin hairs on the
+inner side of your forearm, just where they would have adhered if your
+arm had encircled a seal-skin coat with some pressure!"
+
+"For once you are at fault," I said triumphantly; "the hair is my own,
+as you will perceive; I have just had it cut at the hairdresser's, and
+no doubt this arm projected beyond the apron."
+
+He frowned slightly, yet, nevertheless, on my turning to go he embraced
+me warmly--a rare exhibition in that man of ice.  He even helped me on
+with my overcoat and pulled out and smoothed down the flaps of my
+pockets.  He was particular, too, in fitting my arm in my overcoat
+sleeve, shaking the sleeve down from the armhole to the cuff with his
+deft fingers.  "Come again soon!" he said, clapping me on the back.
+
+"At any and all times," I said enthusiastically; "I only ask ten
+minutes twice a day to eat a crust at my office, and four hours' sleep
+at night, and the rest of my time is devoted to you always, as you
+know."
+
+"It is indeed," he said, with his impenetrable smile.
+
+Nevertheless, I did not find him at home when I next called.  One
+afternoon, when nearing my own home, I met him in one of his favorite
+disguises,--a long blue swallow-tailed coat, striped cotton trousers,
+large turn-over collar, blacked face, and white hat, carrying a
+tambourine.  Of course to others the disguise was perfect, although it
+was known to myself, and I passed him--according to an old
+understanding between us--without the slightest recognition, trusting
+to a later explanation.  At another time, as I was making a
+professional visit to the wife of a publican at the East End, I saw
+him, in the disguise of a broken-down artisan, looking into the window
+of an adjacent pawnshop.  I was delighted to see that he was evidently
+following my suggestions, and in my joy I ventured to tip him a wink;
+it was abstractedly returned.
+
+Two days later I received a note appointing a meeting at his lodgings
+that night.  That meeting, alas! was the one memorable occurrence of my
+life, and the last meeting I ever had with Hemlock Jones!  I will try
+to set it down calmly, though my pulses still throb with the
+recollection of it.
+
+I found him standing before the fire, with that look upon his face
+which I had seen only once or twice in our acquaintance--a look which I
+may call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive
+ratiocination--from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic
+was absolutely discharged.  He was simply an icy algebraic symbol!
+Indeed, his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his
+clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in
+size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his
+forehead and literally hung on his massive ears.
+
+After I had entered he locked the doors, fastened the windows, and even
+placed a chair before the chimney.  As I watched these significant
+precautions with absorbing interest, he suddenly drew a revolver and,
+presenting it to my temple, said in low, icy tones:
+
+"Hand over that cigar case!"
+
+Even in my bewilderment my reply was truthful, spontaneous, and
+involuntary.  "I haven't got it," I said.
+
+He smiled bitterly, and threw down his revolver.  "I expected that
+reply!  Then let me now confront you with something more awful, more
+deadly, more relentless and convincing than that mere lethal
+weapon,--the damning inductive and deductive proofs of your guilt!" He
+drew from his pocket a roll of paper and a note-book.
+
+"But surely," I gasped, "you are joking!  You could not for a moment
+believe"--
+
+"Silence!  Sit down!"  I obeyed.
+
+"You have condemned yourself," he went on pitilessly.  "Condemned
+yourself on my processes,--processes familiar to you, applauded by you,
+accepted by you for years!  We will go back to the time when you first
+saw the cigar case.  Your expressions," he said in cold, deliberate
+tones, consulting his paper, "were, 'How beautiful!  I wish it were
+mine.'  This was your first step in crime--and my first indication.
+From 'I WISH it were mine' to 'I WILL have it mine,' and the mere
+detail, 'HOW CAN I make it mine?' the advance was obvious.  Silence!
+But as in my methods it was necessary that there should be an
+overwhelming inducement to the crime, that unholy admiration of yours
+for the mere trinket itself was not enough.  You are a smoker of
+cigars."
+
+"But," I burst out passionately, "I told you I had given up smoking
+cigars."
+
+"Fool!" he said coldly, "that is the SECOND time you have committed
+yourself.  Of course you told me!  What more natural than for you to
+blazon forth that prepared and unsolicited statement to PREVENT
+accusation.  Yet, as I said before, even that wretched attempt to cover
+up your tracks was not enough.  I still had to find that overwhelming,
+impelling motive necessary to affect a man like you. That motive I
+found in the strongest of all impulses--Love, I suppose you would call
+it," he added bitterly, "that night you called!  You had brought the
+most conclusive proofs of it on your sleeve."
+
+"But--" I almost screamed.
+
+"Silence!" he thundered.  "I know what you would say.  You would say
+that even if you had embraced some Young Person in a sealskin coat,
+what had that to do with the robbery?  Let me tell you, then, that that
+sealskin coat represented the quality and character of your fatal
+entanglement!  You bartered your honor for it--that stolen cigar case
+was the purchaser of the sealskin coat!
+
+"Silence!  Having thoroughly established your motive, I now proceed to
+the commission of the crime itself.  Ordinary people would have begun
+with that--with an attempt to discover the whereabouts of the missing
+object.  These are not MY methods."
+
+So overpowering was his penetration that, although I knew myself
+innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear the further details of
+this lucid exposition of my crime.
+
+"You committed that theft the night I showed you the cigar case, and
+after I had carelessly thrown it in that drawer.  You were sitting in
+that chair, and I had arisen to take something from that shelf.  In
+that instant you secured your booty without rising. Silence!  Do you
+remember when I helped you on with your overcoat the other night?  I
+was particular about fitting your arm in. While doing so I measured
+your arm with a spring tape measure, from the shoulder to the cuff.  A
+later visit to your tailor confirmed that measurement.  It proved to be
+THE EXACT DISTANCE BETWEEN YOUR CHAIR AND THAT DRAWER!"
+
+I sat stunned.
+
+"The rest are mere corroborative details!  You were again tampering
+with the drawer when I discovered you doing so!  Do not start!  The
+stranger that blundered into the room with a muffler on--was myself!
+More, I had placed a little soap on the drawer handles when I purposely
+left you alone.  The soap was on your hand when I shook it at parting.
+I softly felt your pockets, when you were asleep, for further
+developments.  I embraced you when you left--that I might feel if you
+had the cigar case or any other articles hidden on your body.  This
+confirmed me in the belief that you had already disposed of it in the
+manner and for the purpose I have shown you.  As I still believed you
+capable of remorse and confession, I twice allowed you to see I was on
+your track: once in the garb of an itinerant negro minstrel, and the
+second time as a workman looking in the window of the pawnshop where
+you pledged your booty."
+
+"But," I burst out, "if you had asked the pawnbroker, you would have
+seen how unjust"--
+
+"Fool!" he hissed, "that was one of YOUR suggestions--to search the
+pawnshops!  Do you suppose I followed any of your suggestions, the
+suggestions of the thief?  On the contrary, they told me what to avoid."
+
+"And I suppose," I said bitterly, "you have not even searched your
+drawer?"
+
+"No," he said calmly.
+
+I was for the first time really vexed.  I went to the nearest drawer
+and pulled it out sharply.  It stuck as it had before, leaving a part
+of the drawer unopened.  By working it, however, I discovered that it
+was impeded by some obstacle that had slipped to the upper part of the
+drawer, and held it firmly fast.  Inserting my hand, I pulled out the
+impeding object.  It was the missing cigar case!  I turned to him with
+a cry of joy.
+
+But I was appalled at his expression.  A look of contempt was now added
+to his acute, penetrating gaze.  "I have been mistaken," he said
+slowly; "I had not allowed for your weakness and cowardice!  I thought
+too highly of you even in your guilt!  But I see now why you tampered
+with that drawer the other night.  By some inexplicable means--possibly
+another theft--you took the cigar case out of pawn and, like a whipped
+hound, restored it to me in this feeble, clumsy fashion.  You thought
+to deceive me, Hemlock Jones! More, you thought to destroy my
+infallibility.  Go!  I give you your liberty.  I shall not summon the
+three policemen who wait in the adjoining room--but out of my sight
+forever!"
+
+As I stood once more dazed and petrified, he took me firmly by the ear
+and led me into the hall, closing the door behind him.  This reopened
+presently, wide enough to permit him to thrust out my hat, overcoat,
+umbrella, and overshoes, and then closed against me forever!
+
+I never saw him again.  I am bound to say, however, that thereafter my
+business increased, I recovered much of my old practice, and a few of
+my patients recovered also.  I became rich.  I had a brougham and a
+house in the West End.  But I often wondered, pondering on that
+wonderful man's penetration and insight, if, in some lapse of
+consciousness, I had not really stolen his cigar case!
+
+
+
+
+GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN,
+
+OR
+
+THE MINX AND THE MANXMAN
+
+By H-LL C--NE
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+Golly Coyle was the only granddaughter of a vague and somewhat simple
+clergyman who existed, with an aunt, solely for Golly's epistolary
+purposes.  There was, of course, intermediate ancestry,--notably a dead
+mother who was French, and therefore responsible for any later
+naughtiness in Golly,--but they have no purpose here. They lived in the
+Isle of Man.  Golly knew a good deal of Man, for even at the age of
+twelve she was in love with John Gale--only son of Lord Gale, who was
+connected with the Tempests.  Gales, however, were frequent and
+remarkable along the coast, so that it was not singular that one day
+she found John "coming on" on a headland where she was sitting.  His
+dog had "pointed" her.  "It's exceedingly impolite to point to anything
+you want," said Golly. Touched by this, and overcome by a strange
+emotion, John Gale turned away and went to Canada.  Slight as the
+incident was, it showed that inborn chivalry to women, that desire for
+the Perfect Life, that intense eagerness to incarnate Christianity in
+modern society, which afterward distinguished him.  Golly loved him!
+For all that, she still remained a "tomboy" as she was,--robbing
+orchards, mimicking tramps and policemen, buttering the stairs and the
+steps of houses, tying kettles to dogs' tails, and marching in a white
+jersey, with the curate's hat on, through the streets of the village.
+"Gol dern my skin!" said the dear old clergyman, as he tried to emerge
+from a surplice which Golly had stitched together; "what spirits the
+child DO have!"  Yet everybody loved her!  And when John Gale returned
+from Canada, and looked into her big blue eyes one day at church, small
+wonder that he immediately went off again to Paris, and an extended
+Continental sojourn, with a serious leaning to theology!  Golly bore
+his absence meekly but characteristically; got a boat, disported like a
+duck in the water, attempted to elope with a boy appropriately named
+Drake, but encountered a half gale at sea and a whole Gale in John on a
+yacht, who rescued them both.  Convinced now that there was but one way
+to escape from his Fate--Golly!--John Gale took holy orders and at once
+started for London.  As he stood on the deck of the steamer he heard an
+imbecile chuckle in his ear.  It was the simple old clergyman: "You are
+going to London to join the Church, John; Golly is going there, too, as
+hospital nurse.  There's a pair of you! He! he!  Look after her, John,
+and protect her Manx simplicity." Before John could recover himself,
+Golly was at his side executing the final steps of a "cellar-door flap
+jig" to the light-hearted refrain:--
+
+     "We are a simple family--we are--we are--we are!"
+
+
+And even as her pure young voice arose above the screams of the
+departure whistle, she threw a double back-somersault on the
+quarterdeck, cleverly alighting on the spikes of the wheel before the
+delighted captain.
+
+"Jingle my electric bells," he said, looking at the bright young thing,
+"but you're a regular minx--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," interrupted John Gale, with a quick flush.
+
+"I mean a regular MANX," said the captain hurriedly.
+
+A singular paleness crossed the deeply religious face of John.  As the
+vessel rose on the waves, he passed his hand hurriedly first across his
+brows and then over his high-buttoned clerical waistcoat, that visible
+sign of a devoted ascetic life!  Then murmuring in his low, deep voice,
+"Brandy, steward," he disappeared below.
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+Glorious as were Golly's spirits, exquisitely simple her worldly
+ignorance, and irresistible her powers of mimicry, strangely enough
+they were considered out of place in St. Barabbas' Hospital.  A
+light-hearted disposition to mistake a blister for a poultice; that
+rare Manx conscientiousness which made her give double doses to the
+patients as a compensation when she had omitted to give them a single
+one, and the faculty of bursting into song at the bedside of a dying
+patient, produced some liveliness not unmixed with perplexity among the
+hospital staff.  It is true, however, that her performance of
+clog-dancing during the night-watches drew a larger and more persistent
+attendance of students and young surgeons than ever was seen before.
+Yet everybody loved her!  Even her patients! "If it amooses you, miss,
+to make me tyke the pills wot's meant for the lydy in the next ward, I
+ain't complyning," said an East End newsboy.  "When ye tyke off the
+style of the doctor wot wisits me, miss, and imitates his wyes, Lawd!
+it does me as much good as his mixtures," said a consumptive charwoman.
+Even thus, old and young basked in the radiant youth of Golly.  She
+found time to write to her family:--
+
+
+DEAR OLD PALS!  I'm here.  J'y suis! bet your boots!  While you're
+wondering what has become of the Bright Young Thing, the B. Y. T. is
+lookin' out of the winder of St. Barabbas' Hospital--just taking in all
+of dear, roaring, dirty London in one gulp!  Such a place--Lordy!  I've
+been waiting three hours to see the crowd go by, and they haven't gone
+yet!  Such crowds, such busses,--all green and blue, only a penny fare,
+and you can ride on top if you want to! Think of that, you dear old
+Manx people!  But there--"the bell goes a-ringing for Sarah!"--they're
+calling for Nurse!  That's the worst of this job: they're always
+a-dyin' just as you're getting interested in something else!  Ta-ta!
+
+GOLLY!
+
+
+Then her dear old grandfather wrote:
+
+
+I'm wondering where my diddleums, Golly, is!  We all miss you so much,
+deary, though we don't miss so many little things as when you were
+here.  My dear, conscientious, unselfish little girl!  You don't say
+where John Gale is.  Is he still protecting you--he-he!--you giddy,
+naughty thing!  People wonder on the island why I let you go alone to
+London--they forget your dear mother was a Frenchwoman!  If you see
+anything your dear old grandfather would like--send it on.
+
+GRANFER.
+
+
+Later, her aunt wrote:--
+
+
+Have you seen the Queen yet, and does she wear her crown at breakfast?
+You might get over the area railing at Buckingham Palace--it would be
+nothing for a girl like you to do--and see if you can find out.
+
+
+To these letters Golly answered, in her own light-hearted way:--
+
+
+DEAR GRANKINS,--I haven't seen John much--but I think he's like the
+Private Secretary at the play--he "don't like London."  Lordy!
+there--I've let it out!  I've been to a theayter.  Nurse Jinny Jones
+and me scrouged into the pit one night without paying, "pertendin'," as
+we were in uniform, we had come to take out a "Lydy" that had fainted.
+Such larks! and such a glorious theayter! I'll tell you another time.
+Tell aunty the Queen's always out when I call.  But that's nothing,
+everybody else is so affable and polite in London.  Gentlemen--"real
+toffs," they call 'em--whom you don't know from Adam--think nothing of
+speaking to you in the street.  Why, Nurse Jinny says--but there
+another patient's going off who by rights oughter have died only
+to-morrow.  "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow," as that
+barn-stormer actor said.  But they're always calling for that giddy
+young thing.
+
+Your GOLLY.
+
+
+Meantime, John Gale, having abruptly left Golly at the door of St.
+Barabbas' hospital, tactfully avoiding an unseemly altercation with the
+cab-driver regarding her exact fare, pursued his way thoughtfully to
+the residence of his uncle, the First Lord of the Admiralty.  He found
+his Lordship in his bath-room.  He was leaning over the bath-tub, which
+was half full of water, contemplating with some anxiety the model of a
+line-of-battle ship which was floating on it, bottom upward.  "I don't
+think it can be quite right--do you?" he said, nervously grasping his
+nephew's hand as he pointed to the capsized vessel; "yet they always do
+it.  Tell me!" he went on appealingly, "tell me, as a professing
+Christian and a Perfect Man--is it quite right?"
+
+"I should think, sir," responded John Gale, with uncompromising
+truthfulness, "that the average vessel of commerce is not built in that
+way."
+
+"Yet," said the First Lord of the Admiralty, with a far-off look, "they
+all do it!  And they don't steer!  The larger they are and the more
+recent the model, the less they steer.  Dear me--you ought to see 'em
+go round and round in that tub."  Then, apparently recalling the
+probable purpose of John's visit, he led the way into his
+dressing-room.  "So you are in London, dear boy.  Is there any little
+thing you want?  I have," he continued, absently fumbling in the
+drawers of his dressing-table, "a few curacies and a bishopric
+somewhere, but with these blessed models--I can't think where they are.
+Or what would you say to a nice chaplaincy in the navy, with a becoming
+uniform, on one of those thingummies?"  He pointed to the bath-room.
+"Stay," he continued, as he passed his hand over his perplexed brows,
+"now I think of it--you're quite unorthodox! Dear me! that wouldn't do.
+You see, Drake,"--he paused, as John Gale started,--"I mean Sir Francis
+Drake, once suspended his chaplain for unorthodoxy, according to
+Froude's book.  These admirals are dreadfully strict Churchmen.  No
+matter!  Come again some other time," he added, gently pushing his
+nephew downstairs and into the street, "and we'll see about it."
+
+With a sinking heart, John turned his steps toward Westminster.  He
+would go and see Golly; perhaps he had not looked after her as he
+ought.  Suddenly a remembered voice, in mimicking accents, fell upon
+his ear with the quotation, "Do you know?"  Then, in a hansom passing
+swiftly by him, Golly, in hospital dress with flying ribbons, appeared,
+sitting between Lord Brownstone Ewer and Francis Horatio Nelson Drake,
+completely grown up.  And from behind floated the inexpressibly sad
+refrain, "Hi tiddli hi!"
+
+This is how it happened.  One morning, Jinny Jones, another hospital
+nurse, had said to her, "Have you any objection, dear, to seeing a
+friend of another gent, a friend of mine?"
+
+"None in the least, dear," said Golly.  "I want to see all that can be
+seen, and do all that can be done in London, and know the glory
+thereof.  I only require that I shall be allowed to love John Gale
+whenever he permits it, which isn't often, and that I may be permitted
+to write simple letters to my doting relations at the rate of twelve
+pages a day, giving an account--MY OWN account--of my doings.  There!
+Go on now!  Bring on your bears."
+
+They had visited the chambers which Lord Brownstone and Drake occupied
+together, and in girlish innocence had put on the gentlemen's clothes
+and danced before them.  Then they all went to the theatre, where
+Golly's delightful simplicity and childish ignorance of the world had
+charmed them.  Everything to her was new, strange, and thrilling.  She
+even leaned from the carriage windows to see the "wheels go round."
+She was surprised at the number of people in the theatre, and insisted
+on knowing if it was church, because they all sat there in their best
+clothes so quietly.  She believed that the play was real, and
+frequently, from a stage box, interrupted the acting with explanations.
+She informed the heroine of the design of the villain waiting at the
+wings.  And when the aged mother of the heroine was dying of starvation
+in a hovel, and she threw a bag of bonbons on the stage, with the
+vociferous declaration that "Lord Brownstone had just given them to
+her--but--Lordy!--SHE didn't want them," they were obliged to lead her
+away, closely followed by an usher and a policeman.  "To think," she
+wrote to John Gale, "that the audience only laughed and shouted, and
+never offered to help!  And yet look at the churches in London, where
+they dare to preach the gospel!"
+
+Fired by this simple letter, and alarmed by Golly's simplicity, John
+Gale went to his clerical chief, Archdeacon Luxury, and demanded
+permission to preach next Sunday.  "Certainly," said the Archdeacon;
+"you shall take my curate's place.  I shall inform the congregation
+that you are the son of Lord Gale.  They are very particular
+churchmen--all society people--and of course will be satisfied with the
+work of the Lord, especially," he added, with a polite smile, "when
+that work happens to be--the Lord Gale's son." Accordingly, the next
+Sunday, John Gale occupied the pulpit of St. Swithin.  But an
+unexpected event happened.  His pent-up eagerness to denounce the
+present methods of Christianity, his fullness of utterance, defeated
+his purpose.  He was overcome with a kind of pulpit fright.  His ideas
+of time and place fled him.  After beginning, "Mr. Chairman, in rising
+to propose the toast of our worthy Archdeacon--Fellow Manxmen--the
+present moment--er--er--the proudest in my--er--life--Dearly beloved
+Golly--unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," he abruptly delivered
+the benediction and sat down.  The incident, however, provoked little
+attention.  The congregation, accustomed to sleep through the sermon,
+awoke at the usual time and went home.  Only a single Scotchwoman said
+to him in passing: "Verra weel for a beginning, laddie.  But give it
+hotter to 'em next time."  Discomfited and bewildered, he communed with
+himself gloomily.  "I can't marry Golly.  I can't talk.  I hate
+society.  What's to be done?  I have it!  I'll go into a monastery."
+
+He went into a monastery in Bishopsgate Street, reached by a threepenny
+'bus.  He gave out vaguely that he had got into "Something Good, in the
+City."  Society was satisfied.  Only Golly suspected the truth.  She
+wrote to her grandfather:--
+
+
+"I saw John Gale the other day with a crowd following him in the
+Strand.  He had on only a kind of brown serge dressing-gown, tied
+around his waist by a rope, and a hood on his head.  I think his poor
+'toe-toes' were in sandals, and I dare say his legs were cold, poor
+dear.  However, if he calls THAT protection of Golly--I don't! I might
+be run off at any moment--for all he'd help.  No matter! If this Court
+understands herself, and she thinks she do, Golly can take care of
+herself--you bet."
+
+
+Nevertheless, Golly lost her place at the hospital through her heroic
+defense of her friend Jinny Jones, who had been deceived by Lord
+Brownstone Ewer.  "You would drive that poor girl into the street," she
+said furiously to the Chairman of the Board, throwing her cap and apron
+in their faces.  "You're a lot of rotten old hypocrites, and I'm glad
+to get shut of you."  Not content with that, she went to Drake and
+demanded that he should make his friend Lord Brownstone marry Jinny.
+
+"Sorry--awfully sorry--my dear Golly, but he's engaged to a rich
+American girl who is to pay his debts; but I'll see that he does
+something handsome for Jinny.  And YOU, my child, what are YOU going to
+do without a situation?" he added, with touching sympathy. "You see,
+I've some vague idea of marrying you myself," he concluded meditatively.
+
+"Thank you for nothing," interrupted Golly gayly, "but I can take care
+of myself and follow out my mission like John Gale."
+
+"There's a pair of you, certainly," said Drake, with a tinge of jealous
+bitterness.
+
+"You bet it's 'a pair' that will take your 'two knaves,' you and your
+Lord Brownstone," returned Golly, dropping a mock courtesy. "Ta-ta; I'm
+going on the stage."
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+She went first into a tobacconist's--and sold cigarettes. Sometimes she
+suffered from actual want, and ate fried fish.  "Do you know how nice
+fried fish tastes in London,--you on 'the Oilan'?" she wrote gayly.
+"I'm getting on splendidly; so's John Gale, I suppose, though he's
+looking cadaverous from starving himself all round.  Tell aunty I
+haven't seen the Queen yet, though after all I really believe she has
+not seen me."
+
+Then, after a severe struggle, she succeeded in getting on the stage as
+a song and dance girl.  She sang melodiously and danced divinely, so
+remarkably that the ignorant public, knowing her to be a Manx girl, and
+vaguely associating her with the symbol of the Isle of Man, supposed
+she had three legs.  She was the success of the season; her cup of
+ambition was filled.  It was slightly embittered by the news that her
+friend Jinny Jones had killed herself in the church at the wedding of
+her recreant lover and the American heiress.  But the affair was
+scarcely alluded to by the Society papers--who were naturally shocked
+at the bad taste of the deceased.  And even Golly forgot it all--on the
+stage.
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+Meanwhile John Gale, or Brother Boreas, as he was known in the
+monastery, was submitting--among other rigors--to an exceptionally
+severe winter in Bishopsgate Street, which seemed to have an Arctic
+climate of its own,--possibly induced by the "freezing-out" process of
+certain stock companies in its vicinity.
+
+"You are miserable, and eager to get out in the wicked world again, my
+son," said the delightful old Superior, as he sat by the only fire,
+sipping a glass of mulled port, when John came in from shoveling snow
+outside.  "I, therefore, merely to try you, shall make you gatekeeper.
+The keys of the monastery front door are under the door-mat in my cell,
+but I am a sound sleeper."  He smiled seraphically, and winked casually
+as he sipped his port. "We will call it, if you please--a penance."
+
+John threw himself in an agony of remorse and shame at the feet of the
+Superior.  "It isn't of myself I'm thinking," he confessed wildly, "but
+of that poor young man, Brother Bones, in the next cell to mine.  He is
+a living skeleton, has got only one lung and an atrophied brain.  A
+night out might do him good."
+
+The Father Superior frowned.  "Do you know who he is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"His real name is Jones.  Why do you start?  You have heard it before?"
+
+John had started, thinking of Jinny Jones, Golly's deserted and
+self-immolated friend.
+
+"It is an uncommon name," he stammered--"for a monastery, I mean."
+
+"He is or was an uncommon man!" said the Superior gravely.  "But," he
+added resignedly, "we cannot pick and choose our company here. Most of
+us have done something and have our own reasons for this retreat.
+Brother Polygamus escaped here from the persecutions of his sixth wife.
+Even I," continued the Superior with a gentle smile, putting his feet
+comfortably on the mantelpiece, "have had my little fling, and the dear
+boys used to say--ahem!--but this is mere worldly vanity.  You alone,
+my dear son," he went on with slight severity, "seem to be wanting in
+some criminality, or--shall I say?--some appropriate besetting sin to
+qualify you for this holy retreat.  An absolutely gratuitous and
+blameless idiocy appears to be your only peculiarity, and for this you
+must do penance.  From this day henceforth, I make you doorkeeper!  Go
+on with your shoveling at present, and shut the door behind you;
+there's a terrible draught in these corridors."
+
+For three days John Gale underwent an agony of doubt and determination,
+and it still snowed in Bishopsgate Street.
+
+On the fourth evening he went to Brother Bones.
+
+"Would you like to have an evening out?"
+
+"I would," said Brother Bones.
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+"I would go to see my remaining sister."  His left eyelid trembled
+slowly in his cadaverous face.
+
+"But if you should hear she was ruined like the other?  What would you
+do?"
+
+A shudder passed over the man.  "I have not got my little knife," he
+said vacantly.
+
+True, he had not!  The Brotherhood had no pockets,--or rather only a
+corporate one, which belonged to the Superior.  John Gale lifted his
+eyes in sublime exaltation.  "You shall go out," he said with decision.
+"Muffle up until you are well out of Bishopsgate Street, where it still
+snows."
+
+"But how did you get the keys?" said Brother Bones.
+
+"From under the Father Superior's door-mat."
+
+"But that was wrong, Brother."
+
+"The mat bore the inscription, 'Salve,' which you know in Latin means
+'Welcome,'" returned John Gale.  "It was logically a permission."
+
+The two men gazed at each other silently.  A shudder passed over the
+two left eyelids of their wan spiritual faces.
+
+"But I have no money," said Brother Bones.
+
+"Nor have I.  But here is a 'bus ticket and a free pass to the Gaiety.
+You will probably find Golly somewhere about.  Tell her," he said in a
+hollow voice, "that I'm getting on."
+
+"I will," said Brother Bones, with a deep cough.
+
+The gate opened and he disappeared in the falling snow.  The bloodhound
+kept by the monastery--one of the real Bishopsgate breed--bayed twice,
+and licked its huge jaws in ghastly anticipation.  "I wonder," said
+John Gale as he resumed his shoveling, "if I have done exactly right.
+Candor compels me to admit that it is an open question."
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+Early the next morning, Brother Bones was brought home by Policeman X,
+his hat crushed, his face haggard, his voice husky and unintelligible.
+He only said vaguely, "Washertime?"
+
+"It is," said John Gale timidly, in explanation to Policeman X, "a case
+of spiritual exhaustion following a vigil."
+
+"That warn't her name," said Policeman X sternly.  "But don't let this
+'ere appen again."
+
+John Gale turned to Brother Bones.  "Then you saw her--Golly?"
+
+"No," said Brother Bones.
+
+"Why?  What on earth have you been doing?"
+
+"Dunno!  Found myself in stashun--zis morning!  Thashall!"
+
+Then John Gale sought the Superior in an agony of remorse, and
+confessed all.  "I am unfit to remain doorkeeper.  Remove me," he
+groaned bitterly.
+
+The old man smiled gently.  "On the contrary, I should have given you
+the keys myself.  Hereafter you can keep them.  The ways of our
+Brotherhood are mysterious,--indeed, you may think idiotic,--but we are
+not responsible for them.  It's all Brother Caine's doing--it's 'All
+Caine!"
+
+
+BOOK VI
+
+Nevertheless, John Gale left the monastery.  "The Bishopsgate Street
+winter does not suit me," he briefly explained to the Superior.  "I
+must go south or southwest."
+
+But he did neither.  He saw Golly, who was living west.  He upbraided
+her for going on the stage.  She retorted: "Whose life is the more
+artificial, yours or mine?  It is true that we are both imperfectly
+clothed," she added, glancing at a photograph of herself in a short
+skirt, "and not always in our right mind--but you've caught nothing but
+a cold!  Nevertheless, I love you and you love me."
+
+Then he begged her to go with him to the South Seas and take the place
+of Father Damien among the colony of lepers.  "It is a beautiful place,
+and inexpensive, for we shall live only a few weeks.  What do you say,
+dearest?  You know," he added, with a faint, sad smile, glancing at
+another photograph of her,--executing the high kick,--"you're quite a
+leaper yourself."
+
+But that night she received an offer of a new engagement.  She wrote to
+John Gale: "The South Seas is rather an expensive trip to take simply
+to die.  Couldn't we do it as cheaply at home?  Or couldn't you prevail
+on your Father Superior to set up his monastery there?  I'm afraid I'm
+not up to it.  Why don't you try the old 'Oilan,' nearer home?  There's
+lots of measles and diphtheria about there lately."
+
+When the heartbroken John Gale received this epistle, he also received
+a letter from his uncle, the First Lord of the Admiralty. "I don't
+fancy this Damien whim of yours.  If you're really in earnest about
+killing yourself, why not take a brief trial trip in one of our latest
+ironclads?  It's just as risky, although--as we are obliged to keep
+these things quiet in the Office--you will not of course get that
+publicity your noble soul craves."
+
+Abandoned by all in his noble purposes, John Gale took the first
+steamer to the Isle of Man.
+
+
+BOOK VII
+
+But he did not remain there long.  Once back in that epistolary island,
+he wrote interminable letters to Golly.  When they began to bore each
+other, he returned to London and entered the Salvation Army.  Crowds
+flocked to hear him preach.  He inveighed against Society and
+Wickedness as represented in his mind by Golly and her friends, and
+praised a perfect Christianity represented by himself and HIS friends.
+A panic of the same remarkable character as the Bishopsgate Street
+winter took possession of London.  Old Moore's, Zadkiel's, and Mother
+Shipton's prophecies were to be fulfilled at an early and fixed date,
+with no postponement on account of weather.  Suddenly Society, John
+Drake, and Antichrist generally combined by ousting him from his
+church, and turning it into a music-hall for Golly!  Then John Gale
+took his last and sublime resolve.  His duty as a perfect Christian was
+to kill Golly!  His logic was at once inscrutable, perfect, and--John
+Galish!
+
+With this sublime and lofty purpose, he called upon Golly.  The heroic
+girl saw his purpose in his eye--an eye at once black, murderous, and
+Christian-like.  For an instant she thought it was better to succumb at
+once and thus end this remarkable attachment. Suddenly through this
+chaos of Spiritual, Religious, Ecstatic, Super-Egotistic whirl of
+confused thought, darted a gleam of Common, Ordinary Horse Sense!  John
+Gale saw it illumine her blue eyes, and trembled.  God in Mercy!  If it
+came to THAT!
+
+"Sit down, John," she said calmly.  Then, in her sweet, clear voice,
+she said: "Did it ever occur to you, dearest, that a more ridiculous,
+unconvincing, purposeless, insane, God-forsaken idiot than you never
+existed?  That you eclipse the wildest dreams of insanity?  That you
+are a mental and moral 'What-is-it?'"
+
+"It has occurred to me," he replied simply.  "I began life with vast
+asinine possibilities which fall to the lot of few men; yet I cannot
+say that I have carried even THEM to a logical conclusion! But YOU,
+love! YOU, darling! conceived in extravagance, born to impossibility, a
+challenge to credulity, a problem to the intellect, a 'missing word'
+for all ages,--are you aware of any one as utterly unsympathetic,
+unreal, and untrue to nature as you are, existing on the face of the
+earth, or in the waters under the earth?"
+
+"You are right, dearest; there are none," she returned with the same
+calm, level voice.  "It is true that I have at times tried to do
+something real and womanly, and not, you know, merely to complicate
+a--a"--her voice faltered--"theatrical situation--but I couldn't!
+Something impelled me otherwise.  Now you know why I became an actress!
+But even there I fail!  THEY are allowed reasoning power off the
+stage--I have none at any time!  I laugh in the wrong place--I do the
+unnecessary, extravagant thing.  Endowed by some strange power with
+extraordinary attributes, I am supposed to make everybody love me, but
+I don't--I satisfy nobody; I convince none!  I have no idea what will
+happen to me next.  I am doomed to--I know not what."
+
+"And I," he groaned bitterly, "I, in some rare and lucid moments, have
+had a glimpse of this too.  We are in the hands of some inscrutable but
+awful power.  Tell me, Golly, tell me, darling, who is it?"
+
+Again that gleam of Common or Ordinary Horse Sense came in her eye.
+
+"I have found out who," she whispered.  "I have found out who has
+created us, and made us as puppets in his hands."
+
+"Is it the Almighty?" he asked.
+
+"No; it is"--she said, with a burst of real laughter--"it is--The 'All
+Caine!"
+
+"What! our countryman the Manxman?  The only great Novelist?  The
+beloved of Gladstone?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes--and he intends to kill YOU--and we're only to be married at your
+deathbed!"
+
+John Gale arose with a look of stern determination.  "I have suffered
+much and idiotically--but I draw a line at this.  I shall kick!"
+
+Golly clapped her hands joyfully.  "We will!"
+
+"And we'll chuck him."
+
+"We will."
+
+They were choking with laughter.
+
+"And go and get married in a natural, simple way like anybody else--and
+try--to do our duty--to God--to each other--and to our
+fellow-beings--and quit this--damned--nonsense--and in-fer-nal idiocy
+forever!"
+
+"Amen!"
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE.--"In that supreme work of my life, 'The Christian,'"
+said the gifted novelist to a reporter in speaking of his methods, "I
+had endowed the characters of Golly and John Gale with such superhuman
+vitality and absolute reality that--as is well known in the experience
+of great writers--they became thinking beings, and actually criticised
+my work, and even INTERFERED and REBELLED to the point of altering my
+climax and the end!"  The present edition gives that ending, which of
+course is the only real one.
+
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN LONGBOWE, YEOMAN
+
+BEING A MODERN-ANTIQUE REALISTIC ROMANCE
+
+(COMPILED FROM SEVERAL EMINENT SOURCES)
+
+It seemeth but fair that I, John Longbowe, should set down this account
+of such hap and adventure as hath befallen me, without flourish,
+vaporing, or cozening of speech, but as becometh one who, not being a
+ready writer, goeth straight to the matter in hand in few words.  So,
+though I offend some, I shall yet convince all, the which lieth closer
+to my purpose.  Thus, it was in the year 1560, or 1650, or mayhap
+1710--for my memory is not what it hath been and I ever cared little
+for monkish calendars or such dry-as-dust matter, being active as
+becometh one who hath to make his way in the world--yet I wot well it
+was after the Great Plague, which I have great cause to remember, lying
+at my cozen's in Wardour Street, London, in that lamentable year,
+eating of gilly flowers, sulphur, hartes tongue and many stynking
+herbes; touching neither man nor mayd, save with a great tongs steept
+in pitch; wearing a fine maske of silk with a mouth piece of aromatic
+stuff--by reason of which acts of hardihood and courage I was
+miraculously preserved.  This much I shall say as to the time of these
+happenings, and no more.  I am a plain, blunt man--mayhap rude of
+speech should occasion warrant---so let them who require the exactness
+of a scrivener or a pedagogue go elsewhere for their entertainment and
+be hanged to them!
+
+Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the
+English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of
+scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined
+together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the
+conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard
+in all England.  And though this be little toward those great
+enterprises and happenings I shall presently shew, I set it down for
+the behoof of such malapert wights as must needs gird at a man of
+spirit and action--and yet, in sooth, know not their own letters.
+
+So to my tale.  There was a great frost when my Lord bade me follow him
+to the water gate near our lodgings in the Strand.  When we reached it
+we were amazed to see that the Thames was frozen over and many citizens
+disporting themselves on the ice--the like of which no man had seen
+before.  There were fires built thereon, and many ships and barges were
+stuck hard and fast, and my Lord thought it vastly pretty that the
+people were walking under their bows and cabbin windows and climbing of
+their sides like mermen, but I, being a plain, blunt man, had no joy in
+such idlenesse, deeming it better that in these times of pith and
+enterprise they should be more seemly employed.  My Lord, because of
+one or two misadventures by reason of the slipperiness of the ice, was
+fain to go by London Bridge, which we did; my Lord as suited his humor
+ruffling the staid citizens as he passed or peering under the hoods of
+their wives and daughters--as became a young gallant of the time.  I,
+being a plain, blunt man, assisted in no such folly, but contented
+myself, when they complayned to me, with damning their souls for greasy
+interfering varlets.  For I shall now make no scruple in declaring that
+my Lord was the most noble Earl of Southampton, being withheld from so
+saying before through very plainness and bluntness, desiring as a
+simple yeoman to make no boast of serving a man of so high quality.
+
+We fared on over Bankside to the Globe playhouse, where my Lord bade me
+dismount and deliver a secret message to the chief player--which
+message was, "had he diligently perused and examined that he wot of,
+and what said he thereof?"  Which I did.  Thereupon he that was called
+the chief player did incontinently proceed to load mine arms and wallet
+with many and divers rolls of manuscripts in my Lord's own hand, and
+bade me say unto him that there was a great frost over London, but that
+if he were to perform those plays and masques publickly, there would be
+a greater frost there--to wit, in the Globe playhouse.  This I did
+deliver with the Manuscripts to my Lord, who changed countenance
+mightily at the sight of them, but could make nought of the message.
+At which the lad who held the horses before the playhouse--one Will
+Shakespeare--split with laughter.  Whereat my Lord cursed him for a
+deer-stealing, coney-catching Warwickshire lout, and cuffed him
+soundly.  I wot there will be those who remember that this Will
+Shakespeare afterwards became a player and did write plays--which were
+acceptable even to the Queen's Majesty's self--and I set this down not
+from vanity to shew I have held converse with such, nor to give a
+seemingness and colour to my story, but to shew what ill-judged,
+misinformed knaves were they who did afterwards attribute friendship
+between my Lord and this Will Shakespeare, even to the saying that he
+made sonnets to my Lord.  Howbeit, my Lord was exceeding wroth, and I,
+to beguile him, did propose that we should leave our horses and cargoes
+of manuscript behind and cross on the ice afoot, which conceit pleased
+him mightily.  In sooth it chanced well with what followed, for hardly
+were we on the river when we saw a great crowd coming from Westminster,
+before a caravan of strange animals and savages in masks, capering and
+capricolling, dragging after them divers sledges quaintly fashioned
+like swannes, in which were ladies attired as fairies and goddesses and
+such like heathen and wanton trumpery, which I, as a plain, blunt man,
+would have fallen to cursing, had not my Lord himself damned me under
+his breath to hold my peace, for that he had recognized my Lord of
+Leicester's colours and that he made no doubt they were of the Court.
+As forsooth this did presently appear; also that one of the ladies was
+her Gracious Majesty's self--masked to the general eye, the better to
+enjoy these miscalled festivities.  I say miscalled, for, though a
+loyal subject of her Majesty, and one who hath borne arms at Tilbury
+Fort in defence of her Majesty, it inflamed my choler, as a plain and
+blunt man, that her Mightiness should so degrade her dignity.  Howbeit,
+as a man who hath his way to make in the world, I kept mine eyes well
+upon the anticks of the Great, while my Lord joined the group of
+maskers and their follies.  I recognized her Majesty's presence by her
+discourse in three languages to as many Ambassadors that were
+present--though I marked well that she had not forgotten her own
+tongue, calling one of her ladies "a sluttish wench," nor her English
+spirit in cuffing my Lord of Essex's ears for some indecorum--which, as
+a plain man myself, curt in speech and action, did rejoice me greatly.
+But I must relate one feat, the like of which I never saw in England
+before or since.  There was a dance of the maskers, and in the midst of
+it her Majesty asked the Ambassador from Spayne if he had seen the
+latest French dance.  He replied that he had not.  Whereupon Her Most
+Excellent Majesty skipt back a pace and forward a pace, and lifting her
+hoop, delivered a kick at his Excellency's hat which sent it flying the
+space of a good English ell above his head!  Howbeit so great was the
+acclamation that her Majesty was graciously moved to repeat it to my
+Lord of Leicester, but, tripping back, her high heels caught in her
+farthingale, and she would have fallen on the ice, but for that my
+Lord, with exceeding swiftness and dexterity, whisked his cloak from
+his shoulder, spreading it under her, and so received her body in its
+folds on the ice, without himself touching her Majesty's person.  Her
+Majesty was greatly pleased at this, and bade my Lord buy another cloak
+at her cost, though it swallowed an estate; but my Lord replyed, after
+the lying fashion of the time, that it was honour enough for him to be
+permitted to keep it after "it had received her Royal person."  I know
+that this hap hath been partly related of another person--the shipman
+Raleigh--but I tell such as deny me that they lie in their teeth, for
+I, John Longbowe, have cause--miserable cause enough, I warrant--to
+remember it, and my Lord can bear me out!  For, spite of his fair
+speeches, when he was quit of the Royal presence, he threw me his wet
+and bedraggled cloak and bade me change it with him for mine own, which
+was dry and warm.  And it was this simple act which wrought the
+lamentable and cruel deed of which I was the victim, for, as I followed
+my Lord, thus apparelled, across the ice, I was suddenly set upon and
+seized, a choke-pear clapt into my mouth so that I could not cry aloud,
+mine eyes bandaged, mine elbows pinioned at my side in that fatall
+cloak like to a trussed fowl, and so I was carried to where the ice was
+broken, and thrust into a boat.  Thence I was conveyed in the same rude
+sort to a ship, dragged up her smooth, wet side, and clapt under
+hatches.  Here I lay helpless as in a swoon.  When I came to, it was
+with a great trampling on the decks above and the washing of waves
+below, and I made that the ship was moving--but where I knew not.
+After a little space the hatch was lifted from where I lay, the
+choke-pear taken from my mouth; but not the bandage from mine eyes, so
+I could see nought around me.  But I heard a strange voice say: "What
+coil is this?  This is my Lord's cloak in sooth, but not my Lord that
+lieth in it!  Who is this fellow?"  At which I did naturally discover
+the great misprise of those varlets who had taken me for my dear Lord,
+whom I now damned in my heart for changing of the cloaks!  Howbeit,
+when I had fetched my breath with difficulty, being well nigh spent by
+reason of the gag, I replyed that I was John Longbowe, my Lord's true
+yeoman, as good a man as any, as they should presently discover when
+they set me ashore.  That I knew--  "Softly, friend," said the Voice,
+"thou knowest too much for the good of England and too little for thine
+own needs.  Thou shalt be sent where thou mayest forget the one and
+improve thy knowledge of the other."  Then as if turning to those about
+him, for I could not see by reason of the blindfold, he next said:
+"Take him on your voyage, and see that he escape not till ye are quit
+of England."  And with that they clapt to the hatch again, and I heard
+him cast off from the ship's side. There was I, John Longbowe, an
+English yeoman,--I, who but that day had held converse with Will
+Shakespeare and been cognizant of the revels of Her Most Christian
+Majesty even to the spying of her garter!--I was kidnapped at the age
+of forty-five or thereabout--for I will not be certain of the year--and
+forced to sea for that my Lord of Southampton had provoked the
+jealousie and envy of divers other great nobles.
+
+
+
+CHAPTERS I TO XX
+
+I AM FORCED TO SEA AND TO BECOME A PIRATE!  I SUFFER LAMENTABLY FROM
+SICKNESS BY REASON OF THE BIGNESSE OF THE WAVES.  I COMMIT MANY
+CRUELTIES AND BLOODSHED.  BUT BY THE DIVINE INTERCESSION I EVENTUALLY
+THROW THE WICKED CAPTAIN OVERBOARD AND AM ELECTED IN HIS STEAD.  I
+DISCOVER AN ISLAND OF TREASURE, OBTAIN POSSESSION THEREOF BY A TRICKE,
+AND PUT THE NATIVES TO THE SWORD.
+
+I marvel much at those who deem it necessary in the setting down of
+their adventures to gloze over the whiles between with much matter of
+the country, the peoples, and even their own foolish reflections
+thereon, hoping in this way to cozen the reader with a belief in their
+own truthfulness, and encrease the extravagance of their deeds.  I,
+being a plain, blunt man, shall simply say for myself that for many
+days after being taken from the bilboes and made free of the deck, I
+was grievously distempered by reason of the waves, and so collapsed in
+the bowels that I could neither eat, stand, nor lie.  Being thus in
+great fear of death, from which I was miraculously preserved, I, out of
+sheer gratitude to my Maker, did incontinently make oath and sign
+articles to be one of the crew--which were buccaneers.  I did this the
+more readily as we were to attack the ships of Spayne only, and through
+there being no state of Warre at that time between England and that
+country, it was wisely conceived that this conduct would provoke it,
+and we should thus be forearmed, as became a juste man in his quarrel.
+For this we had the precious example of many great Captains.  We did
+therefore heave to and burn many ships--the quality of those
+engagements I do not set forth, not having a seaman's use of ship
+speech, and despising, as a plain, blunt man, those who misuse it,
+having it not.
+
+But this I do know, that, having some conceit of a shipman's ways and
+of pirates, I did conceive at this time a pretty song for my comradoes,
+whereof the words ran thus:--
+
+     Yo ho! when the Dog Watch bayeth loud
+       In the light of a mid-sea moon!
+     And the Dead Eyes glare in the stiffening Shroud,
+       For that is the Pirate's noon!
+     When the Night Mayres sit on the Dead Man's Chest
+       Where no manne's breath may come--
+     Then hey for a bottle of Rum! Rum! Rum!
+       And a passage to Kingdom come!
+
+
+I take no credit to myself for the same, except so far as it may shew a
+touch of my Lord of Southampton's manner--we being intimate--but this I
+know, that it was much acclaimed by the crew.  Indeed they, observing
+that the Captain was of a cruel nature, would fain kill him and put me
+in his stead, but I, objecting to the shedding of precious blood in
+such behoof, did prevent such a lamentable and inhuman action by
+stealthily throwing him by night from his cabbin window into the
+sea--where, owing to the inconceivable distance of the ship from shore,
+he was presently drowned.  Which untoward fate had a great effect upon
+my fortunes, since, burthening myself with his goods and effects, I
+found in his chest a printed proclamation from an aged and infirm
+clergyman in the West of England covenanting that, for the sum of two
+crowns, he would send to whoso offered, the chart of an island of great
+treasure in the Spanish Main, whereof he had had confession from the
+lips of a dying parishioner, and the amount gained thereby he would use
+for the restoration of his parish church.  Now I, reading this, was
+struck by a great remorse and admiration for our late Captain, for that
+it would seem that he was, like myself, a staunch upholder of the
+Protestant Faith and the Church thereof, as did appear by his
+possession of the chart, for which he had no doubt paid the two good
+crowns.  As an act of penance I resolved upon finding the same island
+by the aid of the chart, and to that purpose sailed East many days, and
+South, and North, and West as many other days--the manner whereof and
+the latitude and longitude of which I shall not burden the reader with,
+holding it, as a plain, blunt man, mere padding and impertinence to
+fill out my narrative, which helpeth not the general reader.  So, I
+say, when we sighted the Island, which seemed to be swarming with
+savages, I ordered the masts to be stripped, save but for a single sail
+which hung sadly and distractedly, and otherwise put the ship into the
+likeness of a forlorn wreck, clapping the men, save one or two, under
+hatches. This I did to prevent the shedding of precious blood, knowing
+full well that the ignorant savages, believing the ship in sore
+distress, would swim off to her with provisions and fruit, bearing no
+arms.  Which they did, while we, as fast as they clomb the sides,
+despatched them at leisure, without unseemly outcry or alarms.  Having
+thus disposed of the most adventurous, we landed and took possession of
+the island, finding thereon many kegs of carbuncles and rubies and
+pieces of eight--the treasure store of those lawless pirates who infest
+the seas, having no colour of war or teaching of civilisation to atone
+for their horrid deeds.
+
+I discovered also, by an omission in the chart, that this was not the
+Island wot of by the good and aged Devonshire divine--and so we eased
+our consciences of accounting for the treasure to him.  We then sailed
+away, arriving after many years' absence at the Port of Bristol in
+Merrie England, where I took leave of the "Jolly Roger," that being the
+name of my ship; it was a strange conceit of seamen in after years ever
+to call the device of my FLAG--to wit, a skull and bones made in the
+sign of a Cross--by the NAME my ship bore, and if I have only corrected
+the misuse of history by lying knaves, I shall be content with this
+writing.  But alas! such are the uncertainties of time; I found my good
+Lord of Southampton dead and most of his friends beheaded, and the
+blessed King James of Scotland--if I mistake not, for these also be the
+uncertainties of time--on the throne.  In due time I married Mistress
+Marian Straitways.  I might have told more of trifling, and how she
+fared, poor wench! in mine absence, even to the following of me in
+another ship, in a shipboy's disguise, and how I rescued her from a
+scheming Pagan villain; but, as a plain, blunt man, I am no hand at the
+weaving of puling love tales and such trifling diversions for lovesick
+mayds and their puny gallants--having only consideration for men and
+their deeds, which I have here set down bluntly and even at mine
+advanced years am ready to maintain with the hand that set it down.
+
+
+
+DAN'L BOREM
+
+BY E. N---S W--T---T
+
+
+I
+
+Dan'l Borem poured half of his second cup of tea abstractedly into his
+lap.
+
+"Guess you've got suthin' on yer mind, Dan'l," said his sister.
+
+"Mor'n likely I've got suthin' on my pants," returned Dan'l with that
+exquisitely dry, though somewhat protracted humor which at once
+thrilled and bored his acquaintances.  "But--speakin' o' that hoss
+trade"--
+
+"For goodness' sake, don't!" interrupted his sister wearily; "yer allus
+doin' it.  Jest tell me about that young man--the new clerk ye think o'
+gettin'."
+
+"Well, I telegraphed him to come over, arter I got this letter from
+him," he returned, handing her a letter.  "Read it out loud."
+
+But his sister, having an experienced horror of prolixity, glanced over
+it.  "Far as I kin see he takes mor'n two hundred words to say you've
+got to take him on trust, and sez it suthin' in a style betwixt a
+business circular and them Polite Letter Writers.  I thought you
+allowed he was a tony feller."
+
+"Ef he does not brag much, ye see, I kin offer him small wages," said
+Dan'l, with a wink.  "It's kinder takin' him at his own figger."
+
+"And THAT mightn't pay!  But ye don't think o' bringin' him HERE in
+this house?  'Cept you're thinkin' o' tellin' him that yarn o' yours
+about the hoss trade to beguile the winter evenings.  I told ye ye'd
+hev to pay yet to get folks to listen to it."
+
+"Wrong agin--ez you'll see!  Wot ef I get a hundred thousand folks to
+pay me for tellin' it?  But, speakin' o' this young feller, I
+calkilated to send him to the Turkey Buzzard Hotel;" and he looked at
+his sister with a shrewd yet humorous smile.
+
+"What!" said his sister in alarm.  "The Turkey Buzzard!  Why, he'll be
+starved or pizoned!  He won't stay there a week."
+
+"Ef he's pizoned to death he won't be able to demand any wages; ef he
+leaves because he can't stand it--it's proof positive he couldn't stand
+me.  Ef he's only starved and made weak and miserable he'll be easy to
+make terms with.  It may seem hard what I'm sayin', but what seems hard
+on the other feller always comes mighty easy to you.  The thing is NOT
+to be the 'other feller.'  Ye ain't listenin'.  Yet these remarks is
+shrewd and humorous, and hez bin thought so by literary fellers."
+
+"H'm!" said his sister.  "What's that ye was jest sayin' about folks
+bein' willin' to pay ye for tellin' that hoss trade yarn o' yours?"
+
+"Thet's only what one o' them smart New York publishers allowed it was
+worth arter hearin' me tell it," said Dan'l dryly.
+
+"Go way!  You or him must be crazy.  Why, it ain't ez good as that
+story 'bout a man who had a balky hoss that could be made to go only by
+buildin' a fire under him, and arter the man sells that hoss and the
+secret, and the man wot bought him tries it on, the blamed hoss lies
+down over the fire, and puts it out."
+
+"I've allus allowed that the story ye hev to tell yourself is a blamed
+sight funnier than the one ye're listenin' to," said Dan'l. "Put that
+down among my sayin's, will ye?"
+
+"But your story was never anythin' more than one o' them snippy things
+ye see in the papers, drored out to no end by you.  It's only one o'
+them funny paragraphs ye kin read in a minit in the papers that takes
+YOU an hour to tell."
+
+To her surprise Dan'l only looked at his sister with complacency.
+
+"That," he said, "is jest what the New York publisher sez.  'The
+'Merrikan people,' sez he, 'is ashamed o' bein' short and peart and
+funny; it lacks dignity,' sez he; 'it looks funny,' sez he, 'but it
+ain't deep-seated nash'nul literature,' sez he.  'Them snips o' funny
+stories and short dialogues in the comic papers--they make ye laff,'
+sez he, 'but laffin' isn't no sign o' deep morril purpose,' sez he,
+'and it ain't genteel and refined.  Abraham Linkin with his pat
+anecdotes ruined our standin' with dignified nashuns,' sez he. 'We
+cultivated publishers is sick o' hearin' furrin' nashuns roarin' over
+funny 'Merrikan stories; we're goin' to show 'em that, even ef we
+haven't classes and titles and sich, we kin be dull. We're workin' the
+historical racket for all that it's worth,--ef we can't go back mor'n a
+hundred years or so, we kin rake in a Lord and a Lady when we do, and
+we're gettin' in some ole-fashioned spellin' and "methinkses" and
+"peradventures."  We're doin' the religious bizness ez slick ez Robert
+Elsmere, and we find lots o' soul in folks--and heaps o quaint morril
+characters,' sez he."
+
+"Sakes alive, Dan'l!" broke in his sister; "what's all that got to do
+with your yarn 'bout the hoss trade?"
+
+"Everythin'," returned Dan'l.  "'For,' sez he, 'Mr. Borem,' sez he,
+'you're a quaint morril character.  You've got protracted humor,' sez
+he.  'You've bin an hour tellin' that yarn o' yours!  Ef ye could spin
+it out to fill two chapters of a book--yer fortune's made!  For you'll
+show that a successful hoss trade involves the highest nash'nul
+characteristics.  That what common folk calls "selfishness," "revenge,"
+"mean lyin'," and "low-down money-grubbin' ambishun" is really
+"quaintness," and will go in double harness with the bizness of a
+Christian banker,' sez he."
+
+"Created goodness, Dan'l!  You're designin' ter"--
+
+Dan'l Borem rose, coughed, expectorated carefully at the usual spot in
+the fender, his general custom of indicating the conclusion of a
+subject or an interview, and said dryly: "I'm thar!"
+
+
+II
+
+To return to the writer of the letter, whose career was momentarily cut
+off by the episode of the horse trade (who, if he had previously
+received a letter written by somebody else would have been an entirely
+different person and not in this novel at all): John Lummox--known to
+his family as "the perfect Lummox"--had been two years in college, but
+thought it rather fine of himself--a habit of thought in which he
+frequently indulged--to become a clerk, but finally got tired of it,
+and to his father's relief went to Europe for a couple of years,
+returning with some knowledge of French and German, and the cutting end
+of a German student's blunted dueling sword.  Having, as he felt, thus
+equipped himself for the hero of an American "Good Society" novel, he
+went on board a "liner," where there would naturally be susceptible
+young ladies. One he thought he recognized as a girl with whom he used
+to play "forfeits" in the vulgar past of his boyhood.  She sat at his
+table, accompanied by another lady whose husband seemed to be a
+confirmed dyspeptic.  His remarks struck Lummox as peculiar.
+
+"Shall I begin dinner with pudding and cheese or take the ordinary soup
+first?  I quite forget which I did last night," he said anxiously to
+his wife.
+
+But Mrs. Starling hesitated.
+
+"Tell me, Mary," he said, appealing to Miss Bike, the young lady.
+
+"I should begin with the pudding," said Miss Bike decisively, "and
+between that and the arrival of the cheese you can make up your mind,
+and then, if you think better, go back to the soup."
+
+"Thank you so much.  Now, as to drink?  Shall I take the
+Friedrichshalle first or the Benedictine?  You know the doctor insists
+upon the Friedrichshalle, but I don't think I did well to mix them as I
+did yesterday.  Or shall I take simply milk and beer?"
+
+"I should say simplicity was best.  Besides, you can always fill up
+with champagne later."
+
+How splendidly this clear-headed, clear-eyed girl dominated the man!
+Lummox felt that REALLY he might renew her acquaintance!  He did so.
+
+"I remembered you," she said.  "You've not changed a bit since you were
+eight years old."
+
+John, wishing to change the subject, said that he thought Mr. Starling
+seemed an uncertain man.
+
+"Very!  He's even now in his stateroom sitting in his pyjamas with a
+rubber shoe on one foot and a pump on the other, wondering whether he
+ought to put on golf knickerbockers with a dressing-gown and straw hat
+before he comes on deck.  He has already put on and taken off about
+twenty suits."
+
+"He certainly is very trying," returned Lummox.  He paused and colored
+deeply.  "I beg," he stammered, "I hope--you don't think me guilty of a
+pun!  When I said 'trying' I referred entirely to the effect on your
+sensitiveness of these tentative attempts toward clothing himself."
+
+"I should never accuse YOU of levity, Mr. Lummox," said the young lady,
+gazing thoughtfully upon his calm but somewhat heavy features,--"never."
+
+Yet he would have liked to reclaim himself by a show of lightness. He
+was leaning on the rail looking at the sea.  The scene was beautiful.
+
+"I suppose," he said, rolling with the sea and his early studies of
+Doctor Johnson, "that one would in the more superior manner show his
+appreciation of all this by refraining from the obvious comment which
+must needs be recognized as comparatively commonplace and vulgar; but
+really this is so superb that I must express some of my emotion, even
+at the risk of lowering your opinion of my good taste, provided, of
+course, that you have any opinion on the one hand or any good taste on
+the other."
+
+"Without that undue depreciation of one's self which must ever be a
+sign of self-conscious demerit," said the young girl lightly, "I may
+say that I am not generally good at Johnsonese; but it may relieve your
+mind to know that had you kept silence one instant longer, I should
+have taken the risk of lowering your opinion of my taste, provided, of
+course, that you have one to lower and are capable of that exertion--if
+such indeed it may be termed--by remarking that this is perfectly
+magnificent."
+
+"Do you think," he said gloomily, still leaning on the rail, "that we
+can keep this kind of thing up--perhaps I should say down--much longer?
+For myself, I am feeling far from well; it may have been the
+lobster--or that last sentence--but"--
+
+They were both silent.  "Yet," she said, after a pause, "you can at
+least take Mr. Starling and his dyspepsia off my hands.  You might be
+equal to that exertion."
+
+"I suppose that by this time I ought to be doing something for
+somebody," he said thoughtfully.  "Yes, I will."
+
+That evening after dinner he took Mr. Starling into the smoking-room
+and card-room.  They had something hot.  At 4 A. M., with the
+assistance of the steward, he projected Mr. Starling into Mrs.
+Starling's stateroom, delicately withdrawing to evade the lady's
+thanks.  At breakfast he saw Miss Bike.  "Thank you so much," she said;
+"Mrs. Starling found Starling greatly improved.  He himself admitted he
+was 'never berrer' and, far from worrying about what night-clothes he
+should wear, went to bed AS HE WAS--even to his hat.  Mrs. Starling
+calls you 'her preserver,' and Mr. Starling distinctly stated that you
+were a 'jolly-good-fler.'"
+
+"And you?" asked John Lummox.
+
+"In your present condition of abnormal self-consciousness and
+apperceptive egotism, I really shouldn't like to say."
+
+When the voyage was ended Mr. Lummox went to see Mary Bike at her
+house, and his father--whom he had not seen for ten years--at HIS
+house.  With a refined absence of natural affection he contented
+himself with inquiring of the servants as to his father's habits, and
+if he still wore dress clothes at dinner.  The information thus
+elicited forced him to the conclusion that the old gentleman's
+circumstances were reduced, and that it was possible that he, John
+Lummox, might be actually compelled to earn his own living.  He
+communicated that suspicion to his father at dinner, and over the last
+bottle of "Mouton," a circumstance which also had determined him in his
+resolution.  "You might," said his father thoughtfully, "offer yourself
+to some rising American novelist as a study for the new hero,--one
+absolutely without ambition, capacity, or energy; willing, however, to
+be whatever the novelist chooses to make him, so long as he hasn't to
+choose for himself.  If your inordinate self-consciousness is still in
+your way, I could give him a few points about you, myself."
+
+"I had thought," said John, hesitatingly, "of going into your office
+and becoming your partner in the business.  You could always look after
+me, you know."
+
+A shudder passed over the old man.  Then he tremblingly muttered to
+himself:
+
+"Thank heaven!  There is one way it may still be averted!" Retiring to
+his room he calmly committed suicide, thoughtfully leaving the empty
+poison bottle in the fender.
+
+And this is how John Lummox came to offer himself as a clerk to Dan'l
+Borem.  The ways of Providence are indeed strange, yet those of the
+novelist are only occasionally novel.
+
+
+III
+
+John K. Lummox lived for a week at the Turkey Buzzard Hotel exclusively
+on doughnuts and innuendoes.  He was informed by Mr. Borem's
+clerk--whose place he was to fill--that he wouldn't be able to stand
+it, and thus received the character of his employer from his last
+employee.
+
+"I suppose," said Dan'l Borem, chuckling, "that he said I was a old
+skinflint, good only at a hoss trade, uneddicated, ignorant, and unable
+to keep accounts, and an oppressor o' the widder and orphan. Allowed
+that my cute sayin's was a kind o' ten-cent parody o' them proverbs in
+Poor Richard's Almanack!"
+
+"Omitting a few expletives, he certainly did," returned Lummox with
+great delicacy.
+
+"He allowed to me," said Dan'l thoughtfully, "that YOU was a poor
+critter that hadn't a single reason to show for livin': that the
+fool-killer had bin shadderin' you from your birth, and that you hadn't
+paid a cent profit on your father's original investment in ye, nor on
+the assessments he'd paid on ye ever since.  He seems to be a cute
+feller arter all, and I'm rather sorry he's leavin'."
+
+"I am quite willing to abandon my position in his favor, now," said
+Lummox with alacrity.
+
+"No," said Dan'l, rubbing his chin argumentatively; "the only way for
+us to do is to circumvent him like in a hoss trade--with suthin'
+unexpected.  When he thinks you're goin' to sleep in the shafts you'll
+run away; and when he think's I'm vicious I'll let a woman or a child
+drive me."
+
+
+IV
+
+"Well, Dan'l, how's that new clerk o' yours gettin' on?" said Mrs.
+Bigby a week later.
+
+"Purty fine!  He's good at accounts and hez got to know the Bank's
+customers by this time.  But I allus reckoned he'd get stuck with some
+o' them counterfeit notes--and he hez!  Ye see he ain't accustomed to
+look at a five or a ten dollar note as sharp as some men, and he's
+already taken in two tens and a five counterfeits."
+
+"Gracious!" said Mrs. Bigsby.  "What did the poor feller do?"
+
+"Oh, he ups and tells me, all right, after he discovered it.  And sez
+he: 'I've charged my account with 'em,' sez he, 'so the Bank won't lose
+it.'"
+
+"Why, Dan'l," said Mrs. Bigsby, "ye didn't let that poor feller"--
+
+"You hol' on!" said her brother; "business is business; but I sez to
+him: 'Ye oughter put it down to Profit and Loss account.  Or perhaps
+we'll have a chance o' gettin' rid o' them,--not in Noo York, where
+folks is sharp, but here in the country, and then ye kin credit
+yourself with the amount arter you've got rid o' them.'"
+
+"Laws!  I'm sorry ye did that, Dan'l," said Mrs. Bigsby.
+
+"With that he riz up," continued Dan'l, ignoring his sister, "and,
+takin' them counterfeit notes from my hand, sez he: 'Them notes belong
+to ME now,' sez he, 'and I'm goin' to destroy 'em.'  And with that he
+walks over to the fire as stiff as a poker, and held them notes in it
+until they were burnt clean up."
+
+"Well, but that was honest and straightforward in him!" said Mrs.
+Bigsby.
+
+"Um! but it wasn't business--and ye see"--  Dan'l paused and rubbed his
+chin.
+
+"Well, go on!" said Mrs. Bigsby impatiently.
+
+"Well, ye see, neither him nor me was very smart in detectin'
+counterfeits, or even knowin' 'em, and"--
+
+"Well!  For goodness' sake, Dan'l, speak out!"
+
+"Well--THE DUM FOOL BURNT UP THREE GOOD BILLS, and we neither of us
+knew it!"
+
+
+V
+
+The "unexpected" which Dan'l Borem had hinted might characterize his
+future conduct was first intimated by his treatment of the "Widow
+Cully," an aged and impoverished woman whose property was heavily
+mortgaged to him.  He had curtly summoned her to come to his office on
+Christmas Day and settle up.  Frightened, hopeless, and in the face of
+a snowstorm, the old woman attended, but was surprised by receiving a
+"satisfaction piece" in full from the banker, and a gorgeous Christmas
+dinner.  "All the same," said Mrs. Bigsby to Lummox, "Dan'l might hev
+done all this without frightenin' the poor old critter into a nervous
+fever, chillin' her through by makin' her walk two miles through the
+snow, and keepin' her on the ragged edge o' despair for two mortal
+hours!  But it's his humorous way."
+
+"Did he give any reason for being so lenient to the widow?" asked
+Lummox.
+
+"He said that her son had given him a core of his apple when they were
+boys together.  Dan'l ez mighty thoughtful o' folks that was kind to
+him in them days."
+
+"Is that all?" said Lummox, astonished.
+
+"Well--I've kinder thought suthin' else," said Mrs. Bigsby hesitatingly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That its bein' Christmas Day--and as I've heard tell that's NO DAY IN
+LAW, but just like Sunday--Dan'l mebbe thought that he might crawl
+outer that satisfaction piece, ef he ever wanted ter!  Dan'l is mighty
+cute."
+
+
+VI
+
+Mr. John Lummox was not behind his employer in developing unexpected
+traits of character.  Hitherto holding aloof from his neighbors in Old
+Folksville, he suddenly went to a social gathering, and distinguished
+himself as the principal and popular guest of the evening.  As Dan'l
+Borem afterward told his sister: "He was one o' them Combination
+Minstrels and Variety Shows in one. He sang through a whole opery, made
+the pianner jest howl, gave some recitations, Casabianker and Betsy and
+I are Out; imitated all them tragedians; did tricks with cards and
+fetched rabbits outer hats, besides liftin' the pianner with two men
+sittin' on it, jest by his teeth.  Created snakes!" said Borem,
+concluding his account, which here is necessarily abbreviated, "ef he
+learnt all that in his two years in Europe I ain't sayin' anythin' more
+agin' eddication and furrin' travel after this!  Why, the next day
+there was quite a run on the Bank jest to see HIM.  He is makin' the
+bizness pop'lar."
+
+"Then ye think ye'll get along together?"
+
+"I reckon we'll hitch hosses," said Dan'l, with a smile.
+
+A few weeks later, one evening, Dan'l Borem sat with his sister alone.
+John Lummox, who was now residing with them, was attending a social
+engagement.  Mrs. Bigsby knew that Dan'l had something to communicate,
+but knew that he would do so in his own way.
+
+"Speakin' o' hoss trades," he began.
+
+"We WASN'T and we ain't goin' to," said Mrs. Bigsby with great
+promptness.  "I've heard enough of 'em."
+
+"But this here one hez suthin' to do with your fr'en', John Lummox,"
+said Dan'l, with a chuckle.
+
+Mrs. Bigsby stared.  "Go on, then," she said, "but, for goodness' sake,
+cut it short."
+
+Dan'l threw away his quid and replenished it from his silver tobacco
+box.  Mrs. Bigsby shuddered slightly as she recognized the usual
+preliminary to prolixity, but determined, as far as possible, to make
+her brother brief.
+
+"It mout be two weeks ago," began Dan'l, "that I see John Lummox over
+at Palmyra, where he'd bin visitin'.  He was drivin' a hoss, the
+beautifulest critter--for color--I ever saw.  It was yaller, with mane
+and tail a kinder golden, like the hair o' them British Blondes that
+was here in the Variety Show."
+
+"Dan'l!" exclaimed Mrs. Bigsby, horrified.  "And you allowed you never
+went thar!"
+
+"Saw 'em on the posters--and mebbe the color was a little brighter
+thar," said Dan'l carelessly--"but who's interruptin' now?"
+
+"Go on," said Mrs. Bigsby.
+
+"'Got a fine hoss thar,' sez I; 'reckon I never see such a purty
+color,' sez I.  'He is purty,' sez he, 'per'aps too purty for ME to be
+a-drivin', but he isn't fast.'  'I ain't speakin' o' that,' sez I;
+'it's his looks that I'm talkin' of; whar might ye hev got him?' 'He
+was offered to me by a fr'en' o' me boyhood,' sez he; 'he's a pinto
+mustang,' sez he, 'from Californy, whar they breed 'em.' 'What's a
+pinto hoss?' sez I.  'The same ez a calico hoss,' sez he; 'what they
+have in cirkises, but ye never see 'em that color.'  En he was right,
+for when I looked him over I never DID see such a soft and silky coat,
+and his mane and tail jest glistened.  'It IS a little too showy for
+ye,' sez I, 'but I might take him at a fair price.  What's your fr'en'
+askin'?'  'He won't sell him to anybody but me,' sez Lummox; 'he's a
+horror o' hoss traders, anyway, and his price is more like a gift to a
+fr'en'.'  'What might that price be, ef it's a fair question?' sez I,
+for the more I looked at the hoss the more I liked him.  'A hundred and
+fifty dollars,' sez he; 'but my fr'en' would ask YOU double that.'
+'Couldn't YOU and ME make a trade?' sez I; 'I'll exchange ye that roan
+mare, that's worth two hundred, for this hoss and fifty dollars.'  With
+that he drew himself up, and sez he: 'Mr. Borem,' sez he, 'I share my
+fr'en's opinion about hoss tradin', and I promised my mother I'd never
+swap hosses.  You ought to know me by this time.'"
+
+"That's so!" said Mrs. Bigsby; "I'm wonderin' ye dared to ax him."
+
+Dan'l passed his hand over his mouth, and continued: "'I dunno but
+you're right, Lummox,' sez I; 'per'aps it's jest as well as thar wasn't
+TWO in the Bank in that bizness.'  But the more I looked at the hoss
+the more I hankered arter him.  'Look here,' sez I, 'I tell ye what
+I'll do!  I'll LEND you my hoss and you'll LEND me yourn.  I'll draw up
+a paper to that effect, and provide that in case o' accidents, ef I
+don't return you your hoss, I'll agree to pay you a hundred and fifty
+dollars.  You'll give me the same kind o' paper about my hoss--with the
+proviso that you pay me two hundred for him!'  'Excuse me, Mr. Borem,'
+sez he, 'but that difference of fifty makes a hoss trade accordin' to
+my mind.  It's agin' my principles to make such an agreement.'"
+
+"An' he was right, Dan'l," said Mrs. Bigsby approvingly.
+
+But Dan'l wiped his mouth again, leaving, however, a singular smile on
+it.  "Well, ez I wanted that hoss, I jest thought and thought! I knew I
+could get two hundred and fifty for him easy, and that Lummox didn't
+know anythin' of his valoo, and I finally agreed to make the swap even.
+'What do you call him?' sez I.  'Pegasus,' sez he,--'the poet's hoss,
+on account o' his golden mane,' sez he. That made me laff, for I never
+knew a poet ez could afford to hev a hoss,--much less one like that!
+But I said: 'I'll borry Pegasus o' you on those terms.'  The next day I
+took the hoss to Jonesville; Lummox was right: he wasn't FAST, but,
+jest as I expected, he made a sensation!  Folks crowded round him
+whenever I stopped; wimmin followed him and children cried for him.  I
+could hev sold him for three hundred without leavin' town!  'So ye call
+him Pegasus,' sez Doc Smith, grinnin'; 'I didn't known ye was subject
+to the divine afflatus, Dan'l.'  'I don' offen hev it,' sez I, 'but
+when I do I find a little straight gin does me good.'  'So did Byron,'
+sez he, chucklin'.  But even if I had called him 'Beelzebub' the hull
+town would hev bin jest as crazy over him.  Well, as it was comin' on
+to rain I started jest after sundown for home.  But it came ter blow,
+an' ter pour cats and dogs, an' I was nigh washed out o' the buggy,
+besides losin' my way and gettin' inter ditches and puddles, and I hed
+to stop at Staples' Half-Way House and put up for the night. In the
+mornin' I riz up early and goes into the stable yard, and the first
+thing I sees was the 'ostler.  'I hope ye giv' my hoss a good scrub
+down,' I sez, 'as I told ye, for his color is that delicate the
+smallest spot shows.  It's a very rare color for a hoss.'  'I was
+hopin' it might be,' sez he.  I was a little huffed at that, and I sez:
+'It's considered a very beautiful color.' 'Mebbe it is,' sez he, 'but I
+never cared much for fireworks.' 'What yer mean?' sez I.  'Look here,
+Squire!' sez he; 'I don't mind scourin' and rubbin' down a hoss that
+will stay the same color TWICE, but when he gets to playin' a
+kaladeoskope on me, I kick!' 'Trot him out,' sez I, beginnin' to feel
+queer.  With that he fetched out the hoss!  For a minit I hed to ketch
+on to the fence to keep myself from fallin'.  I swonny! ef he didn't
+look like a case of measles on top o' yaller fever--'cept where the
+harness had touched him, and that was kinder stenciled out all over
+him.  Thar was places whar the 'ostler had washed down to the
+foundation color, a kind o' chewed licorice!  Then I knew that somebody
+had bin sold terrible, and I reckoned it might be me!  But I said
+nothin' to the 'ostler, and waited until dark, when I drove him over
+here, and put him in the stables, lettin' no one see him.  In the
+mornin' Lummox comes to me, and sez he: 'I'm glad to see you back,' sez
+he, 'for my conscience is troublin' me about that hoss agreement; it
+looks too much like a hoss trade,' sez he, 'and I'm goin' to send the
+hoss back.'  'Mebbe your conscience,' sez I, 'may trouble you a little
+more ef you'll step this way;' and with that I takes his arm and leads
+him round to the stable and brings out the hoss.
+
+"Well, Lummox never changes ez much as a hair, ez he puts up his
+eyeglasses.  'I'm not good at what's called "Pop'lar Art,"' sez he. 'Is
+it a chromo, or your own work?' sez he, critical like.
+
+"'It's YOUR HOSS,' sez I.
+
+"He looks at me a minit and then drors a paper from his pocket. 'This
+paper,' sez he in his quiet way, 'was drored up by you and is a
+covenant to return to me a yaller hoss with golden mane and tail--or a
+hundred and fifty dollars.  Ez I don't see the hoss anywhere--mebbe
+you've got the hundred and fifty dollars handy?' sez he. 'Suppose I
+hadn't the money?' sez I.  'I should be obliged,' sez he in a kind o'
+pained Christian-martyr way, 'ter sell YOUR hoss for two hundred, and
+send the money to my fr'en'.'  We looked at each other steddy for a
+minit and then I counts him out a hundred and fifty.  He took the money
+sad-like and then sez: 'Mr. Borem,' sez he, 'this is a great morril
+lesson to us,' and went back to the office.  In the arternoon I called
+in an old hoss dealer that I knew and shows him Pegasus.
+
+"'He wants renewin',' sez he.
+
+"'Wot's that?' sez I.
+
+"'A few more bottles o' that British Blonde Hair Dye to set him up
+ag'in.  That's wot they allus do in the cirkis, whar he kem from.'
+
+"Then I went back to the office and I took down my sign.  'What's that
+you re doin'?' sez Lummox, with a sickly kind o' smile.  'Are you goin'
+out o' the bizness?'
+
+"'No, I'm only goin' to change that sign from "Dan'l Borem" to "Borem
+and Lummox,"' sez I.  'I've concluded it's cheaper for me to take you
+inter partnership now than to continue in this way, which would only
+end in your hevin' to take me in later.  I preferred to DO IT FUST.'"
+
+
+VII
+
+A rich man, and settled in business, John Lummox concluded that he
+would marry Mary Bike.  With that far-sighted logic which had always
+characterized him he reasoned that, having first met her on a liner, he
+would find her again on one if he took passage to Europe.  He did--but
+she was down on the passenger list as Mrs. Edwin Wraggles.  The result
+of their interview was given to Mrs. Bigsby by Dan'l Borem in his own
+dialect.
+
+"Ez far as I kin see, it was like the Deacon's Sunday hoss trade, bein'
+all 'Ef it wassent.'  'Ef ye wasn't Mrs. Wraggles,' sez Lummox, sez he,
+'I'd be tellin' ye how I've loved ye ever sence I first seed ye.  Ef ye
+wasn't Mrs. Wraggles, I'd be squeezin' yer hand,' sez he; 'ef ye wasn't
+Mrs. Wraggles, I'd be askin' ye to marry me.'  Then the gal ups and
+sez, sez she: 'But I AIN'T Mrs. Wraggles,' sez she; 'Mrs. Wraggles is
+my sister, and couldn't come, so I'm travelin' on her ticket, and
+that's how my name is Wraggles on the passenger list.'  'But why didn't
+ye tell me so at once?' sez Lummox.  'This is an episoode o' protracted
+humor,' sez she, 'and I'M bound to have a show in it somehow!'"
+
+"Well!" said Mrs. Bigsby breathlessly; "then he DID marry her?"
+
+"Darned ef I know.  He never said so straight out--but that's like
+Lummox."
+
+
+
+
+STORIES THREE
+
+BY R-DY--D K-PL--G
+
+
+I
+
+FOR SIMLA REASONS
+
+Some people say that improbable things don't necessarily happen in
+India--but these people never find improbabilities anywhere.  This
+sounds clever, but you will at once perceive that it really means the
+opposite of what I intended to say.  So we'll drop it.  What I am
+trying to tell you is that after Sparkley had that affair with Miss
+Millikens a singular change came over him.  He grew abstracted and
+solitary,--holding dark seances with himself,--which was odd, as
+everybody knew he never cared a rap for the Millikens girl.  It was
+even said that he was off his head--which is rhyme.  But his reason was
+undoubtedly affected, for he had been heard to mutter incoherently at
+the Club, and, strangest of all, to answer questions THAT WERE NEVER
+ASKED!  This was so awkward in that Branch of the Civil Department of
+which he was a high official--where the rule was exactly the
+reverse--that he was presently invalided on full pay!  Then he
+disappeared.  Clever people said it was because the Department was
+afraid he had still much to answer for; stupid people simply envied him.
+
+Mrs. Awksby, whom everybody knew had been the cause of breaking off the
+match, was now wild to know the reason of Sparkley's retirement.  She
+attacked heaven and earth, and even went a step higher--to the Viceroy.
+At the vice-regal ball I saw, behind the curtains of a window, her
+rolling violet-blue eyes with a singular glitter in them.  It was the
+reflection of the Viceroy's star, although the rest of his Excellency
+was hidden in the curtain.  I heard him saying, "Come now! really, now,
+you are--you know you are!" in reply to her cooing questioning.  Then
+she made a dash at me and captured me.
+
+"What did you hear?"
+
+"Nothing I should not have heard."
+
+"Don't be like all the other men--you silly boy!" she answered.  "I was
+only trying to find out something about Sparkley.  And I will find it
+out too," she said, clinching her thin little hand.  "And what's more,"
+she added, turning on me suddenly, "YOU shall help me!"
+
+"I?" I said in surprise.
+
+"Don't pretend!" she said poutingly.  "You're too clever to believe
+he's cut up over the Millikens.  No--it's something awful or--another
+woman!  Now, if I knew as much of India as you do--and wasn't a woman,
+and could go where I liked--I'd go to Bungloore and find him."
+
+"Oh! You have his address?" I said.
+
+"Certainly!  What did you expect I was behind the curtain with the
+Viceroy for?" she said, opening her violet eyes innocently.  "It's
+Bungloore--First Turning to the Right--At the End of the passage."
+
+Bungloore--near Ghouli Pass--in the Jungle!  I knew the place, a spot
+of dank pestilence and mystery.  "You never could have gone there," I
+said.
+
+"You do not know WHAT I could do for a FRIEND," she said sweetly,
+veiling her eyes in demure significance.
+
+"Oh, come off the roof!" I said bluntly.
+
+She could be obedient when it was necessary.  She came off.  Not
+without her revenge.  "Try to remember you are not at school with the
+Stalkies," she said, and turned away.
+
+I went to Bungloore,--not on her account, but my own.  If you don't
+know India, you won't know Bungloore.  It's all that and more.  An egg
+dropped by a vulture, sat upon and addled by the Department. But I knew
+the house and walked boldly in.  A lion walked out of one door as I
+came in at another.  We did this two or three times--and found it
+amusing.  A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as I passed, and
+respectfully removed his hood.
+
+I found the poor old boy at the end of the passage.  It might have been
+the passage between Calais and Dover,--he looked so green, so limp and
+dejected.  I affected not to notice it, and threw myself in a chair.
+
+He gazed at me for a moment and then said, "Did you hear what the chair
+was saying?"
+
+It was an ordinary bamboo armchair, and had creaked after the usual
+fashion of bamboo chairs.  I said so.
+
+He cast his eyes to the ceiling.  "He calls it 'creaking,'" he
+murmured.  "No matter," he continued aloud, "its remark was not of a
+complimentary nature.  It's very difficult to get really polite
+furniture."
+
+The man was evidently stark, staring mad.  I still affected not to
+observe it, and asked him if that was why he left Simla.
+
+"There were Simla reasons, certainly," he replied.  "But you think I
+came here for solitude!  SOLITUDE!" he repeated, with a laugh. "Why, I
+hold daily conversations with any blessed thing in this house, from the
+veranda to the chimney-stack, with any stick of furniture, from the
+footstool to the towel-horse.  I get more out of it than the gabble at
+the Club.  You look surprised.  Listen!  I took this thing up in my
+leisure hours in the Department.  I had read much about the
+conversation of animals.  I argued that if animals conversed, why
+shouldn't inanimate things communicate with each other?  You cannot
+prove that animals don't converse--neither can you prove that inanimate
+objects DO NOT.  See?"
+
+I was thunderstruck with the force of his logic.
+
+"Of course," he continued, "there are degrees of intelligence, and that
+makes it difficult.  For instance, a mahogany table would not talk like
+a rush-bottomed kitchen chair."  He stopped suddenly, listened, and
+replied, "I really couldn't say."
+
+"I didn't speak," I said.
+
+"I know YOU didn't.  But your chair asked me 'how long that fool was
+going to stay.'  I replied as you heard.  Pray don't move--I intend to
+change that chair for one more accustomed to polite society.  To
+continue: I perfected myself in the language, and it was awfully jolly
+at first.  Whenever I went by train, I heard not only all the engines
+said, but what every blessed carriage thought, that joined in the
+conversation.  If you chaps only knew what rot those whistles can get
+off!  And as for the brakes, they can beat any mule driver in cursing.
+Then, after a time, it got rather monotonous, and I took a short sea
+trip for my health.  But, by Jove, every blessed inch of the whole
+ship--from the screw to the bowsprit--had something to say, and the bad
+language used by the garboard strake when the ship rolled was something
+too awful!  You don't happen to know what the garboard strake is, do
+you?"
+
+"No," I replied.
+
+"No more do I.  That's the dreadful thing about it.  You've got to
+listen to chaps that you don't know.  Why, coming home on my bicycle
+the other day there was an awful row between some infernal 'sprocket'
+and the 'ball bearings' of the machine, and I never knew before there
+were such things in the whole concern."
+
+I thought I had got at his secret, and said carelessly: "Then I suppose
+this was the reason why you broke off your engagement with Miss
+Millikens?"
+
+"Not at all," he said coolly.  "Nothing to do with it.  That is quite
+another affair.  It's a very queer story; would you like to hear it?"
+
+"By all means."  I took out my notebook.
+
+"You remember that night of the Amateur Theatricals, got up by the
+White Hussars, when the lights suddenly went out all over the house?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "I heard about it."
+
+"Well, I had gone down there that evening with the determination of
+proposing to Mary Millikens the first chance that offered.  She sat
+just in front of me, her sister Jane next, and her mother, smart Widow
+Millikens,--who was a bit larky on her own account, you remember,--the
+next on the bench.  When the lights went out and the panic and
+tittering began, I saw my chance!  I leaned forward, and in a voice
+that would just reach Mary's ear I said, 'I have long wished to tell
+you how my life is bound up with you, dear, and I never, never can be
+happy without you'--when just then there was a mighty big shove down my
+bench from the fellows beyond me, who were trying to get out.  But I
+held on like grim death, and struggled back again into position, and
+went on: 'You'll forgive my taking a chance like this, but I felt I
+could no longer conceal my love for you,' when I'm blest if there
+wasn't another shove, and though I'd got hold of her little hand and
+had a kind of squeeze in return, I was drifted away again and had to
+fight my way back.  But I managed to finish, and said, 'If the devotion
+of a lifetime will atone for this hurried avowal of my love for you,
+let me hope for a response,' and just then the infernal lights were
+turned on, and there I was holding the widow's hand and she nestling on
+my shoulder, and the two girls in hysterics on the other side.  You
+see, I never knew that they were shoved down on their bench every time,
+just as I was, and of course when I got back to where I was I'd just
+skipped one of them each time!  Yes, sir!  I had made that proposal in
+THREE sections--a part to each girl, winding up with the mother!  No
+explanation was possible, and I left Simla next day.  Naturally, it
+wasn't a thing they could talk about, either!"
+
+"Then you think Mrs. Awksby had nothing to do with it?" I said.
+
+"Nothing--absolutely nothing.  By the way, if you see that lady, you
+might tell her that I have possession of that brocade easy-chair which
+used to stand in the corner of her boudoir.  You remember it,--faded
+white and yellow, with one of the casters off and a little frayed at
+the back, but rather soft-spoken and amiable?  But of course you don't
+understand THAT.  I bought it after she moved into her new bungalow."
+
+"But why should I tell her that?" I asked in wonder.
+
+"Nothing--except that I find it very amusing with its reminiscences of
+the company she used to entertain, and her confidences generally.
+Good-by--take care of the lion in the hall.  He always couches on the
+left for a spring.  Ta-ta!"
+
+I hurried away.  When I returned to Simla I told Mrs. Awksby of my
+discoveries, and spoke of the armchair.
+
+I fancied she colored slightly, but quickly recovered.
+
+"Dear old Sparkley," she said sweetly; "he WAS a champion liar!"
+
+
+II.
+
+A PRIVATE'S HONOR
+
+I had not seen Mulledwiney for several days.  Knowing the man--this
+looked bad.  So I dropped in on the Colonel.  I found him in deep
+thought.  This looked bad, too, for old Cockey Wax--as he was known to
+everybody in the Hill districts but himself--wasn't given to thinking.
+I guessed the cause and told him so.
+
+"Yes," he said wearily, "you are right!  It's the old story.
+Mulledwiney, Bleareyed, and Otherwise are at it again,--drink followed
+by Clink.  Even now two corporals and a private are sitting on
+Mulledwiney's head to keep him quiet, and Bleareyed is chained to an
+elephant."
+
+"Perhaps," I suggested, "you are unnecessarily severe."
+
+"Do you really think so?  Thank you so much!  I am always glad to have
+a civilian's opinion on military matters--and vice versa--it broadens
+one so!  And yet--am I severe?  I am willing, for instance, to overlook
+their raid upon a native village, and the ransom they demanded for a
+native inspector!  I have overlooked their taking the horses out of my
+carriage for their own use.  I am content also to believe that my fowls
+meekly succumb to jungle fever and cholera.  But there are some things
+I cannot ignore.  The carrying off of the great god Vishnu from the
+Sacred Shrine at Ducidbad by The Three for the sake of the priceless
+opals in its eyes"--
+
+"But I never heard of THAT," I interrupted eagerly.  "Tell me."
+
+"Ah!" said the Colonel playfully, "that--as you so often and so
+amusingly say--is 'Another Story'!  Yet I would have overlooked the
+theft of the opals if they had not substituted two of the Queen's
+regimental buttons for the eyes of the god.  This, while it did not
+deceive the ignorant priests, had a deep political and racial
+significance.  You are aware, of course, that the great mutiny was
+occasioned by the issue of cartridges to the native troops greased with
+hog's fat--forbidden by their religion."
+
+"But these three men could themselves alone quell a mutiny," I replied.
+
+The Colonel grasped my hand warmly.  "Thank you.  So they could.  I
+never thought of that."  He looked relieved.  For all that, he
+presently passed his hand over his forehead and nervously chewed his
+cheroot.
+
+"There is something else," I said.
+
+"You are right.  There is.  It is a secret.  Promise me it shall go no
+further--than the Press?  Nay, swear that you will KEEP it for the
+Press!"
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Thank you SO much.  It is a matter of my own and Mulledwiney's. The
+fact is, we have had a PERSONAL difficulty."  He paused, glanced around
+him, and continued in a low, agitated voice: "Yesterday I came upon him
+as he was sitting leaning against the barrack wall.  In a spirit of
+playfulness--mere playfulness, I assure you, sir--I poked him lightly
+in the shoulder with my stick, saying 'Boo!'  He turned--and I shall
+never forget the look he gave me."
+
+"Good heavens!" I gasped, "you touched--absolutely
+TOUCHED--Mulledwiney?"
+
+"Yes," he said hurriedly, "I knew what you would say; it was against
+the Queen's Regulations--and--there was his sensitive nature which
+shrinks from even a harsh word; but I did it, and of course he has me
+in his power."
+
+"And you have touched him?" I repeated,--"touched his private honor!"
+
+"Yes!  But I shall atone for it!  I have already arranged with him that
+we shall have it out between ourselves alone, in the jungle, stripped
+to the buff, with our fists--Queensberry rules!  I haven't fought since
+I stood up against Spinks Major--you remember old Spinks, now of the
+Bombay Offensibles?--at Eton."  And the old boy pluckily bared his
+skinny arm.
+
+"It may be serious," I said.
+
+"I have thought of that.  I have a wife, several children, and an aged
+parent in England.  If I fall, they must never know.  You must invent a
+story for them.  I have thought of cholera, but that is played out; you
+know we have already tried it on The Boy who was Thrown Away.  Invent
+something quiet, peaceable and respectable--as far removed from
+fighting as possible.  What do you say to measles?"
+
+"Not half bad," I returned.
+
+"Measles let it be, then!  Say I caught it from Wee Willie Winkie. You
+do not think it too incredible?" he added timidly.
+
+"Not more than YOUR story," I said.
+
+He grasped my hand, struggling violently with his emotion.  Then he
+struggled with me--and I left hurriedly.  Poor old boy!  The funeral
+was well attended, however, and no one knew the truth, not even myself.
+
+
+III
+
+JUNGLE FOLK
+
+It was high noon of a warm summer's day when Moo Kow came down to the
+watering-place.  Miaow, otherwise known as "Puskat"--the warmth-loving
+one--was crouching on a limb that overhung the pool, sunning herself.
+Brer Rabbit--but that is Another Story by Another Person.
+
+Three or four Gee Gees, already at the pool, moved away on the approach
+of Moo Kow.
+
+"Why do ye stand aside?" said the Moo Kow.
+
+"Why do you say 'ye'?" said the Gee Gees together.
+
+"Because it's more impressive than 'you.'  Don't you know that all
+animals talk that way in English?" said the Moo Kow.
+
+"And they also say 'thou,' and don't you forget it!" interrupted Miaow
+from the tree.  "I learnt that from a Man Cub."
+
+The animals were silent.  They did not like Miaow's slang, and were
+jealous of her occasionally sitting on a Man Cub's lap.  Once Dunkee, a
+poor relation of the Gee Gees, had tried it on, disastrously--but that
+is also Another and a more Aged Story.
+
+"We are ridden by The English--please to observe the Capital letters,"
+said Pi Bol, the leader of the Gee Gees, proudly.  "They are a mighty
+race who ride anything and everybody.  D'ye mind that--I mean, look ye
+well to it!"
+
+"What should they know of England who only England know?" said Miaow.
+
+"Is that a conundrum?" asked the Moo Kow.
+
+"No; it's poetry," said the Miaow.
+
+"I know England," said Pi Bol prancingly.  "I used to go from the Bank
+to Islington three times a day--I mean," he added hurriedly, "before I
+became a screw--I should say, a screw-gun horse."
+
+"And I," said the Moo Kow, "am terrible.  When the young women and
+children in the village see me approach they fly shriekingly.  My
+presence alone has scattered their sacred festival--The Sundes Kool
+Piknik.  I strike terror to their inmost souls, and am more feared by
+them than even Kreep-mows, the insidious!  And yet, behold!  I have
+taken the place of the mothers of men, and I have nourished the mighty
+ones of the earth!  But that," said the Moo Kow, turning her head aside
+bashfully, "that is Anudder Story."
+
+A dead silence fell on the pool.
+
+"And I," said Miaow, lifting up her voice, "I am the horror and haunter
+of the night season.  When I pass like the night wind over the roofs of
+the houses men shudder in their beds and tremble. When they hear my
+voice as I creep stealthily along their balconies they cry to their
+gods for succor.  They arise, and from their windows they offer me
+their priceless household treasures--the sacred vessels dedicated to
+their great god Shiv--which they call 'Shivin Mugs'--the Kloes Brosh,
+the Boo-jak, urging me to fly them! And yet," said Miaow mournfully,
+"it is but my love-song!  Think ye what they would do if I were on the
+war-path."
+
+Another dead silence fell on the pool.  Then arose that strange,
+mysterious, indefinable Thing, known as "The Scent."  The animals
+sniffed.
+
+"It heralds the approach of the Stalkies--the most famous of British
+Skool Boaz," said the Moo Kow.  "They have just placed a decaying
+guinea-pig, two white mice in an advanced state of decomposition, and a
+single slice of Limburger cheese in the bed of their tutor.  They had
+previously skillfully diverted the drains so that they emptied into the
+drawing-room of the head-master.  They have just burned down his house
+in an access of noble zeal, and are fighting among themselves for the
+spoil.  Hark! do ye hear them?"
+
+A wild medley of shrieks and howls had arisen, and an irregular mob of
+strange creatures swept out of the distance toward the pool. Some were
+like pygmies, some had bloody noses.  Their talk consisted of feverish,
+breathless ejaculations,--a gibberish in which the words "rot," "oach,"
+and "giddy" were preeminent.  Some were exciting themselves by chewing
+a kind of "bhang" made from the plant called pappahmint; others had
+their faces streaked with djam.
+
+"But who is this they are ducking in the pool?" asked Pi Bol.
+
+"It is one who has foolishly and wantonly conceived that his parents
+have sent him here to study," said the Moo Kow; "but that is against
+the rules of the Stalkies, who accept study only as a punishment."
+
+"Then these be surely the 'Bander Log'--the monkey folk--of whom the
+good Rhuddyidd has told us," said a Gee Gee--"the ones who have no
+purpose--and forget everything."
+
+"Fool!" said the Moo Kow.  "Know ye not that the great Rhuddyidd has
+said that the Stalkies become Major-Generals, V. C.'s, and C. B's of
+the English?  Truly, they are great.  Look now; ye shall see one of the
+greatest traits of the English Stalky."
+
+One of the pygmy Stalkies was offering a bun to a larger one, who
+hesitated, but took it coldly.
+
+"Behold! it is one of the greatest traits of this mighty race not to
+show any emotion.  He WOULD take the bun--he HAS taken it!  He is
+pleased--but he may not show it.  Observe him eat."
+
+The taller Stalky, after eating the bun, quietly kicked the giver,
+knocked off his hat, and turned away with a calm, immovable face.
+
+"Good!" said the Moo Kow.  "Ye would not dream that he was absolutely
+choking with grateful emotion?"
+
+"We would not," said the animals.
+
+"But why are they all running back the way they came?" asked Pi Bol.
+
+"They are going back to punishment.  Great is its power.  Have ye not
+heard the gospel of Rhuddyidd the mighty?  'Force is everything!
+Gentleness won't wash, courtesy is deceitful. Politeness is foreign.
+Be ye beaten that ye may beat.  Pass the kick on.'"
+
+But here he was interrupted by the appearance of three soldiers who
+were approaching the watering-place.
+
+"Ye are now," said the Moo Kow, "with the main guard.  The first is
+Bleareyed, who carries a raven in a cage, which he has stolen from the
+wife of a deputy commissioner.  He will paint the bird snow white and
+sell it as a dove to the same lady.  The second is Otherwise, who is
+dragging a small garden engine, of which he has despoiled a native
+gardener, whom he has felled with a single blow. The third is
+Mulledwiney, swinging a cut-glass decanter of sherry which he has just
+snatched from the table of his colonel. Mulledwiney and Otherwise will
+play the engine upon Bleareyed, who is suffering from heat apoplexy and
+djim-djams."
+
+The three soldiers seated themselves in the pool.
+
+"They are going to tell awful war stories now," said the Moo Kow,
+"stories that are large and strong!  Some people are shocked--others
+like 'em."
+
+Then he that was called Mulledwiney told a story.  In the middle of it
+Miaow got up from the limb of the tree, coughed slightly, and put her
+paw delicately over her mouth.  "You must excuse me," she said faintly.
+"I am taken this way sometimes--and I have left my salts at home.
+Thanks!  I can get down myself!"  The next moment she had disappeared,
+but was heard coughing in the distance.
+
+Mulledwiney winked at his companions and continued his story:--
+
+"Wid that we wor in the thick av the foight.  Whin I say 'thick' I mane
+it, sorr!  We wor that jammed together, divil a bit cud we shoot or
+cut!  At fur-rest, I had lashed two mushkits together wid the baynits
+out so, like a hay fork, and getting the haymaker's lift on thim, I
+just lifted two Paythians out--one an aych baynit--and passed 'em,
+aisy-like, over me head to the rear rank for them to finish.  But what
+wid the blud gettin' into me ois, I was blinded, and the pressure kept
+incraysin' until me arrums was thrussed like a fowl to me sides, and
+sorra a bit cud I move but me jaws!"
+
+"And bloomin' well you knew how to use them," said Otherwise.
+
+"Thrue for you--though ye don't mane it!" said Mulledwiney, playfully
+tapping Otherwise on the head with a decanter till the cut glass slowly
+shivered.  "So, begorra! there wor nothing left for me to do but to ATE
+thim!  Wirra! but it was the crooel worruk."
+
+"Excuse me, my lord," interrupted the gasping voice of Pi Bol as he
+began to back from the pool, "I am but a horse, I know, and being built
+in that way--naturally have the stomach of one--yet, really, my lord,
+this--er"--  And his voice was gone.
+
+The next moment he had disappeared.  Mulledwiney looked around with
+affected concern.
+
+"Save us!  But we've cleaned out the Jungle!  Sure, there's not a baste
+left but ourselves!"
+
+It was true.  The watering-place was empty.  Moo Kow, Miaow, and the
+Gee Gees had disappeared.  Presently there was a booming crash and a
+long, deep rumbling among the distant hills.  Then they knew they were
+near the old Moulmein Pagoda, and the dawn had come up like thunder out
+of China 'cross the bay.  It always came up that way there.  The strain
+was too great, and day was actually breaking.
+
+
+
+
+"ZUT-SKI"
+
+THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED FEME SOLE
+
+BY M-R-E C-R-LLI
+
+
+I
+
+The great pyramid towered up from the desert with its apex toward the
+moon which hung in the sky.  For centuries it had stood thus,
+disdaining the aid of gods or man, being, as the Sphinx herself
+observed, able to stand up for itself.  And this was no small praise
+from that sublime yet mysterious female who had seen the ages come and
+go, empires rise and fall, novelist succeed novelist, and who, for eons
+and cycles the cynosure and centre of admiration and men's idolatrous
+worship, had yet--wonderful for a woman--through it all kept her head,
+which now alone remained to survey calmly the present.  Indeed, at that
+moment that magnificent and peaceful face seemed to have lost--with a
+few unimportant features--its usual expression of speculative wisdom
+and intense disdain; its mouth smiled, its left eyelid seemed to droop.
+As the opal tints of dawn deepened upon it, the eyelid seemed to droop
+lower, closed, and quickly recovered itself twice.  You would have
+thought the Sphinx had winked.
+
+Then arose a voice like a wind on the desert,--but really from the
+direction of the Nile, where a hired dahabiyeh lay moored to the
+bank,--"'Arry Axes!  'Arry Axes!"  With it came also a flapping,
+trailing vision from the water--the sacred Ibis itself--and with wings
+aslant drifted mournfully away to its own creaking echo: "K'raksis!
+K'raksis!"  Again arose the weird voice: "'Arry Axes! Wotcher doin'
+of?"  And again the Ibis croaked its wild refrain: "K'raksis!
+K'raksis!"  Moonlight and the hour wove their own mystery (for which
+the author is not responsible), and the voice was heard no more.  But
+when the full day sprang in glory over the desert, it illuminated the
+few remaining but sufficiently large features of the Sphinx with a
+burning saffron radiance!  The Sphinx had indeed blushed!
+
+
+II
+
+It was the full season at Cairo.  The wealth and fashion of Bayswater,
+South Kensington, and even the bosky Wood of the Evangelist had sent
+their latest luxury and style to flout the tombs of the past with the
+ghastly flippancy of to-day.  The cheap tripper was there--the latest
+example of the Darwinian theory--apelike, flea and curio hunting!
+Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the
+Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice--and, for the matter of that, what
+did they know of him? And yet he was not half bad in comparison with
+the "swagger people,"--these people who pretend to have lungs and what
+not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and
+snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of
+piled logs in the evening, at the first approach of winter steal away
+to the Land of the Sun, and decline to die, like honest Britons, on
+British soil.  And then they know nothing of the Egyptians and are
+horrified at "bakshish," which they really ought to pay for the
+privilege of shocking the straight-limbed, naked-footed Arab in his
+single rough garment with their baggy elephant-legged trousers! And
+they know nothing of the mystic land of the old gods, filled with
+profound enigmas of the supernatural, dark secrets yet unexplored
+except in this book.  Well might the great Memnon murmur after this
+lapse of these thousand years, "They're making me tired!"
+
+Such was the blissful, self-satisfied ignorance of Sir Midas Pyle, or
+as Lord Fitz-Fulke, with his delightful imitation of the East London
+accent, called him, Sir "Myde His Pyle," as he leaned back on his divan
+in the Grand Cairo Hotel.  He was the vulgar editor and proprietor of a
+vulgar London newspaper, and had brought his wife with him, who was
+vainly trying to marry off his faded daughters.  There was to be a
+fancy-dress ball at the hotel that night, and Lady Pyle hoped that her
+girls, if properly disguised, might have a better chance.  Here, too,
+was Lady Fitz-Fulke, whose mother was immortalized by Byron--sixty if a
+day, yet still dressing youthfully--who had sought the land of the
+Sphinx in the faint hope that in the contiguity of that lady she might
+pass for being young.  Alaster McFeckless, a splendid young
+Scotchman,--already dressed as a Florentine sailor of the fifteenth
+century, which enabled him to show his magnificent calves quite as well
+as in his native highland dress, and who had added with characteristic
+noble pride a sporran to his costume, was lolling on another divan.
+
+"Oh, those exquisite, those magnificent eyes of hers!  Eh, sirs!" he
+murmured suddenly, as waking from a dream.
+
+"Oh, damn her eyes!" said Lord Fitz-Fulke languidly.  "Tell you what,
+old man, you're just gone on that girl!"
+
+"Ha!" roared McFeckless, springing to his feet, "ye will be using such
+language of the bonniest"--
+
+"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Sir Midas,--who hated scenes
+unless he had a trusted reporter with him,--"but I think it is time for
+me to go upstairs and put on my Windsor uniform, which I find
+exceedingly convenient for these mixed assemblies."  He withdrew,
+caressing his protuberant paunch with some dignity, as the two men
+glanced fiercely at each other.
+
+In another moment they might have sprung at each other's throats. But
+luckily at this instant a curtain was pushed aside as if by some
+waiting listener, and a thin man entered, dressed in cap and
+gown,--which would have been simply academic but for his carrying in
+one hand behind him a bundle of birch twigs.  It was Dr. Haustus
+Pilgrim, a noted London practitioner and specialist, dressed as "Ye
+Olde-fashioned Pedagogue."  He was presumably spending his holiday on
+the Nile in a large dahabiyeh with a number of friends, among whom he
+counted the two momentary antagonists he had just interrupted; but
+those who knew the doctor's far-reaching knowledge and cryptic
+researches believed he had his own scientific motives.
+
+The two men turned quickly as he entered; the angry light faded from
+their eyes, and an awed and respectful submission to the intruder took
+its place.  He walked quietly toward them, put a lozenge in the mouth
+of one and felt the pulse of the other, gazing critically at both.
+
+"We will be all right in a moment," he said with professional
+confidence.
+
+"I say!" said Fitz-Fulke, gazing at the doctor's costume, "you look
+dooced smart in those togs, don'tcherknow."
+
+"They suit me," said the doctor, with a playful swish of his birch
+twigs, at which the two grave men shuddered.  "But you were speaking of
+somebody's beautiful eyes."
+
+"The Princess Zut-Ski's," returned McFeckless eagerly; "and this daft
+callant said"--
+
+"He didn't like them," put in Fitz-Fulke promptly.
+
+"Ha!" said the doctor sharply, "and why not, sir?"  As Fitz-Fulke
+hesitated, he added brusquely: "There!  Run away and play!  I've
+business with this young man," pointing to McFeckless.
+
+As Fitz-Fulke escaped gladly from the room, the doctor turned to
+McFeckless.  "It won't do, my boy.  The Princess is not for you--you'll
+only break your heart and ruin your family over her!  That's my advice.
+Chuck her!"
+
+"But I cannot," said McFeckless humbly.  "Think of her weirdly
+beautiful eyes."
+
+"I see," said the doctor meditatively; "sort of makes you feel creepy?
+Kind of all-overishness, eh?  That's like her.  But whom have we here?"
+
+He was staring at a striking figure that had just entered, closely
+followed by a crowd of admiring spectators.  And, indeed, he seemed
+worthy of the homage.  His magnificent form was closely attired in a
+velveteen jacket and trousers, with a singular display of pearl buttons
+along the seams, that were absolutely lavish in their quantity; a hat
+adorned with feathers and roses completed his singularly picturesque
+equipment.
+
+"Chevalier!" burst out McFeckless in breathless greeting.
+
+"Ah, mon ami!  What good chance?" returned the newcomer, rushing to him
+and kissing him on both cheeks, to the British horror of Sir Midas, who
+had followed.  "Ah, but you are perfect!" he added, kissing his fingers
+in admiration of McFeckless's Florentine dress.
+
+"But you?--what is this ravishing costume?" asked McFeckless, with a
+pang of jealousy.  "You are god-like."
+
+"It is the dress of what you call the Koster, a transplanted Phenician
+tribe," answered the other.  "They who knocked 'em in the road of Old
+Kent--know you not the legend?"  As he spoke, he lifted his superb form
+to a warrior's height and gesture.
+
+"But is this quite correct?" asked Fitz-Fulke of the doctor.
+
+"Perfectly," said the doctor oracularly.  "The renowned ''Arry Axes'--I
+beg his pardon," he interrupted himself hastily, "I mean the
+Chevalier--is perfect in his archaeology and ethnology.  The Koster is
+originally a Gypsy, which is but a corruption of the word 'Egyptian,'
+and, if I mistake not, that gentleman is a lineal descendant."
+
+"But he is called 'Chevalier,' and he speaks like a Frenchman," said
+Fluffy.
+
+"And, being a Frenchman, of course knows nothing outside of Paris,"
+said Sir Midas.
+
+"We are in the Land of Mystery," said the doctor gravely in a low
+voice.  "You have heard of the Egyptian Hall and the Temple of Mystery?"
+
+A shudder passed through many that were there; but the majority were
+following with wild adulation the superb Koster, who, with elbows
+slightly outward and hands turned inward, was passing toward the
+ballroom.  McFeckless accompanied him with conflicting emotions.  Would
+he see the incomparable Princess, who was lovelier and even still more
+a mystery than the Chevalier?  Would she--terrible thought!--succumb to
+his perfections?
+
+
+III
+
+The Princess was already there, surrounded by a crowd of admirers,
+equal if not superior to those who were following the superb Chevalier.
+Indeed, they met almost as rivals!  Their eyes sought each other in
+splendid competition.  The Chevalier turned away, dazzled and
+incoherent.  "She is adorable, magnificent!" he gasped to McFeckless.
+"I love her on the instant!  Behold, I am transported, ravished!
+Present me."
+
+Indeed, as she stood there in a strange gauzy garment of exquisite
+colors, apparently shapeless, yet now and then revealing her perfect
+figure like a bather seen through undulating billows, she was lovely.
+Two wands were held in her taper fingers, whose mystery only added to
+the general curiosity, but whose weird and cabalistic uses were to be
+seen later.  Her magnificent face--strange in its beauty--was stranger
+still, since, with perfect archaeological Egyptian correctness, she
+presented it only in profile, at whatever angle the spectator stood.
+But such a profile!  The words of the great Poet-King rose to
+McFeckless's lips: "Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward
+Damascus."
+
+He hesitated a moment, torn with love and jealousy, and then presented
+his friend.  "You will fall in love with her--and then--you will fall
+also by my hand," he hissed in his rival's ear, and fled tumultuously.
+
+"Voulez-vous danser, mademoiselle?" whispered the Chevalier in the
+perfect accent of the boulevardier.
+
+"Merci, beaucoup," she replied in the diplomatic courtesies of the
+Ambassadeurs.
+
+They danced together, not once, but many times, to the admiration, the
+wonder and envy of all; to the scandalized reprobation of a proper few.
+Who was she?  Who was he?  It was easy to answer the last question: the
+world rang with the reputation of "Chevalier the Artist."  But she was
+still a mystery.
+
+Perhaps they were not so to each other!  He was gazing deliriously into
+her eyes.  She was looking at him in disdainful curiosity. "I've seen
+you before somewhere, haven't I?" she said at last, with a crushing
+significance.
+
+He shuddered, he knew not why, and passed his hand over his high
+forehead.  "Yes, I go there very often," he replied vacantly.  "But
+you, mademoiselle--you--I have met before?"
+
+"Oh, ages, ages ago!"  There was something weird in her emphasis.
+
+"Ha!" said a voice near them, "I thought so!"  It was the doctor,
+peering at them curiously.  "And you both feel rather dazed and
+creepy?"  He suddenly felt their pulses, lingering, however, as the
+Chevalier fancied, somewhat longer than necessary over the lady's wrist
+and beautiful arm.  He then put a small round box in the Chevalier's
+hand, saying, "One before each meal," and turning to the lady with
+caressing professional accents said, "We must wrap ourselves closely
+and endeavor to induce perspiration," and hurried away, dragging the
+Chevalier with him.  When they reached a secluded corner, he said, "You
+had just now a kind of feeling, don't you know, as if you'd sort of
+been there before, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, what you call a--preexistence," said the Chevalier wonderingly.
+
+"Yes; I have often observed that those who doubt a future state of
+existence have no hesitation in accepting a previous one," said the
+doctor dryly.  "But come, I see from the way the crowd are hurrying
+that your divinity's number is up--I mean," he corrected himself
+hastily, "that she is probably dancing again."
+
+"Aha! with him, the imbecile McFeckless?" gasped the Chevalier.
+
+"No, alone."
+
+She was indeed alone, in the centre of the ballroom--with outstretched
+arms revolving in an occult, weird, dreamy, mystic, druidical,
+cabalistic circle.  They now for the first time perceived the meaning
+of those strange wands which appeared to be attached to the many folds
+of her diaphanous skirts and involved her in a fleecy, whirling cloud.
+Yet in the wild convolutions of her garments and the mad gyrations of
+her figure, her face was upturned with the seraphic intensity of a
+devotee, and her lips parted as with the impassioned appeal for "Light!
+more light!"  And the appeal was answered.  A flood of blue, crimson,
+yellow, and green radiance was alternately poured upon her from the
+black box of a mysterious Nubian slave in the gallery.  The effect was
+marvelous; at one moment she appeared as a martyr in a sheet of flame,
+at another as an angel wrapped in white and muffled purity, and again
+as a nymph of the cerulean sea, and then suddenly a cloud of darkness
+seemed to descend upon her, through which for an instant her figure, as
+immaculate and perfect as a marble statue, showed distinctly--then the
+light went out and she vanished!
+
+The whole assembly burst into a rapturous cry.  Even the common Arab
+attendants who were peeping in at the doors raised their melodious
+native cry, "Alloe, Fullah!  Aloe, Fullah!" again and again.
+
+A shocked silence followed.  Then the voice of Sir Midas Pyle was heard
+addressing Dr. Haustus Pilgrim:
+
+"May we not presume, sir, that what we have just seen is not unlike
+that remarkable exhibition when I was pained to meet you one evening at
+the Alhambra?"
+
+The doctor coughed slightly.  "The Alhambra--ah, yes!--you--er--refer,
+I presume, to Granada and the Land of the Moor, where we last met.  The
+music and dance are both distinctly Moorish--which, after all, is akin
+to the Egyptian.  I am gratified indeed that your memory should be so
+retentive and your archaeological comparison so accurate.  But see! the
+ladies are retiring.  Let us follow."
+
+
+IV
+
+The intoxication produced by the performance of the Princess naturally
+had its reaction.  The British moral soul, startled out of its
+hypocrisy the night before, demanded the bitter beer of
+self-consciousness and remorse the next morning.  The ladies were now
+openly shocked at what they had secretly envied.  Lady Pyle was,
+however, propitiated by the doctor's assurance that the Princess was a
+friend of Lady Fitz-Fulke, who had promised to lend her youthful age
+and aristocratic prestige to the return ball which the Princess had
+determined to give at her own home.  "Still, I think the Princess open
+to criticism," said Sir Midas oracularly.
+
+"Damn all criticism and critics!" burst out McFeckless, with the noble
+frankness of a passionate and yet unfettered soul.  Sir Midas, who
+employed critics in his business, as he did other base and ignoble
+slaves, drew up himself and his paunch and walked away.
+
+The Chevalier cast a superb look at McFeckless.  "Voila!  Regard me
+well!  I shall seek out this Princess when she is with herself! Alone,
+comprenez?  I shall seek her at her hotel in the Egyptian Hall!  Ha!
+ha!  I shall seek Zut-Ski!  Zut!"  And he made that rapid yet graceful
+motion of his palm against his thigh known only to the true Parisian.
+
+"It's a rum hole where she lives, and nobody gets a sight of her," said
+Flossy.  "It's like a beastly family vault, don't you know, outside,
+and there's a kind of nigger doorkeeper that vises you and chucks you
+out if you haven't the straight tip.  I'll show you the way, if you
+like."
+
+"Allons, en avant!" said the Chevalier gayly.  "I precipitate myself
+there on the instant."
+
+"Remember!" hissed McFeckless, grasping his arm, "you shall account to
+me!"
+
+"Bien!" said the Chevalier, shaking him off lightly.  "All
+a-r-r-right."  Then, in that incomparable baritone, which had so often
+enthralled thousands, he moved away, trolling the first verse of the
+Princess's own faint, sweet, sad song of the "Lotus Lily," that
+thrilled McFeckless even through the Chevalier's marked French accent:--
+
+     "Oh, a hard zing to get is ze Lotus Lillee!
+      She lif in ze swamp--in ze watair chillee;
+      She make your foot wet--and you look so sillee,
+      But you buy her for sixpence in Piccadillee!"
+
+
+In half an hour the two men reached the remote suburb where the
+Princess lived, a gloomy, windowless building.  Pausing under a low
+archway over which in Egyptian characters appeared the faded legend,
+"Sta Ged Oor," they found a Nubian slave blocking the dim entrance.
+
+"I leave you here," said Flossy hurriedly, "as even I left once
+before--only then I was lightly assisted by his sandaled foot," he
+added, rubbing himself thoughtfully.  "But better luck to you."
+
+As his companion retreated swiftly, the Chevalier turned to the slave
+and would have passed in, but the man stopped him.  "Got a pass, boss?"
+
+"No," said the Chevalier.
+
+The man looked at him keenly.  "Oh, I see! one of de profesh."
+
+The Chevalier nodded haughtily.  The man preceded him by devious,
+narrow ways and dark staircases, coming abruptly upon a small apartment
+where the Princess sat on a low divan.  A single lamp inclosed in an
+ominous wire cage flared above her.  Strange things lay about the floor
+and shelves, and from another door he could see hideous masks,
+frightful heads, and disproportionate faces.  He shuddered slightly,
+but recovered himself and fell on his knees before her.  "I lofe you,"
+he said madly.  "I have always lofed you!"
+
+"For how long?" she asked, with a strange smile.
+
+He covertly consulted his shirt cuff.  "For tree tousand fife hundred
+and sixty-two years," he said rapidly.
+
+She looked at him disdainfully.  "The doctor has been putting you up to
+that!  It won't wash!  I don't refer to your shirt cuff," she added
+with deep satire.
+
+"Adorable one!" he broke out passionately, attempting to embrace her,
+"I have come to take you."  Without moving, she touched a knob in the
+wall.  A trap-door beyond him sank, and out of the bowels of the earth
+leaped three indescribable demons.  Then, rising, she took a cake of
+chalk from the table and, drawing a mystic half circle on the floor,
+returned to the divan, lit a cigarette, and leaning comfortably back,
+said in a low, monotonous voice, "Advance one foot within that magic
+line, and on that head, although it wore a crown, I launch the curse of
+Rome."
+
+"I--only wanted to take you--with a kodak," he said, with a light laugh
+to conceal his confusion, as he produced the instrument from his
+coat-tail pocket.
+
+"Not with that cheap box," she said, rising with magnificent disdain.
+"Come again with a decent instrument--and perhaps"-- Then, lightly
+humming in a pure contralto, "I've been photographed like this--I've
+been photographed like that," she summoned the slave to conduct him
+back, and vanished through a canvas screen, which nevertheless seemed
+to the dazed Chevalier to be the stony front of the pyramids.
+
+
+V
+
+"And you saw her?" said the doctor in French.
+
+"Yes; but the three-thousand-year gag did not work!  She spotted you,
+cher ami, on the instant.  And she wouldn't let me take her with my
+kodak."
+
+The doctor looked grave. "I see," he mused thoughtfully.  "You must
+have my camera, a larger one and more bulky perhaps to carry; but she
+will not object to that,--she who has stood for full lengths. I will
+give you some private instructions."
+
+"But, cher doctor, this previous-existence idea--at what do you arrive?"
+
+"There is much to say for it," said the doctor oracularly.  "It has
+survived in the belief of all ages.  Who can tell?  That some men in a
+previous existence may have been goats or apes," continued the doctor,
+looking at him curiously, "does not seem improbable!  From the time of
+Pythagoras we have known that; but that the individual as an individual
+ego has been remanded or projected, has harked back or anticipated
+himself, is, we may say, with our powers of apperception,--that is, the
+perception that we are perceiving,--is"--
+
+But the Chevalier had fled.  "No matter," said the doctor, "I will see
+McFeckless."  He did.  He found him gloomy, distraught, baleful.  He
+felt his pulse.  "The mixture as before," he said briefly, "and a
+little innocent diversion.  There is an Aunt Sally on the
+esplanade--two throws for a penny.  It will do you good. Think no more
+of this woman!  Listen,--I wish you well; your family have always been
+good patients of mine.  Marry some good Scotch girl; I know one with
+fifty thousand pounds.  Let the Princess go!"
+
+"To him--never!  I will marry her!  Yet," he murmured softly to
+himself, "feefty thousand pun' is nae small sum.  Aye!  Not that I care
+for siller--but feefty thousand pun'!  Eh, sirs!"
+
+
+VI
+
+Dr. Haustus knew that the Chevalier had again visited the Princess,
+although he had kept the visit a secret,--and indeed was himself
+invisible for a day or two afterwards.  At last the doctor's curiosity
+induced him to visit the Chevalier's apartment. Entering, he was
+surprised--even in that Land of Mystery--to find the room profoundly
+dark, smelling of Eastern drugs, and the Chevalier sitting before a
+large plate of glass which he was examining by the aid of a lurid ruby
+lamp,--the only light in the weird gloom.  His face was pale and
+distraught, his locks were disheveled.
+
+"Voila!" he said.  "Mon Dieu!  It is my third attempt.  Always the
+same--hideous, monstrous, unearthly!  It is she, and yet it is not she!"
+
+The doctor, professional man as he was and inured to such spectacles,
+was startled!  The plate before him showed the Princess's face in all
+its beautiful contour, but only dimly veiling a ghastly death's-head
+below.  There was the whole bony structure of the head and the eyeless
+sockets; even the graceful, swan-like neck showed the articulated
+vertebral column that supported it in all its hideous reality.  The
+beautiful shoulders were there, dimly as in a dream--but beneath was
+the empty clavicle, the knotty joint, the hollow sternum, and the ribs
+of a skeleton half length!
+
+The doctor's voice broke the silence.  "My friend," he said dryly, "you
+see only the truth!  You see what she really is, this peerless Princess
+of yours.  You see her as she is to-day, and you see her kinship to the
+bones that have lain for centuries in yonder pyramid.  Yet they were
+once as fair as this, and this was as fair as they--in effect the same!
+You that have madly, impiously adored her superficial beauty, the mere
+dust of tomorrow, let this be a warning to you!  You that have no soul
+to speak of, let that suffice you!  Take her and be happy.  Adieu!"
+
+Yet, as he passed out of the fitting tomblike gloom of the apartment
+and descended the stairs, he murmured to himself: "Odd that I should
+have lent him my camera with the Rontgen-ray attachment still on.  No
+matter!  It is not the first time that the Princess has appeared in two
+parts the same evening."
+
+
+VII
+
+In spite of envy, jealousy, and malice, a certain curiosity greater
+than all these drew everybody to the Princess Zut-Ski's ball.  Lady
+Fitz-Fulke was there in virgin white, looking more youthful than ever,
+in spite of her sixty-five years and the card labeled "Fresh Paint"
+which somebody had playfully placed upon her enameled shoulder.  The
+McFecklesses, the Pyles, Flossy, the doctor, and the Chevalier--looking
+still anxious--were in attendance.
+
+The mysterious Nubian doorkeeper admitted the guests through the same
+narrow passages, much to the disgust of Lady Pyle and the discomfiture
+of her paunchy husband; but on reaching a large circular interior hall,
+a greater surprise was in store for them. It was found that the only
+entrance to the body of the hall was along a narrow ledge against the
+bare wall some distance from the floor, which obliged the guests to
+walk slowly, in single file, along this precarious strip, giving them
+the attitudes of an Egyptian frieze, which was suggested in the
+original plaster above them.  It is needless to say that, while the
+effect was ingenious and striking from the centre of the room, where
+the Princess stood with a few personal friends, it was exceedingly
+uncomfortable to the figures themselves, in their enforced march along
+the ledge,--especially a figure of Sir Midas Pyle's proportions.
+Suddenly an exclamation broke from the doctor.
+
+"Do you see," he said to the Princess, pointing to the figure of the
+Chevalier, who was filing along with his sinewy hands slightly turned
+inward, "how surprisingly like he is to the first attendant on the King
+in the real frieze above?  And that," added the doctor, "was none other
+than 'Arry Axes, the Egyptian you are always thinking of."  And he
+peered curiously at her.
+
+"Goodness me!" murmured the Princess, in an Arabic much more soft and
+fluent than the original gum.  "So he does--look like him."
+
+"And do you know you look like him, too?  Would you mind taking a walk
+around together?"
+
+They did, amid the acclamations of the crowd.  The likeness was
+perfect.  The Princess, however, was quite white as she eagerly
+rejoined the doctor.
+
+"And this means--?" she hissed in a low whisper.
+
+"That he is the real 'Arry Axes!  Hush, not a word now!  We join the
+dahabiyeh to-night.  At daybreak you will meet him at the fourth angle
+of the pyramid, first turning from the Nile!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+The crescent moon hung again over the apex of the Great Pyramid, like a
+silver cutting from the rosy nail of a houri.  The Sphinx--mighty
+guesser of riddles, reader of rebuses and universal solver of missing
+words--looked over the unfathomable desert and these few pages, with
+the worried, hopeless expression of one who is obliged at last to give
+it up.  And then the wailing voice of a woman, toiling up the steep
+steps of the pyramid, was heard above the creaking of the Ibis: "'Arry
+Axes!  Where are you?  Wait for me."
+
+"J'y suis," said a voice from the very summit of the stupendous granite
+bulk, "yet I cannot reach it."
+
+And in that faint light the figure of a man was seen, lifting his arms
+wildly toward the moon.
+
+"'Arry Axes," persisted the voice, drifting higher, "wait for me; we
+are pursued."
+
+And indeed it was true.  A band of Nubians, headed by the doctor, was
+already swarming like ants up the pyramid, and the unhappy pair were
+secured.  And when the sun rose, it was upon the white sails of the
+dahabiyeh, the vacant pyramid, and the slumbering Sphinx.
+
+
+There was great excitement at the Cairo Hotel the next morning. The
+Princess and the Chevalier had disappeared, and with them Alaster
+McFeckless, Lady Fitz-Fulke, the doctor, and even his dahabiyeh!  A
+thousand rumors had been in circulation.  Sir Midas Pyle looked up from
+the "Times" with his usual I-told-you-so expression.
+
+"It is the most extraordinary thing, don'tcherknow," said Fitz-Fulke.
+"It seems that Dr. Haustus Pilgrim was here professionally--as a nerve
+specialist--in the treatment of hallucinations produced by neurotic
+conditions, you know."
+
+"A mad doctor, here!" gasped Sir Midas.
+
+"Yes.  The Princess, the Chevalier, McFeckless, and even my mother were
+all patients of his on the dahabiyeh.  He believed, don'tcherknow, in
+humoring them and letting them follow out their cranks, under his
+management.  The Princess was a music-hall artist who imagined she was
+a dead and gone Egyptian Princess; and the queerest of all, 'Arry Axes
+was also a music-hall singer who imagined himself Chevalier--you know,
+the great Koster artist--and that's how we took him for a Frenchman.
+McFeckless and my poor old mother were the only ones with any real rank
+and position--but you know what a beastly bounder Mac was, and the poor
+mater DID overdo the youthful!  We never called the doctor in until the
+day she wanted to go to a swell ball in London as Little Red
+Riding-hood. But the doctor writes me that the experiment was a
+success, and they'll be all right when they get back to London."
+
+"Then, it seems, sir, that you and I were the only sane ones here,"
+said Sir Midas furiously.
+
+"Really it's as much as I can do to be certain about myself, old
+chappie," said Fitz-Fulke, turning away.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of New Burlesques, by Bret Harte
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