After Twenty Years二十年以后 The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o'clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain in them had well nigh depeopled the streets. Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed. When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed his walk. In the doorway of a darkened hardware store a man leaned, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman walked up to him the man spoke up quickly. "It's all right, officer," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it? Well, I'll explain if you'd like to make certain it's all straight. About that long ago there used to be a restaurant where this store stands--'Big Joe' Brady's restaurant." "Until five years ago," said the policeman. "It was torn down then." The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light showed a pale, square-jawed face with keen eyes, and a little white scar near his right eyebrow. His scarfpin was a large diamond, oddly set. "Twenty years ago to-night," said the man, "I dined here at 'Big Joe' Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my best chum, and the finest chap in the world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers, together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was to start for the West to make my fortune. You couldn't have dragged Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the only place on earth. Well, we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from what distance we might have to come. We figured that in twenty years each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made, whatever they were going to be." "It sounds pretty interesting," said the policeman. "Rather a long time between meets, though, it seems to me. Haven't you heard from your friend since you left?" "Well, yes, for a time we corresponded," said the other. "But after a year or two we lost track of each other. You see, the West is a pretty big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But I know Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for he always was the truest, stanchest old chap in the world. He'll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door to-night, and it's worth it if my old partner turns up." The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with small diamonds. "Three minutes to ten," he announced. "It was exactly ten o'clock when we parted here at the restaurant door." "Did pretty well out West, didn't you?" asked the policeman. "You bet! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plodder, though, good fellow as he was. I've had to compete with some of the sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove in New York. It takes the West to put a razor-edge on him." The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two. "I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp?" "I should say not!" said the other. "I'll give him half an hour at least. If Jimmy is alive on earth he'll be here by that time. So long, officer." "Good-night, sir," said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went. There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars turned high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and waited. About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man. "Is that you, Bob?" he asked, doubtfully. "Is that you, Jimmy Wells?" cried the man in the door. "Bless my heart!" exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both the other's hands with his own. "It's Bob, sure as fate. I was certain I'd find you here if you were still in existence. Well, well, well! --twenty years is a long time. The old gone, Bob; I wish it had lasted, so we could have had another dinner there. How has the West treated you, old man?" "Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. You've changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall by two or three inches." "Oh, I grew a bit after I was twenty." "Doing well in New York, Jimmy?" "Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments. Come on, Bob; we'll go around to a place I know of, and have a good long talk about old times." The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the West, his egotism enlarged by success, was beginning to outline the history of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat, listened with interest. At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights. When they came into this glare each of them turned simultaneously to gaze upon the other's face. The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm. "You're not Jimmy Wells," he snapped. "Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change a man's nose from a Roman to a pug." "It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one, said the tall man. "You've been under arrest for ten minutes, 'Silky' Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That's sensible. Now, before we go on to the station here's a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it here at the window. It's from Patrolman Wells." The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little by the time he had finished. The note was rather short. "Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went around and got a plain clothes man to do the job. JIMMY." 纽约的一条大街上,一位值勤的警察正沿街走着。一阵冷飕飕的风向他迎面吹来。已近夜间10点,街上的行人寥寥无几了。 在一家小店铺的门口,昏暗的灯光下站着一个男子。他的嘴里叼着一支没有点燃的雪茄烟。警察放慢了脚步,认真地看了他一眼,然后,向那个男子走了过去。 “这儿没有出什么事,警官先生。”看见警察向自己走来,那个男子很快地说,“我只是在这儿等一位朋友罢了。这是20年前定下的一个约会。你听了觉得稀奇,是吗?好吧,如果有兴致听的话,我来给你讲讲。大约20年前,这儿,这个店铺现在所占的地方,原来是一家餐馆……” “那餐馆5年前就被拆除了。”警察接上去说。 男子划了根火柴,点燃了叼在嘴上的雪茄。借着火柴的亮光,警察发现这个男子脸色苍白,右眼角附近有一块小小的白色的伤疤。 “20年前的今天晚上,”男子继续说,“我和吉米·维尔斯在这儿的餐馆共进晚餐。哦,吉米是我最要好的朋友。我们俩都是在纽约这个城市里长大的。从孩提时候起,我们就亲密无间,情同手足。当时,我正准备第二天早上就动身到西部去谋生。那天夜晚临分手的时候,我们俩约定:20年后的同一日期、同一时间,我们俩将来到这里再次相会。” “这听起来倒挺有意思的。”警察说,“你们分手以后,你就没有收到过你那位朋友的信吗?” “哦,收到过他的信。有一段时间我们曾相互通信。”那男子 说,“可是一两年之后,我们就失去了联系。你知道,西部是个很大的地方。而我呢,又总是不断地东奔西跑。可我相信,吉米只要还活着,就一定会来这儿和我相会的。他是我最信得过的朋友啦。” 说完,男子从口袋里掏出一块小巧玲球的金表。表上的宝石在黑暗中闪闪发光。“九点五十七分了。” 他说,“我们上一次是十点整在这儿的餐馆分手的。” “你在西部混得不错吧?”警察问道。 “当然罗!吉米的光景要是能赶上我的一半就好了。啊,实在不容易啊!这些年来,我一直不得不东奔西跑……” 又是一阵冷赠飕的风穿街而过。接着,一片沉寂。他们俩谁也没有说话。过了一会儿,警察准备离开这里。 “我得走了,”他对那个男子说,“我希望你的朋友很快就会到来。假如他不准时赶来,你会离开这儿吗?” “不会的。我起码要再等他半个小时。如果吉米他还活在人间,他到时候一定会来到这儿的。就说这些吧,再见,警官先生。” “再见,先生。”警察一边说着,一边沿街走去,街上已经没有行人了,空荡荡的。 男子又在这店铺的门前等了大约二十分钟的光景,这时候,一 个身材高大的人急匆匆地径直走来。他穿着一件黑色的大衣,衣领向上翻着,盖住了耳朵。 “你是鲍勃吗?’来人问道。 “你是吉米·维尔斯?”站在门口的男子大声地说,显然,他很激动。 来人握住了男子的双手。“不错,你是鲍勃。我早就确信我会在这儿见到你的。啧,啧,啧!20年是个不短的时间啊!你看,鲍勃!原来的那个饭馆已经不在啦!要是它没有被拆除,我们再一块儿在这里面共进晚餐该多好啊!鲍勃,你在西部的情况怎么样?” “幄,我已经设法获得了我所需要的一切东西。你的变化不小啊,吉米。我原来根本没有想到你会长这么高的个子。” “哦,你走了以后,我是长高了一点儿。” “吉米,你在纽约混得不错吧?” “一般,一般。我在市政府的一个部门里上班,坐办公室。来,鲍勃,咱们去转转,找个地方好好叙叙往事。” 这条街的街角处有一家大商店。尽管时间已经不早了,商店里的灯还在亮着。来到亮处以后,这两个人都不约而同地转过身来看了看对方的脸。 突然间,那个从西部来的男子停住了脚步。 “你不是吉米·维尔斯。”他说,“2O年的时间虽然不短,但它不足以使一个人变得容貌全非。”从他说话的声调中可以听出,他在怀疑对方。 “然而,20年的时间却有可能使一个好人变成坏人。”高个子 说,“你被捕了,鲍勃。芝加哥的警方猜到你会到这个城市来的,于是他们通知我们说,他们想跟你‘聊聊’。好吧,在我们还没有去警察局之前,先给你看一张条子,是你的朋友写给你的。” 鲍勃接过便条。读着读着,他微微地颤抖起来。便条上写着: 鲍勃:刚才我准时赶到了我们的约会地点。当你划着火柴点烟时,我发现你正是那个芝加哥警方所通缉的人。不知怎么的,我不忍自己亲自逮捕你,只得找了个便衣警察来做这件事。 The Cop and the Anthem警察与赞美诗 On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready. Soapy's mind became cognisant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigour. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench. The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable. For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs. Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then, after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest. Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm. Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing--with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demi-tasse and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the cafe management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge. But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard. Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of. At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons. "Where's the man that done that?" inquired the officer excitedly. "Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?" said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune. The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man half way down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful. On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter be betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers. "Now, get busy and call a cop," said Soapy. "And don't keep a gentleman waiting." "No cop for youse," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. "Hey, Con!" Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose, joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street. Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fatuously termed to himself a "cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of severe demeanour leaned against a water plug. It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle. Soapy straightened the lady missionary's readymade tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an eye Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raised his hat and said: "Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?" The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy's coat sleeve. Sure, Mike," she said joyfully, "if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching." With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the policeman overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty. At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and librettos. Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of "disorderly conduct." On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwise disturbed the welkin. The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a citizen. "'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be." Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind. In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily. "My umbrella," he said, sternly. "Oh, is it?" sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. "Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call a cop? There stands one on the corner." The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously."Of course," said the umbrella man--"that is--well, you know how these mistakes occur--I--if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me--I picked it up this morning in a restaurant--If you recognise it as yours, why--I hope you'll--" "Of course it's mine," said Soapy, viciously. The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away. Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong. At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench. But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence. The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves--for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars. The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives that made up his existence. And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. To-morrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would-- Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman. "What are you doin' here?" asked the officer. "Nothin'," said Soapy. "Then come along," said the policeman. "Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.  索比急躁不安地躺在麦迪逊广场的长凳上,辗转反侧。每当雁群在夜空中引颈高歌,缺少海豹皮衣的女人对丈夫加倍的温存亲热,索比在街心公园的长凳上焦躁不安、翻来复去的时候,人们就明白,冬天已近在咫尺了。   一片枯叶落在索比的大腿上,那是杰克·弗洛斯特①的卡片。杰克对麦迪逊广场的常住居民非常客气,每年来临之先,总要打一声招呼。在十字街头,他把名片交给"户外大厦"的信使"北风",好让住户们有个准备。   索比意识到,该是自己下决心的时候了,马上组织单人财务委员会,以便抵御即将临近的严寒,因此,他急躁不安地在长凳上辗转反侧。   索比越冬的抱负并不算最高,他不想在地中海巡游,也不想到南方去晒令人昏睡的太阳,更没想过到维苏威海湾漂泊。他梦寐以求的只要在岛上待三个月就足够了。整整三个月,有饭吃,有床睡,还有志趣相投的伙伴,而且不受"北风"和警察的侵扰。对索比而言,这就是日思夜想的最大愿望。   多年来,好客的布莱克韦尔岛②的监狱一直是索比冬天的寓所。正像福气比他好的纽约人每年冬天买票去棕榈滩③和里维埃拉④一样,索比也要为一年一度逃奔岛上作些必要的安排。现在又到时候了。昨天晚上,他睡在古老广场上喷水池旁的长凳上,用三张星期日的报纸分别垫在上衣里、包着脚踝、盖住大腿,也没能抵挡住严寒的袭击。因此,在他的脑袋里,岛子的影象又即时而鲜明地浮现出来。他诅咒那些以慈善名义对城镇穷苦人所设的布施。在索比眼里,法律比救济更为宽厚。他可以去的地方不少,有市政办的、救济机关办的各式各样的组织,他都可以去混吃、混住,勉强度日,但接受施舍,对索比这样一位灵魂高傲的人来讲,是一种不可忍受的折磨。从慈善机构的手里接受任何一点好处,钱固然不必付,但你必须遭受精神上的屈辱来作为回报。正如恺撒对待布鲁图一样⑤,凡事有利必有弊,要睡上慈善机构的床,先得让人押去洗个澡;要吃施舍的一片面包,得先交待清楚个人的来历和隐私。因此,倒不如当个法律的座上宾还好得多。虽然法律铁面无私、照章办事,但至少不会过分地干涉正人君子的私事。   一旦决定了去岛上,索比便立即着手将它变为现实。要兑现自己的意愿,有许多简捷的途径,其中最舒服的莫过于去某家豪华餐厅大吃一台,然后呢,承认自己身无分文,无力支付,这样便安安静静、毫不声张地被交给警察。其余的一切就该由通商量的治安推事来应付了。   索比离开长凳,踱出广场,跨过百老汇大街和第五大街的交汇处那片沥青铺就的平坦路面。他转向百老汇大街,在一家灯火辉煌的咖啡馆前停下脚步,在这里,每天晚上聚积着葡萄、蚕丝和原生质的最佳制品⑥。   索比对自己的马甲从最下一颗纽扣之上还颇有信心,他修过面,上衣也还够气派,他那整洁的黑领结是感恩节时一位教会的女士送给他的。只要他到餐桌之前不被人猜疑,成功就属于他了。他露在桌面的上半身绝不会让侍者生疑。索比想到,一只烤野鸭很对劲——再来一瓶夏布利酒⑦,然后是卡门贝干酪⑧,一小杯清咖啡和一只雪茄烟。一美元一只的雪茄就足够了。全部加起来的价钱不宜太高,以免遭到咖啡馆太过厉害的报复;然而,吃下这一餐会使他走向冬季避难所的行程中心满意足、无忧无虑了。   可是,索比的脚刚踏进门,领班侍者的眼睛便落在了他那旧裤子和破皮鞋上。强壮迅急的手掌推了他个转身,悄无声息地被押了出来,推上了人行道,拯救了那只险遭毒手的野鸭的可怜命运。   索比离开了百老汇大街。看起来,靠大吃一通走向垂涎三尺的岛上,这办法是行不通了。要进监狱,还得另打主意。   在第六大街的拐角处,灯火通明、陈设精巧的大玻璃橱窗内的商品尤其诱人注目。索比捡起一块鹅卵石,向玻璃窗砸去。人们从转弯处奔来,领头的就是一位巡警。索比一动不动地站在原地,两手插在裤袋里,对着黄铜纽扣微笑⑨。   "肇事的家伙跑哪儿去了?"警官气急败坏地问道。   "你不以为这事与我有关吗?"索比说,多少带点嘲讽语气,但很友好,如同他正交着桃花运呢。   警察根本没把索比看成作案对象。毁坏窗子的人绝对不会留在现场与法律的宠臣攀谈,早就溜之大吉啦。警察看到半条街外有个人正跑去赶一辆车,便挥舞着警棍追了上去。索比心里十分憎恶,只得拖着脚步,重新开始游荡。他再一次失算了。   对面街上,有一家不太招眼的餐厅,它可以填饱肚子,又花不了多少钱。它的碗具粗糙,空气混浊,汤菜淡如水,餐巾薄如绢。索比穿着那令人诅咒的鞋子和暴露身分的裤子跨进餐厅,上帝保佑、还没遭到白眼。他走到桌前坐下,吃了牛排,煎饼、炸面饼圈和馅饼。然后,他向侍者坦露真象:他和钱老爷从无交往。   "现在,快去叫警察,"索比说。"别让大爷久等。"   "用不着找警察,"侍者说,声音滑腻得如同奶油蛋糕,眼睛红得好似曼哈顿开胃酒中的樱桃。"喂,阿康!"   两个侍者干净利落地把他推倒在又冷又硬的人行道上,左耳着地。索比艰难地一点一点地从地上爬起来,好似木匠打开折尺一样,接着拍掉衣服上的尘土。被捕的愿望仅仅是美梦一个,那个岛子是太遥远了。相隔两个门面的药店前,站着一名警察,他笑了笑,便沿街走去。   索比走过五个街口之后,设法被捕的气又回来了。这一次出现的机会极为难得,他满以为十拿九稳哩。一位衣着简朴但讨人喜欢的年轻女人站在橱窗前,兴趣十足地瞪着陈列的修面杯和墨水瓶架入了迷。而两码之外,一位彪形大汉警察正靠在水龙头上,神情严肃。   索比的计划是装扮成一个下流、讨厌的"捣蛋鬼"。他的对象文雅娴静,又有一位忠于职守的警察近在眼前,这使他足以相信,警察的双手抓住他的手膀的滋味该是多么愉快呵,在岛上的小乐窝里度过这个冬季就有了保证。   索比扶正了教会的女士送给他的领结,拉出缩进去的衬衣袖口,把帽子往后一掀,歪得几乎要落下来,侧身向那女人挨将过去。他对她送秋波,清嗓子,哼哼哈哈,嬉皮笑脸,把小流氓所干的一切卑鄙无耻的勾当表演得维妙维肖。他斜眼望去,看见那个警察正死死盯住他。年轻女人移开了几步,又沉醉于观赏那修面杯。索比跟过去,大胆地走近她,举了举帽子,说:"啊哈,比德莉亚,你不想去我的院子里玩玩吗?"   警察仍旧死死盯住。受人轻薄的年轻女人只需将手一招,就等于已经上路去岛上的安乐窝了。在想象中,他已经感觉到警察分局的舒适和温暖了。年轻女人转身面对着他,伸出一只手,捉住了索比的上衣袖口。   "当然罗,迈克,"她兴高采烈地说,"如果你肯破费给我买一杯啤酒的话。要不是那个警察老瞅住我,早就同你搭腔了。"   年轻女人像常青藤攀附着他这棵大橡树一样。索比从警察身边走过,心中懊丧不已。看来命中注定,他该自由。   一到拐弯处,他甩掉女伴,撒腿就跑。他一口气跑到老远的一个地方。这儿,整夜都是最明亮的灯光,最轻松的心情,最轻率的誓言和最轻快的歌剧。淑女们披着皮裘,绅士们身着大衣,在这凛冽的严寒中欢天喜地地走来走去。索比突然感到一阵恐惧,也许是某种可怕的魔法制住了他,使他免除了被捕。这念头令他心惊肉跳。但是,当他看见一个警察在灯火通明的剧院门前大模大样地巡逻时,他立刻捞到了"扰乱治安"这根救命稻草。   索比在人行道上扯开那破锣似的嗓子,像醉鬼一样胡闹。   他又跳,又吼,又叫,使尽各种伎俩来搅扰这苍穹。   警察旋转着他的警棍,扭身用背对着索比,向一位市民解释说:"这是个耶鲁小子在庆祝胜利,他们同哈特福德学院赛球,请人家吃了个大鹅蛋。声音是有点儿大,但不碍事。我们上峰有指示,让他们闹去吧。"   索比怏怏不乐地停止了白费力气的闹嚷。难道就永远没有警察对他下手吗?在他的幻梦中,那岛屿似乎成了可望而不可及的阿卡狄亚⑩了。他扣好单薄的上衣,以便抵挡刺骨的寒风。   索比看到雪茄烟店里有一位衣冠楚楚的人正对着火头点烟。那人进店时,把绸伞靠在门边。索比跨进店门,拿起绸伞,漫不经心地退了出来。点烟人匆匆追了出来。   "我的伞,"他厉声道。   "呵,是吗?"索比冷笑说;在小偷摸小摸之上,再加上一条侮辱罪吧。"好哇,那你为什么不叫警察呢?没错,我拿了。你的伞!为什么不叫巡警呢?拐角那儿就站着一个哩。"   绸伞的主人放慢了脚步,索比也跟着慢了下来。他有一种预感,命运会再一次同他作对。那位警察好奇地瞧着他们俩。   "当然罗,"绸伞主人说,"那是,噢,你知道有时会出现这类误会……我……要是这伞是你的,我希望你别见怪……我是今天早上在餐厅捡的……要是你认出是你的,那么……我希望你别……"   "当然是我的,"索比恶狠狠地说。   绸伞的前主人悻悻地退了开去。那位警察慌忙不迭地跑去搀扶一个身披夜礼服斗篷、头发金黄的高个子女人穿过横街,以免两条街之外驶来的街车会碰着她。   索比往东走,穿过一条因翻修弄得高低不平的街道。他怒气冲天地把绸伞猛地掷进一个坑里。他咕咕哝哝地抱怨那些头戴钢盔、手执警棍的家伙。因为他一心只想落入法网,而他们则偏偏把他当成永不出错的国王⑾。   最后,索比来到了通往东区的一条街上,这儿的灯光暗淡,嘈杂声也若有若无。他顺着街道向麦迪逊广场走去,即使他的家仅仅是公园里的一条长凳,但回家的本能还是把他带到了那儿。   可是,在一个异常幽静的转角处,索比停住了。这儿有一座古老的教堂,样子古雅,显得零乱,是带山墙的建筑。柔和的灯光透过淡紫色的玻璃窗映射出来,毫无疑问,是风琴师在练熟星期天的赞美诗。悦耳的乐声飘进索比的耳朵,吸引了他,把他粘在了螺旋形的铁栏杆上。   月亮挂在高高的夜空,光辉、静穆;行人和车辆寥寥无几;屋檐下的燕雀在睡梦中几声啁啾——这会儿有如乡村中教堂墓地的气氛。风琴师弹奏的赞美诗拨动了伏在铁栏杆上的索比的心弦,因为当他生活中拥有母爱、玫瑰、抱负、朋友以及纯洁无邪的思想和洁白的衣领时,他是非常熟悉赞美诗的。   索比的敏感心情同老教堂的潜移默化交融在一起,使他的灵魂猛然间出现了奇妙的变化。他立刻惊恐地醒悟到自己已经坠入了深渊,堕落的岁月,可耻的欲念,悲观失望,才穷智竭,动机卑鄙——这一切构成了他的全部生活。   顷刻间,这种新的思想境界令他激动万分。一股迅急而强烈的冲动鼓舞着他去迎战坎坷的人生。他要把自己拖出泥淖,他要征服那一度驾驭自己的恶魔。时间尚不晚,他还算年轻,他要再现当年的雄心壮志,并坚定不移地去实现它。管风琴的庄重而甜美音调已经在他的内心深处引起了一场革命。明天,他要去繁华的商业区找事干。有个皮货进口商一度让他当司机,明天找到他,接下这份差事。他愿意做个煊赫一时的人物。他要……   索比感到有只手按在他的胳膊上。他霍地扭过头来,只见一位警察的宽脸盘。   "你在这儿干什么呀?"警察问道。   "没干什么,"索比说。   "那就跟我来,"警察说。   第二天早晨,警察局法庭的法官宣判道:"布莱克韦尔岛,三个月。"   ①杰克·弗洛斯特(Jack Frost):"霜冻"的拟人化称呼。   ②布莱克韦尔岛(Blackwell):在纽约东河上。岛上有监狱。   ③棕榈滩(Palm Beach):美国佛罗里达州东南部城镇,冬令游憩胜地。   ④里维埃拉(The Riviera):南欧沿地中海一段地区,在法国的东南部和意大利的西北部,是假节日憩游胜地。   ⑤恺撒(Julius Caesar):(100-44BC)罗马统帅、政治家,罗马的独裁者,被共和派贵族刺杀。布鲁图(Brutus):(85-42BC)罗马贵族派政治家,刺杀恺撒的主谋,后逃希腊,集结 军队对抗安东尼和屋大维联军,因战败自杀。   ⑥作者诙谐的说法,指美酒、华丽衣物和上流人物。   ⑦夏布利酒(Chablis):原产于法国的Chablis地方的一种无甜味的白葡萄酒。   ⑧卡门贝(Carmembert)干酪(Cheese):一种产于法国的软干酪。原为Fr.诺曼底一村庄,产此干酪而得名。   ⑨指警察,因警察上衣的纽扣是黄铜制的。   ⑩阿卡狄亚(Arcadia):原为古希腊一山区,现在伯罗奔尼撒半岛中部,以其居民过着田园牧歌式的淳朴生活而著称,现指"世外桃园"。   ⑾英语谚语:国王不可能犯错误(King can do no wrong.) The Gift of the Magi麦琪的礼物 One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good. Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim. There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pierglass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street. Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie." "Will you buy my hair?" asked Della. "I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it." Down rippled the brown cascade. "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand. "Give it to me quick," said Della. Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task. Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically. "If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?" At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty." The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face. Della wriggled off the table and went for him. "Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you." "You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor. "Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?" Jim looked about the room curiously. "You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy. "You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?" Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on. Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. "Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first." White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat. For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone. But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!" And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!" Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. "Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it." Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. "Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on." The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.   一元八角七。全都在这儿了,其中六角是一分一分的铜板。这些分分钱是杂货店老板、菜贩子和肉店老板那儿软硬兼施地一分两分地扣下来,直弄得自己羞愧难当,深感这种掂斤播两的交易实在丢人现眼。德拉反复数了三次,还是一元八角七,而第二天就是圣诞节了。   除了扑倒在那破旧的小睡椅上哭嚎之外,显然别无他途。   德拉这样作了,可精神上的感慨油然而生,生活就是哭泣、抽噎和微笑,尤以抽噎占统治地位。   当这位家庭主妇逐渐平静下来之际,让我们看看这个家吧。一套带家具的公寓房子,每周房租八美元。尽管难以用笔墨形容,可它真真够得上乞丐帮这个词儿。   楼下的门道里有个信箱,可从来没有装过信,还有一个电钮,也从没有人的手指按响过电铃。而且,那儿还有一张名片,上写着"詹姆斯·迪林厄姆·杨先生"。   "迪林厄姆"这个名号是主人先前春风得意之际,一时兴起加上去的,那时候他每星期挣三十美元。现在,他的收入缩减到二十美元,"迪林厄姆"的字母也显得模糊不清,似乎它们正严肃地思忖着是否缩写成谦逊而又讲求实际的字母D。不过,每当詹姆斯·迪林厄姆·杨回家,走进楼上的房间时,詹姆斯·迪林厄姆·杨太太,就是刚介绍给诸位的德拉,总是把他称作"吉姆",而且热烈地拥抱他。那当然是再好不过的了。   德拉哭完之后,往面颊上抹了抹粉,她站在窗前,痴痴地瞅着灰濛濛的后院里一只灰白色的猫正行走在灰白色的篱笆上。明天就是圣诞节,她只有一元八角七给吉姆买一份礼物。她花去好几个月的时间,用了最大的努力一分一分地攒积下来,才得了这样一个结果。一周二十美元实在经不起花,支出大于预算,总是如此。只有一元八角七给吉姆买礼物,她的吉姆啊。她花费了多少幸福的时日筹划着要送他一件可心的礼物,一件精致、珍奇、贵重的礼物——至少应有点儿配得上吉姆所有的东西才成啊。   房间的两扇窗子之间有一面壁镜。也许你见过每周房租八美元的公寓壁镜吧。一个非常瘦小而灵巧的人,从观察自己在一连串的纵条影象中,可能会对自己的容貌得到一个大致精确的概念。德拉身材苗条,已精通了这门子艺术。   突然,她从窗口旋风般地转过身来,站在壁镜前面。她两眼晶莹透亮,但二十秒钟之内她的面色失去了光彩。她急速地折散头发,使之完全泼散开来。   现在,詹姆斯·迪林厄姆·杨夫妇俩各有一件特别引以自豪的东西。一件是吉姆的金表,是他祖父传给父亲,父亲又传给他的传家宝;另一件则是德拉的秀发。如果示巴女王①也住在天井对面的公寓里,总有一天德拉会把头发披散下来,露出窗外晾干,使那女王的珍珠宝贝黔然失色;如果地下室堆满金银财宝、所罗门王又是守门人的话,每当吉姆路过那儿,准会摸出金表,好让那所罗门王忌妒得吹胡子瞪眼睛。   此时此刻,德拉的秀发泼撒在她的周围,微波起伏,闪耀光芒,有如那褐色的瀑布。她的美发长及膝下,仿佛是她的一件长袍。接着,她又神经质地赶紧把头发梳好。踌躇了一分钟,一动不动地立在那儿,破旧的红地毯上溅落了一、两滴眼泪。   她穿上那件褐色的旧外衣,戴上褐色的旧帽子,眼睛里残留着晶莹的泪花,裙子一摆,便飘出房门,下楼来到街上。   她走到一块招牌前停下来,上写着:"索弗罗妮夫人——专营各式头发"。德拉奔上楼梯,气喘吁吁地定了定神。那位夫人身躯肥大,过于苍白,冷若冰霜,同"索弗罗妮"的雅号简直牛头不对马嘴。   "你要买我的头发吗?"德拉问。   "我买头发,"夫人说。"揭掉帽子,让我看看发样。"   那褐色的瀑布泼撒了下来。   "二十美元,"夫人一边说,一边内行似地抓起头发。   "快给我钱,"德拉说。   呵,接着而至的两个小时犹如长了翅膀,愉快地飞掠而过。请不用理会这胡诌的比喻。她正在彻底搜寻各家店铺,为吉姆买礼物。   她终于找到了,那准是专为吉姆特制的,决非为别人。她找遍了各家商店,哪儿也没有这样的东西,一条朴素的白金表链,镂刻着花纹。正如一切优质东西那样,它只以货色论长短,不以装璜来炫耀。而且它正配得上那只金表。她一见这条表链,就知道一定属于吉姆所有。它就像吉姆本人,文静而有价值——这一形容对两者都恰如其份。她花去二十一美元买下了,匆匆赶回家,只剩下八角七分钱。金表匹配这条链子,无论在任何场合,吉姆都可以毫无愧色地看时间了。   尽管这只表华丽珍贵,因为用的是旧皮带取代表链,他有时只偷偷地瞥上一眼。   德拉回家之后,她的狂喜有点儿变得审慎和理智了。她找出烫发铁钳,点燃煤气,着手修补因爱情加慷慨所造成的破坏,这永远是件极其艰巨的任务,亲爱的朋友们——简直是件了不起的任务呵。   不出四十分钟,她的头上布满了紧贴头皮的一绺绺小卷发,使她活像个逃学的小男孩。她在镜子里老盯着自己瞧,小心地、苛刻地照来照去。   "假如吉姆看我一眼不把我宰掉的话,"她自言自语,"他定会说我像个科尼岛上合唱队的卖唱姑娘。但是我能怎么办呢——唉,只有一元八角七,我能干什么呢?"   七点钟,她煮好了咖啡,把煎锅置于热炉上,随时都可作肉排。   吉姆一贯准时回家。德拉将表链对叠握在手心,坐在离他一贯进门最近的桌子角上。接着,她听见下面楼梯上响起了他的脚步声,她紧张得脸色失去了一会儿血色。她习惯于为了最简单的日常事物而默默祈祷,此刻,她悄声道:"求求上帝,让他觉得我还是漂亮的吧。"   门开了,吉姆步入,随手关上了门。他显得瘦削而又非常严肃。可怜的人儿,他才二十二岁,就挑起了家庭重担!他需要买件新大衣,连手套也没有呀。   吉姆站在屋里的门口边,纹丝不动地好像猎犬嗅到了鹌鹑的气味似的。他的两眼固定在德拉身上,其神情使她无法理解,令她毛骨悚然。既不是愤怒,也不是惊讶,又不是不满,更不是嫌恶,根本不是她所预料的任何一种神情。他仅仅是面带这种神情死死地盯着德拉。   德拉一扭腰,从桌上跳了下来,向他走过去。   "吉姆,亲爱的,"她喊道,"别那样盯着我。我把头发剪掉卖了,因为不送你一件礼物,我无法过圣诞节。头发会再长起来——你不会介意,是吗?我非这么做不可。我的头发长得快极了。说'恭贺圣诞'吧!吉姆,让我们快快乐乐的。你肯定猜不着我给你买了一件多么好的——多么美丽精致的礼物啊!"   "你已经把头发剪掉了?"吉姆吃力地问道,似乎他绞尽脑汁也没弄明白这明摆着的事实。   "剪掉卖了,"德拉说。"不管怎么说,你不也同样喜欢我吗?没了长发,我还是我嘛,对吗?"   吉姆古怪地四下望望这房间。   "你说你的头发没有了吗?"他差不多是白痴似地问道。   "别找啦,"德拉说。"告诉你,我已经卖了——卖掉了,没有啦。这是圣诞前夜,好人儿。好好待我,这是为了你呀。也许我的头发数得清,"突然她特别温柔地接下去,"可谁也数不清我对你的恩爱啊。我做肉排了吗,吉姆?"   吉姆好像从恍惚之中醒来,把德拉紧紧地搂在怀里。现在,别着急,先让我们花个十秒钟从另一角度审慎地思索一下某些无关紧要的事。房租每周八美元,或者一百万美元——那有什么差别呢?数学家或才子会给你错误的答案。麦琪②带来了宝贵的礼物,但就是缺少了那件东西。这句晦涩的话,下文将有所交待。   吉姆从大衣口袋里掏出一个小包,扔在桌上。   "别对我产生误会,德尔,"他说道,"无论剪发、修面,还是洗头,我以为世上没有什么东西能减低一点点对我妻子的爱情。不过,你只消打开那包东西,就会明白刚才为什么使我楞头楞脑了。"   白皙的手指灵巧地解开绳子,打开纸包。紧接着是欣喜若狂的尖叫,哎呀!突然变成了女性神经质的泪水和哭泣,急需男主人千方百计的慰藉。   还是因为摆在桌上的梳子——全套梳子,包括两鬓用的,后面的,样样俱全。那是很久以前德拉在百老汇的一个橱窗里见过并羡慕得要死的东西。这些美妙的发梳,纯玳瑁做的,边上镶着珠宝——其色彩正好同她失去的美发相匹配。她明白,这套梳子实在太昂贵,对此,她仅仅是羡慕渴望,但从未想到过据为己有。现在,这一切居然属于她了,可惜那有资格佩戴这垂涎已久的装饰品的美丽长发已无影无踪了。   不过,她依然把发梳搂在胸前,过了好一阵子才抬起泪水迷濛的双眼,微笑着说:"我的头发长得飞快,吉姆!"   随后,德拉活像一只被烫伤的小猫跳了起来,叫道,"喔!喔!"   吉姆还没有瞧见他的美丽的礼物哩。她急不可耐地把手掌摊开,伸到他面前,那没有知觉的贵重金属似乎闪现着她的欢快和热忱。   "漂亮吗,吉姆?我搜遍了全城才找到了它。现在,你每天可以看一百次时间了。把表给我,我要看看它配在表上的样子。"   吉姆非旦不按她的吩咐行事,反而倒在睡椅上,两手枕在头下,微微发笑。   "德尔,"他说,"让我们把圣诞礼物放在一边,保存一会儿吧。它们实在太好了,目前尚不宜用。我卖掉金表,换钱为你买了发梳。现在,你作肉排吧。"   正如诸位所知,麦琪是聪明人,聪明绝顶的人,他们把礼物带来送给出生在马槽里的耶稣。他们发明送圣诞礼物这玩艺儿。由于他们是聪明人,毫无疑问,他们的礼物也是聪明的礼物,如果碰上两样东西完全一样,可能还具有交换的权利。在这儿,我已经笨拙地给你们介绍了住公寓套间的两个傻孩子不足为奇的平淡故事,他们极不明智地为了对方而牺牲了他们家最最宝贵的东西。不过,让我们对现今的聪明人说最后一句话,在一切馈赠礼品的人当中,那两个人是最聪明的。在一切馈赠又接收礼品的人当中,像他们两个这样的人也是最聪明的。无论在任何地方,他们都是最聪明的人。   他们就是麦琪。   ①示巴女王(QueeenofSheba):基督教《圣经》中朝觐所罗门王,以测其智慧的示巴女王,她以美貌著称。   ②麦琪(Magi,单数为Magus):指圣婴基督出生时来自东方送礼的三贤人,载于圣经马太福音第二章第一节和第七至第十三节。 A Cosmopolite in a Cafe咖啡馆里的世界公民 At midnight the cafe was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons. And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites. I invoke your consideration of the scene--the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garcons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the melange of talk and laughter--and, if you will, the Wurzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the scene was truly Parisian. My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new "attraction" there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table d'hote grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have addressed a letter to "E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the Universe," and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him. I was sure that I had found at last the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his worldwide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation. And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that "the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown." And whenever they walk "by roaring streets unknown" they remember their native city "most faithful, foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond." And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon. Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was "Dixie," and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table. It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafes in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the "rebel" air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years' generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now--the war, you know. When "Dixie" was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft- brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out cigarettes. The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Wurzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had. "Would you mind telling me," I began, "whether you are from--" The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was jarred into silence. "Excuse me," said he, "but that's a question I never like to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section." "Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own--larger theory, I must confess." And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves. "I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of a valley, and sing tooralloo-ralloo." This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan. "I've been around the world twelve times," said he. "I know an Esquimau in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goatherder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year around. I've got slippers waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell 'em how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about being from the North, or the South, or the old manor house in the dale, or Euclid avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just because we happened to be born there." "You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite," I said admiringly. "But it also seems that you would decry patriotism." "A relic of the stone age," declared Coglan, warmly. "We are all brothers--Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians and the people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride in one's city or State or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be." "But while you are wandering in foreign lands," I persisted, "do not your thoughts revert to some spo--some dear and--" "Nary a spot," interrupted E. R. Coglan, flippantly. "The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a Southerner on being introduced to the King of England hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his grandaunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he came back to Kabul with the agent. 'Afghanistan?' the natives said to him through an interpreter. 'Well, not so slow, do you think?' 'Oh, I don't know,' says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at Sixth avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere." My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw some one through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wurzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley. I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and I believed in him. How was it? "The men that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown." Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his-- My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the cafe. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing "Teasing." My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting. I called McCarthy, one of the French garcons, and asked him the cause of the conflict. "The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy." "Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world--a cosmopolite. He--" "Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, "and he wouldn't stand for no knockin' the place."  半夜,咖啡馆拥挤不通。我随意间选坐的一张小桌恰好不为人们所注目,还剩下两把空椅以诱人的殷勤,伸开双臂欢迎新拥进的顾客。   当时,一位世界公民和我同一张小桌,坐在另一张椅子上。我真高兴,因为我持这种理论,自亚当以来,还没有过一位真正的属于整个世界的居民。我们听说过世界公民,也在许多包裹上见过异国标签,但那是旅游者,不是世界公民。   我提到下面的情景定会引起你的思考——大理石桌面的桌子,一排排靠墙的皮革椅座,愉快的侣伴,稍加打扮的女士们正以微妙而又明显可见的情趣争相谈论着经济、繁盛和艺术,小心周到喜欢慷慨的侍者,使作曲家慌忙不迭的音乐机灵地满足一切人的口味,还有杂七杂八的谈话声、欢笑声——假如你乐意的话,高高的玻璃锥体维尔茨堡酒①将躬身到你的唇边,就像那枝头上的熟樱桃摇晃进强盗樫鸟的嘴壳一样。一位来自英奇·丘恩克的雕塑家告诉我,这景象真真是巴黎式的。   我这位世界公民名叫E·拉什莫尔·科格兰,明年夏天他将在科尼岛②——他对我说,他即将在那儿建立一种新的"诱惑力",并提供国王式的消遣。过后,他的谈话便随同经纬度的平行线而展开,把巨大的圆圆的世界握在手里,这样说吧,对世界了如指掌,又极为瞧不起,世界似乎只是客饭中黑葡萄酒里的樱桃核那般大小。他粗俗无礼地谈及赤道,匆匆由这块大陆转到那块大陆,他嘲笑那些地区,用餐巾抹掉狂涛巨浪。他把手一挥,谈起了海德拉巴帮③的某个东方集市。噗!他会让你在拉普兰④滑雪。嘘!你在基莱卡希基同夏威夷的土著一起驰骋在浪尖波顶。一转眼,他拖着你穿过阿肯色州长满星毛栎的沼泽,让你在艾达荷州他那碱性平原的牧场上炙烤一阵子,然后才旋风似地带你去维也纳大公们的上流社会。之后,他会给你讲到,有一次他在芝加哥湖吹了凉风而感冒,有位年长的埃斯卡米拉人在布宜诺斯艾丽斯⑤又怎样用丘丘拉草药热浸剂才把他治好。你该致函"宇宙、太阳系、地球、E·拉什莫尔·科格兰先生,"一旦寄出,便会觉得信定会交到。   我确信自己终于发现了从亚当以来的第一个真正的世界公民,我倾听他纵横整个世界的宏论,生怕从中发现他仅仅是个环球旅行的地方口音。他的见解决非飘浮不定或令人沮丧,他对不同的城市、国家和各大洲都是不偏不依,有如吹风和万有引力一样自然。   正当E·拉什莫尔·科格兰对这小小的星球高谈阔论之际,我高兴地想起了一位差不多算伟大的世界公民来,他为整个世界而写作,把自己献给了孟买⑥。在一首诗中,他不得不说,地球上的城市之间不免有些妄自尊大,互相竞争,"靠这城市抚育着人们,让他们来来往往,但仅仅依附于城市的折缝之中,有如孩子依附于母亲的睡袍一样。"当他们走在"陌生的繁华街道上,"便会记起对故乡城镇是"多么忠诚、多么愚笨、多么令人喜爱,"使他们的名字与故乡的名字生死与共,紧紧相连。我的兴趣被激起来了,因为突然记起了吉卜林⑦的疏忽大意。现在,我已经找到了一个不是由尘埃造就的人,他不是狭隘地吹捧自己的出生地或自己的国家,如果说褒扬的话,他是在赞美圆圆的整个地球,而与火星人和月球的居民相抗衡。   关于这类问题的见解是坐在这张桌子的第三转角处的E·拉什莫尔·科格兰突然抛掷出来的。科格兰正在给我描绘西伯利亚铁路的地形时,乐队转成了集成曲。结束的曲调是"迪克西⑧",振奋人心的乐曲加快时,几乎被张张桌子的人们鼓掌声所淹没。   值得花上一段来讲讲纽约市内众多的咖啡馆每天晚上处处可见的这种引人入胜的场面。成吨的饮料挥霍于阐释各种理论。有人轻率地猜测,城里所有的南方人在夜幕降临之际都赶紧上咖啡馆。在北方的一座城市里如此赞许这种"反叛"气氛真有点叫人迷惑不解,但并非不可解答。对西班牙的战争,多年来薄荷和西瓜等农作物的丰收,新奥尔良的跑道上暴出冷门的获胜者,由印地安纳和堪萨斯的居民所组成的"北卡罗来纳社团"举办盛大的宴会已经使南方成了曼哈顿的"时尚"。你修剪指甲暗示着你的左手食指会提醒她你是个弗吉尼亚州里士满的绅士。呵,当然罗,不过,现在不少女士不得不工作——战争,你是知道的。   正演奏着"迪克西",就在这时一位黑发年轻小伙子不知从什么地方蹦了出来,一声莫斯比⑨游击队队员的吼声,疯狂地挥舞着软边帽,迂回地穿过烟雾,落座于我们桌旁的空椅子上,抽出一只烟来。   这夜晚到了打破缄默的时候了。我们当中有人向侍者要了三杯维尔茨堡酒,黑发小伙子明白也包括他有一杯在内,便笑了笑,点了点头。我赶忙问他一个问题,因为我要证实我的一种理论。   "你不介意告诉我,你是哪儿的人……"   E·拉什莫尔·科格兰的拳头砰一声砸在桌上,把我吓得沉默了。   "原谅我,"他说,"但我决不喜欢听到这种问话。是哪里人又有什么相干呢?从一个人的通讯地址来判断人公正吗?唉,我见过肯塔基人厌恶威士忌,弗吉尼亚人不是从波卡洪塔丝⑩传下来的,印地安纳人没写过一本小说。墨西哥人不穿缝口上钉银币的丝绒裤,有趣的英国人,挥霍的北方佬,冷酷的南方人,气量狭小的西方人,纽约人太匆忙,没能花上一小时在街上瞧瞧杂货店的独臂售货员怎样把越橘装进纸袋。让人真正像人,不要用任何地域的标签给他设置障碍。"   "请原谅,"我说,"但我的好奇心不是毫无根据的。我了解南方,当乐队奏起'迪克西'时,我喜欢观察。我相信那位为这只乐曲喝采特别卖劲、假装对南方最为忠诚的人一定来自新泽西州的塞考卡,或者在本市默里·希尔·吕克昂和哈莱姆河之间。我正要寻问这位绅士来证实我的看法,恰好被你的理论所打断,当然是更大的理论,我必须承认。"   现在,黑发小伙子对我说,很明显,他的思想也是按自己的一套习惯运行。   "我倒喜欢成为一枝长春花,"他玄妙地说,"长在峡谷之巅,高唱嘟——啦卢——拉卢。"   这显然过于朦胧了,因此,我又转向科格兰。   "我已经围绕地球走了十二遍,"他说。"我了解到厄珀纳维克的一位爱斯基摩人寄钱到辛辛那提⑾去买领带,我看到乌拉圭的牧羊人在一次"战斗小湾"早餐食品谜语竞赛中获了奖。我在开罗、希腊为间房间付房租,在横滨为另一间付了全年租金。上海的一家茶馆专门为我准备了一双拖鞋,在里约热内卢的贾尼罗或者西雅图,我不必告诉他们怎样给我煮蛋。真是一个太小的旧世界。吹嘘自己是北方人、南方人有什么用呢?吹嘘山谷中的旧庄园的房舍、克里夫兰市的欧几里德大街、派克峰⑿、弗吉尼亚的费尔法克斯县或阿飞公寓或者其他任何地方又有什么用呢?只有当我们摒弃这些糊涂观念,即由于我们碰巧出生在某个发霉的城市或者十公顷沼泽地便沾沾自喜的时候,这个世界才会变得更美好。"   "你似乎是个货真价实的世界公民,"我羡慕地说。"不过,你似乎也抵毁了爱国主义。"   "石器时代的残余,"科格兰激烈地宣称。"我们都是兄弟——中国人、英国人、祖鲁人⒀、巴塔哥尼亚人⒁以及住在考河湾的人都是兄弟。将有这么一天,一切为自己出生的城市、州、地区或国家的自豪感将一扫而光,正如我们理当如此的那样,都是世界公民。"   "可是,当你在陌生的地方游荡时,"我仍坚持道,"你的思想是否会回复到某个地点——某些亲近的和……"   "从来也没有这样一个地点,"E·拉什莫尔·科格兰毫不在意地打断我。"这一大块陆地的世界的行星的东西,只要稍微把两极弄平一点,称之为地球,这就是我的寓所。在国外,我碰到过这个国家的无数公民被某个地方所束缚。我见过芝加哥人在威尼斯的月夜,坐在凤尾船上,吹嘘他们的排水沟。我见过一位被介绍给英格兰国王的南方人,他连眼皮子也不眨一下,便把消息通给了那位独裁者——他母亲方面的一位姑婆,通过婚姻关系,同查尔斯顿⒂的珀金斯⒃家的人搭上了关系。我知道一位纽约人被几个阿富汗的匪徒绑架索取赎金,等他的人送钱去,才同代理人一道回到喀布尔⒄。   '阿富汗?'当地人通过翻译对他说。'呵,不是太慢了,你以为?''哦,我不知道,'他说,然后他开始告诉他们关于第六大街和百老汇大街的一个马车驾驶人的事。我不是固定在直径不足八千英里的任何地方。请记下我,E·拉什莫尔·科格兰,属于整个地球的公民。"   我的世界公民作了个夸张的辞别,离开了我,因为他越过闲谈、透过烟雾看见某个熟悉的人。因此,只留下想当长春花的人和我在一起,他屈尊于维尔茨堡酒,再也没有能力去声言他在谷顶上唱歌的抱负了。   我坐在那儿,回味着我那明白无误的世界公民,弄不准怎么那位诗人没有注意到他。他是我的新发现,我信赖他。那是怎么回事呢?"靠这些城市抚育着人们,让他们来来往往,但仅仅依附于城市的折缝之中,有如孩子依附于母亲的睡袍一样。"   而E·拉什莫尔·科格兰却不是这样。把整个世界作为他的……   我的沉思默想被咖啡馆另一边传来的高声吵嚷和争执所打断。从坐着的顾客头顶上望过去,我看见E·拉什莫尔·科格兰和另一个陌生人正激烈搏斗。他俩像泰坦⒅们一样,在桌子之间打来打去,玻璃杯砸碎了,人们抓起帽子还来不及躲开便被打翻在地,一位微黑女郎尖声叫喊,另一位金发女郎却开始唱《取笑》。   我的世界公民仍保持着地球的骄傲和名声,就在这时,侍者们利用著名的飞速楔形结构插入两个格斗者之间,硬把他两个推出了咖啡馆,尽管还在抵抗。   我叫住一位法国侍者麦卡锡,问他争执的缘由。   "打红领带的那个人"(即我的世界公民),他说,"给惹火了,原因是另一个谈起了他出生的那个地方的人行道和供水都太差劲。"   "哦,"我难为情地说,"那人是个世界的公民——世界公民。他……"   "原籍是缅因州的马托瓦姆基格,他说,"麦卡锡继续道,"他不愿再忍受不敲掉那个鬼地方。"   ①维尔茨堡(Wurzburg):德意志联帮的中南部城市。在这里指该地所产的酒。   ②科尼岛(ConeyIsland):美国纽约布鲁克林区南部的一个海滨游憩地带,原为一个小岛。   ③海德拉巴帮(Hyderabad):印度原帮名。   ④拉普兰(Lapland):北欧一地区名,指拉普人居住的地区,包括挪威、瑞典、芬兰等国的北部和原苏联的科拉岛。   ⑤布宜诺斯艾丽斯(BuenoAyres):阿根廷首府。   ⑥孟买(Brmbay):印度一城市名。   ⑦吉卜林〔Joseph Rud-yard Kipling 1865-1936〕:英国小说家、诗人,1907年获诺贝尔文学奖。   ⑧迪克西(Dixie):美国南北战争时期在南部各州流行的战歌,现仍旧流行。   ⑨莫斯比(John Singleton Mosly 1833-1916):美国内战时,南方联盟别动队首领。南军投降后队伍解散(1865),后加入共和党,曾任美国驻香港领事(1878-1885)、司法部长助理(1904-1910)。   ⑩波卡洪塔丝(Pochahontas 1595-1617):北美波瓦坦印第安人部落联盟首领波瓦坦之女,曾搭救过英国殖民者John Smith,与英国移民John Rolf结婚(1614),后去英国(1616),受到上流社会礼遇。   ⑾辛辛那提(Cimcinnati):美国俄亥俄州西部城市。   ⑿派克峰(Pike's Peak):指科罗拉多州为纪念派克而命名的山峰。   ⒀祖鲁人(Zulu):居住在南非纳塔尔。   ⒁巴塔哥尼亚人(Patagonian):居住在南美东南部巴塔哥尼亚高原的民族。   ⒂查尔斯顿(Charleston):美国西弗吉尼亚州首府。   ⒃珀金斯(Franceo Perkins 1882-1965):美国劳工部长、女社会改革家,主持制定并实施合理劳动标准法,举办失业保险和儿童福利事业,后任文职人员委员会委员。   ⒄喀布尔(Kabul):阿富汗首都。   ⒅泰坦(Titan):希腊神话中天神(Llranus)和大地女神(Gaea)之子。 The Furnished Room带家具出租的房间 Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever--transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing "Home, Sweet Home" in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree. Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests. One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths. To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers. He asked if there was a room to let. "Come in," said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur. "I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?" The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below. "This is the room," said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. "It's a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer--no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls--you may have heard of her--Oh, that was just the stage names --right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It's a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long." "Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?" asked the young man. "They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes." He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue. "A young girl--Miss Vashner--Miss Eloise Vashner--do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow." "No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't call that one to mind." No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime. The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the raggcd brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner. The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its divers tenantry. A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered rectangular, tropical islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house--The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port--a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck. One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the furnished room's procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny finger prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond in staggering letters the name "Marie." It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury--perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness--and wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home; and yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. A hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish. The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft- shod, through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent, slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains roared intermittently; a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath of the house--a dank savour rather than a smell --a cold, musty effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and rotten woodwork. Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odour of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud: "What, dear?" as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odour clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an odour? Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched, that had caressed him? "She has been in this room," he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignonette, the odour that she had loved and made her own--whence came it? The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins--those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman's black satin hair bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hairbow also is femininity's demure, impersonal, common ornament, and tells no tales. And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangngs, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became cognisant of the call. Once again he answered loudly: "Yes, dear!" and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet discern form and colour and love and outstretched arms in the odour of mnignonette. Oh, God! whence that odour, and since when have odours had a voice to call? Thus he groped. He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed in passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant; but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace. And then he thought of the housekeeper. He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could. "Will you tell me, madam," he besought her, "who occupied the room I have before I came?" "Yes, sir. I can tell you again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B'retta Sprowls it was in the theatres, but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over--" "What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls--in looks, I mean?" Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday." "And before they occupied it?" "Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months; and back of them was old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember." He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage. The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed. * * * * * * * It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where house-keepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom. "I rented out my third floor, back, this evening," said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam. "A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago." "Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?" said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. "You do be a wonder for rentin' rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then?" she concluded in a husky whisper, laden with mystery. "Rooms," said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, "are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool." "'Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, ma'am. There be many people will rayjict the rentin' of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin' in the bed of it." "As you say, we has our living to be making," remarked Mrs. Purdy. "Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin' herself wid the gas--a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am." "She'd a-been called handsome, as you say," said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, "but for that mole she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool."  在纽约西区南部的红砖房那一带地方,绝大多数居民都如时光一样动荡不定、迁移不停、来去匆匆。正因为无家可归,他们也可以说有上百个家。他们不时从这间客房搬到另一间客房,永远都是那么变幻无常——在居家上如此,在情感和理智上也无二致。他们用爵士乐曲调唱着流行曲“家,甜美的家”;全部家当用硬纸盒一拎就走;缠缘于阔边帽上的装饰就是他们的葡萄藤;拐杖就是他们的无花果树。   这一带有成百上千这种住客,这一带的房子可以述说的故事自然也是成百上千。当然,它们大多干瘪乏味;不过,要说在这么多漂泊过客掀起的余波中找不出一两个鬼魂,那才是怪事哩。   一天傍晚擦黑以后,有个青年男子在这些崩塌失修的红砖大房中间转悠寻觅,挨门挨户按铃。在第十二家门前,他把空当当的手提行李放在台阶上,然后揩去帽沿和额头上的灰尘。门铃声很弱,好像传至遥远、空旷的房屋深处。   这是他按响的第十二家门铃。铃声响过,女房东应声出来开门。她的模样使他想起一只讨厌的、吃得过多的蛆虫。它已经把果仁吃得只剩空壳,现在正想寻找可以充饥的房客来填充空间。   年轻人问有没有房间出租。   “进来吧,”房东说。她的声音从喉头挤出,嘎声嘎气,好像喉咙上绷了层毛皮。“三楼还有个后间,空了一个星期。想看看吗?”   年轻人跟她上楼。不知从什么地方来的一线微光缓和了过道上的阴影。他们不声不响地走着,脚下的地毯破烂不堪,可能连造出它的织布机都要诅咒说这不是自己的产物。它好像已经植物化了,已经在这恶臭、阴暗的空气中退化成茂盛滋润的地衣或满地蔓延的苔藓,东一块西一块,一直长到楼梯上,踩在脚下像有机物一样粘糊糊的。楼梯转角处墙上都有空着的壁龛。它们里面也许曾放过花花草草。果真如此的话,那些花草已经在污浊肮脏的空气中死去。壁龛里面也许曾放过圣像,但是不难想象,黑暗之中大大小小的魔鬼早就把圣人拖出来,一直拖到下面某间客房那邪恶的深渊之中去了。   “就是这间,”房东说,还是那副毛皮嗓子。“房间很不错,难得有空的时候。今年夏天这儿还住过一些特别讲究的人哩——从不找麻烦,按时提前付房租。自来水在过道尽头。斯普罗尔斯和穆尼住了三个月。她们演过轻松喜剧。布雷塔·斯普罗尔斯小姐——也许你听说过她吧——喔,那只是艺名儿——就在那张梳妆台上边,原来还挂着她的结婚证书哩,镶了框的。煤气开关在这儿,瞧这壁橱也很宽敞。这房间人人见了都喜欢,从来没长时间空过。”   “你这儿住过很多演戏的?”年轻人问。   “他们这个来,那个去。我的房客中有很多人在演出界干事。对了,先生,这一带剧院集中,演戏的人从不在一个地方长住。到这儿来住过的也不少。他们这个来,那个去。”   他租下了房间,预付了一个星期的租金。他说他很累,想马上住下来。他点清了租金。她说房间早就准备规矩,连毛巾和水都是现成的。房东走开时,——他又——已经是第一千次了——把挂在舌尖的问题提了出来。   “有个姑娘——瓦西纳小姐——埃卢瓦丝·瓦西纳小姐——你记得房客中有过这人吗?她多半是在台上唱歌的。她皮肤白嫩,个子中等,身材苗条,金红色头发,左眼眉毛边长了颗黑痣。”   “不,我记不得这个名字。那些搞演出的,换名字跟换房间一样快,来来去去,谁也说不准。不,我想不起这个名字了。”   不。总是不。五个月不间断地打听询问,千篇一律地否定回答。已经花了好多时间,白天去找剧院经理、代理人、剧校和合唱团打听;晚上则夹在观众之中去寻找,名角儿会演的剧院去找过,下流污秽的音乐厅也去找过,甚至还害怕在那类地方找到他最想找的人。他对她独怀真情,一心要找到她。他确信,自她从家里失踪以来,这座水流环绕的大城市一定把她蒙在了某个角落。但这座城市就像一大团流沙,沙粒的位置变化不定,没有基础,今天还浮在上层的细粒到了明天就被淤泥和粘土覆盖在下面。   客房以假惺惺的热情迎接新至的客人,像个暗娼脸上堆起的假笑,红中透病、形容枯槁、马马虎虎。破旧的家具、破烂绸套的沙发、两把椅子、窗户间一码宽的廉价穿衣镜、一两个烫金像框、角落里的铜床架——所有这一切折射出一种似是而非的舒适之感。   房客懒洋洋地半躺在一把椅子上,客房则如巴比伦通天塔的一个套间,尽管稀里糊涂扯不清楚,仍然竭力把曾在这里留宿过的房客分门别类,向他细细讲来。   地上铺了一张杂色地毯,像一个艳花盛开的长方形热带小岛,四周是肮脏的垫子形成的波涛翻滚的大海。用灰白纸裱过的墙上,贴着紧随无家可归者四处漂流的图片——“胡格诺情人”,“第一次争吵”,“婚礼早餐”,“泉边美女”。壁炉炉额的样式典雅而庄重,外面却歪歪斜斜扯起条花哨的布帘,像舞剧里亚马逊女人用的腰带。炉额上残留着一些零碎物品,都是些困居客房的人在幸运的风帆把他们载到新码头时抛弃不要的东西——一两个廉价花瓶,女演员的画片,药瓶儿,残缺不全的扑克纸牌。   渐渐地,密码的笔形变得清晰可辨,前前后后居住过这间客房的人留下的细小痕迹所具有的意义也变得完整有形。   梳妆台前那片地毯已经磨得只剩麻纱,意味着成群的漂亮女人曾在上面迈步。墙上的小指纹表明小囚犯曾在此努力摸索通向阳光和空气之路。一团溅开的污迹,形如炸弹爆炸后的影子,是杯子或瓶子连同所盛之物一起被砸在墙上的见证。穿衣镜镜面上用玻璃钻刀歪歪扭扭地刻着名字“玛丽”。看来,客房留宿人——也许是受到客房那俗艳的冷漠之驱使吧——   曾先先后后在狂怒中辗转反侧,并把一腔愤懑倾泄在这个房间上。家具有凿痕和磨损;长沙发因凸起的弹簧而变形,看上去像一头在痛苦中扭曲的痉挛中被宰杀的可怖怪物。另外某次威力更大的动荡砍去了大理石壁炉额的一大块。地板的每一块拼木各自构成一个斜面,并且好像由于互不干连、各自独有的哀怨而发出尖叫。令人难以置信的是,那些把所有这一切恶意和伤害施加于这个房间的人居然就是曾一度把它称之为他们的家的人;然而,也许正是这屡遭欺骗、仍然盲目保持的恋家本性以及对虚假的护家神的愤恨点燃了他们胸中的冲天怒火。一间茅草房——只要属于我们自己——我们都会打扫、装点和珍惜。   椅子上的年轻人任这些思绪缭绕心间,与此同时,楼中飘来有血有肉、活灵活现的声音和气味。他听见一个房间传来吃吃的窃笑和淫荡放纵的大笑;别的房间传来独自咒骂声,骰子的格格声,催眠曲和呜呜抽泣;楼上有人在兴致勃勃地弹班卓琴。不知什么地方的门砰砰嘭嘭地关上;架空电车不时隆隆驶过;后面篱墙上有只猫在哀叫。他呼吸到这座房子的气息。这不是什么气味儿,而是一种潮味儿,如同从地窖里的油布和朽木混在一起蒸发出的霉臭。   他就这样歇在那儿,突然,房间里充满木犀草浓烈的芬芳。它乘风而至,鲜明无误,香馥沁人,栩栩如生,活脱脱几乎如来访的佳宾。年轻人忍不住大叫:“什么?亲爱的?”好像有人在喊他似地。他然后一跃而起,四下张望。浓香扑鼻而来,把他包裹其中。他伸出手臂拥抱香气。刹那间,他的全部感觉都给搅混在一起。人怎么可能被香味断然唤起呢?唤起他的肯定是声音。 难道这就是曾抚摸、安慰过他的声音?   “她在这个房间住过,”他大声说,扭身寻找起来,硬想搜出什么征迹,因为他确信能辨认出属于她的或是她触摸过的任何微小的东西。这沁人肺腑的木犀花香,她所喜爱、唯她独有的芬芳,究竟是从哪儿来的?   房间只马马虎虎收拾过。薄薄的梳妆台桌布上有稀稀拉拉五六个发夹——都是些女性朋友用的那类东西,悄声无息,具有女性特征,但不标明任何心境或时间。他没去仔细琢磨,因为这些东西显然缺乏个性。他把梳妆台抽屉搜了个底朝天,发现一条丢弃的破旧小手绢。他把它蒙在脸上,天芥菜花的怪味刺鼻而来。他顺手把手绢甩在地上。在另一个抽屉,他发现几颗零星纽扣,一张剧目表,一张当铺老板的名片,两颗吃剩的果汁软糖,一本梦释书。最后一个抽屉里有一个女人用的黑缎蝴蝶发结。他猛然一楞,悬在冰与火之间,处于兴奋与失望之间。但是黑缎蝴蝶发结也只是女性庄重端雅但不具个性特征的普通装饰,不能提供任何线索。   随后他在房间里四处搜寻,像一条猎狗东嗅西闻,扫视四壁,趴在地上仔细查看拱起的地毡角落,翻遍壁炉炉额和桌子、窗帘和门帘、角落里摇摇欲坠的酒柜,试图找到一个可见的、但他还未发现的迹象,以证明她就在房间里面,就在他旁边、周围、对面、心中、上面,紧紧地牵着他、追求他,并通过精微超常的感觉向他发出如此哀婉的呼唤,以至于连他愚钝的感觉都能领悟出这呼唤之声。 他再次大声回答:“我在这儿,亲爱的!”然后转过身子,目瞪口呆,一片漠然,因为他在木犀花香中还察觉不出形式、色彩、爱情和张开的双臂。唔,上帝啊,那芳香是从哪儿来的?从什么时候起香味开始具有呼唤之力?就这样他不停地四下摸索。   他把墙缝和墙角掏了一遍,找到一些瓶塞和烟蒂。对这些东西他不屑一顾。但有一次他在一折地毡里发现一支抽了半截的纸雪茄,铁青着脸使劲咒了一声,用脚后跟把它踩得稀烂。他把整个房间从一端到另一端筛了一遍,发现许许多多流客留下的无聊、可耻的记载。但是,有关可能曾住过这儿的、其幽灵好像仍然徘徊在这里的、他正在寻求的她,他却丝毫痕迹也未发现。   这时他记起了女房东。   他从幽灵萦绕的房间跑下楼,来到透出一缝光线的门前。   她应声开门出来。他竭尽全力,克制住激动之情。   “请告诉我,夫人,”他哀求道,“我来之前谁住过那个房间?”   “好的,先生。我可以再说一遍。以前住的是斯普罗尔斯和穆尼夫妇,我已经说过。布雷塔·斯普罗尔斯小姐,演戏的,后来成了穆尼夫人。我的房子从来声誉就好。他们的结婚证都是挂起的,还镶了框,挂在钉子上——”   “斯普罗尔斯小姐是哪种女人——我是说,她长相如何?”   “喔,先生,黑头发,矮小,肥胖,脸蛋儿笑嘻嘻的。他们一个星期前搬走,上星期二。”   “在他们以前谁住过?”   “嗨,有个单身男人,搞运输的。他还欠我一个星期的房租没付就走了。在他以前是克劳德夫人和她两个孩子,住了四个月;再以前是多伊尔老先生,房租是他儿子付的。他住了六个月。 都是一年以前的事了,再往以前我就记不得了。”   他谢了她,慢腾腾地爬回房间。房间死气沉沉。曾为它注入生机的香气已经消失,木犀花香已经离去,代之而来的是发霉家具老朽、陈腐、凝滞的臭气。   希望破灭,他顿觉信心殆尽。他坐在那儿,呆呆地看着咝咝作响的煤气灯的黄光。稍许,他走到床边,把床单撕成长条,然后用刀刃把布条塞进门窗周围的每一条缝隙。一切收拾得严实紧扎以后,他关掉煤气灯,却又把煤气开足,最后感激不尽地躺在床上。   按照惯例,今晚轮到麦克库尔夫人拿罐子去打啤酒。她取酒回来,和珀迪夫人在一个地下幽会场所坐了下来。这是房东们聚会、蛆虫猖厥的地方。   “今晚我把三楼后间租了出去,”珀迪夫人说,杯中的酒泡圆圆的。“房客是个年轻人。两个钟头以前他就上床了。”   “嗬,真有你的,珀迪夫人,”麦克库尔夫人说,羡慕不已。“那种房子你都租得出去,可真是奇迹。那你给他说那件事没有呢?”她说这话时悄声细语,嘎声哑气,充满神秘。   “房间里安起家具嘛,”珀迪夫人用她最令人毛骨悚然的声音说,“就是为了租出去。我没给他说那事儿,麦克库尔夫人。”   “可不是嘛,我们就是靠出租房子过活。你的生意经没错,夫人。如果知道这个房间里有人自杀,死在床上,谁还来租这个房间呢。”   “当然嘛,我们总得活下去啊,”珀迪夫人说。   “对,夫人,这话不假。一个星期前我才帮你把三楼后间收拾规矩。那姑娘用煤气就把自己给弄死了——她那小脸蛋儿多甜啊,珀迪夫人。”   “可不是嘛,都说她长得俏,”珀迪夫人说,既表示同意又显得很挑剔。“只是她左眼眉毛边的痣长得不好看。再来一杯,麦克库尔夫人。” The Last Leaf最后一片叶子 IIn a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony." At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'h?te of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow. "She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?" "She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue. "Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?" "A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." "Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten." After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward. "Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together. Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. "What is it, dear?" asked Sue. "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now." "Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie." "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self." "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too." "Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down." "Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. "I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." "Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back." Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above. Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. "Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy." "She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet." "You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes." Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. "Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper. Wearily Sue obeyed. But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground. "It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time." "Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?" But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves. When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised. The ivy leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. "I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." And hour later she said: "Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left. "Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable." The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all." And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all. "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell." 在华盛顿广场西边的一个小区里,街道都横七竖八地伸展开去,又分裂成一小条一小条的“胡同”。这些“胡同”稀奇古怪地拐着弯子。一条街有时自己本身就交叉了不止一次。有一回一个画家发现这条街有一种优越性:要是有个收帐的跑到这条街上,来催要颜料、纸张和画布的钱,他就会突然发现自己两手空空,原路返回,一文钱的帐也没有要到! 所以,不久之后不少画家就摸索到这个古色古香的老格林尼治村来,寻求朝北的窗户、18世纪的尖顶山墙、荷兰式的阁楼,以及低廉的房租。然后,他们又从第六街买来一些蜡酒杯和一两只火锅,这里便成了“艺术区”。 苏和琼西的画室设在一所又宽又矮的三层楼砖房的顶楼上。“琼西”是琼娜的爱称。她俩一个来自缅因州,一个是加利福尼亚州人。她们是在第八街的“台尔蒙尼歌之家”吃份饭时碰到的,她们发现彼此对艺术、生菜色拉和时装的爱好非常一致,便合租了那间画室。 那是5月里的事。到了11月,一个冷酷的、肉眼看不见的、医生们叫做“肺炎”的不速之客,在艺术区里悄悄地游荡,用他冰冷的手指头这里碰一下那里碰一下。在广场东头,这个破坏者明目张胆地踏着大步,一下子就击倒几十个受害者,可是在迷宫一样、狭窄而铺满青苔的“胡同”里,他的步伐就慢了下来。 肺炎先生不是一个你们心目中行侠仗义的老的绅士。一个身子单薄,被加利福尼亚州的西风刮得没有血色的弱女子,本来不应该是这个有着红拳头的、呼吸急促的老家伙打击的对象。然而,琼西却遭到了打击;她躺在一张油漆过的铁床上,一动也不动,凝望着小小的荷兰式玻璃窗外对面砖房的空墙。 一天早晨,那个忙碌的医生扬了扬他那毛茸茸的灰白色眉毛,把苏叫到外边的走廊上。 “我看,她的病只有十分之一的恢复希望,”他一面把体温表里的水银柱甩下去,一面说,“这一分希望就是她想要活下去的念头。有些人好像不愿意活下去,喜欢照顾殡仪馆的生意,简直让整个医药界都无能为力。你的朋友断定自己是不会痊愈的了。她是不是有什么心事呢?” “她——她希望有一天能够去画那不勒斯的海湾。”苏说。 “画画?——真是瞎扯!她脑子里有没有什么值得她想了又想的事——比如说,一个男人?” “男人?”苏像吹口琴似的扯着嗓子说,“男人难道值得——不,医生,没有这样的事。” “能达到的全部力量去治疗她。可要是我的病人开始算计会有多少辆马车送她出丧,我就得把治疗的效果减掉百分之五十。只要你能想法让她对冬季大衣袖子的时新式样感到兴趣而提出一两个问题,那我可以向你保证把医好她的机会从十分之一提高到五分之一。” 医生走后,苏走进工作室里,把一条日本餐巾哭成一团湿。后来她手里拿着画板,装做精神抖擞的样子走进琼西的屋子,嘴里吹着爵士音乐调子。 琼西躺着,脸朝着窗口,被子底下的身体纹丝不动。苏以为她睡着了,赶忙停止吹口哨。 她架好画板,开始给杂志里的故事画一张钢笔插图。年轻的画家为了铺平通向艺术的道路,不得不给杂志里的故事画插图,而这些故事又是年轻的作家为了铺平通向文学的道路而不得不写的。 苏正在给故事主人公,一个爱达荷州牧人的身上,画上一条马匹展览会穿的时髦马裤和一片单眼镜时,忽然听到一个重复了几次的低微的声音。她快步走到床边。 琼西的眼睛睁得很大。她望着窗外,数着……倒过来数。 “12”,她数道,歇了一会又说“11”,然后是“10”和“9”,接着几乎同时数着“8”和“7”。 苏关切地看了看窗外。那儿有什么可数的呢?只见一个空荡阴暗的院子,20英尺以外还有一所砖房的空墙。一棵老极了的长春藤,枯萎的根纠结在一块,枝干攀在砖墙的半腰上。秋天的寒风把藤上的叶子差不多全都吹掉了,几乎只有光秃的枝条还缠附在剥落的砖块上。 “什么呀,亲爱的?”苏问道。 “6”,琼西几乎用耳语低声说道,“它们现在越落越快了,三天前还有差不多一百片。我数得头都疼了,但是现在好数了。又掉了一片,只剩下五片了。” “五片什么呀,亲爱的。告诉你的苏娣吧。” “叶子。长春藤上的。等到最后一片叶子掉下来,我也就该去了。这件事我三天前就知道了。难道医生没有告诉你?” “哼,我从来没听过这种傻话,”苏十分不以为然地说,“那些破长春藤叶子和你的病好不好有什么关系?你以前不是很喜欢这棵树吗?你这个淘气孩子。不要说傻话了。瞧,医生今天早晨还告诉我,说你迅速痊愈的机会是,——让我一字不改地照他的话说吧——他说有九成把握。噢,那简直和我们在纽约坐电车或者走过一座新楼房的把握一样大。喝点汤吧,让苏娣去画她的画,好把它卖给编辑先生,换了钱来给她的病孩子买点红葡萄酒,再给她自己买点猪排解解馋。” “你不用买酒了,”琼西的眼睛直盯着窗外说道,“又落了一片。不,我不想喝汤。只剩下四片了。我想在天黑以前等着看那最后一片叶子掉下去。然后我也要去了。” “琼西,亲爱的,”苏俯着身子对她说,“你答应我闭上眼睛,不要瞧窗外,等我画完,行吗?明天我非得交出这些插图。我需要光线,否则我就拉下窗帘了。” “你不能到那间屋子里去画吗?”琼西冷冷地问道。 “我愿意呆在你跟前,”苏说,“再说,我也不想让你老看着那些讨厌的长春藤叶子。” “你一画完就叫我,”琼西说着,便闭上了眼睛。她脸色苍白,一动不动地躺在床上,就像是座横倒在地上的雕像。“因为我想看那最后一片叶子掉下来,我等得不耐烦了,也想得不耐烦了。我想摆脱一切,飘下去,飘下去,像一片可怜的疲倦了的叶子那样。” “你睡一会吧,”苏说道,“我得下楼把贝尔门叫上来,给我当那个隐居的老矿工的模特儿。我一会儿就回来的。不要动,等我回来。” 老贝尔门是住在她们这座楼房底层的一个画家。他年过60,有一把像米开朗琪罗的摩西雕像那样的大胡子,这胡子长在一个像半人半兽的森林之神的头颅上,又鬈曲地飘拂在小鬼似的身躯上。贝尔门是个失败的画家。他操了四十年的画笔,还远没有摸着艺术女神的衣裙。他老是说就要画他的那幅杰作了,可是直到现在他还没有动笔。几年来,他除了偶尔画点商业广告之类的玩意儿以外,什么也没有画过。他给艺术区里穷得雇不起职业模特儿的年轻画家们当模特儿,挣一点钱。他喝酒毫无节制,还时常提起他要画的那幅杰作。除此以外,他是一个火气十足的小老头子,十分瞧不起别人的温情,却认为自己是专门保护楼上画室里那两个年轻女画家的一只看家狗。 苏在楼下他那间光线黯淡的斗室里找到了嘴里酒气扑鼻的贝尔门。一幅空白的画布绷在个画架上,摆在屋角里,等待那幅杰作已经25年了,可是连一根线条还没等着。苏把琼西的胡思乱想告诉了他,还说她害怕琼西自个儿瘦小柔弱得像一片叶子一样,对这个世界的留恋越来越微弱,恐怕真会离世飘走了。 老贝尔门两只发红的眼睛显然在迎风流泪,他十分轻蔑地嗤笑这种傻呆的胡思乱想。 “什么,”他喊道,“世界上真会有人蠢到因为那些该死的长春藤叶子落掉就想死?我从来没有听说过这种怪事。不,我才不给你那隐居的矿工糊涂虫当模特儿呢。你干吗让她胡思乱想?唉,可怜的琼西小姐。” “她病得很厉害很虚弱,”苏说,“发高烧发得她神经昏乱,满脑子都是古怪想法。好,贝尔门先生,你不愿意给我当模特儿,就拉倒,我看你是个讨厌的老——老罗唆鬼。” “你简直太婆婆妈妈了!”贝尔门喊道,“谁说我不愿意当模特儿?走,我和你一块去。我不是讲了半天愿意给你当模特儿吗?老天爷,琼西小姐这么好的姑娘真不应该躺在这种地方生病。总有一天我要画一幅杰作,我们就可以都搬出去了。一定的!” 他们上楼以后,琼西正睡着觉。苏把窗帘拉下,一直遮住窗台,做手势叫贝尔门到隔壁屋子里去。他们在那里提心吊胆地瞅着窗外那棵长春藤。后来他们默默无言,彼此对望了一会。寒冷的雨夹杂着雪花不停地下着。贝尔门穿着他的旧的蓝衬衣,坐在一把翻过来充当岩石的铁壶上,扮作隐居的矿工。 第二天早晨,苏只睡了一个小时的觉,醒来了,她看见琼西无神的眼睛睁得大大地注视拉下的绿窗帘。 “把窗帘拉起来,我要看看。”她低声地命令道。 苏疲倦地照办了。 然而,看呀!经过了漫长一夜的风吹雨打,在砖墙上还挂着一片藤叶。它是长春藤上最后的一片叶子了。靠近茎部仍然是深绿色,可是锯齿形的叶子边缘已经枯萎发黄,它傲然挂在一根离地二十多英尺的藤枝上。 “这是最后一片叶子。”琼西说道,“我以为它昨晚一定会落掉的。我听见风声的。今天它一定会落掉,我也会死的。” “哎呀,哎呀,”苏把疲乏的脸庞挨近枕头边上对她说,“你不肯为自己着想,也得为我想想啊。我可怎么办呢?” 可是琼西不回答。当一个灵魂正在准备走上那神秘的、遥远的死亡之途时,她是世界上最寂寞的人了。那些把她和友谊及大地联结起来的关系逐渐消失以后,她那个狂想越来越强烈了。 白天总算过去了,甚至在暮色中她们还能看见那片孤零零的藤叶仍紧紧地依附在靠墙的枝上。后来,夜的到临带来了呼啸的北风,雨点不停地拍打着窗子,雨水从低垂的荷兰式屋檐上流泻下来。 天刚蒙蒙亮,琼西就毫不留情地吩咐拉起窗帘来。 那片藤叶仍然在那里。 琼西躺着对它看了许久。然后她招呼正在煤气炉上给她煮鸡汤的苏。 “我是一个坏女孩子,苏娣,”琼西说,“天意让那片最后的藤叶留在那里,证明我是多么坏。想死是有罪过的。你现在就给我拿点鸡汤来,再拿点掺葡萄酒的牛奶来,再——不,先给我一面小镜子,再把枕头垫垫高,我要坐起来看你做饭。” 过了一个钟头,她说道:“苏娣,我希望有一天能去画那不勒斯的海湾。” 下午医生来了,他走的时候,苏找了个借口跑到走廊上。 “有五成希望。”医生一面说,一面把苏细瘦的颤抖的手握在自己的手里,“好好护理你会成功的。现在我得去看楼下另一个病人。他的名字叫贝尔门——听说也是个画家。也是肺炎。他年纪太大,身体又弱,病势很重。他是治不好的了;今天要把他送到医院里,让他更舒服一点。” 第二天,医生对苏说:“她已经脱离危险,你成功了。现在只剩下营养和护理了。” 下午苏跑到琼西的床前,琼西正躺着,安详地编织着一条毫无用处的深蓝色毛线披肩。苏用一只胳臂连枕头带人一把抱住了她。 “我有件事要告诉你,小家伙,”她说,“贝尔门先生今天在医院里患肺炎去世了。他只病了两天。头一天早晨,门房发现他在楼下自己那间房里痛得动弹不了。他的鞋子和衣服全都湿透了,冻凉冰凉的。他们搞不清楚在那个凄风苦雨的夜晚,他究竟到哪里去了。后来他们发现了一盏没有熄灭的灯笼,一把挪动过地方的梯子,几支扔得满地的画笔,还有一块调色板,上面涂抹着绿色和黄色的颜料,还有——亲爱的,瞧瞧窗子外面,瞧瞧墙上那最后一片藤叶。难道你没有想过,为什么风刮得那样厉害,它却从来不摇一摇、动一动呢?唉,亲爱的,这片叶子才是贝尔门的杰作——就是在最后一片叶子掉下来的晚上,他把它画在那里的。” A Service of Love爱的牺牲 When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the great wall of China. Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he left for New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer. Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine- tree village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go "North" and "finish." They could not see her f--, but that is our story. Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong. Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other, or each of the other, as you please, and in a short time were married--for (see above), when one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat--something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be--sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor--janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your Art and your Delia. Flat-dwellers shall indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close--let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and long--enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the Labrador. Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister--you know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light--his high-lights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock--you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys. They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every-- but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar and then contemptuous with Music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room and refuse to go on the stage. But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat-- the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions--ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable--the mutual help and inspiration; and--overlook my artlessness--stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m. But after a while Art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman doesn't flag it. Everything going out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Herr Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling. For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home elated. "Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General--General A. B. Pinkney's daughter--on Seventy-first street. Such a splendid house, Joe--you ought to see the front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before. "My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a delicate thing-dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and, just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice supper." "That's all right for you, Dele," said Joe, attacking a can of peas with a carving knife and a hatchet, "but how about me? Do you think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two." Delia came and hung about his neck. "Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister." "All right," said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish. "But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't Art. But you're a trump and a dear to do it." "When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard," said Delia. "Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park," said Joe. "And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them." "I'm sure you will," said Delia, sweetly. "And now let's be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast." During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised and kissed at 7 o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o'clock when he returned in the evening. At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8x10 (inches) centre table of the 8x10 (feet) flat parlour. Sometimes," she said, a little wearily, "Clementina tries me. I'm afraid she doesn't practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano--he is a widower, you know--and stands there pulling his white goatee. 'And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers progressing?' he always asks. "I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe! And those Astrakhan rug portieres. And Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother was once Minister to Bolivia." And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one--all legal tender notes--and laid them beside Delia's earnings. "Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he announced overwhelmingly. "Don't joke with me," said Delia, "not from Peoria!" "All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first, he was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another--an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot--to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it." "I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia, heartily. "You're bound to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We'll have oysters to-night." "And filet mignon with champignons," said Joe. "Were is the olive fork?" On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands. Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages. "How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously. Clementina," she explained, "insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney!--Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody--they said the furnace man or somebody in the basement--out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now." "What's this?" asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages. "It's something soft," said Delia, "that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?" She had seen the money on the table. "Did I?" said Joe; "just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot to-day, and he isn't sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?" "Five o'clock, I think," said Dele, plaintively. "The iron--I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen. Pinkney, Joe, when--" "Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders. "What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?" he asked. She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears. "I couldn't get any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twentyfourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria. "He wasn't from Peoria," said Joe, slowly. "Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe --and--kiss me, Joe--and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina?" "I didn't," said Joe, "until to-night. And I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks." "And then you didn't--" "My purchaser from Peoria," said Joe, "and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art--but you wouldn't call it either painting or music. And then they both laughed, and Joe began: "When one loves one's Art no service seems--" But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. "No," she said-- "just 'When one loves.'"   当你爱好你的艺术时,就觉得没有什么牺牲是难以忍受的。   那是我们的前提。这篇故事将从它那里得出一个结论,同时证明那个前提的不正确。从逻辑学的观点来说,这固然是一件新鲜事,可是从文学的观点来说,却是一件比中国的万里长城还要古老的艺术。   乔·拉雷毕来自中西部槲树参天的平原,浑身散发着绘画艺术的天才。他还只六岁的时候就画了一幅镇上抽水机的风景,抽水机旁边画了一个匆匆走过去的、有声望的居民。这件作品给配上架子,挂在药房的橱窗里,挨着一只留有几排参差不齐的玉米的穗轴。二十岁的时候,他背井离乡到了纽约,束着一条飘垂的领带,带着一个更为飘垂的荷包。   德丽雅·加鲁塞斯生长在南方一个松林小村里,她把六音阶之类的玩意儿搞得那样出色,以致她的亲戚们给她凑了一笔数目很小的款子,让她到北方去"深造"。他们没有看到她成——,那就是我们要讲的故事。   乔和德丽雅在一个画室里见了面,那儿有许多研究美术和音乐的人经常聚会,讨论明暗对照法、瓦格纳①、音乐、伦勃朗的作品②、绘画、瓦尔特杜弗③、糊墙纸、萧邦④、奥朗⑤。   乔和德丽雅互相——或者彼此,随你高兴怎么说——一见倾心,短期内就结了婚——当你爱好你的艺术时,就觉得没有什么牺牲是难以忍受的。   拉雷毕夫妇租了一层公寓,开始组织家庭。那是一个寂静的地方——单调得像是钢琴键盘左端的A高半音。可是他们很幸福;因为他们有了各自的艺术,又有了对方。我对有钱的年轻人的劝告是——为了争取和你的艺术以及你的德丽雅住在公寓里的权利,赶快把你所有的东西都卖掉,施舍给穷苦的看门人吧。   公寓生活是唯一真正的快乐,住公寓的人一定都赞成我的论断。家庭只要幸福,房间小又何妨——让梳妆台坍下来作为弹子桌;让火炉架改作练习划船的机器;让写字桌充当临时的卧榻,洗脸架充当竖式钢琴;如果可能的话,让四堵墙壁挤拢来,你和你的德丽雅仍旧在里面,可是假若家庭不幸福,随它怎么宽敞——你从金门进去,把帽子挂在哈得拉斯,把披肩挂在合恩角,然后穿过拉布拉多出去⑥,到头还是枉然。   乔在伟大的马杰斯脱那儿学画——各位都知道他的声望。他取费高昂;课程轻松——他的高昂轻松给他带来了声望。德丽雅在罗森斯托克那儿学习,各位也知道他是一个出名的专跟钢琴键盘找麻烦的家伙。   只要他们的钱没用完,他们的生活是非常幸福的。谁都是这样——算了吧,我不愿意说愤世嫉俗的话。他们的目标非常清楚明确。乔很快就能有画问世,那些鬓须稀朗而钱袋厚实的老先生,就要争先恐后地挤到他的画室里来抢购他的作品。德丽雅要把音乐搞好,然后对它满不在乎,如果她看到音乐厅里的位置和包厢不满座的话,她可以推托喉痛,拒绝登台,在专用的餐室里吃龙虾。   但是依我说,最美满的还是那小公寓里的家庭生活:学习了一天之后的情话絮语;舒适的晚饭和新鲜、清淡的早餐;关于志向的交谈——他们不但关心自己的,也关心对方的志向,否则就没有意义了——互助和灵感;还有——恕我直率——晚上十一点钟吃的菜裹肉片和奶酪三明治。   可是没多久,艺术动摇了。即使没有人去摇动它,有时它自己也会动摇的。俗语说得好,坐吃山空,应该付给马杰斯脱和罗森斯托克两位先生的学费也没着落了。当你爱好你的艺术时,就觉得没有什么牺牲是难以忍受的。于是,德丽雅说,她得教授音乐,以免断炊。   她在外面奔走了两三天,兜揽学生。一天晚上,她兴高采烈地回家来。   "乔,亲爱的,"她快活地说,"我有一个学生啦。哟,那家人可真好。一位将军——爱·皮·品克奈将军的小姐,住在第七十一街。多么漂亮的房子,乔——你该看看那扇大门!我想就是你所说的拜占廷式⑦。还有屋子里面!喔,乔,我从没见过那样豪华的摆设。   "我的学生是他的女儿克蕾门蒂娜。我见了她就喜欢极啦。她是个柔弱的小东西——老是穿白的;态度又多么朴实可爱!她只有十八岁。我一星期教三次课;你想想看,乔!每课五块钱。 数目固然不大,可是我一点也不在乎;等我再找到两三个学生,我又可以到罗森斯托克先生那儿去学习了。现在,别皱眉头啦,亲爱的,让我们好好吃一顿晚饭吧。"   "你倒不错,德丽,"乔说,一面用斧子和切肉刀在开一听青豆,"可是我怎么办呢?你认为我能让你忙着挣钱,我自己却在艺术的领域里追逐吗?我以般范纽都·切利尼⑧的骨头赌咒,决不能够!我想我以卖卖报纸,搬石子铺马路,多少也挣一两块钱回来。"   德丽雅走过来,勾住他的脖子。   "乔,亲爱的,你真傻。你一定得坚持学习。我并不是放弃了音乐去干别的事情。我一面教授,一面也能学一些。我永远跟我的音乐在一起。何况我们一星期有十五钱,可以过得像百万富翁那般快乐。你绝不要打算脱离马杰斯脱先生。"   "好吧,"乔说,一面去拿那只贝壳形的蓝菜碟。可是我不愿意让你去教课,那不是艺术。你这样牺牲真了不起,真叫人佩服。"   "当你爱好你的艺术时,就觉得没有什么牺牲是难以忍受的,"德丽雅说。   "我在公园里画的那张素描,马杰斯脱说上面的天空很好。"乔说。"丁克尔答应我在他的橱窗里挂上两张。如果碰上一个合适的有钱的傻瓜,可能卖掉一张。"   "我相信一定卖得掉的,"德丽雅亲切地说。"现在让我们先来感谢品克奈将军和这烤羊肉吧。"   下一个星期,拉雷毕夫妇每天一早就吃早饭。乔很起劲地要到中央公园里去在晨光下画几张速写,七点钟的时候,德丽雅给了他早饭、拥抱、赞美、接吻之后,把他送出门。艺术是个迷人的情妇。他回家时,多半已是晚上七点钟了。   周末,愉快自豪、可是疲血不堪的德丽雅,得意扬扬地掏出三张五块钱的钞票,扔在那八呎阔十呎长的公寓客厅里的八吋阔十吋长的桌子上。   "有时候,"她有些厌倦地说,"克蕾门蒂娜真叫我费劲。我想她大概练习得不充分,我得三翻四复地教她。而且她老是浑身穿白,也叫人觉得单调。不过品克奈将军倒是一个顶可爱的老头儿!我希望你能认识他,乔,我和克蕾门蒂娜练钢琴的时候,他偶尔走进来——他是个鳏夫,你知道——站在那儿捋他的白胡子。""十六分音符和三十二分音符教得怎么样啦?"他老是这样问道。   "我希望你能看到客厅里的护壁板,乔!还有那些阿斯特拉罕的呢门帘。克蕾门蒂娜老是有点咳嗽。我希望她的身体比她的外表强健些。喔,我实在越来越喜欢她了,她多么温柔,多么有教养。品克奈将军的弟弟一度做过驻波利维亚的公使。"   接着,乔带着基度山伯爵的神气⑨,掏出一张十元、一张五元、一张两元和一张一元的钞票——全是合法的纸币——把它们放在德丽雅挣来的钱旁边。   "那幅方尖碑的水彩画卖给了一个从庇奥利亚⑩来的人,"他郑重其事地宣布说。   "别跟我开玩笑啦,"德丽雅——"不会是从庇奥利亚来的吧!"   "确实是那儿来的。我希望你能见到他,德丽。一个胖子,围着羊毛围巾,啣着一根翮管牙签。他在丁克尔的橱窗里看到了那幅画,起先还以为是座风车呢。他倒很气派,不管三七二十一的,把它买下了。他另外预定了一幅——勒加黄那货运车站的油画——准备带回家去。我的画,加上你的音乐课!呵,我想艺术还是有前途的。"   "你坚持下去,真使我高兴,"德丽雅热切地说。"你一定会成功的,亲爱的。三十三块钱!我们从来没有这么多可以花的钱。今晚我们买牡蛎吃。"   "加上炸嫩牛排和香菌,"乔说,"肉叉在哪儿?"   下一个星期六的晚上,乔先回家。他把他的十八块钱摊在客厅的桌子上,然后把手上许多似乎是黑色颜料的东西洗掉。   半个钟头以后,德丽雅来了,她的右手用绷带包成一团,简直不像样了。   "这是怎么搞的?"乔照例地招呼了之后,问道。德丽雅笑了,可是笑得并不十分快活。   "克蕾门蒂娜,"她解释说,"上了课之后一定要吃奶酪面包。她真是个古怪姑娘,下午五点钟还要吃奶酪面包。将军也在场,你该看看他奔去拿烘锅的样子,乔,好像家里没有佣人似的,我知道克蕾门蒂娜身体不好;神经多么过敏。她浇奶酪的时候泼翻了许多,滚烫的,溅在手腕上。痛得要命,乔。那可爱的姑娘难过极了!还有品克奈将军!——乔,那老头儿差点要发狂了。 他冲下楼去叫人——他们说是烧炉子的或是地下室里的什么人——到药房里去买一些油和别的东西来,替我包扎。现在倒不十分痛了。"   "这是什么?"乔轻轻地握住那只手,扯扯绷带下面的几根白线,问道。   "那是涂了油的软纱。"德丽雅说,"喔,乔,你又卖掉了一幅素描吗?"她看到了桌子上的钱。   "可不是吗?"乔说,"只消问问那个从庇奥利亚来的人。他今天把他要的车站图取去了,他没有确定,可能还要一幅公园的景致和一幅哈得逊河的风景。你今天下午什么时候烫痛手的,德丽?"   "大概是五点钟,"德丽雅可怜巴巴的说。"熨斗——我是说奶酪,大概在那个时候烧好。你真该看到品克奈将军,乔,他——"   "先坐一会儿吧,德丽,"乔说,他把她拉到卧榻上,在她身边坐下,用胳臂围住了她的肩膀。   "这两个星期来,你到底在干什么。德丽?"他问道。   她带着充满了爱情和固执的眼色熬了一两分钟,含含混混地说着品克奈将军;但终于垂下头,一边哭,一边说出实话来了。   "我找不到学生,"她供认说,"我又不忍眼看你放弃你的课程,所以在第二十四街那家大洗衣作里找了一个烫衬衣的活儿。我以为我把品克奈将军和克蕾门蒂娜两个人编造得很好呢,可不是吗,乔?今天下午,洗衣作里一个姑娘的热熨斗烫了我的手,我一路上就编出那个烘奶酪的故事。你不会生我的气吧,乔?如果我不去做工,你也许不可能把你的画卖给那个庇奥利亚来的人。"   "他不是从庇奥利亚来的,"乔慢慢吞吞地说。   "他打哪儿来都一样。你真行,乔——吻我吧,乔——你怎么会疑心我不在教克蕾门蒂娜的音乐课呢?"   "到今晚为止,我始终没有起疑。"乔说,"本来今晚也不会起疑的,可是今天下午,我把机器间的油和废纱头送给楼上一个给熨斗烫了手的姑娘。两星期来,我就在那家洗衣作的炉子房烧火。"   "那你并没有——"   "我的庇奥利亚来的主顾,"乔说,"和品克奈将军都是同一艺术的产物——只是你不会管那门艺术叫做绘画或音乐罢了。"   他们两个都笑了,乔开口说:   "当你爱好你的艺术时,就觉得没有什么牺牲是——"可是德丽雅用手掩住了他的嘴。"别说下去啦,"她说——"只消说'当你爱的时候'。"   ①瓦格纳(1813-1883):德国作曲家。   ②伦勃朗(1606-1669):荷兰画家。   ③瓦尔特杜弗(1837-1915):法国作曲家。   ④萧邦(1809-1849),波兰作曲家。   ⑤奥朗:中国乌龙红茶的粤音。   ⑥金门是美旧金山湾口的海峡;哈得拉斯是北卡罗来纳州海岸的海峡,与英文的"帽架"谐音;合恩角是南美智利的海峡,与"衣架"谐音;拉布拉多是哈得逊湾与大西洋间的半岛,与"边门" 谐音。   ⑦拜占廷式:六世纪至十五世纪间,东罗马帝国的建筑式样,圆屋顶、拱门、细工镶嵌。   ⑧般范纽都·切利尼(1500-1571):意大利著名雕刻家。   ⑨基度山伯爵:法国大仲马小说中的人物。年轻时为情敌陷害,被判无期徒刑,在孤岛囚禁多年:脱逃后,在基度山岛上掘获宝藏自称基度山伯爵,逐一报复仇人。   ⑩庇奥利亚:伊利诺州中部的城市。 Mammon and the Archer 财神与爱神 Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall's Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the right--the aristocratic clubman, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones--came out to his waiting motor-car, wrinkling a contumelious nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance sculpture of the soap palace's front elevation. "Stuck-up old statuette of nothing doing!" commented the ex-Soap King. "The Eden Musee'll get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he don't watch out. I'll have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer and see if that'll make his Dutch nose turn up any higher." And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the door of his library and shouted "Mike!" in the same voice that had once chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies. "Tell my son," said Anthony to the answering menial, "to come in here before he leaves the house." When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and rattled the keys in his pocket with the other. "Richard," said Anthony Rockwail, "what do you pay for the soap that you use?" Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of unexpectednesses as a girl at her first party. "Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad." "And your clothes?" "I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule." "You're a gentleman," said Anthony, decidedly. "I've heard of these young bloods spending $24 a dozen for soap, and going over the hundred mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of 'em, and yet you stick to what's decent and moderate. Now I use the old Eureka--not only for sentiment, but it's the purest soap made. Whenever you pay more than 10 cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and labels. But 50 cents is doing very well for a young man in your generation, position and condition. As I said, you're a gentleman. They say it takes three generations to make one. They're off. Money'll do it as slick as soap grease. It's made you one. By hokey! it's almost made one of me. I'm nearly as impolite and disagreeable and ill-mannered as these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me that can't sleep of nights because I bought in between 'em." "There are some things that money can't accomplish," remarked young Rockwall, rather gloomily. "Now, don't say that," said old Anthony, shocked. "I bet my money on money every time. I've been through the encyclopaedia down to Y looking for something you can't buy with it; and I expect to have to take up the appendix next week. I'm for money against the field. Tell me something money won't buy." "For one thing," answered Richard, rankling a little, "it won't buy one into the exclusive circles of society." "Oho! won't it?" thundered the champion of the root of evil. "You tell me where your exclusive circles would be if the first Astor hadn't had the money to pay for his steerage passage over?" Richard sighed. "And that's what I was coming to," said the old man, less boisterously. "That's why I asked you to come in. There's something going wrong with you, boy. I've been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could lay my hands on eleven millions within twenty-four hours, besides the real estate. If it's your liver, there's the Rambler down in the bay, coaled, and ready to steam down to the Bahamas in two days." "Not a bad guess, dad; you haven't missed it far." "Ah," said Anthony, keenly; "what's her name?" Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was enough comradeship and sympathy in this crude old father of his to draw his confidence. "Why don't you ask her?" demanded old Anthony. "She'll jump at you. You've got the money and the looks, and you're a decent boy. Your hands are clean. You've got no Eureka soap on 'em. You've been to college, but she'll overlook that." "I haven't had a chance," said Richard. "Make one," said Anthony. "Take her for a walk in the park, or a straw ride, or walk home with her from church Chance! Pshaw!" "You don't know the social mill, dad. She's part of the stream that turns it. Every hour and minute of her time is arranged for days in advance. I must have that girl, dad, or this town is a blackjack swamp forevermore. And I can't write it--I can't do that." "Tut!" said the old man. "Do you mean to tell me that with all the money I've got you can't get an hour or two of a girl's time for yourself?" "I've put it off too late. She's going to sail for Europe at noon day after to-morrow for a two years' stay. I'm to see her alone to-morrow evening for a few minutes. She's at Larchmont now at her aunt's. I can't go there. But I'm allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station to-morrow evening at the 8.30 train. We drive down Broadway to Wallack's at a gallop, where her mother and a box party will be waiting for us in the lobby. Do you think she would listen to a declaration from me during that six or eight minutes under those circumstances? No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one tangle that your money can't unravel. We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer. There's no hope of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails." "All right, Richard, my boy," said old Anthony, cheerfully. "You may run along down to your club now. I'm glad it ain't your liver. But don't forget to burn a few punk sticks in the joss house to the great god Mazuma from time to time. You say money won't buy time? Well, of course, you can't order eternity wrapped up and delivered at your residence for a price, but I've seen Father Time get pretty bad stone bruises on his heels when he walked through the gold diggings." That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, sentimental, wrinkled, sighing, oppressed by wealth, in to Brother Anthony at his evening paper, and began discourse on the subject of lovers' woes. "He told me all about it," said brother Anthony, yawning. "I told him my bank account was at his service. And then he began to knock money. Said money couldn't help. Said the rules of society couldn't be bucked for a yard by a team of ten-millionaires." "Oh, Anthony," sighed Aunt Ellen, "I wish you would not think so much of money. Wealth is nothing where a true affection is concerned. Love is all-powerful. If he only had spoken earlier! She could not have refused our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have no opportunity to address her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to your son." At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard. "Wear it to-night, nephew," she begged. "Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved." Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he 'phoned for his cab. At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirty-two. "We mustn't keep mamma and the others waiting," said she. "To Wallack's Theatre as fast as you can drive!" said Richard loyally. They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white- starred lane that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills of morning. At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop. "I've dropped a ring," he apologised, as he climbed out. "It was my mother's, and I'd hate to lose it. I won't detain you a minute--I saw where it fell." In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring. But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of the cab. The cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off. He tried the right, and had to back away from a furniture van that had no business to be there. He tried to back out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses. One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite suddenly in the big city. "Why don't you drive on?" said Miss Lantry, impatiently. "We'll be late." Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirly-fourth street cross one another as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. And still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling thcmselves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers' imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the proportions of this one. "I'm very sorry," said Richard, as he resumed his seat, "but it looks as if we are stuck. They won't get this jumble loosened up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring we--"Let me see the ring," said Miss Lantry. "Now that it can't be helped, I don't care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway." At 11 o'clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rockwall's door. "Come in," shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading a book of piratical adventures. Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey-haired angel that had been left on earth by mistake. "They're engaged, Anthony," she said, softly. "She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the theatre there was a street blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it. "And oh, brother Anthony, don't ever boast of the power of money again. A little emblem of true love--a little ring that symbolised unending and unmercenary affection--was the cause of our Richard finding his happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And before they could continue the blockade occurred. He spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross compared with true love, Anthony." "All right," said old Anthony. "I'm glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I wouldn't spare any expense in the matter if--" "But, brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?" "Sister," said Anthony Rockwall. "I've got my pirate in a devil of a scrape. His ship has just been scuttled, and he's too good a judge of the value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with this chapter." The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who read it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for truth. The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie, who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwall's house, and was at once received in the library. "Well," said Anthony, reaching for his chequebook, "it was a good bilin' of soap. Let's see--you had $5,000 in cash." "I paid out $3OO more of my own," said Kelly. "I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5; but the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motormen wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me hardest--$50 I paid two, and the rest $20 and $25. But didn't it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley's statue." "Thirteen hundred--there you are, Kelly," said Anthony, tearing off a check. "Your thousand, and the $300 you were out. You don't despise money, do you, Kelly?" "Me?" said Kelly. "I can lick the man that invented poverty." Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door. "You didn't notice," said he, "anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a fat boy without any clothes on shooting arrows around with a bow, did you?" "Why, no," said Kelly, mystified. "I didn't. If he was like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there." "I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand," chuckled Anthony. "Good-by, Kelly." 老安东尼•罗克韦尔是已退休的“罗克韦尔的尤雷卡肥皂”的制造商兼厂主。他正从第五大街私邸的书房窗口向外张望,露齿而笑。住在他右边的邻居G•范•斯凯莱特•萨福克—琼斯是贵族俱乐部成员,正从家里出来,走向等候他的汽车。同往常一样,他朝这座肥皂宫殿正面的意大利文艺复兴式的雕塑侮辱性地皱了皱鼻子。   “自命不凡的倔老头儿,你歪什么!”前任肥皂大王品评道。“你这个外来客内斯尔罗德②一不留心,伊登博物馆迟早会把你这老王八收进去。这个夏天,我要把我的房子粉刷成红白蓝三色③,瞧你那荷兰鼻子能翘多高。”   安东尼•罗克韦尔呼唤佣人历来不按铃。他走到书房门口,叫道,“迈克!”那嗓门有如当年曾震破过堪萨斯大草原的苍穹。   “告诉少爷一声,”安东尼吩咐应召而来的仆人说,“叫他出门之前来我这儿一趟。”   小罗克韦尔走进书房时,老头子丢开报纸,光滑红润的宽脸盘上带着慈爱而又严肃的神情打量着儿子。他一只手揉乱了满头银发,另一只手则把口袋里的钥匙弄得响个不停。   “理查德,”安东尼•罗克韦尔说,“你用的肥皂是花多少钱买的?”   理查德离开学校才六个月,听了这话微觉吃惊。他还拿不准这老头子的分寸。这老头子总是像初入社交界的少女一样,时不时地问你一些意想不到的事。   “大概是六美元一打,爸。”   “你的衣服呢?”   “通常是六十美元左右。”   “你是上流社会的人,”安东尼斩钉截铁地说。“我听说现在的公子哥儿都用二十四美元一打的肥皂,穿的衣服突破百元大关。你有的是钱,可以像他们那样胡花乱用,但你始终正正经经,很有分寸。现在,我仍旧使用老牌尤雷卡肥皂,这不仅仅是出于感情问题,而且也因为这是最纯粹的肥皂。你花十美分以上买一块肥皂,买的只是蹩足香料和包装招牌。不过,像你这个年纪,有地位有身分的年轻人用五十美分一块的肥皂也够好了。正如我刚才所说,你是上流社会的人。人们说,三代人才造就一个上流人物。他们错了。有了钱办什么事都很灵便,就像肥皂的油脂一样润滑。钱使你成了上流人物。啊,差点也使我成了上流人物。不过,我几乎同住在我们两边的荷兰佬不相上下,语言粗俗,行为古怪,举止无礼。他们两个晚上连觉也睡不着,因为我在他们中间购置了房地产。”   “有些事情即使有了钱也办不到,”小罗克韦尔相当抑郁地说。   “现在别那么讲,”老安东尼惊愕地说。“我始终相信钱能通神。我查遍了百科全书,已经查到字母Y,还没有发现过金钱办不到的事;下星期我还要查补遗。我绝对相信金钱能对付世上的一切。你倒说说,有什么东西是钱买不到的吧。”   “举个例吧,”理查德有点怨恨地说,“有钱也挤不进排外的社会圈子。”   “啊哈!是这样吗?”这个万恶之源的金钱拥护者雷霆般地吼道。“告诉我,要是首批阿斯特人④没钱买统舱船票到美国来,你的排外社会圈子又会在哪儿呢?”   理查德叹了叹气。   “这正是我打算要给你谈的事,”老头子说道,声音缓和了下来。“我叫你来就是为了这个。最近,你有点对劲,孩子。我已经注意观察你两个星期了,说出来吧。我想,在二十四小时内,可以调动一千一百万美元,房地产还不算。要是你的肝病发了,《逍遥号》就停泊在海湾,而且上足了煤,两天时间就可以送你到巴哈马群岛⑤。”   “你猜得不错,爸;相差不远啦。”   “啊,”安东尼热情地问,“她的名字叫什么?”   理查德开始在书房来回踱步。他这位粗鲁的老爹爹如此关切同情,增强了他讲实话的信心。   “干吗不向她求婚呢?”老安东尼追问道。“她一定会扑进你的怀抱。你有钱,人又漂亮,又是个正经小伙子。你的两手干干净净,从没沾上一点儿尤雷卡肥皂。你又上过大学,不过那点她不会在意的。”   “我一直没有机会呀,”理查德说。   “制造机会嘛,”安东尼说。“带她上公园散步,或者驾车出游,要么做完礼拜陪她回家也可以。机会,多的是嘛!”   “你不知道现在社交界的状况,爹。她是社交界的头面人物之一,她的每小时每分钟都在前几天预先安排妥当了。我非要那个姑娘不可,爹,否则这个城市会变成腐臭的沼泽,使我抱恨终身。我又无法写信表白,不能那么做。”   “呸!”老头儿说。“你是想对我说,我给你的全部钱财都不能让一个姑娘陪你一两个小时吗?”   “我开始得太晚了。她后天中午就要乘船去欧洲待两年。明天傍晚,我能单独和她待上几分钟。现在,她还住在拉齐蒙特的姨母家,我不能到那儿去。但允许我明天晚上坐马车去中央火车站接她,她乘八点半到站的那趟火车。我们一道乘马车赶到百老汇街的沃拉克剧院,她母亲和别的亲友在剧院休息室等我们。你以为在那种情况下,只有六到八分钟,她会听我表白心意吗?决不会。在剧院里或散戏之后,我还有什么机会呢?根本不可能。不,爸,这就是你的金钱解决不了的难题,我们拿钱连一分钟也买不到;如果可能的话,富人就会长生不老了。在兰特里小姐启航之前,我没希望同她好好谈谈了。”   “好啦,理查德,孩子,”老安东尼快活地说。“现在,你可以去俱乐部玩了。我很高兴你的肝脏没闹毛病,不过别忘了常常去神庙,给伟大的财神爷烧香跪拜求保佑。你说钱买不到时间吗?唔,当然,你不能出个价钱,叫永恒包扎得好好的给你送到家门口,但是,我已经见过,时间老人穿过金矿时,被石块弄得满脚伤痕。”   那天晚上,一个性情温和、多情善感、满脸皱纹、长吁短叹、被财富压得喘不过气来的女人,埃伦姑妈来看望她的弟弟。安东尼正在看晚报。他们以情人的烦恼为话题议论开了。   “他全告诉我啦,”安东尼说着,打了一个呵欠。“我告诉他,我在银行的存款全都听他支配,可他却开始贬责金钱,说什么有了钱也不管用。还说什么十个百万富翁加在一起也不能把社会规律动上一码远。”   “哦,安东尼,”埃伦姑妈叹息说,“我希望你别把金钱看得太重了。涉及到真情实感,财富就算不了一回事。爱情才是万能的。要是他早一点开口就好啦!她不可能拒绝我们的理查德,只是我怕现在太迟了。他没有机会向她表白。你的全部钱财都不能给儿子带来幸福。”   第二天傍晚八点钟,埃伦姑妈从一个蛀虫斑斑的盒子里取出一枚古雅的金戒指,交给理查德。   “今晚戴上吧,孩子,”她央求说。“这戒指是你母亲托付给我的。她说,这戒指能给情人带来好运,嘱咐我当你找到意中人时,就把它交给你。”   小罗克韦尔郑重其事地接过戒指,在他的小指上试了试,只滑到第二指节就不动了。他取下来,按照男人的习惯,把它放进坎肩兜里,然后打电话叫马车。   八点三十二分,他在火车站杂乱的人群中接到了兰特里小姐。   “我们别让妈妈和别人等久了,”她说。   “去沃拉克剧院,越快越好!”理查德按她的意愿吩咐车夫。   他们旋风般地从第四十二街向百老汇街驶去,接着通过一条灯火繁若星辰的小巷,从光线幽暗的绿草地段到达灯光耀眼、陡如高山的建筑区。   到第三十四街时,理查德迅速推开车窗隔板,叫车夫停下。   “我掉了一枚戒指,”他下车时抱歉似地说。“是我母亲的遗物,我悔不该把它丢了。我耽误不了一分钟的,我明白它掉在哪里的。”   不到一分钟,他带着戒指回到了马车里。   但就在那一分钟里,一辆城区街车停在了马车的正前方,马车试图往左拐,又被一辆邮车挡住了。马车夫朝右试了试,又不得不退回来,避过一辆莫名其妙地出现在那儿的搬运家具的马车。他想后退,也不行,只得丢下僵绳,尽职地咒骂起来。他给一伙纠缠不清的车辆和马匹封锁住了。   交通阻塞在大城市并不稀罕,有时突然发生断绝往来。   “为什么不赶路啊?”兰特里小姐心烦意乱地问。“我们要赶不上啦。”   理查德起身站在马车里,望了望四周,看见百老汇街、第六大街和第三十四街的交叉口那大片地段给各式各样的货车、卡车、马车、搬运车和街车挤得水泄不通,有如一个二十六英寸腰围的姑娘硬要扎一根二十二英寸的腰带一样。而且在这几条街上还有车辆正飞速驶来,投入这一难分难解的车阵、马阵之中,在原有的喧嚣之中,又加进了新的咒骂声和吼叫声。曼哈顿的全部车辆似乎都挤压在这儿了。人行道上挤满了看热闹的纽约人,成千上万,其中资格最老的人也记不清哪次的阻塞规模能与之媲美。   “实在对不起,”理查德重新坐下时说,“看样子我们给堵死了。一小时之内,这场混乱不可能松动,都是我的错。如果没有掉戒指的话,我们……”   “让我瞧瞧戒指吧,”兰特里小姐说。“既然无法可想,我也不在乎了。其实,我觉得看戏也无聊。”   那天晚上十一点钟,有人轻敲安东尼•罗克韦尔的房门。   “进来,”安东尼叫道,他穿着一件红睡衣,正在读海盗惊险小说。   走进来的是埃伦姑妈,她的样子好像一位头发灰白的天使错误地留在了人间。   “他们订婚了,安东尼,”她平静地说。“她答应嫁给我们的理查德。他们去剧院的路上堵了车,两小时之后,他们的马车才脱了困。”   “哦,安东尼弟弟,别再吹金钱万能了。一件表示真诚爱情的信物——一只小戒指象征着海枯石烂心不变、金钱买不到的一往深情,这才是我们的理查德获得幸福的根由。他在街上把戒指掉了,便下车去找。他们重新上路之前,街道给堵住了。就在堵车的时间,他向她表白了爱情,最后赢得了她。比起真正的爱情来,金钱成了粪土,安东尼。”   “好呵,”老安东尼说。“我真高兴,孩子得到了他想要的人。我对他说过,在这件事上,我不惜付出任何代价,只要……”   “可是,安东尼弟弟,在这件事上,你的金钱起了什么作用呢?”   “姐姐,”安东尼•罗克韦尔说,“我的海盗正处于万分危急的关头,他的船刚被凿沉,他太重视金钱的价值而决不会被淹死的。我希望你让我继续把这章读完。”   故事本该在这儿打住了。我跟你们一样,也热切地希望如此。不过,为了明白究竟,我们还得刨根问底。   第二天,有个两手通红、系着兰点子领带、自称凯利的人来找安东尼•罗克韦尔,立刻在书房受到接见。   “唔,”安东尼说,伸手去拿支票簿,“这一锅肥皂熬得不坏。瞧瞧,你已经支了五千美元现款。”   “我自己还垫了三百块哩,”凯利说。“预算不得不超出一点,邮车和马车大多付五美元,但卡车和双马马车提高到十美元。汽车司机要十美元,载满货的二十美元。可表演得真精彩啊,罗克韦尔先生?真幸运,威廉•阿•布雷迪⑥没有光临那场户外的车辆场景,我不希望威廉忌妒得心碎。根本没有排练过呀!伙计们准时赶到现场,一秒钟也不差。整整两个小时堵得水泄不通,连一条蛇也无法从格里利⑦塑像下钻过去。”   “给你一千三百美元,凯利,”安东尼说着,撕下一张支票。“一千美元是你的报酬,还你三百美元。你不至于看不起金钱吧,是吗?凯利。”   “我吗?”凯利说。“我能揍那发明贫困的家伙。”   凯利走到门口时,安东尼叫住了他。   “你注意到没有,”他说,“在交通阻塞那儿有个赤身露体的胖娃娃⑧手拿弓箭在乱射吗?”   “怎么,没有呀,”凯利莫名其妙地说。“我没注意到。如果真的像你说的那样,也许我还没有赶到那儿,警察早已把他收拾了。”   “我想,这个小流氓是不会到场的,”安东尼咯咯笑道。“再见,凯利。”   ①archer:弓箭手,但在这里指罗马神话中的Cupid(爱神)。他赤身露体,长着双翅,手执弓箭。   ②Nesselrode,指Karl Robert Nesselrode (1780—1862) K.R. 内斯尔罗德:德籍俄罗斯政治家。   ③红、白、蓝三色:指荷兰国旗的颜色。   ④Astor(阿斯特):指John Robert Astor (1763—1848), 原为德国人,后遗居美国,成为美国皮毛商富豪兼金融家。   ⑤The Babamas:拉丁美洲的巴哈马群岛,为著名的旅游胜地。   ⑥威廉•阿•布雷迪:美国著名的剧院经理。   ⑦Greeley格里利,指Horace Greeley(1811—1872), 美国新闻记者、作家、编缉、政治家、纽约论坛报的创始人。   ⑧胖娃娃:指爱神Cupid。 The Romance of a Busy Broker证券经纪人的浪漫故事 Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy Good-morning, Pitcher, Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of letters and telegrams waiting there for him. The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peachblow, her expression a happy one, tinged with reminiscence. Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of her presence. The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs. Well--what is it Anything asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail lay like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently. Nothing, answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile. Mr. Pitcher, she said to the confidential clerk, did Mr. Maxwell say anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer He did, answered Pitcher. He told me to get another one. I notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning. It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing gum has showed up yet. I will do the work as usual, then, said the young lady, until some one comes to fill the place. And she went to her desk at once and hung the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed place. He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The poet sings of the crowded hour of glorious life. The broker's hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms. And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face relaxed into something resembling animation. On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door with the trained agility of a harlequin. In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her. Lady from the Stenographer's Agency to see about the position, said Pitcher. Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker tape. What position he asked, with a frown. Position of stenographer, said Pitcher. You told me yesterday to call them up and have one sent over this morning. You are losing your mind, Pitcher, said Maxwell. Why should I have given you any such instructions Miss Leslie has given perfect satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any more of 'em in here. The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself independently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed. Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the old man seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world. The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's customers were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were imperilled, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate, strong machine--strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate, never hesitating, with the proper word and decision and act ready and prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins and securities--here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human world or the world of nature. When the luncheon hour drew near there came a slight lull in the uproar. Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands full of telegrams and memoranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the beloved janitress Spring had turned on a little warmth through the waking registers of the earth. And through the window came a wandering--perhaps a lost--odour--a delicate, sweet odour of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and hers only. The odour brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next room--twenty steps away. By George, I'll do it now, said Maxwell, half aloud. I'll ask her now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago. He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer. She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was above his ear. Miss Leslie, he began hurriedly, I have but a moment to spare. I want to say something in that moment. Will you he my wife I haven't had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk quick, please--those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific. Oh, what are you talking about exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed. Don't you understand said Maxwell, restively. I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, Miss Leslie The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome with amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck. I know now, she said, softly. It's this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey We were married last evening at 8 o'clock in the Little Church Around the Corner. 证券经纪人哈维·马克斯韦尔于九点半在年轻女速记员陪同下步履轻快地来到办公室。机要秘书皮彻那通常毫无表情的面孔不禁露出一丝好奇和诧异。马克斯韦尔只随口道了声“早上好”,便径直奔向办公桌,匆忙得好像想一步跨过桌面,随后就一头扎进一大堆等着他处理的信件和电报。   年轻女郎给马克斯韦尔当速记员已经有一年。她异常秀美动人,绝非速记员草草几笔所能简单描述。她不愿采用华丽诱人的庞巴杜式发型,不戴项链、手镯或鸡心。她脸上没有随时准备受邀外出进餐的神气。她的灰色衣服素净朴实,但却生动勾勒出她的身材而不失典雅。她那顶精巧的黑色无边帽上插了根艳绿色金刚鹦鹉毛。今天早上,她春风飘逸,温柔而羞涩。她的眼睛流波瞑瞑,双颊桃红妖娆,满面乐融,又略带一丝回味。   好奇之余,皮彻发现今天她的举止也有点儿异样。她没有直接到放有她办公桌的里间办公室去,而是滞留在外间办公室,有点儿拿不定主意似的。她慢慢蹭到马克斯韦尔桌边,离他很近,足以让他意识到她的存在。   坐在办公桌前的他已经不再是个常人,而是一个繁忙的纽约证券经纪人,一架完全受嗡嗡作响的轮子和张开的弹簧所驱动的机器。   “嘿,怎么啦?有事?”马克斯韦尔问,语气尖刻。那些拆开的邮件堆了满满一桌,就像演戏用的假雪。他那锐利的灰蓝色眼睛,毫无人情味儿,严厉粗暴,不耐烦地盯着她。   “没什么,”速记员回答说,然后微笑着走开了。   “皮彻先生,”她问机要秘书,“马克斯韦尔先生昨天提没提过另外雇一名速记员的事?”   “提过,”皮彻说。“他吩咐我另外找一个。昨天下午我已通知职业介绍所,让他们今天上午送几个来面试。现在已经九点四十五了,可还没有哪个戴阔边帽或嚼波萝口香糖的人露面哩。”   “那我还是照常工作好啦,”年轻女郎说,“等有人替补再说。”说完她马上走到自己的办公桌边,在老地方挂起那顶插有金刚鹦鹉毛的黑色无边帽。   谁无缘目睹曼哈顿经纪人在生意高峰时刻那股紧张劲儿,谁搞人类学研究就有极大缺陷。有诗人赞颂“绚丽生活中的拥挤时辰”。证券经纪人不仅时辰拥挤,他的分分秒秒都是挤得满满当当的,像是前后站台都挤满乘客的车厢里的拉手吊带,每根都被拉得紧绷绷的。   今天又正是哈维·马克斯韦尔的大忙天。行情收录器的滚轴开始瑟瑟卷动,忽停忽动地吐出卷纸,桌上的电话像害了慢性病似的响个不停。人们开始涌入办公室,隔着扶手栏杆朝他大喊大叫,有的欣喜若狂,有的横眉竖眼,有的恶意满怀,有的激动不已。信童拿着信件和电报跑进跑出。办公室的职员们忙得跳来跳去,就像与风暴搏斗的水手。连皮彻的脸也舒张开来,显得生机勃勃。   证券交易所里风云变幻,飓风、山崩、雪暴、冰川、火山瞬息交替;这些自然力的剧动以微观形式在经纪人办公室中再现。马克斯韦尔把椅子掀到墙边,如踢跶舞演员般敏捷地处理业务,时而从自动收录器跳向电话,时而从桌前跳到门口,其灵活不亚于受过专门训练的滑稽丑角。   经纪人全神致力于这堆越来越多但又十分重要的事务之中,这时他突然注意到一头高高卷起的金发,上面是顶微微抖动的鹅绒帽和鸵毛羽饰;一件人造海豹皮短大衣,一串大如山核桃的珠子垂近地板,尾端还吊了一个银鸡心。这一大套装饰物与一个沉着镇定的年轻女子相关联。皮彻正准备引荐她,替她作解释。   “这位小姐从速记员介绍所来,说招聘的事。”   马克斯韦尔侧过身子,手上捏了一把文件和行情纸带。   “招聘什么?”他皱起眉头问。   “速记员,”皮彻说。“昨天你叫我打电话,让他们今天上午送一个过来。”   “你搞糊涂了吧?”马克斯韦尔说。“我干吗给你下这个命令?莱丝丽这一年工作表现十全十美。只要她愿意,这份工作就是她的。小姐,这儿没有空缺。皮彻,通知事务所,取消要人申请,叫他们别再送人过来。”   银鸡心离开了办公室。一路上她愤愤不平,大摇大摆,把桌椅沙发碰得乒乒乓乓。皮彻忙中偷闲给簿记员说,“老太爷”一天比一天心不在焉,多事健忘。   业务处理越来越紧张,节奏越来越快。在交易所马克斯韦尔的顾客投资巨额的六七种股票正在暴跌。收进和抛出的单据来来去去,疾如燕飞。有些他本人持有的股票也处于危险之中。经纪人工作起来就像一架高速运转、精密复杂、强壮有力的机器——绷紧到最大限度,运转至最快速度,精确无误,坚决果断,措词贴切而决策恰当,行动时机的选择如时钟般准确无误。股票,证券,贷款,抵押,保证金,债券——这是一个金融世界,人际感情或自然本性在这里毫无落脚之地。   午餐时间逐渐临近,喧嚣之中慢慢出现片刻暂息。   马克斯韦尔站在办公桌边,手上捏满了电报和备忘录,右耳上夹了支钢笔,几撮头发零乱地披在脑门上。窗户敞开着,因为亲爱的女门房——春——已经打开苏醒大地的暖气管,送来一丝暖意。   通过窗户飘来一丝悠悠——也许是失散——的香气。这是紫丁香幽微、甜美的芳菲。刹那间,经纪人给怔住了。因为这香气属于莱丝丽小姐;这是她本人的气息,她独有的气息。   芳香在他心中唤出她的容貌,栩栩如生,几乎伸手可及。   金融世界转瞬间缩成一点。而她就在隔壁房间,仅二十步之遥。   “天哪,我现在就得去,”马克斯韦尔压低嗓子说。“我现在就去跟她说。怎么我没早点儿想起?”   他箭步冲进里间办公室,像个卖空头的人急于补足那样急不可耐。他对直冲向速记员的办公桌。   她抬起头,笑盈盈地看着他,服上泛出淡淡红晕,眼睛里闪动着温柔和坦率。马克斯韦尔一支胳膊撑在桌上,手上依然握满了文件,耳朵上还夹着那支钢笔。   “莱丝丽小姐,”他仓仓促促地说,“我只能呆一小会儿,趁这个时候给你说件事。你愿意做我的妻子吗?我没时间以常人的方式向你求爱,但我确确实实爱你。请快回答我。那些人又在抢购太平洋联合公司的股票罗。”   “喔,你在说什么呀?”年轻女郎惊诧不已。她站起身,直愣愣地看着他,眼睛瞪得圆圆的。   “你不懂?”马克斯韦尔倔头倔脑地说。“我要你嫁给我。我爱你,莱丝丽小姐。我早就想告诉你,手头的事情稍微松些后,我才瞅空过来。又有人在打电话找我。皮彻,叫他们等一下。答应我吗,莱丝丽小姐?”   速记员的神态叫人莫名其妙。起初,她好像惊愕万分;继而,泪水又涌出她迷惘的眼睛;其后,泪眼又发出欢笑的光芒;最后,她又柔情地搂住经纪人的脖子。   “现在我懂了,”她亲切地说。“是这生意让你忘记了一切。刚才我还吓了一大跳。哈维,不记得了吗?昨天晚上八点,我们已经在街上拐角处的小教堂结过婚了。” Girl 姑娘 IN GILT letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 962 were the words: "Robbins & Hartley, Brokers." The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub- women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the half-open windows. Robbins, fifty, something of an overweight beau, and addicted to first nights and hotel palm-rooms, pretended to be envious of his partner's commuter's joys. "Going to be something doing in the humidity line to-night," he said. "You out-of-town chaps will be the people, with your katydids and moonlight and long drinks and things out on the front porch." Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, ner- vous, sighed and frowned a little. "Yes," said he, "we always have cool nights in Floral- hurst, especially in the winter." A man with an air of mystery came in the door and went up to Hartley. "I've found where she lives," he announced in the portentous half-whisper that makes the detective at work a marked being to his fellow men. Hartley scowled him into a state of dramatic silence and quietude. But by that time Robbins had got his cane and set his tie pin to his liking, and with a debonair nod went out to his metropolitan amusements. "Here is the address," said the detective in a natural tone, being deprived of an audience to foil. Hartley took the leaf torn out of the sleuth's dingy memorandum book. On it were pencilled the words "Vivienne Arlington, No. 341 East --th Street, care of Mrs. McComus." "Moved there a week ago," said the detective. "Now, if you want any shadowing done, Mr. Hartley, I can do you as fine a job in that line as anybody in the city. It will be only $7 a day and expenses. Can send in a daily typewritten report, covering -- " "You needn't go on," interrupted the broker. "It isn't a case of that kind. I merely wanted the address. How much shall I pay you?" "One day's work," said the sleuth. "A tenner will cover it." Hartley paid the man and dismissed him. Then he left the office and boarded a Broadway car. At the first large crosstown artery of travel he took an eastbound car that deposited him in a decaying avenue, whose ancient structures once sheltered the pride and glory of the town. Walking a few squares, he came to the building that he sought. It was a new flathouse, bearing carved upon its cheap stone portal its sonorous name, "The Vallambrosa." Fire-escapes zigzagged down its front -- these laden with household goods, drying clothes, and squalling children evicted by the midsummer heat. Here and there a pale rubber plant peeped from the miscellaneous mass, as if wondering to what kingdom it belonged -- vegetable, animal or artificial. Hartley pressed the "McComus" button. The door latch clicked spasmodically -- now hospitably, now doubt- fully, as though in anxiety whether it might be admitting friends or duns. Hartley entered and began to climb the stairs after the manner of those who seek their friends in city flat-houses -- which is the manner of a boy who climbs an apple-tree, stopping when he comes upon what he wants. On the fourth floor he saw Vivienne standing in an open door. She invited him inside, with a nod and a bright, genuine smile. She placed a chair for him near a window, and poised herself gracefully upon the edge of one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde pieces of furniture that are masked and mysteriously hooded, unguessable bulks by day and inquisitorial racks of torture by night. Hartley cast a quick, critical, appreciative glance at her before speaking, and told himself that his taste in choosing had been flawless. Vivienne was about twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her hair was a ruddy golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass shining with its own lustre and delicate graduation of colour. In perfect harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes that looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or the pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her North- ern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there seemed to be something of the tropics in her -- something of languor in the droop of her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of satisfaction and comfort in the mere act of breathing -- something that seemed to claim for her a right as a perfect work of nature to exist and be admired equally with a rare flower or some beauti- ful, milk-white dove among its sober-hued companions. She was dressed in a white waist and dark skirt - that discreet masquerade of goose-girl and duchess. "Vivienne," said Hartley, looking at her pleadingly, "you did not answer my last letter. It was only by nearly a week's search that I found where you had moved to. Why have you kept me in suspense when you knew how anxiously I was waiting to see you and hear from you?" The girl looked out the window dreamily. "Mr. Hartley," she said hesitatingly, "I hardly know what to say to you. I realize all the advantages of your offer, and sometimes I feel sure that I could be contented with you. But, again, I am doubtful. I was born a city girl, and I am afraid to bind myself to a quiet sub- urban life." "My dear girl," said Hartley, ardently, "have I not told you that you shall have everything that your heart can desire that is in my power to give you? You shall come to the city for the theatres, for shopping and to visit your friends as often as you care to. You can trust me, can you not?" "To the fullest," she said, turning her frank eyes upon him with a smile. "I know you are the kindest of men, and that the girl you get will be a lucky one. I learned all about you when I was at the Montgomerys'." "Ah!" exclaimed Hartley, with a tender, reminiscent light in his eye; "I remember well the evening I first saw you at the Montgomerys'. Mrs. Montgomery was sound- ing your praises to me all the evening. And she hardly did you justice. I shall never forget that supper. Come, Vivienne, promise me. I want you. You'll never regret coming with me. No one else will ever give you as pleasant a home." The girl sighed and looked down at her folded hands. A sudden jealous suspicion seized Hartley. "Tell me, Vivienne," he asked, regarding her keenly, "is there another -- is there some one else ?" A rosy flush crept slowly over her fair cheeks and neck. "You shouldn't ask that, Mr. Hartley," she said, in some confusion. "But I will tell you. There is one other -- but he has no right -- I have promised him nothing." "His name?" demanded Hartley, sternly. "Townsend." "Rafford Townsend!" exclaimed Hartley, with a grim tightening of his jaw. "How did that man come to know you? After all I've done for him -- " "His auto has just stopped below," said Vivienne, bending over the window-sill. "He's coming for his answer. Oh I don't know what to do!" The bell in the flat kitchen whirred. Vivienne hurried to press the latch button. "Stay here," said Hartley. "I will meet him in the hall." Townsend, looking like a Spanish grandee in his light tweeds, Panama hat and curling black mustache, came up the stairs three at a time. He stopped at sight of Hartley and looked foolish. "Go back," said Hartley, firmly, pointing downstairs with his forefinger. "Hullo!" said Townsend, feigning surprise. "What's up? What are you doing here, old man?" "Go back," repeated Hartley, inflexibly. "The Law of the Jungle. Do you want the Pack to tear you in pieces? The kill is mine." "I came here to see a plumber about the bathroom connections," said Townsend, bravely. "All right," said Hartley. "You shall have that lying plaster to stick upon your traitorous soul. But, go back." Townsend went downstairs, leaving a bitter word to be wafted up the draught of the staircase. Hartley went back to his wooing. "Vivienne," said he, masterfully. "I have got to have you. I will take no more refusals or dilly-dallying." "When do you want me?" she asked. "Now. As soon as you can get ready." She stood calmly before him and looked him in the eye. "Do you think for one moment," she said, "that I would enter your home while Héloise is there?" Hartley cringed as if from an unexpected blow. He folded his arms and paced the carpet once or twice. "She shall go," he declared grimly. Drops stood upon his brow. "Why should I let that woman make my life miserable? Never have I seen one day of freedom from trouble since I have known her. You are right, Vivienne. Héloise must be sent away before I can take you home. But she shall go. I have decided. I will turn her from my doors." "When will you do this?" asked the girl. Hartley clinched his teeth and bent his brows together. "To-night," he said, resolutely. "I will send her away to-night." "Then," said Vivienne, "my answer is 'yes.' Come for me when you will." She looked into his eyes with a sweet, sincere light in her own. Hartley could scarcely believe that her sur- render was true, it was so swift and complete. "Promise me," he said feelingly, "on your word and honour." "On my word and honour," repeated Vivienne, softly. At the door he turned and gazed at her happily, but yet as one who scarcely trusts the foundations of his joy. "To-morrow," he said, with a forefinger of reminder uplifted. "To-morrow," she repeated with a smile of truth and candour. In an hour and forty minutes Hartley stepped off the train at Floralhurst. A brisk walk of ten minutes brought him to the gate of a handsome two-story cottage set upon a wide and well-tended lawn. Halfway to the house he was met by a woman with jet-black braided hair and flowing white summer gown, who half strangled him without apparent cause. When they stepped into the hall she said: "Mamma's here. The auto is coming for her in half an hour. She came to dinner, but there's no dinner." "I've something to tell you," said Hartley. "I thought to break it to you gently, but since your mother is here we may as well out with it." He stooped and whispered something at her ear. His wife screamed. Her mother came running into the hall. The dark-haired woman screamed again- the joyful scream of a well-beloved and petted woman. "Oh, mamma!" she cried ecstatically, "what do you think? Vivienne is coming to cook for us! She is the one that stayed with the Montgomerys a whole year. And now, Billy, dear," she concluded, "you must go right down into the kitchen and discharge Héloise. She has been drunk again the whole day long." 962号房门磨砂玻璃上的镀金字样是“罗宾斯—哈特利,经纪人”。过了五点钟,雇员们都走了。保洁女工们步声嘈杂,像一群佩尔什灰色马似的进入高耸入云的二十层的写字间大楼。半开的窗口喷出一阵带有柠檬皮、烟煤和鲸油味的灼热的空气。 罗宾斯年过五十,属于那种发胖的花花公子之列,他经常出席剧院的首演式和饭店的酒会,装出羡慕他的合伙人在市区工作、在郊区住家的生活。 “今晚又要喝酒了吧,”他说,“你们这些郊区人晚上可以在月光下听蝈蝈儿叫,在前廊上喝酒消磨时光。” 哈特利二十九岁,长得瘦削端正,严肃而有点神经质,他稍稍皱起眉头,叹了一口气。 “是啊,”他说,“我们花岗那里的夜晚总是很凉快,尤其在冬天。” 一个神秘兮兮的人进了门,走近哈特利身边。 “我查明了她的地址。”他故弄玄虚地悄声说,实际上希望别人知道他是负有使命的侦探。 哈特利一瞪眼,不让他说下去。这时候罗宾斯已经拿起手杖,整好领带别针,殷勤地点点头,出去找他的都市消遣了。 “这就是地址。”侦探现在不需要避人耳目,用平时的声调说。 哈特利接过侦探从记事本撕下的一页纸。上面的铅笔字是:“维维恩•阿林顿,东街341号,麦科姆斯太太转。” “一星期前搬过去的,”侦探说,“哈特利先生,如果你需要盯梢的活,我干得不比本市任何人差。每天只收七元,包括全部费用。我每天可以递交一份打字机打的报告,内容——” “不必了,”经纪人打断他的话说,“不是那类事。我知道地址就行了。我应该付给你多少钱?” “一天的活,”侦探说,“十元钱够了。” 哈特利付了钱,把那人打发走了。他离开写字间,乘上百老汇路的电车。他在横贯全市的交通线上换乘了往东区的电车,在一条曾有许多知名人士的住宅、而今已经败落的街道下了车。 他经过几个街口,到了要找的地方。那是一座新盖的公寓房子,廉价的石门上刻的名字十分响亮:“仙苑别墅”。房子正面的防火梯曲曲折折通到楼下——防火梯上堆放着家用杂物,晾着衣服,蹲坐着被仲夏的燠热驱赶到外面来的小孩。这些杂乱无章的人和物中间偶尔还有一两株灰扑扑的橡皮盆景——傻乎乎的闹不明白自己究竟属于植物、动物,还是仿造品。 哈特利摁了标有“麦科姆斯”的电铃钮。门锁发出抽搐的咔嗒声——既有欢迎,又有疑虑,似乎很想知道来客是朋友还是讨债人。哈特利进门上楼,像在市区公寓里找人那样开始寻找——也就是像小孩爬苹果树那样,遇到想要的就停下来。 到了四楼,他看到维维恩站在一扇打开的房门口。她朝他点点头,真诚地微微一笑,请他进屋。她搬了一把椅子放在窗前,让他坐下,自己端坐在一件杰基尔-海德[1]式的、蒙着神秘的布罩的家具上,白天猜不出那是什么东西,晚上可能成了拷问的刑具。 哈特利说明来意之前,先迅速地打量她一眼,觉得自己的选择一点不错。 维维恩二十来岁,属于那种最纯正的撒克逊类型。她的金黄色头发有点红,梳得整整齐齐,光亮的发丝带着微妙的色泽变化。她的象牙白的皮肤同湛蓝的眼睛十分和谐,眼睛像海里的美人鱼或者人迹罕至的山涧的精灵似的天真而娴静地望着世界。她体格强健,但具有绝对自然的优雅。尽管她的轮廓和肤色一看就是北方人,却带有某种热带地区的气息——她举手投足的姿态有点倦怠,甚至连呼吸也有心满意足和喜欢安逸的模样——这一切似乎替她要求作为完美的自然产物的生存权利,似乎主张她应该受到异花奇葩或者美丽的乳白色鸽子那样的赞美。 她穿着白色背心和深色裙子——牧鹅少女和女公爵都合适的谨慎的打扮。 “维维恩,”哈特利恳求似地看着她说,“你没有回复我给你的信。我差不多花了一个星期才打听到你的住址。你知道我多么盼望见到你、听你的回音,你为什么让我干等?” 那姑娘恍恍惚惚地看着窗外。 “哈特利先生,”她犹豫地说,“我简直不知道该怎么对你说。我了解你提议的全部优点,有时候我觉得应该心满意足了。但我还是拿不定主意。我从小在城市长大,担心过不惯清静的郊区生活。” “亲爱的姑娘,”哈特利热情地说,“我早就说过,你想要的任何东西,只要我力所能及,我都会给你的。如果你想进城看戏,购物,看朋友,随时都可以办到。你相信我吗?” “我完全相信,”她坦诚地瞅着他微笑着说,“我知道你最最善良,你找到的姑娘一定很幸运。我在蒙哥马利家的时候已经了解你的所有情况。” “啊!”哈特利的眼睛里闪出温柔的忆旧的光芒,“那晚在蒙哥马利家第一次见到你的情景,我记得很清楚。蒙哥马利太太整晚都在我面前夸你。其实她说得不够全面。我永远忘不了那顿晚餐。来吧,维维恩,答应我吧。我要你。你跟我绝对不会后悔的。谁都不会给你一个更愉快的家。” 那姑娘叹了一口气,低头看看她合抱的手。 哈特利突然起了妒意的疑心。 “告诉我,维维恩,”他敏锐地打量着她问道,“是不是还有——是不是另外有人?” 她白皙的脸和颈脖慢慢红了起来。 “你不应该问那种话,哈特利先生,”她有点慌乱地说,“不过我可以告诉你。是有另一个人——但是他没有权利——我什么也没有答应他。” “他姓什么?”哈特利厉声问道。 “汤森。” “拉福德•汤森!”哈特利咬紧牙喊道,“那个人怎么会认识你?我帮过他多少忙——” “他的汽车就停在下面,”维维恩说,她在窗槛上探身张望,“他是来听回音的。啊,我不知道该怎么办了!” ​公寓厨房里的电铃响了。维维恩赶快去摁开大门门锁的电钮。 ​“你待着别动,”哈特利说,“我去门厅迎他。” ​汤森穿着浅色的花呢衣服,戴着巴拿马草帽,留着两撇拳曲的黑胡子,活像西班牙贵族,他一步跨三级楼梯匆匆上来,看到哈特利时站停了,脸上一副尴尬的样子。 “回去。”哈特利用食指指着楼下,坚定地说。 ​“嗨!”汤森假装吃惊地说,“怎么回事?你在这里干吗,老兄?” “回去,”哈特利毫不让步地说,“丛林法则。你不怕狼群把你撕得粉碎吗?是我先下手的。” “我来这儿找管子工,修理浴室的管道接头。”汤森勇敢地说。 “得啦,”哈特利说,“你用撒谎的胶泥去糊你出卖朋友的灵魂吧。你给我回去。” 汤森嘴里嘟嘟囔囔地下了楼。哈特利回去继续恳求。 ​“维维恩,”他专横地说,“我非要你不可。我不听任何拒绝或者推诿的话了。” “你什么时候要我?”她问道。 “现在。你收拾好了就走。” ​她平静地站在他面前,直视他的眼睛。 ​“你有没有考虑过,”她说,“埃洛伊兹还在的时候,我进你家合适吗?” ​哈特利仿佛受到意外打击似的畏缩了一下。他抱着双臂在地毯上踱了几步。 “她得走,”他额头冒汗,冷酷地宣布说,“我凭什么要让那女人把我的生活搞得痛苦不堪。她来之后,我没有一天好日子过。你说得对,维维恩。我带你回家之前,必须先把埃洛伊兹打发走。但是她非走不可。我已经做出了决定。我要把她赶出我家门。” “你什么时候赶?” ​哈特利咬紧牙,皱起眉头。 ​“今晚,”他下定决心说,“我今天晚上就让她走。” ​“这样的话,”维维恩说,“我的答复是‘同意’。你到时候来接我好了。” ​她带着甜美真诚的眼光瞅着他。哈特利不敢相信,她竟然这么痛快就彻底顺从了。 ​“你要答应我,”他激动地说,“以名誉担保。” ​“我以名誉担保。”维维恩温柔地跟着说了一遍。 ​他在门口转过身,高兴地看着她,但仍像不敢相信他的高兴是否可靠似的。 “明天。”他举起食指提醒她说。 ​“明天。”她坦诚地微笑着,重复了一遍。 ​一小时四十分钟后,哈特利在花岗下了火车。他快步走了十分钟,到了坐落在宽阔整齐的草坪上一幢雅致的两层楼别墅门口。他进屋时,一个梳着两条乌黑的辫子、穿着飘拂的白袍的女人迎上前,莫名其妙地紧紧搂住他。 他们踏进门厅时,她说: ​“妈妈来了。汽车半小时后来接她。她是来吃晚饭的,可是没吃成。” “我有话要告诉你,”哈特利说,“我本想过一会儿再说,你妈妈既然在这里,现在说出来也不妨。” ​他弯下腰,在她耳边悄悄说了些什么。 他的妻子尖叫起来。妻子的母亲闻声跑进门厅。黑头发的女人又叫了一声——受到宠爱的女人的快活的尖叫。 “哦,妈妈,”她狂喜地喊道,“你知道吗?维维恩要来替我们做饭了!她在蒙哥马利家做了整整一年。现在,亲爱的比来,”她说,“你必须马上去厨房打发埃洛伊兹走人。她又喝得烂醉,一整天都不醒。” * * * [1] 杰基尔-海德是英国作家斯蒂文森所著小说《化身博士》中具有双重人格的人物,白天行医,夜里为非作歹。 What You Want 各取所需 Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad-on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of romance were filled with the same kind of folk that so much interested our interesting old friend, the late Mr. H. A. Rashid. They wore clothes eleven hundred years nearer to the latest styles than H. A. saw in old Bagdad; but they were about the same people underneath. With the eye of faith, you could have seen the Little Hunchback, Sinbad the Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor, the Beautiful Persian, the one-eyed Calenders, Ali Baba and Forty Robbers on every block, and the Barber and his Six Brothers, and all the old Arabian gang easily. But let us revenue to our lamb chops. Old Tom Crowley was a caliph. He had $42,000,000 in preferred stocks and bonds with solid gold edges. In these times, to be called a caliph you must have money. The old-style caliph business as conducted by Mr. Rashid is not safe. If you hold up a person nowadays in a bazaar or a Turkish bath or a side street, and inquire into his private and personal affairs, the police court'll get you. Old Tom was tired of clubs, theatres, dinners, friends, music, money and everything. That's what makes a caliph - you must get to despise everything that money can buy, and then go out and try to want something that you can't pay for. "I'll take a little trot around town all by myself," thought old Tom, "and try if I can stir up anything new. Let's see - it seems I've read about a king or a Cardiff giant or something in old times who used to go about with false whiskers on, making Persian dates with folks he hadn't been introduced to. That don't listen like a bad idea. I certainly have got a case of humdrumness and fatigue on for the ones I do know. That old Cardiff used to pick up cases of trouble as he ran upon 'em and give 'em gold - sequins, I think it was - and make 'em marry or got 'em good Government jobs. Now, I'd like something of that sort. My money is as good as his was even if the magazines do ask me every month where I got it. Yes, I guess I'll do a little Cardiff business to-night, and see how it goes." Plainly dressed, old Tom Crowley left his Madison Avenue palace, and walked westward and then south. As he stepped to the sidewalk, Fate, who holds the ends of the strings in the central offices of all the enchanted cities pulled a thread, and a young man twenty blocks away looked at a wall clock, and then put on his coat. James Turner worked in one of those little hat-cleaning establishments on Sixth Avenue in which a fire alarms rings when you push the door open, and where they clean your hat while you wait - two days. James stood all day at an electric machine that turned hats around faster than the best brands of champagne ever could have done. Overlooking your mild impertinence in feeling a curiosity about the personal appearance of a stranger, I will give you a modified description of him. Weight, 118; complexion, hair and brain, light; height, five feet six; age, about twenty-three; dressed in a $10 suit of greenish-blue serge; pockets containing two keys and sixty-three cents in change. But do not misconjecture because this description sounds like a General Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one. Allons! James stood all day at his work. His feet were tender and extremely susceptible to impositions being put upon or below them. All day long they burned and smarted, causing him much suffering and inconvenience. But he was earning twelve dollars per week, which he needed to support his feet whether his feet would support him or not. James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was, just as you and I have ours. Your delight is to gad about the world in yachts and motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to smoke a pipe at evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an owl go into their common prairie home one by one. James Turner's idea of bliss was different; but it was his. He would go directly to his boarding-house when his day's work was done. After his supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed (not stewed) apples and infusion of chicory, he would ascend to his fifth-floor-back hall room. Then he would take off his shoes and socks, place the soles of his burning feet against the cold bars of his iron bed, and read Clark Russell's sea yarns. The delicious relief of the cool metal applied to his smarting soles was his nightly joy. His favorite novels never palled upon him; the sea and the adventures of its navigators were his sole intellectual passion. No millionaire was ever happier than James Turner taking his ease. When James left the hat-cleaning shop he walked three blocks out of his way home to look over the goods of a second-hand bookstall. On the sidewalk stands he had more than once picked up a paper-covered volume of Clark Russell at half price. While he was bending with a scholarly stoop over the marked-down miscellany of cast-off literature, old Tom the caliph sauntered by. His discerning eye, made keen by twenty years' experience in the manufacture of laundry soap (save the wrappers!) recognized instantly the poor and discerning scholar, a worthy object of his caliphanous mood. He descended the two shallow stone steps that led from the sidewalk, and addressed without hesitation the object of his designed munificence. His first words were no worse than salutatory and tentative. James Turner looked up coldly, with "Sartor Resartus" in one hand and "A Mad Marriage" in the other. "Beat it," said he. "I don't want to buy any coat hangers or town lots in Hankipoo, New Jersey. Run along, now, and play with your Teddy bear." "Young man," said the caliph, ignoring the flippancy of the hat cleaner, "I observe that you are of a studious disposition. Learning is one of the finest things in the world. I never had any of it worth mentioning, but I admire to see it in others. I come from the West, where we imagine nothing but facts. Maybe I couldn't understand the poetry and allusions in them books you are picking over, but I like to see somebody else seem to know what they mean. I'm worth about $40,000,000, and I'm getting richer every day. I made the height of it manufacturing Aunt Patty's Silver Soap. I invented the art of making it. I experimented for three years before I got just the right quantity of chloride of sodium solution and caustic potash mixture to curdle properly. And after I had taken some $9,000,000 out of the soap business I made the rest in corn and wheat futures. Now, you seem to have the literary and scholarly turn of character; and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay for your education at the finest college in the world. I'll pay the expense of your rummaging over Europe and the art galleries, and finally set you up in a good business. You needn't make it soap if you have any objections. I see by your clothes and frazzled necktie that you are mighty poor; and you can't afford to turn down the offer. Well, when do you want to begin?" The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, house, booth, seat, path or room. "Say, Mike," said James Turner, "what's your line, anyway - shoe laces? I'm not buying anything. You better put an egg in your shoe and beat it before incidents occur to you. You can't work off any fountain pens, gold spectacles you found on the street, or trust company certificate house clearings on me. Say, do I look like I'd climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall? What's vitiating you, anyhow?" "Son," said the caliph, in his most Harunish tones, "as I said, I'm worth $40,000,000. I don't want to have it all put in my coffin when I die. I want to do some good with it. I seen you handling over these here volumes of literature, and I thought I'd keep you. I've give the missionary societies $2,000,000, but what did I get out of it? Nothing but a receipt from the secretary. Now, you are just the kind of young man I'd like to take up and see what money could make of him." Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that evening at the Old Book Shop. And James Turner's smarting and aching feet did not tend to improve his temper. Humble hat cleaner though he was, he had a spirit equal to any caliph's. "Say, you old faker," he said, angrily, "be on your way. I don't know what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus $40,000,000 bill. Well, I don't carry that much around with me. But I do carry a pretty fair left-handed punch that you'll get if you don't move on." "You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup," said the caliph. Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him by the collar and kicked him thrice; the hat cleaner rallied and clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent flying. A copy came up, took an arm of each, and marched them to the nearest station house. "Fighting and disorderly conduct," said the cop to the sergeant. "Three hundred dollars bail," said the sergeant at once, asseveratingly and inquiringly. "Sixty-three cents," said James Turner with a harsh laugh. The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change amounting to four dollars. "I am worth," he said, "forty million dollars, but -" "Lock 'em up," ordered the sergeant. In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. "Maybe he's got the money, and maybe he ain't. But if he has or he ain't, what does he want to go 'round butting into other folks's business for? When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it's the same as $40,000,000 to him." Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face. He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched himself out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the cold bars of the cell door. Something hard and bulky under the blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under, and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called "A Sailor's Sweetheart." He gave a great sigh of contentment. Presently, to his cell came the doorman and said: "Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping seems to have been the goods after all. He 'phoned to his friends, and he's out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a Pullman car pillow. He wants to bail you, and for you to come out and see him." "Tell him I ain't in," said James Turner. “各取所需” 夜晚降临了那个叫做“地下铁道上的巴格达”的美丽的大城市。与夜晚同来的迷人的魅力,并不是阿拉伯半岛独有的。这个充满了传奇色彩的西方城市的街道、市集和房屋,外貌虽然不同,内里却还是那同一类人,他们曾使我们的有趣的老朋友——已故的哈•亚•拉西德先生极感兴趣。他们的衣著比拉西德在老巴格达见到的要时髦一千一百年,但衣服里面的人还是大同小异。诚则灵。你带着诚心的眼光就不难看到小驼背,水手辛巴德,裁缝菲巴德,美貌的波斯人,独眼托钵僧,各个地段的阿里巴巴和四十大盗,理发师和他的六弟兄,以及《天方夜谭》中所有的人物。 让我们回到正文上来吧。 老汤姆•克劳利是个哈里发。他有四千二百万元的优先股票和稳妥可靠的证券。如今被人称作哈里发的先决条件是要有钱。拉西德所充当的老式哈里发的事业是不保险的。现今你在市集、土耳其浴室或者小街上拦住一个人,盘问他个人的私事是行不通的,违警罪法庭会找你的麻烦。 老汤姆已经厌倦了俱乐部、剧院、宴会、朋友、音乐、金钱和一切。那正是造就哈里发的条件——你必须蔑视金钱所能买到的一切,然后出去找寻金钱买不到的东西。 “我要独自上街去遛达遛达,”老汤姆想道,“看看能不能搞些新花样。让我想想——我仿佛在书上看到古时一个皇帝或者哈迪发之类的人,他老是戴着假胡子在外面转悠,同他素不相识的人做波斯式的约会。那个主意挺新鲜。我熟悉的一些玩意儿已经使我感到厌倦。那个老哈迪发微服出巡的时候总是找些穷困的人,给他们钱——我想给的是古金币吧——让他们结婚,或者派他们做大官。我也可以做些类似的事。我的钱同他的一样光明正大,尽管杂志上每个月都质问我的钱是怎么搞来的。对,我今晚不妨当一下哈迪发,见识见识。” 老汤姆•克劳利穿着朴素的衣服,离开他坐落在麦迪逊路的宫殿,先朝西,然后折向南面。他踩上人行道时,在所有中了魔法的城市里掌握全局的命运之神拉动了一根牵线,二十个街口之外的一个年轻人望了望墙上的挂钟,穿上了外衣。 詹姆斯•特纳在六马路一家小洗帽店干活。你推门走进那种店铺时,门铃便象报火警似地响了起来。他们洗帽子是立等——两天——可取。詹姆斯整天站在一台电动机器旁边,那台机器把帽子旋得晕头转向,效力比最醇的香槟酒还大。你对于陌生人的相貌感到好奇,有些失礼的地方是可以原谅的。我不妨把他大致描绘一下。体重,一百一十八磅;特征,头发浅色、头脑浅薄;身高,五英尺六;年龄,二十三岁左右;身穿价值十元的青蓝色哔叽衣服;口袋里有两把钥匙和六毛三分零钱。 这番描述有点儿象是警察局发布的有关詹姆斯失踪或者死亡的公告,可是你别胡思乱想。 好啦! 詹姆斯整天站着干活。他的脚很荏弱,对于加在它们上面或者下面的负担非常敏感。它们整天热辣辣地发胀,使他觉得十分痛苦,十分不便。但他每星期挣十二块钱,不管他的脚是不是愿意支持他,他总是需要这笔钱来支持他的脚。 詹姆斯•特纳正如你我一样,有他自己的幸福观。你喜欢乘了游艇和汽车到世界各地观光,用金币来扔野鸟。我喜欢在黄昏时分抽一斗烟,看一头獾、一条响尾蛇和一只猫头鹰相继回到草原上它们公共的宿地。 詹姆斯•特纳对于幸福的概念却不同;他有自己独特的见解。他干完一天活之后,便立刻回到寄宿所。晚饭是小排骨、炸焦的土豆、煮苹果(不是燉的)和泡菊苣①。饭后,他爬到五楼的后穿堂间。他脱掉鞋袜,把热辣辣的脚底板搁在铁床冰凉的横档上,开始看克拉克•拉塞尔②的海洋小说。冰凉的金属给予他脚板的愉快的慰藉是每晚的乐事。他喜爱的小说也从来没让他扫兴;海洋和航海者的冒险是他唯一的精神寄托。詹姆斯•特纳休息时的乐趣是任何百万富翁所不能企求的。 『①菊苣的根是咖啡的代用品。』『②克拉克•拉塞尔(1844~1911):英国小说家,曾在商船上工作多年,写了许多海洋冒险小说。』詹姆斯离开洗帽店后,拐到离他住处有三个街口的一个旧书摊去浏览。在那些街头书摊上,他不止一次地找到一本纸面平装的克拉克•拉塞尔的小说,售价只有原订价的一半。 当他带着学者的风度弯着腰在挑选那些五花八门的削价旧书时,哈里发老汤姆正好在附近走过。他那双由于制造了二十年洗衣肥皂(节约包装纸!)而变得精明的眼睛,马上看到了这个穷困而精明的学者,认为正是他发泄哈里发情绪的合适的对象。他跨下人行道边两级石阶,毫不犹豫地同他企图行善的对象攀谈起来。开场只属于招呼和试探性质。 詹姆斯•特纳一手拿着《衣服的哲学》①,另一手拿着《疯狂的婚姻》,冷冷地抬起眼睛。 『①《衣服的哲学》:英国散文家托马斯•卡莱尔(1795~1881)的自传体作品。』“走开,”他说,“我不想买什么衣架或者新泽西州汉基坡的地皮。去玩你的玩具熊吧。” “小伙子啊,”哈里发对洗帽店伙计的轻率并不计较,自顾自地说道,“我注意到你很好学。学习是世界上最有益的事情之一。我自己的学问不值一提,但我喜欢别的有学问的人。我是从西部来的,西部人除了事实以外不想别的。也许我不懂得你正在挑选的那些书本里的诗句和隐喻,但是我喜欢看到有人懂得它们的意思。现在我有一个建议。我的财产有四千万左右,并且一天比一天更富。我是靠制造‘帕蒂姑妈银光皂’起家的。我发明了这种肥皂的配方。我试验了三年,发现该把多少份量的氯化钠溶液和苛性钾混合起来才能凝成肥皂。我在肥皂生意上赚了九百多万,其余的钱是从玉米和小麦期货交易赚来的。你仿佛爱好文学,有研究学问的气质;我把我的打算告诉你。我要资助你上全世界最好的大学。我出钱让你游览欧洲,参观所有的美术陈列馆,最后扶植你办一个大企业。你如果有反对意见,尽可以不必做肥皂生意。从你的衣著和破旧的领带来看,你穷得很;你不至于拒绝这个建议的。嗯,你打算什么时候开始?” 洗帽店的小伙子用大城市的眼光瞅着老汤姆,这种眼光包含着冷漠而无可非议的怀疑,包含着象哈曼②那样挂得老高的,悬而未决的判断,包含着自卫、挑衅、好奇、反抗和猜疑;奇怪的是,还包含着一种对友谊和交情的孩子气的渴望,人们同陌生人相处时,这种渴望准是隐而不露的。人们要在新巴格达活下去,必须怀疑那些在他们附近的椅子、屋子、桌子、座位、道路或者房间里坐着、住着、喝着、搭车、行走或者睡觉的人。 『②哈曼:据《旧约•以斯帖记》,哈曼是犹太人的仇敌,设计杀害犹太人,被末底改和以斯帖挫败,给挂在五丈高的木架上处死。』“喂,迈克,”詹姆斯•特纳说,“你到底是干什么的——推销鞋带吗?我可不打算买。你最好脚底抹些油,赶快跑开,免得自找麻烦。你休想在我面前兜卖你说是在路上拣来的自来水笔和金丝边眼镜,或者信托公司的证券。喂,难道我象是从疯人院虚幻的避火梯上爬下来的人?你究竟有什么毛病?” “老弟,”老汤姆用十足的哈里发式的语气说,“刚才我已经讲过,我的财产有四千万。我不打算死后把钱带进棺材。我想用它来做些好事。我注意到你在这里翻阅文学书籍,便决定成全你。我捐赠了两百万元给传教团体,可是换来了什么?只不过是秘书签署的一纸收据。你正是我要找的那种年轻人,我想看看金钱能有什么成就。” 那晚,旧书摊上很难找到克拉克•拉塞尔的小说。詹姆斯•特纳那双胀痛的脚也不能改善他的心情。尽管是一个微贱的洗帽店伙计,他的气质却和任何一个哈里发一样。 “喂,老骗子,”他怒冲冲地说,“走开些。我不知道你在耍什么花招,总之无非是想兑换一张四千万元的假钞票。我身边可没有带这许多钱。不过我带着很好的左长拳,你再不跑开就要尝到它的滋味了。” “你真是个不识好歹的野小子。”哈里发说。 这一来,詹姆斯使出了他颇为自负的长拳;老汤姆揪住他的领子,踢了他三脚;洗帽店的伙计鼓起劲头扭打;两个书摊给掀翻了,书本散了一地。警察赶来,揪住一人一条胳臂,把他们带到最近的警察局。“殴打和扰乱治安。”警察对警官说。 “每人三百元保释金。”警官不容分辩地立即宣布。 “身边只有六毛三分。”詹姆斯•特纳干笑一声说。 哈里发摸遍了口袋,只凑出四块钱的小票和辅币。 “我的身价,”他说,“值四千万,不过——” “把他们押起来。”警官命令道。 詹姆斯•特纳在监禁室里躺在床上寻思。“他也许有钱,也许没有。不管有没有钱,他干吗要跑来干涉别人的事?一个人知道自己需要什么,并且能满足他的需要,那就等于有了四千万元。” 他想出一个主意,脸上泛起愉快的笑容。 他脱掉袜子,把小床拖到门前,惬意地再躺下去,把一双胀痛的脚搁在冰凉的铁栅门上。小床的毯子底下有什么鼓鼓的硬东西,硌得他的肩膀怪不舒服。他伸手去摸摸,拿出来的是一本平装的克拉克•拉塞尔的小说,书名是《水手的情人》。他心满意足地叹了一口气。 没多久,看守跑来对他说: “喂,小伙子,同你打架一起给抓进来的那个老家伙好象很有办法。他打电话给朋友。现在他在办公室,拿着和普尔门火车卧铺枕头一般大的一捆钞票。他要保你出去,让你去看他。” “对他说我不会客。”詹姆斯•特纳说。 An Adjustment of Nature In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a fountain-pen. The idea of Kraft--but that is not the beginning of the story. Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at Cypher's, on Eighth Avenue. I say "took." When we had money, Cypher got it "off of" us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in Cypher's sullenness end smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now and then we paid up back scores. But the chief thing at Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She was a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of her heroic sisters as "Liver-and-Bacon Enlivening the World." She belonged to Cypher's. You expected to see her colossal figure loom through that reeking blue cloud of smoke from frying fat just as you expect the Palisades to appear through a drifting Hudson River fog. There amid the steam of vegetables and the vapours of acres of "ham and," the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of "short orders," the cries of the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howling savages. Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majestic that they could be followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows. She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she was of such superb Evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from the beginning. Cypher's store of eatables she poured out upon us with royal indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew no exhaustion. Her voice rang like a great silver bell; her smile was many-toothed and frequent; she seemed like a yellow sunrise on mountain tops. I never saw her but I thought of the Yosemite. And yet, somehow, I could never think of her as existing outside of Cypher's. There nature had placed her, and she had taken root and grown mightily. She seemed happy, and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed pleasure of a child that receives an unexpected donation. It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held latently. It came up apropos, of course, of certain questions of art at which we were hammering. One of us compared the harmony existing between a Haydn symphony and pistache ice cream to the exquisite congruity between Milly and Cypher's. "There is a certain fate hanging over Milly," said Kraft, "and if it overtakes her she is lost to Cypher's and to us." "She will grow fat? "asked Judkins, fearsomely. "She will go to night school and become refined?" I ventured anxiously. "It is this," said Kraft, punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with a stiff forefinger. "Caesar had his Brutus--the cotton has its boliworm, the chorus girl has her Pittsburger, the summer boarder has his poison ivy, the hero has his Carnegie medal, art has its Morgan, the rose has its--" "Speak," I interrupted, much perturbed. "You do not think that Milly will begin to lace?" "One day," concluded Kraft, solemnly, "there will come to Cypher's for a plate of beans a millionaire lumberman from Wisconsin, and he will marry Milly." "Never!" exclaimed Judkins and T, in horror. "A lumberman," repeated Kraft, hoarsely. "And a millionaire lumberman!" I sighed, despairingly. "From Wisconsin!" groaned Judkins. We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her. Few things were less improbable. Milly, like some vast virgin stretch of pine woods, was made to catch the lumberman's eye. And well we knew the habits of the Badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they hie, and lay their goods at the feet of the girl who serves them beans in a beanery. Why, the alphabet itself connives. The Sunday newspaper's headliner's work is cut for him. "Winsome Waitress Wins Wealthy Wisconsin Woodsman. For a while we felt that Milly was on the verge of being lost to us. It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee of a tree murderer. No! In Cypher's she belonged--in the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone china and rattling casters. Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the wildwood discharged upon us Milly's preordained confiscator--our fee to adjustment and order. But Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of the visitation. We were at our supper of beef stew and dried apples when he trotted in as if on the heels of a dog team, and made one of the mess at our table. With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house. We embraced him as a specimen, and in three minutes we had all but died for one another as friends. He was rugged and bearded and wind-dried. He had just come off the "trail," he said, at one of the North River ferries. I fancied I could see the snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Kiondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions. "Bank drafts for two millions," was his summing up, "and a thousand a day piling up from my claims. And now I want some beef stew and canned peaches. I never got off the train since I mushed out of Seattle, and I'm hungry. The stuff the niggers feed you on Pullmans don't count. You gentlemen order what you want." And then Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm-- loomed up big and white and pink and awful as Mount Saint Elias--with a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Kiondiker threw down his pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall half-way, and stared at her. You could almost see the diamond tiaras on Milly's brow and the hand-embroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant to buy for her. At last the bollworm had attacked the cotton--the poison ivy was reaching out its tendrils to entwine the summer boarder--the millionaire lumberman, thinly disguised as the Alaskan miner, was about to engulf our Milly and upset Nature's adjustment. Kraft was the first to act. He leaped up and pounded the Klondiker's back. "Come out and drink," he shouted. "Drink first and eat afterward." Judkins seized one arm and I the other. Gaily, roaringly, irresistibly, in jolly-good-fellow style, we dragged him from the restaurant to a cafe, stuffing his pockets with his embalmed birds and indigestible nuggets. There he rumbled a roughly good-humoured protest. "That's the girl for my money," he declared. "She can eat out of my skillet the rest of her life. Why, I never see such a fine girl. I'm going back there and ask her to marry me. I guess she won't want to sling hash any more when she sees the pile of dust I've got." "You'll take another whiskey and milk now," Kraft persuaded, with Satan's smile. "I thought you up-country fellows were better sports." Kraft spent his puny store of coin at the bar and then gave Judkins and me such an appealing look that we went down to the last dime we had in toasting our guest. Then, when our ammunition was gone and the Klondiker, still somewhat sober, began to babble again of Milly, Kraft whispered into his ear such a polite, barbed insult relating to people who were miserly with their funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver and notes, calling for all the fluids in the world to drown the imputation. Thus the work was accomplished. With his own guns we drove him from the field. And then we had him carted to a distant small hotel and put to bed with his nuggets and baby seal-skins stuffed around him. "He will never find Cypher's again," said Kraft. "He will propose to the first white apron he sees in a dairy restaurant to-morrow. And Milly--I mean the Natural Adjustment--is saved!" And back to Cypher's went we three, and, finding customers scarce, we joined hands and did an Indian dance with Milly in the centre. This, I say, happened three years ago. And about that time a little luck descended upon us three, and we were enabled to buy costlier and less wholesome food than Cypher's. Our paths separated, and I saw Kraft no more and Judkins seldom. But, as I said, I saw a painting the other day that was sold for $5,000. The title was "Boadicea," and the figure seemed to fill all out-of-doors. But of all the picture's admirers who stood before it, I believe I was the only one who longed for Boadicea to stalk from her frame, bringing me corned-beef hash with poached egg. I hurried away to see Kraft. His satanic eyes were the same, his hair was worse tangled, but his clothes had been made by a tailor. "I didn't know," I said to him. "We've bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money," said he. "Any evening at 7." "Then," said I, "when you led us against the lumberman--the-- Klondiker--it wasn't altogether on account of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature?" "Well, not altogether," said Kraft, with a grin. An Afternoon Miracle At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed rangers sweltered in a little 'dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side. Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behaviour. Garcia had mentioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call and collect a painful indemnity for personal satisfaction. This Mexican, although a tremendous braggart, was thoroughly courageous, and each side of the river respected him for one of these attributes. He and a following of similar bravoes were addicted to the pastime of retrieving towns from stagnation. The day designated by Garcia for retribution was to be further signalised on the American side by a cattlemen's convention, a bull fight, and an old settlers' barbecue and picnic. Knowing the avenger to be a man of his word, and believing it prudent to court peace while three such gently social relaxations were in progress, Captain McNulty, of the ranger company stationed there, detailed his lieutenant and three men for duty at the end of the bridge. Their instructions were to prevent the invasion of Garcia, either alone or attended by his gang. Travel was slight that sultry afternoon, and the rangers swore gently, and mopped their brows in their convenient but close quarters. For an hour no one had crossed save an old woman enveloped in a brown wrapper and a black mantilla, driving before her a burro loaded with kindling wood tied in small bundles for peddling. Then three shots were fired down the street, the sound coming clear and snappy through the still air. The four rangers quickened from sprawling, symbolic figures of indolence to alert life, but only one rose to his feet. Three turned their eyes beseechingly but hopelessly upon the fourth, who had gotten nimbly up and was buckling his cartridge-belt around him. The three knew that Lieutenant Bob Buckley, in command, would allow no man of them the privilege of investigating a row when he himself might go. The agile, broad-chested lieutenant, without a change of expression in his smooth, yellow-brown, melancholy face, shot the belt strap through the guard of the buckle, hefted his sixes in their holsters as a belle gives the finishing touches to her toilette, caught up his Winchester, and dived for the door. There he paused long enough to caution his comrades to maintain their watch upon the bridge, and then plunged into the broiling highway. The three relapsed into resigned inertia and plaintive comment. "I've heard of fellows," grumbled Broncho Leathers, "what was wedded to danger, but if Bob Buckley ain't committed bigamy with trouble, I'm a son of a gun." "Peculiarness of Bob is," inserted the Nueces Kid, "he ain't had proper trainin'. He never learned how to git skeered. Now, a man ought to be skeered enough when he tackles a fuss to hanker after readin' his name on the list of survivors, anyway." "Buckley," commented Ranger No. 3, who was a misguided Eastern man, burdened with an education, "scraps in such a solemn manner that I have been led to doubt its spontaneity. I'm not quite onto his system, but he fights, like Tybalt, by the book of arithmetic." "I never heard," mentioned Broncho, "about any of Dibble's ways of mixin' scrappin' and cipherin'." "Triggernometry?" suggested the Nueces infant. "That's rather better than I hoped from you," nodded the Easterner, approvingly. "The other meaning is that Buckley never goes into a fight without giving away weight. He seems to dread taking the slightest advantage. That's quite close to foolhardiness when you are dealing with horse-thieves and fence-cutters who would ambush you any night, and shoot you in the back if they could. Buckley's too full of sand. He'll play Horatius and hold the bridge once too often some day." "I'm on there," drawled the Kid; "I mind that bridge gang in the reader. Me, I go instructed for the other chap--Spurious Somebody--the one that fought and pulled his freight, to fight 'em on some other day." "Anyway," summed up Broncho, "Bob's about the gamest man I ever see along the Rio Bravo. Great Sam Houston! If she gets any hotter she'll sizzle!" Broncho whacked at a scorpion with his four-pound Stetson felt, and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence. How well Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he forced his craven body to do the bravest deeds. Scourging himself always, as a monk whips his besetting sin, Buckley threw himself with apparent recklessness into every danger, with the hope of some day ridding himself of the despised affliction. But each successive test brought no relief, and the ranger's face, by nature adapted to cheerfulness and good-humour, became set to the guise of gloomy melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired his deeds, and his prowess was celebrated in print and by word of mouth in many camp- fires in the valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within him. Only himself knew of the horrible tightening of the chest, the dry mouth, the weakening of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves--the never- failing symptoms of his shameful malady. One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that devil- may-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck, you go into a scrap like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a complimentary wave of his tin cup, "but what it generally is." Buckley's conscience was of the New England order with Western adjustments, and he continued to get his rebellious body into as many difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose to drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden alarm that had startled the peace and dignity of the State. Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here Buckley came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators pressed about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the fragments of a plate-glass window. Inside, Buckley found Bud Dawson utterly ignoring a bullet wound in his shoulder, while he feelingly wept at having to explain why he failed to drop the "blamed masquerooter," who shot him. At the entrance of the ranger Bud turned appealingly to him for confirmation of the devastation he might have dealt. "You know, Buck, I'd 'a' plum got him, first rattle, if I'd thought a minute. Come in a-masque-rootin', playin' female till he got the drop, and turned loose. I never reached for a gun, thinkin' it was sure Chihuahua Betty, or Mrs. Atwater, or anyhow one of the Mayfield girls comin' a-gunnin', which they might, liable as not. I never thought of that blamed Garcia until--" "Garcia!" snapped Buckley. "How did he get over here?" Bud's bartender took the ranger by the arm and led him to the side door. There stood a patient grey burro cropping the grass along the gutter, with a load of kindling wood tied across its back. On the ground lay a black shawl and a voluminous brown dress. "Masquerootin' in them things," called Bud, still resisting attempted ministrations to his wounds. "Thought he was a lady till he gave a yell and winged me." "He went down this side street," said the bartender. "He was alone, and he'll hide out till night when his gang comes over. You ought to find him in that Mexican lay-out below the depot. He's got a girl down there--Pancha Sales." "How was he armed?" asked Buckley. "Two pearl-handled sixes, and a knife." "Keep this for me, Billy," said the ranger, handing over his Winchester. Quixotic, perhaps, but it was Bob Buckley's way. Another man--and a braver one--might have raised a posse to accompany him. It was Buckley's rule to discard all preliminary advantage. The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the course of Garcia's retreat. As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it went down, down, down in his bosom. ***** The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G.N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for Los Estados Unidos grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers--they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way. On a side track near the mean little 'dobe depot stood a private car, left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with the next day's regular. The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it and gringed to the conductor's hat-band slips would never have recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder's eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire length--a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius. Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the name was that of "Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe." This, her car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement, she would exhibit her "Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied Tremblers!" One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth of five nations; its architecture tent, jacal, and 'dobe; its distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger's store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town's jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte. In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe. The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was curtained off into a small reception-room. Here the admiring and propitiatory reporters were wont to sit and transpose the music of Senorita Alvarita's talk into the more florid key of the press. A picture of Abraham Lincoln hung against a wall; one of a cluster of school-girls grouped upon stone steps was in another place; a third was Easter lilies in a blood-red frame. A neat carpet was under foot. A pitcher, sweating cold drops, and a glass stood on a fragile stand. In a willow rocker, reading a newspaper, sat Alvarita. Spanish, you would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold, touched with a pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten conviction of her charm, but glance at the stacks of handbills in the corner, green, and yellow, and white. Upon them you see an incompetent presentment of the senorita in her professional garb and pose. Irresistible, in black lace and yellow ribbons, she faces you; a blue racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled twice about her waist and once about her neck, his horrid head close to hers, you perceive Kuku, the great eleven-foot Asian python. A hand drew aside the curtain that partitioned the car, and a middle- aged, faded woman holding a knife and a half-peeled potato looked in and said: "Alviry, are you right busy?" "I'm reading the home paper, ma. What do you think! that pale, tow- headed Matilda Price got the most votes in the News for the prettiest girl in Gallipo--lees." "Shush! She wouldn't of done it if you'd been home, Alviry. Lord knows, I hope we'll be there before fall's over. I'm tired gallopin' round the world playin' we are dagoes, and givin' snake shows. But that ain't what I wanted to say. That there biggest snake's gone again. I've looked all over the car and can't find him. He must have been gone an hour. I remember hearin' somethin' rustlin' along the floor, but I thought it was you." "Oh, blame that old rascal!" exclaimed the Queen, throwing down her paper. "This is the third time he's got away. George never will fasten down the lid to his box properly. I do believe he's afraid of Kuku. Now I've got to go hunt him." "Better hurry; somebody might hurt him." The Queen's teeth showed in a gleaming, contemptuous smile. "No danger. When they see Kuku outside they simply scoot away and buy bromides. There's a crick over between here and the river. That old scamp'd swap his skin any time for a drink of running water. I guess I'll find him there, all right." A few minutes later Alvarita stopped upon the forward platform, ready for her quest. Her handsome black skirt was shaped to the most recent proclamation of fashion. Her spotless shirt-waist gladdened the eye in that desert of sunshine, a swelling oasis, cool and fresh. A man's split-straw hat sat firmly on her coiled, abundant hair. Beneath her serene, round, impudent chin a man's four-in-hand tie was jauntily knotted about a man's high, stiff collar. A parasol she carried, of white silk, and its fringe was lace, yellowly genuine. I will grant Gallipolis as to her costume, but firmly to Seville or Valladolid I am held by her eyes; castanets, balconies, mantillas, serenades, ambuscades, escapades--all these their dark depths guaranteed. "Ain't you afraid to go out alone, Alviry?" queried the Queen-mother anxiously. "There's so many rough people about. Mebbe you'd better--" "I never saw anything I was afraid of yet, ma. 'Specially people. And men in particular. Don't you fret. I'll trot along back as soon as I find that runaway scamp." The dust lay thick upon the bare ground near the tracks. Alvarita's eye soon discovered the serrated trail of the escaped python. It led across the depot grounds and away down a smaller street in the direction of the little canon, as predicted by her. A stillness and lack of excitement in the neighbourhood encouraged the hope that, as yet, the inhabitants were unaware that so formidable a guest traversed their highways. The heat had driven them indoors, whence outdrifted occasional shrill laughs, or the depressing whine of a maltreated concertina. In the shade a few Mexican children, like vivified stolid idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-struck and silent, as Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman peeped from a door and stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect of the white silk parasol. A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou canon. Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was, with a kind of cockney ruralness further endorsed by the waste papers and rifled tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among its pseudo-sylvan glades and depressions, wandered the bright and unruffled Alvarita. Once she saw evidence of the recreant reptile's progress in his distinctive trail across a spread of fine sand in the arroyo. The living water was bound to lure him; he could not be far away. So sure was she of his immediate proximity that she perched herself to idle for a time in the curve of a great creeper that looped down from a giant water-elm. To reach this she climbed from the pathway a little distance up the side of a steep and rugged incline. Around her chaparral grew thick and high. A late-blooming ratama tree dispensed from its yellow petals a sweet and persistent odour. Adown the ravine rustled a seductive wind, melancholy with the taste of sodden, fallen leaves. Alvarita removed her hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of her hair, began to slowly arrange it in two long, dusky plaits. From the obscure depths of a thick clump of evergreen shrubs five feet away, two small jewel-bright eyes were steadfastly regarding her. Coiled there lay Kuku, the great python; Kuku, the magnificent, he of the plated muzzle, the grooved lips, the eleven-foot stretch of elegantly and brilliantly mottled skin. The great python was viewing his mistress without a sound or motion to disclose his presence. Perhaps the splendid truant forefelt his capture, but, screened by the foliage, thought to prolong the delight of his escapade. What pleasure it was, after the hot and dusty car, to lie thus, smelling the running water, and feeling the agreeable roughness of the earth and stones against his body! Soon, very soon the Queen would find him, and he, powerless as a worm in her audacious hands, would be returned to the dark chest in the narrow house that ran on wheels. Alvarita heard a sudden crunching of the gravel below her. Turning her head she saw a big, swarthy Mexican, with a daring and evil expression, contemplating her with an ominous, dull eye. "What do you want?" she asked as sharply as five hairpins between her lips would permit, continuing to plait her hair, and looking him over with placid contempt. The Mexican continued to gaze at her, and showed his teeth in a white, jagged smile. "I no hurt-y you, Senorita," he said. "You bet you won't," answered the Queen, shaking back one finished, massive plait. "But don't you think you'd better move on?" "Not hurt-y you--no. But maybeso take one beso--one li'l kees, you call him." The man smiled again, and set his foot to ascend the slope. Alvarita leaned swiftly and picked up a stone the size of a cocoanut. "Vamoose, quick," she ordered peremptorily, "you coon!" The red of insult burned through the Mexican's dark skin. "Hidalgo, Yo!" he shot between his fangs. "I am not neg-r-ro! Diabla bonita, for that you shall pay me." He made two quick upward steps this time, but the stone, hurled by no weak arm, struck him square in the chest. He staggered back to the footway, swerved half around, and met another sight that drove all thoughts of the girl from his head. She turned her eyes to see what had diverted his interest. A man with red-brown, curling hair and a melancholy, sunburned, smooth-shaven face was coming up the path, twenty yards away. Around the Mexican's waist was buckled a pistol belt with two empty holsters. He had laid aside his sixes--possibly in the jacal of the fair Pancha--and had forgotten them when the passing of the fairer Alvarita had enticed him to her trail. His hands now flew instinctively to the holsters, but finding the weapons gone, he spread his fingers outward with the eloquent, abjuring, deprecating Latin gesture, and stood like a rock. Seeing his plight, the newcomer unbuckled his own belt containing two revolvers, threw it upon the ground, and continued to advance. "Splendid!" murmured Alvarita, with flashing eyes. ***** As Bob Buckley, according to the mad code of bravery that his sensitive conscience imposed upon his cowardly nerves, abandoned his guns and closed in upon his enemy, the old, inevitable nausea of abject fear wrung him. His breath whistled through his constricted air passages. His feet seemed like lumps of lead. His mouth was dry as dust. His heart, congested with blood, hurt his ribs as it thumped against them. The hot June day turned to moist November. And still he advanced, spurred by a mandatory pride that strained its uttermost against his weakling flesh. The distance between the two men slowly lessened. The Mexican stood, immovable, waiting. When scarce five yards separated them a little shower of loosened gravel rattled down from above to the ranger's feet. He glanced upward with instinctive caution. A pair of dark eyes, brilliantly soft, and fierily tender, encountered and held his own. The most fearful heart and the boldest one in all the Rio Bravo country exchanged a silent and inscrutable communication. Alvarita, still seated within her vine, leaned forward above the breast-high chaparral. One hand was laid across her bosom. One great dark braid curved forward over her shoulder. Her lips were parted; her face was lit with what seemed but wonder--great and absolute wonder. Her eyes lingered upon Buckley's. Let no one ask or presume to tell through what subtle medium the miracle was performed. As by a lightning flash two clouds will accomplish counterpoise and compensation of electric surcharge, so on that eyeglance the man received his complement of manhood, and the maid conceded what enriched her womanly grace by its loss. The Mexican, suddenly stirring, ventilated his attitude of apathetic waiting by conjuring swiftly from his bootleg a long knife. Buckley cast aside his hat, and laughed once aloud, like a happy school-boy at a frolic. Then, empty-handed, he sprang nimbly, and Garcia met him without default. So soon was the engagement ended that disappointment imposed upon the ranger's warlike ecstasy. Instead of dealing the traditional downward stroke, the Mexican lunged straight with his knife. Buckley took the precarious chance, and caught his wrist, fair and firm. Then he delivered the good Saxon knock-out blow--always so pathetically disastrous to the fistless Latin races--and Garcia was down and out, with his head under a clump of prickly pears. The ranger looked up again to the Queen of the Serpents. Alvarita scrambled down to the path. "I'm mighty glad I happened along when I did," said the ranger. "He--he frightened me so!" cooed Alvarita. They did not hear the long, low hiss of the python under the shrubs. Wiliest of the beasts, no doubt he was expressing the humiliation he felt at having so long dwelt in subjection to this trembling and colouring mistress of his whom he had deemed so strong and potent and fearsome. Then came galloping to the spot the civic authorities; and to them the ranger awarded the prostrate disturber of the peace, whom they bore away limply across the saddle of one of their mounts. But Buckley and Alvarita lingered. Slowly, slowly they walked. The ranger regained his belt of weapons. With a fine timidity she begged the indulgence of fingering the great .45's, with little "Ohs" and "Ahs" of new-born, delicious shyness. The canoncito was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning glory of sunset. A scream--a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita. Back she cowered, and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What terror so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the never- before-daunted Queen? Across the path there crawled a caterpillar--a horrid, fuzzy, two- inch caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou went avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen of the Serpent Tribe--viva la reina! Babes In The Jungle 丛林中的孩子 Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe - you can't count 'em!" Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice. I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief. "Paresis or superannuated?" I asks him. "Hello, Billy," says Silver; "I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to me that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness. I've been saving New York for dessert. I know it's a low-down trick to take things from these people. They only know this and that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon. I'd hate for my mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones. She raised me better." "Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that does skin grafting?" I asks. "Well, no," says Silver; "you needn't back Epidermis to win today. I've only been here a month. But I'm ready to begin; and the members of Willie Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of whom has volunteered to contribute a portion of cuticle toward this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to the Evening Daily. "I've been studying the town," says Silver, "and reading the papers every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the City Hall knows an O'Sullivan. People here lie down on the floor and scream and kick when you are the least bit slow about taking money from them. Come up in my room and I'll tell you. We'll work the town together, Billy, for the sake of old times." Silver takes me up in a hotel. He has a quantity of irrelevant objects lying about. "There's more ways of getting money from these metropolitan hayseeds," says Silver, "than there is of cooking rice in Charleston, S. C. They'll bite at anything. The brains of most of 'em commute. The wiser they are in intelligence the less perception of cognizance they have. Why, didin't a man the other day sell J. P. Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller, Jr., for Andrea del Sarto's celebrated painting of the young Saint John! "You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy? That's gold mining stock. I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in two hours. Why? Got arrested for blocking the street. People fought to buy it. I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to the station-house, and then I took it off the market. I don't want people to give me their money. I want some little consideration connected with the transaction to keep my pride from being hurt. I want 'em to guess the missing letter in Chic-go, or draw to a pair of nines before they pay me a cent of money. "Now there's another little scheme that worked so easy I had to quit it. You see that bottle of blue ink on the table? I tattooed an anchor on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told 'em I was Admiral Dewey's nephew. They offered to cash my draft on him for a thousand, but I didn't know my uncle's first name. It shows, though, what an easy town it is. As for burglars, they won't go in a house now unless there's a hot supper ready and a few college students to wait on 'em. They're slugging citizens all over the upper part of the city and I guess, taking the town from end to end, it's a plain case of assault and Battery." "Monty," says I, when Silver had slacked, up, "you may have Manhattan correctly discriminated in your perorative, but I doubt it. I've only been in town two hours, but it don't dawn upon me that it's ours with a cherry in it. There ain't enough rus in urbe about it to suit me. I'd be a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in their hair, and run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms. They don't look easy to me." "You've got it, Billy," says Silver. "All emigrants have it. New York's bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You'll be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the people here because they don't send me all their money in laundry baskets, with germicide sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full of twenties." "I hope you are right, Monty," says I; "but I wish all the same I had been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of farmers is never so short out there but what you can get a few of 'em to sign a petition for a new post office that you can discount for $200 at the county bank. The people hear appear to possess instincts of self-preservation and illiberality. I fear me that we are not cultured enough to tackle this game." "Don't worry," says Silver. "I've got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East River ain't a river. Why, there are people living in four blocks of Broadway who never saw any kind of a building except a skyscraper in their lives! A good, live hustling Western man ought to get conspicuous enough here inside of three months to incur either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's displeasure." "Hyperbole aside," says I, "do you know of any immediate system of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit on Miss Helen Gould's doorsteps?" "Dozens of 'em," says Silver. "How much capital have you got, Billy?" "A thousand," I told him. "I've got $1,200," says he. "We'll pool and do a big piece of business. There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't know how to begin." The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel and he is all sonorous and stirred with a kind of silent joy. "We're to meet J. P. Morgan this afternoon," says he. "A man I know in the hotel wants to introduce us. He's a friend of his. He says he likes to meet people from the West." "That sounds nice and plausible," says I. "I'd like to know Mr. Morgan." "It won't hurt us a bit," says Silver, "to get acquainted with a few finance kings. I kind of like the social way New York has with strangers." The man Silver knew was named Klein. At three o'clock Klein brought his Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room. "Mr. Morgan" looked some like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel wrapped around his left foot, and he walked with a cane. "Mr. Silver and Mr. Pescud," says Klein. "It sounds superfluous," says he, "to mention the name of the greatest financial -" "Cut it out, Klein," says Mr. Morgan. "I'm glad to know you gents; I take great interest in the West. Klein tells me you're from Little Rock. I think I've a railroad or two out there somewhere. If either of you guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker I -" "Now, Pierpont," cuts in Klein, "you forget!" "Excuse me, gents!" says Morgan; "since I've had the gout so bad I sometimes play a social game of cards at my house. Neither of you never knew One-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around Little Rock? He lived in Seattle, New Mexico." Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with his can and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone of voice. "They have been pounding your stocks to-day on the Street, Pierpont?" asks Klein, smiling. "Stocks! No!" roars Mr. Morgan. "It's that picture I sent an agent to Europe to buy. I just thought about it. He cabled me to-day that it ain't to be found in all Italy. I'd pay $50,000 to-morrow for that picture - yes, $75,000. I give the agent a la carte in purchasing it. I cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a De Vinchy to -" "Why, Mr. Morgan," says klein; "I thought you owned all of the De Vinchy paintings." "What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan?" asks Silver. "It must be as big as the side of the Flatiron Building." "I'm afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver," says Morgan. "The picture is 27 inches by 42; and it is called 'Love's Idle Hour.' It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-step on the bank of a purple river. The cablegram said it might have been brought to this country. My collection will never be complete without that picture. Well, so long, gents; us financiers must keep early hours." Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a cab. Me and Silver talked about how simple and unsuspecting great people was; and Silver said what a shame it would be to try to rob a man like Mr. Morgan; and I said I thought it would be rather imprudent, myself. Klein proposes a stroll after dinner; and me and him and Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue to see the sights. Klein sees a pair of cuff links that instigate his admiration in a pawnshop window, and we all go in while he buys 'em. After we got back to the hotel and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at me and waves his hands. "Did you see it?" says he. "Did you see it, Billy?" "What?" I asks. "Why, that picture that Morgan wants. It's hanging in that pawnshop, behind the desk. I didn't say anything because Klein was there. It's the article sure as you live. The girls are as natural as paint can make them, all measuring 36 and 25 and 42 skirts, if they had any skirts, and they're doing a buck-and-wing on the bank of a river with the blues. What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give for it? Oh, don't make me tell you. They can't know what it is in that pawnshop." When the pawnshop opened the next morning me and Silver was standing there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit to buy a drink. We sauntered inside, and began to look at watch-chains. "That's a violent specimen of a chromo you've got up there," remarked Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker. "But I kind of enthuse over the girl with the shoulderblades and red bunting. Would an offer of $2.25 for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of your stock in hurrying it off the nail?" The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch-chains. "That picture," says he, "was pledged a year ago by an Italian gentleman. I loaned him $500 on it. It is called 'Love's Idle Hour,' and it is by Leonardo de Vinchy. Two days ago the legal time expired, and it became an unredeemed pledge. Here is a style of chain that is worn a great deal now." At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker $2,000 and walked out with the picture. Silver got into a cab with it and started for Morgan's office. I goes to the hotel and waits for him. In two hours Silver comes back. "Did you see Mr. Morgan?" I asks. "How much did he pay you for it?" Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover. "I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan," he says, "because Mr. Morgan's been in Europe for a month. But what's worrying me, Billy, is this: The department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for $3.48. And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone - that's what I can't understand." 丛林中的孩子* 『*英国古代民谣和儿歌中有“森林中的孩子”的故事,叙说一个恶叔叔为篡夺财产,将一对侄儿女骗至森林害死。后来这一词用来指天真轻信,容易受骗的人。』蒙塔古•西尔弗是西部第一流的街头推销员和贩卖赝品的骗子,有一次在小石城时,他对我说:“比利,如果你上了年纪,脑筋不灵,不能在成人中间做规矩的骗局,那就去纽约吧。西部每分钟产生一个冤大头①;但是纽约的冤大头却象鱼卵一般——多得数不清!” 『①这句话是十九世纪美国著名的马戏团老板巴南的名言,意谓世人容易上当受骗。』两年后,我发觉自己记不清那些俄罗斯海军上将的姓名了,又发觉左耳上长了几茎白发;我认为该是采纳西尔弗的劝告的时候了。 某天中午,我到了纽约,便去百老汇路逛逛。我竟然遇到了西尔弗。他衣著华丽,靠在一家旅馆门口,用绸手帕在擦指甲上的半月痕。 “是害了麻痹性痴呆,还是告老退休了?”我问他说。 “喂,比利,”西尔弗说,“见到你真高兴。是啊,我觉得西部的人逐渐聪明起来,有些过分了。我一直留着纽约,把它当作最后的一道点心。我认为在纽约人身上捞油水未免有点儿缺德。他们熙来攘往,懵懵懂懂,更是少用脑筋。我真不愿意让我妈知道,我在剥这些低能儿的皮。她万万不会想到我这么没出息。” “那么说,施行植皮手术的老医生的候诊室里已经挤满了人吗?”我问道。 “哎,也不尽然。”西尔弗说。“剥皮的勾当暂先不考虑。我来这里才一个月。不过我准备随时都可以开始;纽约主日学校的学员们,每人自愿捐助了一块皮,帮我撑了身上这套行头,他们很可以把相片寄到《每日晚报》上去扬扬名。 “我正在研究这个城市,”西尔弗说,“每天读报。我了解这个城市,正象市政厅里的猫了解爱尔兰籍的值班警察一般。你从这里的人身上刮钱刮得稍微慢些,他们就烧得发慌,会赖在地上乱叫乱嚷。到我的房间里去坐坐,我详细告诉你。为了旧日的交情,比利,我们一起来整治这个城市吧。” 西尔弗领我走进一家旅馆。他房间里四下搁着许多不相干的东西。 “从这些大城市的乡巴佬身上搞钱的办法,”西尔弗说,“比南卡罗来纳州查尔斯顿煮米饭的花样还要多。不论下什么饵,他们都会上钩。大部分的人脑筋相差无几。他们的智力越高,理解力就越低。哎,不久前,不是有人把小洛克菲勒的油画像当作安德烈亚•德尔•萨尔托画的著名的圣约翰像卖给约•皮•摩根的吗①?” 『①安德烈亚•德尔•萨尔托(1486~1531):意大利画家,他画的圣约翰一生事迹壁画陈列在弗罗伦萨。洛克菲勒和摩根都是美国财阀。』“你看到角落里那捆印刷品吗,比利?那是金矿股票。有一天我上街去推销,不出两小时就不得不住手了。为什么呢?因为妨碍交通,被警察抓了去。大家争先恐后抢着买,挤得水泄不通。去警察局的路上,我卖了一些股票给警察,后来我就停止出售。我不愿意人家轻易给我钱。为了保持自尊心,我做买卖时总要给人一点儿东西。在他们给我一分钱之前,我要他们猜猜芝-哥这个地名中间缺哪个字,或者在玩纸牌赌博时,让他们手里先拿到一对九。 “还有一个小计谋,由于太容易得手,我不得不放弃。你看到桌上那瓶蓝墨水吗?我在手背上画一个船锚,权充刺花,然后到银行里去,说我是杜威①上将的侄子。我开了一千元的支票,从他名下支款,银行愿意付现。可是我只知道我叔叔的姓,不知道他的名字叫什么。虽然没有成功,但这件事说明纽约是个多么容易搞钱的城市。至于窃贼,他们如今也不去人家家里了,除非先替他们预备好热的晚餐,再有几个大学生伺候他们。强盗在住宅区里杀了人,可是走遍全市只算是人身攻击罪。” 『①杜威(1837~1917):美国海军将领,一八九八年美西战争中指挥了马尼拉湾战役。』“蒙塔,”我等西尔弗歇下来时说,“你的高论准确地贬低了纽约,可是我有些怀疑。我来这里不过两小时,但我认为它不会这么轻易落到我们手里。这里没有合我口味的乡村气氛。如果居民头发上沾着稻草,穿着假天鹅绒坎肩,佩着七叶树果做的表坠,那我就放心啦。依我看,他们并不容易上钩。” “你说得不错,比利。”西尔弗说。“初来的人都有这种感觉。纽约比小石城或者欧洲大得多,它叫外来的人看了害怕。你不久就会宽心的。老实告诉你,这里的人没有痛痛快快地把他们的钱装在洗衣篮里,上面喷了消毒剂,送来给我,我真想揍他们。我讨厌去外面搞钱。在这个城里,戴钻石的是谁?哟,是骗子的老婆温妮,恶棍的新娘贝拉。要骗纽约人的钱真是易如反掌。我担心的只有一件事:等我身上装满了面额二十元的钞票,恐怕会挤折我坎肩口袋里的雪茄烟。” “我希望你说得对,蒙塔,”我说,“不过我还是后悔没有安心在小石城做些小买卖。那里的农场主永远不会少,你总可以找几个,让他们在要求添设邮局的申请书上签个名,然后拿到银行里去借两百块钱。这里的人似乎生来就明哲保身,吝啬得很。我怕凭我们的本事在这里是吃不开的。” “别担心。”西尔弗说。“我已经把这个冥顽不灵的城市估计得非常准确,就好象北河是赫德森河而东江根本不是一条江一样。住在百老汇路四个街口之内的人,除了摩天大楼之外,一辈子没有见过别的房屋!一个出色能干的西部人在这里呆上三个月,不论软哄硬骗,好歹要露几手。” “吹牛管吹牛,”我说,“你现在老实说,除了向救世军求助,或者在海伦•古尔德①小姐的门前装病告帮之外,你有没有具体的计划,可以立刻弄一两块钱来花花呢?” 『①海伦•古尔德(1868~1938):美国资本家杰•古尔德的长女,曾赠款给纽约大学。』“计划有的是。”西尔弗说。“你有多少资本,比利?” “一千元。”我告诉了他。 “我有一千二百元。”他说。“我们合伙大干一场。要挣大钱的办法实在太多啦,我简直不知道该从哪儿着手。” 第二天早晨,西尔弗到我下榻的旅馆里来看我,他容光焕发,看上去心里有说不出的高兴。 “今天下午我们去见见约•皮•摩根,”他说。“我在旅馆里认识的一个人要替我们介绍他。他是摩根的朋友。我说摩根喜欢见见西部的人。” “这倒不坏。”我说。“我很愿意认识摩根先生。” “认识认识几个金融大王,”西尔弗说,“对我们有益无害。我有点儿喜欢纽约对待外地人的社交方式。” 西尔弗认识的人姓克莱因。三点钟光景,克莱因带了他那位华尔街的朋友到西尔弗的房间来拜访我们。“摩根先生”同他照片上的模样差不多,左脚裹了一块土耳其毛巾,走路时拄着一根手杖。 “西尔弗先生,佩斯克德先生,”克莱因开口说,“我似乎不必提这位金融界最伟大的人物的名字——” “废话少说,克莱因,”摩根先生说,“同两位先生见面,我很高兴;我对西部很感兴趣。克莱因告诉我,你们是从小石城来的。我想我在那边什么地方有一两条铁路。如果你们两位喜欢玩玩沙哈①,我——” 『①一种纸牌赌博,每人先后发牌五张,四明一暗,互比大小,决定胜负。』“唉,皮尔庞特,”克莱因赶紧插嘴说,“你忘啦!” “对不起,哥儿们!”摩根说,“自从我害了痛风病以来,在家里无聊,偶尔玩玩纸牌。你们在小石城时,认不认识独眼儿彼得斯?他住在新墨西哥州的西雅图②。” 『②西雅图在美国西北部的华盛顿州;新墨西哥州在西南部;作者故意混淆,说明“摩根”的无知。』我们还来不及回答,摩根先生已经用手杖拄着地板,来回走着,嘴里不干不净地高声咒骂。 “难道华尔街今天有人抛售你的股票吗,皮尔庞特?”克莱因陪笑问道。 “股票?不是的!”摩根先生吼了起来。“是我派人去欧洲收购的那幅画。我刚想起来。他今天来电报说,找遍意大利也没有弄到。明天我愿意出五万元买那幅画——七万五千元也成。我授权派去的人要相机办理。我真不明白为什么所有的陈列馆会让一幅达•芬奇——” “哎,摩根先生,”克莱因说,“我以为你已经把达•芬奇的全部作品都买下来了。” “那幅画是什么样子,摩根先生?”西尔弗问道。“它一定大得象弗拉特艾荣大厦的门面吧。” “我怕你的艺术修养太差啦,西尔弗先生。”摩根说。“那幅画只有二十七英寸高,四十二英寸宽;名称是‘爱的闲暇’。有许多穿衣服的模特儿在紫色河岸上跳舞。电报说那幅画可能已经运到美国来了。缺了那幅画,我的收藏就不齐全。好吧,哥儿们,再见吧;我们当金融家的晚上非早睡不可。” 摩根先生和克莱因一起坐车走了。我和西尔弗谈起大人物的脑筋真简单,一点儿不怀疑别人;西尔弗说,在摩根那样的人身上找钱真叫人惭愧;我说我也认为那确实说不过去。晚饭后,克莱因建议出去散散步;于是我们三人去七马路观光。克莱因在一家当铺橱窗里看到一对袖扣很中意,他进去买,我们也跟了进去。 我们回到旅馆,克莱因走后,西尔弗挥动着手向我蹦过来。 “你看到了吗?”他问道。“你看到了吗,比利?” “看到了什么?”我问。 “哎,摩根要的那幅画。挂在当铺里,写字台后面。我没有声张,因为克莱因在场。千真万确,就是那幅画。画上的那些女孩子画得再自然没有啦,身材窈窕,如果穿衣服,一定都合乎胸围三十六英寸,腰围二十五,臀围四十二的标准,她们都在河边跳慢四步。摩根先生说他愿意出多少钱来着?噢,不用我告诉你啦。当铺里的人决不会知道那幅画是值大钱的。” 第二天早晨,当铺还没开门,我和西尔弗早就在门口等着,仿佛急于典当我们的衣服去换酒喝似的。我们走进去,先看看表链。 “上面挂的那幅五彩石印画太粗糙了。”西尔弗装出随便的样子对当铺老板说。“可是我很中意那个袒肩膀、红头发的姑娘。我给你两块两毛五分钱,我想你立刻就会脱手了吧。” 当铺老板笑了笑,继续拿出镀金表链给我们看。 “那幅画,”他说,“是去年一个意大利人抵押给我的。我凭它借了五百块钱给他。画名叫做‘爱的闲暇’,是利奥那多•达•芬奇画的。两天前,法定的抵押期限已经过了,不能再赎取了。这儿有一种表链现在很时行。” 过了半小时,我和西尔弗付了当铺老板两千元,捧着那幅画出来。西尔弗雇了一辆车去摩根的办公室。我回旅馆去等他。两小时后,西尔弗回来了。 “你见到摩根先生了吗?”我问道。“他付了你多少钱?” 西尔弗坐下来,颓然抚弄着台布的流苏。 “我根本没有见过摩根先生,”他说,“因为摩根先生一个月之前就去欧洲了。但是有一件事叫我弄不明白,比利:百货公司里都有同样的画出售,连镜框一起,每幅卖三块四毛八分钱。但是光买镜框,却要三块五毛——真把我搞糊涂啦。” Best-Seller I One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh--well, I had to go there on business. My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost anywhere. Some students of human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in life, both flag and social; but I never could. The only way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of the sleeper. The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the window-sill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of No. 9.Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was The Rose-Lady and Trevelyan, one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philistine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the window, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud, of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass company--an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years. In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and had finished with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, residence, and destination. Politics might have followed next; but I was not so ill-fated. I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of your nose. I never saw him wear but one kind of necktie, and he believes in cuff-holders and button-shoes. He is as hard and true as anything ever turned out by the Cambria Steel Works; and he believes that as soon as Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, St. Peter will come down and sit at the foot of Smithfield Street, and let somebody else attend to the gate up in the branch heaven. He believes that "our" plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world, and that when a man is in his home town he ought to be decent and law-abiding. During my acquaintance with him in the City of Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding, and coffee (hey, there!--with milk separate). Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, he told me that business had picked up since the party conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coketown. II "Say," said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his right shoe, "did you ever read one of these best-sellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an American swell--sometimes even from Chicago- -who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father's kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They're all alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is a Washington newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a Van Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat- broker worthy fifty millions. But he's always ready to break into the king row of any foreign country that sends over their queens and princesses to try the new plush seats on the Big Four or the B. and 0. There doesn't seem to be any other reason in the book for their being here. "Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home, as I said, and finds out who she is. He meets here on the corso or the strasse one evening and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of the difference in their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring in three solid pages about America's uncrowned sovereigns. If you'd take his remarks and set 'em to music, and then take the music away from 'em, they'd sound exactly like one of George Cohan's songs. "Well, you know how it runs on, if you ve read any of 'em--he slaps the king's Swiss body-guards around like everything whenever they get in his way. He's a great fencer, too. Now, I've known of some Chicago men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come to massacre the said king. And then he has to fight duels with a couple of chancellors, and foil a plot by four Austrian archdukes to seize the kingdom for a gasoline-station. "But the great scene is when his rival for the princess' hand, Count Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis and the ruined chapel, armed with a mitrailleuse, a yataghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds. This scene is what runs the best-seller into the twenty- ninth edition before the publisher has had time to draw a check for the advance royalties. "The American hero shucks his coat and throws it over the heads of the bloodhounds, gives the mitrailleuse a slap with his mitt, says 'Yah!' to the yataghan, and lands in Kid McCoy's best style on the count's left eye. Of course, we have a neat little prize-fight right then and there. The count--in order to make the go possible--seems to be an expert at the art of self-defence, himself; and here we have the Corbett-Sullivan fight done over into literature. The book ends with the broker and the princess doing a John Cecil Clay cover under the linden-trees on the Gorgonzola Walk. That winds up the love-story plenty good enough. But I notice that the book dodges the final issue. Even a best-seller has sense enough to shy at either leaving a Chicago grain broker on the throne of Lobsterpotsdam or bringing over a real princess to eat fish and potato salad in an Italian chalet on Michigan Avenue. What do you think about 'em?" "Why," said I, "I hardly know, John. There's a saying: 'Love levels all ranks,' you know." "Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are rank--on the level. I know something about literature, even if I am in plate- glass. These kind of books are wrong, and yet I never go into a train but what they pile 'em up on me. No good can come out of an international clinch between the Old-World aristocracy and one of us fresh Americans. When people in real life marry, they generally hunt up somebody in their own station. A fellow usually picks out a girl that went to the same high-school and belonged to the same singing- society that he did. When young millionaires fall in love, they always select the chorus-girl that likes the same kind of sauce on the lobster that he does. Washington newspaper correspondents always many widow ladies ten years older than themselves who keep boarding-houses. No, sir, you can't make a novel sound right to me when it makes one of C. D. Gibson's bright young men go abroad and turn kingdoms upside down just because he's a Taft American aud took a course at a gymnasium. And listen how they talk, too!" Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page. "Listen at this," said he. "Trevelyan is chinning with the Princess Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes: "'Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. Would I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am only--myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I have no title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm and a sword that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of traitors.' "Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing anything that sounded as much like canned pork as that! He'd be much more likely to fight to have an import duty put on it." "I think I understand you, John," said I. "You want fiction-writers to be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn't mix Turkish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long Island clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cowboys, or Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajahs of India." "Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 'em," added Pescud. "It don't jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it or not, and it's everybody's impulse to stick to their own class. They do it, too. I don't see why people go to work and buy hundreds of thousands of books like that. You don't see or hear of any such didoes and capers in real life." III "Well, John," said I, "I haven't read a best-seller in a long time. Maybe I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?" "Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I've had my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a house on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. Oh, I'm in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who's elected!" "Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked. "Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader grin. "0-ho!" I said. "So you've taken time enough off from your plate- glass to have a romance?" "No, no," said John. "No romance--nothing like that! But I'll tell you about it. "I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I'd ever laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business, either handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, and she wasn't the kind to start anything. She read a book and minded her business, which was to make the world prettier and better just by residing on it. I kept on looking out of the side doors of my eyes, and finally the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass business go to smash for a while. "She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over the L. and N. There she bought another ticket, and went on through Shelbyville, Frankfort, and Lexington. Along there I began to have a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they pleased, and didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to keep on the track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. I'll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people for my services any time if they knew how I managed to shadow that young lady. I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her. "The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about six in the afternoon. There were about fifty houses and four hundred niggers in sight. The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds. "A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud as Julius Caesar and Roscoe Conkling on the same post-card, was there to meet her. His clothcs were frazzled, but I didn't notice that till later. He took her little satchel, and they started over the plank- walks and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece behind 'em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the previous Saturday. "They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took my breath away when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove I ever saw was a tremendous house with round white pillars about a thousand feet high, and the yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs that you couldn't have seen the house if it hadn't been as big as the Capitol at Washington. "'Here's where I have to trail,' says I to myself. "I thought before that she seemed to be in moderate circumstances, at least. This must be the Governor's mansion, or the Agricultural Building of a new World's Fair, anyhow. I'd better go back to the village and get posted by the postmaster, or drug the druggist for some information. "In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View House. The only excuse for the name was a bay horse grazing in the front yard. I set my sample-case down, and tried to be ostensible. I told the landlord I was taking orders for plate-glass. "'I don't want no plates,' says he, 'but I do need another glass molasses-pitcher.' "By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answering questions. "'Why,' says he, 'I thought everybody knowed who lived in the big white house on the hill. It's Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and the finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They're the oldest family in the State. That was his daughter that got off the train. She's been up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick.' "I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young lady walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I stopped and raised my hat--there wasn't any other way. "'Excuse me,' says I, 'can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives?' "She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of fun in her eyes. "'No one of that name lives in Birchton,' says she. 'That is,' she goes on, 'as far as I know. Is the gentleman you are seeking white?' "Well, that tickled me. 'No kidding,' says I. 'I'm not looking for smoke, even if I do come from Pittsburgh.' "'You are quite a distance from home,' says she. "'I'd have gone a thousand miles farther,' says I. "'Not if you hadn't waked up when the train started in Shelbyville,' says she; and then she turned almost as red as one of the roses on the bushes in the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep on a bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see which train she took, and only just managed to wake up in time. "And then I told her why I had come, as respectful and earnest as I could. And I told her everything about myself, and what I was making, and how that all I asked was just to get acquainted with her and try to get her to like me. "She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes never get mixed up. They look straight at whatever she's talking to. "'I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. Pescud,' says she. 'What did you say your name is--John?' "'John A.,' says I. "'And you came mighty near missing the train at Powhatan Junction, too,' says she, with a laugh that sounded as good as a mileage-book to me. "'How did you know?' I asked. "'Men are very clumsy,' said she. 'I knew you were on every train. I thought you were going to speak to me, and I'm glad you didn't.' "Then we had more talk; and at last a kind of proud, serious look came on her face, and she turned and pointed a finger at the big house. "'The Allyns,' says she, 'have lived in Elmcroft for a hundred years. We are a proud family. Look at that mansion. It has fifty rooms. See the pillars and porches and balconies. The ceilings in the reception-rooms and the ball-room are twenty-eight feet high. My father is a lineal descendant of belted earls.' "'I belted one of 'em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in Pittsburgh,' says I, 'and he didn't offer to resent it. He was there dividing his attentions between Monongahela whiskey and heiresses, and he got fresh.' "'Of course,' she goes on, 'my father wouldn't allow a drummer to set his foot in Elmeroft. If he knew that I was talking to one over the fence he would lock me in my room.' "'Would you let me come there?' says I. 'Would you talk to me if I was to call? For,' I goes on, 'if you said I might come and see you, the earls might be belted or suspendered, or pinned up with safety- pins, as far as I am concerned.' "'I must not talk to you,' she says, 'because we have not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say good-bye, Mr.--' "'Say the name,' says I. 'You haven't forgotten it.' "'Pescud,' says she, a little mad. "'The rest of the name!' I demands, cool as could be. "'John,' says she. "'John-what?' I says. "'John A.,' says she, with her head high. 'Are you through, now?' "'I'm coming to see the belted earl to-morrow,' I says. "'He'll feed you to his fox-hounds,' says she, laughing. "'If he does, it'll improve their running,' says I. 'I'm something of a hunter myself.' "'I must be going in now,' says she. 'I oughtn't to have spoken to you at all. I hope you'll have a pleasant trip back to Minneapolis -- or Pittsburgh, was it? Good-bye!' "'Good-night,' says I, 'and it wasn't Minneapolis. What's your name, first, please?' "She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, and said: "'My name is Jessie,' says she. "'Good-night, Miss Allyn,' says I. "The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the door-bell of that World's Fair main building. After about three-quarters of an hour an old nigger man about eighty showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave him my business card, and said I wanted to see the colonel. He showed me in. "Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? That's what that house was like. There wasn't enough furniture in it to fill an eight-dollar flat. Some old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs and some framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light up. You could almost hear a band playing, and see a bunch of old-timers in wigs and white stockings dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him, although he had on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the station. "For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came mighty near getting cold feet and trying to sell him some plate-glass. But I got my nerve back pretty quick. He asked me to sit down, and I told him everything. I told him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati, and what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, and explained to him my little code of living--to be always decent and right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit. At first I thought he was going to throw me out of the window, but I kept on talking. Pretty soon I got a chance to tell him that story about the Western Congressman who had lost his pocket-book and the grass widow--you remember that story. Well, that got him to laughing, and I'll bet that was the first laugh those ancestors and horsehair sofas had heard in many a day. "We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; and then he began to ask questions, and I told him the rest. All I asked of him was to give me a chance. If I couldn't make a hit with the little lady, I'd clear out, and not bother any more. At last he says: "'There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of Charles I, if I remember rightly.' "'If there was,' says I, 'he can't claim kin with our bunch. We've always lived in and around Pittsburgh. I've got an uncle in the real- estate business, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across that story about the captain of the whaler who tried to make a sailor say his prayers?' says I. "'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,' says the colonel. "So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a customer. What a bill of glass I'd sell him! And then he says: "'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.' So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh? Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the super-annuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was in the town. "Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story. "'It's going to be a fine evening,' says I. "'He's coming,' says she. 'He's going to tell you, this time, the story about the old negro and the green watermelons. It always comes after the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was another time,' she goes on, 'that you nearly got left--it was at Pulaski City.' "'Yes,' says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the step, and I nearly tumbled off.' "'I know,' says she. 'And--and I--I was afraid you had, John A. I was afraid you had.' "And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows." IV "Coketown!" droned the porter, making his way through the slowing car. Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of an old traveller. "I married her a year ago," said John. "I told you I built a house in the East End. The belted--I mean the colonel--is there, too. I find him waiting at the gate whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story I might have picked up on the road." I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing more than a ragged hillside dotted with a score of black dismal huts propped up against dreary mounds of slag and clinkers. It rained in slanting torrents, too, and the rills foamed and splashed down through the black mud to the railroad-tracks. "You won't sell much plate-glass here, John," said I. "Why do you get off at this end-o'-the-world?" "Why," said Pescud, "the other day I took Jessie for a little trip to Philadelphia, and coming back she thought she saw some petunias in a pot in one of those windows over there just like some she used to raise down in the old Virginia home. So I thought I'd drop off here for the night, and see if I could dig up some of the cuttings or blossoms for her. Here we are. Good-night, old man. I gave you the address. Come out and see us when you have time." The train moved forward. One of the dotted brown ladies insisted on having windows raised, now that the rain beat against them. The porter came along with his mysterious wand and began to light the car. I glanced downward and saw the best-seller. I picked it up and set it carefully farther along on the floor of the car, where the rain-drops would not fall upon it. And then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life has no geographical metes and bounds. "Good-luck to you, Trevelyan," I said. "And may you get the petunias for your princess!" Between Rounds 回合之间 The May moon shone bright upon the private boarding-house of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heydey, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; handorgans, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere. The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding-house were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pancakes. In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs. McCaskey. At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth; and he apologised for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds. As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words. Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of his spouse. "I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals cold such as there's money to buy after drinkin' up yer wages at Gallegher's every Saturday evenin', and the gas man here twice to-day for his." "Woman!" said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, "the noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society. 'Tis no more than exercisin' the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the dissent of ladies blockin' the way for steppin' between them. Will ye bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?" Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware. "Pig's face, is it?" said Mrs. MeCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at her lord. Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the battle, according to courses, should have ended. But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent table d'hoter. Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite- ware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice. On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils. "'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again," meditated the policeman. "I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure, they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with." And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. "'Tis probably the cat," said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other direction. The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy, Mike, was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy--two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock. Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. "The little one lost?" he exclaimed. "I will scour the city." His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said: "Go, Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." "Give me some thirty or--sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need carfares." Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: "Oh, ar-r-Mike, f'r Gawd's sake, where is me little bit av a boy?" "When'd ye see him last?" asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the Building Trades League. "Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, "'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno. But it's lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin' on the sidewalk only this mornin'--or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with work, 'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven--" Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws. No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange. Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy's place. "Gimme a rye-high," he said to the servitor. "Haven't seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year- old loot kid around here anywhere, have you?" Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. "Think of that dear little babe," said Miss Purdy, "lost from his mother's side-- perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds-- oh, isn't it dreadful?" "Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say I start out and help look for um!" "Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing--so reckless--suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should befall you, then what--" Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines. In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below, and thrust their heads out of the window. "'Tis little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, "the beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!" "The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the window. "Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be different. If 'twas a woman I'd be willin', for they leave peace behind 'em when they go." Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm. "Jawn," she said, sentimentally, "Missis Murphy's little bye is lost. 'Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn, 'tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had had one six years ago." "We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact. "But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all." "Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. "'Tis Pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrim." "Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth tin dozen bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named." She leaned over the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below. "Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey, softly, "I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye." "'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say," said her husband, "and hurry-up turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. 'Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right, and tell no lie." Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough hand in hers. "Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. "'Tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breakin' me heart." Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulders of his wife. "'Tis foolishness, of course," said he, roughly, "but I'd be cut up some meself if our little Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard with ye, Judy. Forget it." They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted below. Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling the air with rumours, and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went. Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house. "What's up now, Judy?" asked Mr. McCaskey. "'Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. "She says she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room." Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly. "That's yer Phelan," he shouted, sardonically. "Divil a bit would a Pat have done that trick. If the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup." Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her mouth drawn down. Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment, where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece. "By the deported snakes!" he exclaimed, "Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fightin' for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm." Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner. Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night. 回合之间 五月的月亮明晃晃地照着墨菲太太经营的寄宿舍。查一下历书就可以知道,月亮的光辉同时也洒到一片广大的地区。春天披上了盛装,枯草热紧接着就要猖狂。公园里满是新绿和来自西部与南方的商贾行旅。花在招展。避暑胜地的代理人在招徕顾客;气候和法庭的判决都日趋温和;到处是手风琴声、喷泉和纸牌戏。 墨菲太太寄宿舍的窗户都敞开着。一群房客坐在门口的高石阶上,屁股下面垫着又圆又扁的草编,象是德国式煎薄饼。 麦卡斯基太太倚在二楼前面的一个窗口上,等她丈夫回家。开在桌上的晚饭快凉了。它的火气钻到了麦卡斯基太太的肚子里。 九点钟,麦卡斯基终于来了。他胳臂上搭着外套,嘴里叼着烟斗,一面小心翼翼地在房客们坐的石阶上寻找空隙,以便搁下他那九号长四号宽的大脚,一面因为打扰了他们而不住地道歉。 他推开房门时,碰到的情况却出乎意外。他平日要闪避的不是火炉盖,便是捣土豆用的木杵,这次飞来的却只是话语。 麦卡斯基先生推断,温和的五月的月光已经软化了老伴的心。 “我全听到啦。”代替锅碗瓢盆的话语是这样开头的。“你笨手笨脚,踩到了马路上那些不三不四的家伙的衣角倒会赔不是,你自己的老婆伸着脖子在窗口等你,把脖子伸得有晒衣绳那么长,即使你在她脖子上踩过,连一声‘对不起’都不吭;你每星期六晚上在加勒吉的店里喝酒,把工钱几乎统统喝光,剩下一点儿来买吃的,现在又统统搁凉,收煤气帐的今天又来过两次啦。” “婆娘!”麦卡斯基把外套和帽子往椅子上一扔,说道:“你这样聒噪,害得我胃口都倒了。你不讲礼貌,就是拆社会基础的墙脚。太太们挡着道,你打她们中间走过,说声借光也是爷们儿的本分。你这副猪脸能不能别再对着窗口,赶快去弄饭?” 麦卡斯基太太慢吞吞地站起来。她的举动有点不对头,使麦卡斯基先生有了提防。当她的嘴角突然象晴雨计的指针那样往下一沉的时候,往往预告着碗盏锅罐的来临。 “你说是猪脸吗?”麦卡斯基太太一面说,一面猛地把一只盛满咸肉萝卜的炖锅向她丈夫扔去。 麦卡斯基先生是个随机应变的老手。他知道头一道小菜之后该上什么。桌上有一盘配着酢浆草的烤猪肉。他端起这个来回敬,随即招来一个搁在陶器碟子里的面包布丁。丈夫很准确地摔过去的一大块瑞士奶酪打在麦卡斯基太太的眼睛下面。当她用满满一壶又烫又黑、半香半臭的咖啡作为恰当的答复时,根据上菜的规矩,这场战斗照说该结束了。 但是麦卡斯基先生不是那种吃五毛钱客饭的人。让那些劣等的波希米亚人把咖啡当作结束吧,假如他们愿意的话。让他们去丢人现眼吧。他可精明得多。他不是没有见识过饭后洗手指的水盂。墨菲寄宿舍虽然没有这种玩意儿,可是它们的代用品就在手边。他得意扬扬地举起那个搪瓷脸盆,朝他欢喜冤家的头上一送。麦卡斯基太太躲过了这一招。她伸手去拿熨斗,打算把它当作提神酒,结束这场可口的决斗。这当儿,楼下传来一声响亮的哀号,使她和麦卡斯基不由自主地停了下来,暂时休战。 警察克利里站在房子犄角的人行道上,竖起耳朵倾听家庭用具的砰嘭声。 “约翰•麦卡斯基同他太太又干上啦。”警察思忖着。“我要不要上楼去劝劝呢?还是不去为好。他们是名正言顺的夫妻,平时又没什么娱乐。不会闹得太久的。当然啦,再闹下去的话,他们要借用人家的碗盏才行。” 正在那时候,楼下响起了那声尖厉的号叫,说明不是出了恐怖的事情,便是情况危急。“那也许是猫叫。”警察克利里说着,匆匆朝相反方向走开。 坐在石阶上的房客们骚动起来。保险公司掮客出身,以问长问短为职业的图米先生,走进屋去打听尖叫的原因。他回来报信说,墨菲太太的小儿子迈克不见了。跟在报信人后面蹦出来的是墨菲太太本人——两百磅的眼泪和歇斯底里,呼天抢地地哀悼失踪的三十磅的雀斑和调皮捣乱。你说这种描写手法大煞风景吗,一点不错;可是图米先生挨在女帽商珀迪小姐的身边坐下,他们的手握在一起表示同情。沃尔什姊妹,那两个整天抱怨过道里太嘈杂的老小姐,立刻探听有没有谁在钟座后面找过。 跟他的胖太太坐在石阶最上面一级的格里格少校站了起来,扣好外套。“小家伙不见了吗?”他嚷道。“我走遍全市去找。”他妻子一向不准他在天黑之后出去,现在却用男中音的嗓门说道:“去吧,卢多维克!看到那位母亲如此伤心而坐视不救的人,才叫没有心肝儿呢。”“亲爱的,给我三毛——还是给我六毛钱吧,”少校说。“走失的小孩有时追得很远。我可能要坐车子,身边得备些钱。” 住在四楼后房的丹尼老头,坐在石阶最下面的一级,正借着街灯的亮光在看报纸。他翻过一版,继续看那篇有关木匠罢工的报道。墨菲太太逼紧了嗓子朝月亮喊道:“啊,我们的迈克呀,天哪,我的小宝贝儿在哪儿呀?” “你最后一次见到他是在什么时候?”丹尼老头一面问,一面还在看建筑公会的报告。 “哟,”墨菲太太哀叫着,“也许是昨天,也许是四个钟头以前。我记不清啦。我的小儿子迈克准是走失啦。今天早晨——也许是星期三吧——他还在人行道上玩耍。我实在太忙,连日子也记不清楚。我在屋子里上上下下都找遍了,就是找不着他。哟,老天哪——” 任凭人们怎样谩骂,这座大城市始终是沉默、冷酷和庞大的。人们说它是铁石心肠,说它没有恻隐之心;人们把它的街道比作荒寂的森林和熔岩的沙漠。其实不然,龙虾的硬壳里面还可以找到美味可口的食品呢。这个譬喻也许不很恰当。不过,不至于有谁见怪。我们没有足够的把握是不会随便把人家叫做龙虾的①。 『①美国俚语中把容易受骗的人称作“龙虾”。』小孩的迷失比任何灾害更能引起人们的同情。他们的小脚是那么荏弱无力,世道又是那么崎岖坎坷。 格里格少校匆匆拐过街角,跨进比利的铺子。“来一杯威士忌苏打。”他对伙计说。“你有没有在附近什么地方见到一个六岁左右,罗圈腿,肮脏脸的走失了的小鬼?” 图米先生坐在石阶上,握着珀迪小姐的手不放。“想起那个可爱的小东西,”珀迪小姐说,“失去了母亲的保护——也许已经倒在奔马的铁蹄下面了——哦,太可怕了!” “可不是吗?”图米先生捏紧她的手,表示同意说。“你看我要不要出去帮着找他呢?” “也许你应该去,”珀迪小姐说,“可是啊,图米先生,你这样见义勇为——这样不顾一切——假如你出于热心,遭到了什么意外,我怎么——” 丹尼老头用手指顺着行句,继续在看那篇仲裁协定。 二楼前房的麦卡斯基先生和太太走到窗口来喘口气。麦卡斯基先生弯起食指在抠坎肩里面的萝卜,他太太的眼睛被烤猪肉里的盐分搞得很不自在,正在揉擦。他们听到楼下的喧哗,把头伸出窗外。 “小迈克不见了,”麦卡斯基太太压低了嗓门说,“那个可爱的、淘气的、天使般的小东西!” “那个小家伙走失了吗?”麦卡斯基先生把身子探出窗外说。“哎,那可糟糕。孩子应当另眼相看。换了女人就好了,因为她们一走就天下太平。” 麦卡斯基太太不去理会这句带刺的话,她拽住丈夫的胳臂。 “约翰,”她感情冲动地说,“墨菲太太的小孩儿不见了。这个城市太大,小孩儿容易走失。他只有六岁呐。约翰,假如我们六年前生个孩子,现在也有这么大了。” “我们从来没有生过呀。”麦卡斯基先生把事实琢磨了一会儿之后说。 “可是如果我们生过的话,约翰,我们的小费伦今晚在城里迷了路,走不见了,你想我们心里该有多难受呀。” “你在说废话。”麦卡斯基先生说。“他应该叫做帕特,跟我那住在坎特里的老爸爸的名字。” “你胡扯!”麦卡斯基太太说,声调里倒没有火气。“我哥哥抵得上十打泥腿子麦卡斯基。孩子一定要起他的名字。”她从窗台上探出上身,观看下面的纷扰。 “约翰,”麦卡斯基太太温和地说,“对不起,我对你太急躁了。” “正如你说的,”她丈夫说,“急躁的布丁,匆忙的萝卜,还有撵人的咖啡。你不妨管它叫做一客快餐,准没错儿。” 麦卡斯基太太伸手勾住丈夫的胳臂,握住他那粗糙的手。 “听听可怜的墨菲太太的哭声,”她说,“一个小不点儿的孩子在这样一个大城市里走失,实在太可怕了。假如换了我们的小费伦,约翰,我的心都要碎啦。” 麦卡斯基先生不自在地抽回了手。但是,他把手搭在了在他身边的太太的肩膀上。 “这种说法固然荒唐,”他粗鲁地说,“但是如果我们的小——帕特碰上绑票一类的事,我也要伤心的。不过我们从来没有生过孩子。有时候我太不应该,我对你太粗暴了,朱迪。别搁在心上。” 他们偎依着,望着下面演出的伤感的悲剧。 他们这样坐了很久。人们在人行道上涌来涌去,凑在一起打听消息,传播着许许多多的谣言和毫无根据的揣测。墨菲太太象犁地似地在他们中间穿进穿出,仿佛一座挂着泪水瀑布、哗哗直响的肉山。报信人你来我往,忙个不停。 寄宿舍门前响起一片喧嘈的人声,又闹腾开了。 “又是怎么回事,朱迪?”麦卡斯基先生问道。 “是墨菲太太的声音。”麦卡斯基太太一面倾听,一面说。“她说她在屋里找到了小迈克,他在床底下一卷漆布后面睡着了。” 麦卡斯基先生哈哈大笑。 “你的费伦就是那样。”他讥讽地喊道。“换了帕特,才不会玩那种鬼花样呢。我们那个未曾出生的小孩儿如果走失不见了,尽管叫他费伦好啦,看他象条小癞皮狗那样躲在床底下。” 麦卡斯基太太慢吞吞地站起来,朝碗柜走去,她两个嘴角往下一沉。 人群散开之后,警察克利里才从拐角那儿踱回来。他竖起耳朵听着麦卡斯基家的住屋,不禁大吃一惊:那里铁器瓷器的砰嘭声,投掷厨房用具的哐啷声似乎跟刚才一样响亮。警察克利里掏出挂表。 “好家伙!”他脱口喊道。“照我的表看来,约翰•麦卡斯基同他的太太已经干了一小时又十五分钟。他太太的体重比他多四十磅,希望他加把劲。” 警察克利里慢悠悠地拐过街角走了。 丹尼老头折好报纸,慌慌忙忙地走上石阶,墨菲太太正准备锁上门过夜。 A Bird Of Bagdad Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. Quigg's restaurant is in Fourth Avenue - that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue - born and bred in the Bowery - staggers northward full of good resolutions. Where it crosses Fourteenth Street it struts for a brief moment proudly in the glare of the museums and cheap theatres. It may yet become a fit mate for its high-born sister boulevard to the west, or its roaring, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east. It passes Union Square; and here the hoofs of the dray horses seem to thunder in unison, recalling the tread of marching hosts - Hooray! But now come the silent and terrible mountains - buildings square as forts, high as the clouds, shutting out the sky, where thousands of slaves bend over desks all day. On the ground floors are only little fruit shops and laundries and book shops, where you see copies of "Littell's Living Age" and G. W. M. Reynold's novels in the windows. And next - poor Fourth Avenue! - the street glides into a mediaeval solitude. On each side are shops devoted to "Antiques." Let us say it is night. Men in rusty armor stand in the windows and menace the hurrying cars with raised, rusty iron gauntlets. Hauberks and helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound citizens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live inclosed by these mortuary relics, and trod by these spectral citizens in whose sunken hearts scarce one good whoop or tra-la-la remained? Not Fourth Avenue. Not after the tinsel but enlivening glories of the Little Rialto - not after the echoing drum-beats of Union Square. There need be no tears, ladies and gentlemen; 'tis but the suicide of a street. With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue dives headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth and is never seen again. Near the sad scene of the thoroughfare's dissolution stood the modest restaurant of Quigg. It stands there yet if you care to view its crumbling red-brick front, its show window heaped with oranges, tomatoes, layer cakes, pies, canned asparagus - its papier-mache lobster and two Maltese kittens asleep on a bunch of lettuce - if you care to sit at one of the little tables upon whose cloth has been traced in the yellowest of coffee stains the trail of the Japanese advance - to sit there with one eye on your umbrella and the other upon the bogus bottle from which you drop the counterfeit sauce foisted upon us by the cursed charlatan who assumes to be our dear old lord and friend, the "Nobleman in India." Quigg's title came through his mother. One of her ancestors was a Margravine of Saxony. His father was a Tammany brave. On account of the dilution of his heredity he found that he could neither become a reigning potentate nor get a job in the City Hall. So he opened a restaurant. He was a man full of thought and reading. The business gave him a living, though he gave it little attention. One side of his house bequeathed to him a poetic and romantic adventure. The other have him the restless spirit that made him seek adventure. By day he was Quigg, the restaurateur. By night he was the Margrave - the Caliph - the Prince of Bohemia - going about the city in search of the odd, the mysterious, the inexplicable, the recondite. One night at 9, at which hour the restaurant closed, Quigg set forth upon his quest. There was a mingling of the foreign, the military and the artistic in his appearance as he buttoned his coat high up under his short-trimmed brown and gray beard and turned westward toward the more central life conduits of the city. In his pocket he had stored an assortment of cards, written upon, without which he never stirred out of doors. Each of those cards was good at his own restaurant for its face value. Some called simply for a bowl of soup or sandwiches and coffee; others entitled their bearer to one, two, three or more days of full meals; a few were for single regular meals; a very few were, in effect, meal tickets good for a week. Of riches and power Margrave Quigg had none; but he had a Caliph's heart - it may be forgiven him if his head fell short of the measure of Harun Al Rashid's. Perhaps some of the gold pieces in Bagdad had put less warmth and hope into the complainants among the bazaars than had Quigg's beef stew among the fishermen and one-eyed calenders of Manhattan. Continuing his progress in search of romance to divert him, or of distress that he might aid, Quigg became aware of a fast-gathering crowd that whooped and fought and eddied at a corner of Broadway and the crosstown street that he was traversing. Hurrying to the spot he beheld a young man of an exceedingly melancholy and preoccupied demeanor engaged in the pastime of casting silver money from his pockets in the middle of the street. With each motion of the generous one's hand the crowd huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy. Traffic was suspended. A policman in the centre of the mob stooped often to the ground as he urged the blockaders to move on. The Margrave saw at a glance that here was food for his hunger after knowledge concerning abnormal working of the human heart. He made his way swiftly to the young man's side and took his arm. "Come with me at once," he said, in the low but commanding voice that his waiters had learned to fear. "Pinched," remarked the young man, looking up at him with expressionless eyes. "Pinched by a painless dentist. Take me away, flatty, and give me gas. Some lay eggs and some lay none. When is a hen?" Still deeply seized by some inward grief, but tractable, he allowed Quigg to lead him away and down the street to a little park. There, seated on a bench, he upon whom a corner of the great Caliph's mantle has descended, spake with kindness and discretion, seeking to know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing his soul and driving him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste of his substance and stores. "I was doing the Monte Cristo act as adapted by Pompton, N. J., wasn't I?" asked the young man. "You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to scramble after," said the Margrave. "That's it. You buy all the beer you can hold, and then you throw chicken feed to - Oh, curse that word chicken, and hens, feathers, roosters, eggs, and everything connected with it!" "Young sir," said the Margrave kindly, but with dignity, "though I do not ask your confidence, I invite it. I know the world and I know humanity. Man is my study, though I do not eye him as the scientist eyes a beetle or as the philanthropist gazes at the objects of his bounty - through a veil of theory and ignorance. It is my pleasure and distraction to interest myself in the peculiar and complicated misfortunes that life in a great city visits upon my fellow-men. You may be familiar with the history of that glorious and immortal ruler, the Caliph Harun Al Rashid, whose wise and beneficent excursions among his people in the city of Bagdad secured him the privilege of relieving so much of their distress. In my humble way I walk in his footsteps. I seek for romance and adventure in city streets - not in ruined castles or in crumbling palaces. To me the greatest marvels of magic are those that take place in men's hearts when acted upon by the furious and diverse forces of a crowded population. In your strange behavior this evening I fancy a story lurks. I read in your act something deeper than the wanton wastefulness of a spendthrift. I observe in your countenance the certain traces of consuming grief or despair. I repeat - I invite your confidence. I am not without some power to alleviate and advise. Will you not trust me?" "Gee, how you talk!" exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admiration supplanting for a moment the dull sadness of his eyes. "You've got the Astor Library skinned to a synopsis of preceding chapters. I mind that old Turk you speak of. I read 'The Arabian Nights' when I was a kid. He was a kind of Bill Devery and Charlie Schwab rolled into one. But, say, you might wave enchanted dishrags and make copper bottles smoke up coon giants all night without ever touching me. My case won't yield to that kind of treatment." "If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, serious smile. "I'll spiel it in about nine words," said the young man, with a deep sigh, "but I don't think you can help me any. Unless you're a peach at guessing it's back to the Bosphorous for you on your magic linoleum." THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN AND THE HARNESS MAKER'S RIDDLE "I work in Hildebrant's saddle and harness shop down in Grant Street. I've worked there five years. I get $18 a week. That's enough to marry on, ain't it? Well, I'm not going to get married. Old Hildebrant is one of these funny Dutchmen - you know the kind - always getting off bum jokes. He's got about a million riddles and things that he faked from Rogers Brothers' great-grandfather. Bill Watson works there, too. Me and Bill have to stand for them chestnuts day after day. Why do we do it? Well, jobs ain't to be picked off every Anheuser bush - And then there's Laura. "What? The old man's daughter. Comes in the shop every day. About nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the palisades of the Rhine and charms the clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the best harness blacking - think of that! "Me? well, it's either me or Bill Watson. She treats us both equal. Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me? - well, you saw me plating the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver tonight. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst. "How? Why, old Hildebrandt say to me and Bill this afternoon: 'Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide - is not that - hein?' And he hands us a riddle - a conundrum, some calls it - and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that'll carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair of traces. "The riddle? Why, it was this: 'What kind of a hen lays the longest? Think of that! What kind of a hen lays the longest? Ain't it like a Dutchman to risk a man's happiness on a fool proposition like that? Now, what's the use? What I don't know about hens would fill several incubators. You say you're giving imitations of the old Arab guy that gave away - libraries in Bagdad. Well, now, can you whistle up a fairy that'll solve this hen query, or not?" When the young man ceased the Margrave arose and paced to and fro by the park bench for several minutes. Finally he sat again, and said, in grave and impressive tones: "I must confess, sir, that during the eight years that I have spent in search of adventure and in relieving distress I have never encountered a more interesting or a more perplexing case. I fear that I have overlooked hens in my researches and observations. As to their habits, their times and manner of laying, their many varieties and cross-breedings, their span of life, their -" "Oh, don't make an Ibsen drama of it!" interrupted the young man, flippantly. "Riddles - especially old Hildebrant's riddles - don't have to be worked out seriously. They are light themes such as Sim Ford and Harry Thurston Peck like to handle. But, somehow, I can't strike just the answer. Bill Watson may, and he may not. To-morrow will tell. Well, Your Majesty, I'm glad anyhow that you butted in and whiled the time away. I guess Mr. Al Rashid himself would have bounced back if one of his constituents had conducted him up against this riddle. I'll say good night. Peace fo' yours, and what-you-may-call-its of Allah." The Margrave, still with a gloomy air, held out his hand. "I cannot exppress my regret," he said, sadly. "Never before have I found myself unable to assist in some way. 'What kind of a hen lays the longest? It is a baffling problem. There is a hen, I believe, called the Plymouth Rock that -" "Cut it out," said the young man. "The Caliph trade is a mighty serious one. I don't suppose you'd even see anything funny in a preacher's defense of John D. Rockefeller. Well, good night, Your Nibs." From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pockets. He drew forth a card and handed it to the young man. "Do me the favor to accept this, anyhow," he said. "The time may come when it might be of use to you." "Thanks!" said the young man, pocketing it carelessly. "My name is Simmons." *** Shame to him who would hint that the reader's interest shall altogether pursue the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. I am indeed astray if my hand fail in keeping the way where my peruser's heart would follow. Then let us, on the morrow, peep quickly in at the door of Hildebrant, harness maker. Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench, silverbuckling a raw leather martingale. Bill Watson came in first. "Vell," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with the vile conceit of the joke-maker, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?'" "Er - why, I think so," said Bill, rubbing a servile chin. "I think so, Mr. Hildebrant - the one that lives the longest - Is that right?" "Nein!" said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently. "You haf not guessed der answer." Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bachelorhood. In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco - pale, melancholy, hopeless. "Vell," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?'" Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye. Should he curse this mountain of pernicious humor - curse him and die? Why should - But there was Laura. Dogged, speechless, he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and stood. His hand encountered the strange touch of the Margrave's card. He drew it out and looked at it, as men about to be hanged look at a crawling fly. There was written on it in Quigg's bold, round hand: "Good for one roast chicken to bearer." Simmons looked up with a flashing eye. "A dead one!" said he. "Goot!" roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. "Dot is right! You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party." A Blackjack Bargainer The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree's law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creakv old arm- chair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street -- the main street of the town of Bethel. Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley. The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the "court- house gang" was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had -- first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. The "gang" had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing "from the valley," sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool. Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily tra- versed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left -- Colonel Abner Col- trane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree's father. The feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong and slaughter. But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep -- but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years. He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity. One more chance -- he was saying to himself -- if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted. He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. There had come from "back yan'" in the mountains two of the strangest creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. "Back yan'," with a wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the mountaineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed gorges, the haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf's den, and the boudoir of the bear. In the cabin far up on Blackjack's shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years. They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him "crazy as a loon." He acknowledged no occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he "moonshined" occasionally by way of diversion. Once the "revenues" had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he had been sent to state's prison for two years. Released, he popped back into his hole like an angry weasel. Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into Blackjack's bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner. One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey's cabin. Pike lifted his squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on the chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence of anything resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica underlying the said property. When the Garveys became possessed of so many dol- lars that they faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small cannon -- doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price -- might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever. But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs. Garvey's bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex -- to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike's proposed system of fortifica- tions, and announced that thev would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially. And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey's preference for one of the large valley towns and Pike's hankering for primeval solitudes. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions omportable with Martella's ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable. Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree's feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the spendthrift's shaking hands. Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers. A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a slothful gray horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the middle of the street as it neared Goree's office, and stopped in the gutter directly in front of his door. On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in a skintight silk dress of the description known as "change- able," being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-omamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However Martella Garvey's heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountain- side. She could always hear the awful silence of Black- jack sounding through the stillest of nights. Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the transformed, the recently civilized. The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts upon Garvey's soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man's countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile as a statue's. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account for the visit. "Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?" he inquired. "Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo' old place, and she likes the neighbourhood. Society is what she 'lows she wants, and she is gettin' of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The best folks hev axed her to differ'nt kinds of doin's. I cyan't say, Mr. Goree, that sech things suits me -- fur me, give me them thar." Garvey's huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains. "That's whar I b'long, 'mongst the wild honey bees and the b'ars. But that ain't what I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar's somethin' you got what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy." "Buy!" echoed Goree. "From me?" Then he laughed harshly. "I reckon you are mistaken about that. I reckon you are mistaken about that. I sold out to you, as you yourself expressed it, 'lock, stock and barrel.' There isn't even a ramrod left to sell." "You've got it; and we 'uns want it. 'Take the money,' says Missis Garvey, 'and buy it fa'r and squared'.'" Goree shook his head. "The cupboard's bare," he said. "We've riz," pursued the mountaineer, undetected from his object, "a heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner every day. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society. But there's somethin' we need we ain't got. She says it ought to been put in the 'ventory ov the sale, but it tain't thar. 'Take the money, then,' says she, 'and buy it fa'r and squar'."' "Out with it," said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient. Garvey threw his slouch bat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing his unblinking eves upon Goree's. "There's a old feud," he said distinctly and slowly, "'tween you 'uns and the Coltranes." Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from "back yan'" knew it as well as the lawyer did. "Na offense," he went on "but purely in the way of business. Missis Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the mountains hev 'em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin' on feuds f'om twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo' uncle, Jedge Paisley Goree, 'journed co't and shot Len Coltrane f'om the bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f'om the po' white trash. Nobody wouldn't pick a feud with we 'uns, no mo'n with a fam'ly of tree-toads. Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We 'uns ain't quality, but we're uyin' into it as fur as we can. 'Take the money, then,' says Missis Garvey, 'and buy Mr. Goree's feud, fa'r and squar'.'" The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table. "Thar's two hundred dollars, Mr. Goree; what you would call a fa'r price for a feud that's been 'lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar's only you left to cyar' on yo' side of it, and you'd make mighty po' killin'. I'll take it off yo' hands, and it'll set me and Missis Garvey up among the quality. Thar's the money." The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself, writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed Garvey's last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the court-house could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot, for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated across the sqquare upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood on Goree's brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from under the table, and filled a tumbler from it. "A little corn liquor, Mr. Garvey? Of course you are joking about what you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn't it? Feuds. Prime, two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged -- two hundred, I believe you said, Mr. Garvey?" Goree laughed self-consciously. The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and drank the whisky without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and taste. "Two hundred," repeated Garvey. "Thar's the money." A sudden passion flared up in Goree's brain. He struck the table with his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He flinched as if something had stung him. "Do you come to me," he shouted, "seriously with such a ridiculous, insulting, darned-fool proposition?" "It's fa'r and squar'," said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out his hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger at himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that were being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged gentleman to an anxious chafferer recom- mending his goods. "Don't be in a hurry, Garvey," he said, his face crimson and his speech thick. "I accept your p-p-proposition, though it's dirt cheap at two hundred. A t-trade's all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey?" Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. "Missis Garvev will be pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a scrap ov writin', Mr. Goree, you bein' a lawyer, to show we traded." Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in his moist hand. Everything else sud- denly seemed to grow trivial and light. "Bill of sale, by all means. 'Right, title, and interest in and to' . . . 'forever warrant and -- ' No, Garvey, we'll have to leave out that 'defend,'" said Goree with a loud laugh. "You'll have to defend this title yourself." The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him, folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket. Goree was standing near the window. "Step here, said, raising his finger, "and I'll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he goes, down the other side of the street." The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect, portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long, double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree glanced at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here was its counterpart. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs. "Is that him? Why, that's the man who sent me to the penitentiary once!" "He used to be district attorney," said Goree care- lessly. "And, by the way, he's a first-class shot." "I kin hit a squirrel's eye at a hundred yard," said Garvey. "So that thar's Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin'. I'll take keer ov this feud, Mr. Goree, better'n you ever did!" He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betray- ing a slight perplexity. "Anything else to-day?" inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. "Any family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low as the lowest." "Thar was another thing," replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, "that Missis Garvey was thinkin' of. 'Tain't so much in my line as t'other, but she wanted partic'lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin', 'pay fur it,' she says, 'fa'r and squar'.' Thar's a buryin' groun', as you know, Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo' old place, under the cedars. Them that lies thar is yo' folks what was killed by the Coltranes. The monyments has the names on 'em. Missis Garvev says a fam'ly buryin' groun'- is a sho' sign of quality. She says ef we git the feud thar's somethin' else ought to go with it. The names on them moiivments is 'Goree,' but they can be changed to ourn by -- " "Go. Go!" screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking. "Go, you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his ancestors -- go!" The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the court-house. At three o'clock in the morning they brought him back to his office, shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man "from the valley" acting as escort. "On the table," said one of them, and they deposited him there among the litter of his unprofitable books and papers. "Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he's liquored up," sighed the sheriff reflectively. "Too much," said the gay attorney. "A man has no business to play poker who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped to-night." "Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain't had a cent fur over a month, I know." "Struck a client, maybe. Well, let's get home before daylight. He'll be all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the cranium." The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching, white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table's débris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly, smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane. A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of these two families faced each other in peace. Goree's eyelids puckered as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he smiled serenely. "Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?" he said calmly. "Do you know me, Yancey?" asked Coltrane. "Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end." So he had -- twenty-four years ago; when Yancey's father was his best friend. Goree's eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. "Lie still, and I'll bring you some," said he. There was a pump in the yard at the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the click of its handle, and the bubbling of the falling stream. Col- trane brought a pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink. Presently Goree sat up -- a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax soiled and crumpled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He tried to wave one of his hands toward the colonel. "Ex-excuse-everything, will you?" he said. "I must have drunk too much whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table." His brows knitted into a puzzled frown. "Out with the boys awhile?" asked Coltrane kindly. "No, I went nowhere. I haven't had a dollar to spend in the last two months. Struck the demijohn too often. I reckon, as usual." Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder. "A little while ago, Yancey," he began, "you asked me if I had brought Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren't quite awake then, and must have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I want you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old playmate, and to my old friend's son. They know that I am going to bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay until you are yourself aain, and as much longer as you will. We heard of your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with me?" "Trouble!" said Goree, opening his eyes wide. "There was never any trouble between us that I know of. I'm sure we've always been the best friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home as I am -- a drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and gambler -- " He lurched from the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked to him persist- ently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple moun- tain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting upon the genuineness of the invitation. Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber from a high mountain-side to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once invented a device for this purpose -- a series of slides and chutes- upon which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow, delighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in demonstration of what he could and would do. The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the progress he had made. Bethel received the surprise of its existence that after- noon when a Coltrane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by side they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down across the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had brushed and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he was unsteady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the contemplation of some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood, relying upon the influence of changed surroundings to restore his equilibrium. Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a collapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The colonel, foreseeing such a con- dition, had provided a small flask of whisky for the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it almost with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and by he was recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he pulled up his horse suddenly, and said: "I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I get that money?" "Take it easy, Yancev. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We'll go fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping there like bullfrogs. We'll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?" Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so Goree retired again into brooding silence. By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharma- cop?ia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foilage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze. Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of Painter's Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to him. Though he hid forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the music of "Home, Sweet Home." They rounded the cliff, decended into Elder Branch, and paused there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream. Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quicky disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, zigzagging among the trees. "That's Garvey," said Coltrane; "the man you sold out to. There's no doubt but he's considerably cracked. I had to send him up for moonshining, once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I believed him irresponsible. Why, what's the matter, Yancey?" Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. "Do I look queer, too?" he asked, trying to smile. "I'm just remembering a few more things." Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. "I recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars." "Don't think of it," said Coltrane cheerfully. "Later on we'll figure it all out together." They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill Goree stopped again. "Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel" he asked. "Sort of foolish proud about appearances?" The colonel's eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sag- ging suit of flax and the faded slouch hat. "It seems to me," he replied, mystified, but humouring him, "I remember a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair, and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge." "Right you are," said Goree eagerly. "And it's in me yet, though it don't show. Oh, I'm as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as Lucifer. I'm going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a little matter." "Speak out, Yancey. We'll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella's peacock's tail to wear in your hat." "I'm in earnest. In a few minutes we'll pass the house up there on the hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a century. Strangers live there now -- and look at me! I am about to show myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar. Colonel Coltrane, I'm ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I pass the old place." "Now, what does this mean?" said Coltrane to him- self, as he compared his companion's sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange. The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly the same size -- rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on Goree's disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat. "Now," said Goree, taking up the reins, "I'm all right. I want you to ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can get a good look at me. They'll see I'm no back number yet, by any means. I guess I'll show up pretty well to them once more, any- how. Let's ride on." He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel fol- lowing, as he had been requested. Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself, "Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?" It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he saw what he had been looking for -- a puff of white smoke, coming from the thick cedars in one comer. He toppled so slowly to the left that Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with one arm. The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would pass - through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane's black frock coat. Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel's arm kept him steady. The little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon Coltrane's fingers, which held his bridle. "Good friend," he said, and that was all. Thus did Yancey Goree, as be rode past his old home, make, considering all things, the best showing that was in his power. The Brief Debut of Tildy If you do not know Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your loss. For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you should be interested to know how the other half consumes provisions. And if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are things of moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you get your money's worth--in quantity, at least. Bogle's is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie, that boulevard of Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster- stand, containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet wili his prowess be balked when he comes to wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. Also upon each table stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made "from the recipe of a nobleman in India." At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smouldering, and takes your money. Behind a mountain of toothpicks he makes your change, files your check, and ejects at you, like a toad, a word about the weather. Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement you would better not venture. You are not Bogle's friend; you are a fed, transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the blowing of Gabriel's dinner horn. So take your change and go--to the devil if you like. There you have Bogle's sentiments. The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and a Voice. One of the waitresses was named Aileen. She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There was no more necessity for another name at Bogle's than there was for finger-bowls. The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda? Please listen this time--Tildy--Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last clause to yourself once or twice, and make the acquaintance of the duplicate infinite. The Voice at Bogle's was invisible. It came from the kitchen, and did not shine in the way of originality. It was a heathen Voice, and contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the waitresses concerning food. Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had she donned a few hundred dollars' worth of clothes and joined the Easter parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so yourself. The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could wait upon at once. They who were in a hurry restrained their impatience for the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure. They who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light of her smiles. Every man there--and they were mostly men--tried to make his impression upon her. Aileen could successfully exchange repartee against a dozen at once. And every smile that she sent forth lodged, like pellets from a scatter-gun, in as many hearts. And all this while she would be performing astounding feats with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, ham-and, sausage-and-the-wheats, and any quantity of things on the iron and in the pan and straight up and on the side. With all this feasting and flirting and merry exchange of wit Bogle's came mighty near being a salon, with Aileen for its Madame Recamier. If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the steady customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening. At least twice a week some one took her to a theatre or to a dance. One stout gentleman whom she and Tildy had privately christened "The Hog" presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as "Fresby," who rode on the Traction Company's repair wagon, was going to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth. And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and said he was a stock broker asked her to go to "Parsifal" with him. "I don't know where this place is," said Aileen while talking it over with Tildy, "but the wedding-ring's got to be on before I put a stitch into a travelling dress--ain't that right? Well, I guess!" But, Tildy! In steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented Bogle's there was almost a heart tragedy. Tildy with the blunt nose, the hay-coloured hair, the freckled skin, the bag-o'-meal figure, had never had an admirer. Not a man followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the restaurant save now and then when they glared with the beast-hunger for food. None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges of wit. None of them loudly "jollied" her of mornings as they did Aileen, accusing her, when the eggs were slow in coming, of late hours in the company of envied swains. No one had ever given her a turquoise ring or invited her upon a voyage to mysterious, distant "Parsifal." Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat at her tables spoke to her briefly. with quotations from the bill of fare; and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwise-flavoured accents, eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in their chairs to gaze around and over the impending form of Tildy, that Aileen's pulchritude might season and make ambrosia of their bacon and eggs. And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could receive the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the short Grecian. She was Aileen's friend; and she was glad to see her rule hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-coloured hair the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but coming to us alone. There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly bruised eye; and Tildy's solicitude was almost enough to heal any optic. "Fresh guy," explained Aileen, "last night as I was going home at Twenty-third and Sixth. Sashayed up, so he did, and made a break. I turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down to Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a good one, side of the face. Then he give me that eye. Does it look real awful, Til? I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when he comes in for his tea and toast at ten." Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one and black one's eye for love! Among the customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled weakfish. One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking beer. There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When Mr. Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around Tildy's waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied himself to play pennies in the slot machines at the Amusement Arcade. For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of Aileen shaking at her an arch forefinger, and saying: "Why, Til, you naughty girl! Ain't you getting to be awful, Miss Slyboots! First thing I know you'll be stealing some of my fellows. I must keep an eye on you, my lady." Another thing dawned upon Tildy's recovering wits. In a moment she had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered lawn--the robe of Venus herself. The freckles on Tildy's cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both Circe and Psyche peeped from her brightened eyes. Not even Aileen herself had been publicly embraced and kissed in the restaurant. Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she went and stood at Bogle's desk. Her eyes were shining; she tried not to let her words sound proud and boastful. "A gentleman insulted me to-day," she said. "He hugged me around the waist and kissed me." "That so?" said Bogle, cracking open his business armour. "After this week you get a dollar a week more." At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with whom she had acquaintance she said to each of them modestly, as one whose merit needed no bolstering: "A gentleman insulted me to-day in the restaurant. He put his arm around my waist and kissed me." The diners accepted the revelation in various ways--some incredulously, some with congratulations; others turned upon her the stream of badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. And Tildy's heart swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the towers of Romance rise above the horizon of the grey plain in which she had for so long travelled. For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought ribbons, and arranged her hair like Aileen's, and tightened her waist two inches. She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders would rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have loved her desperately; and impulsive lovers are always blindly jealous. Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy rather hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal to Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend. At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in. There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was quartering pies. Mr. Seeders walked back to where they stood. Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon against her heart. A red hair-bow was in her hair; she wore Venus's Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver symbolic heart. Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into his hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie. "Miss Tildy," said he, "I want to apologise for what I done the other evenin'. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up or I wouldn't of done it. I wouldn't do no lady that a-way when I was sober. So I hope, Miss Tildy, you'll accept my 'pology, and believe that I wouldn't of done it if I'd known what I was doin' and hadn't of been drunk." With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders backed away, and departed, feeling that reparation had been made. But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon a table among the butter chips and the coffee cups, and was sobbing her heart out--out and back again to the grey plain wherein travel they with blunt noses and hay-coloured hair. From her knot she had torn the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain the Sleeping Beauty. Yet not all was lost. Aileen's arm was around her; and Tildy's red hand groped among the butter chips till it found the warm clasp of her friend's. "Don't you fret, Til," said Aileen, who did not understand entirely. "That turnip-faced little clothespin of a Seeders ain't worth it. He ain't anything of a gentleman or he wouldn't ever of apologised." Buried Treasure There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise? I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops--parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof- prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise. But, going back from my theme a while--as lame pens must do--I was a fool of the sentimental soft. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other sporty kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not paint the picture for her. You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have and to hold. I wanted her to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings. May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling 'em names. He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as a fine specimen of the racibus humanus because she saw that he had food at times, and put his clothes on right side before, and kept his alcohol-bottles filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absent- minded. There was another besides myself who thought May Martha Mangum one to be desired. That was Goodloe Banks, a young man just home from college. He had all the attainments to be found in books--Latin, Greek, philosophy, and especially the higher branches of mathematics and logic. If it hadn't been for his habit of pouring out this information and learning on every one that he addressed, I'd have liked him pretty well. But, even as it was, he and I were, you would have thought, great pals. We got together every time we could because each of us wanted to pump the other for whatever straws we could to find which way the wind blew from the heart of May Martha Mangum--rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is the way of rivals. You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, culture, rowing, intellect, and clothes. I would have put you in mind more of baseball and Friday-night debating societies--by way of culture--and maybe of a good horseback rider. But in our talks together, and in our visits and conversation with May Martha, neither Goodloe Banks nor I could find out which one of us she preferred. May Martha was a natural-born non-committal, and knew in her cradle how to keep people guessing. As I said, old man Mangum was absentminded. After a long time he found out one day--a little butterfly must have told him-that two young men were trying to throw a net over the head of the young person, a daughter, or some such technical appendage, who looked after his comforts. I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. Old Mangum orally labelled and classified Goodloe and myself easily among the lowest orders of the vertebrates; and in English, too, without going any further into Latin than the simple references to Orgetorix, Rex Helvetii--which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that if he ever caught us around his house again he would add us to his collection. Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm to subside. When we dared to call at the house again May Martha Mangum and her father were gone. Gone! The house they had rented was closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also. And not a word of farewell to either of us from May Martha--not a white, fluttering note pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark on the gate-post nor a post-card in the post-office to give us a clew. For two months Goodloe Banks and I--separately--tried every scheme we could think of to track the runaways. We used our friendship and influence with the ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad conductors, and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results. Then we became better friends and worse enemies than ever. We forgathered in the back room of Snyder's saloon every afternoon after work, and played dominoes, and laid conversational traps to find out from each other if anything had been discovered. That is the way of rivals. Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own learning and putting me in the class that was reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird is dead, she cannot play." Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a contempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded as good- natured, so I kept my temper. And I was trying to find out if he knew anything about May Martha, so I endured his society. In talking things over one afternoon he said to me: "Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you profit? Miss Mangum has a mind. Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for higher things than you could give her. I have talked with no one who seemed to appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their philosophy of life. Don't you think you are wasting your time looking for her?" "My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I went on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always hitched at a post for 'the missus '--and May Martha Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a fig--a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig--for your curriculums, cults, and philosophy." "She is meant for higher things," repeated Goodloe Banks. "Whatever she is meant for," I answered, just now she is out of pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the colleges." "The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a domino and we had the beer. Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and brought me a folded blue paper. He said his grandfather had just died. I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had jealously guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules and a hypotenuse of non-arable land. The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during the rebellion of the abolitionists against the secessionists. It was dated June 14, 1863, and it described the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of gold and silver coin valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Old Rundle-- grandfather of his grandson, Sam--was given the information by a Spanish priest who was in on the treasure-burying, and who died many years before--no, afterward--in old Rundle's house. Old Rundle wrote it down from dictation. "Why didn't your father look this up?" I asked young Rundle. "He went blind before he could do so," he replied. "Why didn't you hunt for it yourself?" I asked. "Well," said he, "I've only known about the paper for ten years. First there was the spring ploughin' to do, and then choppin' the weeds out of the corn; and then come takin' fodder; and mighty soon winter was on us. It seemed to run along that way year after year." That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took it up with young Lee Rundle at once. The directions on the paper were simple. The whole burro cavalcade laden with the treasure started from an old Spanish mission in Dolores County. They travelled due south by the compass until they reached the Alamito River. They forded this, and buried the treasure on the top of a little mountain shaped like a pack-saddle standing in a row between two higher ones. A heap of stones marked the place of the buried treasure. All the party except the Spanish priest were killed by Indians a few days later. The secret was a monopoly. It looked good to me. Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping outfit, hire a surveyor to run out the line from the Spanish mission, and then spend the three hundred thousand dollars seeing the sights in Fort Worth. But, without being highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense. We went to the State land-office and had a practical, what they call a "working," sketch made of all the surveys of land from the old mission to the Alamito River. On this map I drew a line due southward to the river. The length of lines of each survey and section of land was accurately given on the sketch. By these we found the point on the river and had a "connection" made with it and an important, well- identified corner of the Los Animos five-league survey--a grant made by King Philip of Spain. By doing this we did not need to have the line run out by a surveyor. It was a great saving of expense and time. So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon team with all the accessories, and drove a hundred and forty-nine miles to Chico, the nearest town to the point we wished to reach. There we picked up a deputy county surveyor. He found the corner of the Los Animos survey for us, ran out the five thousand seven hundred and twenty varas west that our sketch called for, laid a stone on the spot, had coffee and bacon, and caught the mail-stage back to Chico. I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred thousand dollars. Lee Rundle's was to be only one-third, because I was paying all the expenses. With that two hundred thousand dollars I knew I could find May Martha Mangum if she was on earth. And with it I could flutter the butterflies in old man Mangum's dove-cot, too. If I could find that treasure! But Lee and I established camp. Across the river were a dozen little mountains densely covered by cedar-brakes, but not one shaped like a pack-saddle. That did not deter us. Appearances are deceptive. A pack-saddle, like beauty, may exist only in the eye of the beholder. I and the grandson of the treasure examined those cedar-covered hills with the care of a lady hunting for the wicked flea. We explored every side, top, circumference, mean elevation, angle, slope, and concavity of every one for two miles up and down the river. We spent four days doing so. Then we hitched up the roan and the dun, and hauled the remains of the coffee and bacon the one hundred and forty- nine miles back to Concho City. Lee Rundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. I was busy driving, because I was in a hurry. As shortly as could be after our empty return Goodloe Banks and I forgathered in the back room of Snyder's saloon to play dominoes and fish for information. I told Goodloe about my expedition after the buried treasure. "If I could have found that three hundred thousand dollars," I said to him, "I could have scoured and sifted the surface of the earth to find May Martha Mangum." "She is meant for higher things," said Goodloe. "I shall find her myself. But, tell me how you went about discovering the spot where this unearthed increment was imprudently buried." I told him in the smallest detail. I showed him the draughtsman's sketch with the distances marked plainly upon it. After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned back in his chair and bestowed upon me an explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate laughter. "Well, you are a fool, Jim," he said, when he could speak. "It's your play," said I, patiently, fingering my double-six. "Twenty," said Goodloe, making two crosses on the table with his chalk. "Why am I a fool?" I asked. "Buried treasure has been found before in many places." "Because," said he, "in calculating the point on the river where your line would strike you neglected to allow for the variation. The variation there would be nine degrees west. Let me have your pencil." Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an envelope. "The distance, from north to south, of the line run from the Spanish mission," said he, "is exactly twenty-two miles. It was run by a pocket-compass, according to your story. Allowing for the variation, the point on the Alamito River where you should have searched for your treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty-five varas farther west than the place you hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are, Jim!" "What is this variation that you speak of?" I asked. "I thought figures never lied." "The variation of the magnetic compass," said Goodloe, "from the true meridian." He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out in his face the singular, eager, consuming cupidity of the seeker after buried treasure. "Sometimes," he said with the air of the oracle, "these old traditions of hidden money are not without foundation. Suppose you let me look over that paper describing the location. Perhaps together we might--" The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in love, became companions in adventure. We went to Chico by stage from Huntersburg, the nearest railroad town. In Chico we hired a team drawing a covered spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We had the same surveyor run out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his variations, and then dismissed him and sent him on his homeward road. It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and made a fire near the bank of the river and cooked supper. Goodloe would have helped, but his education had not fitted him for practical things. But while I worked he cheered me with the expression of great thoughts handed down from the dead ones of old. He quoted some translations from the Greek at much length. "Anacreon," he explained. "That was a favorite passage with Miss Mangum--as I recited it." "She is meant for higher things," said I, repeating his phrase. "Can there be anything higher," asked Goodloe, "than to dwell in the society of the classics, to live in the atmosphere of learning and culture? You have often decried education. What of your wasted efforts through your ignorance of simple mathematics? How soon would you have found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you your error?" "We'll take a look at those hills across the river first," said I, "and see what we find. I am still doubtful about variations. I have been brought up to believe that the needle is true to the pole." The next morning was a bright June one. We were up early and had breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He recited--Keats, I think it was, and Kelly or Shelley--while I broiled the bacon. We were getting ready to cross the river, which was little more than a shallow creek there, and explore the many sharp-peaked cedar-covered hills on the other side. "My good Ulysses," said Goodloe, slapping me on the shoulder while I was washing the tin breakfast-plates, "let me see the enchanted document once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is it like, Jim?" "Score one against culture," said I. "I'll know it when I see it." Goodloe was looking at old Rundle's document when he ripped out a most uncollegiate swear-word. "Come here," he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. "Look at that," he said, laying his finger against it. On the blue paper--a thing I had never noticed before--I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures : "Malvern, 1898." "What about it?" I asked. "It's the water-mark," said Goodloe. "The paper was manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud." "Oh, I don't know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle." And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me. "I've often told you you were a fool," he said. "You have let yourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me." "How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you ?" "By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have discovered serious flaws in your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you to avoid. And," he continued, "I have been put to expense that I could ill afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with it." I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dish- water. "Goodloe Banks," I said, "I care not one parboiled navy bean for your education. I always barely tolerated it in any one, and I despised it in you. What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore to your friends. Away," I said--"away with your water-marks and variations! They are nothing to me. They shall not deflect me from the quest." I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped like a pack-saddle. "I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for the treasure. Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a water- mark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide." A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it. "I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool would pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate." He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted his glasses nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust. After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar- brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a pack-saddle. It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many birds, so many butter-flies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the air and fields. I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from base to summit. I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure. There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the document of old man Rundle. I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. Suddenly, out of the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a tributary small stream ran into the Alamito River. And there I was started to see what I took to be a wild man, with unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with brilliant wings. "Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and wondered how he had strayed so far from seats of education and learning. And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild flowers. She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew her I saw her face--which was the color of the white keys of a new piano--turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass. "I knew you would come, Jim," she said clearly. "Father wouldn't let me write, but I knew you would come. What followed you may guess--there was my wagon and team just across the river. I've often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he can't use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to others, where does it come in? For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a good start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence. And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in places where they cannot be found. But who cares for that? Who cares--who cares? By Courier It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters; and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring. She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched her countenance must have been of recent birth, for it had not yet altered the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, nor subdued the arch though resolute curve of her lips. A tall young man came striding through the park along the path near which she sat. Behind him tagged a boy carrying a suit-case. At sight of the young lady, the man's face changed to red and back to pale again. He watched her countenance as he drew nearer, with hope and anxiety mingled on his own. He passed within a few yards of her, but he saw no evidence that she was aware of his presence or existence. Some fifty yards further on he suddenly stopped and sat on a bench at one side. The boy dropped the suit-case and stared at him with wondering, shrewd eyes. The young man took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. It was a good handkerchief, a good brow, and the young man was good to look at. He said to the boy: "I want you to take a message to that young lady on that bench. Tell her I am on my way to the station, to leave for San Francisco, where I shall join that Alaska moose-hunting expedition. Tell her that, since she has commanded me neither to speak nor to write to her, I take this means of making one last appeal to her sense of justice, for the sake of what has been. Tell her that to condemn and discard one who has not deserved such treatment, without giving him her reasons or a chance to explain is contrary to her nature as I believe it to be. Tell her that I have thus, to a certain degree, disobeyed her injunctions, in the hope that she may yet be inclined to see justice done. Go, and tell her that." The young man dropped a half-dollar into the boy's hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of his head. The lady looked at him coolly, without prejudice or favour. "Lady," he said, "dat gent on de oder bench sent yer a song and dance by me. If yer don't know de guy, and he's tryin' to do de Johnny act, say de word, and I'll call a cop in t'ree minutes. If yer does know him, and he's on de square, w'y I'll spiel yer de bunch of hot air he sent yer." The young lady betrayed a faint interest. "A song and dance!" she said, in a deliberate sweet voice that seemed to clothe her words in a diaphanous garment of impalpable irony. "A new idea--in the troubadour line, I suppose. I--used to know the gentleman who sent you, so I think it will hardly be necessary to call the police. You may execute your song and dance, but do not sing too loudly. It is a little early yet for open-air vaudeville, and we might attract attention." "Awe," said the boy, with a shrug down the length of him, "yer know what I mean, lady. 'Tain't a turn, it's wind. He told me to tell yer he's got his collars and cuffs in dat grip for a scoot clean out to 'Frisco. Den he's goin' to shoot snow-birds in de Klondike. He says yer told him not to send 'round no more pink notes nor come hangin' over de garden gate, and he takes dis means of puttin' yer wise. He says yer refereed him out like a has-been, and never give him no chance to kick at de decision. He says yer swiped him, and never said why." The slightly awakened interest in the young lady's eyes did not abate. Perhaps it was caused by either the originality or the audacity of the snow-bird hunter, in thus circumventing her express commands against the ordinary modes of communication. She fixed her eye on a statue standing disconsolate in the dishevelled park, and spoke into the transmitter: "Tell the gentleman that I need not repeat to him a description of my ideals. He knows what they have been and what they still are. So far as they touch on this case, absolute loyalty and truth are the ones paramount. Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can, and I know its weakness as well as I do its needs. That is why I decline to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through hearsay or doubtful evidence, and that is why I made no charge. But, since he persists in hearing what he already well knows, you may convey the matter. "Tell him that I entered the conservatory that evening from the rear, to cut a rose for my mother. Tell him I saw him and Miss Ashburton beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was pretty, but the pose and juxtaposition were too eloquent and evident to require explanation. I left the conservatory, and, at the same time, the rose and my ideal. You may carry that song and dance to your impresario." "I'm shy on one word, lady. Jux--jux--put me wise on dat, will yer?" "Juxtaposition--or you may call it propinquity--or, if you like, being rather too near for one maintaining the position of an ideal." The gravel spun from beneath the boy's feet. He stood by the other bench. The man's eyes interrogated him, hungrily. The boy's were shining with the impersonal zeal of the translator. "De lady says dat she's on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller comes spielin' ghost stories and tryin' to make up, and dat's why she won't listen to no soft-soap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a bunch o' calico in de hot-house. She side- stepped in to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy, and make a sneak for de train." The young man gave a low whistle and his eyes flashed with a sudden thought. His hand flew to the inside pocket of his coat, and drew out a handful of letters. Selecting one, he handed it to the boy, following it with a silver dollar from his vest-pocket. "Give that letter to the lady," he said, "and ask her to read it. Tell her that it should explain the situation. Tell her that, if she had mingled a little trust with her conception of the ideal, much heartache might have been avoided. Tell her that the loyalty she prizes so much has never wavered. Tell her I am waiting for an answer." The messenger stood before the lady. "De gent says he's had de ski-bunk put on him widout no cause. He says he's no bum guy; and, lady, yer read dat letter, and I'll bet yer he's a white sport, all right." The young lady unfolded the letter; somewhat doubtfully, and read it. DEAR DR. ARNOLD: I want to thank you for your most kind and opportune aid to my daughter last Friday evening, when she was overcome by an attack of her old heart-trouble in the conservatory at Mrs. Waldron's reception. Had you not been near to catch her as she fell and to render proper attention, we might have lost her. I would be glad if you would call and undertake the treatment of her case.Gratefully yours,Robert Ashburton. The young lady refolded the letter, and handed it to the boy. "De gent wants an answer," said the messenger. "Wot's de word?" The lady's eyes suddenly flashed on him, bright, smiling and wet. "Tell that guy on the other bench," she said, with a happy, tremulous laugh, "that his girl wants him." The Cactus The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves. That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor apartments. On the table stood a singular-looking green plant in a red earthen jar. The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was provided with long, tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with the slightest breeze with a peculiar beckoning motion. Trysdale's friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard complaining at being allowed to drink alone. Both men were in evening dress. White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom of the apartment. As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale's mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours. It seemed that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked in odorous masses about the church, and in his ears the lowpitched hum of a thousand well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp garments, and, most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably binding her to another. >From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had become a habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and how he had lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had suddenly found himself confronted by a thing he had never before faced --his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn to rags of folly. He shuddered at the thought that to others, before now, the garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare. Vanity and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how free from either she had always been--But why--As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an unworthy, sullen exultation that had served to support him. He had told himself that her paleness was from thoughts of another than the man to whom she was about to give herself. But even that poor consolation had been wrenched from him. For, when he saw that swift, limpid, upward look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he knew himself to be forgotten. Once that same look had been raised to him, and he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no quarrel between them, nothing-- For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of those last few days before the tide had so suddenly turned. She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had accepted her homage with royal grandeur. It had been a very sweet incense that she had burned before him; so modest (he told himself); so childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so sincere. She had invested him with an almost supernatural number of high attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the oblation as a desert drinks the rain that can coax from it no promise of blossom or fruit. As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the crowning instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came vividly back to him. The scene was the night when he had asked her to come up on his pedestal with him and share his greatness. He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the memory of her convincing beauty that night--the careless wave of her hair, the tenderness and virginal charm of her looks and words. But they had been enough, and they had brought him to speak. During their conversation she had said: "And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language like a native. Why have you hidden this accomplishment from me? Is there anything you do not know?" Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty (he sometimes did such things) of airing at the club some old, canting Castilian proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries. Carruthers, who was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man to have magnified this exhibition of doubtful erudition. But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and flattering. He allowed the imputation to pass without denial. Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship. He let it grace his conquering head, and, among its soft convolutions, he did not feel the prick of the thorn that was to pierce him later. How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like a snared bird when he laid his mightiness at her feet! He could have sworn, and he could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her eyes, but, coyly, she would give him no direct answer. "I will send you my answer to-morrow," she said; and he, the indulgent, confident victor, smilingly granted the delay. The next day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for the word. At noon her groom came to the door and left the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There was no note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing a barbarous foreign or botanical name. He waited until night, but her answer did not come. His large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her. Two evenings later they met at a dinner. Their greetings were conventional, but she looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager. He was courteous, adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and turned to snow and ice. Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where was his fault? Who had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the answer amid the ruins of his self-conceit. If-- The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon his thoughts, aroused him. "I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look unhappy as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two thousand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from South America to connive at the sacrifice--please to observe how lightly my guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only little sister I had, too, and now she's gone. Come now! take something to ease your conscience." "I don't drink just now, thanks," said Trysdale. "Your brandy," resumed the other, coming over and joining him, "is abominable. Run down to see me some time at Punta Redonda, and try some of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It's worth the, trip. Hallo! here's an old acquaintance. Wherever did you rake up this cactus, Trysdale?" "A present," said Trysdale, "from a friend. Know the species?" "Very well. It's a tropical concern. See hundreds of 'em around Punta every day. Here's the name on this tag tied to it. Know any Spanish, Trysdale?" "No," said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a smile--"Is it Spanish?" "Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning to you. They call it by this name--Ventomarme. Name means in English, 'Come and take me.'" The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, sat on his favourite bench in the park. The coolness of the September night quickened the life in him like a rare, tonic wine. The benches were not filled; for park loungers, with their stagnant blood, are prompt to detect and fly home from the crispness of early autumn. The moon was just clearing the roofs of the range of dwellings that bounded the quadrangle on the east. Children laughed and played about the fine- sprayed fountain. In the shadowed spots fauns and hamadryads wooed, unconscious of the gaze of mortal eyes. A hand organ--Philomel by the grace of our stage carpenter, Fancy--fluted and droned in a side street. Around the enchanted boundaries of the little park street cars spat and mewed and the stilted trains roared like tigers and lions prowling for a place to enter. And above the trees shone the great, round, shining face of an illuminated clock in the tower of an antique public building. Prince Michael's shoes were wrecked far beyond the skill of the carefullest cobbler. The ragman would have declined any negotiations concerning his clothes. The two weeks' stubble on his face was grey and brown and red and greenish yellow--as if it had been made up from individual contributions from the chorus of a musical comedy. No man existed who had money enough to wear so bad a hat as his. Prince Michael sat on his favourite bench and smiled. It was a diverting thought to him that he was wealthy enough to buy every one of those close-ranged, bulky, window-lit mansions that faced him, if he chose. He could have matched gold, equipages, jewels, art treasures, estates and acres with any Croesus in this proud city of Manhattan, and scarcely have entered upon the bulk of his holdings. He could have sat at table with reigning sovereigns. The social world, the world of art, the fellowship of the elect, adulation, imitation, the homage of the fairest, honours from the highest, praise from the wisest, flattery, esteem, credit, pleasure, fame--all the honey of life was waiting in the comb in the hive of the world for Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, whenever he might choose to take it. But his choice was to sit in rags and dinginess on a bench in a park. For he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of life, and, finding it bitter in his mouth, had stepped out of Eden for a time to seek distraction close to the unarmoured, beating heart of the world. These thoughts strayed dreamily through the mind of Prince Michael, as he smiled under the stubble of his polychromatic beard. Lounging thus, clad as the poorest of mendicants in the parks, he loved to study humanity. He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his station and all the grosser sweets of life had given him. It was his chief solace and satisfaction to alleviate individual distress, to confer favours upon worthy ones who had need of succour, to dazzle unfortunates by unexpected and bewildering gifts of truly royal magnificence, bestowed, however, with wisdom and judiciousness. And as Prince Michael's eye rested upon the glowing face of the great clock in the tower, his smile, altruistic as it was, became slightly tinged with contempt. Big thoughts were the Prince's; and it was always with a shake of his head that he considered the subjugation of the world to the arbitrary measures of Time. The comings and goings of people in hurry and dread, controlled by the little metal moving hands of a clock, always made him sad. By and by came a young man in evening clothes and sat upon the third bench from the Prince. For half an hour he smoked cigars with nervous haste, and then he fell to watching the face of the illuminated clock above the trees. His perturbation was evident, and the Prince noted, in sorrow, that its cause was connected, in some manner, with the slowly moving hands of the timepiece. His Highness arose and went to the young man's bench. "I beg your pardon for addressing you," he said, "but I perceive that you are disturbed in mind. If it may serve to mitigate the liberty I have taken I will add that I am Prince Michael, heir to the throne of the Electorate of Valleluna. I appear incognito, of course, as you may gather from my appearance. It is a fancy of mine to render aid to others whom I think worthy of it. Perhaps the matter that seems to distress you is one that would more readily yield to our mutual efforts." The young man looked up brightly at the Prince. Brightly, but the perpendicular line of perplexity between his brows was not smoothed away. He laughed, and even then it did not. But he accepted the momentary diversion. "Glad to meet you, Prince," he said, good humouredly. "Yes, I'd say you were incog. all right. Thanks for your offer of assistance--but I don't see where your butting-in would help things any. It's a kind of private affair, you know--but thanks all the same." Prince Michael sat at the young man's side. He was often rebuffed but never offensively. His courteous manner and words forbade that. "Clocks," said the Prince, "are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of a bunco steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease to order your affairs by that insensate monitor of brass and steel." "I don't usually," said the young man. "I carry a watch except when I've got my radiant rags on." "I know human nature as I do the trees and grass," said the Prince, with earnest dignity. "I am a master of philosophy, a graduate in art, and I hold the purse of a Fortunatus. There are few mortal misfortunes that I cannot alleviate or overcome. I have read your countenance, and found in it honesty and nobility as well as distress. I beg of you to accept my advice or aid. Do not belie the intelligence I see in your face by judging from my appearance of my ability to defeat your troubles." The young man glanced at the clock again and frowned darkly. When his gaze strayed from the glowing horologue of time it rested intently upon a four-story red brick house in the row of dwellings opposite to where he sat. The shades were drawn, and the lights in many rooms shone dimly through them. "Ten minutes to nine!" exclaimed the young man, with an impatient gesture of despair. He turned his back upon the house and took a rapid step or two in a contrary direction. "Remain!" commanded Prince Michael, in so potent a voice that the disturbed one wheeled around with a somewhat chagrined laugh. "I'll give her the ten minutes and then I'm off," he muttered, and then aloud to the Prince: "I'll join you in confounding all clocks, my friend, and throw in women, too." "Sit down," said the Prince calmly. "I do not accept your addition. Women are the natural enemies of clocks, and, therefore, the allies of those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our follies and limit our pleasures. If you will so far confide in me I would ask you to relate to me your story." The young man threw himself upon the bench with a reckless laugh. "Your Royal Highness, I will," he said, in tones of mock deference. "Do you see yonder house--the one with three upper windows lighted? Well, at 6 o'clock I stood in that house with the young lady I am-- that is, I was--engaged to. I had been doing wrong, my dear Prince-- I had been a naughty boy, and she had heard of it. I wanted to be forgiven, of course--we are always wanting women to forgive us, aren't we, Prince?" "'I want time to think it over,' said she. 'There is one thing certain; I will either fully forgive you, or I will never see your face again. There will be no half-way business. At half-past eight,' she said, 'at exactly half-past eight you may be watching the middle upper window of the top floor. If I decide to forgive I will hang out of that window a white silk scarf. You will know by that that all is as was before, and you may come to me. If you see no scarf you may consider that everything between us is ended forever.' That," concluded the young man bitterly, "is why I have been watching that clock. The time for the signal to appear has passed twenty- three minutes ago. Do you wonder that I am a little disturbed, my Prince of Rags and Whiskers?" "Let me repeat to you," said Prince Michael, in his even, well- modulated tones, "that women are the natural enemies of clocks. Clocks are an evil, women a blessing. The signal may yet appear." "Never, on your principality!" exclaimed the young man, hopelessly. "You don't know Marian--of course. She's always on time, to the minute. That was the first thing about her that attracted me. I've got the mitten instead of the scarf. I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was cooked. I'll go West on the 11.45 to-night with Jack Milburn. The jig's up. I'll try Jack's ranch awhile and top off with the Klondike and whiskey. Good-night--er--er--Prince." Prince Michael smiled his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile and caught the coat sleeve of the other. The brilliant light in the Prince's eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy translucence. "Wait," he said solemnly, "till the clock strikes. I have wealth and power and knowledge above most men, but when the clock strikes I am afraid. Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the word of the hereditary Prince of Valleluna. On the day of your marriage I will give you $100,000 and a palace on the Hudson. But there must be no clocks in that palace--they measure our follies and limit our pleasures. Do you agree to that?" "Of course," said the young man, cheerfully, "they're a nuisance, anyway--always ticking and striking and getting you late for dinner." He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three minutes to nine. "I think," said Prince Michael, "that I will sleep a little. The day has been fatiguing." He stretched himself upon a bench with the manner of one who had slept thus before. "You will find me in this park on any evening when the weather is suitable," said the Prince, sleepily. "Come to me when your marriage day is set and I will give you a cheque for the money." "Thanks, Your Highness," said the young man, seriously. "It doesn't look as if I would need that palace on the Hudson, but I appreciate your offer, just the same." Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from the bench to the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the frowsy face and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more comfortable position. "Poor devil!" he said, as he drew the tattered clothes closer about the Prince's breast. Sonorous and startling came the stroke of 9 from the clock tower. The young man sighed again, turned his face for one last look at the house of his relinquished hopes--and cried aloud profane words of holy rapture. From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving, snowy, fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised joy. By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home-hurrying, unknowing of the delights of waving silken scarfs on the borders of dimly-lit parks. "Will you oblige me with the time, sir?" asked the young man; and the citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and announced: "Twenty-nine and a half minutes past eight, sir." And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made further oration. "By George! that clock's half an hour fast! First time in ten years I've known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies a--" But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer, a fast receding black shadow, flying in the direction of a house with three lighted upper windows. And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats they owned. The park was deserted save for one dilapidated figure that sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it. "It's Dopy Mike," said one. "He hits the pipe every night. Park bum for twenty years. On his last legs, I guess." The other policeman stooped and looked at something crumpled and crisp in the hand of the sleeper. "Gee!" he remarked. "He's doped out a fifty-dollar bill, anyway. Wish I knew the brand of hop that he smokes." And then "Rap, rap, rap!" went the club of realism against the shoe soles of Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna. A Call Loan In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin suaderos, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky--what else was there for him to spend money for? Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become extinct. So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle Branch on the Frio--a wife-driven man--to taste the urban joys of success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income steadily increasing. Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a cool head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from cowboy to be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune, stepping gingerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her cornucopia at the doorstep of the ranch. In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly residence. Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social existence. He was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled for a time like a mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up his quirt and spurs. Time hung heavily on his hands. He organised the First National Bank of Chaparosa, and was elected its president. One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted an official-looking card between the bars of the cashier's window of the First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing at the beck and call of a national bank examiner. This examiner, Mr. J. Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one. At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the president, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office. "Well, how do you find things?" asked Longley, in his slow, deep tones. "Any brands in the round-up you didn't like the looks of?" "The bank checks up all right, Mr. Longley," said Todd; "and I find your loans in very good shape--with one exception. You are carrying one very bad bit of paper--one that is so bad that I have been thinking that you surely do not realise the serious position it places you in. I refer to a call loan of $10,000 made to Thomas Merwin. Not only is the amount in excess of the maximum sum the bank can loan any individual legally, but it is absolutely without endorsement or security. Thus you have doubly violated the national banking laws, and have laid yourself open to criminal prosecution by the Government. A report of the matter to the Comptroller of the Currency--which I am bound to make--would, I am sure, result in the matter being turned over to the Department of Justice for action. You see what a serious thing it is." Bill Longley was leaning his lengthy, slowly moving frame back in his swivel chair. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he turned a little to look the examiner in the face. The examiner was surprised to see a smile creep about the rugged mouth of the banker, and a kindly twinkle in his light-blue eyes. If he saw the seriousness of the affair, it did not show in his countenance. "Of course, you don't know Tom Merwin," said Longley, almost genially. "Yes, I know about that loan. It hasn't any security except Tom Merwin's word. Somehow, I've always found that when a man's word is good it's the best security there is. Oh, yes, I know the Government doesn't think so. I guess I'll see Tom about that note." Mr. Todd's dyspepsia seemed to grow suddenly worse. He looked at the chaparral banker through his double-magnifying glasses in amazement. "You see," said Longley, easily explaining the thing away, "Tom heard of 2000 head of two-year-olds down near Rocky Ford on the Rio Grande that could be had for $8 a head. I reckon 'twas one of old Leandro Garcia's outfits that he had smuggled over, and he wanted to make a quick turn on 'em. Those cattle are worth $15 on the hoof in Kansas City. Tom knew it and I knew it. He had $6,000, and I let him have the $10,000 to make the deal with. His brother Ed took 'em on to market three weeks ago. He ought to be back 'most any day now with the money. When he comes Tom'll pay that note." The bank examiner was shocked. It was, perhaps, his duty to step out to the telegraph office and wire the situation to the Comptroller. But he did not. He talked pointedly and effectively to Longley for three minutes. He succeeded in making the banker understand that he stood upon the border of a catastrophe. And then he offered a tiny loophole of escape. "I am going to Hilldale's to-night," he told Longley, "to examine a bank there. I will pass through Chaparosa on my way back. At twelve o'clock to-morrow I shall call at this bank. If this loan has been cleared out of the way by that time it will not be mentioned in my report. If not--I will have to do my duty." With that the examiner bowed and departed. The President of the First National lounged in his chair half an hour longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin's house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye, sat with his feet upon a table, plaiting a rawhide quirt. "Tom," said Longley, leaning against the table, "you heard anything from Ed yet?" "Not yet," said Merwin, continuing his plaiting. "I guess Ed'll be along back now in a few days." "There was a bank examiner," said Longley, "nosing around our place to-day, and he bucked a sight about that note of yours. You know I know it's all right, but the thing is against the banking laws. I was pretty sure you'd have paid it off before the bank was examined again, but the son-of-a-gun slipped in on us, Tom. Now, I'm short of cash myself just now, or I'd let you have the money to take it up with. I've got till twelve o'clock to-morrow, and then I've got to show the cash in place of that note or--" "Or what, Bill?" asked Merwin, as Longley hesitated. "Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam's feet." "I'll try to raise the money for you on time," said Merwin, interested in his plaiting. "All right, Tom," concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; "I knew you would if you could." Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig. "Cooper," he said, to the partner by that name, "I've got to have $10,000 to-day or to-morrow. I've got a house and lot there that's worth about $6,000 and that's all the actual collateral. But I've got a cattle deal on that's sure to bring me in more than that much profit within a few days." Cooper began to cough. "Now, for God's sake don't say no," said Merwin. "I owe that much money on a call loan. It's been called, and the man that called it is a man I've laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for ten years. He can call anything I've got. He can call the blood out of my veins and it'll come. He's got to have the money. He's in a devil of a--Well, he needs the money, and I've got to get it for him. You know my word's good, Cooper." "No doubt of it," assented Cooper, urbanely, "but I've a partner, you know. I'm not free in making loans. And even if you had the best security in your hands, Merwin, we couldn't accommodate you in less than a week. We're just making a shipment of $15,000 to Myer Brothers in Rockdell, to buy cotton with. It goes down on the narrow-gauge to-night. That leaves our cash quite short at present. Sorry we can't arrange it for you." Merwin went back to his little bare office and plaited at his quirt again. About four o'clock in the afternoon he went to the First National Bank and leaned over the railing of Longley's desk. "I'll try to get that money for you to-night--I mean to-morrow, Bill." "All right, Tom," said Longley quietly. At nine o'clock that night Tom Merwin stepped cautiously out of the small frame house in which he lived. It was near the edge of the little town, and few citizens were in the neighbourhood at that hour. Merwin wore two six-shooters in a belt, and a slouch hat. He moved swiftly down a lonely street, and then followed the sandy road that ran parallel to the narrow-gauge track until he reached the water- tank, two miles below the town. There Tom Merwin stopped, tied a black silk handkerchief about the lower part of his face, and pulled his hat down low. In ten minutes the night train for Rockdell pulled up at the tank, having come from Chaparosa. With a gun in each hand Merwin raised himself from behind a clump of chaparral and started for the engine. But before he had taken three steps, two long, strong arms clasped him from behind, and he was lifted from his feet and thrown, face downward upon the grass. There was a heavy knee pressing against his back, and an iron hand grasping each of his wrists. He was held thus, like a child, until the engine had taken water, and until the train had moved, with accelerating speed, out of sight. Then he was released, and rose to his feet to face Bill Longley. "The case never needed to be fixed up this way, Tom," said Longley. "I saw Cooper this evening, and he told me what you and him talked about. Then I went down to your house to-night and saw you come out with your guns on, and I followed you. Let's go back, Tom." They walked away together, side by side. "'Twas the only chance I saw," said Merwin presently. "You called your loan, and I tried to answer you. Now, what'll you do, Bill, if they sock it to you?" "What would you have done if they'd socked it to you?" was the answer Longley made. "I never thought I'd lay in a bush to stick up a train," remarked Merwin; "but a call loan's different. A call's a call with me. We've got twelve hours yet, Bill, before this spy jumps onto you. We've got to raise them spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can--Great Sam Houston! do you hear that?" Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the lugubrious air of "The Cowboy's Lament." "It's the only tune he knows," shouted Merwin, as he ran. "I'll bet--" They were at the door of Merwin's house. He kicked it open and fell over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned, firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a brown cigarette. "What's the word, Ed?" gasped Merwin. "So, so," drawled that capable youngster. "Just got in on the 9:30. Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit kickin' a valise around that's got $29,000 in greenbacks in its in'ards." The Call Of The Tame When the inauguration was accomplished - the proceedings were made smooth by the presence of the Rough Riders - it is well known that a herd of those competent and loyal ex-warrriors paid a visit to the big city. The newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks the old broad-brimmed hats and leather belts that they wear to North Beach fish fries, and mixed with the visitors. No damage was done beyond the employment of the wonderful plural "tenderfeet" in each of the scribe's stories. The Westerners mildly contemplated the skyscrapers as high as the third story, yawned at Broadway, hunched down in the big chairs in hotel corridors, and altogether looked as bored and dejected as a member of Ye Ancient and Honorable Artillery separated during a sham battle from his valet. Out of this sightseeing delegations of good King Teddy's Gentlemen of the Royal Bear-hounds dropped one Greenbrier Nye, of Pin Feather, Ariz. The daily cyclone of Sixth Avenue's rush hour swept him away from the company of his pardners true. The dust from a thousand rustling skirts filled his eyes. The mighty roar of trains rushing across the sky deafened him. The lightning-flash of twice ten hundred beaming eyes confused his vision. The storm was so sudden and tremendous that Greenbrier's first impulse was to lie down and grab a root. And then he remembered that the disturbance was human, and not elemental; and he backed out of it with a grin into a doorway. The reporters had written that but for the widebrimmed hats the West was not visible upon these gauchos of the North. Heaven sharpen their eyes! The suit of black diagonal, wrinkled in impossible places; the bright blue four-in-hand, factory tied; the low, turned-down collar, pattern of the days of Seymour and Blair, white glazed as the letters on the window of the open-day-and-night-except-Sunday restaurants; the out-curve at the knees from the saddle grip; the peculiar spread of the half-closed right thumb and fingers from the stiff hold upon the circling lasso; the deeply absorbed weather tan that the hottest sun of Cape May can never equal; the seldom-winking blue eyes that unconsciously divided the rushing crowds into fours, as though they were being counted out of a corral; the segregated loneliness and solemnity of expression, as of an Emperor or of one whose horizons have not intruded upon him nearer than a day's ride - these brands of the West were set upon Greenbrier Nye. Oh, yes; he wore a broadbrimmed hat, gentle reader - just like those the Madison Square Post Office mail carriers wear when they go up to Bronx Park on Sunday afternoons. Suddenly Greenbrier Nye jumped into the drifting herd of metropolitan cattle, seized upon a man, dragged him out of the stream and gave him a buffet upon his collarbone that sent him reeling against a wall. The victim recovered his hat, with the angry look of a New Yorker who has suffered an outrage and intends to write to the Trib. about it. But he looked at his assailant, and knew that the blow was in consideration of love and affection after the manner of the West, which greets its friends with contumely and uproar and pounding fists, and receives its enemies in decorum and order, such as the judicious placing of the welcoming bullet demands. "God in the mountains!" cried Greenbrier, holding fast to the foreleg of his cull. "Can this be Longhorn Merritt?" The other man was - oh, look on Broadway any day for the pattern - business man - latest rolled-brim derby - good barber, business, digestion and tailor. "Greenbrier Nye!" he exclaimed, grasping the hand that had smitten him. "My dear fellow! So glad to see you! How did you come to - oh, to be sure - the inaugural ceremonies - I remember you joined the Rough Riders. You must come and have luncheon with me, of course." Greenbrier pinned him sadly but firmly to the wall with a hand the size, shape and color of a McClellan saddle. "Longy," he said, in a melancholy voice that disturbed traffic, "what have they been doing to you? You act just like a citizen. They done made you into an inmate of the city directory. You never made no such Johnny Branch execration of yourself as that out on the Gila. 'Come and have lunching with me!' You never defined grub by any such terms of reproach in them days." "I've been living in New York seven years," said Merritt. "It's been eight since we punched cows together in Old Man Garcia's outfit. Well, let's go to a cafe, anyhow. It sounds good to hear it called 'grub' again." They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as by a natural law, to the bar. "Speak up," invited Greenbrier. "A dry Martini," said Merritt. "Oh, Lord!" cried Greenbrier; "and yet me and you once saw the same pink Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in Canon Diablo! A dry - but let that pass. Whiskey straight - and they're on you." Merritt smiled, and paid. They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that connected with the cafe. Merritt dexterously diverted his friend's choice, that hovered over ham and eggs, to a puree of celery, a salmon cutlet, a partridge pie and a desirable salad. "On the day," said Greenbrier, grieved and thunderous, "when I can't hold but one drink before eating when I meet a friend I ain't seen in eight years at a 2 by 4 table in a thirty-cent town at 1 o'clock on the third day of the week, I want nine broncos to kick me forty times over a 640-acre section of land. Get them statistics?" "Right, old man," laughed Merritt. "Waiter, bring an absinthe frapp'e and - what's yours, Greenbrier?" "Whiskey straight," mourned Nye. "Out of the neck of a bottle you used to take it, Longy - straight out of the neck of a bottle on a galloping pony - Arizona redeye, not this ab - oh, what's the use? They're on you." Merritt slipped the wine card under his glass. "All right. I suppose you think I'm spoiled by the city. I'm as good a Westerner as you are, Greenbrier; but, somehow, I can't make up my mind to go back out there. New York is comfortable - comfortable. I make a good living, and I live it. No more wet blankets and riding herd in snowstorms, and bacon and cold coffee, and blowouts once in six months for me. I reckon I'll hang out here in the future. We'll take in the theatre to-night, Greenbrier, and after that we'll dine at -""I'll tell you what you are. Merritt," said Greenbrier, laying one elbow in his salad and the other in his butter. "You are a concentrated, effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss Sally Walker. God made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle and use cuss words in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to New York and putting on little shoes tied with strings, and making faces when you talk. I've seen you rope and tie a steer in 42 1/2. If you was to see one now you'd write to the Police Commissioner about it. And these flapdoodle drinks that you inoculate your system with - these little essences of cowslip with acorns in 'em, and paregoric flip - they ain't anyways in assent with the cordiality of manhood. I hate to see you this way." "Well, Mr. Greenbrier," said Merritt, with apology in his tone, "in a way you are right. Sometimes I do feel like I was being raised on the bottle. But, I tell you, New York is comfortable - comfortable. There's something about it - the sights and the crowds, and the way it changes every day, and the very air of it that seems to tie a one-mile-long stake rope around a man's neck, with the other end fastened somewhere about Thirty-fourth Street. I don't know what it is." "God knows," said Greenbrier sadly, "and I know. The East has gobbled you up. You was venison, and now you're veal. You put me in mind of a japonica in a window. You've been signed, sealed and diskivered. Requiescat in hoc signo. You make me thirsty." "A green chartreuse here," said Merritt to the waiter. "Whiskey straight," sighed Greenbrier, "and they're on you, you renegade of the round-ups." "Guilty, with an application for mercy," said Merritt. "You don't know how it is, Greenbrier. It's so comfortable here that -" "Please loan me your smelling salts," pleaded Greenbrier. "If I hadn't seen you once bluff three bluffers from Mazatzal City with an empty gun in Phoenix -" Greenbrier's voice died away in pure grief."Cigars!" he called harshly to the waiter, to hide his emotion. "A pack of Turkish cigarettes for mine," said Merritt."They're on you," chanted Greenbrier, struggling to conceal his contempt. At seven they dined in the Where-to-Dine-Well column.That evening a galaxy had assembled there. Bright shone the lights o'er fair women and br - let it go, anyhow - brave men. The orchestra played charmingly. Hardly had a tip from a diner been placed in its hands by a waiter when it would burst forth into soniferousness. The more beer you contributed to it the more Meyerbeer it gave you. Which is reciprocity. Merritt put forth exertions on the dinner. Greenbrier was his old friend, and he liked him. He persuaded him to drink a cocktail. "I take the horehound tea," said Greenbrier, "for old times' sake. But I'd prefer whiskey straight. They're on you." "Right!" said Merritt. "Now, run your eye down that bill of fare and see if it seems to hitch on any of these items." "Lay me on my lava bed!" said Greenbrier, with bulging eyes. "All these specimens of nutriment in the grub wagon! What's this? Horse with the heaves? I pass. But look along! Here's truck for twenty roundups all spelled out in different directions. Wait till I see." The viands ordered, Merritt turned to the wine list. "This Medoc isn't bad," he suggested. "You're the doc," said Greenbrier. "I'd rather have whiskey straight. It's on you." Greenbrier looked around the room. The waiter brought things and took dishes away. He was observing. He saw a New York restaurant crowd enjoying itself."How was the range when you left the Gila?" asked Merritt. "Fine," said Greenbrier. "You see that lady in the red speckled silk at that table. Well, she could warm over her beans at my campfire. Yes, the range was good. She looks as nice as a white mustang I see once on Black River." When the coffee came, Greenbrier put one foot on the seat of the chair next to him. "You said it was a comfortable town, Longy," he said, meditatively. "Yes, it's a comfortable town. It's different from the plains in a blue norther. What did you call that mess in the crock with the handle, Longy? Oh, yes, squabs in a cash roll. They're worth the roll. That white mustang had just such a way of turning his head and shaking his mane - look at her, Longy. If I thought I could sell out my ranch at a fair price, I believe I'd - "Gyar - song!" he suddenly cried, in a voice that paralyzed every knife and fork in the restaurant. The waiter dived toward the table."Two more of them cocktail drinks," ordered Greenbrier. Merritt looked at him and smiled significantly. "They're on me," said Greenbrier, blowing a puff of smoke to the ceiling. A Chaparral Christmas Gift The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing. At the end of that time it was worth it. Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sun- down Ranch you would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown Sheep Ranch. There came riding on red roan steeds -- or, to be more explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel -- two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid, But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature- His name was simply Johnny McRoy. It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita's admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps'- eves that were cast in those savannas that did not belong. to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny MeRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled. Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race. He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious, vociferous, mag- nanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion. Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and sixshooters, the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of the herders of kine. But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon it Johnny MeRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed. "I'll give you a Christmas present," he yelled, shrilly, at the door, with his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an offhand shot. His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane's right ear. The barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the bride's had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy, spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita's head. The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of Mr. McRoy. "I'll shoot better next time," yelled Johnny; "and there'll be a next time." He backed rapidly out the door. Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy's bullet from the darkness laid him low. The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement, it was a decided mis- demeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard him quote the line "Christmas comes but once a year" to the guests. But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the concealing chaparral. That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the "bad man" of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly blood- thirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom be assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty. Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to give each one credit, if it can be done, for what- ever speck of good he may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and this is the way it happened. One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree. One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite aW co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere beneath his ice and iron. "I don't know what I've been thinking about, Mex," he remarked in his usual mild drawl, "to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I'm going to ride over to-morrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl -- Rosita would have had me if he hadn't cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?" "Ah, shucks, Kid," said Mexican, "don't talk foolish- ness. You know you can't get within a mile of Mad Lane's house to-morrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don't you suppose Mad Lane'll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks." "I'm going," repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, "to go to Madison Lane's Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and -- oh! h--l, Mex, he got her; and I'll get him -- yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then's when I'll get him." "There's other ways of committing suicide," advised Mexican. "Why don't you go and surrender to the sheriff?" "I'll get him," said the Kid. Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of far-away frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass. When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch- house were brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer ranches. At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other cowboys employed on his ranch. "Now, boys," said Lane, "keep your eyes open. Walk around the house and watch the road well. All of you know the 'Frio Kid,' as they call him now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions. I'm not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She's been afraid he'd come in on us every Christmas since we were married." The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were making themselves comfortable inside. The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised Rosita's excellent supper, and after- ward the men scattered in groups about the rooms or on the broad "gallery," smoking and chatting. The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all were they pleased when Santa Claus himself in magnificent white beard and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys. "It's my papa," announced Billy Sampson, aged six. "I've seen him wear 'em before." Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking. "Well, Mrs. Lane," said he, "I suppose by this Christ- mas you've gotten over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven't you? Madison and I have talked about it, you know." "Very nearly," said Rosita, smiling, "but I am still nervous sometimes. I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing us." "He's the most cold-hearted villain in the world," said Berkly. "The citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like a wolf." "He has committed awful crimes," said Rosita, but -- I -- don't -- know. I think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always bad -- that I know." Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through. "I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane," he said. "I was just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband. But I've left one for you, instead. It's in the room to your right." "Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus," said Rosita, brightly. Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler air of the yard. She found no one in the room but Madison. "Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?" she asked. "Haven't seen anything in the way of a present," said her husband, laughing, "unless he could have meant me." The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X 0 Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta. "Well, the Frio Kid's got his dose of lead at last," he remarked to the postmaster. "That so? How'd it happen?" "One of old Sanchez's Mexican sheep herders did it! -- think of it! the Frio Kid killed bv a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along past his camp about twelve o'clock last night, and was so skeered that he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora- skin whiskers and a regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid playing Santy!" A Chaparral Prince Nine o'clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen's Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water in that turbulent and depressing hostelry. The din of the day's quarrying was over--the blasting and drilling, the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the house. Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair. She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs were sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest trouble. The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired she might be, she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time had Grimm whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come and deliver her out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken fresh courage and strength from Grimm. To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition. The woodcutter's lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted stepdaughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch's hut--all these were but transparent disguises for Lena, the overworked kitchenmaid in the Quarrymen's Hotel. And always when the extremity was direst came the good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue. So, here in the ogre's castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do for servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work briskly the next day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from one's mamma, and never having any time to play, live entirely deprived of Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it is. Lena's home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the Pedernales River, in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at little tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and scat. They are very thrifty people. Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena's father. And that is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty miles away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added her wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become as rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum pipe three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for dinner every day in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to work and assist in the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you can, what it means to be sentenced at eleven years of age from a home in the pleasant little Rhine village to hard labour in the ogre's castle, where you must fly to serve the ogres, while they devour cattle and sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp white limestone dust from their great shoes for you to sweep and scour with your weak, aching fingers. And then--to have Grimm taken away from you! Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained canned corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She was going to write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post it for her at Ballinger's. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the quarries, went home to Ballinger's every night, and was now waiting in the shadows under Lena's window for her to throw the letter out to him. That was the only way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg. Mrs. Maloney did not like for her to write letters. The stump of the candle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she wrote: Dearest Mamma:--I want so much to see you. And Gretel and Claus and Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so tired. I want to see you. To-day I was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had no supper. I could not bring in enough wood, for my hand hurt. She took my book yesterday. I mean "Grimm's Fairy Tales," which Uncle Leo gave me. It did not hurt any one for me to read the book. I try to work as well as I can, but there is so much to do. I read only a little bit every night. Dear mamma, I shall tell you what I am going to do. Unless you send for me to-morrow to bring me home I shall go to a deep place I know in the river and drown. It is wicked to drown, I suppose, but I wanted to see you, and there is no one else. I am very tired, and Tommy is waiting for the letter. You will excuse me, mamma, if I do it. Your respectful and loving daughter,Lena. Tommy was still waiting faithfully when the letter was concluded, and when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the steep hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled herself upon the mattress on the floor. At 10:30 o'clock old man Ballinger came out of his house in his stocking feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked down the big road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with the toe of his other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to come pattering up the road. Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard the lively hoofbeats of Fritz's team of little black mules, and very soon afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz's big spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice shouted a greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger's. The mail-carrier jumped out and took the bridles from the mules, for he always fed them oats at Ballinger's. While the mules were eating from their feed bags old man Ballinger brought out the mail sack and threw it into the wagon. Fritz Bergmann was a man of three sentiments--or to be more accurate-- four, the pair of mules deserving to be reckoned individually. Those mules were the chief interest and joy of his existence. Next came the Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller. "Tell me," said Fritz, when he was ready to start, "contains the sack a letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries? One came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already. Her mamma is very anxious to hear again." "Yes," said old man Ballinger, "thar's a letter for Mrs. Helterskelter, or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he come. Her little gal workin' over thar, you say?" "In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven years old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter Hildesmuller!--some day I shall with a big club pound that man's dummkopf--all in and out the town. Perhaps in this letter Lena will say that she is yet feeling better. So, her mamma will be glad. Auf wiedersehen, Herr Ballinger--your feets will take cold out in the night air." "So long, Fritzy," said old man Ballinger. "You got a nice cool night for your drive." Up the road went the little black mules at their steady trot, while Fritz thundered at them occasional words of endearment and cheer. These fancies occupied the mind of the mail-carrier until he reached the big post oak forest, eight miles from Ballinger's. Here his ruminations were scattered by the sudden flash and report of pistols and a whooping as if from a whole tribe of Indians. A band of galloping centaurs closed in around the mail wagon. One of them leaned over the front wheel, covered the driver with his revolver, and ordered him to stop. Others caught at the bridles of Donder and Blitzen. "Donnerwetter!" shouted Fritz, with all his tremendous voice--"wass ist? Release your hands from dose mules. Ve vas der United States mail!" "Hurry up, Dutch!" drawled a melancholy voice. "Don't you know when you're in a stick-up? Reverse your mules and climb out of the cart." It is due to the breadth of Hondo Bill's demerit and the largeness of his achievements to state that the holding up of the Fredericksburg mail was not perpetrated by way of an exploit. As the lion while in the pursuit of prey commensurate to his prowess might set a frivolous foot upon a casual rabbit in his path, so Hondo Bill and his gang had swooped sportively upon the pacific transport of Meinherr Fritz. The real work of their sinister night ride was over. Fritz and his mail bag and his mules came as gentle relaxation, grateful after the arduous duties of their profession. Twenty miles to the southeast stood a train with a killed engine, hysterical passengers and a looted express and mail car. That represented the serious occupation of Hondo Bill and his gang. With a fairly rich prize of currency and silver the robbers were making a wide detour to the west through the less populous country, intending to seek safety in Mexico by means of some fordable spot on the Rio Grande. The booty from the train had melted the desperate bushrangers to jovial and happy skylarkers. Trembling with outraged dignity and no little personal apprehension, Fritz climbed out to the road after replacing his suddenly removed spectacles. The band had dismounted and were singing, capering, and whooping, thus expressing their satisfied delight in the life of a jolly outlaw. Rattlesnake Rogers, who stood at the heads of the mules, jerked a little too vigorously at the rein of the tender-mouthed Donder, who reared and emitted a loud, protesting snort of pain. Instantly Fritz, with a scream of anger, flew at the bulky Rogers and began to assiduously pummel that surprised freebooter with his fists. "Villain!" shouted Fritz, "dog, bigstiff! Dot mule he has a soreness by his mouth. I vill knock off your shoulders mit your head-- robbermans!" "Yi-yi!" howled Rattlesnake, roaring with laughter and ducking his head, "somebody git this here sour-krout off'n me!" One of the band yanked Fritz back by the coat-tail, and the woods rang with Rattlesnake's vociferous comments. "The dog-goned little wienerwurst," he yelled, amiably. "He's not so much of a skunk, for a Dutchman. Took up for his animile plum quick, didn't he? I like to see a man like his hoss, even if it is a mule. The dad-blamed little Limburger he went for me, didn't he! Whoa, now, muley--I ain't a-goin' to hurt your mouth agin any more." Perhaps the mail would not have been tampered with had not Ben Moody, the lieutenant, possessed certain wisdom that seemed to promise more spoils. "Say, Cap," he said, addressing Hondo Bill, "there's likely to be good pickings in these mail sacks. I've done some hoss tradin' with these Dutchmen around Fredericksburg, and I know the style of the varmints. There's big money goes through the mails to that town. Them Dutch risk a thousand dollars sent wrapped in a piece of paper before they'd pay the banks to handle the money." Hondo Bill, six feet two, gentle of voice and impulsive in action, was dragging the sacks from the rear of the wagon before Moody had finished his speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the ripping sound as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded around and began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their labours by swearing affably at the writers, who seemed to have conspired to confute the prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was found in the Fredericksburg mail. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hondo Bill to the mail- carrier in solemn tones, "to be packing around such a lot of old, trashy paper as this. What d'you mean by it, anyhow? Where do you Dutchers keep your money at?" The Ballinger mail sack opened like a cocoon under Hondo's knife. It contained but a handful of mail. Fritz had been fuming with terror and excitement until this sack was reached. He now remembered Lena's letter. He addressed the leader of the band, asking that that particular missive be spared. "Much obliged, Dutch," he said to the disturbed carrier. "I guess that's the letter we want. Got spondulicks in it, ain't it? Here she is. Make a light, boys." Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the angular German script. "Whatever is this you've humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this here a valuable letter? That's a mighty low-down trick to play on your friends what come along to help you distribute your mail." "That's Chiny writin'," said Sandy Grundy, peering over Hondo's shoulder. "You're off your kazip," declared another of the gang, an effective youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. "That's shorthand. I see 'em do it once in court." "Ach, no, no, no--dot is German," said Fritz. "It is no more as a little girl writing a letter to her mamma. One poor little girl, sick and vorking hard avay from home. Ach! it is a shame. Good Mr. Robberman, you vill please let me have dot letter?" "What the devil do you take us for, old Pretzels?" said Hondo with sudden and surprising severity. "You ain't presumin' to insinuate that we gents ain't possessed of sufficient politeness for to take an interest in the miss's health, are you? Now, you go on, and you read that scratchin' out loud and in plain United States language to this here company of educated society." Hondo twirled his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering above the little German, who at once began to read the letter, translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in absolute silence, listening intently. "How old is that kid?" asked Hondo when the letter was done. "Eleven," said Fritz. "And where is she at?" "At dose rock quarries--working. Ach, mein Gott--little Lena, she speak of drowning. I do not know if she vill do it, but if she shall I schwear I vill dot Peter Hildesmuller shoot mit a gun." "You Dutchers," said Hondo Bill, his voice swelling with fine contempt, "make me plenty tired. Hirin' out your kids to work when they ought to be playin' dolls in the sand. You're a hell of a sect of people. I reckon we'll fix your clock for a while just to show what we think of your old cheesy nation. Here, boys!" Hondo Bill parleyed aside briefly with his band, and then they seized Fritz and conveyed him off the road to one side. Here they bound him fast to a tree with a couple of lariats. His team they tied to another tree near by. "We ain't going to hurt you bad," said Hondo reassuringly. "'Twon't hurt you to be tied up for a while. We will now pass you the time of day, as it is up to us to depart. Ausgespielt--nixcumrous, Dutchy. Don't get any more impatience." Fritz heard a great squeaking of saddles as the men mounted their horses. Then a loud yell and a great clatter of hoofs as they galloped pell-mell back along the Fredericksburg road. For more than two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure he sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at last awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was lifted to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body. Rubbing his eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst of the same band of terrible bandits. They shoved him up to the seat of his wagon and placed the lines in his hands. "Hit it out for home, Dutch," said Hondo Bill's voice commandingly. "You've given us lots of trouble and we're pleased to see the back of your neck. Spiel! Zwei bier! Vamoose!" Hondo reached out and gave Blitzen a smart cut with his quirt. The little mules sprang ahead, glad to be moving again. Fritz urged them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure. According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg at daylight. As it was, he drove down the long street of the town at eleven o'clock A.M. He had to pass Peter Hildesmuller's house on his way to the post-office. He stopped his team at the gate and called. But Frau Hildesmuller was watching for him. Out rushed the whole family of Hildesmullers. Frau Hildesmuller, fat and flushed, inquired if he had a letter from Lena, and then Fritz raised his voice and told the tale of his adventure. He told the contents of that letter that the robber had made him read, and then Frau Hildesmuller broke into wild weeping. Her little Lena drown herself! Why had they sent her from home? What could be done? Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for her now. Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it shivered into pieces. "Woman!" he roared at his wife, "why did you let that child go away? It is your fault if she comes home to us no more." Every one knew that it was Peter Hildesmuller's fault, so they paid no attention to his words. A moment afterward a strange, faint voice was heard to call: "Mamma!" Frau Hildesmuller at first thought it was Lena's spirit calling, and then she rushed to the rear of Fritz's covered wagon, and, with a loud shriek of joy, caught up Lena herself, covering her pale little face with kisses and smothering her with hugs. Lena's eyes were heavy with the deep slumber of exhaustion, but she smiled and lay close to the one she had longed to see. There among the mail sacks, covered in a nest of strange blankets and comforters, she had lain asleep until wakened by the voices around her. Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles. "Gott in Himmel!" he shouted. "How did you get in that wagon? Am I going crazy as well as to be murdered and hanged by robbers this day?" "You brought her to us, Fritz," cried Frau Hildesmuller. "How can we ever thank you enough?" "Tell mamma how you came in Fritz's wagon," said Frau Hildesmuller. "I don't know," said Lena. "But I know how I got away from the hotel. The Prince brought me." "By the Emperor's crown!" shouted Fritz, "we are all going crazy." "I always knew he would come," said Lena, sitting down on her bundle of bedclothes on the sidewalk. "Last night he came with his armed knights and captured the ogre's castle. They broke the dishes and kicked down the doors. They pitched Mr. Maloney into a barrel of rain water and threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel jumped out of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights began firing their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the stair. And then the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes and carried me out. He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was as rough as a scrubbing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled of schnapps. He took me on his horse before him and we rode away among the knights. He held me close and I went to sleep that way, and didn't wake up till I got home." "Rubbish!" cried Fritz Bergmann. "Fairy tales! How did you come from the quarries to my wagon?" "The Prince brought me," said Lena, confidently. And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven't been able to make her give any other explanation. Christmas by Injunction Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and pine burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget, weighing thirty ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man of breadth and hospitality, sent out invitations to his friends in three States to drop in and share his luck. Not one of the invited guests sent regrets. They rolled in from the Gila country, from Salt River, from the Pecos, from Albuquerque and Phoenix and Santa Fe, and from the camps intervening. When a thousand citizens had arrived and taken up claims they named the town Yellowhammer, appointed a vigilance committee, and presented Cherokee with a watch-chain made of nuggets. Three hours after the presentation ceremonies Cherokee's claim played out. He had located a pocket instead of a vein. He abandoned it and staked others one by one. Luck had kissed her hand to him. Never afterward did he turn up enough dust in Yellowhammer to pay his bar bill. But his thousand invited guests were mostly prospering, and Cherokee smiled and congratulated them. Yellowhammer was made up of men who took off their hats to a smiling loser; so they invited Cherokee to say what he wanted. "Me?" said Cherokee, "oh, grubstakes will be about the thing. I reckon I'll prospect along up in the Mariposas. If I strike it up there I will most certainly let you all know about the facts. I never was any hand to hold out cards on my friends." In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful, mouse- coloured forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the undefined limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of commendation and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble between contents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to consider Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and eggs, and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit to warm her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas. The name of the father of Yellowhammer was given him by the gold hunters in accordance with their popular system of nomenclature. It was not necessary for a citizen to exhibit his baptismal certificate in order to acquire a cognomen. A man's name was his personal property. For convenience in calling him up to the bar and in designating him among other blue-shirted bipeds, a temporary appellation, title, or epithet was conferred upon him by the public. Personal peculiarities formed the source of the majority of such informal baptisms. Many were easily dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed to have hailed. Some announced themselves to be "Thompsons," and "Adamses," and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly arrogant, and did not win popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton L. C. Belmont, and proved it by letters, was given till sundown to leave the town. Such names as "Shorty," "Bow-legs," "Texas," "Lazy Bill," "Thirsty Rogers," "Limping Riley," "The Judge," and "California Ed" were in favour. Cherokee derived his title from the fact that he claimed to have lived for a time with that tribe in the Indian Nation. On the twentieth day of December Baldy, the mail rider, brought Yellowhammer a piece of news. "What do I see in Albuquerque," said Baldy, to the patrons of the bar, "but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of Turkey, and lavishin' money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and the owl, and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he audits all the bills, C.O.D. His pockets looked like a pool table's after a fifteen-ball run. "Cherokee must have struck pay ore," remarked California Ed. "Well, he's white. I'm much obliged to him for his success." "Seems like Cherokee would ramble down to Yellowhammer and see his friends," said another, slightly aggrieved. "But that's the way. Prosperity is the finest cure there is for lost forgetfulness." "You wait," said Baldy; "I'm comin' to that. Cherokee strikes a three- foot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the ton, and he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand hasty dollars in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat and a red sleigh, and what do you think he takes it in his head to do next?" "Chuck-a-luck," said Texas, whose ideas of recreation were the gamester's. "Come and Kiss Me, Ma Honey," sang Shorty, who carried tintypes in his pocket and wore a red necktie while working on his claim. "Bought a saloon?" suggested Thirsty Rogers. "Cherokee took me to a room," continued Baldy, "and showed me. He's got that room full of drums and dolls and skates and bags of candy and jumping-jacks and toy lambs and whistles and such infantile truck. And what do you think he's goin' to do with them inefficacious knick- knacks? Don't surmise none--Cherokee told me. He's goin' to lead 'em up in his red sleigh and--wait a minute, don't order no drinks yet-- he's goin' to drive down here to Yellowhammer and give the kids--the kids of this here town--the biggest Christmas tree and the biggest cryin' doll and Little Giant Boys' Tool Chest blowout that was ever seen west of the Cape Hatteras." Two minutes of absolute silence ticked away in the wake of Baldy's words. It was broken by the House, who, happily conceiving the moment to be ripe for extending hospitality, sent a dozen whisky glasses spinning down the bar, with the slower travelling bottle bringing up the rear. "Didn't you tell him?" asked the miner called Trinidad. "Well, no," answered Baldy, pensively; "I never exactly seen my way to. "You see, Cherokee had this Christmas mess already bought and paid for; and he was all flattered up with self-esteem over his idea; and we had in a way flew the flume with that fizzy wine I speak of; so I never let on." "I cannot refrain from a certain amount of surprise," said the Judge, as he hung his ivory-handled cane on the bar, "that our friend Cherokee should possess such an erroneous conception of--ah--his, as it were, own town." "Oh, it ain't the eighth wonder of the terrestrial world," said Baldy. "Cherokee's been gone from Yellowhammer over seven months. Lots of things could happen in that time. How's he to know that there ain't a single kid in this town, and so far as emigration is concerned, none expected?" "Come to think of it," remarked California Ed, "it's funny some ain't drifted in. Town ain't settled enough yet for to bring in the rubber- ring brigade, I reckon." "To top off this Christmas-tree splurge of Cherokee's," went on Baldy, "he's goin' to give an imitation of Santa Claus. He's got a white wig and whiskers that disfigure him up exactly like the pictures of this William Cullen Longfellow in the books, and a red suit of fur-trimmed outside underwear, and eight-ounce gloves, and a stand-up, lay-down croshayed red cap. Ain't it a shame that a outfit like that can't get a chance to connect with a Annie and Willie's prayer layout?" "When does Cherokee allow to come over with his truck?" inquired Trinidad. "Mornin' before Christmas," said Baldy. "And he wants you folks to have a room fixed up and a tree hauled and ready. And such ladies to assist as can stop breathin' long enough to let it be a surprise for the kids." The unblessed condition of Yellowhammer had been truly described. The voice of childhood had never gladdened its flimsy structures; the patter of restless little feet had never consecrated the one rugged highway between the two rows of tents and rough buildings. Later they would come. But now Yellowhammer was but a mountain camp, and nowhere in it were the roguish, expectant eyes, opening wide at dawn of the enchanting day; the eager, small hands to reach for Santa's bewildering hoard; the elated, childish voicings of the season's joy, such as the coming good things of the warm-hearted Cherokee deserved. Of women there were five in Yellowhammer. The assayer's wife, the proprietress of the Lucky Strike Hotel, and a laundress whose washtub panned out an ounce of dust a day. These were the permanent feminines; the remaining two were the Spangler Sisters, Misses Fanchon and Erma, of the Transcontinental Comedy Company, then playing in repertoire at the (improvised) Empire Theatre. But of children there were none. Sometimes Miss Fanchon enacted with spirit and address the part of robustious childhood; but between her delineation and the visions of adolescence that the fancy offered as eligible recipients of Cherokee's holiday stores there seemed to be fixed a gulf. Christmas would come on Thursday. On Tuesday morning Trinidad, instead of going to work, sought the Judge at the Lucky Strike Hotel. "It'll be a disgrace to Yellowhammer," said Trinidad, "if it throws Cherokee down on his Christmas tree blowout. You might say that that man made this town. For one, I'm goin' to see what can be done to give Santa Claus a square deal." "My co-operation," said the Judge, "would be gladly forthcoming. I am indebted to Cherokee for past favours. But, I do not see--I have heretofore regarded the absence of children rather as a luxury--but in this instance--still, I do not see--" "Look at me," said Trinidad, "and you'll see old Ways and Means with the fur on. I'm goin' to hitch up a team and rustle a load of kids for Cherokee's Santa Claus act, if I have to rob an orphan asylum." "Eureka!" cried the Judge, enthusiastically. "No, you didn't," said Trinidad, decidedly. "I found it myself. I learned about that Latin word at school." "I will accompany you," declared the Judge, waving his cane. "Perhaps such eloquence and gift of language as I possess will be of benefit in persuading our young friends to lend themselves to our project." Within an hour Yellowhammer was acquainted with the scheme of Trinidad and the Judge, and approved it. Citizens who knew of families with offspring within a forty-mile radius of Yellowhammer came forward and contributed their information. Trinidad made careful notes of all such, and then hastened to secure a vehicle and team. The first stop scheduled was at a double log-house fifteen miles out from Yellowhammer. A man opened the door at Trinidad's hail, and then came down and leaned upon the rickety gate. The doorway was filled with a close mass of youngsters, some ragged, all full of curiosity and health. "It's this way," explained Trinidad. "We're from Yellowhammer, and we come kidnappin' in a gentle kind of a way. One of our leading citizens is stung with the Santa Claus affliction, and he's due in town to-morrow with half the folderols that's painted red and made in Germany. The youngest kid we got in Yellowhammer packs a forty-five and a safety razor. Consequently we're mighty shy on anybody to say 'Oh' and 'Ah' when we light the candles on the Christmas tree. Now, partner, if you'll loan us a few kids we guarantee to return 'em safe and sound on Christmas Day. And they'll come back loaded down with a good time and Swiss Family Robinsons and cornucopias and red drums and similar testimonials. What do you say?" "In other words," said the Judge, "we have discovered for the first time in our embryonic but progressive little city the inconveniences of the absence of adolescence. The season of the year having approximately arrived during which it is a custom to bestow frivolous but often appreciated gifts upon the young and tender--" "I understand," said the parent, packing his pipe with a forefinger. "I guess I needn't detain you gentlemen. Me and the old woman have got seven kids, so to speak; and, runnin' my mind over the bunch, I don't appear to hit upon none that we could spare for you to take over to your doin's. The old woman has got some popcorn candy and rag dolls hid in the clothes chest, and we allow to give Christmas a little whirl of our own in a insignificant sort of style. No, I couldn't, with any degree of avidity, seem to fall in with the idea of lettin' none of 'em go. Thank you kindly, gentlemen." Down the slope they drove and up another foothill to the ranch-house of Wiley Wilson. Trinidad recited his appeal and the Judge boomed out his ponderous antiphony. Mrs. Wiley gathered her two rosy-cheeked youngsters close to her skirts and did not smile until she had seen Wiley laugh and shake his head. Again a refusal. Trinidad and the Judge vainly exhausted more than half their list before twilight set in among the hills. They spent the night at a stage road hostelry, and set out again early the next morning. The wagon had not acquired a single passenger. "It's creepin' upon my faculties," remarked Trinidad, "that borrowin' kids at Christmas is somethin' like tryin' to steal butter from a man that's got hot pancakes a-comin'." "It is undoubtedly an indisputable fact," said the Judge, "that the-- ah--family ties seem to be more coherent and assertive at that period of the year." On the day before Christmas they drove thirty miles, making four fruitless halts and appeals. Everywhere they found "kids" at a premium. The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said: "There's a woman that's just took charge of the railroad eatin' house down at Granite Junction. I hear she's got a little boy. Maybe she might let him go." Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o'clock in the afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and appeased passengers. On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy of ten smoking a cigarette. The dining-room had been left in chaos by the peripatetic appetites. A youngish woman reclined, exhausted, in a chair. Her face wore sharp lines of worry. She had once possessed a certain style of beauty that would never wholly leave her and would never wholly return. Trinidad set forth his mission. "I'd count it a mercy if you'd take Bobby for a while," she said, wearily. "I'm on the go from morning till night, and I don't have time to 'tend to him. He's learning bad habits from the men. It'll be the only chance he'll have to get any Christmas." The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured the glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colours. "And, moreover, my young friend," added the Judge, "Santa Claus himself will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the gifts conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to--" "Aw, come off," said the boy, squinting his small eyes. "I ain't no kid. There ain't any Santa Claus. It's your folks that buys toys and sneaks 'em in when you're asleep. And they make marks in the soot in the chimney with the tongs to look like Santa's sleigh tracks." "That might be so," argued Trinidad, "but Christmas trees ain't no fairy tale. This one's goin' to look like the ten-cent store in Albuquerque, all strung up in a redwood. There's tops and drums and Noah's arks and--" "Oh, rats!" said Bobby, wearily. "I cut them out long ago. I'd like to have a rifle--not a target one--a real one, to shoot wildcats with; but I guess you won't have any of them on your old tree." "Well, I can't say for sure," said Trinidad diplomatically; "it might be. You go along with us and see." The hope thus held out, though faint, won the boy's hesitating consent to go. With this solitary beneficiary for Cherokee's holiday bounty, the canvassers spun along the homeward road. In Yellowhammer the empty storeroom had been transformed into what might have passed as the bower of an Arizona fairy. The ladies had done their work well. A tall Christmas tree, covered to the topmost branch with candles, spangles, and toys sufficient for more than a score of children, stood in the centre of the floor. Near sunset anxious eyes had begun to scan the street for the returning team of the child-providers. At noon that day Cherokee had dashed into town with his new sleigh piled high with bundles and boxes and bales of all sizes and shapes. So intent was he upon the arrangements for his altruistic plans that the dearth of children did not receive his notice. No one gave away the humiliating state of Yellowhammer, for the efforts of Trinidad and the Judge were expected to supply the deficiency. When the sun went down Cherokee, with many wings and arch grins on his seasoned face, went into retirement with the bundle containing the Santa Claus raiment and a pack containing special and undisclosed gifts. "When the kids are rounded up," he instructed the volunteer arrangement committee, "light up the candles on the tree and set 'em to playin' 'Pussy Wants a Corner' and 'King William.' When they get good and at it, why--old Santa'll slide in the door. I reckon there'll be plenty of gifts to go 'round." The ladies were flitting about the tree, giving it final touches that were never final. The Spangled Sisters were there in costume as Lady Violet de Vere and Marie, the maid, in their new drama, "The Miner's Bride." The theatre did not open until nine, and they were welcome assistants of the Christmas tree committee. Every minute heads would pop out the door to look and listen for the approach of Trinidad's team. And now this became an anxious function, for night had fallen and it would soon be necessary to light the candles on the tree, and Cherokee was apt to make an irruption at any time in his Kriss Kringle garb. At length the wagon of the child "rustlers" rattled down the street to the door. The ladies, with little screams of excitement, flew to the lighting of the candles. The men of Yellowhammer passed in and out restlessly or stood about the room in embarrassed groups. Trinidad and the Judge, bearing the marks of protracted travel, entered, conducting between them a single impish boy, who stared with sullen, pessimistic eyes at the gaudy tree. "Where are the other children?" asked the assayer's wife, the acknowledged leader of all social functions. "Ma'am," said Trinidad with a sigh, "prospectin' for kids at Christmas time is like huntin' in a limestone for silver. This parental business is one that I haven't no chance to comprehend. It seems that fathers and mothers are willin' for their offsprings to be drownded, stole, fed on poison oak, and et by catamounts 364 days in the year; but on Christmas Day they insists on enjoyin' the exclusive mortification of their company. This here young biped, ma'am, is all that washes out of our two days' manoeuvres." "Oh, the sweet little boy!" cooed Miss Erma, trailing her De Vere robes to centre of stage. "Aw, shut up," said Bobby, with a scowl. "Who's a kid? You ain't, you bet." "Fresh brat!" breathed Miss Erma, beneath her enamelled smile. "We done the best we could," said Trinidad. "It's tough on Cherokee, but it can't be helped." Then the door opened and Cherokee entered in the conventional dress of Saint Nick. A white rippling beard and flowing hair covered his face almost to his dark and shining eyes. Over his shoulder he carried a pack. No one stirred as he came in. Even the Spangler Sisters ceased their coquettish poses and stared curiously at the tall figure. Bobby stood with his hands in his pockets gazing gloomily at the effeminate and childish tree. Cherokee put down his pack and looked wonderingly about the room. Perhaps he fancied that a bevy of eager children were being herded somewhere, to be loosed upon his entrance. He went up to Bobby and extended his red-mittened hand. "Merry Christmas, little boy," said Cherokee. "Anything on the tree you want they'll get it down for you. Won't you shake hands with Santa Claus?" "There ain't any Santa Claus," whined the boy. "You've got old false billy goat's whiskers on your face. I ain't no kid. What do I want with dolls and tin horses? The driver said you'd have a rifle, and you haven't. I want to go home." Trinidad stepped into the breach. He shook Cherokee's hand in warm greeting. "I'm sorry, Cherokee," he explained. "There never was a kid in Yellowhammer. We tried to rustle a bunch of 'em for your swaree, but this sardine was all we could catch. He's a atheist, and he don't believe in Santa Claus. It's a shame for you to be out all this truck. But me and the Judge was sure we could round up a wagonful of candidates for your gimcracks." "That's all right," said Cherokee gravely. "The expense don't amount to nothin' worth mentionin'. We can dump the stuff down a shaft or throw it away. I don't know what I was thinkin' about; but it never occurred to my cogitations that there wasn't any kids in Yellowhammer." Meanwhile the company had relaxed into a hollow but praiseworthy imitation of a pleasure gathering. Bobby had retreated to a distant chair, and was coldly regarding the scene with ennui plastered thick upon him. Cherokee, lingering with his original idea, went over and sat beside him. "Where do you live, little boy?" he asked respectfully. "Granite Junction," said Bobby without emphasis. The room was warm. Cherokee took off his cap, and then removed his beard and wig. "Say!" exclaimed Bobby, with a show of interest, "I know your mug, all right." "Did you ever see me before?" asked Cherokee. "I don't know; but I've seen your picture lots of times." "Where?" The boy hesitated. "On the bureau at home," he answered. "Let's have your name, if you please, buddy." "Robert Lumsden. The picture belongs to my mother. She puts it under her pillow of nights. And once I saw her kiss it. I wouldn't. But women are that way." Cherokee rose and beckoned to Trinidad. "Keep this boy by you till I come back," he said. "I'm goin' to shed these Christmas duds, and hitch up my sleigh. I'm goin' to take this kid home." "Well, infidel," said Trinidad, taking Cherokee's vacant chair, "and so you are too superannuated and effete to yearn for such mockeries as candy and toys, it seems." "I don't like you," said Bobby, with acrimony. "You said there would be a rifle. A fellow can't even smoke. I wish I was at home." Cherokee drove his sleigh to the door, and they lifted Bobby in beside him. The team of fine horses sprang away prancingly over the hard snow. Cherokee had on his $500 overcoat of baby sealskin. The laprobe that he drew about them was as warm as velvet. Bobby slipped a cigarette from his pocket and was trying to snap a match. "Throw that cigarette away," said Cherokee, in a quiet but new voice. Bobby hesitated, and then dropped the cylinder overboard. "Throw the box, too," commanded the new voice. More reluctantly the boy obeyed. "Say," said Bobby, presently, "I like you. I don't know why. Nobody never made me do anything I didn't want to do before." "Tell me, kid," said Cherokee, not using his new voice, "are you sure your mother kissed that picture that looks like me?" "Dead sure. I seen her do it." "Didn't you remark somethin' a while ago about wanting a rifle?" "You bet I did. Will you get me one?" "To-morrow--silver-mounted." Cherokee took out his watch. "Half-past nine. We'll hit the Junction plumb on time with Christmas Day. Are you cold? Sit closer, son." The Coming-Out of Maggie Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and Take--or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold's paper-box factory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops. Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left- handed style of footwork in the twostep, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her "fellow." Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that her friend could go to the dance with them. The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went 'round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little welter- weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes. On Saturdays Rhinegold's paper-box factory closed at 3 P. M. On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie's door Anna said, as usual: "Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me'll come by for you." But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high- poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye. "Thanks, Anna," said Maggie; "but you and Jimmy needn't bother to- night. I've a gentleman friend that's coming 'round to escort me to the hop." The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it? "You'll see to-night," said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had gathered in Cupid's vineyard. "He's swell all right. He's two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I'll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall." Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening. Anna's eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her friend's "catch." At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy. "Oh, gee!" cried Anna, "Mag ain't made a hit--oh, no! Swell fellow? well, I guess! Style? Look at 'um." "Go as far as you like," said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. "Cop him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don't mind me. He don't squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!" "Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First fellow she ever had. Oh, here they come." Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind a paperbox maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brumme1 airs. They were not considered honourable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the supereminence of the male in the cosmogony of creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle tourneys of Cupid--these were the approved arms and ammunition of the Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, genuflexions and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle. "A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O'Sullivan," was Maggie's formula of introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each new-arriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse. "Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last," was the word that went round among the paper-box girls. "Pipe Mag's floor-walker"--thus the Give and Takes expressed their indifferent contempt. Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self- sacrificing partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum to walk over his feet through a two-step. But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first butterfly flight. And though our tropes of fairyland be mixed with those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the rose-crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect night. The girls besieged her for introductions to her "fellow." The Clover Leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance. Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honours of the evening fell thick and fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he introduced manner and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly upon his tongue, and--he waltzed twice in succession with the paper- box girl that Dempsey Donovan brought. Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan's lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him. Whenever be broke a pushcart man's head or shot a member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and Literary Association in the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say: "The Cap'n 'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye have time, Dempsey, me boy." But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains and black cigars; and somebody would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the sixpound dumbbells. So, doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe terpsichorean performance compared with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paper-box girl. At 10 o'clock the jolly round face of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys. Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. "Big Mike" looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed. The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls. Terry O'Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted him in the middle of the floor. Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly every one to turn and look at them--there was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in the arena. Two or three Give and Takes with tight coat sleeves drew nearer. "One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Dempsey. "I hope you're enjoying yourself. Where did you say you live?" The two gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten pounds of weight to give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth with quickness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive. "I live on Grand," said O'Sullivan, insolently; "and no trouble to find me at home. Where do you live?" Dempsey ignored the question. "You say your name's O'Sullivan," he went on. "Well, 'Big Mike' says he never saw you before." "Lots of things he never saw," said the favourite of the hop. "As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, "O'Sullivans in this district know one another. You escorted one of our lady members here, and we want chance to make good. If you've got a family tree let's see a few historical O'Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots?" "Suppose you mind your own business," suggested O'Sullivan, blandly. Dempsey's eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a brilliant idea had struck him. "I've got it now," he said cordially. "It was just a little mistake. You ain't no O'Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not recognising you at first." O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Geoghan was ready and caught his arm. Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club, and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted him out through the same door at the rear. This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a word of elucidation. Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature, under the supervision of the board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members guaranteed that. So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary work that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She looked about for her escort. "Smoke up!" said Rose Cassidy. "Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan picked a scrap with your Lizzie-boy, and they've waltzed out to the slaughter room with him. How's my hair look done up this way, Mag?" Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist. "Gone to fight with Dempsey!" she said, breathlessly. "They've got to be stopped. Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. Why, he'll--he'll kill him!" "Ah, what do you care?" said Rosa. "Don't some of 'em fight every hop?" But Maggie was off, darting her zig-zag way through the maze of dancers. She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene--the Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in his shirt sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream--leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom. The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of the Give and Take Association! Such a thing had never happened before. Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning. And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey and the board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his head in the direction of the door. "The back stairs, Giuseppi," he said, briefly. "Somebody'11 pitch your hat down after you." Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him bravely in the eye. "I knew it, Dempsey," she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their tears. "I knew he was a Guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always carries knives. But you don't understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my life. I got tired of comin' with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, and brought him along. I knew there'd be nothin' doin' for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll resign from the club now." Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan. "Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window," he said, "and tell 'em inside that Mr. O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tammany Hall." And then he turned back to Maggie. "Say, Mag," he said, "I'll see you home. And how about next Saturday night? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around for you?" It was remarkable how quickly Maggie's eyes could change from dull to a shining brown. "With you, Dempsey?" she stammered. "Say--will a duck swim?" Compliments Of The Season There are no more Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced to very questionable sources - facts and philosophy. We will begin with - whichever you choose to call it. Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end. We exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat-trap. As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs. Now comes the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion, and the Twenty-fifth of December. On the tenth of that month the Child of the Millionaire lost her rag-doll. There were many servants in the Millionaire's palace on the Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds, but without finding the lost treasure. The child was a girl of five, and one of those perverse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar, inexpensive toy instead of upon diamond-studded automobiles and pony phaetons. The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inexplicable to the Millionaire, to whom the rag-doll market was about as interesting as Bay State Gas; and to the Lady, the Child's mother, who was all form - that is, nearly all, as you shall see. The Child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed, spindling, and corykilverty in many other respects. The Millionaire smiled and tapped his coffers confidently. The pick of the output of the French and German toymakers was rushed by special delivery to the mansion; but Rachel refused to be comforted. She was weeping for her rag child, and was for a high protective tariff against all foreign foolishness. Then doctors with the finest bedside manners and stop-watches were called in. One by one they chattered futilely about peptomanganate of iron and sea voyages and hypophosphites until their stop-watches showed that Bill Rendered was under the wire for show or place. Then, as men, they advised that the rag-doll be found as soon as possible and restored to its mourning parent. The Child sniffed at therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and wailed for her Betsy. And all this time cablegrams were coming from Santa Claus saying that he would soon be here and enjoining us to show a true Christian spirit and let up on the pool-rooms and tontine policies and platoon systems long enough to give him a welcome. Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing itself. The banks were refusing loans, the pawn-brokers had doubled their gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars while you waited on one foot, holly-wreaths of hospitality were hung in windows of the stores, they who had 'em were getting their furs. You hardly knew which was the best bet in balls - three, high, moth, or snow. It was no time at which to lose the rag-doll or your heart. If Doctor Watson's investigating friend had been called in to solve this mysterious disappearance he might have observed on the Millionaire's wall a copy of "The Vampire." That would have quickly suggested, by induction, "A rag and a bone and a hank of hair." "Flip," a Scotch terrier, next to the rag-doll in the Child's heart, frisked through the halls. The hank of hair! Aha! X, the unfound quantity, represented the rag-doll. But, the bone? Well, when dogs find bones they - Done! It were an easy and a fruitful task to examine Flip's forefeet. Look, Watson! Earth - dried earth between the toes. Of course, the dog - but Sherlock was not there. Therefore it devolves. But topography and architecture must intervene. The Millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space. In front of it was a lawn close-mowed as a South Ireland man's face two days after a shave. At one side of it, and fronting on another street was a pleasuance trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables. The Scotch pup had ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless undertakers. There you have the mystery solved, and no checks to write for the hypodermical wizard of fi'-pun notes to toss to the sergeant. Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers - the Christmas heart of the thing. Fuzzy was drunk - not riotously or helplessly or loquaciously, as you or I might get, but decently, appropriately, and inoffensively, as becomes a gentleman down on his luck. Fuzzy was a soldier of misfortune. The road, the haystack, the park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of eleemosynary beds-with-shower-bath-attachment, the petty pickings and ignobly garnered largesse of great cities - these formed the chapters of his history. Fuzzy walked toward the river, down the street that bounded one side of the Millionaire's house and grounds. He saw a leg of Betsy, the lost rag-doll, protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian murder mystery, from its untimely grave in a corner of the fence. He dragged forth the maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, and went on his way crooning a road song of his brethrren that no doll that has been brought up to the sheltered life should hear. Well for Betsy that she had no ears. And well that she had no eyes save unseeing circles of black; for the faces of Fuzzy and the Scotch terrier were those of brothers, and the heart of no rag-doll could withstand twice to become the prey of such fearsome monsters. Though you may not know it, Grogan's saloon stands near the river and near the foot of the street down which Fuzzy traveled. In Grogan's, Christmas cheer was already rampant. Fuzzy entered with his doll. He fancied that as a mummer at the feast of Saturn he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup. He set Betsy on the bar and addressed her loudly and humorously, seasoning his speech with exaggerated compliments and endearments, as one entertaining his lady friend. The loafers and bibbers around caught the farce of it, and roared. The bartender gave Fuzzy a drink. Oh, many of us carry rag-dolls. "One for the lady?" suggested Fuzzy impudently, and tucked another contribution to Art beneath his waistcoat. He began to see possibilities in Betsy. His first-night had been a success. Visions of a vaudeville circuit about town dawned upon him. In a group near the stove sat "Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and "One-ear" Mike, well and unfavorably known in the tough shoestring district that blackened the left bank of the river. They passed a newspaper back and forth among themselves. The item that each solid and blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed "One Hundred Dollars Reward." To earn it one must return the rag-doll lost, strayed, or stolen from the Millionaire's mansion. It seemed that grief still ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of the too faithful Child. Flip, the terrier, capered and shook his absurd whisker before her, powerless to distract. She wailed for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking, mama-ing, and eye-closing French Mabelles and Violettes. The advertisement was a last resort. Black Riley came from behind the stove and approached Fuzzy in his one-sided parabolic way. The Christmas mummer, flushed with success, had tucked Betsy under his arm, and was about to depart to the filling of impromptu dates elsewhere. "Say, 'Bo," said Black Riley to him, "where did you cop out dat doll?" "This doll?" asked Fuzzy, touching Betsy with his forefinger to be sure that she was the one referred to. his doll was presented to me by the Emperor of Beloochistan. I have seven hundred others in my country home in Newport. This doll -" "Cheese the funny business," said Riley. "You swiped it or picked it up at de house on de hill where - but never mind dat. You want to take fifty cents for de rags, and take it quick. Me brother's kid at home might be wantin' to play wid it. Hey - what?" He produced the coin. Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face. Go to the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him that she be released from a night's performance to entertain the Tackytown Lyceum and Literary Coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh. Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a wrestler does. His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest the rag Sabine from the extemporaneous merry-andrew who was entertaining an angel unaware. But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches of well-nourished corporeity, defended from the winter winds by dingy linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small, circular wrinkles running around his coat-sleeves and knees guaranteed the quality of his bone and muscle. His small, blue eyes, bathed in the moisture of altruism and wooziness, looked upon you kindly, yet without abashment. He was whiskerly, whiskyly, fleshily formidable. So, Black Riley temporized. "Wot'll you take for it, den?" he asked. "Money," said Fuzzy, with husky firmness, "cannot buy her." He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of attainment. To set a faded-blue, earth-stained rag-doll on a bar, to hold mimic converse with it, and to find his heart leaping with the sense of plaudits earned and his throat scorching with free libations poured in his honor - could base coin buy him from such achievements? You will perceive that Fuzzy had the temperament. Fuzzy walked out with the gait of a trained sea-lion in search of other caf'es to conquer. Though the dusk of twilight was hardly yet apparent, lights were beginning to spangle the city like pop-corn bursting in a deep skillet. Christmas Eve, impatiently expected, was peeping over the brink of the hour. Millions had prepared for its celebration. Towns would be painted red. You, yourself, have heard the horns and dodged the capers of the Saturnalians. "Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and "One-ear" Mike held a hasty converse outside Grogan's. They were narrow-chested, pallid striplings, not fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their ways of warfare than the most terrible of Turks. Fuzzy, in a pitched battle, could have eaten the three of them. In a go-as-you-please encounter he was already doomed. They overtook him just as he and Betsy were entering Costigan's Casino. They deflected him, and shoved the newspaper under his nose. Fuzzy could read - and more. "Boys," said he, "you are certainly damn true friends. Give me a week to think it over." The soul of a real artist is quenched with difficulty. The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertisements were soulless, and that the deficiencies of the day might not be supplied by the morrow. "A cool hundred," said Fuzzy thoughtfully and mushily. "Booys," said he, "you are true friends. I'll go up and claim the reward. The show business is not what it used to be." Night was falling more surely. The three tagged at his sides to the foot of the rise on which stood the Millionaire's house. There Fuzzy turned upon them acrimoniously. "You are a pack of putty-faced beagle-hounds," he roared. "Go away." They went away - a little way. In "Pigeon" McCarthy's pocket was a section of one-inch gas-pipe eight inches long. In one end of it and in the middle of it was a lead plug. One-half of it was packed tight with solder. Black Riley carried a slung-shot, being a conventional thug. "One-ear" Mike relied upon a pair of brass knucks - an heirloom in the family. "Why fetch and carry," said Black Riley, "when some one will do it for ye? Let him bring it out to us. Hey - what?" "We can chuck him in the river," said "Pigeon" McCarthy, "with a stone tied to his feet." "Youse guys make me tired," said "One-ear" Mike sadly. "Ain't progress ever appealed to none of yez? Sprinkle a little gasoline on 'im, and drop 'im on the Drive - well?" Fuzzy entered the Millionaire's gate and zigzagged toward the softly glowing entrance of the mansion. The three goblins came up to the gate and lingered - one on each side of it, one beyond the roadway. They fingered their cold metal and leather, confident. Fuzzy rang the door-bell, smiling foolishly and dreamily. An atavistic instrinct prompted him to reach for the button of his right glove. But he wore no gloves; so his left hand dropped, embarrassed. The particular menial whose duty it was to open doors to silks and laces shied at first sight of Fuzzy. But a second glance took in his passport, his card of admission, his surety of welcome - the lost rag-doll of the daughter of the house dangling under his arm. Fuzzy was admitted into a great hall, dim with the glow from unseen lights. The hireling went away and returned with a maid and the Child. The doll was restored to the mourning one. She clasped her lost darling to her breast; and then, with the inordinate selfishness and candor of childhood, stamped her foot and whined hatred and fear of the odious being who had rescued her from the depths of sorrow and despair. Fuzzy wriggled himself into an ingratiatory attitude and essayed the idiotic smile and blattering small talk that is supposed to charm the budding intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging her Betsy close. There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and worshipping pomp and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy's hand ten ten-dollar bills; then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial regions. James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far as the front door. When the money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It - and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand; and now wherever he might go the enchanted palaces with shining foot-rests and magic red fluids in gleaming glassware would be open to him. He followed James to the door. He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for him to pass into the vestibule. Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway Black Riley and his two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the rag-doll theirs. Fuzzy stopped at the Millionaire's door and bethought himself. Like little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk, mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths aand festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making the great hall gay - where had he seen such things before? Somewhere he had known polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, and - and some one was singing a song in the house that he thought he had heard before. Some one singing and playing a harp. Of course, it was Christmas - Fuzzy though he must have been pretty drunk to have overlooked that. And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him out of some impossible, vanished, and irrevocable past a little, pure-white, transient, forgotten ghost - the spirit of nobless oblige. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve. James opened the outer door. A stream of light went down the graveled walk to the iron gate. Black Riley, McCarthy, and "One-ear" Mike saw, and carelessly drew their sinister cordon closer about the gate. With a more imperious gesture than James's master had ever used or could ever use, Fuzzy compelled the menial to close the door. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve. Especially at the Christmas season. "It is cust - customary," he said to James, the flustered, "when a gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season with the lady of the house. You und'stand? I shall not move shtep till I pass compl'ments season with lady the house. Und'stand?" There was an argument. James lost. Fuzzy raised his voice and sent it through the house unpleasantly. I did not say he was a gentleman. He was simply a tramp being visited by a ghost. A sterling silver bell rang. James went back to answer it, leaving Fuzzy in the hall. James explained somewhere to some one. Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library. The lady entered a moment later. She was more beautiful and holy than any picture that Fuzzy had seen. She smiled, and said something about a doll. Fuzzy didn't understand that; he remembered nothing about a doll. A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped sterling-silver waiter. The Lady took one. The other was handed to Fuzzy. As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his disabilities dropped from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself; and Time, so disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accomodate Fuzzy. Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the most opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan's whisky. What had the Millionaire's mansion to do with a long, wainscoted Virginia hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl, drinking the ancient toast of the House? And why should the patter of the cab horses' hoofs on the frozen street be in any wise related to the sound of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the west veranda? And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it? The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending smile fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something beneath the rags and Scotch terrier whiskers that she did not understand. But it did not matter. Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly. "P-pardon, lady," he said, "but couldn't leave without exchangin' comp'ments sheason with lady th' house. 'Gainst princ'ples gen'leman do sho." And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the House when men wore lace ruffles and powder. "The blessings of another year -" Fuzzy's memory failed him. The Lady prompted: "- Be upon this hearth." "- The guest -" stammered Fuzzy. "- And upon her who -" continued the Lady, with a leading smile. "Oh, cut it out," said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly. "I can't remember. Drink hearty." Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of her caste. James enveloped and re-conducted him toward the front door. The harp music still softly drifted through the house. Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate. "I wonder," said the Lady to herself, musing, "who - but there were so many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them after they have fallen so low." Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called: "James!" James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, with his brief spark of the divine fire gone. Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his section of gas-pipe. "You will conduct this gentleman," said the lady, "Downstairs. Then tell Louis to get out the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes to go." Confessions of a Humorist There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and then it broke out on me, and people said I was It. But they called it humor instead of measles. The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office to present it. I had been selected for spokesman, and I made a little speech that I had been preparing for a week. It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that brought down the house--which was a very solid one in the wholesale hardware line. Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the employees took their cue and roared. My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past nine o'clock on that morning. For weeks afterward my fellow clerks fanned the flame of my self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of each one of my jokes. Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. Others might speak sanely on business matters and the day's topics, but from me something gamesome and airy was required. I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the granite ware with persiflage. I was second bookkeeper, and if I failed to show up a balance sheet without something comic about the footings or could find no cause for laughter in an invoice of plows, the other clerks were disappointed. By degrees my fame spread, and I became a local "character." Our town was small enough to make this possible. The daily newspaper quoted me. At social gatherings I was indispensable. I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and spontaneous repartee. This gift I cultivated and improved by practice. And the nature of it was kindly and genial, not running to sarcasm or offending others. People began to smile when they saw me coming, and by the time we had met I generally had the word ready to broaden the smile into a laugh. I had married early. We had a charming boy of three and a girl of five. Naturally, we lived in a vine-covered cottage, and were happy. My salary as bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a distance those ills attendant upon superfluous wealth. At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and conceits that I considered peculiarly happy, and had sent them to certain periodicals that print such things. All of them had been instantly accepted. Several of the editors had written to request further contributions. One day I received a letter from the editor of a famous weekly publication. He suggested that I submit to him a humorous composition to fill a column of space; hinting that he would make it a regular feature of each issue if the work proved satisfactory. I did so, and at the end of two weeks he offered to make a contract with me for a year at a figure that was considerably higher than the amount paid me by the hardware firm. I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned me in her mind with the imperishable evergreens of literary success. We had lobster croquettes and a bottle of blackberry wine for supper that night. Here was the chance to liberate myself from drudgery. I talked over the matter very seriously with Louisa. We agreed that I must resign my place at the store and devote myself to humor. I resigned. My fellow clerks gave me a farewell banquet. The speech I made there coruscated. It was printed in full by the Gazette. The next morning I awoke and looked at the clock. "Late, by George!" I exclaimed, and grabbed for my clothes. Louisa reminded me that I was no longer a slave to hardware and contractors' supplies. I was now a professional humorist. After breakfast she proudly led me to the little room off the kitchen. Dear girl! There was my table and chair, writing pad, ink, and pipe tray. And all the author's trappings--the celery stand full of fresh roses and honeysuckle, last year's calendar on the wall, the dictionary, and a little bag of chocolates to nibble between inspirations. Dear girl! I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with arabesques or odalisks or--perhaps--it is trapezoids. Upon one of the figures I fixed my eyes. I bethought me of humor. A voice startled me--Louisa's voice. "If you aren't too busy, dear," it said, "come to dinner." I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the grim scytheman. I went to dinner. "You mustn't work too hard at first," said Louisa. "Goethe--or was it Napoleon?--said five hours a day is enough for mental labor. Couldn't you take me and the children to the woods this afternoon?" "I am a little tired," I admitted. So we went to the woods. But I soon got the swing of it. Within a month I was turning out copy as regular as shipments of hardware. And I had success. My column in the weekly made some stir, and I was referred to in a gossipy way by the critics as something fresh in the line of humorists. I augmented my income considerably by contributing to other publications. I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning a dollar. With false whiskers on, it would serve up cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. By turning the skirt and adding a ruffle of rhyme you would hardly recognize it as vers de societe with neatly shod feet and a fashion-plate illustration. I began to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My townspeople began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence instead of the merry trifier I had been when I clerked in the hardware store. After five or six months the spontaniety seemed to depart from my humor. Quips and droll sayings no longer fell carelessly from my lips. I was sometimes hard run for material. I found myself listening to catch available ideas from the conversation of my friends. Sometimes I chewed my pencil and gazed at the wall paper for hours trying to build up some gay little bubble of unstudied fun. And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my acquaintances. Anxious, haggard, greedy, I stood among them like a veritable killjoy. Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase fall from their lips and I was after it like a hound springing upon a bone. I dared not trust my memory; but, turning aside guiltily and meanly, I would make a note of it in my ever-present memorandum book or upon my cuff for my own future use. My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder. I was not the same man. Where once I had furnished them entertainment and jollity, I now preyed upon them. No jests from me ever bid for their smiles now. They were too precious. I could not afford to dispense gratuitously the means of my livelihood. I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crow's, that they might drop from their beaks the morsels of wit that I coveted. Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even forgot how to smile, not even paying that much for the sayings I appropriated. No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plundering in search of material. Even in church my demoralized fancy went hunting among the solemn aisles and pillars for spoil. Did the minister give out the long-meter doxology, at once I began: "Doxology --sockdology--sockdolager--meter--meet her." The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a bon mot. The solemnest anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of soprano, tenor, and basso. My own home became a hunting ground. My wife is a singularly feminine creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once her conversation was my delight, and her ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked her. She was a gold mine of those amusing but lovable inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind. I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched only the sacred precincts of home. With devilish cunning I encouraged her to talk. Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare. Upon the cold, conspicuous, common, printed page I offered it to the public gaze. A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. For pieces of silver I dressed her sweet confidences in the pantalettes and frills of folly and made them dance in the market place. Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a tender lamb, hearkening even to her soft words murmured in sleep, hoping to catch an idea for my next day's grind. There is worse to come. God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the fugitive sayings of my little children. Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches. I found a ready sale for this kind of humor, and was furnishing a regular department in a magazine with "Funny Fancies of Childhood." I began to stalk them as an Indian stalks the antelope. I would hide behind sofas and doors, or crawl on my hands and knees among the bushes in the yard to eavesdrop while they were at play. I had all the qualities of a harpy except remorse. Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy must leave in the next mail, I covered myself in a pile of autumn leaves in the yard, where I knew they intended to come to play. I cannot bring myself to believe that Guy was aware of my hiding place, but even if he was, I would be loath to blame him for his setting fire to the leaves, causing the destruction of my new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent. Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: "Here comes papa," and they would gather their toys and scurry away to some safer hiding place. Miserable wretch that I was! And yet I was doing well financially. Before the first year had passed I had saved a thousand dollars, and we had lived in comfort. But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but I was everything that it sounds like. I had no friends, no amusements, no enjoyment of life. The happiness of my family had been sacrificed. I was a bee, sucking sordid honey from life's fairest flowers, dreaded and shunned on account of my stingo. One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and friendly smile. Not in months had the thing happened. I was passing the undertaking establishment of Peter Heffelbower. Peter stood in the door and saluted me. I stopped, strangely wrung in my heart by his greeting. He asked me inside. The day was chill and rainy. We went into the back room, where a fire burned, in a little stove. A customer came, and Peter left me alone for a while. Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me --a sense of beautiful calm and content, I looked around the place. There were rows of shining rosewood caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes, mourning streamers, and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was peace, order, silence, the abode of grave and dignified reflections. Here, on the brink of life, was a little niche pervaded by the spirit of eternal rest. When I entered it, the follies of the world abandoned me at the door. I felt no inclination to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and stately trappings. My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose upon a couch draped with gentle thoughts. A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philosopher, full of serenity and ease. I had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the panting joke, from the restless reach after the nimble repartee. I had not known Heffelbower well. When he came back, I let him talk, fearful that he might prove to be a jarring note in the sweet, dirgelike harmony of his establishment. But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of happiness. Never have I known a man's talk to be as magnificently dull as Peter's was. Compared with it the Dead Sea is a geyser. Never a sparkle or a glimmer of wit marred his words. Commonplaces as trite and as plentiful as blackberries flowed from his lips no more stirring in quality than a last week's tape running from a ticker. Quaking a little, I tried upon him one of my best pointed jokes. It fell back ineffectual, with the point broken. I loved that man from then on. Two or three evenings each week I would steal down to Heffelbower's and revel in his back room. That was my only joy. I began to rise early and hurry through my work, that I might spend more time in my haven. In no other place could I throw off my habit of extracting humorous ideas from my surroundings. Peter's talk left me no opening had I besieged it ever so hard. Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. It was the recreation from one's labor which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my former friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed them on the streets. Several times I dumfounded my family by relaxing long enough to make a jocose remark in their presence. I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humor that I seized my hours of holiday with a schoolboy's zest. Mv work began to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to get to his tavern. My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I thought it best not to tell her; women do not understand these things. Poor girl!--she had one shock out of it. One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a paper weight and a fine, fluffy hearse plume to dust my papers with. I loved to see them on my desk, and think of the beloved back room down at Heffelbower's. But Louisa found them, and she shrieked with horror. I had to console her with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in her eyes that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at double-quick time. One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his books, and explained that his profits and his business were increasing rapidly. He had thought of taking in a partner with some cash. He would rather have me than any one he knew. When I left his place that afternoon Peter had my check for the thousand dollars I had in the bank, and I was a partner in his undertaking business. I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of doubt. I was dreading to tell my wife about it. But I walked on air. To give up the writing of humorous stuff, once more to enjoy the apples of life, instead of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops of hard cider to make the pubic feel funny--what a boon that would be! At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters that had come during my absence. Several of them contained rejected manuscript. Ever since I first began going to Heffelbower's my stuff had been coming back with alarming frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and articles with the greatest fluency. Previously I had labored like a bricklayer, slowly and with agony. Presently I opened a letter from the editor of the weekly with which I had a regular contract. The checks for that weekly article were still our main dependence. The letter ran thus: DEAR SIR:As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present month. While regretting the necessity for so doing, we must say that we do not care to renew same for the coming year. We were quite pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted quite a large proportion of our readers. But for the past two months we have noticed a decided falling off in its quality. Your earlier work showed a spontaneous, easy, natural flow of fun and wit. Of late it is labored, studied, and unconvincing, giving painful evidence of hard toil and drudging mechanism.Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions available any longer, we are, yours sincerely,THE EDITOR.I handed this letter to my wife. After she had read it her face grew extremely long, and there were tears in her eyes. "The mean old thing!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I'm sure your pieces are just as good as they ever were. And it doesn't take you half as long to write them as it did." And then, I suppose, Louisa thought of the checks that would cease coming. "Oh, John," she wailed, "what will you do now?" For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper table. I am sure Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee and emulating my steps. I was now something like their old playmate as of yore. "The theatre for us to-night!" I shouted; "nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumpty-diddle-de-dee-de-dum!" And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me. With the editor's letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef--no, of Heffelbower & Co's. undertaking establishment. In conclusion, I will say that to-day you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife's confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, notebook in hand. Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Peter attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake. Cupid a la Carte 饕餮姻缘 "The dispositions of woman," said Jeff Peters, after various opinions on the subject had been advanced, "run, regular, to diversions. What a woman wants is what you're out of. She wants more of a thing when it's scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things that never happened. She likes to be reminded of things she never heard of. A one-sided view of objects is disjointing to the female composition. "'Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel," continued Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery stove, "to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I've breathed gasoline smoke talking to street crowds in nearly every town in the United States. I've held 'em spellbound with music, oratory, sleight of hand, and prevarications, while I've sold 'em jewelry, medicine, soap, hair tonic, and junk of other nominations. And during my travels, as a matter of recreation and expiation, I've taken cognisance some of women. It takes a man a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex. One lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with a line of Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip from Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby's Anti-explosive Lamp Oil Powder. 'Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom. Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising dough. It was a boom town of the regular kind--you stood in line to get a chance to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a lodging bill added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged it to you as board the next morning. "By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the boom. They had knocked together a box house, where they lived and did the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side. That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and pick-me- up hotels. 'Try Mother's Home-Made Biscuits,' 'What's the Matter with Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?' 'Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like You Ate When a Boy,' 'Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to Crow'-- there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man! I said to myself that mother's wandering boy should munch there that night. And so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case of Mame Dugan. "Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame waited on the table. "As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census reports. There wasn't but one girl in the United States. When you come to specifications it isn't easy. She was about the size of an angel, and she had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a girl she was, you'll find a belt of 'em reaching from the Brooklyn Bridge west as far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, Ia. They earn their own living in stores, restaurants, factories, and offices. They're chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look life straight in the eye. They've met man face to face, and discovered that he's a poor creature. They've dropped to it that the reports in the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation. "Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you'd have smothered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. 'Tis my opinion that the biographies of the heart should be confined with the historical romances of the liver to the advertising pages of the magazines. So, you'll excuse the lack of an itemised bill of my feelings toward Mame. "Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat at irregular times when there wasn't so many around. Mame would sail in with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: 'Hello, Jeff --why don't you come at mealtime? Want to see how much trouble you can be, of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie'--and so on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached. Designations was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used as they came to hand. I'd eat about two meals before I left, and string 'em out like a society spread where they changed plates and wives, and josh one another festively between bites. Mame stood for it, pleasant, for it wasn't up to her to take any canvas off the tent by declining dollars just because they were whipped in after meal times. "It wasn't long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got the between-meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed circus of that tent, and Mame's turn as waiter a continuous performance. That Collier man was saturated with designs and contrivings. He was in well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping, or something--I've forgotten which. He was a man well lubricated with gentility, and his words were such as recommended you to his point of view. So, Collier and me infested the grub tent with care and activity. Mame was level full of impartiality. 'Twas like a casino hand the way she dealt out her favours--one to Collier and one to me and one to the board, and not a card up her sleeve. "Me and Collier naturally got acquainted, and gravitated together some on the outside. Divested of his stratagems, he seemed to be a pleasant chap, full of an amiable sort of hostility. "'I notice you have an affinity for grubbing in the banquet hall after the guests have fled,' says I to him one day, to draw his conclusions. "'Well, yes,' says Collier, reflecting; 'the tumult of a crowded board seems to harass my sensitive nerves.' "'It exasperates mine some, too,' says I. 'Nice little girl, don't you think?' "'I see,' says Collier, laughing. 'Well, now that you mention it, I have noticed that she doesn't seem to displease the optic nerve.' "'She's a joy to mine,' says I, 'and I'm going after her. Notice is hereby served.' "'I'll be as candid as you,' admits Collier, 'and if the drug stores don't run out of pepsin I'll give you a run for your money that'll leave you a dyspeptic at the wind-up.' "So Collier and me begins the race; the grub department lays in new supplies; Mame waits on us, jolly and kind and agreeable, and it looks like an even break, with Cupid and the cook working overtime in Dugan's restaurant. "'Twas one night in September when I got Mame to take a walk after supper when the things were all cleared away. We strolled out a distance and sat on a pile of lumber at the edge of town. Such opportunities was seldom, so I spoke my piece, explaining how the Brazilian diamonds and the fire kindler were laying up sufficient treasure to guarantee the happiness of two, and that both of 'em together couldn't equal the light from somebody's eyes, and that the name of Dugan should be changed to Peters, or reasons why not would be in order. "Mame didn't say anything right away. Directly she gave a kind of shudder, and I began to learn something. "'Jeff,' she says, 'I'm sorry you spoke. I like you as well as any of them, but there isn't a man in the world I'd ever marry, and there never will be. Do you know what a man is in my eye? He's a tomb. He's a sarcophagus for the interment of Beafsteakporkchopsliver'nbaconham- andeggs. He's that and nothing more. For two years I've watched men eat, eat, eat, until they represent nothing on earth to me but ruminant bipeds. They're absolutely nothing but something that goes in front of a knife and fork and plate at the table. They're fixed that way in my mind and memory. I've tried to overcome it, but I can't. I've heard girls rave about their sweethearts, but I never could understand it. A man and a sausage grinder and a pantry awake in me exactly the same sentiments. I went to a matinee once to see an actor the girls were crazy about. I got interested enough to wonder whether he liked his steak rare, medium, or well done, and his eggs over or straight up. That was all. No, Jeff; I'll marry no man and see him sit at the breakfast table and eat, and come back to dinner and eat, and happen in again at supper to eat, eat, eat.' "'But, Mame,' says I, 'it'll wear off. You've had too much of it. You'll marry some time, of course. Men don't eat always.' "'As far as my observation goes, they do. No, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.' Mame turns, sudden, to animation and bright eyes. 'There's a girl named Susie Foster in Terre Haute, a chum of mine. She waits in the railroad eating house there. I worked two years in a restaurant in that town. Susie has it worse than I do, because the men who eat at railroad stations gobble. They try to flirt and gobble at the same time. Whew! Susie and I have it all planned out. We're saving our money, and when we get enough we're going to buy a little cottage and five acres we know of, and live together, and grow violets for the Eastern market. A man better not bring his appetite within a mile of that ranch.' "'Don't girls ever--' I commenced, but Mame heads me off, sharp. "'No, they don't. They nibble a little bit sometimes; that's all.' "'I thought the confect--' "'For goodness' sake, change the subject,' says Mame. "As I said before, that experience puts me wise that the feminine arrangement ever struggles after deceptions and illusions. Take England--beef made her; wieners elevated Germany; Uncle Sam owes his greatness to fried chicken and pie, but the young ladies of the Shetalkyou schools, they'll never believe it. Shakespeare, they allow, and Rubinstein, and the Rough Riders is what did the trick. "'Twas a situation calculated to disturb. I couldn't bear to give up Mame; and yet it pained me to think of abandoning the practice of eating. I had acquired the habit too early. For twenty-seven years I had been blindly rushing upon my fate, yielding to the insidious lures of that deadly monster, food. It was too late. I was a ruminant biped for keeps. It was lobster salad to a doughnut that my life was going to be blighted by it. "I continued to board at the Dugan tent, hoping that Mame would relent. I had sufficient faith in true love to believe that since it has often outlived the absence of a square meal it might, in time, overcome the presence of one. I went on ministering to my fatal vice, although I felt that each time I shoved a potato into my mouth in Mame's presence I might be burying my fondest hopes. "I think Collier must have spoken to Mame and got the same answer, for one day he orders a cup of coffee and a cracker, and sits nibbling the corner of it like a girl in the parlour, that's filled up in the kitchen, previous, on cold roast and fried cabbage. I caught on and did the same, and maybe we thought we'd made a hit! The next day we tried it again, and out comes old man Dugan fetching in his hands the fairy viands. "'Kinder off yer feed, ain't ye, gents?' he asks, fatherly and some sardonic. 'Thought I'd spell Mame a bit, seein' the work was light, and my rheumatiz can stand the strain.' "So back me and Collier had to drop to the heavy grub again. I noticed about that time that I was seized by a most uncommon and devastating appetite. I ate until Mame must have hated to see me darken the door. Afterward I found out that I had been made the victim of the first dark and irreligious trick played on me by Ed Collier. Him and me had been taking drinks together uptown regular, trying to drown our thirst for food. That man had bribed about ten bartenders to always put a big slug of Appletree's Anaconda Appetite Bitters in every one of my drinks. But the last trick he played me was hardest to forget. "One day Collier failed to show up at the tent. A man told me he left town that morning. My only rival now was the bill of fare. A few days before he left Collier had presented me with a two-gallon jug of fine whisky which he said a cousin had sent him from Kentucky. I now have reason to believe that it contained Appletree's Anaconda Appetite Bitters almost exclusively. I continued to devour tons of provisions. In Mame's eyes I remained a mere biped, more ruminant than ever. "About a week after Collier pulled his freight there came a kind of side-show to town, and hoisted a tent near the railroad. I judged it was a sort of fake museum and curiosity business. I called to see Mame one night, and Ma Dugan said that she and Thomas, her younger brother, had gone to the show. That same thing happened for three nights that week. Saturday night I caught her on the way coming back, and got to sit on the steps a while and talk to her. I noticed she looked different. Her eyes were softer, and shiny like. Instead of a Mame Dugan to fly from the voracity of man and raise violets, she seemed to be a Mame more in line as God intended her, approachable, and suited to bask in the light of the Brazilians and the Kindler. "'You seem to be right smart inveigled,' says I, 'with the Unparalleled Exhibition of the World's Living Curiosities and Wonders.' "'It's a change,' says Mame. "'You'll need another,' says I, 'if you keep on going every night.' "'Don't be cross, Jeff,' says she; 'it takes my mind off business.' "'Don't the curiosities eat?' I ask. "'Not all of them. Some of them are wax.' "'Look out, then, that you don't get stuck,' says I, kind of flip and foolish. "Mame blushed. I didn't know what to think about her. My hopes raised some that perhaps my attentions had palliated man's awful crime of visibly introducing nourishment into his system. She talked some about the stars, referring to them with respect and politeness, and I drivelled a quantity about united hearts, homes made bright by true affection, and the Kindler. Mame listened without scorn, and I says to myself, 'Jeff, old man, you're removing the hoodoo that has clung to the consumer of victuals; you're setting your heel upon the serpent that lurks in the gravy bowl.' "Monday night I drop around. Mame is at the Unparalleled Exhibition with Thomas. "'Now, may the curse of the forty-one seven-sided sea cooks,' says I, 'and the bad luck of the nine impenitent grasshoppers rest upon this self-same sideshow at once and forever more. Amen. I'll go to see it myself to-morrow night and investigate its baleful charm. Shall man that was made to inherit the earth be bereft of his sweetheart first by a knife and fork and then by a ten-cent circus?' "The next night before starting out for the exhibition tent I inquire and find out that Mame is not at home. She is not at the circus with Thomas this time, for Thomas waylays me in the grass outside of the grub tent with a scheme of his own before I had time to eat supper. "'What'll you give me, Jeff,' says he, 'if I tell you something?' "'The value of it, son,' I says. "'Sis is stuck on a freak,' says Thomas, 'one of the side-show freaks. I don't like him. She does. I overheard 'em talking. Thought maybe you'd like to know. Say, Jeff, does it put you wise two dollars' worth? There's a target rifle up town that--' "I frisked my pockets and commenced to dribble a stream of halves and quarters into Thomas's hat. The information was of the pile-driver system of news, and it telescoped my intellects for a while. While I was leaking small change and smiling foolish on the outside, and suffering disturbances internally, I was saying, idiotically and pleasantly: "'Thank you, Thomas--thank you--er--a freak, you said, Thomas. Now, could you make out the monstrosity's entitlements a little clearer, if you please, Thomas?' "'This is the fellow,' says Thomas, pulling out a yellow handbill from his pocket and shoving it under my nose. 'He's the Champion Faster of the Universe. I guess that's why Sis got soft on him. He don't eat nothing. He's going to fast forty-nine days. This is the sixth. That's him.' "I looked at the name Thomas pointed out--'Professor Eduardo Collieri.' 'Ah!' says I, in admiration, 'that's not so bad, Ed Collier. I give you credit for the trick. But I don't give you the girl until she's Mrs. Freak.' "I hit the sod in the direction of the show. I came up to the rear of the tent, and, as I did so, a man wiggled out like a snake from under the bottom of the canvas, scrambled to his feet, and ran into me like a locoed bronco. I gathered him by the neck and investigated him by the light of the stars. It is Professor Eduardo Collieri, in human habiliments, with a desperate look in one eye and impatience in the other. "'Hello, Curiosity,' says I. 'Get still a minute and let's have a look at your freakship. How do you like being the willopus-wallopus or the bim-bam from Borneo, or whatever name you are denounced by in the side-show business?' "'Jeff Peters,' says Collier, in a weak voice. 'Turn me loose, or I'll slug you one. I'm in the extremest kind of a large hurry. Hands off!' "'Tut, tut, Eddie,' I answers, holding him hard; 'let an old friend gaze on the exhibition of your curiousness. It's an eminent graft you fell onto, my son. But don't speak of assaults and battery, because you're not fit. The best you've got is a lot of nerve and a mighty empty stomach.' And so it was. The man was as weak as a vegetarian cat. "'I'd argue this case with you, Jeff,' says he, regretful in his style, 'for an unlimited number of rounds if I had half an hour to train in and a slab of beefsteak two feet square to train with. Curse the man, I say, that invented the art of going foodless. May his soul in eternity be chained up within two feet of a bottomless pit of red- hot hash. I'm abandoning the conflict, Jeff; I'm deserting to the enemy. You'll find Miss Dugan inside contemplating the only living mummy and the informed hog. She's a fine girl, Jeff. I'd have beat you out if I could have kept up the grubless habit a little while longer. You'll have to admit that the fasting dodge was aces-up for a while. I figured it out that way. But say, Jeff, it's said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it. I love that Mame Dugan. I've gone six days without food in order to coincide with her sentiments. Only one bite did I have. That was when I knocked the tattooed man down with a war club and got a sandwich he was gobbling. The manager fined me all my salary; but salary wasn't what I was after. 'Twas that girl. I'd give my life for her, but I'd endanger my immortal soul for a beef stew. Hunger is a horrible thing, Jeff. Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!' "In such language Ed Collier discoursed to me, pathetic. I gathered the diagnosis that his affections and his digestions had been implicated in a scramble and the commissary had won out. I never disliked Ed Collier. I searched my internal admonitions of suitable etiquette to see if I could find a remark of a consoling nature, but there was none convenient. "'I'd be glad, now,' says Ed, 'if you'll let me go. I've been hard hit, but I'll hit the ration supply harder. I'm going to clean out every restaurant in town. I'm going to wade waist deep in sirloins and swim in ham and eggs. It's an awful thing, Jeff Peters, for a man to come to this pass--to give up his girl for something to eat--it's worse than that man Esau, that swapped his copyright for a partridge-- but then, hunger's a fierce thing. You'll excuse me, now, Jeff, for I smell a pervasion of ham frying in the distance, and my legs are crying out to stampede in that direction.' "'A hearty meal to you, Ed Collier,' I says to him, 'and no hard feelings. For myself, I am projected to be an unseldom eater, and I have condolence for your predicaments.' "There was a sudden big whiff of frying ham smell on the breeze; and the Champion Faster gives a snort and gallops off in the dark toward fodder. "I wish some of the cultured outfit that are always advertising the extenuating circumstances of love and romance had been there to see. There was Ed Collier, a fine man full of contrivances and flirtations, abandoning the girl of his heart and ripping out into the contiguous territory in the pursuit of sordid grub. 'Twas a rebuke to the poets and a slap at the best-paying element of fiction. An empty stomach is a sure antidote to an overfull heart. "I was naturally anxious to know how far Mame was infatuated with Collier and his stratagems. I went inside the Unparalleled Exhibition, and there she was. She looked surprised to see me, but unguilty. "'It's an elegant evening outside,' says I. 'The coolness is quite nice and gratifying, and the stars are lined out, first class, up where they belong. Wouldn't you shake these by-products of the animal kingdom long enough to take a walk with a common human who never was on a programme in his life?' "Mame gave a sort of sly glance around, and I knew what that meant. "'Oh,' says I, 'I hate to tell you; but the curiosity that lives on wind has flew the coop. He just crawled out under the tent. By this time he has amalgamated himself with half the delicatessen truck in town.' "'You mean Ed Collier?' says Mame. "'I do,' I answers; 'and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime again. I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of devastating the food crop of the world. 'Tis enormously sad when one's ideal descends from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of himself.' "Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my reflections. "'Jeff,' says she, 'it isn't quite like you to talk that way. I don't care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but they don't look ridiculous to the girl he does 'em for. That was one man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I'd be hard- hearted and ungrateful if I didn't feel kindly toward him. Could you do what he did?' "'I know,' says I, seeing the point, 'I'm condemned. I can't help it. The brand of the consumer is upon my brow. Mrs. Eve settled that business for me when she made the dicker with the snake. I fell from the fire into the frying-pan. I guess I'm the Champion Feaster of the Universe.' I spoke humble, and Mame mollified herself a little. "'Ed Collier and I are good friends,' she said, 'the same as me and you. I gave him the same answer I did you--no marrying for me. I liked to be with Ed and talk with him. There was something mighty pleasant to me in the thought that here was a man who never used a knife and fork, and all for my sake.' "'Wasn't you in love with him?' I asks, all injudicious. 'Wasn't there a deal on for you to become Mrs. Curiosity?' "All of us do it sometimes. All of us get jostled out of the line of profitable talk now and then. Mame put on that little lemon glace smile that runs between ice and sugar, and says, much too pleasant: 'You're short on credentials for asking that question, Mr. Peters. Suppose you do a forty-nine day fast, just to give you ground to stand on, and then maybe I'll answer it.' "So, even after Collier was kidnapped out of the way by the revolt of his appetite, my own prospects with Mame didn't seem to be improved. And then business played out in Guthrie. "I had stayed too long there. The Brazilians I had sold commenced to show signs of wear, and the Kindler refused to light up right frequent on wet mornings. There is always a time, in my business, when the star of success says, 'Move on to the next town.' I was travelling by wagon at that time so as not to miss any of the small towns; so I hitched up a few days later and went down to tell Mame good-bye. I wasn't abandoning the game; I intended running over to Oklahoma City and work it for a week or two. Then I was coming back to institute fresh proceedings against Mame. "What do I find at the Dugans' but Mame all conspicuous in a blue travelling dress, with her little trunk at the door. It seems that sister Lottie Bell, who is a typewriter in Terre Haute, is going to be married next Thursday, and Mame is off for a week's visit to be an accomplice at the ceremony. Mame is waiting for a freight wagon that is going to take her to Oklahoma, but I condemns the freight wagon with promptness and scorn, and offers to deliver the goods myself. Ma Dugan sees no reason why not, as Mr. Freighter wants pay for the job; so, thirty minutes later Mame and I pull out in my light spring wagon with white canvas cover, and head due south. "That morning was of a praiseworthy sort. The breeze was lively, and smelled excellent of flowers and grass, and the little cottontail rabbits entertained themselves with skylarking across the road. My two Kentucky bays went for the horizon until it come sailing in so fast you wanted to dodge it like a clothesline. Mame was full of talk and rattled on like a kid about her old home and her school pranks and the things she liked and the hateful ways of those Johnson girls just across the street, 'way up in Indiana. Not a word was said about Ed Collier or victuals or such solemn subjects. About noon Mame looks and finds that the lunch she had put up in a basket had been left behind. I could have managed quite a collation, but Mame didn't seem to be grieving over nothing to eat, so I made no lamentations. It was a sore subject with me, and I ruled provender in all its branches out of my conversation. "I am minded to touch light on explanations how I came to lose the way. The road was dim and well grown with grass; and there was Mame by my side confiscating my intellects and attention. The excuses are good or they are not, as they may appear to you. But I lost it, and at dusk that afternoon, when we should have been in Oklahoma City, we were seesawing along the edge of nowhere in some undiscovered river bottom, and the rain was falling in large, wet bunches. Down there in the swamps we saw a little log house on a small knoll of high ground. The bottom grass and the chaparral and the lonesome timber crowded all around it. It seemed to be a melancholy little house, and you felt sorry for it. 'Twas that house for the night, the way I reasoned it. I explained to Mame, and she leaves it to me to decide. She doesn't become galvanic and prosecuting, as most women would, but she says it's all right; she knows I didn't mean to do it. "We found the house was deserted. It had two empty rooms. There was a little shed in the yard where beasts had once been kept. In a loft of it was a lot of old hay. I put my horses in there and gave them some of it, for which they looked at me sorrowful, expecting apologies. The rest of the hay I carried into the house by armfuls, with a view to accommodations. I also brought in the patent kindler and the Brazilians, neither of which are guaranteed against the action of water. "Mame and I sat on the wagon seats on the floor, and I lit a lot of the kindler on the hearth, for the night was chilly. If I was any judge, that girl enjoyed it. It was a change for her. It gave her a different point of view. She laughed and talked, and the kindler made a dim light compared to her eyes. I had a pocketful of cigars, and as far as I was concerned there had never been any fall of man. We were at the same old stand in the Garden of Eden. Out there somewhere in the rain and the dark was the river of Zion, and the angel with the flaming sword had not yet put up the keep-off-the-grass sign. I opened up a gross or two of the Brazilians and made Mame put them on--rings, brooches, necklaces, eardrops, bracelets, girdles, and lockets. She flashed and sparkled like a million-dollar princess until she had pink spots in her cheeks and almost cried for a looking-glass. "When it got late I made a fine bunk on the floor for Mame with the hay and my lap robes and blankets out of the wagon, and persuaded her to lie down. I sat in the other room burning tobacco and listening to the pouring rain and meditating on the many vicissitudes that came to a man during the seventy years or so immediately preceding his funeral. "I must have dozed a little while before morning, for my eyes were shut, and when I opened them it was daylight, and there stood Mame with her hair all done up neat and correct, and her eyes bright with admiration of existence. "'Gee whiz, Jeff!' she exclaims, 'but I'm hungry. I could eat a--' "I looked up and caught her eye. Her smile went back in and she gave me a cold look of suspicion. Then I laughed, and laid down on the floor to laugh easier. It seemed funny to me. By nature and geniality I am a hearty laugher, and I went the limit. When I came to, Mame was sitting with her back to me, all contaminated with dignity. "'Don't be angry, Mame,' I says, 'for I couldn't help it. It's the funny way you've done up your hair. If you could only see it!' "'You needn't tell stories, sir,' said Mame, cool and advised. 'My hair is all right. I know what you were laughing about. Why, Jeff, look outside,' she winds up, peeping through a chink between the logs. I opened the little wooden window and looked out. The entire river bottom was flooded, and the knob of land on which the house stood was an island in the middle of a rushing stream of yellow water a hundred yards wide. And it was still raining hard. All we could do was to stay there till the doves brought in the olive branch. "I am bound to admit that conversations and amusements languished during that day. I was aware that Mame was getting a too prolonged one-sided view of things again, but I had no way to change it. Personally, I was wrapped up in the desire to eat. I had hallucinations of hash and visions of ham, and I kept saying to myself all the time, 'What'll you have to eat, Jeff?--what'll you order now, old man, when the waiter comes?' I picks out to myself all sorts of favourites from the bill of fare, and imagines them coming. I guess it's that way with all hungry men. They can't get their cogitations trained on anything but something to eat. It shows that the little table with the broken-legged caster and the imitation Worcester sauce and the napkin covering up the coffee stains is the paramount issue, after all, instead of the question of immortality or peace between nations. "I sat there, musing along, arguing with myself quite heated as to how I'd have my steak--with mushrooms, or a la creole. Mame was on the other seat, pensive, her head leaning on her hand. 'Let the potatoes come home-fried,' I states in my mind, 'and brown the hash in the pan, with nine poached eggs on the side.' I felt, careful, in my own pockets to see if I could find a peanut or a grain or two of popcorn. "Night came on again with the river still rising and the rain still falling. I looked at Mame and I noticed that desperate look on her face that a girl always wears when she passes an ice-cream lair. I knew that poor girl was hungry--maybe for the first time in her life. There was that anxious look in her eye that a woman has only when she has missed a meal or feels her skirt coming unfastened in the back. "It was about eleven o'clock or so on the second night when we sat, gloomy, in our shipwrecked cabin. I kept jerking my mind away from the subject of food, but it kept flopping back again before I could fasten it. I thought of everything good to eat I had ever heard of. I went away back to my kidhood and remembered the hot biscuit sopped in sorghum and bacon gravy with partiality and respect. Then I trailed along up the years, pausing at green apples and salt, flapjacks and maple, lye hominy, fried chicken Old Virginia style, corn on the cob, spareribs and sweet potato pie, and wound up with Georgia Brunswick stew, which is the top notch of good things to eat, because it comprises 'em all. "They say a drowning man sees a panorama of his whole life pass before him. Well, when a man's starving he sees the ghost of every meal he ever ate set out before him, and he invents new dishes that would make the fortune of a chef. If somebody would collect the last words of men who starved to death, they'd have to sift 'em mighty fine to discover the sentiment, but they'd compile into a cook book that would sell into the millions. "I guess I must have had my conscience pretty well inflicted with culinary meditations, for, without intending to do so, I says, out loud, to the imaginary waiter, 'Cut it thick and have it rare, with the French fried, and six, soft-scrambled, on toast.' "Mame turned her head quick as a wing. Her eyes were sparkling and she smiled sudden. "'Medium for me,' she rattles out, 'with the Juliennes, and three, straight up. Draw one, and brown the wheats, double order to come. Oh, Jeff, wouldn't it be glorious! And then I'd like to have a half fry, and a little chicken curried with rice, and a cup custard with ice cream, and--' "'Go easy,' I interrupts; 'where's the chicken liver pie, and the kidney saute on toast, and the roast lamb, and--' "'Oh,' cuts in Mame, all excited, 'with mint sauce, and the turkey salad, and stuffed olives, and raspberry tarts, and--' "'Keep it going,' says I. 'Hurry up with the fried squash, and the hot corn pone with sweet milk, and don't forget the apple dumpling with hard sauce, and the cross-barred dew-berry pie--' "Yes, for ten minutes we kept up that kind of restaurant repartee. We ranges up and down and backward and forward over the main trunk lines and the branches of the victual subject, and Mame leads the game, for she is apprised in the ramifications of grub, and the dishes she nominates aggravates my yearnings. It seems that there is a feeling that Mame will line up friendly again with food. It seems that she looks upon the obnoxious science of eating with less contempt than before. "The next morning we find that the flood has subsided. I geared up the bays, and we splashed out through the mud, some precarious, until we found the road again. We were only a few miles wrong, and in two hours we were in Oklahoma City. The first thing we saw was a big restaurant sign, and we piled into there in a hurry. Here I finds myself sitting with Mame at table, with knives and forks and plates between us, and she not scornful, but smiling with starvation and sweetness. "'Twas a new restaurant and well stocked. I designated a list of quotations from the bill of fare that made the waiter look out toward the wagon to see how many more might be coming. "There we were, and there was the order being served. 'Twas a banquet for a dozen, but we felt like a dozen. I looked across the table at Mame and smiled, for I had recollections. Mame was looking at the table like a boy looks at his first stem-winder. Then she looked at me, straight in the face, and two big tears came in her eyes. The waiter was gone after more grub. "'Jeff,' she says, soft like, 'I've been a foolish girl. I've looked at things from the wrong side. I never felt this way before. Men get hungry every day like this, don't they? They're big and strong, and they do the hard work of the world, and they don't eat just to spite silly waiter girls in restaurants, do they, Jeff? You said once--that is, you asked me--you wanted me to--well, Jeff, if you still care--I'd be glad and willing to have you always sitting across the table from me. Now give me something to eat, quick, please.' "So, as I've said, a woman needs to change her point of view now and then. They get tired of the same old sights--the same old dinner table, washtub, and sewing machine. Give 'em a touch of the various--a little travel and a little rest, a little tomfoolery along with the tragedies of keeping house, a little petting after the blowing-up, a little upsetting and a little jostling around--and everybody in the game will have chips added to their stack by the play." 饕餮姻缘 “女人的脾气,”有关这个话题的各种意见都提出来以后,杰夫•彼得斯开口说,“简直捉摸不定。女人要的东西正是你所没有的。越是希罕的东西,她越是想要。她最喜欢收藏一些她从没听说过的玩意儿。按照性格来说,女人对事物的看法倒不是片面的。    “一则由于天性,二则由于多闯了码头,我犯了这样一个毛病,”杰夫沉思地从架高的双脚中间望着炉子,接下去说,“就是我对某些事情的看法比一般人来得深 刻。我几乎到过合众国所有的城市,一面闻着汽车废气,一面同街上的人们谈话。我用音乐、口才、戏法和花言巧语搞得他们目瞪口呆,同时向他们推销首饰、药 品、肥皂、生发油和各种各样别的玩意儿。我在游历期间,为了消遣和安慰自己的良心,便对女人的性格作了一番研究。要彻底了解一个女人,非得下一辈子功夫不 可。不过假如花十年时间,勤学好问,那么对女性的基本情况也可以知道一个大概。有一次,我刚从萨凡纳①经过棉花种植地带推销多尔比灯油防爆粉回来,在西部 做巴西钻石和一种专利引火剂买卖的时候,就得到了一些教益。当时,俄克拉何马这一带刚开始发展。格思里在它中间象一块自动发酵的面团 那样日见长大。这十足 是座新兴的市镇——你要洗脸先得排队;吃饭的时间如果超过十分钟,就得另付住宿费;在木板上睡了一夜 ,第二天早晨就要你付伙食费②。 ①萨凡纳:美国乔治亚州东南的棉花集散港市。 ②原文“board”有双关意义,可作“伙食”及“木板”解。    “由于天性和原则,我养成了一个习惯,专爱发掘吃饭的好去处。于是我四下寻找,终于发现了一个完全符合要求的地方。我看到一家开张不久的饭摊,经营它的 是一个随着小城的兴旺搬来想发利市的人家。他们草草搭起一座木板房子,作为住家和烹调之用,房子旁边再支起一个帐篷,在那里面卖饭。帐篷里张贴着花花绿绿 的标语,打算把劳顿的旅客从寄宿所和供应烈酒的旅馆的罪孽中超度出来。‘尝尝妈妈亲手做的软饼’,‘你觉得我们的苹果布丁和甜奶油汁怎么样?’,‘热烙饼 和槭糖酱同你小时候吃的一模一样’,‘我们的炸鸡从没有打过鸣’——真是开胃解馋的绝妙文章!我对自己说,妈妈的游子今晚一定去那儿吃饭。结果去了。我就 在那儿结识了玛米•杜根姑娘。 “杜根老头是个六英尺高,一英尺宽的印第安纳州人,他什么事都不干,整天躺在小屋子里的摇椅上,回忆一八八六年的玉米大歉收。杜根大妈掌勺,玛米跑堂招待。    “我一见到玛米,就知道人口普查报告有了差错。合众国里总共只有一个姑娘。要细细形容她可不容易。她的身段同天仙差不多,眼睛和风韵都是说不出的美。如 果你想知道她是怎么样的姑娘,从布鲁克林桥往西直到衣阿华州的康斯尔布拉夫斯的县政府,都找得到类似她的人。她们在商店、饭馆、工厂和办公室里工作,自食 其力。她们是夏娃的嫡系后裔,她们这一伙才有女权。假如男人对此表示怀疑,少不了挨一记耳刮子。她们和蔼可亲,诚实温 柔,不受约束,敢说敢言,勇敢地面对 人生。她们同男人打过交 道,发现男人是可怜的生物。她们认为海滨图书馆里说男人是神话中的王子的报告,是缺乏根据的。 “玛米就是那种 人。她活泼风趣,有说有笑,应付吃饭的客人时巧妙而敏捷,不容你嬉皮笑脸。我不愿意挖掘个人情感的深处。我抱定一个主张:所谓爱情那种毛病的变化和矛盾, 正象用牙刷一样,应该是私人的感情。我还认为,心的传记应该同肝的历史传奇一起,只能局限于杂志的广告栏。①因此,我对玛米的感情,恕我不在这里开列清单 了。 ①心的传记指爱情小说,肝的历史传奇指药品广告。 “不 久,我养成了一个有规律的习惯,就是在没有规律的时间里,只要帐篷里主顾不多,就逛进去吃些东西。玛米穿着黑衣服和白围裙,微笑着走过来说:‘喂,杰夫 ——你为什么不在开饭的时间来。你总是想看看能给人家添多少麻烦。今天有炸鸡牛排猪排火腿蛋菜肉馅饼’——以及诸如此类的话。她管我叫杰夫,可是并没有特 别的用意。只不过是便于称呼而已。为了方便起见,她总是直呼我们的名字。我要吃过两客饭菜才离开,并且象参加社交 宴会似地拖延时间。在那种宴会上,人们不 断掉换盘子和妻子,一面吃,一面兴高采烈地互相戏谑。玛米脸上堆着笑,耐心伺候,因为既然开了饭店,总不能因为过了开饭时间而不做生意呀。    “没多久,另一个名叫埃德•科利尔的家伙也犯了吃饭不上顿的毛病。他和我两个人在早饭与中饭、中饭与晚饭之间架起了桥梁,使饭摊成了连轴转的马戏团 ,玛 米的工作则成了连续不断的演出。科利尔那家伙一肚子都是陰谋诡计。他干的大概是钻井、保险、强占土地,或者别的什么行当——我记不清了。他对人非常圆滑客 气,说的话叫你听了服服贴贴。科利尔和我就这样又谨慎又活跃地同那个饭摊泡上了。玛米不偏不倚,一视同仁。她分施恩泽就象发纸牌一样——一张给科利尔,一 张给我,一张留在桌上,绝不作弊 。 “我同科利尔自然互相认识了,在外面也常常一起消磨时光。抛开他的狡诈不谈,他仿佛还讨人喜欢,尽管含有敌意,却很和蔼可亲。 “‘我注意到,你喜欢等顾客跑光之后才去饭馆吃饭。’有一天我对他这么说,想要探探他的口气。 “‘嗯,不错,’科利尔沉思地说,‘挤满了人的饭桌太嘈杂,叫我那敏感的神经受不了。’ “‘是啊,我也有同感。’我说。‘小妞 儿真不赖,是吗?’ “‘原来如此。’科利尔笑着说。‘嗯,经你一提,倒叫我想起她确实叫人眼目清凉。’ “‘她叫我看了欢喜,’我说,‘我打算追她。特此通知。’ “‘我跟你一样说老实话吧,’科利尔坦白说,‘只要药房里的胃蛋白酶不缺货,我打算同你比赛一场,到头来你恐怕要害消化不良 。’ “于是,科利尔同我开始了比赛。饭馆增添了供应。玛米愉快而和气地伺候我们,一时难分高低,害得爱神丘比特和厨师在杜根饭馆里加班加点,忙得不可开交 。    “九月里的一个晚上,吃过晚饭,店堂收拾干净之后,我邀玛米出去散步。我们走了一段路,在镇边一堆木料上坐下。这种机会难得,我便把心里话都掏了出来, 向她解释,巴西钻石和引火剂累积的财富已经足以保证两个人的幸福生活,还说这两样东西加起来的光亮也抵不上某人的一对眼睛,还说杜根的姓应该改作彼得斯, 如果不同意,请说明理由。 “玛米没有马上开口。一会儿,她似乎打了个哆嗦,我觉得情况不妙。 “‘杰夫,’她说, ‘你开了口,叫我很为难。我喜欢你,同喜欢别人的情况一样,可是世界上根本没有我愿意嫁的男人,也永远不会有。你可知道,男人在我心目中是什么?是一座坟 墓。一具埋葬牛排猪排炸肝拼咸肉火腿蛋的石棺材①。不是别的,就是这么一个东西。两年来,我一直看男人们吃呀吃的,最后他们在我印象中成了只会贪嘴的两脚 动物。他们只是在饭桌上操使刀叉盘碟之类的东西,此外一无可取。在我的心目和印象中,这种想法已经不可磨灭了。我也曾想克服它,可是不成。我听到别的姑娘 们把她们的情人 吹得天花乱坠,我真弄不明白。男人在我心里唤起的感情同绞肉机和食品室所唤起的一模一样。有一次,我去看日场戏,特地看看姑娘们一致吹捧的 一个男演员。当时我的兴趣只在于琢磨他叫牛排是喜欢煎得生一点,适中,还是老一点,琢磨他吃鸡蛋是喜欢老一点,还是嫩一点。就是这么回事。杰夫,我根本不 愿意同男人结婚,看他吃完早饭,再回来吃中饭,又回来吃晚饭,吃呀吃的,吃个没完。’ ①原文“sacrophagus”是古代一种石棺,据信能分解吸收尸体。 “‘不过,玛米,’我说,‘日子一长,这种想法会消褪的。这是因为你看腻了的缘故。你总有一天要结婚的。男人也不是一天到晚吃个不停。’    “‘据我观察,男人是一天到晚吃个不停的。不行,让我把我的打算告诉你吧。’玛米突然精神一振,眼睛明亮地说。‘我在特雷霍特①有一个要好的女朋友,名 叫苏西•福斯特。她在铁路食堂里做女侍。我在那个城的一家饭馆里干过两年活。苏西比我更厌烦男人,因为在铁路食堂里吃饭的人更穷凶极恶。他们为了抢时间, 一面狼吞虎咽,一面还要调情。呸!苏西和我作了一个通盘计划。我们打算积攒一点钱,差不多的时候,就把我们看中的一幢小平房和五英亩地买下来,我们住在一 起,种些紫罗兰,卖给东部的市场。好吃的男人休想走近那个地方。’ ①特雷霍特:美国印第安纳州西部的城市。 “‘难道女人从来不——’我刚开口,玛米立刻打断了我的话。 “‘不,她们从来不。有时候,稍微秀里秀气地吃一点;就是这么一回事。’ “‘我原以为糖果——’ “‘看在老天份上,谈些别的吧。’玛米说。    “我刚才说过,这番经历使我了解到,女人天性喜欢追求空幻虚假的东西。拿英国来说,使它有所成就的是牛排;日耳曼的光荣应该归于香肠;山姆叔叔的伟大则 得力于炸鸡和馅饼。但是,那些自说自话的年轻小姐,她们死也不肯相信。她们认为,这三个国家的赫赫名声是莎士比亚、鲁宾斯坦和义勇骑兵团 ②造成的。 ②鲁宾斯坦(1830~1894):俄罗斯作曲家、钢琴家。“鲁宾斯坦”是德语中常见的姓,杰夫•彼得斯误以为他是德国人。义勇骑兵团 是在一八九八年美国-西班牙战争中,西奥多•罗斯福和伦纳德•伍德指挥的在古巴作战的美国第一义勇骑兵团 。    “这种局面叫谁碰到都要伤脑筋。我舍不得放弃玛米;但是要我放弃吃东西的习惯,想起来都心痛,别说付诸实现了。这个习惯,我得来已久。二十七年来,我瞎 打瞎撞,同命运挣扎,可总是屈服在那可怕的怪物——食物——的诱惑之下。太晚啦。我一辈子要做贪嘴的两脚动物了。从一餐饭开头的龙虾色拉到收尾的炸面饼 圈,我一辈子从头到尾都要受口腹之累。 “我照旧在杜根的饭摊上吃饭,希望玛米能回心转意。我对真正的爱情有足够的信心,认为爱情既然能够经受住饥饿的考验,当然也能逐渐克服饱食的拖累。我继续侍奉我的恶习 。虽然每当我在玛米面前把一块土豆塞进嘴里的时候,我总觉得自己在葬送最美好的希望。    “我想科利尔一定也同玛米谈过,得到了同样的答复。因为有一天他只要了一杯咖啡和一块饼干,坐在那里细嚼慢咽,正象一个姑娘先在厨房里吃足了冷烤肉和煎 白菜,再到客厅里去充秀气那样。我灵机一动,如法炮制。我们还以为自己找到了窍门呢!第二天,我们又试了一次,杜根老头端着神仙的美食出来了。 “‘两位先生胃口不好,是不是?’他象长辈似地,然而有点讽刺地问道。‘我看活儿不重,我的干湿病也对付得了,所以代玛米干些活。’    “于是,我和科利尔又暴饮暴食起来。那一阵子,我发现我的胃口好得异乎寻常。我的吃相一定会叫玛米一见我进门就头痛。后来我才查明,我中了埃德•科利尔 第一次施展在我身上的毒辣的陰谋诡计。原先他和我两人经常在镇里喝酒,想杀杀肚饥。那家伙贿赂了十来个酒吧侍者,在我喝的每一杯酒里下了大剂量的阿普尔特 里蟒蛇开胃药。但是他最后作弄我的那一次,更叫人难以忘怀。 “一天,科利尔没有到饭摊来。有人告诉我,他当天早晨离开了镇里。现在我 唯一的情敌只有菜单了。科利尔离开的前几天,送给我一桶两加仑装的上好威士忌,据他说这是一个在肯塔基的表亲送给他的。现在我确信,那里面几乎全是阿普尔 特里蟒蛇开胃药。我继续吞咽大量的食物。在玛米看来,我仍旧是个两脚动物,并且比以前更贪嘴了。 “科利尔动身之后约莫过了一星期,镇 上来了一个露天游艺团 ,在铁路旁边扎起了帐篷。我断定准是卖野人头的展览会和一些稀奇古怪的玩意儿。有一晚,我去找玛米,杜根大妈说,她带了小弟弟托马斯 去看展览了。那一星期,同样的情况发生了三次。星期六晚上,我在她回家的路上截住她,在台阶上坐了一会儿,同她谈谈。我发现她的神情有点异样。她的眼睛柔 和了一些,闪闪发亮。她非但不象要逃避贪吃的男人,去种紫罗兰的玛米•杜根,反倒象是上帝着意创造的玛米•杜根,容易亲近,适于在巴西钻石和引火剂的光亮 下安身立命了。 “‘那个“举世无双奇珍异物展览会”似乎把你给迷住了。’我说。 “‘只是换换环境罢了。’玛米说。 “‘假如你每晚都去的话,’我说,‘你会需要再换一个环境的。’ “‘别那样别扭,杰夫,’她说,‘我只不过是换换耳目,免得老惦记着生意买卖。’ “‘那些奇珍异物吃不吃东西?’我问道。 “‘不全是吃东西的。有些是蜡制的。’ “‘那你得留神,别被它们粘住。’我冒冒失失地说。    “玛米涨红了脸。我不清楚她的想法。我的希望又抬了头,以为我的殷勤或许减轻了男人们狼吞虎咽的罪孽。她说了一些关于星星的话,对它们的态度恭敬而客 气,我却说了许多痴话,什么心心相印啦,真正的爱情和引火剂所照耀的家庭啦,等等。玛米静静地听着,并没有奚落的神气。我暗忖道:‘杰夫,老弟,你快要摆 脱依附在食品消费者身上的晦气了;你快要踩住潜伏在肉汁里的蛇了。’ “星期一晚上我又去了。玛米带着托马斯又在‘举世无双展览会’里。 “‘但愿四十一个烂水手的咒骂,’我说,‘和九只顽固不化的蝗虫的厄运立即降临到这个展览会上,让它永世不得翻身。亚门。明晚我要亲自去一趟,调查调查它那可恶的魅力。难道一个顶天立地的大丈夫竟能先因刀叉,再因一个三流马戏团 而丧失他的情人 吗?’ “第二天晚上,去展览会之前,我打听了一下,知道玛米不在家。这时候,她也没有同托马斯一起在展览会,因为托马斯在饭摊外面的草地上拦住了我,没让我吃饭,就先提出了他的小打算。 “‘假如我告诉你一个情报,杰夫,’他说,‘你给我什么?’ “‘值多少,给多少,小家伙。’我说。 “‘姊姊看上了一个怪物,’托马斯说,‘展览会里的一个怪物。我不喜欢他。她喜欢。我偷听 到他们的谈话。你也许愿意知道这件事。喂,杰夫,你看这值不值两块钱?镇上有一支练靶用的来复槍——’ “我搜遍了口袋,把五毛的、两毛五的银币叮叮当当地扔进托马斯的帽子里。这情报好象是一记闷棍,害得我一时没了主意。我一面把钱币扔进帽子,脸上堆着傻笑,心里七上八下,一面象白痴似地快活地说: “‘谢谢你,托马斯——谢谢你——呃——你说是一个怪物,托马斯。能不能请你把那个怪物的名字讲得稍微清楚一些,托马斯?’ “‘就是这个家伙。’托马斯说着从口袋里掏出一张黄颜色的传单,塞到我面前,‘他是寰球绝食冠军。我想姊姊就是为了这个道理才对他有了好感。他一点东西都不吃。他要绝食四十九天。今天是第六天。就是这个人。’ “我看看托马斯指出的名字——‘埃德华多•科利埃利教授’。‘啊!’我钦佩地说,‘那主意倒不坏,埃德•科利尔。这一招我输给了你。可是只要那姑娘一天不成为怪物太太,我就一天不罢休。’    “我直奔展览会。我刚到帐篷后面,一个人正从帆布帐篷底下象蛇那样钻出来,踉踉跄跄地站直,仿佛是吃错了疯草的小马似的,同我撞个满怀。我一把揪住他的 脖子,借着星光仔细打量了一番。原来是埃德华多•科利埃利教授,穿着人类的服装,一只眼睛露出铤而走险的凶光,另一只眼睛显得迫不及待。 “‘喂,怪物。’我说。‘你先站站稳,让我看看你怪在什么地方。你当了威洛帕斯-沃洛帕斯,或者婆罗洲来的平彭,或者展览会称呼你的任何别的东西,感觉怎么样?’ “‘杰夫•彼得斯,’科利尔有气无力地说,‘放开我,不然我要揍你了。我有十万火急的事。松手!’ “‘慢着,慢着,埃德,’我回答说,把他揪得更紧了,‘让老朋友看看你的怪异表演。老弟,你玩的把戏真出色。可是别提揍人的话,因为你现在气力不济。你充其量只有一股虚火和一个空瘪的肚子。’事实也确实如此。这家伙虚弱得象头吃素的猫。    “‘我只要有半小时的锻炼,和一块两英尺见方的牛排作为锻炼对象,’他忧伤地说,‘我就可以同你争个高低,奉陪到底。我说,发明绝食的家伙真是罪该万 死。但愿他的灵魂永生永世被锁起来,同一个满是滚烫的肉丁烤菜的无底坑相距两英尺。我放弃斗争,杰夫;我要倒戈投敌了。你到里面去找杜根小姐吧,她在注视 独一无二的活木乃伊和博学多才的公猪。她是个好姑娘,杰夫。只要我能把不吃东西的习惯再维持一个时期,我就能比垮你。你得承认,绝食的一招在短期内是很高 明的。我原是这么想的。喂,杰夫,常言道,爱情是世界的动力。我来告诉你吧,这句话不符合实际。推动世界的是开饭的号角声。我爱玛米•杜根。我六天不吃东 西,就是为了讨她的欢心。我只吃过一口。我用大棒把一个浑身刺花的汉子打蒙了,夺了他嘴里的三明治。经理扣光了我的工资;可是我要的并不是工资。而是那个 姑娘。我愿意为她献出生命,然而为了一盆燉牛肉,我宁愿出卖我永生的灵魂。饥饿是最可怕的东西,杰夫。一个人饿饭的时候,爱情、事业、家庭、宗教、艺术和 爱国等等,对他只是空虚的字眼!’ “埃德•科利尔可怜巴巴地对我说了这番话。我经过分析,知道他的爱情和消化起了冲突,而粮食部门却赢得了胜利。我一向并不讨厌埃德•科利尔。我把肚子里合乎礼节的言语搜索了一番,想找一句安慰他的话,可是找不到凑手的。    “‘现在,只要你放我走路,’埃德说,‘我就感激不尽啦。我遭受了严重打击,现在我准备更严重地打击粮食供应。我准备把镇上所有的饭馆都吃个精光。我要 在齐腰深的牛腰肉里蹚过去,在火腿蛋里游泳。人落到这个地步,杰夫•彼得斯,可够惨的——竟然为了一点吃食而放弃他的姑娘——比那个为了一只松鸡而出卖继 承权的以扫更为可耻①——不过话又说回来,饥饿实在太可怕啦。恕我少陪了,杰夫,我闻到老远有煎火腿的香味,我的腿想直奔那个方向。’ ①《旧约•创世记》二十五章:以扫是以撒的长子、雅各之兄,他看不起长子继承权,把它卖给了雅各,换了一膳之羹汤。原文“羹汤”(pottage)与“松鸡”(partridge)读音相近,埃德•科利尔说错了。 “突然间,风中飘来一股浓烈的煎火腿的气息;这位绝食冠军喷了喷鼻子,在黑暗中朝食料奔去。    “那些有修养的人老是宣扬爱情和浪漫史可以缓和一切,我希望他们当时也在场看看。埃德•科利尔是个堂堂的男子汉,诡计多端,善于调情,居然放弃了他心中 的姑娘,逃窜到胃的领域去追求俗不可耐的食物。这是对诗人的一个讽刺,对最走红的小说题材的一记耳光。空虚的胃,对于充满爱情的心,是一剂百试不爽的解 药。 “我当然急于知道,玛米被科利尔和他的计谋迷惑到了什么程度。我走进‘举世无双展览会’,她还在那儿。她见到我时有点吃惊,但并没有惭愧的表示。 “‘外面的夜色很美。’我说。‘夜气凉爽宜人,星星端端正正地排在应在的地方。你肯不肯暂时抛开这些动物世界里的副产品,同一个生平没有上过节目单的普通人类去散散步?’ “玛米偷偷地四下扫了一眼,我明白她的心思。 “‘哦,’我说,‘我不忍心告诉你;不过那个靠喝风活命的怪物已经逃出牢笼。他刚从帐篷底下爬出去。这时候,他已经同镇上半数的饮食摊泡上啦。’ “‘你是指埃德•科利尔?’玛米问道。 “‘正是,’我回答说,‘遗憾的是他又坠入罪恶的深渊了。我在帐篷外面碰上他,他表示要把全世界的粮食收成掳掠一空。一个人的理想从座架上摔下来,使自己成为一只十七岁的蝗虫时,可真叫人伤心。’ “玛米直瞅着我,看透了我的心思。    “‘杰夫,’她说,‘你说出那种话很不象你平时的为人。埃德•科利尔被人取笑,我可不在意。男人也许会干出可笑的事来,如果是为一个女人干的,在那个女 人看来就没有什么可笑的。这样的男人简直是百里挑一都难找到的。他不吃东西,完全是为了讨我欢喜。假如我对他没有好感,那就未免太狠心,太忘恩负义了。他 干的事,你办得到吗?’ “‘我知道,’我明白了她的意思后说,‘我错了,但是我没办法。我的额头已经盖上了吃客的烙印。夏娃太太同灵蛇打交 道的时候,就决定了我的命运。我跳出火坑又入油锅①。我想我恐怕要算得上寰球吃食冠军了。’我的口气很温 驯,玛米稍微心平气和了一些。 ①英文成语有“out of the frying pan into the fire”(跳出油锅又入火坑),意谓“逃脱小难又遭大难”,这里颠倒了两字的次序,有“投入人世又贪口腹”之意。 “‘埃德•科利尔和我是好朋友,’她说,‘正象你和我一样。我回答他的话也同回答你的一样——我可不打算结婚。我喜欢跟埃德一起,同他聊聊。居然有一个男人永远不碰刀叉,并且完全是为了我,叫我想起来就非常高兴。’ “‘你有没有爱上他?’我很不明智地问道。‘你有没有达成协议,做怪物太太?’ “我们有时候都犯这种毛病。我们都会说溜嘴,自讨没趣。玛米带着那种又冷又甜的柠檬冻似的微笑,使人过于愉快地说:‘你没有资格问这种话,彼得斯先生,假如你先绝食四十九天,取得了立足点,我或许可以回答你。’ “这一来,即使科利尔由于胃口的反叛被迫退出以后,我对玛米的指望也没有什么改善。此外,我在格思里的买卖也没有多大盼头了。    “我在那里逗留得太久了。我卖出去的巴西钻石开始出现磨损的迹象,每逢潮湿的早晨,引火剂也不肯烧旺。在我干的这一门行业里,总有一个时候,那颗指点成 功的星辰会说:‘换个城镇,另开码头吧。’那时,为了不错过任何一个小镇,我出门时总是赶着一辆四轮马车;几天之后,我套好车,到玛米那里去辞行。我并没 有死心,只不过打算去俄克拉何马市做一两个星期的买卖,然后再回来,重整旗鼓,同玛米蘑菇。 “我一到杜根家,只见玛米穿着一套蓝色的 旅行服,门口放着一只小手提箱。据说,她一个在特雷霍特当打字员的小姊妹,洛蒂•贝尔下星期四结婚,玛米去那儿做一星期客,举行婚礼时帮帮忙。玛米准备搭 驶往俄克拉何马的货车。我立即鄙夷地否定了货车,自告奋勇地送她去。杜根大妈认为没有反对的理由,因为货车是要取费的;于是半小时后,玛米和我乘着我那辆 有白帆布篷和弹簧的轻便马车,向南进发。 “那天早晨真值得赞美。微风习 习 ,花草的清香十分可人,白尾巴的小灰兔在路上穿来穿去。我那 两匹肯塔基的栗色马撒开蹄子,往前直奔,以至地平线飞快地迎面扑来,仿佛是拦在前头的晾衣服绳子似的,害得你直想躲闪。玛米谈风很健,象孩子一般喋喋不 休,谈她在印第安纳州的老家,学校里的恶作剧,她爱好的东西和对街约翰逊家几个姑娘的可恶行为。没有一句话提到埃德•科利尔,食物,或者类似的重大事情。 中午时分,玛米检查一下,发现她装午餐的篮子忘了带来。我很有吃些零食的胃口,不过玛米仿佛并不因为没有吃的而发愁,因此我也不便表示。这对我是个痛心的 问题,我在谈话中尽量避免。 “我不打算多解释我怎么会迷路的。道路灰溜溜的,长满了野草;又有玛米坐在我身边,害得我心不在焉。理由 充分不充分,全凭你是怎么想的了。总之,我迷了路,那天薄暮时,我们本应到达俄克拉何马市,却在一条不知名的河床 旁边乱兜乱转。天又下起大雨来,把我们淋 得湿漉漉的。在沼地那面,我们看到比较高的小山岗上有一所木头小房子。房子周围尽是野草、荆棘和几株孤零零的树。这所凄凉的小房子,叫人看了都会替它伤 心。我认为只有在那里过夜了。我向玛米解释,她没有什么意见,让我决定。她不象大多数女人那样急躁埋怨,反而说没有问题;她知道我不是存心这样的。    “我们发现这所房子里没人住。有两间空屋子。院子里还有一个圈过牲口的小棚子。棚子里的阁楼上有许多陈干草。我把马牵了进去,给它们吃些干草,它们悲哀 地看着我,指望我说些道歉的话。其余的干草,我一抱一抱地搬进屋里,准备铺陈。我把专利引火剂和巴西钻石也搬了进屋,因为这两样东西碰到水都不保险。    “玛米和我把马车垫搬了进来,放在地上当座椅。夜气很冷,我在炉子里烧了不少引火剂。假如我判断不错的话,我认为那姑娘很高兴。这对她是换换环境,使她 有一种不同的观点。她有说有笑,眼睛放光,把引火剂的光焰都比得黯然失色了。我身边有满满一口袋的雪茄烟,拿我个人来说,人类堕落的事是根本没有的①,我 们仍旧在伊甸园里。外面大雨滂沱,漆黑一片的某个地方就是天堂的河流,擎着火剑的天使还没有竖起‘不准走近草坪’的告示。我打开一两罗巴西钻石,让玛米戴 上——戒指、胸针、项链、耳坠、手镯、腰带、鸡心等等都齐全。她浑身光彩夺目,脸上泛起了红晕,几乎想要一面镜子来照照自己了。 ①指《圣经》中亚当和夏娃吃了禁果 ,被上帝逐出伊甸园的故事。 “天晚时,我用干草和马车里的毯子替玛米打了一个舒适的地铺,劝她躺下去。我坐在另一间屋子里抽烟,听着倾盆雨声,思忖着人生在世的七十来年中,在葬礼之前,有多少变化莫测的事情。 “黎明前,我一定閤上眼睛打了一会儿盹,因为等我睁开眼睛的时候,天色已亮。玛米站在我面前,头发梳得整整齐齐,眼睛里闪着歌颂生命的光芒。 “‘哎呀,杰夫!’她嚷道,‘我饿啦。我简直吃得下——’ “我抬起头,看到了她的眼色。她收敛笑容,冷冷地、心怀戒意地瞥了我一眼。接着,我哈哈大笑,并且躺在地上,以便笑得更舒畅些。我觉得太逗趣了。出于天性和亲切,我是个喜欢大笑的人,这时我尽情笑了。等我恢复过来时,玛米背朝我坐着,一副凛然不可侵犯的样子。 “‘别生气,玛米,’我说,‘我实在控制不住。你的头发梳成那种样子太逗笑啦。你自己能看到就好啦!’    “‘你不必说假话了,先生。’玛米冷静而有自知之明地说。‘我的头发梳得没错儿。我知道你在笑什么。喂,杰夫,你瞧外面。’她打住话头,从木板的罅隙里 望出去。我打开小木窗,往外一看。整个河床 泛滥了,房子所在的小山岗成了一个岛屿,孤立在一条百来码宽,湍急的黄水河中。瓢泼大雨还是下个不停。我们毫无 办法,只能呆在那里,等鸽子衔橄榄枝来①。 ①《圣经》故事,大洪水四十天后,挪亚在方舟里放出鸽子,鸽子衔回一枝橄榄枝,表示洪水已退。    “我不得不承认,当天的谈话和消遣都索然无味。我知道玛米又对事物过于坚持片面的看法了,但是我没法使她改变。拿我自己来说,我一心只想吃东西。我产生 了肉丁烤菜和火腿的幻觉,一直问自己说:‘你打算吃什么,杰夫?——等侍者来的时候,你准备点什么菜,老弟?’我心里在菜单子上挑选各式各样好吃的东西, 想象它们给端上来时的情景。我猜想,肚子饿透了的人都是这样做的。他们的思想除了放在食物上之外,不可能集中在别的地方。那说明,摆着缺胳膊断腿的五味瓶 架和冒牌的伍斯特辣酱油、用餐布掩盖咖啡污迹的小餐桌,毕竟是头等大事,人的永生或者国与国的和平问题都在其次。 “我坐着沉思冥想, 同自己争论得相当激烈:我究竟要蘑菇配牛排呢,还是克里奥耳式牛排。玛米坐在另一个座垫上,手托着脑袋,也在想心思。‘土豆要油炸的,’我在心里说,‘肉 丁烤菜要煎得黄些,旁边再煎九个荷包皮蛋。’我在口袋里仔细摸索,试试能不能找到一颗遗忘在里面的花生米或者一两颗爆玉米花。 “夜晚又 来了,河水继续上涨,雨不住地下着。我看看玛米,注意到她脸上带着姑娘们走过冰淇淋店时的绝望神情②。我知道那可怜的姑娘也饿了——她这辈子恐怕还是头一 回呢。她的眼色显得心事重重。女人们只有在错过一顿饭,或者觉得裙子没有束好,要坠下来的时候,才有这种眼色。 ②指姑娘们又想吃冰淇淋,又怕吃了发胖。    “第二天晚上十一点左右,我们还是闷闷地坐在那所象失事船只一样的小屋里。我尽力把自己的念头从食物上拉开,可是还没有把它拴在别的地方,它又猛扑回 来。凡是我听到过的好吃的东西,我全想到了。我追溯到童年时代,想起我最喜欢、最珍视的热软饼蘸玉米燉咸肉卤汁。接着,我一年年地往后推想,回味着蘸盐巴 的青苹果,槭糖烙饼,玉米粥,弗吉尼亚老式炸鸡,玉米棒子,小排骨和甜薯馅饼,最后是乔治亚式的什锦砂锅,那是好吃东西中的头儿脑儿,因为它包皮罗万象。    “有人说,落水的人将要溺死时,会看到他一生的经历在眼前重演一遍。好吧,一个人挨饿时,却看到他生平吃过的每一样东西都象幽灵似的浮现出来,并且还能 凭空想象,创造出能叫厨师走红的新菜。如果有谁能收集饿死的人的遗言,虽然要做一番细致的分析工作才能发现他的思绪,但是可以根据这些材料汇编成一本畅销 几百万册的食谱。 “我猜想,我一定在吃食问题上想昏了头,因为我突然不由自主地对想象中的侍者高声喊道:‘肉排要厚,煎得嫩一点,加法式炸土豆,炒六个蛋摊在烤面包皮上。’ “玛米飞快地扭过头来,她眼睛闪闪发亮,突然笑了。 “‘我的肉排要煎得适中,’她连珠似地说下去,‘还要肉汁菜丝汤,三只煎得嫩一点的蛋。一杯咖啡,麦片饼要煎得黄一些,每样都来双份。啊,杰夫,那有多好啊!我再要半只炸鸡,一点咖喱鸡饭,牛奶蛋冻加冰淇淋,还有——’ “‘慢着,’我抢着说,‘别忘了鸡肝馅饼,嫩煎腰子配烤面包皮,烤羊肉和——’ “‘哦,’玛米兴奋地插嘴说,‘加上薄荷酱,火鸡色拉,菜肉卷,木莓果酱小烘饼和——’ “‘点下去呀。’我说。‘赶快点炸南瓜,热玉米饼配甜牛奶,别忘了苹果布丁和甜奶油汁,还有悬钩子果馅饼——’ “是啊,我们把那种饭店里的应答搞了十分钟。我们在饮食问题的枝节上前前后后、上上下下全摸索遍了。玛米带头领先,因为她熟悉饭店的情况,她点出的菜名使我馋涎欲滴。照当时的气氛看来,玛米仿佛要同食物言归于好了。她仿佛不象以前那样鄙薄那门可憎的饮食学了。    “第三天早晨,我们发现洪水退了。我套好马,我们拖泥带水地驶了出去,担了一点风险,终于找到了正路。我们先前只走岔了几英里路。两小时后,我们到达了 俄克拉何马市。我们首先注意到的是一家饭馆的大招牌,便急忙赶去。我同玛米坐一张桌子,中间摆着刀叉盘碟。她非但没有奚落的神气,反而带着饥饿和甜蜜的笑 容。 “那家饭馆开张不久,备货充足。我从菜单上点了一大堆菜,弄得侍者一再看外面的马车,以为还有多少人没下来呢。    “我们坐着,点的菜一道道地端了上来。那些东西足够十来个人吃的,可是我们觉得我们的胃口足能抵上十来个人。我瞅着桌子对面的玛米,不禁笑了,因为我还 记着以前的事。玛米望着桌子,正象一个孩子望着他生平初次得到的转柄表。接着,她直勾勾地看着我,眼里噙着两颗大泪珠。侍者已经走开去端菜了。    “‘杰夫,’她脉脉含情地说,‘我以前是个傻姑娘。我总是从错误的角度来看问题。我以前从没有这种想法。男人们每天都是这样饿,可不是吗?他们长得又大 又结实,承担着世上的艰难,他们吃东西,并不是为了刁难饭馆里傻气的女侍者,对吗,杰夫?你曾经提过——就是,你向我——你要我——呃,杰夫,假如你仍旧 有这种意思——我很高兴,并且愿意永远和你面对面地同坐在一张桌子上。现在,赶快替我弄点吃的吧。’ “所以,我已经说过,女人需要偶 尔换换她们的观点。日子一久,同样的东西会使她们腻烦——饭桌、洗衣盆、缝纫机,都是这样。总要给她们一点变化——一点旅行和休息,掺杂在家务烦恼中的一 点儿戏,吵架之后的一点安抚,一点捣乱和激惹——那么一来,玩这场把戏的人就皆大欢喜了。” The Day Resurgent I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number. First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number of toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-known model, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher," or whatever it was that Trilby called it. Second - the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies. This is magazine-covery, but reliable. Third - Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade. Fourth - Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout. Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the higher criticism has hard-boiled them. The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception. It belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going back still further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a new green leaf from the tree ficus carica. Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a holiday nor an occasion. What it is you shall find out if you follow in the footsteps of Danny McCree. Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place on the calendar between Saturday and Monday. At 5:24 the sun rose, and at 10:30 Danny followed its example. He went into the kitchen and washed his face at the sink. His mother was frying bacon. She looked at his hard, smooth, knowing countenance as he juggled with the round cake of soap, and thought of his father when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder between second and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in Harlem, where the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the front room of the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe, with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He still clung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two years before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off without permission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the reason that they cannot see the smoke. Now, could you enjoy having the news read to you from an evening newspaper unless you could see the colors of the headlines? "'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree. "Scramble mine," said Danny. After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning costume of the Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur - frock coat, striped trousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across front of vest, and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow from Schonstein's (between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit stand) Saturday night sale. "You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man McCree, a little wistfully. "'Tis a kind of holiday, they say. Well, it's fine spring weather. I can feel it in the air." "Why should I not be going out?" demanded Danny in his grumpiest chest tones. "Should I stay in? Am I as good as a horse? One day of rest my team has a week. Who earns the money for the rent and the breakfast you've just eat, I'd like to know? Answer me that!" "All right, lad," said the old man. "I'm not complainin'. While me two eyes was good there was nothin' better to my mind than a Sunday out. There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the windy. I have me tobaccy. A good fine day and rist to ye, lad. Times I wish your mother had larned to read, so I might hear the rest about the hippopotamus - but let that be." "Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?" asked Danny of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. "Have you been taking him to the Zoo? And for what?" "I have not," said Mrs. McCree. "He sets by the windy all day. 'Tis little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I'm thinkin' they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of grease without stoppin' for the most of an hour. I looks to see if there's lard burnin' in the fryin' pan. There is not. He says I do not understand. 'Tis weary days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There was no better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. 'Tis a fine day, son. Injoy yeself ag'inst the morning. There will be cold supper at six." "Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?" asked Danny of Mike, the janitor, as he went out the door downstairs. "I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. "But 'tis the only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages that I've not been compained to about these two days. See the landlord. Or else move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in the lease? No, then?" "It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny. "Likely there's nothing in it." Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck northward into the heart of the district where Easter - modern Easter, in new, bright raiment - leads the pascal march. Out of towering brown churches came the blithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving parterres of living flowers - so it seemed when your eye looked upon the Easter girl. Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The windows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the most opulent creations of flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies. Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him. "Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter? I know it comes the first you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March - but why? Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it out of politics?" "'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York. It extends up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political." "Thanks," said Danny. "And say - did you ever hear a man complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean." "Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and there was wood alcohol in that." Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his. The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly. The family entrance of Dugan's cafe was feasible; so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee. "Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?" "Skiddoo!" said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "Is that a new one? All right. Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess. I give it up. What's the answer - two apples or a yard and a half?" From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward. The April sun seemed to stir in him a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made a wrong diagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon. A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church. They pumped hands on the corner. "Gee! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy. "What's wrong? Come away with me to church and be cheerful." "What's doing at church?" asked Danny. "Why, it's Easter Sunday. Silly! I waited till after eleven expectin' you might come around to go." "What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily. "Nobody seems to know." "Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit. "You haven't even looked at my new hat. And skirt. Why, it's when all the girls put on new spring clothes. Silly! Are you coming to church with me?" "I will," said Danny. "If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought to be able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a beauty. The green roses are great." At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding. He spoke rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early Sabbath dinner; but he knew his business. There was one word that controlled his theme - resurrection. Not a new creation; but a new life arising out of the old. The congregation had heard it often before. But there was a wonderful hat, a combination of sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth pew from the pulpit. It attracted much attention. After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with pique in her sky-blue eyes. "Are you coming along to the house?" she asked. "But don't mind me. I'll get there all right. You seem to be studyin' a lot about something. All right. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. McCree?" "I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning and crossing the street. Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly. Danny stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets, at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening that his hard fibres did not recognize it. It was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer and deeper-rooted than the love of woman - for had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny did not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth. Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight. "Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar. "Well, how is that for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know what he was driving at now. "Hippopotamus! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx! It's been a year since he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at 469 B. C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessed what he was trying to get out of him." Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor supported. Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay on the sill. "Will that be you, lad?" he asked. Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the outset of committing a good deed. "Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" he snapped, viciously. "Have I no right to come in?" "Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh. "Is it evening yet?" Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in gilt letters, "The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch thick. He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper. And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said: "Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?" "Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree. "Many and weary be the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a great likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a fine day outside, lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe." "Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus," said Danny. "The war began there. It kept something doing for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronaea. I'll read it." With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree sat for an hour, listening. Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man McCree's eyes. "Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said. "There is none finer in the land. My two eyes have come back to me again." After supper he said to Danny: "'Tis a happy day, this Easter. And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough." "Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" said Danny, angrily. "Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C., when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire. Am I nothing in this house?" The Detective Detector I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York burglar, highwayman, and murderer. "But, my dear Knight," said I, "it sounds incredible. You have undoubtedly performed some of the most wonderful feats in your profession known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous deeds under the very noses of the police--you have boldly entered the homes of millionaires and held them up with an empty gun while you made free with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged citizens in the glare of Broadway's electric lights; you have killed and robbed with superb openness and absolute impunity--but when you boast that within forty-eight hours after committing a murder you can run down and actually bring me face to face with the detective assigned to apprehend you, I must beg leave to express my doubts--remember, you are in New York." Avery Knight smiled indulgently. "You pique my professional pride, doctor," he said in a nettled tone. "I will convince you." About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperous-looking citizen was rounding a clump of bushes where the walk curved. Knight suddenly drew a revolver and shot the man in the back. His victim fell and lay without moving. The great murderer went up to him leisurely and took from his clothes his money, watch, and a valuable ring and cravat pin. He then rejoined me smiling calmly, and we continued our walk. Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward the spot where the shot had been fired. Avery Knight stopped him. "I have just killed a man," he announced, seriously, "and robbed him of his possessions." "G'wan," said the policeman, angrily, "or I'll run yez in! Want yer name in the papers, don't yez? I never knew the cranks to come around so quick after a shootin' before. Out of th' park, now, for yours, or I'll fan yez." "What you have done," I said, argumentatively, as Knight and I walked on, "was easy. But when you come to the task of hunting down the detective that they send upon your trail you will find that you have undertaken a difficult feat." "Perhaps so," said Knight, lightly. "I will admit that my success depends in a degree upon the sort of man they start after me. If it should be an ordinary plain-clothes man I might fail to gain a sight of him. If they honor me by giving the case to some one of their celebrated sleuths I do not fear to match my cunning and powers of induction against his." On the next afternoon Knight entered my office with a satisfied look on his keen countenance. "How goes the mysterious murder?" I asked. "As usual," said Knight, smilingly. "I have put in the morning at the police station and at the inquest. It seems that a card case of mine containing cards with my name and address was found near the body. They have three witnesses who saw the shooting and gave a description of me. The case has been placed in the hands of Shamrock Jolnes, the famous detective. He left Headquarters at 11:30 on the assignment. I waited at my address until two, thinking he might call there." I laughed, tauntingly. "You will never see Jolnes," I continued, "until this murder has been forgotten, two or three weeks from now. I had a better opinion of your shrewdness, Knight. During the three hours and a half that you waited he has got out of your ken. He is after you on true induction theories now, and no wrongdoer has yet been known to come upon him while thus engaged. I advise you to give it up." "Doctor," said Knight, with a sudden glint in his keen gray eye and a squaring of his chin, "in spite of the record your city holds of something like a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of the perpetrator, and the sleuth in charge of the case, I will undertake to break that record. To-morrow I will take you to Shamrock Jolnes-- I will unmask him before you and prove to you that it is not an impossibility for an officer of the law and a manslayer to stand face to face in your city." "Do it," said I, "and you'll have the sincere thanks of the Police Department." On the next day Knight called for me in a cab. "I've been on one or two false scents, doctor," he admitted. "I know something of detectives' methods, and I followed out a few of them, expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a .45- caliber, I thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in Forty-fifth Street. Then, again, I looked for the detective at the Columbia University, as the man's being shot in the back naturally suggested hazing. But I could not find a trace of him." "--Nor will you," I said, emphatically. "Not by ordinary methods," said Knight. "I might walk up and down Broadway for a month without success. But you have aroused my pride, doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes this day, I promise you I will never kill or rob in your city again." "Nonsense, man," I replied. "When our burglars walk into our houses and politely demand, thousands of dollars' worth of jewels, and then dine and bang the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do you, a mere murderer, expect to come in contact with the detective that is looking for you?" Avery Knight, sat lost in thought for a while. At length he looked up brightly. "Doc," said he, "I have it. Put on your hat, and come with me. In half an hour I guarantee that you shall stand in the presence of Shamrock Jolnes." I entered a cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions to the driver, but the vehicle set out at a smart pace up Broadway, turning presently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again. It was with a rapidly beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful and gifted assassin, whose analytical genius and superb self- confidence had prompted him to make me the tremendous promise of bringing me into the presence of a murderer and the New York detective in pursuit of him simultaneously. Even yet I could not believe it possible. "Are you sure that you are not being led into some trap?" I asked. "Suppose that your clue, whatever it is, should bring us only into the presence of the Commissioner of Police and a couple of dozen cops!" "My dear doctor," said Knight, a little stiffly. "I would remind you that I am no gambler." "I beg your pardon," said I. "But I do not think you will find Jolnes." The cab stopped before one of the handsomest residences on the avenue. Walking up and down in front of the house was a man with long red whiskers, with a detective's badge showing on the lapel of his coat. Now and then the man would remove his whiskers to wipe his face, and then I would recognize at once the well-known features of the great New York detective. Jolnes was keeping a sharp watch upon the doors and windows of the house. "Well, doctor," said Knight, unable to repress a note of triumph in his voice, "have you seen?" "It is wonderful--wonderful!" I could not help exclaiming as our cab started on its return trip. "But how did you do it? By what process of induction--" "My dear doctor," interrupted the great murderer, "the inductive theory is what the detectives use. My process is more modern. I call it the saltatorial theory. Without bothering with the tedious mental phenomena necessary to the solution of a mystery from slight clues, I jump at once to a conclusion. I will explain to you the method I employed in this case. "In the first place, I argued that as the crime was committed in New York City in broad daylight, in a public place and under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and that as the most skilful sleuth available was let loose upon the case, the perpetrator would never be discovered. Do you not think my postulation justified by precedent?" "Perhaps so," I replied, doggedly. "But if Big Bill Dev--" "Stop that," interrupted Knight, with a smile, "I've heard that several times. It's too late now. I will proceed. "If homicides in New York went undiscovered, I reasoned, although the best detective talent was employed to ferret them out, it must be true that the detectives went about their work in the wrong way. And not only in the wrong way, but exactly opposite from the right way. That was my clue. "I slew the man in Central Park. Now, let me describe myself to you. "I am tall, with a black beard, and I hate publicity. I have no money to speak of; I do not like oatmeal, and it is the one ambition of my life to die rich. I am of a cold and heartless disposition. I do not care for my fellowmen and I never give a cent to beggars or charity. "Now, my dear doctor, that is the true description of myself, the man whom that shrewd detective was to hunt down. You who are familiar with the history of crime in New York of late should be able to foretell the result. When I promised you to exhibit to your incredulous gaze the sleuth who was set upon me, you laughed at me because you said that detectives and murderers never met in New York. I have demonstrated to you that the theory is possible." "But how did you do it?" I asked again. "It was very simple," replied the distinguished murderer. "I assumed that the detective would go exactly opposite to the clues he had. I have given you a description of myself. Therefore, he must necessarily set to work and trail a short man with a white beard who likes to be in the papers, who is very wealthy, is fond 'of oatmeal, wants to die poor, and is of an extremely generous and philanthropic disposition. When thus far is reached the mind hesitates no longer. I conveyed you at once to the spot where Shamrock Jolnes was piping off Andrew Carnegie's residence." "Knight," said I, "you're a wonder. If there was no danger of your reforming, what a rounds man you'd make for the Nineteenth Precinct!" The Dog and the Playlet Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway in that month and get a story out of the drama. I found one a few breathless, parboiling days ago, and it seems to decide a serious question in art. There was not a soul left in the city except Hollis and me--and two or three million sunworshippers who remained at desks and counters. The elect had fled to seashore, lake, and mountain, and had already begun to draw for additional funds. Every evening Hollis and I prowled about the deserted town searching for coolness in empty cafes, dining-rooms, and roofgardens. We knew to the tenth part of a revolution the speed of every electric fan in Gotham, and we followed the swiftest as they varied. Hollis's fiancee. Miss Loris Sherman, had been in the Adirondacks, at Lower Saranac Lake, for a month. In another week he would join her party there. In the meantime, he cursed the city cheerfully and optimistically, and sought my society because I suffered him to show me her photograph during the black coffee every time we dined together. My revenge was to read to him my one-act play. It was one insufferable evening when the overplus of the day's heat was being hurled quiveringly back to the heavens by every surcharged brick and stone and inch of iron in the panting town. But with the cunning of the two-legged beasts we had found an oasis where the hoofs of Apollo's steed had not been allowed to strike. Our seats were on an ocean of cool, polished oak; the white linen of fifty deserted tables flapped like seagulls in the artificial breeze; a mile away a waiter lingered for a heliographic signal--we might have roared songs there or fought a duel without molestation. Out came Miss Loris's photo with the coffee, and I once more praised the elegant poise of the neck, the extremely low-coiled mass of heavy hair, and the eyes that followed one, like those in an oil painting. "She's the greatest ever," said Hollis, with enthusiasm. "Good as Great Northern Preferred, and a disposition built like a watch. One week more and I'll be happy Jonny-on-the-spot. Old Tom Tolliver, my best college chum, went up there two weeks ago. He writes me that Loris doesn't talk about anything but me. Oh, I guess Rip Van Winkle didn't have all the good luck!" "Yes, yes," said I, hurriedly, pulling out my typewritten play. "She's no doubt a charming girl. Now, here's that little curtain- raiser you promised to listen to." "Ever been tried on the stage?" asked Hollis. "Not exactly," I answered. "I read half of it the other day to a fellow whose brother knows Robert Edeson; but he had to catch a train before I finished." "Go on," said Hollis, sliding back in his chair like a good fellow. "I'm no stage carpenter, but I'll tell you what I think of it from a first-row balcony standpoint. I'm a theatre bug during the season, and I can size up a fake play almost as quick as the gallery can. Flag the waiter once more, and then go ahead as hard as you like with it. I'll be the dog." I read my little play lovingly, and, I fear, not without some elocution. There was one scene in it that I believed in greatly. The comedy swiftly rises into thrilling and unexpectedly developed drama. Capt. Marchmont suddenly becomes cognizant that his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress, who has deceived him from the day of their first meeting. The rapid and mortal duel between them from that moment--she with her magnificent lies and siren charm, winding about him like a serpent, trying to recover her lost ground; he with his man's agony and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from his heart. That scene I always thought was a crackerjack. When Capt. Marchmont discovers her duplicity by reading on a blotter in a mirror the impression of a note that she has written to the Count, he raises his hand to heaven and exclaims: "O God, who created woman while Adam slept, and gave her to him for a companion, take back Thy gift and return instead the sleep, though it last forever!" "Rot," said Hollis, rudely, when I had given those lines with proper emphasis. "I beg your pardon!" I said, as sweetly as I could. "Come now," went on Hollis, "don't be an idiot. You know very well that nobody spouts any stuff like that these days. That sketch went along all right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out that right-arm exercise and the Adam and Eve stunt, and make your captain talk as you or I or Bill Jones would." "I'll admit," said I, earnestly (for my theory was being touched upon), "that on all ordinary occasions all of us use commonplace language to convey our thoughts. You will rememberthat up to the moment when the captain makes his terrible discovery all the characters on the stage talk pretty much as they would, in real life. But I believe that I am right in allowing him lines suitable to the strong and tragic situation into which he falls." "Tragic, my eye!" said my friend, irreverently. "In Shakespeare's day he might have sputtered out some high-cockalorum nonsense of that sort, because in those days they ordered ham and eggs in blank verse and discharged the cook with an epic. But not for B'way in the summer of 1905!" "It is my opinion," said I, "that great human emotions shake up our vocabulary and leave the words best suited to express them on top. A sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions out of an ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used in fiction or on the stage to portray those emotions." "That's where you fellows are wrong," said Hollis. "Plain, every-day talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have kicked the cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, instead of getting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics." "Possibly, a little later," I continued. "But just at the time--just as the blow is delivered, if something Scriptural or theatrical and deep-tongued isn't wrung from a man in spite of his modern and practical way of speaking, then I'm wrong." "Of course," said Hollis, kindly, "you've got to whoop her up some degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the atmosphere, and scream: "Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!" What she would actually do would be to call up the police by 'phone, ring for some strong tea, and get the little darling's photo out, ready for the reporters. When you get your villain in a corner--a stage corner --it's all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and hiss: "All is lost!" Off the stage he would remark: "This is a conspiracy against me-- I refer you to my lawyers.'" "I get no consolation," said I, gloomily, "from your concession of an accentuated stage treatment. In my play I fondly hoped that I was following life. If people in real life meet great crises in a commonplace way, they should do the same on the stage." And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our cool pool in the great hotel and began to nibble languidly at the gay flies in the swift current of Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was unsettled. We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as wise trout do; but soon the weariness of Manhattan in summer overcame us. Nine stories up, facing the south, was Hollis's apartment, and we soon stepped into an elevator bound for that cooler haven. I was familiar in those quarters, and quickly my play was forgotten, and I stood at a sideboard mixing things, with cracked ice and glasses all about me. A breeze from the bay came in the windows not altogether blighted by the asphalt furnace over which it had passed. Hollis, whistling softly, turned over a late-arrived letter or two on his table, and drew around the coolest wicker armchairs. I was just measuring the Vermouth carefully when I heard a sound. Some man's voice groaned hoarsely: "False, oh, God!--false, and Love is a lie and friendship but the byword of devils!" I looked around quickly. Hollis lay across the table with his head down upon his outstretched arms. And then he looked up at me and laughed in his ordinary manner. I knew him--he was poking fun at me about my theory. And it did seem so unnatural, those swelling words during our quiet gossip, that I half began to believe I had been mistaken--that my theory was wrong. Hollis raised himself slowly from the table. "You were right about that theatrical business, old man," he said, quietly, as he tossed a note to me. I read it. Loris had run away with Tom Tolliver. The Duel The gods, lying beside their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits of ants frm so great a height should be but a mild diversion when coupled with the soft drink that mythology tells us is their only solace. But doubtless they have amused themselves by the comparison of villages and towns; and it will be no news to them (nor, perhaps, to many mortals), that in one particularity New York stands unique among the cities of the world. This shall be the theme of a little story addressed to the man who sits smoking with his Sabbath-slippered feet on another chair, and to the woman who snatches the paper for a moment while boiling greens or a narcotized baby leaves her free. With these I love to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings. New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thus beating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine's. They came here in various ways and for many reasons - Hendrik Hudson, the art schools, green goods, the stork, the annual dressmakers' convention, the Pennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates, brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, freight trains - all these have had a hand in making up the population. But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan has got to fight. He has got to fight at once until either he or his adversary wins. There is no resting between rounds, for there are no rounds. It is slugging from the first. It is a fight to a finish. Your opponent is the City. You must do battle with it from the time the ferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or it has conquered you. It is the same whether you have a million in your pocket or only the price of a week's lodging. The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or turn the rankest outlander and Philistine. You must be one or the other. You cannot remain neutral. You must be for or against - lover or enemy - bosom friend or outcast. And, oh, the city is a general in the ring. Not only by blows does it seek to subdue you. It woos you to its heart with the subtlety of a siren. It is a combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse, Beethoven, chloral and John L. in his best days. In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as long as you please. You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, and be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, and without rebuke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town but Knickerbocker's, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings, comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair's residence in Jackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon. But in New York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism. And this dreary preamble is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures of William and Jack. They came out of the West together, where they had been friends. They came to dig their fortunes out of the big city. Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry, giving one a right-hander on the nose and the other an upper-cut with his left, just to let them know that the fight was on. William was for business; Jack was for Art. Both were young and ambitious; so they countered and clinched. I think they were from Nebraska or possibly Missouri or Minnesota. Anyhow, they were out for success and scraps and scads, and they tackled the city like two Lochinvars with brass knucks and a pull at the City Hall. Four years afterward William and Jack met at luncheon. The business man blew in like a March wind, hurled his silk hat at a waiter, dropped into the chair that was pushed under him, seized the bill of fare, and had ordered as far as cheese before the artist had time to do more than nod. After the nod a humorous smile came into his eyes. "Billy," he said, "you're done for. The city has gobbled you up. It has taken you and cut you to its pattern and stamped you with its brand. You are so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen to-day that you couldn't be picked out from them if it weren't for your laundry marks." "Camembert," finished William. "What's that? Oh, you've still got your hammer out for New York, have you? Well, little old Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me. It's giving me mine. And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round world - only slightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yell myself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my hat on the horizon, and say cutting things in the grocery to little soap drummers from the East. But I'd never seen New York, then, Jack. Me for it from the rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West to me now. Have you heard this fellow Crusoe sing? The desert isle for him, I say, but my wife made me go. Give me May Irwin or E. S. Willard any time." "Poor Billy," said the artist, delicately fingering a cigarette. "You remember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked about this great, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it and never let it get the best of us? We were going to be just the same fellows we had always been, and never let it master us. It has downed you, old man. You have changed from a maverick into a butterick." "Don't see exactly what you are driving at," said William. "I don't wear an alpaca coat with blue trousers and a seersucker vest on dress occasions, like I used to do at home. You talk about being cut to a pattern - well, ain't the pattern all right? When you're in Rome you've got to do as the Dagoes do. This town seems to me to have other alleged metropolises skinned to flag stations. According to the railroad schedule I've got in mind, Chicago and Saint Jo and Paris, France, are asterisk stops - which means you wave a red flag and get on every other Tuesday. I like this little suburb of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. There's something or somebody doing all the time. I'm clearing $8,000 a year selling automatic pumps, and I'm living like kings-up. Why, yesterday, I was introduced to John W. Gates. I took an auto ride with a wine agent's sister. I saw two men run over by a street car, and I seen Edna May play in the evening. Talk about the West, why, the other night I woke everybody up in the hotel hollaring. I dreamed I was walking on a board sidewalk in Oshkosh. What have you got against this town, Jack? There's only one thing in it that I don't care for, and that's a ferryboat." The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. "This town," said he, "is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoever comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of the leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence, the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand to hand every newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. You've lost, Billy. It shall never conquer me. I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or - the color work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw. It has caught you, old man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels. It glosses itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars. Give me the domestic finish. I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled by an aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest ingredients. Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence, it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is the narrowest. Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country. I would go back there to-morrow if I could." "Don't you like this filet mgnon?" said William. "Shucks, now, what's the use to knock the town! It's the greatest ever. I couldn't sell one automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O'Keefe's saloon, in Sacramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sara Bernardt in 'Andrew Mack' yet?" "The town's got you, Billy," said Jack. "All right," said William. "I'm going to buy a cottage on Lake Ronkonkoma next summer." At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it. He caught his breath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred times. Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long, desert canons. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended like the city's soul sounds and odors and thrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill, enrich, despoil, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of it came up to him and went into his blood. There was a knock on his door. A telegram had come for him. It came from the West, and these were its words: "Come back and the answer will be yes. "DOLLY." He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply: "Impossible to leave here at present." Then he sat at the window again and let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again. After all it isn't a story; but I wanted to know which one of the heroes won the battle against the city. So I went to a very learned friend and laid the case before him. What he said was: "Please don't bother me; I have Christmas presents to buy." So there it rests; and you will have to decide for yourself. The Duplicity of Hargraves When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues. It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of high box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots. In this pleasant private boarding house they engaged rooms, including a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his book, Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and Bar. Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period before the Civil War when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the aristocracy of the South. Out of that period he had brought all its old pride and scruples of honor, an antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe. Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The Major was tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he called a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That garment was a surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased to shy at the frocks and broad-brimmed hats of Southern Congressmen. One of the boarders christened it a "Father Hubbard," and it certainly was high in the waist and full in the skirt. But the Major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of plaited, raveling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with the bow always slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in Mrs. Vardeman's select boarding house. Some of the young department clerks would often "string him," as they called it, getting him started upon the subject dearest to him--the traditions and history of his beloved Southland. During his talks he would quote freely from the Anecdotes and Reminiscences. But they were very careful not to let him see their designs, for in spite of his sixty-eight years he could make the boldest of them uncomfortable under the steady regard of his piercing gray eyes. Miss Lydia was a plump, little old maid of thirty-five, with smoothly drawn, tightly twisted hair that made her look still older. Old-fashioned, too, she was; but antebellum glory did not radiate from her as it did from the Major. She possessed a thrifty common sense, and it was she who handled the finances of the family, and met all comers when there were bills to pay. The Major regarded board bills and wash bills as contemptible nuisances. They kept coming in so persistently and so often. Why, the Major wanted to know, could they not be filed and paid in a lump sum at some convenient period--say when the Anecdotes and Reminiscences had been published and paid for? Miss Lydia would calmly go on with her sewing and say, "We'll pay as we go as long as the money lasts, and then perhaps they'll have to lump it." Most of Mrs. Vardeman's boarders were away during the day, being nearly all department clerks and business men; but there was one of them who was about the house a great deal from morning to night. This was a young man named Henry Hopkins Hargraves--every one in the house addressed him by his full name--who was engaged at one of the popular vaudeville theaters. Vaudeville has risen to such a respectable plane in the last few years, and Mr. Hargraves was such a modest and well-mannered person, that Mrs. Vardeman could find no objection to enrolling him upon her list of boarders. At the theater Hargraves was known as an all-round dialect comedian, having a large repertoire of German, Irish, Swede, and black-face specialties. But Mr. Hargraves was ambitious, and often spoke of his great desire to succeed in legitimate comedy. This young man appeared to conceive a strong fancy for Major Talbot. Whenever that gentleman would begin his Southern reminiscences, or repeat some of the liveliest of the anecdotes, Hargraves could always be found, the most attentive among his listeners. For a time the Major showed an inclination to discourage the advances of the "play actor," as he privately termed him; but soon the young man's agreeable manner and indubitable appreciation of the old gentleman's stories completely won him over. It was not long before the two were like old chums. The Major set apart each afternoon to read to him the manuscript of his book. During the anecdotes Hargraves never failed to laugh at exactly the right point. The Major was moved to declare to Miss Lydia one day that young Hargraves possessed remarkable perception and a gratifying respect for the old regime. And when it came to talking of those old days--if Major Talbot liked to talk, Mr. Hargraves was entranced to listen. Like almost all old people who talk of the past, the Major loved to linger over details. In describing the splendid, almost royal, days of the old planters, he would hesitate until he had recalled the name of the negro who held his horse, or the exact date of certain minor happenings, or the number of bales of cotton raised in such a year; but Hargraves never grew impatient or lost interest. On the contrary, he would advance questions on a variety of subjects connected with the life of that time, and he never failed to extract ready replies. The fox hunts, the 'possum suppers, the hoe-downs and jubilees in the negro quarters, the banquets in the plantation-house hall, when invitations went for fifty miles around; the occasional feuds with the neighboring gentry; the Major's duel with Rathbone Culbertson about Kitty Chalmers, who afterward married a Thwaite of South Carolina; and private yacht races for fabulous sums on Mobile Bay; the quaint beliefs, improvident habits, and loyal virtues of the old slaves--all these were subjects that held both the Major and Hargraves absorbed for hours at a time. Sometimes, at night, when the young man would be coming upstairs to his room after his turn at the theater was over, the Major would appear at the door of his study and beckon archly to him. Going in, Hargraves would find a little table set with a decanter, sugar bowl, fruit, and a big bunch of fresh green mint. "It occurred to me," the Major would begin--he was always ceremonious--"that perhaps you might have found your duties at the--at your place of occupation--sufficiently arduous to enable you, Mr. Hargraves, to appreciate what the poet might well have had in his mind when he wrote, 'tired Nature's sweet restorer'--one of our Southern juleps." It was a fascination to Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank among artists when he began, and he never varied the process. With what delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he estimated the ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the compound with the scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe! And then the hospitality and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had been plunged into its tinkling depths! After about four months in Washington, Miss Lydia discovered one morning that they were almost without money. The Anecdotes and Reminiscences was completed, but publishers had not jumped at the collected gems of Alabama sense and wit. The rental of a small house which they still owned in Mobile was two months in arrears. Their board money for the month would be due in three days. Miss Lydia called her father to a consultation. "No money?" said he with a surprised look. "It is quite annoying to be called on so frequently for these petty sums, Really, I--" The Major searched his pockets. He found only a two-dollar bill, which he returned to his vest pocket. "I must attend to this at once, Lydia," he said. "Kindly get me my umbrella and I will go downtown immediately. The congressman from our district, General Fulghum, assured me some days ago that he would use his influence to get my book published at an early date. I will go to his hotel at once and see what arrangement has been made." With a sad little smile Miss Lydia watched him button his "Father Hubbard" and depart, pausing at the door, as he always did, to bow profoundly. That evening, at dark, he returned. It seemed that Congressman Fulghum had seen the publisher who had the Major's manuscript for reading. That person had said that if the anecdotes, etc., were carefully pruned down about one-half, in order to eliminate the sectional and class prejudice with which the book was dyed from end to end, he might consider its publication. The Major was in a white heat of anger, but regained his equanimity, according to his code of manners, as soon as he was in Miss Lydia's presence. "We must have money," said Miss Lydia, with a little wrinkle above her nose. "Give me the two dollars, and I will telegraph to Uncle Ralph for some to-night." The Major drew a small envelope from his upper vest pocket and tossed it on the table. "Perhaps it was injudicious," he said mildly, "but the sum was so merely nominal that I bought tickets to the theater to-night. It's a new war drama, Lydia. I thought you would be pleased to witness its first production in Washington. I am told that the South has very fair treatment in the play. I confess I should like to see the performance myself." Miss Lydia threw up her hands in silent despair. Still, as the tickets were bought, they might as well be used. So that evening, as they sat in the theater listening to the lively overture, even Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second place. The Major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing only where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair smoothly roached, looked really fine and distinguished. The curtain went up on the first act of A Magnolia Flower, revealing a typical Southern plantation scene. Major Talbot betrayed some interest. "Oh, see!" exclaimed Miss Lydia, nudging his arm, and pointing to her program. The Major put on his glasses and read the line in the cast of characters that her fingers indicated. Col. Webster Calhoun .... Mr. Hopkins Hargraves. "It's our Mr. Hargraves," said Miss Lydia. "It must be his first appearance in what he calls 'the legitimate.' I'm so glad for him." Not until the second act did Col. Webster Calhoun appear upon the stage. When he made his entry Major Talbot gave an audible sniff, glared at him, and seemed to freeze solid. Miss Lydia uttered a little, ambiguous squeak and crumpled her program in her hand. For Colonel Calhoun was made up as nearly resembling Major Talbot as one pea does another. The long, thin white hair, curly at the ends, the aristocratic beak of a nose, the crumpled, wide, raveling shirt front, the string tie, with the bow nearly under one ear, were almost exactly duplicated. And then, to clinch the imitation, he wore the twin to the Major's supposed to be unparalleled coat. High-collared, baggy, empire-waisted, ample-skirted, hanging a foot lower in front than behind, the garment could have been designed from no other pattern. From then on, the Major and Miss Lydia sat bewitched, and saw the counterfeit presentment of a haughty Talbot "dragged," as the Major afterward expressed it, "through the slanderous mire of a corrupt stage." Mr. Hargraves had used his opportunities well. He had caught the Major's little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation and his pompous courtliness to perfection--exaggerating all to the purpose of the stage. When he performed that marvelous bow that the Major fondly imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience sent forth a sudden round of hearty applause. Miss Lydia sat immovable, not daring to glance toward her father. Sometimes her hand next to him would be laid against her cheek, as if to conceal the smile which, in spite of her disapproval, she could not entirely suppress. The culmination of Hargraves audacious imitation took place in the third act. The scene is where Colonel Calhoun entertains a few of the neighboring planters in his "den." Standing at a table in the center of the stage, with his friends grouped about him, he delivers that inimitable, rambling character monologue so famous in A Magnolia Flower, at the same time that he deftly makes juleps for the party. Major Talbot, sitting quietly, but white with indignation, heard his best stories retold, his pet theories and hobbies advanced and expanded, and the dream of the Anecdotes and Reminiscences served, exaggerated and garbled. His favorite narrative--that of his duel with Rathbone Culbertson--was not omitted, and it was delivered with more fire, egotism, and gusto than the Major himself put into it. The monologue concluded with a quaint, delicious, witty little lecture on the art of concocting a julep, illustrated by the act. Here Major Talbot's delicate but showy science was reproduced to a hair's breadth--from his dainty handling of the fragrant weed--"the one-thousandth part of a grain too much pressure, gentlemen, and you extract the bitterness, instead of the aroma, of this heaven-bestowed plant"--to his solicitous selection of the oaten straws. At the close of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of appreciation. The portrayal of the type was so exact, so sure and thorough, that the leading characters in the play were forgotten. After repeated calls, Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his rather boyish face bright and flushed with the knowledge of success. At last Miss Lydia turned and looked at the Major. His thin nostrils were working like the gills of a fish. He laid both shaking hands upon the arms of his chair to rise. "We will go, Lydia," he said chokingly. "This is an abominable--desecration." Before he could rise, she pulled him back into his seat. "We will stay it out," she declared. "Do you want to advertise the copy by exhibiting the original coat?" So they remained to the end. Hargraves's success must have kept him up late that night, for neither at the breakfast nor at the dinner table did he appear. About three in the afternoon he tapped at the door of Major Talbot's study. The Major opened it, and Hargraves walked in with his hands full of the morning papers--too full of his triumph to notice anything unusual in the Major's demeanor. "I put it all over 'em last night, Major," he began exultantly. "I had my inning, and, I think, scored. Here's what The Post says: "'His conception and portrayal of the old-time Southern colonel, with his absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric garb, his quaint idioms and phrases, his motheaten pride of family, and his really kind heart, fastidious sense of honor, and lovable simplicity, is the best delineation of a character role on the boards to-day. The coat worn by Colonel Calhoun is itself nothing less than an evolution of genius. Mr. Hargraves has captured his public.' "How does that sound, Major, for a first-nighter?" "I had the honor"--the Major's voice sounded ominously frigid--"of witnessing your very remarkable performance, sir, last night." Hargraves looked disconcerted. "You were there? I didn't know you ever--I didn't know you cared for the theater. Oh, I say, Major Talbot," he exclaimed frankly, "don't you be offended. I admit I did get a lot of pointers from you that helped out wonderfully in the part. But it's a type, you know--not individual. The way the audience caught on shows that. Half the patrons of that theater are Southerners. They recognized it." "Mr. Hargraves," said the Major, who had remained standing, "you have put upon me an unpardonable insult. You have burlesqued my person, grossly betrayed my confidence, and misused my hospitality. If I thought you possessed the faintest conception of what is the sign manual of a gentleman, or what is due one, I would call you out, sir, old as I am. I will ask you to leave the room, sir." The actor appeared to be slightly bewildered, and seemed hardly to take in the full meaning of the old gentleman's words. "I am truly sorry you took offense," he said regretfully. "Up here we don't look at things just as you people do. I know men who would buy out half the house to have their personality put on the stage so the public would recognize it." "They are not from Alabama, sir," said the Major haughtily. "Perhaps not. I have a pretty good memory, Major; let me quote a few lines from your book. In response to a toast at a banquet given in--Milledgeville, I believe--you uttered, and intend to have printed, these words: "'The Northern man is utterly without sentiment or warmth except in so far as the feelings may be turned to his own commercial profit. He will suffer without resentment any imputation cast upon the honor of himself or his loved ones that does not bear with it the consequence of pecuniary loss. In his charity, he gives with a liberal hand; but it must be heralded with the trumpet and chronicled in brass.' "Do you think that picture is fairer than the one you saw of Colonel Calhoun last night?" "The description," said the Major, frowning, "is--not without grounds. Some exag--latitude must be allowed in public speaking." "And in public acting," replied Hargraves. "That is not the point," persisted the Major, unrelenting. "It was a personal caricature. I positively decline to overlook it, sir." "Major Talbot," said Hargraves, with a winning smile, "I wish you would understand me. I want you to know that I never dreamed of insulting you. In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I want, and what I can, and return it over the footlights. Now, if you will, let's let it go at that. I came in to see you about something else. We've been pretty good friends for some months, and I'm going to take the risk of offending you again. I know you are hard up for money--never mind how I found out, a boarding house is no place to keep such matters secret--and I want you to let me help you out of the pinch. I've been there often enough myself. I've been getting a fair salary all the season, and I've saved some money. You're welcome to a couple hundred--or even more--until you get----" "Stop!" commanded the Major, with his arm outstretched. "It seems that my book didn't lie, after all. You think your money salve will heal all the hurts of honor. Under no circumstances would I accept a loan from a casual acquaintance; and as to you, sir, I would starve before I would consider your insulting offer of a financial adjustment of the circumstances we have discussed. I beg to repeat my request relative to your quitting the apartment." Hargraves took his departure without another word. He also left the house the same day, moving, as Mrs. Vardeman explained at the supper table, nearer the vicinity of the downtown theater, where A Magnolia Flower was booked for a week's run. Critical was the situation with Major Talbot and Miss Lydia. There was no one in Washington to whom the Major's scruples allowed him to apply for a loan. Miss Lydia wrote a letter to Uncle Ralph, but it was doubtful whether that relative's constricted affairs would permit him to furnish help. The Major was forced to make an apologetic address to Mrs. Vardeman regarding the delayed payment for board, referring to "delinquent rentals" and "delayed remittances" in a rather confused strain. Deliverance came from an entirely unexpected source. Late one afternoon the door maid came up and announced an old colored man who wanted to see Major Talbot. The Major asked that he be sent up to his study. Soon an old darkey appeared in the doorway, with his hat in hand, bowing, and scraping with one clumsy foot. He was quite decently dressed in a baggy suit of black. His big, coarse shoes shone with a metallic luster suggestive of stove polish. His bushy wool was gray--almost white. After middle life, it is difficult to estimate the age of a negro. This one might have seen as many years as had Major Talbot. "I be bound you don't know me, Mars' Pendleton," were his first words. The Major rose and came forward at the old, familiar style of address. It was one of the old plantation darkeys without a doubt; but they had been widely scattered, and he could not recall the voice or face. "I don't believe I do," he said kindly--"unless you will assist my memory." "Don't you 'member Cindy's Mose, Mars' Pendleton, what 'migrated 'mediately after de war?" "Wait a moment," said the Major, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He loved to recall everything connected with those beloved days. "Cindy's Mose," he reflected. "You worked among the horses--breaking the colts. Yes, I remember now. After the surrender, you took the name of--don't prompt me--Mitchell, and went to the West--to Nebraska." "Yassir, yassir,"--the old man's face stretched with a delighted grin--"dat's him, dat's it. Newbraska. Dat's me--Mose Mitchell. Old Uncle Mose Mitchell, dey calls me now. Old mars', your pa, gimme a pah of dem mule colts when I lef' fur to staht me goin' with. You 'member dem colts, Mars' Pendleton?" "I don't seem to recall the colts," said the Major. "You know. I was married the first year of the war and living at the old Follinsbee place. But sit down, sit down, Uncle Mose. I'm glad to see you. I hope you have prospered." Uncle Mose took a chair and laid his hat carefully on the floor beside it. "Yessir; of late I done mouty famous. When I first got to Newbraska, dey folks come all roun' me to see dem mule colts. Dey ain't see no mules like dem in Newbraska. I sold dem mules for three hundred dollars. Yessir--three hundred. "Den I open a blacksmith shop, suh, and made some money and bought some lan'. Me and my old 'oman done raised up seb'm chillun, and all doin' well 'cept two of 'em what died. Fo' year ago a railroad come along and staht a town slam ag'inst my lan', and, suh, Mars' Pendleton, Uncle Mose am worth leb'm thousand dollars in money, property, and lan'." "I'm glad to hear it," said the Major heartily. "Glad to hear it." "And dat little baby of yo'n, Mars' Pendleton--one what you name Miss Lyddy--I be bound dat little tad done growed up tell nobody wouldn't know her." The Major stepped to the door and called: "Lydie, dear, will you come?" Miss Lydia, looking quite grown up and a little worried, came in from her room. "Dar, now! What'd I tell you? I knowed dat baby done be plum growed up. You don't 'member Uncle Mose, child?" "This is Aunt Cindy's Mose, Lydia," explained the Major. "He left Sunnymead for the West when you were two years old." "Well," said Miss Lydia, "I can hardly be expected to remember you, Uncle Mose, at that age. And, as you say, I'm 'plum growed up,' and was a blessed long time ago. But I'm glad to see you, even if I can't remember you." And she was. And so was the Major. Something alive and tangible had come to link them with the happy past. The three sat and talked over the olden times, the Major and Uncle Mose correcting or prompting each other as they reviewed the plantation scenes and days. The Major inquired what the old man was doing so far from his home. "Uncle Mose am a delicate," he explained, "to de grand Baptis' convention in dis city. I never preached none, but bein' a residin' elder in de church, and able fur to pay my own expenses, dey sent me along." "And how did you know we were in Washington?" inquired Miss Lydia. "Dey's a cullud man works in de hotel whar I stops, what comes from Mobile. He told me he seen Mars' Pendleton comin' outen dish here house one mawnin'. "What I come fur," continued Uncle Mose, reaching into his pocket--"besides de sight of home folks--was to pay Mars' Pendleton what I owes him. "Yessir--three hundred dollars." He handed the Major a roll of bills. "When I lef' old mars' says: 'Take dem mule colts, Mose, and, if it be so you gits able, pay fur 'em.' Yessir--dem was his words. De war had done lef' old mars' po' hisself. Old mars' bein' long ago dead, de debt descends to Mars' Pendleton. Three hundred dollars. Uncle Mose is plenty able to pay now. When dat railroad buy my lan' I laid off to pay fur dem mules. Count de money, Mars' Pendleton. Dat's what I sold dem mules fur. Yessir." Tears were in Major Talbot's eyes. He took Uncle Mose's hand and laid his other upon his shoulder. "Dear, faithful, old servitor," he said in an unsteady voice, "I don't mind saying to you that 'Mars' Pendleton spent his last dollar in the world a week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a way, it is a sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and devotion of the old regime. Lydia, my dear, take the money. You are better fitted than I to manage its expenditure." "Take it, honey," said Uncle Mose. "Hit belongs to you. Hit's Talbot money." After Uncle Mose had gone, Miss Lydia had a good cry---for joy; and the Major turned his face to a corner, and smoked his clay pipe volcanically. The succeeding days saw the Talbots restored to peace and ease. Miss Lydia's face lost its worried look. The major appeared in a new frock coat, in which he looked like a wax figure personifying the memory of his golden age. Another publisher who read the manuscript of the Anecdotes and Reminiscences thought that, with a little retouching and toning down of the high lights, he could make a really bright and salable volume of it. Altogether, the situation was comfortable, and not without the touch of hope that is often sweeter than arrived blessings. One day, about a week after their piece of good luck, a maid brought a letter for Miss Lydia to her room. The postmark showed that it was from New York. Not knowing any one there, Miss Lydia, in a mild flutter of wonder, sat down by her table and opened the letter with her scissors. This was what she read: DEAR MISS TALBOT: I thought you might be glad to learn of my good fortune. I have received and accepted an offer of two hundred dollars per week by a New York stock company to play Colonel Calhoun in A Magnolia Flower. There is something else I wanted you to know. I guess you'd better not tell Major Talbot. I was anxious to make him some amends for the great help he was to me in studying the part, and for the bad humor he was in about it. He refused to let me, so I did it anyhow. I could easily spare the three hundred. Sincerely yours,H. HOPKINS HARGRAVES. P.S. How did I play Uncle Mose? Major Talbot, passing through the hall, saw Miss Lydia's door open and stopped. "Any mail for us this morning, Lydia, dear?" he asked. Miss Lydia slid the letter beneath a fold of her dress. "The Mobile Chronicle came," she said promptly. "It's on the table in your study." The Fifth Wheel The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues. The Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the winged walking delegate of the Lord. Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a man. You deeded him to Morpheus; and the recording angel gave you credit. The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied. He had looked over the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday. That left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent man and business go to the deuce. The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small, dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth's monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with conscientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the Preacher small bills or silver. Then a lieutenant of Scandinavian coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging house with a squad of the redeemed. All the while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms beautifully devoid of eloquence - splendid with the deadly, accusative monotony of truth. Before the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must hear one phrase of the Preacher's - the one that formed his theme that night. It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the world. "No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky." Think of it, tippler. It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to the Potter's Field. A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of his coat collar. It was a well-cut tweed coat; and the trousers still showed signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose. But, conscientiously, I must warn the milliner's apprentice who reads this, expecting a Reginald Montressor in straits, to peruse no further. The young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the one-night bed seekers. If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe family carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 100 to 1-shot bays. The carriage is shaped like a bath-tub. In each end of it reclines an old lady Van Smuythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year's Eve feather tickler. Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid. But it is one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed Line army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse. The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own age, shabby but neat. "What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?" asked Thomas, with the freemasonic familiarity of the damned - "Booze? That's mine. You don't look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now! Say; how do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rummage sale." The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy ex-coachman. "No," said he, "mine isn't exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my unforgiving relatives. I've been out of work for a year because I don't know how to work; and I've been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother. I was turned out of the hospital yesterday. And I haven't a cent. That's my tale of woe." "Tough luck," said Thomas. "A man alone can pull through all right. But I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it." Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, so red, so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations that it drew the attention even of the listless Bed Liners. Suspended and pinioned on its left side was an extra tire. When opposite the unfortunate company the fastenings of this tire became loosed. It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake of the flying car. Thomas McQuade, scenting an opportunity, darted from his place among the Preacher's goats. In thirty seconds he had caught the rolling tire, swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly after the car. On both sides of the avenue people were shouting, whistling, and waving canes at the red car, pointing to the enterprising Thomas coming up with the lost tire. One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest guerdon that so grand an automobilist could offer for the service he had rendered, and save his pride. Two blocks away the car had stopped. There was a little, brown, muffled chauffeur driving, and an imposing gentleman wearing a magnificent sealskin coat and a silk hat on a rear seat. Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex-coachman manner and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to higher denominations. But the look was not so construed. The sealskinned gentleman received the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intently at the ex-coachman, and muttered to himself inscrutable words. "Strange - strange!" said he. "Once or twice even I, myself, have fancied that the Chaldean Chiroscope has availed. Could it be possible?" Then he addressed less mysterious words to the waiting and hopeful Thomas. "Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire. And I would ask you, if I may, a question. Do you know the family of Van Smuythes living in Washington Square North?" "Oughtn't I to?" replied Thomas. "I lived there. Wish I did yet." The sealskinned gentleman opened a door of the car. "Step in please," he said. "You have been expected." Thomas McQuade obeyed with surprise but without hesitation. A seat in a motor car seemed better than standing room in the Bed Line. But after the lap-robe had been tucked about him and the auto had sped on its course, the peculiarity of the invitation lingered in his mind. "Maybe the guy hasn't got any change," was his diagnosis. "Lots of these swell rounders don't lug about any ready money. Guess he'll dump me out when he gets to some joint where he can get cash on his mug. Anyhow, it's a cinch that I've got that open-air bed convention beat to a finish." Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious automobilist seemed, himself, to marvel at the surprises of life. "Wonderful! amazing! strange!" he repeated to himself constantly. When the car had well entered the crosstown Seventies, it swung eastward a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, brownstone-front houses. "Be kind enough to enter my house with me," said the sealskinned gentleman when they had alighted. "He's going to dig up, sure," reflected Thomas, following him inside. There was a dim light in the hall. His host conducted him through a door to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness. Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy tales. The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings embroidered with fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped porti`eres of dull gold spangled with silver crescents and stars. The furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles. The ex-coachman's feet sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts. There were three or four oddly shaped stands or tables covered with black velvet drapery. Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one eye. With the other he looked for his imposing conductor - to find that he had disappeared. "B'gee!" muttered Thomas, "this listens like a spook shop. Shouldn't wonder if it ain't one of these Moravian Nights' adventures that you read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy." Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant electric glow. With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of Hebe from a cabinet near by and hurled it with all his might at the terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold portieres parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah's throneroom advancing to greet a visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his d t's to be mindful of his p's and q's. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists. "Say, doc," said he resentfully, "that's a hot bird you keep on tap. I hope I didn't break anything. But I've nearly got the williwalloos, and when he threw them 32-candle-power-lamps of his on me, I took a snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the sideboard." "That is merely a mechanical toy," said the gentleman with a wave of his hand. "May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North." "Any silver missing," asked Thomas tartly. "Any joolry displaced? Of course I know 'em. Any of the old ladies' sunshades disappeared? Well, I know 'em. And then what?" The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly. "Wonderful!" he murmured. "Wonderful! Shall I come to believe in the Chaldean Chiroscope myself? Let me assure you," he continued, "that there is nothing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you that very good fortune awaits you. We will see." "Do they want me back?" asked Thomas, with something of his old professional pride in his voice. "I'll promise to cut out the booze and do the right thing if they'll try me again. But how did you get wise, doc? B'gee, it's the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its flashlight owls and so forth." With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused for two minutes. He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to the chauffeur, who still waited with the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment, he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and genial converse that the poor Bed Liner almost forgot the cold streets from which he had been so recently and so singularly rescued. A servant brought some tender cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of miraculous wine; and Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him. Thus half an hour sped quickly; and then the honk of the returned motor car at the door suddenly drew the Grand Duke to his feet, with another soft petition for a brief absence. Two women, well muffled against the cold, were admitted at the front door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down the hall through another door to the left and into a smaller room, which was screened and segregated from the larger front room by heavy, double portieres. here the furnishings were even more elegant and exquisitely tasteful than in the other. On a gold-inlaid rosewood table were scattered sheets of white paper and a queer, triangular instrument or toy, apparently of gold, standing on little wheels. The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her cloak. She was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face. The other, young and plump, took a chair a little distance away and to the rear as a servant or an attendant might have done. "You sent for me, Professor Cherubusco," said the elder woman, wearily. "I hope you have something more definite than usual to say. I've about lost the little faith I had in your art. I would not have responded to your call this evening if my sister had not insisted upon it." "Madam," said the professor, with his princeliest smile, "the true Art cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes requires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the crystal, the stars, the magic formulae of Zarazin, nor the Oracle of Po. But we have at last discovered the true psychic route. The Chaldean Chiroscope has been successful in our search." The professor's voice had a ring that seemed to proclaim his belief in his own words. The elderly lady looked at him with a little more interest. "Why, there was no sense in those words that it wrote with my hands on it," she said. "What do you mean?" "The words were these," said Professor Cherubusco, rising to his full magnificent height: "By the fifth wheel of the chariot he shall come." "I haven't seen many chariots," said the lady, "but I never saw one with five wheels." "Progress," said the professor - "progress in science and mechanics has accomplished it - though, to be exact, we may speak of it only as an extra tire. Progress in occult art has advanced in proportion. Madam, I repeat that the Chaldean Chiroscope has succeeded. I can not only answer the question that you have propounded, but I can produce before your eyes the proof thereof." And now the lady was disturbed both in her disbelief and in her poise. "O professor!" she cried anxiously - "When? - where? Has he been found? Do not keep me in suspense." "I beg you will excuse me for a very few minutes," said Professor Cherubusco, "and I think I can demonstrate to you the efficacy of the true Art." Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs of the bread and fowl when the enchanter appeared suddenly at his side. "Are you willing to return to your old home if you are assured of a welcome and restoration to favor?" he asked, with his courteous, royal smile. "Do I look bughouse?" answered Thomas. "Enough of the footback life for me. But will they have me again? The old lady is as fixed in her ways as a nut on a new axle." "My dear young man," said the other, "she has been searching for you everywhere." "Great!" said Thomas. "I'm on the job. That team of dropsical domedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman like myself; but I'll take the job back, sure, doc. They're good people to be with." And now a change came o'er the suave countenance of the Caliph of Bagdad. He looked keenly and suspiciously at the ex-coachman. "May I ask what your name is?" he said shortly. "You've been looking for me," said Thomas, "and don't know my name? You're a funny kind of sleuth. You must be one of the Central Office gumshoers. I'm Thomas McQuade, of course; and I've been chauffeur of the Van Smuythe elephant team for a year. They fired me a month ago for - well, doc, you saw what I did to your old owl. I went broke on booze, and when I saw the tire drop off your whiz wagon I was standing in that squad of hoboes at the Worth monument waiting for a free bed. Now, what's the prize for the best answer to all this?" To his intense surprise Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door. This was opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one heavy, disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous Arabian's shoe. As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits he hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway. "Crazy guy," was his estimate of the mysterious automobilist. "Just wanted to have some fun kiddin', I guess. He might have dug up a dollar, anyhow. Now I've got to hurry up and get back to that gang of bum bed hunters before they all get preached to sleep." When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk he found the ranks of the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten. He took the proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear rank. In a file in front of him was the young man who had spoken to him of hospitals and something of a wife and child. "Sorry to see you back again," said the young man, turning to speak to him. "I hoped you had struck something better than this." "Me?" said Thomas. "Oh, I just took a run around the block to keep warm! I see the public ain't lending to the Lord very fast tonight." "In this kind of weather," said the young man, "charity avails itself of the proverb, and both begins and ends at home." And the Preacher and his vehement lieutenant struck up a last hymn of petition to Providence and man. Those of the Bed Liners whose windpipes still registered above 32 degrees hopelessly and tunelessly joined in. In the middle of the second verse Thomas saw a sturdy girl with wind-tossed drapery battling against the breeze and coming straight toward him from the opposite sidewalk. "Annie!" he yelled, and ran toward her. "You fool, you fool!" she cried, weeping and laughing, and hanging upon his neck, "why did you do it?" "The Stuff," explained Thomas briefly. "You know. But subsequently nit. Not a drop." He led her to the curb. "How did you happen to see me?" "I came to find you," said Annie, holding tight to his sleeve. "Oh, you big fool! Professor Cherubusco told us that we might find you here." "Professor Ch - Dont' know the guy. What saloon does he work in?" "He's a clairvoyant, Thomas; the greatest in the world. He found you with the Chaldean telescope, he said." "He's a liar," said Thomas. "I never had it. He never saw me have anybody's telescope." "And he said you came in a chariot with five wheels or something." "Annie," said Thoms solicitously, "you're giving me the wheels now. If I had a chariot I'd have gone to bed in it long ago. And without any singing and preaching for a nightcap, either." "Listen, you big fool. The Missis says she'll take you back. I begged her to. But you must behave. And you can go up to the house to-night; and your old room over the stable is ready." "Great!" said Thomas earnestly. "You are It, Annie. But when did these stunts happen?" "To-night at Professor Cherubusco's. He sent his automobile for the Missis, and she took me along. I've been there with her before." "What's the professor's line?" "He's a clairvoyant and a witch. The Missis consults him. He knows everything. But he hasn't done the Missis any good yet, though she's paid him hundreds of dollars. But he told us that the stars told him we could find you here." "What's the old lady want this cherry-buster to do?" "That's a family secret," said Annie. "And now you've asked enough questions. Come on home, you big fool." They had moved but a little way up the street when Thomas stopped. "Got any dough with you, Annie?" he asked. Annie looked at him sharply. "Oh, I know what that look means," said Thomas. "You're wrong. Not another drop. But there's a guy that was standing next to me in the bed line over there that's in bad shape. He's the right kind, and he's got wives or kids or something, and he's on the sick list. No booze. If you could dig up half a dollar for him so he could get a decent bed I'd like it." Annie's fingers began to wiggle in her purse. "Sure, I've got money," said she. "Lots of it. Twelve dollars." And then she added, with woman's ineradicable suspicion of vicarious benevolence: "Bring him here and let me see him first." Thomas went on his mission. The wan Bed Liner came readily enough. As the two drew near, Annie looked up from her purse and screamed: "Mr. Walter - Oh - Mr. Walter!" "Is that you, Annie?" said the young man meekly. "Oh, Mr. Walter! - and the Missis hunting high and low for you!" "Does mother want to see me?" he asked, with a flush coming out on his pale cheek. "She's been hunting for you high and low. Sure, she wants to see you. She wants you to come home. She's tried police and morgues and lawyers and advertising and detectives and rewards and everything. And then she took up clearvoyants. You'll go right home, won't you, Mr. Walter?" "Gladly, if she wants me," said the young man. "Three years is a long time. I suppose I'll have to walk up, though, unless the street cars are giving free rides. I used to walk and beat that old plug team of bays we used to drive to the carriage. Have they got them yet?" "They have," said Thomas, feelingly. "And they'll have 'em ten years from now. The life of the royal elephantibus truckhorseibus is one hundred and forty-nine years. I'm the coachman. Just got my reappointment five minutes ago. Let's all ride up in a surface car - that is - er - if Annie will pay the fares." On the Broadway car Annie handed each one of the prodigals a nickel to pay the conductor. "Seems to me you are mighty reckless the way you throw large sums of money around," said Thomas sarcastically. "In that purse," said Annie decidedly, "is exactly $11.85. I shall take every cent of it to-morrow and give it to professor Cherubusco, the greatest man in the world." "Well," said Thomas, "I guess he must be a pretty fly guy to pipe off things the way he does. I'm glad his spooks told him where you could find me. If you'll give me his address, some day I'll go up there, myself, and shake his hand." Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an abrasion or two on his knees and his elbows. "Say, Annie," said he confidentially, maybe it's one of the last dreams of booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in authomobile with a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. If it was the d t's, why am I so sore?" "Shut up, you fool," said Annie. "If I could find that funny guy's house, said Thomas, in conclusion, "I'd go up there some day and punch his nose for him." The Girl And The Graft The other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue. Pogue is a conscientious grafter of the highest type. His headquarters is the Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from speculating in town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling wooden toys in Connecticut, made by hydraulic pressure from nutmegs ground to a pulp. Now and then when Pogue has made a good haul he comes to New York for a rest. He says the jug of wine and loaf of bread and Thou in the wilderness business is about as much rest and pleasure to him as sliding down the bumps at Coney would be to President Taft. "Give me," says Pogue, "a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I'm not much fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don't find any." While in the metropolis Pogue can always be found at one of two places. One is a little second-hand bookshop on Fourth Avenue, where he reads books about his hobbies, Mahometanism and taxidermy. I found him at the other - his hall bedroom in Eighteenth Street - where he sat in his stocking feet trying to pluck "The Banks of the Wabash" out of a small zither. Four years he has practised this tune without arriving near enough to cast the longest trout line to the water's edge. On the dresser lay a blued-steel Colt's forty-five and a tight roll of tens and twenties large enough around to belong to the spring rattlesnake-story class. A chambermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered nearby in the hall, unable to enter or to flee, scandalized by the stocking feet, aghast at the Colt's, yet powerless, with her metropolitan instincts, to remove herself beyond the magic influence of the yellow-hued roll. I sat on his trunk while Ferguson Pogue talked. No one could be franker or more candid in his conversation. Beside his expression the cry of Henry James for lacteal nourishment at the age of one month would have seemed like a Chaldean cryptogram. He told me stories of his profession with pride, for he considered it an art. And I was curious enough to ask him whether he had known any women who followed it. "Ladies?" said Pogue, with Western chivalry. "Well, not to any great extent. They don't amount to much in special lines of graft, because they're all so busy in general lines. What? Why, they have to. Who's got the money in the world? The men. Did you ever know a man to give a woman a dollar without any consideration? A man will shell out his dust to another man free and easy and gratis. But if he drops a penny in one of the machines run by the Madam Eve's Daughters' Amalgamated Association and the pineapple chewing gum don't fall out when he pulls the lever you can hear him kick to the superintendent four blocks away. Man is the hardest proposition a woman has to go up against. He's the low-grade one, and she has to work overtime to make him pay. Two times out of five she's salted. She can't put in crushers and costly machinery. He'd notice 'em and be onto the game. They have to pan out what they get, and it hurts their tender hands. Some of 'em are natural sluice troughs and can carry out $1,000 to the ton. The dry-eyed ones have to depend on signed letters, false hair, sympathy, the kangaroo walk, cowhide whips, ability to cook, sentimental juries, conversational powers, silk underskirts, ancestry, rouge, anonymous letters, violet sachet powders, witnesses, revolvers, pneumatic forms, carbolic acid, moonlight, cold cream and the evening newspapers." "You are outrageous, Ferg," I said. "Surely there is none of this 'graft' as you call it, in a perfect and harmonious matrimonial union!" "Well," said Pogue, "nothing that would justify you every time in calling Police Headquarters and ordering out the reserves and a vaudeville manager on a dead run. But it's this way: Suppose you're a Fifth Avenue millionaire, soaring high, on the right side of copper and cappers. "You come home at night and bring a $9,000,000 diamond brooch to the lady who's staked your for a claim. You hand it over. She says, 'Oh, George!' and looks to see if it's backed. She comes up and kisses you. You've waited for it. You get it. All right. It's graft. "But I'm telling you about Artemisia Blye. She was from Kansas and she suggested corn in all of its phases. Her hair was as yellow as the silk; her form was as tall and graceful as a stalk in the low grounds during a wet summer; her eyes were as big and startling as bunions, and green was her favorite color. "On my last trip into the cool recesses of your sequestered city I met a human named Vaucross. He was worth - that is, he had a million. He told me he was in business on the street. 'A sidewalk merchant?' says I, sarcastic. 'Exactly,' says he, 'Senior partner of a paving concern.' "I kind of took to him. For this reason, I met him on Broadway one night when I was out of heart, luck, tobacco and place. He was all silk hat, diamonds and front. He was all front. If you had gone behind him you would have only looked yourself in the face. I looked like a cross between Count Tolstoy and a June lobster. I was out of luck. I had - but let me lay my eyes on that dealer again. "Vaucross stopped and talked to me a few minutes and then he took me to a high-toned restaurant to eat dinner. There was music, and then some Beethoven, and Bordelaise sauce, and cussing in French, and frangipangi, and some hauteur and cigarettes. When I am flush I know them places. "I declare, I must have looked as bad as a magazine artist sitting there without any money and my hair all rumpled like I was booked to read a chapter from 'Elsie's School Days' at a Brooklyn Bohemian smoker. But Vaucross treated me like a bear hunter's guide. He wasn't afraid of hurting the waiter's feelings. "'Mr. Pogue,' he explains to me, 'I am using you.' "'Go on,' says I; 'I hope you don't wake up.' "And then he tells me, you know, the kind of man he was. He was a New Yorker. His whole ambition was to be noticed. He wanted to be conspicuous. He wanted people to point him out and bow to him, and tell others who he was. He said it had been the desire of his life always. He didn't have but a million, so he couldn't attract attention by spending money. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by planting a little public square on the east side with garlic for free use of the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with a library in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way of automibiles; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice in the papers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filled teeth, supposed to be the last of the famous Red Leary gang had been run over. "'Ever try the reporters,' I asked him. "'Last month,' says Mr. Vaucross, 'my expenditure for lunches to reporters was $124.80.' "'Get anything out of that?' I asks. "'That reminds me,' says he; 'add $8.50 for perpsin. Yes, I got indigestion.' "'How am I supposed to push along your scramble for prominence?' I inquires. 'Contrast?' "'Something of that sort to-night,' says Vaucross. 'It grieves me; but I am forced to resort to eccentricity.' And here he drops his napkin in his soup and rises up and bows to a gent who is devastating a potato under a palm across the room. "'The Police Commissioner,' says my climber, gratified. 'Friend', says I, in a hurry, 'have ambitions but don't kick a rung out of your ladder. When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil my appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and incriminated. Be thoughtful.' "At the Quaker City squab en casserole the idea about Artemisia Blye comes to me. "'Suppose I can manage to get you in the papers,' says I - 'a column or two every day in all of 'em and your picture in most of 'em for a week. How much would it be worth to you?' "'Ten thousand dollars,' says Vaucross, warm in a minute. 'But no murder,' says he; 'and I won't wear pink pants at a cotillon.' "'I wouldn't ask you to,' says I. 'This is honorable, stylish and uneffiminate. Tell the waiter to bring a demi tasse and some other beans, and I will disclose to you the opus moderandi.' "We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge et noise room. I telegraphed that night to Miss Artemisia in Salina. She took a couple of photographs and an autograph letter to an elder in the Fourth Presbyterian Church in the morning, and got some transportation and $80. She stopped in Topeka long enough to trade a flashlight interior and a valentine to the vice-president of a trust company for a mileage book and a package of five-dollar notes with $250 scrawled on the band. "The fifth evening after she got my wire she was waiting, all decolletee and dressed up, for me and Vaucross to take her to dinner in one of these New York feminine apartment houses where a man can't get in unless he plays bezique and smokes depilatory powder cigarettes. "'She's a stunner,' says Vaucross when he saw her. 'They'll give her a two-column cut sure.' "This was the scheme the three of us concocted. It was business straight through. Vaucross was to rush Miss Blye with all the style and display and emotion he could for a month. Of course, that amounted to nothing as far as his ambitions were concerned. The sight of a man in a white tie and patent leather pumps pouring greenbacks through the large end of a cornucopia to purchase nutriment and heartsease for tall, willowy blondes in New York is as common a sight as blue turtles in delirium tremens. But he was to write her love letters - the worst kind of love letters, such as your wife publishes after you are dead - every day. At the end of the month he was to drop her, and she would bring suit for $100,000 for breach of promise. "Miss Artemisia was to get $10,000. If she won the suit that was all; and if she lost she was to get it anyhow. There was a signed contract to that effect. "Sometimes they had me out with 'em, but not often. I couldn't keep up to their style. She used to pull out his notes and criticize them like bills of lading. "'Say, you!' she'd say. 'What do you call this - letter to a Hardware Merchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has Nettlerash? You Eastern duffers know as much about writing love letters as a Kansas grasshopper does about tugboats. "My dear Miss Blye!" - wouldn't that put pink icing and a little red sugar bird on your bridal cake? How long do you expect to hold an audience in a court-room with that kind of stuff? You want to get down to business, and call me "Tweedlums Babe" and "Honeysuckle," and sing yourself "Mama's Own Big Bad Puggy Wuggy Boy" if you want any limelight to concentrate upon your sparse gray hairs. Get sappy.' "After that Vaucross dipped his pen in the indelible tabasco. His notes read like something or other in the original. I could see a jury sitting up, and women tearing one another's hats to hear 'em read. And I could see piling up for Mr. Vaucross as much notoriousness as Archbishop Crammer or the Brooklyn Bridge or cheese-on-salad ever enjoyed. He seemed mighty pleased at the prospects. "They agreed on a night; and I stood on Fifth Avenue outside a solemn restaurant and watched 'em. A process-server walked in and handed Vaucross the papers at this table. Everybody looked at 'em; and he looked as proud as Cicero. I went back to my room and lit a five-cent cigar, for I knew the $10,000 was as good as ours. "About two hours later somebody knocked at my door. There stood Vaucross and Miss Artemisia, and she was clinging - yes, sir, clinging - to his arm. And they tells me they'd been out and got married. And they articulated some trivial cadences about love and such. And they laid down a bundle on the table and said 'Good night' and left. "And that's why I say," concluded Ferguson Pogue, "that a woman is too busy occupied with her natural vocation and instinct of graft such as is given her for self-preservation and amusement to make any great success in special lines." "What was in the bundle they left?" I asked, with my usual curiosity. "Why," said Ferguson, "there was a scalper's railroad ticket as far as Kansas City and two pairs of Mr. Vaucross's old pants." The Girl And The Habit HABIT - a tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or frequent repitition. The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one. To that one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns. When we strove to set forth real life they reproached us for trying to imitate Henry George, George Washington, Washington Irving, and Irving Bacheller. We wrote of the West and the East, and they accused us of both Jesse and Henry James. We wrote from our heart - and they said something about a disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew or - er-yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable vade mecum - the unabridged dictionary. Miss Merriam was cashier at Hinkle's. Hinkle's is one of the big downtown restaurants. It is in what the papers call the "financial district." Each day from 12 o'clock to 2 Hinkle's was full of hungry customers - messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners of mining stock, promoters, inventors with patents pending - and also people with money. The cashiership at Hinkle's was no sinecure. Hinkle egged and toasted and griddle-caked and coffeed a good many customers; and he lunched (as good a word as "dined") many more. It might be said that Hinkle's breakfast crowd was a contingent, but his luncheon patronage amounted to a horde. Miss Merriam sat on a stool at a desk inclosed on three sides by a strong, high fencing of woven brass wire. Through an arched opening at the bottom you thrust your waiter's check and the money, while your heart went pit-pat. For Miss Merriam was lovely and capable. She could take 45 cents out of a $2 bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could - Next! - lost your chance - please don't shove. She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle's casters. There is an old and dignified allusion to the "fierce light that beats upon a throne." The light that beats upon the young lady cashier's cage is also something fierce. The other fellow is responsible for the slang. Every male patron of Hinkle's, from A. D. T. boys up to the curbstone brokers, adored Miss Merriam. When they paid their checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid's art. Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, languishing looks and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back by the gifted Miss Merriam. There is no coign of vantage more effective than the position of young lady cashier. She sits there, easily queen of the court of commerce; she is duchess of dollars and devoirs, countess of compliment; and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon. You take from her a smile and a Canadian dime, and you go your way uncomplaining. You count the cheery word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures; and you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility multiplies her charms - anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert - Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your circulating medium after your sirloin medium. The young men who broke bread at Hinkle's never settled with the cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolate. The older spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than he ate. During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Merriam's conversation, while she took money for checks, would run something like this: "Good morning, Mr. Haskins - sir? - it's natural, thank you - don't be quite so fresh ... Hello, Johnny - ten, fifteen, twenty - chase along now or they'll take the letters off your cap ... Beg pardon - count it again, please - Oh, don't mention it ... Vaudeville? - thanks; not on your moving picture - I was to see Carter in Hedda Gabler on Wednesday night with Mr. Simmons ... 'Scuse me, I thought that was a quarter ... Twenty-five and seventy-five's a dollar - got that ham-and-cabbage habit yet. I see, Billy ... Who are you addressing? - say - you'll get all that's coming to you in a minute ... Oh, fudge! Mr. Bassett - you're always fooling - no - ? Well, maybe I'll marry you some day - three, four and sixty-five is five ... Kindly keep them remarks to yourself, if you please ... Ten cents? - 'scuse me; the check calls for seventy - well, maybe it is a one instead of a seven ... Oh, do you like it that way, Mr. Saunders? - some prefer a pomp; but they say this Cleo de Merody does suit refined features ... and ten is fifty ... Hike along there, buddy; don't take this for a Coney Island ticket booth ... Huh? - why, Macy's - don't it fit nice? Oh, no, it isn't too cool - these light-weight fabrics is all the go this season ... Come again, please - that's the third time you've tried to - what? - forget it - that lead quarter is an old friend of mine ... Sixty-five? - must have had your salary raised, Mr. Wilson ... I seen you on Sixth Avenue Tuesday afternoon, Mr. De Forest - swell? - oh, my! - who is she? ... What's the matter with it? - why, this ain't South America ... Yes, I like the mixed best - Friday? - awfully sorry, but I take my jiu-jitsu lesson on Friday - Thursday, then ... Thanks - that's sixteen times I've been told that this morning - I guess I must be beautiful ... Cut that out, please - who do you think I am? ... Why, Mr. Westbrook - do you really think so? - the idea! - one - eighty and twenty's a dollar - thank you ever so much, but I don't ever go automobile riding with gentlemen - your aunt? - well, that's different - perhaps ... Please don't get fresh - your check was fifteen cents, I believe - kindly step aside and let ... Hello, Ben - coming around Thursday evening? - there's a gentleman going to send around a box of chocolates, and ... forty and sixty is a dollar, and one is two ..." About the middle of one afternoon the dizzy goddess Vertigo - whose other name is Fortune - suddenly smote an old, wealthy and eccentric banker while he was walking past Hinkle's, on his way to a street car. A wealthy and eccentric banker who rides in street cars is - move up, please; there are others. A Samaritan, A Pharisee, a man and a policeman who were first on the spot lifter Banker McRamsey and carried him into Hinkle's restaurant. When the aged but indestructible banker opened his eyes he saw a beautikful vision bending over him with a pitiful, tender smile, bathing his forehead with beef tea and chafing his hands with something frapp'e out of a chafing-dish. Mr. McRamsey sighed, lost a vest button, gazed with deep gratitude upon his fair preserveress, and then recovered consciousness. To the Seaside Library all who are anticipating a romance! Banker McRamsey had an aged and respected wife, and his sentiments toward Miss Merriam were fatherly. He talked to her for half an hour with interest - not the kind that went with his talks during business hours. The next day he brought Mrs. McRamsey down to see her. The old couple were childless - they had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn. To make a short story shorter, the beautiful cashier won the hearts of the good old couple. They came to Hinkle's again and again; they invited her to their old-fashioned but splendid home in one of the East Seventies. Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet frankness and impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn matron, n'ee Ramsey, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal of an art photographer. Miss Merriam was a combination of curves, smiles, rose leaves, pearls, satin and hair-tonic posters. Enough of the fatuity of parents. A month after the worthy couple became acquainted with Miss Merriam, she stood before Hinkle one afternoon and resigned her cashiership. "They're going to adopt me," she told the bereft restaurateur. "They're funny old people, but regular dears. And the swell home they have got! Say, Hinkle, there isn't any use of talking - I'm on the a la carte to wear brown duds and goggles in a whiz wagon, or marry a duke at least. Still, I somehow hate to break out of the old cage. I've been cashiering so long I feel funny doing anything else. I'll miss joshing the fellows awfully when they line up to pay for the buckwheats and. But I can't let this chance slide. And they're awfully good, Hinkle; I know I'll have a swell time. You owe me nine-sixty-two and a half for the week. Cut out the half if it hurts you, Hinkle." And they did. Miss Merriam became Miss Rosa McRamsey. And she graced the transition. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves lie very near to the skin. Nerve - but just here will you oblige by perusing again the quotation with which this story begins? The McRamseys poured out money like domestic champagne to polish their adopted one. Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors got it. Miss - er - McRamsey was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkle's. To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkle's did fade from her memory and speech most of the time. Not every one will remember when the Earl of Hitesbury came to East Seventy - -Street, America. He was only a fair-to-medium earl, without debts, and he created little excitement. But you will surely remember the evening when the Daughters of Benevolence haled their bazaar in the W - -f-A - -a Hotel. For you were there, and you wrote a note to Fannie on the hotel paper, and mailed it, just to show her that - you did not? Very well; that was the evening the baby was sick, of course. At the bazaar the McRamseys were prominent. Miss Mer - er - McRamsey was exquisitely beautiful. The Earl of Hitesbury had been very attentive to her since he dropped in to have a look at America. At the charity bazaar the affair was supposed to be going to be pulled off to a finish. An earl is as good as a duke. Better. His standing may be lower, but his outstanding accounts are also lower. Our ex-young-lady-cashier was assigned to a booth. She was expected to sell worthless articles to nobs and snobs at exorbitant prices. The proceeds of the bazaar were to be used for giving the poor children of the slums a Christmas din - -Say! did you ever wonder where they get the other 364? Miss McRamsey - beautiful, palpitating, excited, charming, radiant - fluttered about in her booth. An imitation brass network, with a little arched opening, fenced her in. Along came the Earl, assured, delicate, accurate, admiring - admiring greatly, and faced the open wicket. "You look chawming, you know - 'pon my word you do - my deah," he said, beguilingly. "Cut that joshing out," she said, coolly and briskly. "Who do you think you are talking to? Your check, please. Oh, Lordy! -" Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around a certain booth. The Earl of Hitesbury stood near by pulling a pale blond and puzzled whisker. "Miss McRamsey has fainted," some one explained. The Gold That Glittered A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his bottle of testing acid. Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by George the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that quarter, and this is their shibboleth: "'Nit,' says I to Frohman, 'you can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I walks." Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two streets where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to play the game at long taw. In El Refugio, they find the atmosphere in which they thrive. In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story thus long. On, diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic chef, hie thee to El Refugio! There only will you find a fish - bluefish, shad or pompano from the Gulf - baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes give it color, individuality and soul; chili colorado bestows upon it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and mystery, and - but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity - but never in it - hovers an ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and delicate that only the Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and carafe of wine that has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio - ah, Dios! One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General was between a claybank and bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of a shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate. Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red-brick house that read, "Hotel Espanol." In the window was a card in Spanish, "Aqui se habla Espanol." The General entered, sure of a congenial port. In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had blond - oh, unimpeachably blond hair. For the rest she was amiability, and ran largely to inches around. Gen. Falcon brushed the floor with his broad-brimmed hat, and emitted a quantity of Spanish, the syllables sounding like firecrackers gently popping their way down the string of a bunch. "Spanish or Dago?" asked Mrs. O'Brien, pleasantly. "I am a Colombian, madam," said the General, proudly. "I speak the Spanish. The advisment in your window say the Spanish he is spoken here. How is that?" "Well, you've been speaking it, ain't you?" said the madam. "I'm sure I can't." At the Hotel Espanol General Falcon engaged rooms and established himself. At dusk he sauntered out upon the streets to view the wonders of this roaring city of the North. As he walked he thought of the wonderful golden hair of Mme. O'Brien. "It is here," said the General to himself, no doubt in his own language, "that one shall find the most beautiful senoras in the world. I have not in my Colombia viewed among our beauties one so fair. But no! It is not for the General Falcon to think of beauty. It is my country that claims my devotion." At the corner of Broadway and the Little Rialto the General became involved. The street cars bewildered him, and the fender of one upset him against a pushcart laden with oranges. A cab driver missed him an inch with a hub, and poured barbarous execrations upon his head. He scrambled to the sidewalk and skipped again in terror when the whistle of a peanut-roaster puffed a hot scream in his ear. V'algame Dios! What devil's city is this?" As the General fluttered out of the streamers of passers like a wounded snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was "Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other Nimrod of the asphalt was "Spider" Kelley, a sportsman with more refined methods. In pouncing upon their self-evident prey, Mr. Kelley was a shade the quicker. His elbow fended accurately the onslaught of Mr. McGuire. "G'wan!" he commanded harshly. "I saw it first." McGuire slunk away, awed by superior intelligence. "Pardon me," said Mr. Kelley, to the General, "but you got balled up in the shuffle, didn't you? Let me assist you." He picked up the General's hat and brushed the dust from it. The ways of Mr. Kelley could not but succeed. The General, bewildered and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his deliverer as a caballero with a most disinterested heart. "I have a desire," said the General, "to return to the hotel of O'Brien, in which I am stop. Caramba! senor, there is a loudness and rapidness of going and coming in the city of this Nueva York." Mr. Kelley's politeness would not suffer the distinguished Colombian to brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied. At the door of the Hotel Espanol they paused. A little lower down on the opposite side of the street shone the modest illuminated sign of El Refugio. Mr. Kelley, to whom few streets were unfamiliar, knew the place exteriorly as a "Dago joint." All foreigners, Mr. Kelley classed under the two heads of "Dagoes" and Frenchmen. He proposed to the General that they repair thither and substantiate their acquaintance with a liquid foundation. An hour later found General Falcon and Mr. Kelley seated at a table in the conspirator's corner of El Refugio. Bottles and glasses were between them. For the tenth time the General confided the secret of his mission to the Estados Unidos. He was here, he declared, to purchase arms - 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles - for the Colombian revolutionists. He had drafts in his pocket drawn by the Cartagena Bank on its New York correspondent for $25,000. At other tables other revolutionists were shouting their political secrets to their fellow-plotters; but none was as loud as the General. He pounded the table; he hallooed for some wine; he roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be hinted at to a living soul. Mr. Kelley himself was stirred to sympathetic enthusiasm. He grasped the General's hand across the table. "Monseer," he said, earnestly, "I don't know where this country of yours is, but I'm for it. I guess it must be a branch of the United States, though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us Columbia, too, sometimes. It's a lucky thing for you that you butted into me to-night. I'm the only man in New York that can get this gun deal through for you. The Secretary of War of the United States is me best friend. He's in the city now, and I'll see him for you to-morrow. In the meantime, monseer, you keep them drafts tight in your inside pocket. I'll call for you to-morrow, and take you to see him. Say! that ain't the District of Columbia you're talking about, is it?" concluded Mr. Kelley, with a sudden qualm. "You can't capture that with no 2,000 guns - it's been tried with more." "No, no, no!" exclaimed the General. "It is the Republic of Colombia - it is a g-r-reat republic on the top side of America of the South. Yes. Yes." "All right," said Mr. Kelley, reassured. "Now suppose we trek along home and go by-by. I'll write to the Secretary to-night and make a date with him. It's a ticklish job to get guns out of New York. McClusky himself can't do it." They parted at the door of the Hotel Espanol. The General rolled his eyes at the moon and sighed. "It is a great country, your Nueva York," he said. "Truly the cars in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Senor Kelley - the senoras with hair of much goldness, and admirable fatness - they are magnificas! Muy magnificas!" Kelley went to the nearest telephone booth and called up McCrary's cafe, far up on Broadway. He asked for Jimmy Dunn. "Is that Jimmy Dunn?" asked Kelley. "Yes," came the answer. "You're a liar," sang back Kelley, joyfully. "Your'e the Secretary of War. Wait there till I come up. I've got the finest thing down here in the way of a fish you ever baited for. It's a Colorado-maduro, with a gold band around it and free coupons enough to buy a red hall lamp and a statuette of Psyche rubbering in the brook. I'll be up on the next car." Jimmy Dunn was an A. M. of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confidence line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he scorned knockout drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended victim but the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in New York. It was the ambition of "Spider" Kelley to elevate himself into Jimmy's class. These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary's. Kelley explained. "He's as easy as a gumshoe. He's from the Island of Colombia, where there's a strike, or a feud, or something going on, and they've sent him up here to buy 2,000 Winchesters to arbitrate the thing with. He showed me two drafts for $10,000 each, and one for $5,000 on a bank here. 'S truth, Jimmy, I felt real mad with him because he didn't have it in thousand-dollar bills, and hand it to me on a silver waiter. Now, we've got to wait till he goes to the bank and gets the money for us." They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn said; "Bring him to No. __ Broadway, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon." In due time Kelley called at the Hotel Espanol for the General. He found the wily warrior engaged in delectable conversation with Mrs. O'Brien. "The Secretary of War is waitin' for us," said Kelley. The General tore himself away with an effort. "Ay, senor," he said, with a sigh, "duty makes a call. But, senor, the senoras of your Estados Unidos - how beauties! For exemplification, take you la Madame O'Brien - que magnifica! She is one goddess - one Juno - what you call one ox-eyed Juno." Now Mr. Kelley was a wit; and better men have been shriveled by the fire of their own imagination. "Sure!" he said with a grin; "but you mean a peroxide Juno, don't you?" Mrs. O'Brien heard, and lifted an auriferous head. Her businesslike eye rested for an instant upon the disappearing form of Mr. Kelley. Except in street cars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady. When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the Broadway address, they were held in an anteroom for half an hour, and then admitted into a well-equipped office where a distinguished looking man, with a smooth face, wrote at a desk. General Falcon was presented to the Secretary of War of the United States, and his mission made known by his old friend, Mr. Kelley. "Ah - Colombia!" said the Secretary, significantly, when he was made to understand; "I'm afraid there will be a little difficutly in that case. The President and I differ in our sympathies there. He prefers the established government, while I -" the secretary gave the General a mysterious but encouraging smile. "You, of course, know, General Falcon, that since the Tammany war, an act of Congress has been passed requiring all manufactured arms and ammunition exported from this country to pass through the War Department. Now, if I can do anything for you I will be glad to do so to oblige my old friend, Mr. Kelley. But it must be in absolute secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard favorably the efforts of your revolutionary party in Colombia. I will have my orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the warehouse." The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters A. D. T. on his cap stepped promptly into the room. "Bring me Schedule B of the small arms inventory," said the Secretary. The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper. The Secretary studied it closely. "I find," he said, "that in Warehouse 9, of Government stores, there is shipment of 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered by the Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his order. Our rule is that legal-tender must be paid down at the time of purchase. My dear Kelley, your friend, General Falcon, shall have this lot of arms, if he desires it, at the manufacturer's price. And you will forgive me, I am sure, if I curtail our interview. I am expecting the Japanese Minister and Charles Murphy every moment!" As one result of this interview, the General was deeply grateful to his esteemed friend, Mr. Kelley. As another, the nimble Secretary of War was extremely busy during the next two days buying empty rifle cases and filling them with bricks, which were then stored in a warehouse rented for that purpose. As still another, when the General returned to the Hotel Espanol, Mrs. O'Brien went up to him, plucked a thread from his lapel, and said: "Say, senor, I don't want to 'butt in,' but what does that monkey-faced, cat-eyed, rubber-necked tin horn tough want with you?" "Sangre de mi vida!" exclaimed the General. "Impossible it is that you speak of my good friend, Senor Kelley." "Come into the summer garden," said Mrs. O'Brien. "I want to have a talk with you." Let us suppose that an hour has elapsed. "And you say," said the General, "that for the sum of $18,000 can be purchased the furnishment of the house and the lease of one year with this garden so lovely - so resembling unto the patios of my cara Colombia?" "And dirt cheap at that," sighed the lady. "Ah, Dios!" breathed General Falcon. "What to me is war and politics? This spot is one paradise. My country it have other brave heroes to continue the fighting. What to me should be glory and the shooting of mans? Ah! no. It is here I have found one angel. Let us buy the Hotel Espanol and you shall be mine, and the money shall not be waste on guns." Mrs. O'Brien rested her blond pompadour against the shoulder of the Colombian patriot. "Oh, senor," she sighed, happily, "ain't you terrible!" Two days later was the time appointed for the delivery of the arms to the General. The boxes of supposed rifles were stacked in the rented warehouse, and the Secretary of War sat upon them, waiting for his friend Kelley to fetch the victim. Mr. Kelley hurried, at the hour, to the Hotel Espanol. He found the General behind the desk adding up accounts. "I have decide," said the General, "to buy not guns. I have to-day buy the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the General Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon with la Madame O'Brien." Mr. Kelley almost strangled. "Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, "you're a swindler - that's what you are! You've bought a boarding house with money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it is." "Ah," said the General, footing up a column, "that is what you call politics. War and revolution they are not nice. Yes. It is not best that one shall always follow Minerva. No. It is of quite desirable to keep hotels and be with that Juno - that ox-eyed Juno. Ah! what hair of the gold it is that she have!" Mr. Kelley choked again. "Ah, Senor Kelley!" said the General, feelingly and finally, "is it that you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame O'Brien she make?" The Green Door Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful woman, wonderful in diamonds and Russian sables. She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it? Not you. You would flush with embarrassment; you would sheepishly drop the roll and continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly for the missing button. This you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead. True adventurers have never been plentiful. They who are set down in print as such have been mostly business men with newly invented methods. They have been out after the things they wanted--golden fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Son--when he started back home. Half-adventurers--brave and splendid figures--have been numerous. From the Crusades to the Palisades they have enriched the arts of history and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick--so they were not followers of true adventure. In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of at our familiar curb, a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door, which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance; we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden douse of rain--and our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon and first cousin of the Sidereal System; at every corner handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator. Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings on which he did not go forth from his hall bedchamber in search of the unexpected and the egregious. The most interesting thing in life seemed to him to be what might lie just around the next corner. Sometimes his willingness to tempt fate led him into strange paths. Twice he had spent the night in a station-house; again and again he had found himself the dupe of ingenious and mercenary tricksters; his watch and money had been the price of one flattering allurement. But with undiminished ardour he picked up every glove cast before him into the merry lists of adventure. One evening Rudolf was strolling along a crosstown street in the older central part of the city. Two streams of people filled the sidewalks--the home-hurrying, and that restless contingent that abandons home for the specious welcome of the thousand-candle-power table d'hote. The young adventurer was of pleasing presence, and moved serenely and watchfully. By daylight he was a salesman in a piano store. He wore his tie drawn through a topaz ring instead of fastened with a stick pin; and once he had written to the editor of a magazine that "Junie's Love Test" by Miss Libbey, had been the book that had most influenced his life. During his walk a violent chattering of teeth in a glass case on the sidewalk seemed at first to draw his attention (with a qualm), to a restaurant before which it was set; but a second glance revealed the electric letters of a dentist's sign high above the next door. A giant negro, fantastically dressed in a red embroidered coat, yellow trousers and a military cap, discreetly distributed cards to those of the passing crowd who consented to take them. This mode of dentistic advertising was a common sight to Rudolf. Usually he passed the dispenser of the dentist's cards without reducing his store; but tonight the African slipped one into his hand so deftly that he retained it there smiling a little at the successful feat. When he had travelled a few yards further he glanced at the card indifferently. Surprised, he turned it over and looked again with interest. One side of the card was blank; on the other was written in ink three words, "The Green Door." And then Rudolf saw, three steps in front of him, a man throw down the card the negro had given him as he passed. Rudolf picked it up. It was printed with the dentist's name and address and the usual schedule of "plate work" and "bridge work" and specious promises of "painless" operations. The adventurous piano salesman halted at the corner and considered. Then he crossed the street, walked down a block, recrossed and joined the upward current of people again. Without seeming to notice the negro as he passed the second time, he carelessly took the card that was handed him. Ten steps away he inspected it. In the same handwriting that appeared on the first card "The Green Door" was inscribed upon it. Three or four cards were tossed to the pavement by pedestrians both following and leading him. These fell blank side up. Rudolf turned them over. Every one bore the printed legend of the dental "parlours." Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true follower. But twice it had been done, and the quest was on. Rudolf walked slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case of rattling teeth. This time as he passed he received no card. In spite of his gaudy and ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric dignity as he stood, offering the cards suavely to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase akin to the jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not only did he withhold a card this time, but it seemed to Rudolf that he received from the shining and massive black countenance a look of cold, almost contemptuous disdain. The look stung the adventurer. He read in it a silent accusation that he had been found wanting. Whatever the mysterious written words on the cards might mean, the black had selected him twice from the throng for their recipient; and now seemed to have condemned him as deficient in the wit and spirit to engage the enigma. Standing aside from the rush, the young man made a rapid estimate of the building in which he conceived that his adventure must lie. Five stories high it rose. A small restaurant occupied the basement. The first floor, now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions of domesticity. After concluding his survey Rudolf walked briskly up the high flight of stone steps into the house. Up two flights of the carpeted stairway he continued; and at its top paused. The hallway there was dimly lighted by two pale jets of gas one--far to his right, the other nearer, to his left. He looked toward the nearer light and saw, within its wan halo, a green door. For one moment he hesitated; then he seemed to see the contumelious sneer of the African juggler of cards; and then he walked straight to the green door and knocked against it. Moments like those that passed before his knock was answered measure the quick breath of true adventure. What might not be behind those green panels! Gamesters at play; cunning rogues baiting their traps with subtle skill; beauty in love with courage, and thus planning to be sought by it; danger, death, love, disappointment, ridicule--any of these might respond to that temerarious rap. A faint rustle was heard inside, and the door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there, white-faced and tottering. She loosed the knob and swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolf caught her and laid her on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took a swift glance around the room by the light of a flickering gas jet. Neat, but extreme poverty was the story that he read. The girl lay still, as if in a faint. Rudolf looked around the room excitedly for a barrel. People must be rolled upon a barrel who--no, no; that was for drowned persons. He began to fan her with his hat. That was successful, for he struck her nose with the brim of his derby and she opened her eyes. And then the young man saw that hers, indeed, was the one missing face from his heart's gallery of intimate portraits. The frank, grey eyes, the little nose, turning pertly outward; the chestnut hair, curling like the tendrils of a pea vine, seemed the right end and reward of all his wonderful adventures. But the face was wofully thin and pale. The girl looked at him calmly, and then smiled. "Fainted, didn't I?" she asked, weakly. "Well, who wouldn't? You try going without anything to eat for three days and see!" "Himmel!" exclaimed Rudolf, jumping up. "Wait till I come back." He dashed out the green door and down the stairs. In twenty minutes he was back again, kicking at the door with his toe for her to open it. With both arms he hugged an array of wares from the grocery and the restaurant. On the table he laid them--bread and butter, cold meats, cakes, pies, pickles, oysters, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk and one of redhot tea. "This is ridiculous," said Rudolf, blusteringly, "to go without eating. You must quit making election bets of this kind. Supper is ready." He helped her to a chair at the table and asked: "Is there a cup for the tea?" "On the shelf by the window," she answered. When he turned again with the cup he saw her, with eyes shining rapturously, beginning upon a huge Dill pickle that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman's unerring instinct. He took it from her, laughingly, and poured the cup full of milk. "Drink that first" he ordered, "and then you shall have some tea, and then a chicken wing. If you are very good you shall have a pickle to-morrow. And now, if you'll allow me to be your guest we'll have supper." He drew up the other chair. The tea brightened the girl's eyes and brought back some of her colour. She began to eat with a sort of dainty ferocity like some starved wild animal. She seemcd to regard the young man's presence and the aid he had rendered her as a natural thing--not as though she undervalued the conventions; but as one whose great stress gave her the right to put aside the artificial for the human. But gradually, with the return of strength and comfort, came also a sense of the little conventions that belong; and she began to tell him her little story. It was one of a thousand such as the city yawns at every day--the shop girl's story of insufficient wages, further reduced by "fines" that go to swell the store's profits; of time lost through illness; and then of lost positions, lost hope, and--the knock of the adventurer upon the green door. But to Rudolf the history sounded as big as the Iliad or the crisis in "Junie's Love Test." "To think of you going through all that," he exclaimed. "It was something fierce," said the girl, solemnly. "And you have no relatives or friends in the city?" "None whatever." "I am all alone in the world, too," said Rudolf, after a pause. "I am glad of that," said the girl, promptly; and somehow it pleased the young man to hear that she approved of his bereft condition. Very suddenly her eyelids dropped and she sighed deeply. "I'm awfully sleepy," she said, "and I feel so good." Then Rudolf rose and took his hat. "I'll say good-night. A long night's sleep will be fine for you." He held out his hand, and she took it and said "good-night." But her eyes asked a question so eloquently, so frankly and pathetically that he answered it with words. "Oh, I'm coming back to-morrow to see how you are getting along. You can't get rid of me so easily." Then, at the door, as though the way of his coming had been so much less important than the fact that he had come, she asked: "How did you come to knock at my door?" He looked at her for a moment, remembering the cards, and felt a sudden jealous pain. What if they had fallen into other hands as adventurous as his? Quickly he decided that she must never know the truth. He would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which she had been driven by her great distress. "One of our piano tuners lives in this house," he said. "I knocked at your door by mistake." The last thing he saw in the room before the green door closed was her smile. At the head of the stairway he paused and looked curiously about him. And then he went along the hallway to its other end; and, coming back, ascended to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations. Every door that he found in the house was painted green. Wondering, he descended to the sidewalk. The fantastic African was still there. Rudolf confronted him with his two cards in his hand. "Will you tell me why you gave me these cards and what they mean?" he asked. In a broad, good-natured grin the negro exhibited a splendid advertisement of his master's profession. "Dar it is, boss," he said, pointing down the street. "But I 'spect you is a little late for de fust act." Looking the way he pointed Rudolf saw above the entrance to a theatre the blazing electric sign of its new play, "The Green Door." "I'm informed dat it's a fust-rate show, sah," said the negro. "De agent what represents it pussented me with a dollar, sah, to distribute a few of his cards along with de doctah's. May I offer you one of de doctah's cards, sah?" At the corner of the block in which he lived Rudolf stopped for a glass of beer and a cigar. When he had come out with his lighted weed he buttoned his coat, pushed back his hat and said, stoutly, to the lamp post on the corner: "All the same, I believe it was the hand of Fate that doped out the way for me to find her." Which conclusion, under the circumstances, certainly admits Rudolf Steiner to the ranks of the true followers of Romance and Adventure. The Handbook of Hymen 婚姻手册 'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can't tell me why our college professors shouldn't be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to expect. But there's the other side of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education. We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army through a peace conference. Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was "warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes." That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper. If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up in a eighteen by twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won't stand it. When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each other's jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a edict to me. Says he: "I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half- masticated noises that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cow's cud, only she's lady enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain't." "Mr. Green," says I, "you having been a friend of mine once, I have some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for society between you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one of the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at present." This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day. You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing "if John had three apples and James five" on a slate. We never felt any special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we could use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots, we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and fractions and the higher branches of information, we'd have had some resources in the line of meditation and private thought. I've seen them Eastern college fellows working in camps all through the West, and I never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to 'em than you would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew McWilliams' saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles for one of these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died. One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I started toward 'em, but caught Idaho's eye. He speaks for the first time in a week. "Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a square deal. And that's more than your parents did when they turned you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-snake and the bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I'll play you a game of seven-up, the winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the other." We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading. I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And Idaho took at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy. Mine was a little book about five by six inches called "Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information." I may be wrong, but I think that was the greatest book that ever was written. I've got it to-day; and I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the information in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York Tribune! Herkimer had cases on both of 'em. That man must have put in fifty years and travelled a million miles to find out all that stuff. There was the population of all cities in it, and the way to tell a girl's age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for chicken pox to break out, what a lady's neck ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many pounds of rice going without three beers a day would buy, the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to plant an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of hairs on a blond lady's head, how to preserve eggs, the height of all the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and battles, and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and what to do before the doctor comes--and a hundred times as many things besides. If there was anything Herkimer didn't know I didn't miss it out of the book. I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through his tan-bark whiskers. "Idaho," says I, "what kind of a book is yours?" Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any slander or malignity. "Why," says he, "this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M." "Homer K. M. what?" I asks. "Why, just Homer K. M.," says he. "You're a liar," says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree. "No man is going 'round signing books with his initials. If it's Homer K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K. M. Jones, why don't you say so like a man instead of biting off the end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes- line?" "I put it to you straight, Sandy," says Idaho, quiet. "It's a poem book," says he, "by Homer K. M. I couldn't get colour out of it at first, but there's a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn't have missed this book for a pair of red blankets." "You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that's what I seem to find in the book I've drawn." "What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of information that exists. They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is 'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invitation to split a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual rainfall." So that's the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: "Sanderson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty- eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up 'most any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see. About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn't exactly know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but I wasn't so sure. This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho, seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says: "Oh, well, since we can't shake the growler, let's get it filled at the corner, and all have a drink on me." Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and Maltese cats. That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell out quick and keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some human grub, and have our whiskers harvested. Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off at nights at the Sunset View Hotel. Being now well read as well as travelled, we was soon pro re nata with the best society in Rosa, and was invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-eating contest in the city hall, for the benefit of the fire company, that me and Idaho first met Mrs. De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society. Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town. It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see it as plain as egg on the chin of an O'Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a claim on that yellow house. There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked out of the Hall. Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs. Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked permission to escort her home. That's where I made a hit. On the way home says she: "Ain't the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?" "For the chance they've got," says I, "they're humping themselves in a mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six million miles distant. It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With an eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three millions of 'em, including them of the thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go out now, you would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years." "My!" says Mrs. Sampson. "I never knew that before. How warm it is! I'm as damp as I can be from dancing so much." "That's easy to account for," says I, "when you happen to know that you've got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles." "Lawsy!" says Mrs. Sampson. "It sounds like an irrigation ditch you was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of information?" "From observation, Mrs. Sampson," I tells her. "I keep my eyes open when I go about the world." "Mr. Pratt," says she, "I always did admire a man of education. There are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined." And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell her about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could. I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with old K. M.'s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming down the lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her hat made a dangerous dip over one eye. "Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I believe." "For nine years," says I. "Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!" "Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed." "It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take up the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady." "Why, now, now, now!" says I. "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have corrupted his demeanour." "It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her poetry." "Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by a man who writes under the nom de plume of K. M." "He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was. And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I'm not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?" "Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says I, "and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet." "Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a Ruby's poetry!" "Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found. In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841." "Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be." But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me out of Herkimer. One night I was waked up by folks hollering "Fire!" all around. I jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene. When I see it was Mrs. Sampson's house, I gave forth a kind of yell, and I was there in two minutes. The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and come out alive. "Where's Mrs. Sampson?" I asks. "She hasn't been seen," says one of the firemen. "She sleeps up- stairs. We've tried to get in, but we can't, and our company hasn't got any ladders yet." I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands --I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement. "Herky, old boy," I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, "you ain't ever lied to me yet, and you ain't ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!" says I. I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117. I run my finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything! It said: Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.--There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye. I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by. "Here," says I, giving him some money, "run to the drug store and bring a dollar's worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you'll get another one for yourself. Now," I sings out to the crowd, "we'll have Mrs. Sampson!" And I throws away my coat and hat. Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It's sure death, they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall through. "How in blazes," I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling like it, "do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?" I jabbed each elbow in a fireman's face, kicked the bark off of one citizen's shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I busted into the house. If I die first I'll write you a letter and tell you if it's any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house was; but don't believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their little stream of water, and I got to Mrs. Sampson's room. She'd lost conscientiousness from the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder. Well, the floors wasn't as bad as they said, or I never could have done it--not by no means. I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass. Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plaintiff's to the lady's hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to save her. And up runs the boy with the flaxseed. I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson's head. She opened her eyes and says: "Is that you, Mr. Pratt?" "S-s-sh," says I. "Don't talk till you've had the remedy." I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her eye. Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs at Mrs. Sampson's pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such sandblasted nonsense. "Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed," says I, "I'm no regular practitioner, but I'll show you my authority, anyway." They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook. "Look on page 117," says I, "at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don't know whether it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he was called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation, there's no objection." Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a fireman's lantern. "Well, Mr. Pratt," says he, "you evidently got on the wrong line in reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: 'Get the patient into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining position.' The flaxseed remedy is for 'Dust and Cinders in the Eye,' on the line above. But, after all--" "See here," interrupts Mrs. Sampson, "I reckon I've got something to say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than anything I ever tried." And then she raises up her head and lays it back on my arm again, and says: "Put some in the other eye, Sandy dear." And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day, you'd see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, embellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside you'd see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour "Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information," all rebound in red morocco, and ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and wisdom. 婚姻手册 本篇作者桑德森•普拉特认为合众国的教育系统应该划归气象局管理。我这种提法有充分根据;你却没有理由不主张把我们的院校教授调到气象部门去。他们都读书识字,可以毫不费劲地看看晨报,然后打电报把气象预报通知总局。不过这是问题的另一方面了。我现在要告诉你的是,气象如何向我和艾达荷•格林提供了良好的教育。 我们在蒙塔纳一带勘探金矿,来到苦根山脉。沃拉沃拉城有一个长络腮胡子的人,已经把发现矿苗的希望当作超重行李,准备放弃了。他把自己的粮食配备转让给了我们;我们便在山脚下慢慢勘探,手头的粮食足够维持在和平谈判会议期间的一支军队。 一天,卡洛斯城来了一个骑马的邮递员。路过山地时他歇歇脚,吃了三个青梅罐头,给我们留下一份近期的报纸。报上有一栏气象预报,它替苦根山脉地区翻出来的底牌是:“晴朗转暖,有轻微西风。” 那晚上开始下雪,刮起了强烈的东风。我和艾达荷转移到山上比较高一点的地方去,住在一幢空着的旧木屋里,认为这场十一月的风雪只是暂时的。但是雪下了三英尺深还不见有停的迹象,我们才知道这下要被雪困住了。雪还不太深的时候,我们已经弄来了大量的柴火,我们的粮食又足以维持两个月,因此并不担心,让它刮风下雪,爱怎么封山就怎么封吧。 假如你想教唆杀人,只消把两个人在一间十八英尺宽、二十英尺长的小屋子里关上一个月就行了。人类的天性忍受不了这种情况。 初下雪时,我同艾达荷•格林两人说说笑话,互相逗趣,并且赞美我们从锅子里倒出来,管它叫面包的东西。到了第三个星期的末尾,艾达荷向我发表了如下公告。他说:“我从没听到酸牛奶从玻璃瓶里滴到铁皮锅底时的声音是什么样的,但是同你谈话器官里发出来的这种越来越没劲的滞涩的思想相比,滴酸奶的声音肯定可以算是仙乐了。你每天发出的这种叽里咕噜的声音,叫我想起了牛的反刍。不同的只是牛比你知趣,不打扰别人,你却不然。” “格林先生,”我说道,“你一度是我的朋友,我有点儿不好意思向你声明,如果我可以随自己的心意在你和一条普通的三条腿的小黄狗之间选择一个伙伴,那么这间小屋子里眼下就有一个居民在摇尾巴了。” 我们这样过了两三天,然后根本不交谈了。我们分了烹饪用具,艾达荷在火炉一边做饭,我在另一边做。外面的雪已经积到窗口,我们整天生着火。 你明白,我和艾达荷除了识字和在石板上做过“约翰有三只苹果,詹姆斯有五只苹果”之类的玩意儿以外,没有受过别的教育。我们浪迹江湖的时候,逐渐获得了一种可以应急的真实本领,因此对大学学位也就不感到特别需要。可是在被大雪封在苦根山脉的那幢小屋里的时候,我们初次感到,如果我们以前研究过荷马的作品,希腊文,数学中的分数以及比较高深的学问,那我们在沉思默想方面也许就能应付自如了。我在西部各地看到东部大学里出来的小伙子在牧场营地干活,我注意到教育对于他们却成了意想不到的累赘。举个例子说吧,有一次在蛇河边,安德鲁•麦克威廉斯的坐骑得了马蝇幼虫寄生病,他派辆四轮马车把十英里外一个据说是植物学家的陌生人请来①。但那匹马仍旧死了。 『①马蝇幼虫病(botts)和植物学家(botanist)原文字首相同,安德鲁以为二者有关。』一天早晨,艾达荷用木棍在一个小木架的顶上拨什么东西,那个架子高了些,手够不着。有两本书落到地上。我跳起来想去拿,但是看到了艾达荷的眼色。这一星期来,他还是第一次开口。 “不准碰。”他说。“尽管你只配做休眠的泥乌龟的伙伴,我还是跟你公平交易。你爹妈养了你这样一个响尾蛇脾气,冻萝卜睡相的东西,他们给你的恩惠都比不上我给你的大。我同你打一副七分纸牌,赢的人先挑一本,输的人拿剩下的一本。” 我们打了牌;赢的是艾达荷。他先挑了他要的书;我拿了我的。我们两人回到各自的地方,开始看书。 我看到那本书时比看到一块十盎司重的天然金矿石还要快活。艾达荷看他那本书的时候,也象小孩看到棒棒糖那样高兴。 我那本书有五英寸宽、六英寸长,书名是《赫基默氏必要知识手册》。我的看法也许不正确,不过我认为那本书伟大得空前绝后。今天这本书还在我手头。我把书里的东西搬一点儿出来,在五分钟之内就可以把你或者随便什么人难倒五十次。别提所罗门或《纽约论坛报》了!赫基默比他们两个都强。那个人准是花了五十年时间,走了一百万里路,才收集到这许多材料。里面有各个城市的人口数,判断女人年龄的方法,和骆驼的牙齿数目。他告诉你世界上哪一条隧道最长,天上有多少星星,水痘要潜伏几天之后才发出来,上流女人的脖子该有多么粗细,州长怎样行使否决权,罗马人的引水渠是什么时候铺设的,每天喝三杯啤酒可以顶几磅大米的营养,缅因州奥古斯塔城的年平均温度是多少,用条播机播一英亩胡萝卜需要多少种子,各种中毒的解救法,一个金发女人有多少根头发,如何储存鲜蛋,全世界所有大山的高度,所有战争战役的年代,如何抢救溺毙的人,如何抢救中暑病人,一磅平头钉有几只,如何制造炸药,如何种花,如何铺床,医生尚未来到之前应如何救护病人——此外还有许许多多东西。赫基默也许有他所不知道的事情,不过我在那本书里却没有发现。 我坐着,把那本书一连看了四个小时。教育的全部奇迹全压缩在那本书里了。我忘了雪,忘了我同老艾达荷之间的别扭。他一动不动地坐在凳子上,看得出了神,他那黄褐色的胡子里透出一种半是温柔半是神秘的模样。 “艾达荷,”我说,“你那本是什么书啊?” 艾达荷一定也忘了我们的芥蒂,因为他回答的口气很客气,既不顶撞人,也没有恶意。 “唔,”他说,“这本书大概是一个叫荷马•伽•谟①的人写的。” 『①指波斯哲学家、天文学家、诗人欧玛尔•海亚姆(1048~1122),生前不以诗闻名。一八五九年英国诗人菲茨杰拉尔德把他的四行诗集译成英文出版,在欧美开始流传。一九二八年郭沫若从英文转译了该集,中译名为《鲁拜集》。这里艾达荷将“欧玛尔”误作为“荷马”。』“荷马•伽•谟后面的姓是什么?”我问道。 “唔,就只有荷马•伽•谟。”他说。 “你胡扯。”我说。我认为艾达荷在蒙人,不禁有点冒火。“写书的人哪有用缩写署名的。总得有个姓呀,不是荷马•伽•谟•斯庞彭戴克,就是荷马•伽•谟•麦克斯温尼,或者是荷马•伽•谟•琼斯。你干吗不学人样,偏要象小牛啃晾衣绳上挂着的衬衫下摆那样,把他姓名的下半截啃掉?” “我说的是实话,桑德。”艾达荷心平气和地说。“这是一本诗集,”他说,“荷马•伽•谟写的。起初我还看不出什么苗头,但是看下去却象找到了矿脉。即使拿两条红毯子来和我换这本书,我都不愿意。” “那你请便吧。”我说。“我需要的是可以让我动动脑筋的开门见山的事实。我抽到的这本书里好象就有这种玩意儿。” “你得到的只是统计数字,”艾达荷说,“世界上最起码的东西。它们会使你脑筋中毒。我喜欢老伽•谟的推测方式。他似乎是个酒类代理商。他干杯时的祝辞总是‘万般皆空’,他并且好象牢骚满腹,只不过他用酒把牢骚浇得那么滋润,即使他抱怨得最厉害的时候,也象是在请人一起喝上一夸脱。总之,太有诗意了。”艾达荷说。“你看的那本胡说八道的书,想用尺寸来衡量智慧,真叫我讨厌。凡是在用自然的艺术来解释哲理的时候,老伽•谟在任何一方面都打垮了你那个人——不论是条播机,一栏栏的数字,一段段的事实,胸围尺寸,或是年平均降雨量。” 我和艾达荷就这么混日子。不论白天黑夜,我们唯一的乐趣就是看书。那次雪封无疑使我们两人都长进了不少学问。到了融雪的时候,假如你突然走到我面前问我说:“桑德森•普拉特,用九块五毛钱一箱的铁皮来铺屋顶,铁皮的尺寸是二十乘二十八,每平方英尺要派到多少钱?”我便会飞快地回答你,正如闪电每秒钟能在铁铲把上走十九万两千英里那么快。世界上有多少人能这样?如果你在半夜里叫醒你所认识的任何一个人,让他马上回答,人的骨骼除了牙齿之外一共有几块,或者内布拉斯加州议会的投票要达到什么百分比才能推翻一项否决,他能回答你吗?试试吧。 至于艾达荷从他那本诗集里得到了什么好处,那我可不清楚了。艾达荷一开口就替那个酒类代理商吹嘘;不过我认为他获益不多。 从艾达荷嘴里透露出来的那个荷马•伽•谟的诗歌看来,我觉得那家伙象是一条狗,把生活当作缚在尾巴上的铁皮罐子。它跑得半死之后,坐了下来,拖出舌头,看看酒罐说:“唔,好吧,我们既然甩不掉这只酒罐,不如到街角的酒店里去沽满它,大家为我干一杯吧。” 此外,他仿佛还是波斯人;我从没听说波斯有什么值得一提的名产,除了土耳其毡毯和马耳他猫。 那年春天,我和艾达荷找到了有利可图的矿苗。我们有个习惯,就是出手快,周转快。我们出让了矿权,每人分到八千元;然后漫无目的地来到萨蒙河畔的罗萨小城,打算休息一个时期,吃些人吃的东西,刮掉胡子。 罗萨不是矿镇。它座落在山谷里,正如乡间小城一样,没有喧嚣和疫病。近郊有一条三英里长的电车线;我和艾达荷坐在咔哒咔哒直响的车厢里兜了一个星期,每天到晚上才回夕照旅馆休息。如今我们见多识广,又读过书,自然就参加了罗萨城里最上流的社交活动,经常被邀请出席最隆重、最时髦的招待会。有一次,市政厅举行为消防队募捐的钢琴独奏会和吃鹌鹑比赛,我和艾达荷初次认识了罗萨社交界的皇后,德•奥蒙德•桑普森夫人。 桑普森夫人是个寡妇,城里唯一的一幢二层楼房就是她的。房子漆成黄色,不管从哪一个方向望去都看得清清楚楚,正如星期五斋戒日爱尔兰人胡子上沾的蛋黄那样引人注目。除了我和艾达荷之外,罗萨城还有二十二个男人想把那幢黄房子归为己有。 乐谱和鹌鹑骨头扫出市政厅后,举行了舞会。二十三个人都拥上去请桑普森夫人跳舞。我避开了两步舞,请她允许我伴送她回家。在那一点上,我获得了成功。 在回家的路上,她说: “今晚的星星是不是又亮又美,普拉特先生?” “就拿你看到的这些亮光来说,”我说道,“它们已经卖足了力气。你看到的那颗大星离这儿有六百六十亿英里远。它的光线传到我们这儿要化三十六年。你用十八英尺长的望远镜可以看到四千三百万颗星,包括十三等星。假如有一颗十三等星现在殒灭了,在今后二千七百年内,你仍旧可以看到它的亮光。” “哎呀!”桑普森夫人说。“我以前从不知道这种事情。天气多热呀!我跳舞跳得太多了,浑身都汗湿了。” “这个问题很容易解释,”我说,“要知道,你身上有两百万根汗腺在同时分泌汗液。每根汗腺有四分之一英寸长。假如把身上所有的汗腺首尾相接,全长就有七英里。” “天哪!”桑普森夫人说。“听你说的,人身上的汗腺简直象是灌溉水渠啦,普拉特先生。你怎么会懂得这许多事情?” “观察来的,桑普森夫人。”我对她说。“我周游世界的时候总是注意观察。” “普拉特先生,”她说,“我一向敬重有学问的人。在这个城里的傻瓜恶棍中有学问的人实在太缺啦。同一位有修养的先生谈话真是愉快。你高兴的话,随时请到我家来坐坐,我非常欢迎。” 这么一来,我就赢得了黄房子夫人的好感。每星期二、五的晚上,我去她家,把赫基默发现、编制和引用的宇宙间的神秘讲给她听。艾达荷和城里其余主张寡妇再醮的人在尽量争取其余几天的每一分钟。 我从没想到艾达荷竟会把老伽•谟追求女人的方式应用到桑普森夫人身上;这是在一天下午,我提了一篮野李子给她送去时才发现的。我碰见那位太太走在一条通向她家的小径上。她眼睛直冒火,帽子斜遮在一只眼睛上,象是要找人吵架似的。 “普拉特先生,”她开口说,“我想那位格林先生大概是你的朋友吧。” “有九年交情啦。”我说。 “同他绝交。”她说。“他不是正派人!” “怎么啦,夫人,”我说,“他是个普通的山地人,具有浪子和骗子的粗暴和一般缺点,然而即使在最严重的关头,我也不忍心说他是不正派的人。拿服饰、傲慢和卖弄来说,艾达荷也许叫人看不顺眼,可是夫人,我知道他不会存心干出下流或出格的事情。我同艾达荷交了九年朋友,桑普森夫人,”我在结尾时说,“我不愿意说他的坏话,也不愿意听到人家说他的坏话。” “普拉特先生,”桑普森夫人说,“你这样维护朋友固然是好事,但是他对我打了非常可恨的主意,任何一位有身分的女人都会觉得这是受了侮辱,这个事实你抹煞不了。” “哎呀呀!”我说,“老艾达荷竟会干出这种事来!我怎么也想不到。我知道有一件事在他心里捣鬼;那是由于一场风雪的缘故。有一次,我们被雪封在山里,他被一种胡说八道的歪诗给迷住了,那也许就败坏了他的道德。” “准是那样。”桑普森夫人说。“我一认识他,他就老是念一些亵渎神明的诗句给我听。他说那是一个叫鲁碧•奥特的人写的,你从她的诗来判断,那个女人肯定不是好东西。” “那么说,艾达荷又弄到一本新书了,”我说,“据我所知,他那本是一个笔名叫伽•谟的男人写的。” “不管什么书,”桑普森夫人说,“他还是守住一本为好。今天他简直无法无天了。他送给我一束花,上面附着一张纸条。普拉特先生,你总能分辨出上流女人的;并且你也了解我在罗萨城的名声。请你想想看,我会不会带着一大壶酒,一个面包,跟着一个男人溜到外面树林子里,同他在树荫底下唱歌,跳来跳去的?我吃饭的时候固然也喝一点葡萄酒,但是我决不会象他说的那样,带上一大壶到树林里去胡闹一通的。当然啦,他还要带上他那卷诗章。他这么说来着。让他一个人去吃那种丢人现眼的野餐吧!不然的话,让他带了他的鲁碧•奥特一起去。我想她是不会反对的。除非带的面包太多而酒太少。你现在对你的规矩朋友有什么看法呢,普拉特先生?” “唔,夫人,”我说,“艾达荷的邀请也许只是诗情,并没有恶意。也许属于他们称之为比喻的诗。它们固然触犯法律和秩序,但还是允许邮递的,因为写的和想的不是一回事。如果你不见怪,我就代艾达荷表示感谢了,”我说,“现在让我们的心灵从低级的诗歌里解脱出来,到高级的事实和想象中去吧。象这样一个美丽的下午,桑普森夫人,”我接下去说,“我们的思想也应该与之相适应。这里虽然暖和,可我们应该知道,赤道上海拔一万五千英尺的地方还是终年积雪的。纬度四十至四十九度之间的地区,雪线就只有四千至九千英尺高了。” “哦,普拉特先生,”桑普森夫人说,“听了鲁碧•奥特那个疯丫头的叫人不痛快的诗以后,再听你讲这种美妙的事实可真开心!” “我们在路边这段木头上坐坐吧,”我说,“别去想诗人不近人情的撒野的话。只有在铁一般的事实和合法的度量衡的辉煌数字里,才能找到美妙的东西。在我们所坐的这段木头里,桑普森夫人,”我说,“就有比诗更神奇的统计数字。木头的年轮说明这棵树有六十岁。在两千英尺深的地底,经过三千年,它就会变成煤。世界上最深的煤矿在纽卡斯尔附近的基林沃斯。一只四英尺长、三英尺宽、二英尺八高的箱子可以装一吨煤。假如动脉割破了,要按住伤口的上方。人的腿有三十根骨头。伦敦塔①一八四一年曾遭火灾。” 『①伦敦塔:伦敦东部俯临泰晤士河的堡垒,原是皇宫,曾改做监狱,囚禁过好几个国王、王后等著名人物,现是文物保存处。』“说下去,普拉特先生,”桑普森夫人说,“这种话真有创造性,听了真舒服。我想再没有什么比统计数字更可爱了。” 可是两星期后,我才得到了赫基默给我的全部好处。 有一夜,我被人们到处叫嚷“失火啦!”的声音惊醒。我跳下床,穿好衣服,跑出旅馆去看热闹。赶上我发现失火的正是桑普森夫人的房屋,我大叫一声,两分钟之内就赶到了现场。 那幢黄房子的底层全部着火了,罗萨城的每一个男性、女性和狗性都在那里号叫,碍消防队员的事。我见到艾达荷想从拽住他的六名消防队员手里挣脱出来。他们对他说,楼下一片火海,谁冲进去休想活着出来。 “桑普森夫人呢?”我问道。 “没见到她。”一个消防队员说。“她睡在楼上。我们想进去,可是不成,我们队里还没有云梯。” 我跑近大火旁边光亮的地方,从里面的口袋里掏出《手册》。我拿着这本书的时候差点没笑出来——我想大概是紧张过度,昏了头。 “赫基,老朋友,”我一面拚命翻,一面对书本说,“你还没有骗过我,你还没有使我失望过。告诉我该怎么办,老朋友,告诉我该怎么办!”我说。 我翻到一百一十七页,“遇到意外事件该怎么办。”我用手指顺着找下去,果然找到了。老赫基默真了不起,他从没有疏漏!书上说:〖吸入烟气或煤气而引起的窒息——用亚麻籽最佳。取数粒置外眼角内。〗我把《手册》塞回口袋,抓住一个正跑过去的小孩。 “喂,”我给了他一些钱,说道,“赶快到药房里去买一块钱的亚麻籽。要快,另一块钱给你。喂,”我对人群嚷道,“我们救桑普森夫人呀!”接着,我脱掉了上衣和帽子。 消防队和老百姓中有四个人拖住了我。他们说,进去准会送命,因为楼板就要烧坍了。 “该死!”我嚷起来,有点象是在笑,可是笑不出来,“没有眼睛叫我把亚麻籽放到哪儿去呀?” 我用胳臂肘撞在两个消防队员的脸上,用脚踢破了一个老百姓的脚胫皮,又使一个绊子,把另一个摔倒在地。紧接着,我冲进屋里。假如我比你们先死,我一准写信告诉你们,地狱里是不是比那幢黄房子里更不受用;现在你们可别相信我的话。总之,我比饭馆里特别加快的烤鸡烤得更糊。烟和火把我熏倒了两次,几乎丢了赫基默的脸;幸好消防队员用他们的细水龙杀了一点火气,帮了我的忙,总算到了桑普森夫人的房间里。她已经被烟熏得失去了羞耻心,于是我用被单把她一裹,往肩上一扛。楼板并不象他们所说的那样糟,不然我也干不了——想都不用想。 我扛着她,一口气跑到离房子五十码远的地方,然后把她放在草地上。接着,另外二十二个追求这位夫人的原告当然也拿着铁皮水勺挤拢来,准备救她了。这时候,去买亚麻籽的小孩也跑来了。 我揭开包在桑普森夫人头上的被单。她睁开眼睛说: “是你吗,普拉特先生?” “嘘——嘘,”我说,“别出声,我先给你上药。” 我用胳臂轻轻托住她的脖子,扶起她的头,用另一只手扯破亚麻籽口袋,慢慢弯下身子,在她外眼角里放了三四粒亚麻籽。 这时,城里的医生也赶来了,他喷着鼻子,抓住桑普森太太的腕子试脉搏,并且问我这样胡搞是什么意思。 “嗯,老球根药喇叭和耶路撒冷橡树籽①,”我说,“我不是正式医师,不过我可以给你看看我的根据。” 『①药喇叭可做泻剂,橡树籽有收敛作用。』他们拿来了我的上衣,我掏出了《手册》。 “请看一百一十七页,”我说,“那上面就讲到如何解救因烟或煤气而引起的窒息。书上说,把亚麻籽放在外眼角里。我不知亚麻籽的作用是解烟毒呢,还是促进复合胃神经的机能,不过赫基默是这样说的,并且先给请来诊治的是他。假如你要会诊,我也不反对。” 老医生拿起《手册》,戴上眼镜,凑着消防队员的灯笼看看。 “哎,普拉特先生,”他说,“你诊断的时候显然看串了行。解救窒息的办法是:‘尽快将病人移至新鲜空气中,置于卧位。’用亚麻籽的地方在上面一行,‘尘灰入眼’。不过,说到头——” “听我说,”桑普森太太插嘴说,“在这次会诊中,我想我也有话要说。那些亚麻籽给我的益处比我试过的任何东西都大。”她抬起头,又枕在我的手臂上,说道:“在另一个眼睛里也放一点,亲爱的桑德。” 因此,假如你明天或者随便哪一天在罗萨城歇歇脚的话,你会看到一幢新盖的精致的黄房子,有普拉特夫人——也就是以前的桑普森夫人——在收拾它,装点它。假如你走进屋子,你还会看到客厅当中大理石面的桌子上有一本《赫基默氏必要知识手册》,重新用红色摩洛哥皮装订过了,准备让人随时查考有关人类幸福和智慧的任何事物。 He Also Serves If I could have a thousand years--just one little thousand years--more of life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true Romance to touch the hem of her robe. Up from ships men come, and from waste places and forest and road and garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely distributed words of the things they have seen and considered. The recording of their tales is no more than a matter of ears and fingers. There are only two fates I dread--deafness and writer's cramp. The hand is yet steady; let the ear bear the blame if these printed words be not in the order they were delivered to me by Hunky Magee, true camp-follower of fortune. Biography shall claim you but an instant--I first knew Hunky when he was head-waiter at Chubb's little beefsteak restaurant and cafe on Third Avenue. There was only one waiter besides. Then, successively, I caromed against him in the little streets of the Big City after his trip to Alaska, his voyage as cook with a treasure- seeking expedition to the Caribbean, and his failure as a pearl-fisher in the Arkansas River. Between these dashes into the land of adventure he usually came back to Chubb's for a while. Chubb's was a port for him when gales blew too high; but when you dined there and Hunky went for your steak you never knew whether he would come to anchor in the kitchen or in the Malayan Archipelago. You wouldn't care for his description--he was soft of voice and hard of face, and rarely had to use more than one eye to quell any approach to a disturbance among Chubb's customers. One night I found Hunky standing at a corner of Twenty-third Street and Third Avenue after an absence of several months. In ten minutes we had a little round table between us in a quiet corner, and my ears began to get busy. I leave out my sly ruses and feints to draw Hunky's word-of-mouth blows--it all came to something like this: "Speaking of the next election," said Hunky, "did you ever know much about Indians? No? I don't mean the Cooper, Beadle, cigar-store, or Laughing Water kind-I mean the modern Indian--the kind that takes Greek prizes in colleges and scalps the half-back on the other side in football games. The kind that eats macaroons and tea in the afternoons with the daughter of the professor of biology, and fills up on grasshoppers and fried rattlesnake when they get back to the ancestral wickiup. "Well, they ain't so bad. I like 'em better than most foreigners that have come over in the last few hundred years. One thing about the Indian is this: when he mixes with the white race he swaps all his own vices for them of the pale-faces--and he retains all his own virtues. Well, his virtues are enough to call out the reserves whenever he lets 'em loose. But the imported foreigners adopt our virtues and keep their own vices--and it's going to take our whole standing army some day to police that gang. "But let me tell you about the trip I took to Mexico with High jack Snakefeeder, a Cherokee twice removed, a graduate of a Pennsylvania college and the latest thing in pointed-toed, rubber-heeled, patent kid moccasins and Madras hunting-shirt with turned-back cuffs. He was a friend of mine. I met him in Tahlequah when I was out there during the land boom, and we got thick. He had got all there was out of colleges and had come back to lead his people out of Egypt. He was a man of first-class style and wrote essays, and had been invited to visit rich guys' houses in Boston and such places. "There was a Cherokee girl in Muscogee that High Jack was foolish about. He took me to see her a few times. Her name was Florence Blue Feather--but you want to clear your mind of all ideas of squaws with nose-rings and army blankets. This young lady was whiter than you are, and better educated than I ever was. You couldn't have told her from any of the girls shopping in the swell Third Avenue stores. I liked her so well that, I got to calling on her now and then when High Jack wasn't along, which is the way of friends in such matters. She was educated at the Muscogee College, and was making a specialty of-- let's see--eth--yes, ethnology. That's the art that goes back and traces the descent of different races of people, leading up from jelly-fish through monkeys and to the O'Briens. High Jack had took up that line too, and had read papers about it before all kinds of riotous assemblies--Chautauquas and Choctaws and chowder-parties, and such. Having a mutual taste for musty information like that was what made 'em like each other, I suppose. But I don't know! What they call congeniality of tastes ain't always it. Now, when Miss Blue Feather and me was talking together, I listened to her affidavits about the first families of the Land of Nod being cousins german (well, if the Germans don't nod, who does?) to the mound-builders of Ohio with incomprehension and respect. And when I'd tell her about the Bowery and Coney Island, and sing her a few songs that I'd heard the Jamaica niggers sing at their church lawn-parties, she didn't look much less interested than she did when High Jack would tell her that he had a pipe that the first inhabitants of America originally arrived here on stilts after a freshet at Tenafly, New Jersey. "But I was going to tell you more about High Jack. "About six months ago I get a letter from him, saying he'd been commissioned by the Minority Report Bureau of Ethnology at Washington to go down to Mexico and translate some excavations or dig up the meaning of some shorthand notes on some ruins--or something of that sort. And if I'd go along he could squeeze the price into the expense account. "Well, I'd been holding a napkin over my arm at Chubb's about long enough then, so I wired High Jack 'Yes'; and he sent me a ticket, and I met him in Washington, and he had a lot of news to tell me. First of all, was that Florence Blue Feather had suddenly disappeared from her home and environments. "'Run away?' I asked. "'Vanished,' says High Jack. 'Disappeared like your shadow when the sun goes under a cloud. She was seen on the street, and then she turned a corner and nobody ever seen her afterward. The whole community turned out to look for her, but we never found a clew.' "'That's bad--that's bad,' says I. 'She was a mighty nice girl, and as smart as you find em. "High Jack seemed to take it hard. I guess he must have esteemed Miss Blue Feather quite highly. I could see that he'd referred the matter to the whiskey-jug. That was his weak point--and many another man's. I've noticed that when a man loses a girl he generally takes to drink either just before or just after it happens. "From Washington we railroaded it to New Orleans, and there took a tramp steamer bound for Belize. And a gale pounded us all down the Caribbean, and nearly wrecked us on the Yucatan coast opposite a little town without a harbor called Boca de Coacoyula. Suppose the ship had run against that name in the dark! "'Better fifty years of Europe than a cyclone in the bay,' says High Jack Snakefeeder. So we get the captain to send us ashore in a dory when the squall seemed to cease from squalling. "'We will find ruins here or make 'em,' says High. 'The Government doesn't care which we do. An appropriation is an appropriation.' "Boca de Coacoyula was a dead town. Them biblical towns we read about--Tired and Siphon--after they was destroyed, they must have looked like Forty-second Street and Broadway compared to this Boca place. It still claimed 1300 inhabitants as estimated and engraved on the stone court-house by the census-taker in 1597. The citizens were a mixture of Indians and other Indians; but some of 'em was light- colored, which I was surprised to see. The town was huddled up on the shore, with woods so thick around it that a subpoena-server couldn't have reached a monkey ten yards away with the papers. We wondered what kept it from being annexed to Kansas; but we soon found out that it was Major Bing. "Major Bing was the ointment around the fly. He had the cochineal, sarsaparilla, log-wood, annatto, hemp, and all other dye-woods and pure food adulteration concessions cornered. He had five-sixths of the Boca de Thingama jiggers working for him on shares. It was a beautiful graft. We used to brag about Morgan and E. H. and others of our wisest when I was in the provinces--but now no more. That peninsula has got our little country turned into a submarine without even the observation tower showing. "Major Bing's idea was this. He had the population go forth into the forest and gather these products. When they brought 'em in he gave 'em one-fifth for their trouble. Sometimes they'd strike and demand a sixth. The Major always gave in to 'em. "The Major had a bungalow so close on the sea that the nine-inch tide seeped through the cracks in the kitchen floor. Me and him and High Jack Snakefeeder sat on the porch and drank rum from noon till midnight. He said he had piled up $300,000 in New Orleans banks, and High and me could stay with him forever if we would. But High Jack happened to think of the United States, and began to talk ethnology. "'Ruins!' says Major Bing. 'The woods are full of 'em. I don't know how far they date back, but they was here before I came.' "High Jack asks what form of worship the citizens of that locality are addicted to. "'Why,' says the Major, rubbing his nose, 'I can't hardly say. I imagine it's infidel or Aztec or Nonconformist or something like that. There's a church here--a Methodist or some other kind--with a parson named Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to Christianity. He and me don't assimilate except on state occasions. I imagine they worship some kind of gods or idols yet. But Skidder says he has 'em in the fold.' "A few days later High Jack and me, prowling around, strikes a plain path into the forest, and follows it a good four miles. Then a branch turns to the left. We go a mile, maybe, down that, and run up against the finest ruin you ever saw--solid stone with trees and vines and under-brush all growing up against it and in it and through it. All over it was chiselled carvings of funny beasts and people that would have been arrested if they'd ever come out in vaudeville that way. We approached it from the rear. "High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in Boca. You know how an Indian is--the palefaces fixed his clock when they introduced him to firewater. He'd brought a quart along with him. "'Hunky,' says he, 'we'll explore the ancient temple. It may be that the storin that landed us here was propitious. The Minority Report Bureau of Ethnology,' says he, 'may yet profit by the vagaries of wind and tide.' "We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We struck a kind of alcove without bath. There was a granite davenport, and a stone wash- stand without any soap or exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel like getting back home from an amateur violoncello solo at an East Side Settlement house. "While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the wall that the stone-masons must have made when their tools slipped, I stepped into the front room. That was at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor, six little windows like square port-holes that didn't let much light in. "I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack's face three feet away. "'High,' says I, 'of all the--' "And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned around. "He'd taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn't seem to hear me. I touched him, and came near beating it. High Jack had turned to stone. I had been drinking some rum myself. "'Ossified!' I says to him, loudly. 'I knew what would happen if you kept it up.' "And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he hears me conversing with nobody, and we have a look at Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2. It's a stone idol, or god, or revised statute or something, and it looks as much like High Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It's got exactly his face and size and color, but it's steadier on its pins. It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see it's been there ten million years. "'He's a cousin of mine,' sings High, and then he turns solemn. "'Hunky,' he says, putting one hand on my shoulder and one on the statue's, 'I'm in the holy temple of my ancestors.' "'Well, if looks goes for anything,' says I, 'you've struck a twin. Stand side by side with buddy, and let's see if there's any diff'erence.' "There wasn't. You know an Indian can keep his face as still as an iron dog's when he wants to, so when High Jack froze his features you couldn't have told him from the other one. "'There's some letters,' says I, 'on his nob's pedestal, but I can't make 'em out. The alphabet of this country seems to be composed of sometimes a, e, I, o, and u, but generally z's, l's, and t's.' "High Jack's ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum for a minute, and he investigates the inscription. "'Hunky,' says he, 'this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one of the most powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs.' "'Glad to know him,' says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might say about your friend: "'Imperious what's-his-name, dead and tunied to stone--No use to write or call him on the 'phone.' "'Hunky,' says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, 'do you believe in reincarnation?' "'It sounds to me,' says I, 'like either a clean-up of the slaughter- houses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don't know.' "'I believe,' says he, 'that I am the reincarnation of Tlotopaxl. My researches have convinced me that the Cherokees, of all the North American tribes, can boast of the straightest descent from the proud Aztec race. That,' says he, 'was a favorite theory of mine and Florence Blue Feather's. And she--what' if she--!' "High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. Just then he looked more like his eminent co-Indian murderer, Crazy Horse. "'Well,' says I, 'what if she, what if she, what if she? You're drunk,' says I. 'Impersonating idols and believing in--what was it ?- -recarnalization? Let's have a drink,' says I. 'It's as spooky here as a Brooklyn artificial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned down.' "Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged High Jack into the bedless bedchamber. There was peep-holes bored through the wall, so we could see the whole front part of the temple. Major Bing told me afterward that the ancient priests in charge used to rubber through them at the congregation. "In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a' big oval earthen dish full of grub. She set it on a square block of stone in front of the graven image, and laid down and walloped her face on the floor a few times, and then took a walk for herself. "High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over. There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava, and broiled land-crabs and mangoes--nothing like what you get at Chubb's. "We ate hearty--and had another round of rum. "'It must be old Tecumseh's--or whatever you call him--birthday,' says I. 'Or do they feed him every day? I thought gods only drank vanilla on Mount Catawampus.' "Then some more native parties in short kimonos that showed their aboriginees punctured the near-horizon, and me and High had to skip back into Father Axletree's private boudoir. They came by ones, twos, and threes, and left all sorts of offerings--there was enough grub for Bingham's nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace Conference at The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of bananas, and bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful shawls worth one hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of a kind of vegetable fibre like silk. All of 'em got down and wriggled on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off through the woods again. "'I wonder who gets this rake-off?' remarks High Jack. "'Oh,' says I, 'there's priests or deputy idols or a committee of disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find a god you'll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt offerings.' "And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on the Palisades. "And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down the path and sees a young lady approaching the blasted ruin. She was bare-footed and had on a white robe, and carried a wreath of white flowers in her hand. When she got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck through her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and High Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to keep from tumbling down on the floor; for the girl's face was as much like Florence Blue Feather's as his was like old King Toxicology's. "And then was when High Jack's booze drowned his system of ethnology. He dragged me inside back of the statue, and says: "'Lay hold of it, Hunky. We'll pack it into the other room. I felt it all the time,' says he. 'I'm the reconsideration of the god Locomotorataxia, and Florence Blue Feather was my bride a thousand years ago. She has come to seek me in the temple where I used to reign.' "'All right,' says I. 'There's no use arguing against the rum question. You take his feet.' "We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into the back room of the cafe--the temple, I mean--and leaned him against the wall. It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an all- night Broadway joint on New-Year's Eve. "Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk shawls and began to undress himself. "'Oh, figs!' says I. 'Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and subtractor, too. Is it the heat or the call of the wild that's got you ?' "But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply. He stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules, and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and. stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw. And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to. "In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath. Danged if I wasn't knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked so exactly much like Florence Blue Feather. 'I wonder,' says I to myself, 'if she has been reincarcerated, too? If I could see,' says I to myself, 'whether she has a mole on her left--' But the next minute I thought she looked one-eighth of a shade darker than Florence; but she looked good at that. And High Jack hadn't drunk all the rum that had been drank. "The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and got down and massaged her nose with the floor, like the rest did. Then she went nearer and laid the flower wreath on the block of stone at High Jack's feet. Rummy as I was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think of offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provisions. Even a stone god ought to appreciate a little sentiment like that on top of the fancy groceries they had piled up in front of him. "And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, quiet, and mentions a few words that sounded just like the hieroglyphics carved on the walls of the ruin. The girl gives a little jump backward, and her eyes fly open as big as doughnuts; but she don't beat it. "Why didn't she? I'll tell you why I think why. It don't seem to a girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone god should come to life for her. If he was to do it for one of them snub-nosed brown girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would be different--but her! I'll bet she said to herself: 'Well, goodness me! you've been a long time getting on your job. I've half a mind not to speak to you.' "But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away out of the temple together. By the time I'd had time to take another drink and enter upon the scene they was twenty yards away, going up the path in the woods that the girl had come down. With the natural scenery already in place, it was just like a play to watch 'em--she looking up at him, and him giving her back the best that an Indian can hand, out in the way of a goo-goo eye. But there wasn't anything in that recarnification and revulsion to tintype for me. "'Hey! Injun!' I yells out to High Jack. 'We've got a board-bill due in town, and you're leaving me without a cent. Brace up and cut out the Neapolitan fisher-maiden, and let's go back home.' "But on the two goes; without looking once back until, as you might say, the forest swallowed 'em up. And I never saw or heard of High Jack Snakefeeder from that day to this. I don't know if the Cherokees came from the Aspics; but if they did, one of 'em went back. "All I could do was to hustle back to that Boca place and panhandle Major Bing. He detached himself from enough of his winnings to buy me a ticket home. And I'm back again on the job at Chubb's, sir, and I'm going to hold it steady. Come round, and you'll find the steaks as good as ever." I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own story; so I asked him if he had any theories about reincarnation and transmogrification and such mysteries as he had touched upon. "Nothing like that," said Hunky, positively. "What ailed High Jack was too much booze and education. They'll do an Indian up every time." "But what about Miss Blue Feather?" I persisted. "Say," said Hunky, with a grin, "that little lady that stole High Jack certainly did give me a jar when I first took a look at her, but it was only for a minute. You remember I told you High Jack said that Miss Florence Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago? Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways through--and she's been Mrs. Magee ever since." The Head-Hunter When the war between Spain and George Dewey was over, I went to the Philippine Islands. There I remained as bushwhacker correspondent for my paper until its managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred- word cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the death of an infant Moro was not considered by the office to be war news. So I resigned, and came home. On board the trading-vessel that brought me back I pondered much upon the strange things I had sensed in the weird archipelago of the yellow-brown people. The manoeuvres and skirmishings of the petty war interested me not: I was spellbound by the outlandish and unreadable countenance of that race that had turned its expressionless gaze upon us out of an unguessable past. Particularly during my stay in Mindanao had I been fascinated and attracted by that delightfully original tribe of heathen known as the head-hunters. Those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence, paralleling the trail of their prey through unmapped forests, across perilous mountain-tops, adown bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable jungles, always near with the invisible hand of death uplifted, betraying their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a gliding serpent might make-a twig crackling in the awful, sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from the screening foliage of a giant tree, a whisper at even from the rushes of a water-level-a hint of death for every mile and every hour-they amused me greatly, those little fellows of one idea. When you think of it, their method is beautifully and almost hilariously effective and simple. You have your hut in which you live and carry out the destiny that was decreed for you. Spiked to the jamb of your bamboo doorway is a basket made of green withes, plaited. From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move you, you creep forth with your snickersnee and take up the silent trail. Back from it you come, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory head of your victim, which you deposit with pardonable pride in the basket at the side of your door. It may be the head of your enemy, your friend, or a stranger, according as competition, jealousy, or simple sportiveness has been your incentive to labor. In any case, your reward is certain. The village men, in passing, stop to congratulate you, as your neighbor on weaker planes of life stops to admire and praise the begonias in your front yard. Your particular brown maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger's eyes at the evidence of your love for her. You chew betel-nut and listen, content, to the intermittent soft drip from the ends of the severed neck arteries. And you show your teeth and grunt like a water-buffalo--which is as near as you can come to laughing-at the thought that the cold, acephalous body of your door ornament is being spotted by wheeling vultures in the Mindanaoan wilds. Truly, the life of the merry head-hunter captivated me. He had reduced art and philosophy to a simple code. To take your adversary's head, to basket it at the portal of your castle, to see it lying there, a dead thing, with its cunning and stratagems and power gone-- Is there a better way to foil his plots, to refute his arguments, to establish your superiority over his skill and wisdom? The ship that brought me home was captained by an erratic Swede, who changed his course and deposited me, with genuine compassion, in a small town on the Pacific coast of one of the Central American republics, a few hundred miles south of the port to which he had engaged to convey me. But I was wearied of movement and exotic fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gaping neighbors sad stories of the death of colonial governors. When I first saw Chloe Greene she was standing, all in white, in the doorway of her father's tile-roofed 'dobe house. She was polishing a silver cup with a cloth, and she looked like a pearl laid against black velvet. She turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a wiltingly disapproving gaze, and then went inside, humming a light song to indicate the value she placed upon my existence. Small wonder: for Dr. Stamford (the most disreputable professional man between Juneau and Valparaiso) and I were zigzagging along the turfy street, tunelessly singing the words of Auld Lang Syne to the air of Muzzer's Little Coal-Black Coon. We had come from the ice factory, which was Mojada's palace of wickedness, where we had been playing billiards and opening black bottles, white with frost, that we dragged with strings out of old Sandoval's ice-cold vats. I turned in sudden rage to Dr. Stamford, as sober as the verger of a cathedral. In a moment I had become aware that we were swine cast before a pearl. "You beast," I said, "this is half your doing. And the other half is the fault of this cursed country. I'd better have gone back to Sleepy-town and died in a wild orgy of currant wine and buns than to have had this happen." Stamford filled the empty street with his roaring laughter. "You too!" he cried. "And all as quick as the popping of a cork. Well, she does seem to strike agreeably upon the retina. But don't burn your fingers. All Mojada will tell you that Louis Devoe is the man. "We will see about that," said I. "And, perhaps, whether he is a man as well as the man." I lost no time in meeting Louis Devoe. That was easily accomplished, for the foreign colony in Mojada numbered scarce a dozen; and they gathered daily at a half-decent hotel kept by a Turk, where they managed to patch together the fluttering rags of country and civilization that were left them. I sought Devoe before I did my pearl of the doorway, because I had learned a little of the game of war, and knew better than to strike for a prize before testing the strength of the enemy. A sort of cold dismay-something akin to fear-filled me when I had estimated him. I found a man so perfectly poised, so charming, so deeply learned in the world's rituals, so full of tact, courtesy, and hospitality, so endowed with grace and ease and a kind of careless, haughty power that I almost overstepped the bounds in probing him, in turning him on the spit to find the weak point that I so craved for him to have. But I left him whole-I had to make bitter acknowledgment to myself that Louis Devoe was a gentleman worthy of my best blows; and I swore to give him them. He was a great merchant of the country, a wealthy importer and exporter. All day he sat in a fastidiously appointed office, surrounded by works of art and evidences of his high culture, directing through glass doors and windows the affairs of his house. In person he was slender and hardly tall. His small, well-shaped head was covered with thick, brown hair, trimmed short, and he wore a thick, brown beard also cut close and to a fine point. His manners were a pattern. Before long I had become a regular and a welcome visitor at the Greene home. I shook my wild habits from me like a worn-out cloak. I trained for the conflict with the care of a prize-fighter and the self-denial of a Brahmin. As for Chloe Greene, I shall weary you with no sonnets to her eyebrow. She was a splendidly feminine girl, as wholesome as a November pippin, and no more mysterious than a windowpane. She had whimsical little theories that she had deduced from life, and that fitted the maxims of Epictetus like princess gowns. I wonder, after all, if that old duffer wasn't rather wise! Chloe had a father, the Reverend Homer Greene, and an intermittent mother, who sometimes palely presided over a twilight teapot. The Reverend Homer was a burr-like man with a life-work. He was writing a concordance to the Scriptures, and had arrived as far as Kings. Being, presumably, a suitor for his daughter's hand, I was timber for his literary outpourings. I had the family tree of Israel drilled into my head until I used to cry aloud in my sleep: "And Aminadab begat Jay Eye See," and so forth, until he had tackled another book. I once made a calculation that the Reverend Homer's concordance would be worked up as far as the Seven Vials mentioned in Revelations about the third day after they were opened. Louis Devoe, as well as I, was a visitor and an intimate friend of the Greenes. It was there I met him the oftenest, and a more agreeable' man or a more accomplished I have never hated in my life. Luckily or unfortunately, I came to be accepted as a Boy. My appearance was youthful, and I suppose I had that pleading and homeless air that always draws the motherliness that is in women and the cursed theories and hobbies of pater-familiases. Chloe called me "Tommy," and made sisterly fun of my attempts to woo her. With Devoe she was vastly more reserved. He was the man of romance, one to stir her imagination and deepest feelings had her fancy leaned toward him. I was closer to her, but standing in no glamour; I had the task before me of winning her in what seems to me the American way of fighting--with cleanness and pluck and everyday devotion to break away the barriers of friendship that divided us, and to take her, if I could, between sunrise and dark, abetted by neither moonlight nor music nor foreign wiles. Chloe gave no sign of bestowing her blithe affections upon either of us. But one day she let out to me an inkling of what she preferred in a man. It was tremendously interesting to me, but not illuminating as to its application. I had been tormenting her for the dozenth time with the statement and catalogue of my sentiments toward her. "Tommy," said she, "I don't want a man to show his love for me by leading an army against another country and blowing people off the earth with cannons." "If you mean that the opposite way," I answered, "as they say women do, I'll see what I can do. The papers are full of this diplomatic row in Russia. My people know some big people in Washington who are right next to the army people, and I could get an artillery commission and--" "I'm not that way," interrupted Chloe. "I mean what I say. It isn't the big things that are done in the world, Tommy, that count with a woman. When the knights were riding abroad in their armor to slay dragons, many a stay-at-home page won a lonesome lady's hand by being on the spot to pick up her glove and be quick with her cloak when the wind blew. The man I am to like best, whoever he shall be, must show his love in little ways. He must never forget, after hearing it once, that I do not like to have any one walk at my left side; that I detest bright-colored neckties; that I prefer to sit with my back to a light; that I like candied violets; that I must not be talked to when I am looking at the moonlight shining on water, and that I very, very often long for dates stuffed with English walnuts." "Frivolity," I said, with a frown. "Any well-trained servant would be equal to such details." "And he must remember," went on Chloe, to remind me of what I want when I do not know, myself, what I want." "You're rising in the scale," I said. "What you seem to need is a first-class clairvoyant." "And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven sonata, and stamp my foot when I say it, he must know by that that what my soul craves is salted almonds; and he will have them ready in his pocket." "Now," said I, "I am at a loss. I do not know whether your soul's affinity is to be an impresario or a fancy grocer." Chole turned her pearly smile upon me. "Take less than half of what I said as a jest," she went on. "And don't think too lightly of the little things, Boy. Be a paladin if you must, but don't let it show on you. Most women are only very big children, and most men are only very little ones. Please us; don't try to overpower us. When we want a hero we can make one out of even a plain grocer the third time he catches our handkerchief before it falls to the ground." That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. That is a kind of coast fever with improvements and high-geared attachments. Your temperature goes up among the threes and fours and remains there, laughing scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the coal- tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula: Vitality + the desire to live--the duration of the fever the result. I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where I had been comfortably established, and sent for a gallon of rum. That was not for myself. Drunk, Stamford was the best doctor between the Andes and the Pacific. He came, sat at my bedside, and drank himself into condition. "My boy," said he, "my lily-white and reformed Romeo, medicine will do you no good. But I will give you quinine, which, being bitter, will arouse in you hatred and anger-two stimulants that will add ten per cent. to your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, and you will get well if the fever doesn't get in a knockout blow when you're off your guard." For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo widow on a burning ghat. Old Atasca, an untrained Indian nurse, sat near the door like a petrified statue of What's-the-Use, attending to her duties, which were, mainly, to see that time went by without slipping a cog. Sometimes I would fancy myself back in the Philippines, or, at worse times, sliding off the horsehair sofa in Sleepytown. One afternoon I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up and dressed carefully. I took my temperature, which I was pleased to find 104. I paid almost dainty attention to my dress, choosing solicitously a necktie of a dull and subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was looking little the worse from my illness. The fever gave brightness to my eyes and color to my face. And while I looked at my reflection my color went and came again as I thought of Chloe Greene and the millions of eons that had passed since I'd seen her, and of Louis Devoe and the time he had gained on me. I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather than walk; I hardly felt the ground under my feet; I thought pernicious fever must be a great boon to make one feel so strong. I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awning in front of the house. She jumped up and met me with a double handshake. "I'm glad, glad, glad to see you out again!" she cried, every word a pearl strung on the string of her sentence. "You are well, Tommy--or better, of course. I wanted to come to see you, but they wouldn't let me. "Oh yes," said I, carelessly, "it was nothing. Merely a little fever. I am out again, as you see." We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. Then Chloe looked out yearningly and almost piteously across the ocean. I could see in her sea-blue eyes some deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse him! saw it too. "What is it?" we asked, in unison. "Cocoanut-pudding," said Chloe, pathetically. "I've wanted some--oh, so badly, for two days. It's got beyond a wish; it's an obsession. "The cocoanut season is over," said Devoe, in that voice of his that gave thrilling interest to his most commonplace words. "I hardly think one could be found in Mojada. The natives never use them except when they are green and the milk is fresh. They sell all the ripe ones to the fruiterers." "Wouldn't a broiled lobster or a Welsh rabbit do as well?" I remarked, with the engaging idiocy of a pernicious-fever convalescent. Chloe came as near to pouting as a sweet disposition and a perfect profile would allow her to come. The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face through the doorway and added a concordance to the conversation. "Sometimes," said he, "old Campos keeps the dried nuts in his little store on the hill. But it would be far better, my daughter, to restrain unusual desires, and partake thankfully of the daily dishes that the Lord has set before us." "Stuff!" said I. "How was that?" asked the Reverend Homer, sharply. "I say it's tough," said I, "to drop into the vernacular, that Miss Greene should be deprived of the food she desires-a simple thing like kalsomine-pudding. Perhaps," I continued, solicitously, "some pickled walnuts or a fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do as well." Every one looked at me with a slight exhibition of curiosity. Louis Devoe arose and made his adieus. I watched him until he had sauntered slowly and grandiosely to the corner, around which he turned to reach his great warehouse and store. Chloe made her excuses, and went inside for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting the seven-o'clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in housekeeping. I had tasted her puddings and bread with beatitude. When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket made of plaited green withes hanging by a nail outside the door-jamb. With a rush that made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the head-hunters--those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence. . . . From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the silent trail. . . . Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory head of his victim . . . His particular brown or white maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger's eyes at the evidence of his love for her. I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. From its supporting nails in the wall I took a machete as heavy as a butcher's cleaver and sharper than a safety-razor. And then I chuckled softly to myself, and set out to the fastidiously appointed private office of Monsieur Louis Devoe, usurper to the hand of the Pearl of the Pacific. He was never slow at thinking; he gave one look at my face and another at the weapon in my hand as I entered his door, and then he seemed to fade from my sight. I ran to the back door, kicked it open, and saw him running like a deer up the road toward the wood that began two hundred yards away. I was after him, with a shout. I remember hearing children and women screaming, and seeing them flying from the road. He was fleet, but I was stronger. A mile, and I had almost come up with him. He doubled cunningly and dashed into a brake that extended into a small canon. I crashed through this after him, and in five minutes had him cornered in an angle of insurmountable cliffs. There his instinct of self-preservation steadied him, as it will steady even animals at bay. He turned to me, quite calm, with a ghastly smile. "Oh, Rayburn!" he said, with such an awful effort at ease that I was impolite enough to laugh rudely in his face. "Oh, Rayburn!" said he, "come, let's have done with this nonsense. Of course, I know it's the fever and you're not yourself; but collect yourself, man-give me that ridiculous weapon, now, and let's go back and talk it over." "I will go back," said I, "carrying your head with me. We will see how charmingly it can discourse when it lies in the basket at her door." "Come," said he, persuasively, "I think better of you than to suppose that you try this sort of thing as a joke. But even the vagaries of a fever-crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk about heads and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" he ended, with the silky cajolery that one would use toward a fretful child. "Listen," said I. "At last you have struck upon the right note. What would she think of me? Listen," I repeated. "There are women," I said, "who look upon horsehair sofas and currant wine as dross. To them even the calculated modulation of your well- trimmed talk sounds like the dropping of rotten plums from a tree in the night. They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the villages, scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the doors of the young men who would win them. One such as they," I said, "is waiting. Only a fool would try to win a woman by drooling like a braggart in her doorway or by waiting upon her whims like a footman. They are all daughters of Herodias, and to gain their hearts one must lay the heads of his enemies before them with his own hands. Now, bend your neck, Louis Devoe. Do not be a coward as well as a chatterer at a lady's tea-table." "There, there!" said Devoe, falteringly. "You know me, don't you, Rayburn?" "Oh yes," I said, "I know you. I know you. I know you. But the basket is empty. The old men of the village and the young men, and both the dark maidens and the ones who are as fair as pearls walk back and forth and see its emptiness. Will you kneel now, or must we have a scuffle? It is not like you to make things go roughly and with bad form. But the basket is waiting for your head." With that he went to pieces. I had to catch him as he tried to scamper past me like a scared rabbit. I stretched him out and got a foot on his chest, but he squirmed like a worm, although I appealed repeatedly to his sense of propriety and the duty he owed to himself as a gentleman not to make a row. But at last he gave me the chance, and I swung the machete. It was not hard work. He flopped like a chicken during the six or seven blows that it took to sever his head; but finally he lay still, and I tied his head in my handkerchief. The eyes opened and shut thrice while I walked a hundred yards. I was red to my feet with the drip, but what did that matter? With delight I felt under my hands the crisp touch of his short, thick, brown hair and close-trimmed beard. I reached the house of the Greenes and dumped the head of Louis Devoe into the basket that still hung by the nail in the door-jamb. I sat in a chair under the awning and waited. The sun was within two hours of setting. Chloe came out and looked surprised. "Where have you been, Tommy?" she asked. "You were gone when I came out." "Look in the basket," I said, rising to my feet. She looked, and gave a little scream--of delight, I was pleased to note. "Oh, Tommy!" she said. "It was just what I wanted you to do. It's leaking a little, but that doesn't matter. Wasn't I telling you? It's the little things that count. And you remembered." Little things! She held the ensanguined head of Louis Devoe in her white apron. Tiny streams of red widened on her apron and dripped upon the floor. Her face was bright and tender. "Little things, indeed!" I thought again. "The head-hunters are right. These are the things that women like you to do for them." Chloe came close to me. There was no one in sight. She looked tip at me with sea-blue eyes that said things they had never said before. "You think of me," she said. "You are the man I was describing. You think of the little things, and they are what make the world worth living in. The man for me must consider my little wishes, and make me happy in small ways. He must bring me little red peaches in December if I wish for them, and then I will love him till June. I will have no knight in armor slaying his rival or killing dragons for me. You please me very well, Tommy." I stooped and kissed her. Then a moisture broke out on my forehead, and I began to feel weak. I saw the red stains vanish from Chloe's apron, and the head of Louis Devoe turn to a brown, dried cocoanut. "There will be cocoanut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, boy," said Chloe, gayly, "and you must come. I must go in for a little while." She vanished in a delightful flutter. Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my pulse as though it were his own property that I had escaped with. "You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum!" he said, angrily. "Why did you leave your bed? And the idiotic things you've been doing!--and no wonder, with your pulse going like a sledge-hammer." "Name some of them," said I. "Devoe sent for me," said Stamford. "He saw you from his window go to old Campos' store, chase him up the hill with his own yardstick, and then come back and make off with his biggest cocoanut." "It's the little things that count, after all," said I. "It's your little bed that counts with you just now," said the doctor. "You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. 'You're as loony as a loon." So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I conceived a distrust as to the value of the method of the head-hunters. Perhaps for many centuries the maidens of the villages may have been looking wistfully at the heads in the baskets at the doorways, longing for other and lesser trophies. Hearts and Crosses Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually--but this is not Baldy's story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire. "I'd be king if I was you," said Baldy, so positively that his holster creaked and his spurs rattled. Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful Baldy. "If a man marries a queen, it oughtn't to make him a two-spot," declared Webb, epitomising his grievances. "Sure not," said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. "By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal. The cards have been stacked on you--I'll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager." "What?" asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes. "You're a prince-consort." "Go easy," said Webb. "I never blackguarded you none." "It's a title," explained Baldy, "up among the picture-cards; but it don't take no tricks. I'll tell you, Webb. It's a brand they're got for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir- apparent. That ain't any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you're a prince- consort; and if I was you, I'd start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin'; and I'd be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck." Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose. "Baldy," said Webb, solemnly, "me and you punched cows in the same outfit for years. We been runnin' on the same range, and ridin' the same trails since we was boys. I wouldn't talk about my family affairs to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don't amount to a knot in a stake rope." "When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued Baldy with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much to say on the ranch as he did." "I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to call Santa the 'cattle queen.' I'm boss of the cattle--that's all. She 'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can't sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's the 'queen'; and I'm Mr. Nobody." "I'd be king if I was you," repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. "When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her--on the hoof-- dressed--dried--corned--any old way from the chaparral to the packing- house. Lots of folks thinks it's funny, Webb, that you don't have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin' none on Miz Yeager--she's the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas--but a man ought to be boss of his own camp." The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers forbade the comparison. "What was that you called me, Baldy?" he asked. "What kind of a concert was it?" "A 'consort,'" corrected Baldy--"a 'prince-consort.' It's a kind of short-card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a four-card flush." Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester scabbard from the floor. "I'm ridin' back to the ranch to-day," he said half-heartedly. "I've got to start a bunch of beeves for San Antone in the morning." "I'm your company as far as Dry Lake," announced Baldy. "I've got a round-up camp on the San Marcos cuttin' out two-year-olds." The two companeros mounted their ponies and trotted away from the little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in the thirsty morning. At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a parting cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the soft drum of the ponies' hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of the chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas discourse is seldom continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a murder between your paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, without apology, Webb offered an addendum to the conversation that had begun ten miles away. "You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa wasn't quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister was keepin' us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander if I ever come in gun-shot of the ranch. You remember the sign she used to send, Baldy--the heart with a cross inside of it?" "Me?" cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. "You old sugar-stealing coyote! Don't I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned turtle- dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them hiroglyphs. The 'gizzard-and-crossbones' we used to call it. We used to see 'em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in charcoal on the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I see one of 'em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man McAllister sent out from the ranch--danged if I didn't." "Santa's father," explained Webb gently, "got her to promise that she wouldn't write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign was her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she managed to put that mark on somethin' at the ranch that she knew I'd see. And I never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the ranch the same night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the little horse-corral." "We knowed it," chanted Baldy; "but we never let on. We was all for you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when we see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the ranch we knowed old Pinto was goin' to eat up miles that night instead of grass. You remember Scurry--that educated horse-wrangler we had-- the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever Scurry saw that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch, he'd wave his hand like that, and say, 'Our friend Lee Andrews will again swim the Hell's point to-night.'" "The last time Santa sent me the sign," said Webb, "was once when she was sick. I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto forty mile that night. She wasn't at the coma mott. I went to the house; and old McAllister met me at the door. 'Did you come here to get killed?' says he; 'I'll disoblige you for once. I just started a Mexican to bring you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. And then come out here and see me.' "Santa was lyin' in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed-- mud and spurs and chaps and all. 'I've heard you ridin' across the grass for hours, Webb,' she says. 'I was sure you'd come. You saw the sign?' she whispers. 'The minute I hit camp,' says I. ''Twas marked on the bag of potatoes and onions.' 'They're always together,' says she, soft like--'always together in life.' 'They go well together,' I says, 'in a stew.' 'I mean hearts and crosses,' says Santa. 'Our sign--to love and to suffer--that's what they mean.' "And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin' himself with whisky and a palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels her forehead; and he says to me: 'You're not such a bad febrifuge. But you'd better slide out now; for the diagnosis don't call for you in regular doses. The little lady'll be all right when she wakes up.' "I seen old McAllister outside. 'She's asleep,' says I. 'And now you can start in with your colander-work. Take your time; for I left my gun on my saddle-horn.' "Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: 'Pumpin' lead into the best ranch- boss in West Texas don't seem to me good business policy. I don't know where I could get as good a one. It's the son-in-law idea, Webb, that makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain't my idea for a member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you'll keep outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You go upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we'll talk it over.'" Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his saddle- horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony. "Adios, Baldy," said Webb, "I'm glad I seen you and had this talk." With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail, the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll, and emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of gravity. Webb turned in his saddle at the signal. "If I was you," came Baldy's strident and perverting tones, "I'd be king!" At eight o'clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled from his saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled with whizzing rowels toward the gallery. Bud was in charge of the bunch of beef-cattle that was to strike the trail that morning for San Antonio. Mrs. Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster of hyacinths growing in a red earthenware jar. "King" McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his strong characteristics--his resolution, his gay courage, his contumacious self-reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs and horns. Allegro and fortissimo had been McAllister's temp and tone. In Santa they survived, transposed to the feminine key. Substantially, she preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander in other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother's slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her the severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the McAllister air of royal independence. Webb stood on one end of the gallery giving orders to two or three sub-bosses of various camps and outfits who had ridden in for instructions. "Morning," said Bud briefly. "Where do you want them beeves to go in town--to Barber's, as usual?" Now, to answer that had been the prerogative of the queen. All the reins of business--buying, selling, and banking--had been held by her capable fingers. The handling of cattle had been entrusted fully to her husband. In the days of "King" McAllister, Santa had been his secretary and helper; and she had continued her work with wisdom and profit. But before she could reply, the prince-consort spake up with calm decision: "You drive that bunch to Zimmerman and Nesbit's pens. I spoke to Zimmerman about it some time ago." Bud turned on his high boot-heels. "Wait!" called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with surprise in her steady gray eyes. "Why, what do you mean, Webb?" she asked, with a small wrinkle gathering between her brows. "I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit. Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market for five years. I'm not going to take the business out of his hands." She faced Bud Turner. "Deliver those cattle to Barber," she concluded positively. Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, stood on his other leg, and chewed a mesquite-leaf. "I want this bunch of beeves to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit," said Webb, with a frosty light in his blue eyes. "Nonsense," said Santa impatiently. "You'd better start on, Bud, so as to noon at the Little Elm water-hole. Tell Barber we'll have another lot of culls ready in about a month." Bud allowed a hesitating eye to steal upward and meet Webb's. Webb saw apology in his look, and fancied he saw commiseration. "You deliver them cattle," he said grimly, "to--" "Barber," finished Santa sharply. "Let that settle it. Is there anything else you are waiting for, Bud?" "No, m'm," said Bud. But before going he lingered while a cow's tail could have switched thrice; for man is man's ally; and even the Philistines must have blushed when they took Samson in the way they did. "You hear your boss!" cried Webb sardonically. He took off his hat, and bowed until it touched the floor before his wife. "Webb," said Santa rebukingly, "you're acting mighty foolish to-day." "Court fool, your Majesty," said Webb, in his slow tones, which had changed their quality. "What else can you expect? Let me tell you. I was a man before I married a cattle-queen. What am I now? The laughing-stock of the camps. I'll be a man again." Santa looked at him closely. "Don't be unreasonable, Webb," she said calmly. "You haven't been slighted in any way. Do I ever interfere in your management of the cattle? I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do. I learned it from Dad. Be sensible." "Kingdoms and queendoms," said Webb, "don't suit me unless I am in the pictures, too. I punch the cattle and you wear the crown. All right. I'd rather be High Lord Chancellor of a cow-camp than the eight-spot in a queen-high flush. It's your ranch; and Barber gets the beeves." Webb's horse was tied to the rack. He walked into the house and brought out his roll of blankets that he never took with him except on long rides, and his "slicker," and his longest stake-rope of plaited raw-hide. These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle. Santa, a little pale, followed him. Webb swung up into the saddle. His serious, smooth face was without expression except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes. "There's a herd of cows and calves," said he, "near the Hondo water- hole on the Frio that ought to be moved away from timber. Lobos have killed three of the calves. I forgot to leave orders. You'd better tell Simms to attend to it." Santa laid a hand on the horse's bridle, and looked her husband in the eye. "Are you going to leave me, Webb?" she asked quietly. "I am going to be a man again," he answered. "I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt," she said, with a sudden coldness. She turned and walked directly into the house. Webb Yeager rode to the southeast as straight as the topography of West Texas permitted. And when he reached the horizon he might have ridden on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito went. And the days, with Sundays at their head, formed into hebdomadal squads; and the weeks, captained by the full moon, closed ranks into menstrual companies crying "Tempus fugit" on their banners; and the months marched on toward the vast camp-ground of the years; but Webb Yeager came no more to the dominions of his queen. One day a being named Bartholomew, a sheep-man--and therefore of little account--from the lower Rio Grande country, rode in sight of the Nopalito ranch-house, and felt hunger assail him. Ex consuetudine he was soon seated at the mid-day dining table of that hospitable kingdom. Talk like water gushed from him: he might have been smitten with Aaron's rod--that is your gentle shepherd when an audience is vouchsafed him whose ears are not overgrown with wool. "Missis Yeager," he babbled, "I see a man the other day on the Rancho Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name--Webb Yeager was his. He'd just been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, not saying much. Perhaps he was some kin of yours, do you think?" "A husband," said Santa cordially. "The Seco has done well. Mr. Yeager is one of the best stockmen in the West." The dropping out of a prince-consort rarely disorganises a monarchy. Queen Santa had appointed as mayordomo of the ranch a trusty subject, named Ramsay, who had been one of her father's faithful vassals. And there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save when the gulf-breeze created undulations in the grass of its wide acres. For several years the Nopalito had been making experiments with an English breed of cattle that looked down with aristocratic contempt upon the Texas long-horns. The experiments were found satisfactory; and a pasture had been set aside for the blue-bloods. The fame of them had gone forth into the chaparral and pear as far as men ride in saddles. Other ranches woke up, rubbed their eyes, and looked with new dissatisfaction upon the long-horns. As a consequence, one day a sunburned, capable, silk-kerchiefed nonchalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three Mexican vaqueros, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the following business-like epistle to the queen thereof: Mrs. Yeager--The Nopalito Ranch: Dear Madam: I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase 100 head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by you. If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the bearer; and a check will be forwarded to you at once. Respectfully,Webster Yeager,Manager the Rancho Seco. Business is business, even--very scantily did it escape being written "especially"--in a kingdom. That night the 100 head of cattle were driven up from the pasture and penned in a corral near the ranch-house for delivery in the morning. When night closed down and the house was still, did Santa Yeager throw herself down, clasping that formal note to her bosom, weeping, and calling out a name that pride (either in one or the other) had kept from her lips many a day? Or did she file the letter, in her business way, retaining her royal balance and strength? Wonder, if you will; but royalty is sacred; and there is a veil. But this much you shall learn: At midnight Santa slipped softly out of the ranch-house, clothed in something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was none to see. Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away; and what she did there can only be surmised. But the forge glowed red; and there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make when he sharpens his arrow-points. Later she came forth with a queer-shaped, handled thing in one hand, and a portable furnace, such as are seen in branding-camps, in the other. To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned she sped with these things swiftly in the moonlight. She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral. The Sussex cattle were mostly a dark red. But among this bunch was one that was milky white--notable among the others. And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not seen before--a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle. The white cow was her object. She swung the lasso, which caught one horn and slipped off. The next throw encircled the forefeet and the animal fell heavily. Santa made for it like a panther; but it scrambled up and dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of grass. Again she made her cast, while the aroused cattle milled around the four sides of the corral in a plunging mass. This throw was fair; the white cow came to earth again; and before it could rise Santa had made the lasso fast around a post of the corral with a swift and simple knot, and had leaped upon the cow again with the rawhide hobbles. In one minute the feet of the animal were tied (no record-breaking deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time, panting and lax. And then she ran swiftly to her furnace at the gate and brought the branding-iron, queerly shaped and white-hot. The bellow of the outraged white cow, as the iron was applied, should have stirred the slumbering auricular nerves and consciences of the near-by subjects of the Nopalito, but it did not. And it was amid the deepest nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to the ranch-house and there fell upon a cot and sobbed--sobbed as though queens had hearts as simple ranchmen's wives have, and as though she would gladly make kings of prince-consorts, should they ride back again from over the hills and far away. In the morning the capable, revolvered youth and his vaqueros set forth, driving the bunch of Sussex cattle across the prairies to the Rancho Seco. Ninety miles it was; a six days' journey, grazing and watering the animals on the way. The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were received and counted by the foreman of the ranch. The next morning at eight o'clock a horseman loped out of the brush to the Nopalito ranch-house. He dismounted stiffly, and strode, with whizzing spurs, to the house. His horse gave a great sigh and swayed foam-streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes. But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel. To-day, in Nopalito horse-pasture he survives, pampered, beloved, unridden, cherished record-holder of long-distance rides. The horseman stumbled into the house. Two arms fell around his neck, and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike: "Webb-- oh, Webb!" "I was a skunk," said Webb Yeager. "Hush," said Santa, "did you see it?" "I saw it," said Webb. What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read the primer of events. "Be the cattle-queen," said Webb; "and overlook it if you can. I was a mangy, sheep-stealing coyote." "Hush!" said Santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. "There's no queen here. Do you know who I am? I am Santa Yeager, First Lady of the Bedchamber. Come here." She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. There stood a cradle with an infant in it--a red, ribald, unintelligible, babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner. "There's no queen on this ranch," said Santa again. "Look at the king. He's got your eyes, Webb. Down on your knees and look at his Highness." But jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and Bud Turner stumbled there again with the same query that he had brought, lacking a few days, a year ago. "'Morning. Them beeves is just turned out on the trail. Shall I drive 'em to Barber's, or--" He saw Webb and stopped, open-mouthed. "Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!" shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air with his fists. "You hear your boss, Bud," said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin--just as he had said a year ago. And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the Rancho Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he had bought from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager: "What's the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?" "X Bar Y," said Wilson. "I thought so," said Quinn. "But look at that white heifer there; she's got another brand--a heart with a cross inside of it. What brand is that?" Hearts and Hands At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. The two were handcuffed together. As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered was a reversed one facing the attractive young woman. Here the linked couple seated themselves. The young woman's glance fell upon them with a distant, swift disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a tender pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out a little gray-gloved hand. When she spoke her voice, full, sweet, and deliberate, proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be heard. "Well, Mr. Easton, if you will make me speak first, I suppose I must. Don't vou ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?" The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice, seemed to struggle with a slight embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and then clasped her fingers with his left hand. "It's Miss Fairchild," he said, with a smile. "I'll ask you to excuse the other hand; "it's otherwise engaged just at present." He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining "bracelet" to the left one of his companion. The glad look in the girl's eyes slowly changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from her cheeks. Her lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress. Easton, with a little laugh, as if amused, was about to speak again when the other forestalled him. The glum-faced man had been watching the girl's countenance with veiled glances from his keen, shrewd eyes. "You'll excuse me for speaking, miss, but, I see you're acquainted with the marshall here. If you'll ask him to speak a word for me when we get to the pen he'll do it, and it'll make things easier for me there. He's taking me to Leavenworth prison. It's seven years for counterfeiting." "Oh!" said the girl, with a deep breath and returning color. "So that is what you are doing out here? A marshal!" "My dear Miss Fairchild," said Easton, calmly, "I had to do something. Money has a way of taking wings unto itself, and you know it takes money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in the West, and--well, a marshalship isn't quite as high a position as that of ambassador, but--" "The ambassador," said the girl, warmly, "doesn't call any more. He needn't ever have done so. You ought to know that. And so now you are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go into all kinds of dangers. That's different from the Washington life. You have been missed from the old crowd." The girl's eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon the glittering handcuffs. "Don't you worry about them, miss," said the other man. "All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting away. Mr. Easton knows his business." "Will we see you again soon in Washington?" asked the girl. "Not soon, I think," said Easton. "My butterfly days are over, I fear." "I love the West," said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were shining softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to speak truly and simply without the gloss of style and manner: "Mamma and I spent the summer in Denver. She went home a week ago because father was slightly ill. I could live and be happy in the West. I think the air here agrees with me. Money isn't everything. But people always misunderstand things and remain stupid--" "Say, Mr. Marshal," growled the glum-faced man. "This isn't quite fair. I'm needing a drink, and haven't had a smoke all day. Haven't you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won't you? I'm half dead for a pipe." The bound travelers rose to their feet, Easton with the same slow smile on his face. "I can't deny a petition for tobacco," he said, lightly. "It's the one friend of the unfortunate. Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. Duty calls, you know." He held out his hand for a farewell. "It's too bad you are not going East," she said, reclothing herself with manner and style. "But you must go on to Leavenworth, I suppose?" "Yes," said Easton, "I must go on to Leavenworth." The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker. The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the conversation. Said one of them: "That marshal's a good sort of chap. Some of these Western fellows are all right." "Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn't he?" asked the other. "Young!" exclaimed the first speaker, "why--Oh! didn't you catch on? Say--did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his right hand?" The Hiding of Black Bill A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat-- seamy on both sides. "Ain't seen you in about four years, Ham," said the seedy man. "Which way you been travelling?" "Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I'll tell you about one hot spell I went through there. "One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it go on without me. 'Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City. Only out there they build 'em twenty miles away so you can't smell what they've got for dinner, instead of running 'em up two inches from their neighbors' windows. "There wasn't any roads in sight, so I footed it 'cross country. The grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman's private estate that every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated- railroad station. "There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of the door. "'Greetings,' says I. 'Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even work for a comparative stranger?' "'Oh, come in,' says he, in a refined tone. 'Sit down on that stool, please. I didn't hear your horse coming.' "'He isn't near enough yet,' says I. 'I walked. I don't want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water handy.' "'You do look pretty dusty,' says he; 'but our bathing arrangements--' "'It's a drink I want,' says I. 'Never mind the dust that's on the outside.' "He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then goes on: "'Do you want work?' "'For a time,' says I. 'This is a rather quiet section of the country, isn't it?' "'It is,' says he. 'Sometimes--so I have been told--one sees no human being pass for weeks at a time. I've been here only a month. I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.' "'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.' "'Can you herd sheep ?' asks the little ranch-man. "'Do you mean have I heard sheep?' says I. "'Can you herd 'em--take charge of a flock of 'em ?' says he. "'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and bark at 'em like collie dogs. Well, I might,' says I. 'I've never exactly done any sheep-herding, but I've often seen 'em from car windows masticating daisies, and they don't look dangerous.' "'I'm short a herder,' says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on the Mexicans. I've only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of muttons--there are only eight hundred of 'em--in the morning, if you like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished. You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp. It's an easy job.' "'I'm on,' says I. 'I'll take the job even if I have to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like the shepherds do in pictures.' "So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving 'em down to a water-hole to drink at noon. "'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the buckboard before night,' says he. "'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer, ain't it?" "'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.' "'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.' "I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd drive 'em to the corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whippoorwills singing around the camp. "The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door. "'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on a mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if it's only to knock somebody's brains out.' "This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger- rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his brother. I didn't care much for him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost sinners--anything sheepless would do. "'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny that it's monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they won't stray out ? "'They're shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,' says I. 'And I'll be back with them long before they'll need their trained nurse.' "So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes. "That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much that he'd be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and you'll see him splitting his ribs laughing at 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies. "By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a total eclipse of sheep. "'Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,' says he, 'about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder, and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it's said that only one man did the job.' "'Seems to me I do,' says I. 'But such things happen so often they don't linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize, or lay hands upon the despoiler?' "'He escaped,' says Ogden. 'And I was just reading in a paper to-day that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country. It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they've followed the trail where they've been spent, and it leads this way.' "Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle. "'I imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal boose, 'that it wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train robber to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell. A sheep-ranch, now,' says I, would be the finest kind of a place. Who'd ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song- birds and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,' says I, kind of looking H. Ogden over, 'was there any description mentioned of this single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or height and thickness or teeth fillings or style of habiliments set forth in print ?' "'Why, no,' says Ogden; 'they say nobody got a good sight of him because he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber called Black Bill, because he always works alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.' "'All right,' says I. 'I approve of Black Bill's retreat to the sheep-ranges. I guess they won't find him.' "'There's one thousand dollars reward for his capture,' says Ogden. "'I don't need that kind of money,' says I, looking Mr. Sheepman straight in the eye. 'The twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,' I goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, was to have come down this way--say, a month ago--and bought a little sheep-ranch and--' "'Stop,' says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty vicious. 'Do you mean to insinuate--' "'Nothing,' says I; 'no insinuations. I'm stating a hypodermical case. I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep- ranch and hired me to Little-Boy-Blue 'em and treated me square and friendly, as you've done, he'd never have anything to fear from me. A man is a man, regardless of any complications he may have with sheep or railroad trains. Now you know where I stand.' "Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he laughs, amused. "'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I was Black Bill I wouldn't be afraid to trust you. Let's have a game or two of seven-up to- night. That is, if you don't mind playing with a train-robber.' "'I've told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings to 'em.' "While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from. "'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.' "'That's a nice little place,' says I. 'I've often stopped over there. But didn't you find the sheets a little damp and the food poor? Now, I hail,' says I, 'from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up there?' "'Too draughty,' says Ogden. 'But if you've ever in the Middle West just mention my name, and you'll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.' "'Well,' says I, 'I wasn't exactly fishing for your private telephone number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don't matter. I just want you to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play hearts on spades, and don't get nervous.' "'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?' "'Not any,' says I. 'A man who's got the nerve to hold up a train single-handed wouldn't do a trick like that. I've knocked about enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we might have been.' "'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for deal.' "About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water- hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His chin and eye wasn't molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a scout. "'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me. "'Well,' says I, 'to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I wouldn't have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets.' "'You don't talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,' says he. "'But you talk like what you look like to me,' says I. "And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me he's a deputy sheriff. "'There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in these parts,' says the scout. 'He's been traced as far as San Antonio, and maybe farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers around here during the past month?' "'I have not,' says I, 'except a report of one over at the Mexican quarters of Loomis' ranch, on the Frio.' "'What do you know about him?' asks the deputy. "'He's three days old,' says I. "'What kind of a looking man is the man you work for ?' he asks. 'Does old George Ramey own this place yet? He's run sheep here for the last ten years, but never had no success.' "'The old man has sold out and gone West,' I tells him. 'Another sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago.' "'What kind of a looking man is he ?' asks the deputy again. "'Oh,' says I, ' a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and blue specs. I don't think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,' says I. "After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information and two-thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away. "That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. "'They're drawing the tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described him to the deputy, and what the deputy said about the matter. "'Oh, well,' says Ogden, 'let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's troubles. We've a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the cupboard and we'll drink to his health--unless,' says he, with his little cackling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers.' "'I'll drink,' says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I believe that Black Bill,' I goes on, 'would be that. So here's to Black Bill, and may he have good luck.' "And both of us drank. "About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip the fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the ranch-house, where I penned 'em in a corral and bade 'em my nightly adieus. "I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few musings. 'Imperial Caesar,' says I, 'asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.' A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections? He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he's about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it's better for all hands for her to be that way. "Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical culture--and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point. "After I'd smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H. O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a kind of a creek farther away. "I saw five men riding up to the house. All of 'em carried guns across their saddles, and among 'em was the deputy that had talked to me at my camp. "They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker of this law-and-order cavalry. "'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your horses?' "The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it seems to cover my whole front elevation. "'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge in a adequate amount of necessary conversation.' "'I will not,' says I. 'I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not have to disobey your injunctions in replying.' "'We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and everybody on 'em. What is your name, and what do you do on this ranch?' "'Captain,' says I, 'Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my name is sheep-herder. I've got my flock of veals--no, muttons--penned here to-night. The shearers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair- cut--with baa-a-rum, I suppose.' "'Where's the boss of this ranch?' the captain of the gang asks me. "'Wait just a minute, cap'n,' says I. 'Wasn't there a kind of a reward offered for the capture of this desperate character you have referred to in your preamble?' "'There's a thousand dollars reward offered,' says the captain, 'but it's for his capture and conviction. There don't seem to be no provision made for an informer.' "'It looks like it might rain in a day or so,' says I, in a tired way, looking up at the cerulean blue sky. "'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, 'you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.' "'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice, 'that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a sheepman's cousin two weeks ago.' "'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth,' says the captain, after looking me over for bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill, I'll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own--out of our own--pockets. That's liberal,' says he. 'You ain't entitled to anything. Now, what do you say?' "'Cash down now?' I asks. "The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco. "'Come nearer, capitan meeo,' says I, 'and listen.' He so did. "'I am mighty poor and low down in the world,' says I. 'I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,' says I, 'I regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it's a come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops. I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati--dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're ever up that way, don't fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I, 'I have never yet went back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when they had plenty, and when adversity's overtaken me I've never forsook 'em. "'But,' I goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider brown beans and corn-bread the food of friendship. I am a poor man,' says I, 'and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will find Black Bill,' says I, 'lying asleep in this house on a cot in the room to your right. He's the man you want, as I know from his words and conversation. He was in a way a friend,' I explains, 'and if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gondola would not have tempted me to betray him. But,' says I, 'every week half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp. "'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.' "So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Stein on to Samson. "The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was mighty tough with all his slimness, and he gives 'em as neat a single- footed tussle against odds as I ever see. "'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down. "'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,' says the captain. 'That's all.' "'It's an outrage,' says H. Ogden, madder yet. "'It was,' says the peace-and-good-will man. 'The Katy wasn't bothering you, and there's a law against monkeying with express packages.' "And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets symptomatically and careful. "'I'll make you perspire for this,' says Ogden, perspiring some himself. 'I can prove who I am.' "'So can I,' says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden's inside coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. 'Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting- card wouldn't have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us and expatriate your sins. "H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they have taken the money off of him. "'A well-greased idea,' says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip off down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is seldom heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,' says the captain. "So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's horse, and the sheriffs all ride tip close around him with their guns in hand, ready to take their prisoner to town. "Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and gives him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just as if he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours afterward one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito, might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars--wages and blood-money--in his pocket, riding south on another horse belonging to said ranch." The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming freight-train sounded far away among the low hills. The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head slowly and disparagingly. "What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again?" "No, I ain't" said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like your talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen year; and I never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the law--not no one. And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at whose table you had played games of cards--if casino can be so called. And yet you inform him to the law and take money for it. It never was like you, I say." "This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer, proved himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated to hand him over." "How about the bills they found in his pocket?" asked the seedy man. "I put 'em there," said the red-faced man, "while he was asleep, when I saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill. Look out, Snipy, here she comes! We'll board her on the bumpers when she takes water at the tank." The Higher Abdication Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a fleeting glance from the bartender's eye, and stood still, trying to look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was waiting for a friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car. Curly's histrionic powers were equal to the impersonation; but his make-up was wanting. The bartender rounded the bar in a casual way, looking up at the ceiling as though he was pondering some intricate problem of kalsomining, and then fell upon Curly so suddenly that the roadster had no excuses ready. Irresistibly, but so composedly that it seemed almost absendmindedness on his part, the dispenser of drinks pushed Curly to the swinging doors and kicked him out, with a nonchalance that almost amounted to sadness. That was the way of the Southwest. Curly arose from the gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to take his chances with them. But he had not yet learned to estimate these cool, languid, Southwestern knights of the bungstarter, who had the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and who, when they disapproved of your presence, moved you with the silence and despatch of a chess automaton advancing a pawn. Curly stood for a few moments in the narrow, mesquite-paved street. San Antonio puzzled and disturbed him. Three days he had been a non- paying guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an I. & G.N. freight, because Greaser Johnny had told him in Des Moines that the Alamo City was manna fallen, gathered, cooked, and served free with cream and sugar. Curly had found the tip partly a good one. There was hospitality in plenty of a careless, liberal, irregular sort. But the town itself was a weight upon his spirits after his experience with the rushing, business-like, systematised cities of the North and East. Here he was often flung a dollar, but too frequently a good-natured kick would follow it. Once a band of hilarious cowboys had roped him on Military Plaza and dragged him across the black soil until no respectable rag-bag would have stood sponsor for his clothes. The winding, doubling streets, leading nowhere, bewildered him. And then there was a little river, crooked as a pot-hook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly's nerves. And the last bartender wore a number nine shoe. The saloon stood on a corner. The hour was eight o'clock. Homefarers and outgoers jostled Curly on the narrow stone sidewalk. Between the buildings to his left he looked down a cleft that proclaimed itself another thoroughfare. The alley was dark except for one patch of light. Where there was light there were sure to be human beings. Where there were human beings after nightfall in San Antonio there might be food, and there was sure to be drink. So Curly headed for the light. The illumination came from Schwegel's Cafe. On the sidewalk in front of it Curly picked up an old envelope. It might have contained a check for a million. It was empty; but the wanderer read the address, "Mr. Otto Schwegel," and the name of the town and State. The postmark was Detroit. Curly entered the saloon. And now in the light it could be perceived that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of the tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His wardrobe represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions and eras. Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes for his feet. As you gazed at him there passed through your mind vague impressions of mummies, wax figures, Russian exiles, and men lost on desert islands. His face was covered almost to his eyes with a curly brown beard that he kept trimmed short with a pocket-knife, and that had furnished him with his nom de route. Light-blue eyes, full of sullenness, fear, cunning, impudence, and fawning, witnessed the stress that had been laid upon his soul. The saloon was small, and in its atmosphere the odours of meat and drink struggled for the ascendancy. The pig and the cabbage wrestled with hydrogen and oxygen. Behind the bar Schwegel laboured with an assistant whose epidermal pores showed no signs of being obstructed. Hot weinerwurst and sauerkraut were being served to purchasers of beer. Curly shuffled to the end of the bar, coughed hollowly, and told Schwegel that he was a Detroit cabinet-maker out of a job. It followed as the night the day that he got his schooner and lunch. "Was you acquainted maybe with Heinrich Strauss in Detroit?" asked Schwegel. "Did I know Heinrich Strauss?" repeated Curly, affectionately. "Why, say, 'Bo, I wish I had a dollar for every game of pinochle me and Heine has played on Sunday afternoons." More beer and a second plate of steaming food was set before the diplomat. And then Curly, knowing to a fluid-drachm how far a "con" game would go, shuffled out into the unpromising street. And now he began to perceive the inconveniences of this stony Southern town. There was none of the outdoor gaiety and brilliancy and music that provided distraction even to the poorest in the cities of the North. Here, even so early, the gloomy, rock-walled houses were closed and barred against the murky dampness of the night. The streets were mere fissures through which flowed grey wreaths of river mist. As he walked he heard laughter and the chink of coin and chips behind darkened windows, and music coming from every chink of wood and stone. But the diversions were selfish; the day of popular pastimes had not yet come to San Antonio. But at length Curly, as he strayed, turned the sharp angle of another lost street and came upon a rollicking band of stockmen from the outlying ranches celebrating in the open in front of an ancient wooden hotel. One great roisterer from the sheep country who had just instigated a movement toward the bar, swept Curly in like a stray goat with the rest of his flock. The princes of kine and wool hailed him as a new zoological discovery, and uproariously strove to preserve him in the diluted alcohol of their compliments and regards. An hour afterward Curly staggered from the hotel barroom dismissed by his fickle friends, whose interest in him had subsided as quickly as it had risen. Full--stoked with alcoholic fuel and cargoed with food, the only question remaining to disturb him was that of shelter and bed. A drizzling, cold Texas rain had begun to fall--an endless, lazy, unintermittent downfall that lowered the spirits of men and raised a reluctant steam from the warm stones of the streets and houses. Thus comes the "norther" dousing gentle spring and amiable autumn with the chilling salutes and adieux of coming and departing winter. Curly followed his nose down the first tortuous street into which his irresponsible feet conducted him. At the lower end of it, on the bank of the serpentine stream, he perceived an open gate in a cemented rock wall. Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built against three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure. Under the sheds many horses were champing at their oats and corn. Many wagons and buckboards stood about with their teams' harness thrown carelessly upon the shafts and doubletrees. Curly recognised the place as a wagon-yard, such as is provided by merchants for their out-of- town friends and customers. No one was in sight. No doubt the drivers of those wagons were scattered about the town "seeing the elephant and hearing the owl." In their haste to become patrons of the town's dispensaries of mirth and good cheer the last ones to depart must have left the great wooden gate swinging open. Curly had satisfied the hunger of an anaconda and the thirst of a camel, so he was neither in the mood nor the condition of an explorer. He zigzagged his way to the first wagon that his eyesight distinguished in the semi-darkness under the shed. It was a two-horse wagon with a top of white canvas. The wagon was half filled with loose piles of wool sacks, two or three great bundles of grey blankets, and a number of bales, bundles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have estimated the load at once as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for some outlying hacienda. But to the drowsy intelligence of Curly they represented only warmth and softness and protection against the cold humidity of the night. After several unlucky efforts, at last he conquered gravity so far as to climb over a wheel and pitch forward upon the best and warmest bed he had fallen upon in many a day. Then he became instinctively a burrowing animal, and dug his way like a prairie-dog down among the sacks and blankets, hiding himself from the cold air as snug and safe as a bear in his den. For three nights sleep had visited Curly only in broken and shivering doses. So now, when Morpheus condescended to pay him a call, Curly got such a strangle hold on the mythological old gentleman that it was a wonder that anyone else in the whole world got a wink of sleep that night. ***** Six cowpunchers of the Cibolo Ranch were waiting around the door of the ranch store. Their ponies cropped grass near by, tied in the Texas fashion--which is not tied at all. Their bridle reins had been dropped to the earth, which is a more effectual way of securing them (such is the power of habit and imagination) than you could devise out of a half-inch rope and a live-oak tree. These guardians of the cow lounged about, each with a brown cigarette paper in his hand, and gently but unceasingly cursed Sam Revell, the storekeeper. Sam stood in the door, snapping the red elastic bands on his pink madras shirtsleeves and looking down affectionately at the only pair of tan shoes within a forty-mile radius. His offence had been serious, and he was divided between humble apology and admiration for the beauty of his raiment. He had allowed the ranch stock of "smoking" to become exhausted. "I thought sure there was another case of it under the counter, boys," he explained. "But it happened to be catterdges." "You've sure got a case of happenedicitis," said Poky Rodgers, fency rider of the Largo Verde potrero. "Somebody ought to happen to give you a knock on the head with the butt end of a quirt. I've rode in nine miles for some tobacco; and it don't appear natural and seemly that you ought to be allowed to live." "The boys was smokin' cut plug and dried mesquite leaves mixed when I left," sighed Mustang Taylor, horse wrangler of the Three Elm camp. "They'll be lookin' for me back by nine. They'll be settin' up, with their papers ready to roll a whiff of the real thing before bedtime. And I've got to tell 'em that this pink-eyed, sheep-headed, sulphur- footed, shirt-waisted son of a calico broncho, Sam Revell, hasn't got no tobacco on hand." Gregorio Falcon, Mexican vaquero and best thrower of the rope on the Cibolo, pushed his heavy, silver-embroidered straw sombrero back upon his thicket of jet black curls, and scraped the bottoms of his pockets for a few crumbs of the precious weed. "Ah, Don Samuel," he said, reproachfully, but with his touch of Castilian manners, "escuse me. Dthey say dthe jackrabbeet and dthe sheep have dthe most leetle sesos--how you call dthem--brain-es? Ah don't believe dthat, Don Samuel--escuse me. Ah dthink people w'at don't keep esmokin' tobacco, dthey--bot you weel escuse me, Don Samuel." "Now, what's the use of chewin' the rag, boys," said the untroubled Sam, stooping over to rub the toes of his shoes with a red-and-yellow handkerchief. "Ranse took the order for some more smokin' to San Antone with him Tuesday. Pancho rode Ranse's hoss back yesterday; and Ranse is goin' to drive the wagon back himself. There wa'n't much of a load--just some woolsacks and blankets and nails and canned peaches and a few things we was out of. I look for Ranse to roll in to-day sure. He's an early starter and a hell-to-split driver, and he ought to be here not far from sundown." "What plugs is he drivin'?" asked Mustang Taylor, with a smack of hope in his tones. "The buckboard greys," said Sam. "I'll wait a spell, then," said the wrangler. "Them plugs eat up a trail like a road-runner swallowin' a whip snake. And you may bust me open a can of greengage plums, Sam, while I'm waitin' for somethin' better." "Open me some yellow clings," ordered Poky Rodgers. "I'll wait, too." The tobaccoless punchers arranged themselves comfortably on the steps of the store. Inside Sam chopped open with a hatchet the tops of the cans of fruit. The store, a big, white wooden building like a barn, stood fifty yards from the ranch-house. Beyond it were the horse corrals; and still farther the wool sheds and the brush-topped shearing pens--for the Rancho Cibolo raised both cattle and sheep. Behind the store, at a little distance, were the grass-thatched jacals of the Mexicans who bestowed their allegiance upon the Cibolo. The ranch-house was composed of four large rooms, with plastered adobe walls, and a two-room wooden ell. A twenty-feet-wide "gallery" circumvented the structure. It was set in a grove of immense live-oaks and water-elms near a lake--a long, not very wide, and tremendously deep lake in which at nightfall, great gars leaped to the surface and plunged with the noise of hippopotamuses frolicking at their bath. From the trees hung garlands and massive pendants of the melancholy grey moss of the South. Indeed, the Cibolo ranch-house seemed more of the South than of the West. It looked as if old "Kiowa" Truesdell might have brought it with him from the lowlands of Mississippi when he came to Texas with his rifle in the hollow of his arm in '55. But, though he did not bring the family mansion, Truesdell did bring something in the way of a family inheritance that was more lasting than brick or stone. He brought one end of the Truesdell-Curtis family feud. And when a Curtis bought the Rancho de los Olmos, sixteen miles from the Cibolo, there were lively times on the pear flats and in the chaparral thickets off the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned the brush of many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or two Curtises fell heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried a brother with a Curtis bullet in him on the bank of the lake at Cibolo. And then the Kiowa Indians made their last raid upon the ranches between the Frio and the Rio Grande, and Truesdell at the head of his rangers rid the earth of them to the last brave, earning his sobriquet. Then came prosperity in the form of waxing herds and broadening lands. And then old age and bitterness, when he sat, with his great mane of hair as white as the Spanish-dagger blossoms and his fierce, pale-blue eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo, growling like the pumas that he had slain. He snapped his fingers at old age; the bitter taste to life did not come from that. The cup that stuck at his lips was that his only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last youthful survivor of the other end of the feud. ***** For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the cowpunchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a doleful song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair for the twentieth time that day before a crinkly mirror. From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping stretch of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green, billowy mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with nearly black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat wound the ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old government trail to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest elevation cast its grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of sunshine. That evening ears were quicker than eyes. The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin against tin. "One waggeen," said he, "cross dthe Arroyo Hondo. Ah hear dthe wheel. Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo." "You've got good ears, Gregorio," said Mustang Taylor. "I never heard nothin' but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin' across the peaceful dell." In ten minutes Taylor remarked: "I see the dust of a wagon risin' right above the fur end of the flat." "You have verree good eyes, senor," said Gregorio, smiling. Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the mesquites. In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of the horses' hoofs: in five minutes more the grey plugs dashed out of the thicket, whickering for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a toy. From the jacals came a cry of: "El Amo! El Amo!" Four Mexican youths raced to unharness the greys. The cowpunchers gave a yell of greeting and delight. Ranse Truesdell, driving, threw the reins to the ground and laughed. "It's under the wagon sheet, boys," he said. "I know what you're waiting for. If Sam lets it run out again we'll use those yellow shoes of his for a target. There's two cases. Pull 'em out and light up. I know you all want a smoke." After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from the bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pair of hasty hands dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for the cases of tobacco. Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm like the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket and pulled out a fearful thing--a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather tied together with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head and claws of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes. "Who-ee!" yelled Long Collins. "Ranse, are you a-packin' around of corpuses? Here's a--howlin' grasshoppers!" Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable, drunken owl. His face was as bluish-red and puffed and seamed and cross-lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cleo de Merode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life. Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with wide-open eyes. "Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you get in there?" The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had forgotten tobacco. Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like a Scotch terrier through his ragged beard. "Where is this?" he rasped through his parched throat. "It's a damn farm in an old field. What'd you bring me here for--say? Did I say I wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin' at--hey? G'wan or I'll punch some of yer faces." "Drag him out, Collins," said Ranse. Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam. "How'd you come in my wagon?" repeated Ranse, this time in a voice that drew a reply. Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen and large persons in blue carrying clubs. "Me?" he growled. "Oh, was you talkin' to me? Why, I was on my way to the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled into that wagon in the wagon-yard--see? I never told you to bring me out to this bloomin' farm--see?" "What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke in his ecstasy. "What do it live on?" "It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. "It's the thing that hollers 'willi-walloo' up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don't know if it bites." "No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Collins. "Them galliwampuses has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don't stand so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its prehensile tail." Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist. "Well, ain't that a Willie for your whiskers?" he commented. "Where'd you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin' to make an auditorium for inbreviates out of the ranch?" "Say," said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell blunted. "Any of you kiddin' guys got a drink on you? Have your fun. Say, I've been hittin' the stuff till I don't know straight up." He turned to Ranse. "Say, you shanghaied me on your d--d old prairie schooner--did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I'm goin' all to little pieces. What's doin'?" Ranse saw that the tramp's nerves were racking him. He despatched one of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a glass of whisky. Curly gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow--as human as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog. "Thanky, boss," he said, quietly. "You're thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon," said Ranse. Curly fell back weakly against the steps. "Since you are here," continued the ranchman, "come along with me. We can't turn you out on the prairie. A rabbit might tear you to pieces." He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were kept. There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets. "I don't suppose you can sleep," said Ranse, "since you've been pounding your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till morning. I'll have Pedro fetch you up some grub." "Sleep!" said Curly. "I can sleep a week. Say, sport, have you got a coffin nail on you?" ***** Fifty miles had Ransom Truesdell driven that day. And yet this is what he did. Old "Kiowa" Truesdell sat in his great wicker chair reading by the light of an immense oil lamp. Ranse laid a bundle of newspapers fresh from town at his elbow. "Back, Ranse?" said the old man, looking up. "Son," old "Kiowa" continued, "I've been thinking all day about a certain matter that we have talked about. I want you to tell me again. I've lived for you. I've fought wolves and Indians and worse white men to protect you. You never had any mother that you can remember. I've taught you to shoot straight, ride hard, and live clean. Later on I've worked to pile up dollars that'll be yours. You'll be a rich man, Ranse, when my chunk goes out. I've made you. I've licked you into shape like a leopard cat licks its cubs. You don't belong to yourself --you've got to be a Truesdell first. Now, is there to be any more nonsense about this Curtis girl?" "I'll tell you once more," said Ranse, slowly. "As I am a Truesdell and as you are my father, I'll never marry a Curtis." "Good boy," said old "Kiowa." "You'd better go get some supper." Ranse went to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Pedro, the Mexican cook, sprang up to bring the food he was keeping warm in the stove. "Just a cup of coffee, Pedro," he said, and drank it standing. And then: "There's a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to eat. Better make it enough for two." Ranse walked out toward the jacals. A boy came running. "Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?" "Why not, senor? I saw him near the puerta but two hours past. He bears a drag-rope." "Get him and saddle him as quick as you can." "Prontito, senor." Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his guitar in the moonlight. Vaminos shall have a word--Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans, who have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him gruyo. He was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roan- dun, if you can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail went a line of black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not laid off as many miles in the world as he could travel in a day. Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal sky for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together like kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that appeared to have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often steered their course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de los Olmos. In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily. "I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never will let me." Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to meet him. "How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way girl? Always half-way." "Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones. "I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh. "I told him after dinner when I thought he would be in a good humour. Did you ever wake up a lion, Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost tore the ranch to pieces. It's all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid of him too. He ordered me to promise that I'd never marry a Truesdell. I promised. That's all. What luck did you have?" "The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty old. I'm sorry, Yenna." The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the horn of his saddle. "I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour." "Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes." They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her saddle and called clearly: "Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse." "Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo. Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely--as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins--as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from somewhere--probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously. Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican jacals. "Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you a while." An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose from a stool. "Sit down," said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in the jacal. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish. "Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" answered the old woman wonderingly. "Tia Juana, who am I?" he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into hers. A frightened look came in the old woman's face. She fumbled with her black shawl. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" said Ranse once more. "Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo," said Tia Juana. "I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will speak. I see in your face that you know." An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana's closed door. As he was on his way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed. The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking. "Say, sport," he grumbled. "This is no way to treat a man after kidnappin' him. I went up to the store and borrowed a razor from that fresh guy and had a shave. But that ain't all a man needs. Say--can't you loosen up for about three fingers more of that booze? I never asked you to bring me to your d--d farm." "Stand up out here in the light," said Ranse, looking at him closely. Curly got up sullenly and took a step or two. His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a peculiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink; and his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square cleft chin almost gave distinction to his looks. Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously. "Where did you come from--have you got any home or folks anywhere?" "Me? Why, I'm a dook," said Curly. "I'm Sir Reginald--oh, cheese it. No; I don't know anything about my ancestors. I've been a tramp ever since I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set 'em up again to-night or not?" "You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be a tramp?" "Me?" answered Curly. "Why, I adopted that profession when I was an infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a big, lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses to beg. I wasn't hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate." "Did he ever tell you how he got you?" asked Ranse. "Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old six-shooter and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what's the diff? That's all I know." "All right," said Ranse. "I reckon you're a maverick for certain. I'm going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I'll start you to work in one of the camps to-morrow." "Work!" sniffed Curly, disdainfully. "What do you take me for? Do you think I'd chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep like that pink and yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do? Forget it." "Oh, you'll like it when you get used to it," said Ranse. "Yes, I'll send you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you'll make a first-class cowpuncher before I get through with you." "Me?" said Curly. "I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can go chase themselves. Don't forget my nightcap, please, boss." Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Rivell was taking off his tan shoes regretting and preparing for bed. "Any of the boys from the San Gabriel camp riding in early in the morning?" asked Ranse. "Long Collins," said Sam briefly. "For the mail." "Tell him," said Ranse, "to take that tramp out to camp with him and keep him till I get there." Curly was sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing talentedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next afternoon. The cowpunchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in favour of the conventions. Ranse went up to Buck Rabb, the camp boss, and spoke briefly. "He's a plumb buzzard," said Buck. "He won't work, and he's the low- downest passel of inhumanity I ever see. I didn't know what you wanted done with him, Ranse, so I just let him set. That seems to suit him. He's been condemned to death by the boys a dozen times, but I told 'em maybe you was savin' him for the torture." Ranse took off his coat. "I've got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done. I've got to make a man out of that thing. That's what I've come to camp for." He went up to Curly. "Brother," he said, "don't you think if you had a bath it would allow you to take a seat in the company of your fellow-man with less injustice to the atmosphere." "Run away, farmer," said Curly, sardonically. "Willie will send for nursey when he feels like having his tub." The charco, or water hole, was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of Curly's ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink. Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the offending member of society far into the lake. Curly crawled out and up the bank spluttering like a porpoise. Ranse met him with a piece of soap and a coarse towel in his hands. "Go to the other end of the lake and use this," he said. "Buck will give you some dry clothes at the wagon." The tramp obeyed without protest. By the time supper was ready he had returned to camp. He was hardly to be recognised in his new shirt and brown duck clothes. Ranse observed him out of the corner of his eye. "Lordy, I hope he ain't a coward," he was saying to himself. "I hope he won't turn out to be a coward." His doubts were soon allayed. Curly walked straight to where he stood. His light-blue eyes were blazing. "Now I'm clean," he said meaningly, "maybe you'll talk to me. Think you've got a picnic here, do you? You clodhoppers think you can run over a man because you know he can't get away. All right. Now, what do you think of that?" Curly planted a stinging slap against Ranse's left cheek. The print of his hand stood out a dull red against the tan. Ranse smiled happily. The cowpunchers talk to this day of the battle that followed. Somewhere in his restless tour of the cities Curly had acquired the art of self-defence. The ranchman was equipped only with the splendid strength and equilibrium of perfect health and the endurance conferred by decent living. The two attributes nearly matched. There were no formal rounds. At last the fibre of the clean liver prevailed. The last time Curly went down from one of the ranchman's awkward but powerful blows he remained on the grass, but looking up with an unquenched eye. Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on his chin in the stream from the faucet. On his face was a grin of satisfaction. Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they could know the details of the curriculum of reclamation through which Ranse put his waif during the month that he spent in the San Gabriel camp. The ranchman had no fine theories to work out--perhaps his whole stock of pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of horse-breaking and a belief in heredity. The cowpunchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out of the strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly organised themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system was their own. Curly's first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on intimate terms with soap and water. And the thing that pleased Ranse most was that his "subject" held his ground at each successive higher step. But the steps were sometimes far apart. Once he got at the quart bottle of whisky kept sacredly in the grub tent for rattlesnake bites, and spent sixteen hours on the grass, magnificently drunk. But when he staggered to his feet his first move was to find his soap and towel and start for the charco. And once, when a treat came from the ranch in the form of a basket of fresh tomatoes and young onions, Curly devoured the entire consignment before the punchers reached the camp at supper time. And then the punchers punished him in their own way. For three days they did not speak to him, except to reply to his own questions or remarks. And they spoke with absolute and unfailing politeness. They played tricks on one another; they pounded one another hurtfully and affectionately; they heaped upon one another's heads friendly curses and obloquy; but they were polite to Curly. He saw it, and it stung him as much as Ranse hoped it would. Then came a night that brought a cold, wet norther. Wilson, the youngest of the outfit, had lain in camp two days, ill with fever. When Joe got up at daylight to begin breakfast he found Curly sitting asleep against a wheel of the grub wagon with only a saddle blanket around him, while Curly's blankets were stretched over Wilson to protect him from the rain and wind. Three nights after that Curly rolled himself in his blanket and went to sleep. Then the other punchers rose up softly and began to make preparations. Ranse saw Long Collins tie a rope to the horn of a saddle. Others were getting out their six-shooters. "Boys," said Ranse, "I'm much obliged. I was hoping you would. But I didn't like to ask." Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop--awful yells rent the air--Long Collins galloped wildly across Curly's bed, dragging the saddle after him. That was merely their way of gently awaking their victim. Then they hazed him for an hour, carefully and ridiculously, after the code of cow camps. Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over a roll of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather leggings. And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was receiving the puncher's accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him. But he would be their "pardner" and stirrup-brother, foot to foot. When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe's big coffee- pot by the fire for a Java nightcap. Ranse watched the new knight carefully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped with his cup of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed and sat by his side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other. Curly--grinned. And then Ranse furnished Curly with mounts and saddle and equipment, and turned him over to Buck Rabb, instructing him to finish the job. Three weeks later Ranse rode from the ranch into Rabb's camp, which was then in Snake Valley. The boys were saddling for the day's ride. He sought out Long Collins among them. "How about that bronco?" he asked. Long Collins grinned. "Reach out your hand, Ranse Truesdell," he said, "and you'll touch him. And you can shake his'n, too, if you like, for he's plumb white and there's none better in no camp." Ranse looked again at the clear-faced, bronzed, smiling cowpuncher who stood at Collins's side. Could that be Curly? He held out his hand, and Curly grasped it with the muscles of a bronco-buster. "I want you at the ranch," said Ranse. "All right, sport," said Curly, heartily. "But I want to come back again. Say, pal, this is a dandy farm. And I don't want any better fun than hustlin' cows with this bunch of guys. They're all to the merry- merry." At the Cibolo ranch-house they dismounted. Ranse bade Curly wait at the door of the living room. He walked inside. Old "Kiowa" Truesdell was reading at a table. "Good-morning, Mr. Truesdell," said Ranse. The old man turned his white head quickly. "How is this?" he began. "Why do you call me 'Mr.--'?" When he looked at Ranse's face he stopped, and the hand that held his newspaper shook slightly. "Boy," he said slowly, "how did you find it out?" "It's all right," said Ranse, with a smile. "I made Tia Juana tell me. It was kind of by accident, but it's all right." "You've been like a son to me," said old "Kiowa," trembling. "Tia Juana told me all about it," said Ranse. "She told me how you adopted me when I was knee-high to a puddle duck out of a wagon train of prospectors that was bound West. And she told me how the kid--your own kid, you know--got lost or was run away with. And she said it was the same day that the sheep-shearers got on a bender and left the ranch." "Our boy strayed from the house when he was two years old," said the old man. "And then along came those emigrant wagons with a youngster they didn't want; and we took you. I never intended you to know, Ranse. We never heard of our boy again." "He's right outside, unless I'm mighty mistaken," said Ranse, opening the door and beckoning. Curly walked in. No one could have doubted. The old man and the young had the same sweep of hair, the same nose, chin, line of face, and prominent light- blue eyes. Old "Kiowa" rose eagerly. Curly looked about the room curiously. A puzzled expression came over his face. He pointed to the wall opposite. "Where's the tick-tock?" he asked, absent-mindedly. "The clock," cried old "Kiowa" loudly. "The eight-day clock used to stand there. Why--" He turned to Ranse, but Ranse was not there. Already a hundred yards away, Vaminos, the good flea-bitten dun, was bearing him eastward like a racer through dust and chaparral towards the Rancho de los Olmos. The Higher Pragmatism I Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Aesop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solomon is too solemn; you couldn't get anything out of Epictetus with a pick. The ant, which for many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair- restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs published by the daily newspapers. College professors have become-- But there shall be no personalities. To sit in classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the past-performances page, will not make us wise. As the poet says, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks into us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. Knowledge is a strong stream of water turned on us through a hose. It disturbs our roots. Then, let us rather gather wisdom. But how to do so requires knowledge. If we know a thing, we know it; but very often we are not wise to it that we are wise, and-- But let's go on with the story. II Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying on a bench in a little city park. Anyhow, that was the amount he asked me for when I sat on the bench next to him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattered magazine, with some queer stories bound in him, I was sure. He turned out to be a scrap-book. "I am a newspaper reporter," I said to him, to try him. "I have been detailed to write up some of the experiences of the unfortunate ones who spend their evenings in this park. May I ask you to what you attribute your downfall in--" I was interrupted by a laugh from my purchase--a laugh so rusty and unpractised that I was sure it had been his first for many a day. "Oh, no, no," said he. "You ain't a reporter. Reporters don't talk that way. They pretend to be one of us, and say they've just got in on the blind baggage from St. Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us park bums get to be fine judges of human nature. We sit here all day and watch the people go by. I can size up anybody who walks past my bench in a way that would surprise you." "Well," I said, "go on and tell me. How do you size me up?" "I should say," said the student of human nature with unpardonable hesitation, "that you was, say, in the contracting business--or maybe worked in a store--or was a sign-painter. You stopped in the park to finish your cigar, and thought you'd get a little free monologue out of me. Still, you might be a plasterer or a lawyer--it's getting kind of dark, you see. And your wife won't let you smoke at home." I frowned gloomily. "But, judging again," went on the reader of men, "I'd say you ain't got a wife." "No," said I, rising restlessly. "No, no, no, I ain't. But I will have, by the arrows of Cupid! That is, if--" My voice must have trailed away and muffled itself in uncertainty and despair. "I see you have a story yourself," said the dusty vagrant--impudently, it seemed to me. "Suppose you take your dime back and spin your yarn for me. I'm interested myself in the ups and downs of unfortunate ones who spend their evenings in the park." Somehow, that amused me. I looked at the frowsy derelict with more interest. I did have a story. Why not tell it to him? I had told none of my friends. I had always been a reserved and bottled-up man. It was psychical timidity or sensitiveness-perhaps both. And I smiled to myself in wonder when I felt an impulse to confide in this stranger and vagabond. "Jack," said I. "Mack," said he. "Mack," said I, "I'll tell you." "Do you want the dime back in advance ?" said he. I handed him a dollar. "The dime," said I, "was the price of listening to your story." "Right on the point of the jaw," said he. "Go on." And then, incredible as it may seem to the lovers in the world who confide their sorrows only to the night wind and the gibbous moon, I laid bare my secret to that wreck of all things that you would have supposed to be in sympathy with love. I told him of the days and weeks and months that I had spent in adoring Mildred Telfair. I spoke of my despair, my grievous days and wakeful nights, my dwindling hopes and distress of mind. I even pictured to this night-prowler her beauty and dignity, the great sway she had in society, and the magnificence of her life as the elder daughter of an ancient race whose pride overbalanced the dollars of the city's millionaires. "Why don't you cop the lady out?" asked Mack, bringing me down to earth and dialect again. I explained to him that my worth was so small, my income so minute, and my fears so large that I hadn't the courage to speak to her of my worship. I told him that in her presence I could only blush and stammer, and that she looked upon me with a wonderful, maddening smile of amusement. "She kind of moves in the professional class, don't she?" asked Mack. "The Telfair family--" I began, haughtily. "I mean professional beauty," said my hearer. "She is greatly and widely admired," I answered, cautiously. "Any sisters?" "One." "You know any more girls?" "Why, several," I answered. "And a few others." "Say," said Mack, "tell me one thing--can you hand out the dope to other girls? Can you chin 'em and make matinee eyes at 'em and squeeze 'em? You know what I mean. You're just shy when it comes to this particular dame--the professional beauty--ain't that right ?" "In a way you have outlined the situation with approximate truth," I admitted. "I thought so," said Mack, grimly. "Now, that reminds me of my own case. I'll tell you about it." I was indignant, but concealed it. What was this loafer's case or anybody's case compared with mine? Besides, I had given him a dollar and ten cents. "Feel my muscle," said my companion, suddenly, flexing his biceps. I did so mechanically. The fellows in gyms are always asking you to do that. His arm was as hard as cast-iron. "Four years ago," said Mack, "I could lick any man in New York outside of the professional ring. Your case and mine is just the same. I come from the West Side--between Thirtieth and Fourteenth--I won't give the number on the door. I was a scrapper when I was ten, and when I was twenty no amateur in the city could stand up four rounds with me. 'S a fact. You know Bill McCarty? No? He managed the smokers for some of them swell clubs. Well, I knocked out everything Bill brought up before me. I was a middle-weight, but could train down to a welter when necessary. I boxed all over the West Side at bouts and benefits and private entertainments, and was never put out once. "But, say, the first time I put my foot in the ring with a professional I was no more than a canned lobster. I dunno how it was- -I seemed to lose heart. I guess I got too much imagination. There was a formality and publieness about it that kind of weakened my nerve. I never won a fight in the ring. Light-weights and all kinds of scrubs used to sign up with my manager and then walk up and tap me on the wrist and see me fall. The minute I seen the crowd and a lot of gents in evening clothes down in front, and seen a professional come inside the ropes, I got as weak as ginger-ale. "Of course, it wasn't long till I couldn't get no backers, and I didn't have any more chances to fight a professional--or many amateurs, either. But lemme tell you--I was as good as most men inside the ring or out. It was just that dumb, dead feeling I had when I was up against a regular that always done me up. "Well, sir, after I had got out of the business, I got a mighty grouch on. I used to go round town licking private citizens and all kinds of unprofessionals just to please myself. I'd lick cops in dark streets and car-conductors and cab-drivers and draymen whenever I could start a row with 'em. It didn't make any difference how big they were, or how much science they had, I got away with 'em. If I'd only just have had the confidence in the ring that I had beating up the best men outside of it, I'd be wearing black pearls and heliotrope silk socks to-day. "One evening I was walking along near the Bowery, thinking about things, when along comes a slumming-party. About six or seven they was, all in swallowtails, and these silk hats that don't shine. One of the gang kind of shoves me off the sidewalk. I hadn't had a scrap in three days, and I just says, 'De-lighted!' and hits him back of the ear. "Well, we had it. That Johnnie put up as decent a little fight as you'd want to see in the moving pictures. It was on a side street, and no cops around. The other guy had a lot of science, but it only took me about six minutes to lay him out. "Some of the swallowtails dragged him up against some steps and began to fan him. Another one of 'em comes over to me and says: "'Young man, do you know what you've done?' "'Oh, beat it,' says I. 'I've done nothing but a little punching-bag work. Take Freddy back to Yale and tell him to quit studying sociology on the wrong side of the sidewalk.' "'My good fellow,' says he, 'I don't know who you are, but I'd like to. You've knocked out Reddy Burns, the champion middle-weight of the world! He came to New York yesterday, to try to get a match on with Jim Jeifries. If you--' "But when I come out of my faint I was laying on the floor in a drug- store saturated with aromatic spirits of ammonia. If I'd known that was Reddy Burns, I'd have got down in the gutter and crawled past him instead of handing him one like I did. Why, if I'd ever been in a ring and seen him climbing over the ropes, I'd have been all to the sal volatile. "So that's what imagination does," concluded Mack. "And, as I said, your case and mine is simultaneous. You'll never win out. You can't go up against the professionals. I tell you, it's a park bench for yours in this romance business." Mack, the pessimist, laughed harshly. "I'm afraid I don't see the parallel," I said, coldly. "I have only a very slight acquaintance with the prize-ring." The derelict touched my sleeve with his forefinger, for emphasis, as he explained his parable. "Every man," said he, with some dignity, "has got his lamps on something that looks good to him. With you, it's this dame that you're afraid to say your say to. With me, it was to win out in the ring. Well, you'll lose just like I did." "Why do you think I shall lose?" I asked warmly. "'Cause," said he, "you're afraid to go in the ring. You dassen't stand up before a professional. Your case and mine is just the same. You're a amateur; and that means that you'd better keep outside of the ropes." "Well, I must be going," I said, rising and looking with elaborate care at my watch. When I was twenty feet away the park-bencher called to me. "Much obliged for the dollar," he said. "And for the dime. But you'll never get 'er. You're in the amateur class." "Serves you right," I said to myself, "for hobnobbing with a tramp. His impudence!" But, as I walked, his words seemed to repeat themselves over and over again in my brain. I think I even grew angry at the man. "I'll show him!" I finally said, aloud. "I'll show him that I can fight Reddy Burns, too--even knowing who he is." I hurried to a telephone-booth and rang up the Telfair residence. A soft, sweet voice answered. Didn't I know that voice? My hand holding the receiver shook. "Is that you?" said I, employing the foolish words that form the vocabulary of every talker through the telephone. "Yes, this is I," came back the answer in the low, clear-cut tones that are an inheritance of the Telfairs. "Who is it, please?" "It's me," said I, less ungrammatically than egotistically. "It's me, and I've got a few things that I want to say to you right now and immediately and straight to the point." "Dear me," said the voice. "Oh, it's you, Mr. Arden!" I wondered if any accent on the first word was intended; Mildred was fine at saying things that you had to study out afterward. "Yes," said I. "I hope so. And now to come down to brass tacks." I thought that rather a vernacularism, if there is such a word, as soon as I had said it; but I didn't stop to apologize. "You know, of course, that I love you, and that I have been in that idiotic state for a long time. I don't want any more foolishness about it--that is, I mean I want an answer from you right now. Will you marry me or not? Hold the wire, please. Keep out, Central. Hello, hello! Will you, or will you not.?" That was just the uppercut for Reddy Burns' chin. The answer came back: "Why, Phil, dear, of course I will! I didn't know that you--that is, you never said--oh, come up to the house, please--I can't say what I want to over the 'phone. You are so importunate. But please come up to the house, won't you?" Would I? I rang the bell of the Telfair house violently. Some sort of a human came to the door and shooed me into the drawing-room. "Oh, well," said I to myself, looking at the ceiling, "any one can learn from any one. That was a pretty good philosophy of Mack's, anyhow. He didn't take advantage of his experience, but I get the benefit of it. If you want to get into the professional class, you've got to--" I stopped thinking then. Some one was coming down the stairs. My knees began to shake. I knew then how Mack had felt when a professional began to climb over the ropes. I looked around foolishly for a door or a window by which I might escape. If it had been any other girl approaching, I mightn't have-- But just then the door opened, and Bess, Mildred's younger sister, came in. I'd never seen her look so much like a glorified angel. She walked straight tip to me, and--and--I'd never noticed before what perfectly wonderful eyes and hair Elizabeth Telfair had. "Phil," she said, in the Telfair, sweet, thrilling tones, "why didn't you tell me about it before? I thought it was sister you wanted all the time, until you telephoned to me a few minutes ago!" I suppose Mack and I always will be hopeless amateurs. But, as the thing has turned out in my case, I'm mighty glad of it. Hygeia at the Solito 索利托牧场的卫生学 If you are knowing in the chronicles of the ring you will recall to mind an event in the early 'nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd seconds, a champion and a "would-be" faced each other on the alien side of an international river. So brief a conflict had rarely imposed upon the fair promise of true sport. The reporters made what they could of it, but, divested of padding, the action was sadly fugacious. The champion merely smote his victim, turned his back upon him, remarking, "I know what I done to dat stiff," and extended an arm like a ship's mast for his glove to be removed. Which accounts for a trainload of extremely disgusted gentlemen in an uproar of fancy vests and neck-wear being spilled from their pullmans in San Antonio in the early morning following the fight. Which also partly accounts for the unhappy predicament in which "Cricket" McGuire found himself as he tumbled from his car and sat upon the depot platform, torn by a spasm of that hollow, racking cough so familiar to San Antonian ears. At that time, in the uncertain light of dawn, that way passed Curtis Raidler, the Nueces County cattleman--may his shadow never measure under six foot two. The cattleman, out this early to catch the south-bound for his ranch station, stopped at the side of the distressed patron of sport, and spoke in the kindly drawl of his ilk and region, "Got it pretty bad, bud?" "Cricket" McGuire, ex-feather-weight prizefighter, tout, jockey, follower of the "ponies," all-round sport, and manipulator of the gum balls and walnut shells, looked up pugnaciously at the imputation cast by "bud." "G'wan," he rasped, "telegraph pole. I didn't ring for yer." Another paroxysm wrung him, and he leaned limply against a convenient baggage truck. Raidler waited patiently, glancing around at the white hats, short overcoats, and big cigars thronging the platform. "You're from the No'th, ain't you, bud?" he asked when the other was partially recovered. "Come down to see the fight?" "Fight!" snapped McGuire. "Puss-in-the-corner! 'Twas a hypodermic injection. Handed him just one like a squirt of dope, and he's asleep, and no tanbark needed in front of his residence. Fight!" He rattled a bit, coughed, and went on, hardly addressing the cattleman, but rather for the relief of voicing his troubles. "No more dead sure t'ings for me. But Rus Sage himself would have snatched at it. Five to one dat de boy from Cork wouldn't stay t'ree rounds is what I invested in. Put my last cent on, and could already smell the sawdust in dat all-night joint of Jimmy Delaney's on T'irty-seventh Street I was goin' to buy. And den--say, telegraph pole, what a gazaboo a guy is to put his whole roll on one turn of the gaboozlum!" "You're plenty right," said the big cattleman; "more 'specially when you lose. Son, you get up and light out for a hotel. You got a mighty bad cough. Had it long?" "Lungs," said McGuire comprehensively. "I got it. The croaker says I'll come to time for six months longer--maybe a year if I hold my gait. I wanted to settle down and take care of myself. Dat's why I speculated on dat five to one perhaps. I had a t'ousand iron dollars saved up. If I winned I was goin' to buy Delaney's cafe. Who'd a t'ought dat stiff would take a nap in de foist round--say?" "It's a hard deal," commented Raidler, looking down at the diminutive form of McGuire crumpled against the truck. "But you go to a hotel and rest. There's the Menger and the Maverick, and--" "And the Fi'th Av'noo, and the Waldorf-Astoria," mimicked McGuire. "Told you I went broke. I'm on de bum proper. I've got one dime left. Maybe a trip to Europe or a sail in me private yacht would fix me up-- pa-per!" He flung his dime at a newsboy, got his Express, propped his back against the truck, and was at once rapt in the account of his Waterloo, as expanded by the ingenious press. Curtis Raidler interrogated an enormous gold watch, and laid his hand on McGuire's shoulder. "Come on, bud," he said. "We got three minutes to catch the train." Sarcasm seemed to be McGuire's vein. "You ain't seen me cash in any chips or call a turn since I told you I was broke, a minute ago, have you? Friend, chase yourself away." "You're going down to my ranch," said the cattleman, "and stay till you get well. Six months'll fix you good as new." He lifted McGuire with one hand, and half-dragged him in the direction of the train. "What about the money?" said McGuire, struggling weakly to escape. "Money for what?" asked Raidler, puzzled. They eyed each other, not understanding, for they touched only as at the gear of bevelled cog- wheels--at right angles, and moving upon different axes. Passengers on the south-bound saw them seated together, and wondered at the conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit, indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type neither new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different soil. Six feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a crystal brook, he represented the union of the West and South. Few accurate pictures of his kind have been made, for art galleries are so small and the mutoscope is as yet unknown in Texas. After all, the only possible medium of portrayal of Raidler's kind would be the fresco--something high and simple and cool and unframed. They were rolling southward on the International. The timber was huddling into little, dense green motts at rare distances before the inundation of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the ranches; the domain of the kings of the kine. McGuire sat, collapsed into his corner of the seat, receiving with acid suspicion the conversation of the cattleman. What was the "game" of this big "geezer" who was carrying him off? Altruism would have been McGuire's last guess. "He ain't no farmer," thought the captive, "and he ain't no con man, for sure. W'at's his lay? You trail in, Cricket, and see how many cards he draws. You're up against it, anyhow. You got a nickel and gallopin' consumption, and you better lay low. Lay low and see w'at's his game." At Rincon, a hundred miles from San Antonio, they left the train for a buckboard which was waiting there for Raidler. In this they travelled the thirty miles between the station and their destination. If anything could, this drive should have stirred the acrimonious McGuire to a sense of his ransom. They sped upon velvety wheels across an exhilarant savanna. The pair of Spanish ponies struck a nimble, tireless trot, which gait they occasionally relieved by a wild, untrammelled gallop. The air was wine and seltzer, perfumed, as they absorbed it, with the delicate redolence of prairie flowers. The road perished, and the buckboard swam the uncharted billows of the grass itself, steered by the practised hand of Raidler, to whom each tiny distant mott of trees was a signboard, each convolution of the low hills a voucher of course and distance. But McGuire reclined upon his spine, seeing nothing but a desert, and receiving the cattleman's advances with sullen distrust. "W'at's he up to?" was the burden of his thoughts; "w'at kind of a gold brick has the big guy got to sell?" McGuire was only applying the measure of the streets he had walked to a range bounded by the horizon and the fourth dimension. A week before, while riding the prairies, Raidler had come upon a sick and weakling calf deserted and bawling. Without dismounting he had reached and slung the distressed bossy across his saddle, and dropped it at the ranch for the boys to attend to. It was impossible for McGuire to know or comprehend that, in the eyes of the cattleman, his case and that of the calf were identical in interest and demand upon his assistance. A creature was ill and helpless; he had the power to render aid--these were the only postulates required for the cattleman to act. They formed his system of logic and the most of his creed. McGuire was the seventh invalid whom Raidler had picked up thus casually in San Antonio, where so many thousand go for the ozone that is said to linger about its contracted streets. Five of them had been guests of Solito Ranch until they had been able to leave, cured or better, and exhausting the vocabulary of tearful gratitude. One came too late, but rested very comfortably, at last, under a ratama tree in the garden. So, then, it was no surprise to the ranchhold when the buckboard spun to the door, and Raidler took up his debile protege like a handful of rags and set him down upon the gallery. McGuire looked upon things strange to him. The ranch-house was the best in the country. It was built of brick hauled one hundred miles by wagon, but it was of but one story, and its four rooms were completely encircled by a mud floor "gallery." The miscellaneous setting of horses, dogs, saddles, wagons, guns, and cow-punchers' paraphernalia oppressed the metropolitan eyes of the wrecked sportsman. "Well, here we are at home," said Raidler, cheeringly. "It's a h--l of a looking place," said McGuire promptly, as he rolled upon the gallery floor in a fit of coughing. "We'll try to make it comfortable for you, buddy," said the cattleman gently. "It ain't fine inside; but it's the outdoors, anyway, that'll do you the most good. This'll be your room, in here. Anything we got, you ask for it." He led McGuire into the east room. The floor was bare and clean. White curtains waved in the gulf breeze through the open windows. A big willow rocker, two straight chairs, a long table covered with newspapers, pipes, tobacco, spurs, and cartridges stood in the centre. Some well-mounted heads of deer and one of an enormous black javeli projected from the walls. A wide, cool cot-bed stood in a corner. Nueces County people regarded this guest chamber as fit for a prince. McGuire showed his eyeteeth at it. He took out his nickel and spun it up to the ceiling. "T'ought I was lyin' about the money, did ye? Well, you can frisk me if you wanter. Dat's the last simoleon in the treasury. Who's goin' to pay?" The cattleman's clear grey eyes looked steadily from under his grizzly brows into the huckleberry optics of his guest. After a little he said simply, and not ungraciously, "I'll be much obliged to you, son, if you won't mention money any more. Once was quite a plenty. Folks I ask to my ranch don't have to pay anything, and they very scarcely ever offers it. Supper'll be ready in half an hour. There's water in the pitcher, and some, cooler, to drink, in that red jar hanging on the gallery." "Where's the bell?" asked McGuire, looking about. "Bell for what?" "Bell to ring for things. I can't--see here," he exploded in a sudden, weak fury, "I never asked you to bring me here. I never held you up for a cent. I never gave you a hard-luck story till you asked me. Here I am fifty miles from a bellboy or a cocktail. I'm sick. I can't hustle. Gee! but I'm up against it!" McGuire fell upon the cot and sobbed shiveringly. Raidler went to the door and called. A slender, bright-complexioned Mexican youth about twenty came quickly. Raidler spoke to him in Spanish. "Ylario, it is in my mind that I promised you the position of vaquero on the San Carlos range at the fall rodeo." "Si, senor, such was your goodness." "Listen. This senorito is my friend. He is very sick. Place yourself at his side. Attend to his wants at all times. Have much patience and care with him. And when he is well, or--and when he is well, instead of vaquero I will make you mayordomo of the Rancho de las Piedras. Esta bueno?" "Si, si--mil gracias, senor." Ylario tried to kneel upon the floor in his gratitude, but the cattleman kicked at him benevolently, growling, "None of your opery-house antics, now." Ten minutes later Ylario came from McGuire's room and stood before Raidler. "The little senor," he announced, "presents his compliments" (Raidler credited Ylario with the preliminary) "and desires some pounded ice, one hot bath, one gin feez-z, that the windows be all closed, toast, one shave, one Newyorkheral', cigarettes, and to send one telegram." Raidler took a quart bottle of whisky from his medicine cabinet. "Here, take him this," he said. Thus was instituted the reign of terror at the Solito Ranch. For a few weeks McGuire blustered and boasted and swaggered before the cow- punchers who rode in for miles around to see this latest importation of Raidler's. He was an absolutely new experience to them. He explained to them all the intricate points of sparring and the tricks of training and defence. He opened to their minds' view all the indecorous life of a tagger after professional sports. His jargon of slang was a continuous joy and surprise to them. His gestures, his strange poses, his frank ribaldry of tongue and principle fascinated them. He was like a being from a new world. Strange to say, this new world he had entered did not exist to him. He was an utter egoist of bricks and mortar. He had dropped out, he felt, into open space for a time, and all it contained was an audience for his reminiscences. Neither the limitless freedom of the prairie days nor the grand hush of the close-drawn, spangled nights touched him. All the hues of Aurora could not win him from the pink pages of a sporting journal. "Get something for nothing," was his mission in life; "Thirty-seventh" Street was his goal. Nearly two months after his arrival he began to complain that he felt worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous kobold or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing. The keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a gehenna against his will; that he was dying of neglect and lack of comforts. With all his dire protestations of increasing illness, to the eye of others he remained unchanged. His currant-like eyes were as bright and diabolic as ever; his voice was as rasping; his callous face, with the skin drawn tense as a drum-head, had no flesh to lose. A flush on his prominent cheek bones each afternoon hinted that a clinical thermometer might have revealed a symptom, and percussion might have established the fact that McGuire was breathing with only one lung, but his appearance remained the same. In constant attendance upon him was Ylario, whom the coming reward of the mayordomoship must have greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained him to a bitter existence. The air--the man's only chance for life--he commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The room was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered it must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp's interminable gasconade concerning his scandalous career. The oddest thing of all was the relation existing between McGuire and his benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was something like that of a peevish, perverse child toward an indulgent parent. When Raidler would leave the ranch McGuire would fall into a fit of malevolent, silent sullenness. When he returned, he would be met by a string of violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler's attitude toward his charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman seemed actually to assume and feel the character assigned to him by McGuire's intemperate accusations--the character of tyrant and guilty oppressor. He seemed to have adopted the responsibility of the fellow's condition, and he always met his tirades with a pacific, patient, and even remorseful kindness that never altered. One day Raidler said to him, "Try more air, son. You can have the buckboard and a driver every day if you'll go. Try a week or two in one of the cow camps. I'll fix you up plumb comfortable. The ground, and the air next to it--them's the things to cure you. I knowed a man from Philadelphy, sicker than you are, got lost on the Guadalupe, and slept on the bare grass in sheep camps for two weeks. Well, sir, it started him getting well, which he done. Close to the ground--that's where the medicine in the air stays. Try a little hossback riding now. There's a gentle pony--" "What've I done to yer?" screamed McGuire. "Did I ever doublecross yer? Did I ask you to bring me here? Drive me out to your camps if you wanter; or stick a knife in me and save trouble. Ride! I can't lift my feet. I couldn't sidestep a jab from a five-year-old kid. That's what your d--d ranch has done for me. There's nothing to eat, nothing to see, and nobody to talk to but a lot of Reubens who don't know a punching bag from a lobster salad." "It's a lonesome place, for certain," apologised Raidler abashedly. "We got plenty, but it's rough enough. Anything you think of you want, the boys'll ride up and fetch it down for you." It was Chad Murchison, a cow-puncher from the Circle Bar outfit, who first suggested that McGuire's illness was fraudulent. Chad had brought a basket of grapes for him thirty miles, and four out of his way, tied to his saddle-horn. After remaining in the smoke-tainted room for a while, he emerged and bluntly confided his suspicions to Raidler. "His arm," said Chad, "is harder'n a diamond. He interduced me to what he called a shore-perplexus punch, and 'twas like being kicked twice by a mustang. He's playin' it low down on you, Curt. He ain't no sicker'n I am. I hate to say it, but the runt's workin' you for range and shelter." The cattleman's ingenuous mind refused to entertain Chad's view of the case, and when, later, he came to apply the test, doubt entered not into his motives. One day, about noon, two men drove up to the ranch, alighted, hitched, and came in to dinner; standing and general invitations being the custom of the country. One of them was a great San Antonio doctor, whose costly services had been engaged by a wealthy cowman who had been laid low by an accidental bullet. He was now being driven back to the station to take the train back to town. After dinner Raidler took him aside, pushed a twenty-dollar bill against his hand, and said: "Doc, there's a young chap in that room I guess has got a bad case of consumption. I'd like for you to look him over and see just how bad he is, and if we can do anything for him." "How much was that dinner I just ate, Mr. Raidler?" said the doctor bluffly, looking over his spectacles. Raidler returned the money to his pocket. The doctor immediately entered McGuire's room, and the cattleman seated himself upon a heap of saddles on the gallery, ready to reproach himself in the event the verdict should be unfavourable. In ten minutes the doctor came briskly out. "Your man," he said promptly, "is as sound as a new dollar. His lungs are better than mine. Respiration, temperature, and pulse normal. Chest expansion four inches. Not a sign of weakness anywhere. Of course I didn't examine for the bacillus, but it isn't there. You can put my name to the diagnosis. Even cigarettes and a vilely close room haven't hurt him. Coughs, does he? Well, you tell him it isn't necessary. You asked if there is anything we could do for him. Well, I advise you to set him digging post-holes or breaking mustangs. There's our team ready. Good- day, sir." And like a puff of wholesome, blustery wind the doctor was off. Raidler reached out and plucked a leaf from a mesquite bush by the railing, and began chewing it thoughtfully. The branding season was at hand, and the next morning Ross Hargis, foreman of the outfit, was mustering his force of some twenty-five men at the ranch, ready to start for the San Carlos range, where the work was to begin. By six o'clock the horses were all saddled, the grub wagon ready, and the cow-punchers were swinging themselves upon their mounts, when Raidler bade them wait. A boy was bringing up an extra pony, bridled and saddled, to the gate. Raidler walked to McGuire's room and threw open the door. McGuire was lying on his cot, not yet dressed, smoking. "Get up," said the cattleman, and his voice was clear and brassy, like a bugle. "How's that?" asked McGuire, a little startled. "Get up and dress. I can stand a rattlesnake, but I hate a liar. Do I have to tell you again?" He caught McGuire by the neck and stood him on the floor. "Say, friend," cried McGuire wildly, "are you bug-house? I'm sick-- see? I'll croak if I got to hustle. What've I done to yer?"--he began his chronic whine--"I never asked yer to--" "Put on your clothes," called Raidler in a rising tone. Swearing, stumbling, shivering, keeping his amazed, shining eyes upon the now menacing form of the aroused cattleman, McGuire managed to tumble into his clothes. Then Raidler took him by the collar and shoved him out and across the yard to the extra pony hitched at the gate. The cow-punchers lolled in their saddles, open-mouthed. "Take this man," said Raidler to Ross Hargis, "and put him to work. Make him work hard, sleep hard, and eat hard. You boys know I done what I could for him, and he was welcome. Yesterday the best doctor in San Antone examined him, and says he's got the lungs of a burro and the constitution of a steer. You know what to do with him, Ross." Ross Hargis only smiled grimly. "Aw," said McGuire, looking intently at Raidler, with a peculiar expression upon his face, "the croaker said I was all right, did he? Said I was fakin', did he? You put him onto me. You t'ought I wasn't sick. You said I was a liar. Say, friend, I talked rough, I know, but I didn't mean most of it. If you felt like I did--aw! I forgot--I ain't sick, the croaker says. Well, friend, now I'll go work for yer. Here's where you play even." He sprang into the saddle easily as a bird, got the quirt from the horn, and gave his pony a slash with it. "Cricket," who once brought in Good Boy by a neck at Hawthorne--and a 10 to 1 shot--had his foot in the stirrups again. McGuire led the cavalcade as they dashed away for San Carlos, and the cow-punchers gave a yell of applause as they closed in behind his dust. But in less than a mile he had lagged to the rear, and was last man when they struck the patch of high chaparral below the horse pens. Behind a clump of this he drew rein, and held a handkerchief to his mouth. He took it away drenched with bright, arterial blood, and threw it carefully into a clump of prickly pear. Then he slashed with his quirt again, gasped "G'wan" to his astonished pony, and galloped after the gang. That night Raidler received a message from his old home in Alabama. There had been a death in the family; an estate was to divide, and they called for him to come. Daylight found him in the buckboard, skimming the prairies for the station. It was two months before he returned. When he arrived at the ranch house he found it well-nigh deserted save for Ylario, who acted as a kind of steward during his absence. Little by little the youth made him acquainted with the work done while he was away. The branding camp, he was informed, was still doing business. On account of many severe storms the cattle had been badly scattered, and the branding had been accomplished but slowly. The camp was now in the valley of the Guadalupe, twenty miles away. "By the way," said Raidler, suddenly remembering, "that fellow I sent along with them--McGuire--is he working yet?" "I do not know," said Ylario. "Mans from the camp come verree few times to the ranch. So plentee work with the leetle calves. They no say. Oh, I think that fellow McGuire he dead much time ago." "Dead!" said Raidler. "What you talking about?" "Verree sick fellow, McGuire," replied Ylario, with a shrug of his shoulder. "I theenk he no live one, two month when he go away." "Shucks!" said Raidler. "He humbugged you, too, did he? The doctor examined him and said he was sound as a mesquite knot." "That doctor," said Ylario, smiling, "he tell you so? That doctor no see McGuire." "Talk up," ordered Raidler. "What the devil do you mean?" "McGuire," continued the boy tranquilly, "he getting drink water outside when that doctor come in room. That doctor take me and pound me all over here with his fingers"--putting his hand to his chest--"I not know for what. He put his ear here and here and here, and listen-- I not know for what. He put little glass stick in my mouth. He feel my arm here. He make me count like whisper--so--twenty, treinta, cuarenta. Who knows," concluded Ylario, with a deprecating spread of his hands, "for what that doctor do those verree droll and such-like things?" "What horses are up?" asked Raidler shortly. "Paisano is grazing out behind the little corral, senor." "Saddle him for me at once." Within a very few minutes the cattleman was mounted and away. Paisano, well named after that ungainly but swift-running bird, struck into his long lope that ate up the ground like a strip of macaroni. In two hours and a quarter Raidler, from a gentle swell, saw the branding camp by a water hole in the Guadalupe. Sick with expectancy of the news he feared, he rode up, dismounted, and dropped Paisano's reins. So gentle was his heart that at that moment he would have pleaded guilty to the murder of McGuire. The only being in the camp was the cook, who was just arranging the hunks of barbecued beef, and distributing the tin coffee cups for supper. Raidler evaded a direct question concerning the one subject in his mind. "Everything all right in camp, Pete?" he managed to inquire. "So, so," said Pete, conservatively. "Grub give out twice. Wind scattered the cattle, and we've had to rake the brush for forty mile. I need a new coffee-pot. And the mosquitos is some more hellish than common." "The boys--all well?" Pete was no optimist. Besides, inquiries concerning the health of cow- punchers were not only superfluous, but bordered on flaccidity. It was not like the boss to make them. "What's left of 'em don't miss no calls to grub," the cook conceded. "What's left of 'em?" repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically he began to look around for McGuire's grave. He had in his mind a white slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But immediately he knew that was foolish. "Sure," said Pete; "what's left. Cow camps change in two months. Some's gone." Raidler nerved himself. "That--chap--I sent along--McGuire--did--he--" "Say," interrupted Pete, rising with a chunk of corn bread in each hand, "that was a dirty shame, sending that poor, sick kid to a cow camp. A doctor that couldn't tell he was graveyard meat ought to be skinned with a cinch buckle. Game as he was, too--it's a scandal among snakes--lemme tell you what he done. First night in camp the boys started to initiate him in the leather breeches degree. Ross Hargis busted him one swipe with his chaparreras, and what do you reckon the poor child did? Got up, the little skeeter, and licked Ross. Licked Ross Hargis. Licked him good. Hit him plenty and everywhere and hard. Ross'd just get up and pick out a fresh place to lay down on agin. "Then that McGuire goes off there and lays down with his head in the grass and bleeds. A hem'ridge they calls it. He lays there eighteen hours by the watch, and they can't budge him. Then Ross Hargis, who loves any man who can lick him, goes to work and damns the doctors from Greenland to Poland Chiny; and him and Green Branch Johnson they gets McGuire into a tent, and spells each other feedin' him chopped raw meat and whisky. "But it looks like the kid ain't got no appetite to git well, for they misses him from the tent in the night and finds him rootin' in the grass, and likewise a drizzle fallin'. 'G'wan,' he says, 'lemme go and die like I wanter. He said I was a liar and a fake and I was playin' sick. Lemme alone.' "Two weeks," went on the cook, "he laid around, not noticin' nobody, and then--" A sudden thunder filled the air, and a score of galloping centaurs crashed through the brush into camp. "Illustrious rattlesnakes!" exclaimed Pete, springing all ways at once; "here's the boys come, and I'm an assassinated man if supper ain't ready in three minutes." But Raidler saw only one thing. A little, brown-faced, grinning chap, springing from his saddle in the full light of the fire. McGuire was not like that, and yet-- In another instant the cattleman was holding him by the hand and shoulder. "Son, son, how goes it?" was all he found to say. "Close to the ground, says you," shouted McGuire, crunching Raidler's fingers in a grip of steel; "and dat's where I found it--healt' and strengt', and tumbled to what a cheap skate I been actin'. T'anks fer kickin' me out, old man. And--say! de joke's on dat croaker, ain't it? I looked t'rough the window and see him playin' tag on dat Dago kid's solar plexus." "You son of a tinker," growled the cattleman, "whyn't you talk up and say the doctor never examined you?" "Ah--g'wan!" said McGuire, with a flash of his old asperity, "nobody can't bluff me. You never ast me. You made your spiel, and you t'rowed me out, and I let it go at dat. And, say, friend, dis chasin' cows is outer sight. Dis is de whitest bunch of sports I ever travelled with. You'll let me stay, won't yer, old man?" Raidler looked wonderingly toward Ross Hargis. "That cussed little runt," remarked Ross tenderly, "is the Jo-dartin'est hustler--and the hardest hitter in anybody's cow camp." 索利托牧场的卫生学 假如你很熟悉拳击界的纪录,你大概记得九十年代初期有过这么一件事:在一条国境河流的彼岸,一个拳击冠军同一个想当冠军的选手对峙了短短的一分零几秒钟。观众指望多少看到一点货真价实的玩意儿,万万没料到这次交锋竟然这么短暂。新闻记者们卖足力气,可是巧妇难为无米之炊,他们报道的消息仍旧干巴得可怜。冠军轻易地击倒了对手,回过身说:“我知道我一拳已经够那家伙受用了。”接着便把胳臂伸得象船桅似的,让助手替他脱掉手套。 由于这件事,第二天一清早,一列车穿着花哨的坎肩,打着漂亮的领结,大为扫兴的先生们从普尔门卧车下到圣安东尼奥车站。也由于这件事,“蟋蟀”麦圭尔跌跌撞撞地从车厢里出来,坐在车站月台上,发作了一阵圣安东尼奥人非常耳熟的剧烈干咳。那当儿,在熹微的晨光中,纽西斯郡的牧场主,身高六英尺二英寸的柯蒂斯•雷德勒碰巧走过。 牧场主这么早出来,是赶南行的火车回牧场去的。他在这个倒霉的拳击迷身边站停,用拖长的本地口音和善地问道:“病得很厉害吗,老弟?” “蟋蟀”麦圭尔听到“老弟”这个不客气的称呼,立刻寻衅似地抬起了眼睛。他以前是次轻级的拳击家,又是马赛预测人,骑师,赛马场的常客,全能的赌徒和各种骗局的行家。 “你走你的路吧,”他嘶哑地说,“电线杆。我没有吩咐你来。” 他又剧烈地咳了一阵,软弱无力地往近便的一只衣箱上一靠。雷德勒耐心地等着,打量着月台上周围那些白礼帽、短大衣和粗雪茄。“你是从北方来的,是吗,老弟?”等对方缓过气来时,他问道。“是来看拳赛的吗?” “拳赛!”麦圭尔冒火说。“只能算是抢壁角游戏!简直象是一针皮下注射。他挨了一拳,就象是打了一针麻醉药似的,躺在地下不醒了,门口连墓碑都不用竖。这算是哪门子拳赛!”他喉咙里咯咯响了一阵,咳了几声,又往下说;他的话不一定是对牧场主而发,只是把心头的烦恼讲出来,觉得轻松一点罢了。“其实我对这件事是完全有把握的。换了拉塞•塞奇①也会抓住这么个机会。我认定那个从科克来的家伙能支持三个回合。我以五对一的赌注打赌,把所有的钱都押上去了。我本来打算把第三十七号街上杰米•德莱尼的那家通宵咖啡馆买下来,以为准能到手,几乎已经闻到充填酒瓶箱的锯木屑的气味了。可是——喂,电线杆,一个人把他所有的钱一次下注是多么傻呀!” 『①指拉塞尔•塞奇(1816~1906):美国金融家,股票大王。』“说得对,”大个子牧场主说,“赌输之后说的话尤其对。老弟,你还是起来去找一家旅馆吧。你咳得很厉害。病得很久了吗?” “我害的是肺病。”麦圭尔很有自知之明地说。“大夫说我还能活六个月——慢一点也许还能活一年。我要安顿下来,保养保养。那也许就是我为什么要以五比一的赌注来搏一下的缘故。我攒了一千块现钱。假如赢的话,我就把德莱尼的咖啡馆买下来。谁料到那家伙在第一个回合就打瞌睡了呢——你倒说说看?” “运气不好。”雷德勒说,同时看看麦圭尔靠在衣箱上的蜷缩消瘦的身体。“你还是去旅馆休息吧。这儿有门杰旅馆,马弗里克旅馆,还有——” “还有五马路旅馆,沃尔多夫•阿斯托里亚旅馆①。”麦圭尔揶揄地学着说。“我对你讲过,我已经破产啦。我现在跟叫化子差不多。我只剩下一毛钱。也许到欧洲去旅行一次,或者乘了私人游艇去航行航行,对我的身体有好处——喂,报纸!” 『①沃尔多夫•阿斯托里亚:纽约的豪华旅馆。』他把那一毛钱扔给了报童,买了一份《快报》,背靠着衣箱,立即全神贯注地阅读富于创造天才的报馆所渲染的关于他的惨败的报道了。 柯蒂斯•雷德勒看了看他那硕大的金表,把手按在了麦圭尔的肩膀上。 “来吧,老弟。”他说。“再过三分钟,火车就要开了。” 麦圭尔生性就喜欢挖苦人。 “一分钟之前,我对你说过我已经破产了。在这期间,你没有看见我捞进筹码,也没有发现我时来运转,是不是?朋友,你自己赶快上车吧。” “你到我的牧场去,”牧场主说,“一直呆到恢复。不出六个月,准保你换一个人。”他一把抓起麦圭尔,拖他朝火车走去。 “费用怎么办?”麦圭尔说,想挣脱可又挣脱不掉。 “什么费用?”雷德勒莫名其妙地说。他们你看着我,我看着你,可是互相并不了解,因为他们的接触只象是格格不入的斜齿轮,在不同方向的轴上转动。 南行火车上的乘客们,看见这两个截然不同的类型凑在一起,不禁暗暗纳罕。麦圭尔只有五英尺一英寸高,容貌既不象横滨人,也不象都柏林①人。他的眼睛又亮又圆,面颊和下巴瘦骨棱棱,脸上满是打破后缝起来的伤痕,神气显得又可怕,又不屈不挠,象大黄蜂那样好勇斗狠。他这种类型既不新奇,也不陌生。雷德勒却是不同土壤上的产物。他身高六英尺二英寸,肩膀宽阔,但是象清澈的小溪那样,一眼就望得到底。他这种类型可以代表西部同南部的结合。能够正确地描绘他这种人的画像非常少,因为艺术馆是那么小,而得克萨斯还没有电影院。总之,要描绘雷德勒这种类型只有用壁画——用某种崇高、朴实、冷静和不配镜框的图画。 『①横滨是日本商埠;都柏林是爱尔兰共和国首都。』他们坐在国际铁路公司的火车上驶向南方。在一望无际的绿色大草原上,远处的树木汇成一簇簇青葱茂密的小丛林。这就是牧场所在的地方;是统治牛群的帝王的领土。 麦圭尔有气无力地坐在座位角落里,猜疑地同牧场主谈着话。这个大家伙把他带走,究竟是在玩什么把戏?麦圭尔怎么也不会想到利他主义上去。“他不是农人,”这个俘虏想道,“他也绝对不是骗子。他是干什么的呢?走着瞧吧,蟋蟀,看他还有些什么花招。反正你现在不名一文。你有的只是五分钱和奔马性肺结核,你还是静静等着。静等着,看他耍什么把戏。” 到了离圣安东尼奥一百英里的林康,他们下了火车,乘上在那儿等候雷德勒的四轮马车。从火车站到他们的目的地还有三十英里,就是坐马车去的。如果有什么事能使麦圭尔觉得象是被绑架的话,那就是坐上这辆马车了。他们的马车轻捷地穿过一片令人赏心悦目的大草原。那对西班牙种的小马轻快地、不停地小跑着,间或任性地飞跑一阵子。他们呼吸的空气中有一股草原花朵的芳香,象美酒和矿泉水那般沁人心脾。道路消失了,四轮马车在一片航海图上没有标出的青草的海洋中游弋,由老练的雷德勒掌舵;对他来说,每一簇遥远的小丛林都是一个路标,每一片起伏的小山都代表方向和里程。但是麦圭尔仰天靠着,他看到的只是一片荒野。他随着牧场主行进,心里既不高兴,也不信任。“他打算干什么?”这个想法成了他的包袱;“这个大家伙葫芦里卖的是什么药?”麦圭尔只能用他熟悉的城市里的尺度来衡量这个以地平线和玄想为界限的牧场。 一星期以前,雷德勒在草原上驰骋时,发现一头被遗弃的病小牛在哞哞叫唤。他没下马就抓起那头可怜的小牛,往鞍头一搭,带回牧场,让手下人去照顾。麦圭尔不可能知道,也不可能理解,在牧场主看来,他的情况同那头小牛完全一样,都需要帮助。一个动物害了病,无依无靠;而雷德勒又有能力提供帮助——他单凭这些条件就采取了行动。这些条件组成了他的逻辑体系和行为准则。据说,圣安东尼奥狭窄的街道上弥漫着臭氧,成千害肺病的人便去那儿疗养。在雷德勒凑巧碰到并带回牧场的病人中间,麦圭尔已经是第七个了。在索利托牧场做客的五个病人,先后恢复了健康或者明显好转,感激涕零地离开了牧场。一个来得太迟了,但终于非常舒适地安息在园子里一株枝叶披覆的树下。 因此,当四轮马车飞驰到门口,雷德勒把那个虚弱的被保护人象一团破布似地提起来,放到回廊上的时候,牧场上的人并不觉得奇怪。 麦圭尔打量着陌生的环境。这个牧场的庄院是当地最好的。砌房的砖是从一百英里以外运来的。不过房子只有一层,四间屋子外面围着一道泥地的回廊。杂乱的马具、狗具、马鞍、大车、枪枝、以及牧童的装备,叫那个过惯城市生活,如今落魄的运动家看了怪不顺眼。 “好啦,我们到家啦。”雷德勒快活地说。 “这个鬼地方。”麦圭尔马上接口说,他突然一阵咳嗽,憋得他上气不接下气,在回廊的泥地上打滚。 “我们会想办法让你舒服些,老弟。”牧场主和气地说。“屋子里面并不精致;不过对你最有好处的倒是室外。里面的一间归你住。只要是我们有的东西,你尽管要好啦。” 他把麦圭尔领到东面的屋子里。地上很干净,没有地毯。打开的窗户里吹来一阵阵海湾风,拂动着白色的窗帘。屋子当中有一张柳条大摇椅,两把直背椅子,一张长桌,桌子上满是报纸、烟斗、烟草、马刺和子弹。墙壁上安着几只剥制得很好的鹿头和一个硕大的黑野猪头。屋角有一张宽阔而凉爽的帆布床。纽西斯郡的人认为这间客房给王子住都合适。麦圭尔却朝它撇撇嘴。他掏出他那五分钱的镍币,往天花板上一扔。 “你以为我说没钱是撒谎吗?你高兴的话,不妨搜我口袋。那是库房里最后一枚钱币啦。谁来付钱呀?” 牧场主那清澈的灰色眼睛,从灰色的眉毛底下坚定地瞅着他客人那黑珠子般的眼睛。歇了一会儿,他直截了当,然而并不失礼地说:“老弟,假如你不再提钱,我就很领你的情。一次已经足够啦。被我请到牧场上来的人一个钱也不用花,他们也很少提起要付钱。再过半小时就可以吃晚饭了。壶里有水,挂在回廊里的红瓦罐里的水比较凉,可以喝。” “铃在哪儿?”麦圭尔打量着周围说。 “什么铃?” “召唤佣人拿东西的铃。我可不能——喂,”他突然软弱无力地发起火来,“我根本没请你把我带来。我根本没有拦住你,向你要过一分钱。我根本没有先开口把我的不幸告诉你,你问了我才说的。现在我落到这里,离侍者和鸡尾酒有五十英里远。我有病,不能动。哟!可是我一个钱也没有!”麦圭尔扑到床上,抽抽噎噎地哭了起来。 雷德勒走到门口喊了一声。一个二十来岁,身材瘦长,面色红润的墨西哥小伙子很快就来了。雷德勒对他讲西班牙语。 “伊拉里奥,我记得我答应过你,到秋季赶牲口的时候让你去圣卡洛斯牧场当牧童。” “是的,先生,承蒙你的好意。” “听着,这位小先生是我的朋友。他病得很厉害。你待在他身边。随时伺候他。耐心照顾他。等他好了,或者——唔,等他好了,我就让你当多石牧场的总管,比牧童更强,好吗?” “那敢情好——多谢你,先生。”伊拉里奥感激得几乎要跪下去,但是牧场主善意地踹了他一脚,喝道:“别演滑稽戏啦。” 十分钟后,伊拉里奥从麦圭尔的屋子里出来,站到雷德勒面前。 “那位小先生,”他说,“向你致意,”(这是雷德勒教给伊拉里奥的规矩)“他要一些碎冰,洗个热水浴,喝掺有柠檬汽水的杜松子酒,把所有的窗子都关严,还要烤面包,修脸,一份《纽约先驱报》,香烟,再要发一个电报。” 雷德勒从药品柜里取出一夸特容量的威士忌酒瓶。“把这给他。”他说。 索利托牧场上的恐怖统治就是这样开始的。最初几个星期,各处的牧童骑着马赶了好几英里路来看雷德勒新弄来的客人;麦圭尔则在他们面前吆喝,吹牛,大摆架子。在他们眼里,他完全是个新奇的人物。他把拳斗的错综复杂的奥妙和腾挪闪躲的诀窍解释给他们听。他让他们了解到靠运动吃饭的人的不规矩的生活方式。他的切口和俚语老是引起他们发笑和诧异。他的手势,特别的姿态,赤裸裸的下流话和下流想法,把他们迷住了。他好象是从一个新世界来的人物。 说来奇怪,他所进入的这个新环境对他毫无影响。他是个彻头彻尾,顽固不化的自私的人。他觉得自己仿佛暂时退居到一个空间,这个空间里只有听他回忆往事的人。无论是草原上白天的无边自由也好,还是夜晚的星光灿烂、庄严肃穆也好,都不能触动他。曙光的色彩并不能把他的注意力从粉红色的运动报刊上转移过来。“不劳而获”是他毕生的目标;第三十七号街上的咖啡馆是他奋斗的方向。 他来了将近两个月后,便开始抱怨说,他觉得身体更糟了。从那时起,他就成了牧场上的负担,贪鬼和梦魇①。他象一个恶毒的妖精或长舌妇,独自关在屋子里,整天发牢骚,抱怨,詈骂,责备。他抱怨说,他被人家不由分说地骗到了地狱里;他就要因为缺乏照顾和舒适而死了。尽管他威胁说他的病越来越重,在别人眼里,他却没有变。他那双葡萄干似的眼睛仍旧那么亮,那么可怕;他的嗓音仍旧那么刺耳;他那皮肤绷得象鼓面一般紧;起老茧的脸并没有消瘦。他那高耸的颧骨每天下午泛起两片潮红,说明一支体温计也许可以揭露某种征状。胸部叩诊也许可以证实麦圭尔只有半边的肺在呼吸,不过他的外表仍跟以前一样。 『①“梦魇”的原文是“the Old Man of the Sea”,典出《天方夜谭》故事中骑在水手辛巴德肩上不肯下来,老是驱使辛巴德涉水的海边老人。』经常伺候他的是伊拉里奥。指日可待的总管职位的许诺肯定给了他极大的激励,因为服侍麦圭尔的差使简直是活受罪。麦圭尔吩咐关上窗子,拉下窗帘,不让他唯一的救星新鲜空气进来。屋子里整天弥漫着污浊的蓝色的烟雾;谁走进这间叫人透不过气来的屋子,谁就得坐着听那小妖精无休无止地吹嘘他那不光彩的经历。 最叫人纳闷的是麦圭尔同他恩人之间的关系。这个病人对牧场主的态度,正如一个倔强乖张的小孩儿对待溺爱的父母。雷德勒离开牧场的时候,麦圭尔就不怀好意地闷声不响,发着脾气。雷德勒一回来,麦圭尔就激烈地、刻毒地把他骂得狗血喷头。雷德勒对他客人的态度也相当费解。牧场主仿佛真的承认并且觉得自己正是麦圭尔所猛烈攻击的人物——专制暴君和万恶的压迫者。他仿佛认为那家伙的情况应该由他负责,不管对方怎样谩骂,他总是心平气和,甚至觉得抱歉。 一天,雷德勒对他说:“你不妨多呼吸些新鲜空气,老弟。假如你愿意到外面跑跑,每天都可以用我的马车,我还可以派一个车夫供你使唤。到一个营地里去试一两个星期。我准替你安排得舒舒服服。土地和外面的空气——这些东西才能治好你的病。我知道有一个费城的人,比你病得凶,在瓜达卢佩迷了路,随着牧羊营里的人在草地上睡了两个星期。哎,先生,这使他的病情有了好转,后来果然完全恢复。接近土地——那里有自然界的医药。从现在开始不妨骑骑马。有一匹驯顺的小马——” “我什么地方跟你过不去?”麦圭尔嚷道。“我几时坑害过你?我有没有求你带我上这儿来?你高兴的话,把我赶到你的营地里去好啦,或者一刀把我捅死;省却麻烦。叫我骑马!我连抬腿的力气都没有呢。即使一个五岁的娃娃来揍我,我也没法招架。全是你这该死的牧场害我的。这里没有吃的,没有看的,没有可以交谈的人,有的只是一批连练拳的沙袋和龙虾肉色拉都分不清的乡巴佬。” “不错,这个地方很荒凉。”雷德勒不好意思地道歉说。“我们这儿很丰饶,但是很简朴。你想要什么,弟兄们可以骑马到外面去替你弄来。” 查德•默奇森最先认为麦圭尔是诈病。查德是圆圈横条牛队①里的牧童,他赶了三十英里路,并且绕了四英里的冤枉路,替麦圭尔弄来一篮子葡萄。在那烟气弥漫的屋子里待了一会儿后,他跑出来,直言不讳地把他的猜疑告诉了雷德勒。 『①指那队牛都以θ形烙印为记号。』“他的胳臂,”查德说,“比金刚石还要硬。他教我怎么打人家的大洋神经丛②,挨他一拳简直象给野马连踢两下。他在诳你呢,老柯。他不会比我病得更凶。我本来不愿意讲出来,可是那小子在你这儿蒙吃蒙住,我不得不讲了。” 『②原文是“shore-perplexus”,应作“Solar plexus”(胃部的太阳神经丛),查德听不懂,搞错了。』牧场主是个实在人,不愿意接受查德对这件事的看法。后来,当他替麦圭尔检查身体时,动机也不是怀疑。 一天中午时分,有两个人来到牧场,下了马,把它们拴好,然后进去吃饭;这地方的风俗是好客的。其中一个人是圣安东尼奥著名的收费高昂的医师,因为一个富有的牧场主给走火的枪打伤了,请他去医治。现在他被伴送到火车站,搭车回城里。饭后,雷德勒把他拉到一边,塞了一张二十元的钞票给他,说道:“大夫,那间屋子里有个小伙子,大概害着很严重的肺病。我希望你去给他检查一下,看他病到什么程度,有没有办法治治。” “我刚才吃的那顿饭要多少钱呢,雷德勒先生?”医师从眼镜上缘看出来,直率地说。雷德勒把钞票放回口袋。医师立即走进麦圭尔的房间,牧场主在回廊里的一堆马鞍上坐着,假如诊断结果不妙,他真要埋怨自己了。 不出十分钟,医师大踏步走了出来。“你那个病人,”他马上说,“跟一枚新铸的钱币那么健全。他的肺比我的还好。呼吸、体温和脉搏都正常。胸围扩张有四英寸。浑身找不到衰弱的迹象。当然啦,我没有检验结核杆菌,不过不可能有。这个诊断,我完全负责。即使拚命抽烟,关紧窗子,把屋子里的空气弄得污浊不堪,对他也没有妨碍。有点咳嗽,是吗?你告诉他完全没有必要。你刚才问有没有办法替他治治。唔,我劝你让他去打木桩,或者去驯服野马。我们要上路啦。再见,先生。”医师象一股清新的劲风那样,飞也似地走了。 雷德勒伸手摘了一片栏杆旁边的牧豆树的叶子,沉思地嚼着。 替牛群打烙印的季节快要到了。第二天早晨,牛队的头目,罗斯•哈吉斯在牧场上召集了二十五个人,准备到即将开始打烙印的圣卡洛斯牧场去。六点钟,马都备了鞍,装粮食的大车也安排就绪,牧童们陆续上马,这当儿,雷德勒叫他们稍等片刻。一个小厮牵了一匹鞍辔齐全的小马来到门口。雷德勒走进麦圭尔的房间,猛地打开门。麦圭尔正躺在床上抽烟,衣服也没有穿好。 “起来。”牧场主说,他的声音象号角那样响亮。 “怎么回事?”麦圭尔有点吃惊地问道。 “起来穿好衣服。我可以容忍一条响尾蛇,可是我讨厌骗子。还要我再对你说一遍吗?”他揪住麦圭尔的脖子,把他拖到地上。 “喂,朋友,”麦圭尔狂叫说,“你疯了吗?我有病——明白吗?我多动就会送命。我什么地方跟你过不去?”——他又搬出他那套牢骚来了——“我从没有求你——” “穿好衣服。”雷德勒的嗓音越来越响了。 麦圭尔咒骂,踉跄,哆嗦,同时用吃惊的亮眼睛盯着激怒的牧场主那吓人的模样,终于拖泥带水地穿上了衣服。雷德勒揪住他的衣领,走出房间,穿过院子,把他一直推到拴在门口的那匹另备的小马旁边。牧童们张着嘴,懒洋洋地坐在马鞍上。 “把这个人带走,”雷德勒对罗斯•哈吉斯说,“叫他干活。叫他多干,多睡,多吃。你们知道我已经尽力照顾了他,并且是真心实意的。昨天,圣安东尼奥最好的医师替他检查身体,说他的肺跟驴子一样健全,体质跟公牛一样结实。你知道该怎么对付他,罗斯。” 罗斯•哈吉斯没有回答,只是阴沉地笑了笑。 “噢,”麦圭尔凝视着雷德勒说,神情有点特别,“那个大夫说我没病,是吗?说我装假,是吗?你找他来看我的。你以为我没病。你说我是骗子。喂,朋友,我知道自己说话粗暴,可是我多半不是存心的。假如你到了我的地步——噢,我忘啦——那个大夫说我没病。好吧,朋友,现在我去替你干活。这才是公平交易。” 他象鸟一样轻快地飞身上马,从鞍头取下鞭子,往小马身上一抽。曾在霍索恩骑着“好孩子”①跑了第一名(当时的赌注是十对一)的“蟋蟀”麦圭尔,现在又踩上了马镫。 『①霍索恩是加利福尼亚州西南部的一个城市;“好孩子”是马名。』这队人马向圣卡洛斯驰去时,麦圭尔一马当先,牧童们落在后面,不由得齐声喝彩。 但是,不出一英里,他慢慢地落后了。当他们驰过牧马地,来到那片高栎树林时,他是最后的一个。他在几株栎树后面勒住马,把手帕按在嘴上。手帕拿下来时,已经浸透了鲜红的动脉血。他小心地把它扔在一簇仙人掌里面。接着,他又扬起鞭子,嘶哑地对那匹吃惊的小马说“走吧”,快跑着向队伍赶去。 那晚,雷德勒接到阿拉巴马老家捎来的信。他家里死了人;要分一宗产业,叫他回去一次。第二天,他坐着四轮马车,穿过草原,直奔车站。他在阿拉巴马待了两个月才回来。回到牧场时,他发现除了伊拉里奥以外,庄院里的人几乎都不在。伊拉里奥在他离家期间,权且充当了总管。这个小伙子点点滴滴地把这段时间里的工作向他作了汇报。他得悉打烙印的营地还在干活。由于多次严重的风暴,牛群分散得很远,因此工作进行得很慢。营地现在扎在二十英里外的瓜达卢佩山谷。 “说起来,”雷德勒突然想到说,“我让他们带去的那个家伙——麦圭尔——他还在干活吗?” “我不清楚。”伊拉里奥说。“营地里的人难得来牧场。小牛身上有许多活要干。他们没提起。哦,我想那个麦圭尔早就死啦。” “死啦!”雷德勒嚷道,“你说什么?” “病得很重,麦圭尔。”伊拉里奥耸耸肩膀说。“他走的时候,我就认为他活不了一两个月。” “废话!”雷德勒说。“他把你也给蒙住了,对不对?医师替他检查过,说他象牧豆树疙瘩一样结实。” “那个医师,”伊拉里奥笑着说,“他是这样告诉你的吗?那个医师没有看过麦圭尔。” “讲讲清楚。”雷德勒命令说。“你到底是什么意思?” “医师进来的时候,”那小伙子平静地说,“麦圭尔正好到外面去取水喝了。医师拖住我,用手指在我这儿乱敲,”——他把手放在胸口——“我不知道为什么。他把耳朵贴在这儿,这儿,这儿,听了听——我不知道为什么。他把一支小玻璃棒插在我嘴里。他按我手臂这个地方。他叫我轻轻地这样数——二十、三十、四十。谁知道,”伊拉里奥无可奈何地摊开双手,结束道,“那个医师干吗要做这许多滑稽的事情?” “家里有什么马?”雷德勒简洁地问道。 “‘乡巴佬’在外面的小栅栏里吃草,先生。” “立刻替我备鞍。” 短短几分钟内,牧场主上马走了。“乡巴佬”的模样并不好看,可是跑得快,跟它的名字很相称;它大步慢跑着,脚下的道路象一条通心面给吞掉时那样,飞快地消失了。过了两小时十五分钟,雷德勒从一个隆起的小山冈上望到打烙印的营帐扎在瓜达卢佩的干河床里的一个水坑旁边。他急切地想听听他所担心的消息,来到营帐前面,翻身下马,放下“乡巴佬”的缰绳。他的心地是那样善良,当时他甚至会承认自己有罪,害死了麦圭尔。 营地上只有厨师一个人,他正在张罗晚饭,把大块大块的烤牛肉和盛咖啡的铁皮杯摆好。雷德勒不愿意开门见山地问到他最关心的那个问题。 “营地里一切都好吗,彼得?”他转弯抹角地问道。 “马马虎虎。”彼得谨慎地说。“粮食断了两次。大风把牛群给吹散了,我们只得在方圆四十英里内细细搜索。我需要一个新的咖啡壶。这里的蚊子比普通的凶。” “弟兄们——都好吗?” 彼得不是生性乐观的人。此外,问起牧童们的健康不仅是多余,而且近乎婆婆妈妈。问这种话的不象是头儿。 “剩下来的人不会错过一顿饭。”厨师说。 “剩下来的人?”雷德勒嗄声学了一遍。他不由自主地开始四下找寻麦圭尔的坟墓。他以为这儿也有象他在阿拉巴马墓地看到的那样一块白色墓碑。但是他随即觉得这种想法太傻了。 “不错,”彼得说,“剩下来的人。两个月来,营地常常移动。有的走了。” 雷德勒鼓起勇气问道: “我派来的——那个——麦圭尔——他有没有——” “嘿,”彼得双手各拿着一只玉米面包站了起来,打断了他的话,“太丢人啦,把那个可怜的、害病的小伙子派到牧牛营来。看不出他一只脚已经踏进棺材里的医师,真应该用马肚带的扣子剥他的皮。他也真是那么倔强——说来真丢人——让我告诉你他干了些什么。第一晚,营地里的弟兄们着手教他牧童的规矩。罗斯•哈吉斯抽了他一下屁股,你知道那可怜的孩子怎么啦?那小子站起来,揍了罗斯。揍了罗斯•哈吉斯。狠狠地揍了他。揍得他又凶又狠,浑身都揍遍了。罗斯只不过是爬起来,换个地方又躺下罢了。 “接着,麦圭尔自己也倒在地上,脸埋在草里,不停地咯血。他们说是内出血。他一躺就是十八个钟头,怎么也不能动他一动。罗斯•哈吉斯喜欢能揍他的人,他把格陵兰到波兰支那的医师都骂遍了,又着手想办法;他同‘绿枝’约翰逊把麦圭尔抬到一个营帐里,轮流喂他吃剁碎的生牛肉和威士忌。 “但是,那个孩子仿佛不想活了,晚上他溜出营帐,躺在草地里,那时候还下着细雨。‘走啦,’他说,‘让我称自己的心意死吧。他说我撒谎,说我是骗子,说我诈病。别来理睬我。’“他就这么躺了两个星期,”厨师说,“连人都认不清,于是——” 突然响起一阵雷鸣似的声音,二十来个骑手风驰电掣地闯过丛林,来到营地。 “天哪!”彼得嚷道,立刻手忙脚乱起来,“弟兄们来啦,晚饭不在三分钟之内弄好,他们就会宰了我。” 但是雷德勒只注意到一件事。一个矮小的,棕色脸盘,笑嘻嘻的家伙翻下马鞍,站在火光前面。他样子不象麦圭尔,可是——转眼之间,牧场主已经拉住他的手和肩膀。 “老弟,老弟,你怎么啦?”他只说出了这么一句话。 “你叫我接近土地,”麦圭尔响亮地说,他那钢钳一般的手几乎把雷德勒的指头都捏碎了,“我就在那儿找到了健康和力量,并且领悟到我过去是多么卑鄙。多谢你把我赶出去,老兄。还有——喂!这个笑话是那大夫闹的,是吗?我在窗外看见他在那个南欧人的太阳神经丛上乱敲。” “你这小子,”牧场主嚷道,“当时你干吗不说医师根本没有替你检查过?” “噢——算了吧!”麦圭尔以前那种粗鲁的态度又冒出来一会儿,“谁也唬不了我。你从来没有问过我。你既然话已出口,把我赶了出去,我也就认了。喂,朋友,赶牛的玩意儿真够意思。我生平交的朋友当中,要算营地上的这批人最好了。你会让我呆下去的,是吗,老兄?” 雷德勒询问似地看看罗斯•哈吉斯。 “那个浑小子,”罗斯亲切地说,“是任何一个牧牛营地里最大胆,最起劲的人——打起架来也最厉害。” The Hypotheses of Failure LAWYER GOOCH bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing arts of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the bot- tom of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door opening from one to another. These doors could also be closed. "Ships," Lawyer Gooch would say, "are constructed for safety, with separate, water-tight compartments in their bottoms. If one compartment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes on unhurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would sink the vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occu- pied with clients, other clients with conflicting interests call. With the assistance of Archibald -- an office boy with a future -- I cause the dangerous influx to be diverted into separate compartments, while I sound with my legal plummet the depth of each. If neces- sary, they may be haled into the hallway and permitted to escape by way of the stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers. Thus the good ship of business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that supports her were allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped -- ha, ha, ha! The law is dry. Good jokes are few. Surely it might be permitted Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore of briefs, the tedium of torts and the prosiness of processes with even so light a levy upon the good property of humour. Lawyer Gooch's practice leaned largely to the settle- ment of marital infelicities. Did matrimony languish through complications, he mediated, soothed and arbi- trated. Did it suffer from implications, he readjusted, defended and championed. Did it arrive at the extremity of duplications, he always got light sentences for his clients. But not always was Lawyer Gooch the keen, armed, wily belligerent, ready with his two-edged sword to lop off the shackles of Hymen. He had been known to build up instead of demolishing, to reunite instead of severing, to lead erring and foolish ones back into the fold instead of scattering the flock. Often had he by his eloquent and moving appeals sent husband and wife, weeping, back into each other's arms. Frequently he had coached childhood so successfully that, at the psychological moment (and at a given signal) the plaintive pipe of "Papa, won't you turn home adain to me and muvver?" had won the day and upheld the pillars of a tottering home. Unprejudiced persons admitted that Lawyer Gooch received as big fees from these revoked clients as would have been paid him had the cases been contested in court. Prejudiced ones intimated that his fees were doubled. because the penitent couples always came back later for the divorce, anyhow. There came a season in June when the legal ship of Lawyer Gooch (to borrow his own figure) was nearly becalmed. The divorce mill grinds slowly in June. It is the month of Cupid and Hymen. Lawyer Gooch, then, sat idle in the middle room of his clientless suite. A small anteroom connected -- or rather separated -- this apartment from the hallway. Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested from visitors their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his master while they waited. Suddenly, on this day, there came a great knocking at the outermost door. Archibald, opening it, was thrust aside as superfluous by the visitor, who without due reverence at once pene- trated to the office of Lawyer Gooch and threw himself with good-natured insolence into a comfortable chair facing that gentlemen. "You are Phineas C. Gooch, attorney-at-law?" said the visitor, his tone of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an assertion and an accusation. Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer esti- mated his possible client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating glances. The man was of the emphatic type -- large-sized, active, bold and debonair in demeanour, vain beyond a doubt, slightly swaggering, ready and at ease. He was well- clothed, but with a shade too much ornateness. He was seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to saddle him with troubles they were not patent in his beaming eye and courageous air. "My name is Gooch," at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he would also have confessed to the Phineas C. But he did not consider it good practice to volunteer information. "I did not receive your card," he continued, by way of rebuke, "so I -- " "I know you didn't," remarked the visitor, coolly; "And you won't just yet. Light up?" He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a handful of rich- hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke. "You are a divorce lawyer," said the cardless visitor. This time there was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple assertion. They formed a charge -- a denunciation -- as one would say to a dog: "You are a dog." Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation. "You handle," continued the visitor, "all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid's darts when he shoots 'em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can't light a cigar at it. Am I right, Mr. Gooch?" "I have undertaken cases," said the lawyer, guardedly, "in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me professionally, Mr. -- " The lawyer paused, with significance. "Not yet," said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, "not just yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used in the original act that makes this pow-wow necessary. There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names I want your honest -- well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe -- abstractly -- you understand? I'm Mr. Nobody; and I've got a story to tell you. Then you say what's what. Do you get my wireless?" "You want to state a hypothetical case?" suggested Lawyer Gooch. "That's the word I was after. 'Apothecary' was the best shot I could make at it in my mind. The hypo- thetical goes. I'll state the case. Suppose there's a woman -- a deuced fine-looking woman -- who has run away from her husband and home? She's badly mashed on another man who went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may as well call this woman's husband Thomas R. Billings, for that's his name. I'm giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario chap is Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called Susanville -- a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two weeks ago. The next day Mrs. Billings follows him. She's dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your law library on that." Lawyer Gooch's client said this with such unctuous satisfaction that even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He now saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic complacency of the successful trifler. "Now," continued the visitor, "suppose this Mrs. Billings wasn't happy at home? We'll say she and her husband didn't gee worth a cent. They've got incom- patibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn't have as a gift with trading-stamps. It's Tabby and Rover with them all the time. She's an educated woman in science and culture, and she reads things out loud at meetings. Billings is not on. He don't appreciate pro- gress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady is out and out above his class. Now, lawyer, don't it look like a fair equalization of rights and wrongs that a woman like that should be allowed to throw down Billings and take the man that can appreciate her? "Incompatibility," said Lawyer Gooch, "is undoubt- edly the source of much marital discord and unhappiness. Where it is positively proved, divorce would seem to be the equitable remedy. Are you -- excuse me -- is this man Jessup one to whom the lady may safely trust her future?" "Oh, you can bet on Jessup," said the client, with a confident wag of his head. "Jessup's all right. He'll do the square thing. Why, he left Susanville just to keep pwple from talking about Mrs. Billings. But she fol- lowed him up, and now, of course, he'll stick to her. When she gets a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup the proper thing." "And now," said Lawyer Gooch, "continuing the hypo- if you prefer, and supposing that my services should ired in the case, what -- " The client rose impulsively to his feet. "Oh, dang the hypothetical business," he exclaimed, impatiently. "Let's let her drop, and get down to straight talk. You ought to know who I am by this time. I want that woman to have her divorce. I'll pay for it. The day you set Mrs. Billings free I'll pay you five hundred dollars." Lawyer Gooch's client banged his fist upon the table to punctuate his generosity. "If that is the case -- " began the lawyer. "Lady to see you, sir," bawled Archibald, bouncing in from his anteroom. He had orders to always announce immediately any client that might come. There was no sense in turning business away. Lawyer Gooch took client number one by the arm and led him suavely into one of the adjoining rooms. "Favour me by remaining here a few minutes, sir," said he. "I will return and resume our consultation with the least possible delay. I am rather expecting a visit from a very wealthy old lady in connection with a will. I will not keep you waiting long." The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging acquiescence, aud took up a magazine. The lawyer returned to the middle office, carefully closing behind him the connecting door. "Show the lady in, Archibald," he said to the office boy, who was awaiting the order. A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly hand- some, entered the room. She wore robes -- robes; not clothes -- ample and fluent. In her eye could be per- ceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She accepted a chair. "Are you Mr. Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?" she asked, in formal and unconciliatory tones. "I am," answered Lawyer Gooch, without circum- locution. He never circumlocuted when dealing with a woman. Women circumlocute. Time is wasted when both sides in debate employ the same tactics. "As a lawyer, sir," began the lady, "you may have acquired some knowledge of the human heart. Do you believe that the pusillanimous and petty conventions of our artificial social life should stand as an obstacle in the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds its true mate among the miserable and worthless wretches in the world that are called men?" "Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he used in curbing his female clients, "this is an office for conducting the practice of law. I am a lawyer, not a philosopher, nor the editor of an 'Answers to the Lovelorn' column of a newspaper. I have other clients waiting. I will ask you kindly to come to the point." "Well, you needn't get so stiff around the gills about it," said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eves and a startling gyration of her umbrella. "Business is what I've come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble con- ditions that the short-sihhted laws of man have interposed between a loving --" "I beg your pardon, madam," interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some impatience, "for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps Mrs. Wilcox -- " "Mrs. Wilcox is all right," cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. "And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and Mr. Edward Bok. I've read 'em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroy- ing restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way until vou pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a sup- posable instance, without -- " "You wish to state a hypothetical case?" said Lawyer Gooch. "I was going to say that," said the lady, sharply. "Now, suppose there is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in taste -- in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature. He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world's great thinkers. He thinks only of real estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a woman with soul. We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets with her ideal -a man with brain and heart and force. She loves him. Although this man feels the thrill of a new-found affinity he is too noble, too honourable to declare himself. He flies from the presence of his beloved. She flies after him, trampling, with superb indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened social system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce cost? Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for three hundred and forty dollars. Can I -- I mean can this lady I speak of get one that cheap?" "Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, "your last two or three sentences delight me with their intelligence and clearness. Can we not now abandon the hypothetical and come down to names and business?" "I should say so," exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with admirable readiness. "Thomas R. Bil- lings is the name of the low brute who stands between the happiness of his legal -- his legal, but not his spiri- tual -- wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom nature intended for her mate. I," concluded the client, with an air of dramatic revelation, "am Mrs. Billings!" "Gentlemen to see you, sir," shouted Archibald, invad- ing the room almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair. "Mrs. Billings," he said courteously, "allow me to conduct you into the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a very wealthy old gentleman on busines connected with a will. In a very short while I will join you, and continue our consultation." With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his soulful client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out, closing the door with circumspection. The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin, nervous, irritable-looking man of middle age, with a worried and apprehensive expression of countenance. He carried in one hand a small satchel, which he set down upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer placed for him. His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn without regard to neatness or style, and appeared to be covered with the dust of travel. "You make a specialty of divorce cases," he said, in, an agitated but business-like tone. "I may say," began Lawyer Gooch, "that my prac- tice has not altogether avoided -- " "I know you do," interrupted client number three. "You needn't tell me. I've heard all about you. I have a case to lay before you without necessarily disclosing any connection that I might have with it -- that is -- " "You wish," said Lawyer Gooch, "to state a hvpo- thetical case. "You may call it that. I am a plain man of business. I will be as brief as possible. We will first take up hypothetical woman. We will say she is married uncon- genially. In many ways she is a superior woman. Phys- ically she is considered to be handsome. She is devoted to what she calls literature -- poetry and prose, and such stuff. Her husband is a plain man in the business walks of life. Their home has not been happy, although the husband has tried to make it so. Some time ago a man -- a stranger -- came to the peaceful town in which they lived and engaged in some real estate operations. This woman met him, and became unaccountably infatu- ated with him. Her attentions became so open that the man felt the community to be no safe place for him, so he left it. She abandoned husband and home, and followed him. She forsook- her home, where she was provided with every comfort, to follow this man who had inspired her with such a strange affection. Is there any- thing more to be deplored," concluded the client, in a trembling voice, "than the wrecking of a home by a woman's uncalculating folly?" Lawyer Gooch delivered the cautious opinion that there was not. "This man she has gone to join," resumed the visitor, "is not the man to make her happy. It is a wild and foolish self-deception that makes her think he will. Her husband, in spite of their many disagreements, is the only one capable of dealing with her sensitive and peculiar nature. But this she does not realize now." "Would you consider a divorce the logical cure in the case you present?" asked Lawyer Gooch, who felt that the conversation was wandering too far from the field of business. "A divorce!" exclaimed the client, feelingly - almost tearfully. "No, no-not that. I have read, Mr. Gooch, of many instances where your sympathy and kindly inter- est led you to act as a mediator between estranged hus- band and wife, and brought them together again. Let us drop the hypothetical case -- I need conceal no longer that it is I who am the sufferer in this sad affair -- the names you shall have -- Thomas R. Billings and wife -- and Henry K. Jessup, the man with whom she is infatuated." Client number three laid his hand upon Mr. Gooch's arm. Deep emotion was written upon his careworn face. "For Heaven's sake", he said fervently, "help me in this hour of trouble. Seek, out Mrs. Billings, and persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable folly. Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive her back to his heart and home -- promise her anything that will induce her to return. I have heard of your success in these matters. Mrs. Bil- lings cannot be very far away. I am worn out with travel and weariness. Twice during the pursuit I saw her, but various circumstances prevented our having an inter- view. Will you undertake this mission for me, Mr. Gooch, and earn my everlasting gratitude?" "It is true," said Lawver Gooch, frowning slightly at the other's last words, but immediately calling up an expression of virtuous benevolence, "that on a number of occasions I have been successful in persuading couples who sought the severing of their matrimonial bonds to think better of their rash intentions and return to their homes reconciled. But I assure you that the work is often exceedingly difficult. The amount of argument, perseverance, and, if I may be allowed to say it, eloquence that it requires would astonish you. But this is a case in which my sympathies would be wholly enlisted. I feel deeply for you sir, and I would be most happy to see husband and wife reunited. But my time," concluded the lawyer, looking at his watch as if suddenly reminded of the fact, "is valuable." "I am aware of that," said the client, "and if you will take the case and persuade Mrs. Billings to return home and leave the man alone that she is following -- on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand dollars. I have made a little money in real estate during the recent boom in Susanville, and I will not begrudge that amount." "Retain your seat for a few moments, please," said Lawyer Gooch, arising, and again consulting his watch. "I have another client waiting in an adjoining room whom I had very nearly forgotten. I will return in the briefest possible space." The situation was now one that fully satisfied Lawyer Gooch's love of intricacy and complication. He revelled in cases that presented such subtle problems and possi- bilities. It pleased him to think that he was master of the happiness and fate of the three individuals who sat, uncon- cious of one another's presence, within his reach. His old figure of the ship glided into his mind. But now the figure failed, for to have filled every compartment of an actual vessel would have been to endanger her safety; with his compartments full, his ship of affairs could but sail on to the advantageous port of a fine, fat fee. The thing for him to do, of course, was to wring the best bargain he could from some one of his anxious cargo. First he called to the office boy: "Lock the outer door, Archibald, and admit no one." Then he moved, with long, silent strides into the room in which client number one waited. That gentleman sat, patiently scanning the pictures in the magazine, with a cigar in his mouth and his feet upon a table. "Well," he remarked, cheerfully, as the lawyer entered, "have you made up your mind? Does five hundred dollars go for getting the fair lady a divorce?" "You mean that as a retainer?" asked Lawyer Gooch, softly interrogative. "Hey? No; for the whole job. It's enough, ain't it?" "My fee," said Lawyer Gooch, "would be one thousand five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars down, and the remainder upon issuance of the divorce." A loud whistle came from client number one. His feet descended to the floor. "Guess we can't close the deal," he said, arising, "I cleaned up five hunderd dollars in a little real estate dicker down in Susanville. I'd do anything I could to free the lady, but it out-sizes my pile." "Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?" asked the lawyer, insinuatingly. "Five hundred is my limit, I tell you. Guess I'll have to hunt up a cheaper lawyer." The client put on his hat. "Out this way, please," said Lawyer Gooch, opening the door that led into the hallway. As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs, Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. "Exit Mr. Jessup," he murmured, as he fingered the Henry Clay tuft of hair at his ear. "And now for the forsaken husband." He returned to the middle office, and assumed a businesslike manner. "I understand," he said to client number three, "that you agree to pay one thousand dollars if I bring about, or am instrumental in bringing about, the return of Mrs. Billings to her home, and her abandonment of her infatu- ated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such a violent fancy. Also that the case is now unreservedly in my hands on that basis. Is that correct?" "Entirely", said the other, eagerly. And I can produce the cash any time at two hours' notice." Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height. His thin figure seemed to expand. His thumbs sought the arm- holes of his vest. Upon his face was a look of sym- pathetic benignity that he always wore during such undertakings. "Then, sir," he said, in kindly tones, "I think I can promise you an early relief from your troubles. I have that much confidence in my powers of argument and persuasion, in the natural impulses of the human heart toward good, and in the strong influence of a husband's unfaltering love. Mrs. Billinos, sir, is here -- in that room -- the lawyer's long arm pointed to the door. "I will call her in at once; and our united pleadings -- " Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had leaped from his chair as if propelled by steel springs, and clutched his satchel. "What the devil," he exclaimed, harshly, "do vou mean? That woman in there! I thought I shook her off forty miles back." He ran to the open window, looked out below, and threw one leg over the sill. "Stop!" cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement. "What would you do? Come, Mr. Billings, and face your erring but innocent wife. Our combined entreaties cannot fail to -- " "Billings!" shouted the now thoroughly moved client. "I'll Billings you, you old idiot!" Turning, he hurled his satchel with fury at the lawyer's head. It struck that astounded peacemaker between the eyes, causing him to stagger backward a pace or two. When Lawyer Gooch recovered his wits he saw that his client had disappeared. Rushing to the window, he leaned out, and saw the recreant gathering himself up from the top of a shed upon which he had dropped from the second-story window. Without stopping to collect his hat he then plunged downward the remaining ten feet to the alley, up which he flew with prodigious celerity until the surrounding building swallowed him up from view. Lawyer Gooch passed his hand tremblingly across his brow. It was a habitual act with him, serving to clear his thoughts. Perhaps also it now seemed to soothe the spot where a very hard alligator-hide satchel had struck. The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its con- tents spilled about. Mechanically, Lawyer Gooch stooped to gather up the articles. The first was a collar; and the omniscient eye of the man of law perceived, wonder- ingly, the initials H.K.J. marked upon it. Then came a comb, a brush, a folded map, and a piece of soap. lastly, a handful of old business letters, addressed -- every one of them -- to "Henry K. Jessup, Esq." Lawyer Gooch closed the satchel, and set it upon the table. He hesitated for a moment, and then put on his hat and walked into the office boy's anteroom. "Archibald," he said mildly, as he opened the hall door, "I am going around to the Supreme Court rooms. In five minutes you may step into the inner office, and inform the lady who is waiting there that" -- here Lawyer Gooch made use of the vernacular -- "that there's nothing doing." The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots of his hair. Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture of nux vomica and bay rum. Dry Valley found the recipe in a Sunday newspaper. You must next be told why a strong man came to fall a victim to a Beauty Hint. Dry Valley had been a sheepman. His real name was Hector, but he had been rechristened after his range to distinguish him from "Elm Creek" Johnson, who ran sheep further down the Frio. Many years of living face to face with sheep on their own terms wearied Dry Valley Johnson. So, he sold his ranch for eighteen thousand dollars and moved to Santa Rosa to live a life of gentlemanly ease. Being a silent and melancholy person of thirty-five--or perhaps thirty-eight--he soon became that cursed and earth-cumbering thing--an elderlyish bachelor with a hobby. Some one gave him his first strawberry to eat, and he was done for. Dry Valley bought a four-room cottage in the village, and a library on strawberry culture. Behind the cottage was a garden of which he made a strawberry patch. In his old grey woolen shirt, his brown duck trousers, and high-heeled boots he sprawled all day on a canvas cot under a live-oak tree at his back door studying the history of the seductive, scarlet berry. The school teacher, Miss De Witt, spoke of him as "a fine, presentable man, for all his middle age." But, the focus of Dry Valley's eyes embraced no women. They were merely beings who flew skirts as a signal for him to lift awkwardly his heavy, round-crowned, broad-brimmed felt Stetson whenever he met them, and then hurry past to get back to his beloved berries. And all this recitative by the chorus is only to bring us to the point where you may be told why Dry Valley shook up the insoluble sulphur in the bottle. So long-drawn and inconsequential a thing is history--the anamorphous shadow of a milestone reaching down the road between us and the setting sun. When his strawberries were beginning to ripen Dry Valley bought the heaviest buggy whip in the Santa Rosa store. He sat for many hours under the live oak tree plaiting and weaving in an extension to its lash. When it was done he could snip a leaf from a bush twenty feet away with the cracker. For the bright, predatory eyes of Santa Rosa youth were watching the ripening berries, and Dry Valley was arming himself against their expected raids. No greater care had he taken of his tender lambs during his ranching days than he did of his cherished fruit, warding it from the hungry wolves that whistled and howled and shot their marbles and peered through the fence that surrounded his property. In the house next to Dry Valley's lived a widow with a pack of children that gave the husbandman frequent anxious misgivings. In the woman there was a strain of the Spanish. She had wedded one of the name of O'Brien. Dry Valley was a connoisseur in cross strains; and he foresaw trouble in the offspring of this union. Between the two homesteads ran a crazy picket fence overgrown with morning glory and wild gourd vines. Often he could see little heads with mops of black hair and flashing dark eyes dodging in and out between the pickets, keeping tabs on the reddening berries. Late one afternoon Dry Valley went to the post office. When he came back, like Mother Hubbard he found the deuce to pay. The descendants of Iberian bandits and Hibernian cattle raiders had swooped down upon his strawberry patch. To the outraged vision of Dry Valley there seemed to be a sheep corral full of them; perhaps they numbered five or six. Between the rows of green plants they were stooped, hopping about like toads, gobbling silently and voraciously his finest fruit. Dry Valley slipped into the house, got his whip, and charged the marauders. The lash curled about the legs of the nearest--a greedy ten-year-old--before they knew they were discovered. His screech gave warning; and the flock scampered for the fence like a drove of javelis flushed in the chaparral. Dry Valley's whip drew a toll of two more elfin shrieks before they dived through the vine-clad fence and disappeared. Dry Valley, less fleet, followed them nearly to the pickets. Checking his useless pursuit, he rounded a bush, dropped his whip and stood, voiceless, motionless, the capacity of his powers consumed by the act of breathing and preserving the perpendicular. Behind the bush stood Panchita O'Brien, scorning to fly. She was nineteen, the oldest of the raiders. Her night-black hair was gathered back in a wild mass and tied with a scarlet ribbon. She stood, with reluctant feet, yet nearer the brook than to the river; for childhood had environed and detained her. She looked at Dry Valley Johnson for a moment with magnificent insolence, and before his eyes slowly crunched a luscious berry between her white teeth. Then she turned and walked slowly to the fence with a swaying, conscious motion, such as a duchess might make use of in leading a promenade. There she turned again and grilled Dry Valley Johnson once more in the dark flame of her audacious eyes, laughed a trifle school-girlishly, and twisted herself with pantherish quickness between the pickets to the O'Brien side of the wild gourd vine. Dry Valley picked up his whip and went into his house. He stumbled as he went up the two wooden steps. The old Mexican woman who cooked his meals and swept his house called him to supper as he went through the rooms. Dry Valley went on, stumbled down the front steps, out the gate and down the road into a mesquite thicket at the edge of town. He sat down in the grass and laboriously plucked the spines from a prickly pear, one by one. This was his attitude of thought, acquired in the days when his problems were only those of wind and wool and water. A thing had happened to the man--a thing that, if you are eligible, you must pray may pass you by. He had become enveloped in the Indian Summer of the Soul. Dry Valley had had no youth. Even his childhood had been one of dignity and seriousness. At six he had viewed the frivolous gambols of the lambs on his father's ranch with silent disapproval. His life as a young man had been wasted. The divine fires and impulses, the glorious exaltations and despairs, the glow and enchantment of youth had passed above his head. Never a thrill of Romeo had he known; he was but a melancholy Jaques of the forest with a ruder philosophy, lacking the bitter-sweet flavour of experience that tempered the veteran years of the rugged ranger of Arden. And now in his sere and yellow leaf one scornful look from the eyes of Panchita O'Brien had flooded the autumnal landscape with a tardy and delusive summer heat. But a sheepman is a hardy animal. Dry Valley Johnson had weathered too many northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real. Old? He would show them. By the next mail went an order to San Antonio for an outfit of the latest clothes, colours and styles and prices no object. The next day went the recipe for the hair restorer clipped from a newspaper; for Dry Valley's sunburned auburn hair was beginning to turn silvery above his ears. Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a week except for frequent sallies after youthful strawberry snatchers. Then, a few days later, he suddenly emerged brilliantly radiant in the hectic glow of his belated midsummer madness. A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as his wrists and ankles. His shirt was ox-blood; his collar winged and tall; his necktie a floating oriflamme; his shoes a venomous bright tan, pointed and shaped on penitential lasts. A little flat straw hat with a striped band desecrated his weather-beaten head. Lemon-coloured kid gloves protected his oak-tough hands from the benignant May sunshine. This sad and optic-smiting creature teetered out of its den, smiling foolishly and smoothing its gloves for men and angels to see. To such a pass had Dry Valley Johnson been brought by Cupid, who always shoots game that is out of season with an arrow from the quiver of Momus. Reconstructing mythology, he had risen, a prismatic macaw, from the ashes of the grey-brown phoenix that had folded its tired wings to roost under the trees of Santa Rosa. Dry Valley paused in the street to allow Santa Rosans within sight of him to be stunned; and then deliberately and slowly, as his shoes required, entered Mrs. O'Brien's gate. Not until the eleven months' drought did Santa Rosa cease talking about Dry Valley Johnson's courtship of Panchita O'Brien. It was an unclassifiable procedure; something like a combination of cake- walking, deaf-and-dumb oratory, postage stamp flirtation and parlour charades. It lasted two weeks and then came to a sudden end. Of course Mrs. O'Brien favoured the match as soon as Dry Valley's intentions were disclosed. Being the mother of a woman child, and therefore a charter member of the Ancient Order of the Rat-trap, she joyfully decked out Panchita for the sacrifice. The girl was temporarily dazzled by having her dresses lengthened and her hair piled up on her head, and came near forgetting that she was only a slice of cheese. It was nice, too, to have as good a match as Mr. Johnson paying you attentions and to see the other girls fluttering the curtains at their windows to see you go by with him. Dry Valley bought a buggy with yellow wheels and a fine trotter in San Antonio. Every day he drove out with Panchita. He was never seen to speak to her when they were walking or driving. The consciousness of his clothes kept his mind busy; the knowledge that he could say nothing of interest kept him dumb; the feeling that Panchita was there kept him happy. He took her to parties and dances, and to church. He tried--oh, no man ever tried so hard to be young as Dry Valley did. He could not dance; but he invented a smile which he wore on these joyous occasions, a smile that, in him, was as great a concession to mirth and gaiety as turning hand-springs would be in another. He began to seek the company of the young men in the town--even of the boys. They accepted him as a decided damper, for his attempts at sportiveness were so forced that they might as well have essayed their games in a cathedral. Neither he nor any other could estimate what progress he had made with Panchita. The end came suddenly in one day, as often disappears the false afterglow before a November sky and wind. Dry Valley was to call for the girl one afternoon at six for a walk. An afternoon walk in Santa Rosa was a feature of social life that called for the pink of one's wardrobe. So Dry Valley began gorgeously to array himself; and so early that he finished early, and went over to the O'Brien cottage. As he neared the porch on the crooked walk from the gate he heard sounds of revelry within. He stopped and looked through the honeysuckle vines in the open door. Panchita was amusing her younger brothers and sisters. She wore a man's clothes--no doubt those of the late Mr. O'Brien. On her head was the smallest brother's straw hat decorated with an ink-striped paper band. On her hands were flapping yellow cloth gloves, roughly cut out and sewn for the masquerade. The same material covered her shoes, giving them the semblance of tan leather. High collar and flowing necktie were not omitted. Panchita was an actress. Dry Valley saw his affectedly youthful gait, his limp where the right shoe hurt him, his forced smile, his awkward simulation of a gallant air, all reproduced with startling fidelity. For the first time a mirror had been held up to him. The corroboration of one of the youngsters calling, "Mamma, come and see Pancha do like Mr. Johnson," was not needed. As softly as the caricatured tans would permit, Dry Valley tiptoed back to the gate and home again. Twenty minutes after the time appointed for the walk Panchita tripped demurely out of her gate in a thin, trim white lawn and sailor hat. She strolled up the sidewalk and slowed her steps at Dry Valley's gate, her manner expressing wonder at his unusual delinquency. Then out of his door and down the walk strode--not the polychromatic victim of a lost summertime, but the sheepman, rehabilitated. He wore his old grey woolen shirt, open at the throat, his brown duck trousers stuffed into his run-over boots, and his white felt sombrero on the back of his head. Twenty years or fifty he might look; Dry Valley cared not. His light blue eyes met Panchita's dark ones with a cold flash in them. He came as far as the gate. He pointed with his long arm to her house. "Go home," said Dry Valley. "Go home to your mother. I wonder lightnin' don't strike a fool like me. Go home and play in the sand. What business have you got cavortin' around with grown men? I reckon I was locoed to be makin' a he poll-parrot out of myself for a kid like you. Go home and don't let me see you no more. Why I done it, will somebody tell me? Go home, and let me try and forget it." Panchita obeyed and walked slowly toward her home, saying nothing. For some distance she kept her head turned and her large eyes fixed intrepidly upon Dry Valley's. At her gate she stood for a moment looking back at him, then ran suddenly and swiftly into the house. Old Antonia was building a fire in the kitchen stove. Dry Valley stopped at the door and laughed harshly. "I'm a pretty looking old rhinoceros to be gettin' stuck on a kid, ain't I, 'Tonia?" said he. "Not verree good thing," agreed Antonia, sagely, "for too much old man to likee muchacha." "You bet it ain't," said Dry Valley, grimly. "It's dum foolishness; and, besides, it hurts." He brought at one armful the regalia of his aberration--the blue tennis suit, shoes, hat, gloves and all, and threw them in a pile at Antonia's feet. "Give them to your old man," said he, "to hunt antelope in." Just as the first star presided palely over the twilight Dry Valley got his biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to catch the last of the reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in his strawberry patch. He laid aside the book, got his whip and hurried forth to see. It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was half-way across the patch. She stopped when she saw him and looked at him without wavering. A sudden rage--a humiliating flush of unreasoning wrath--came over Dry Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view. He had tried to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had--been made a fool of. At last he had seen his folly. There was a gulf between him and youth over which he could not build a bridge even with yellow gloves to protect his hands. And the sight of his torment coming to pester him with her elfin pranks--coming to plunder his strawberry vines like a mischievous schoolboy--roused all his anger. "I told you to keep away from here," said Dry Valley. "Go back to your home." Panchita moved slowly toward him. Dry Valley cracked his whip. "Go back home," said Dry Valley, savagely, "and play theatricals some more. You'd make a fine man. You've made a fine one of me." She came a step nearer, silent, and with that strange, defiant, steady shine in her eyes that had always puzzled him. Now it stirred his wrath. His whiplash whistled through the air. He saw a red streak suddenly come out through her white dress above her knee where it had struck. Without flinching and with the same unchanging dark glow in her eyes, Panchita came steadily toward him through the strawberry vines. Dry Valley's trembling hand released his whip handle. When within a yard of him Panchita stretched out her arms. "God, kid!" stammered Dry Valley, "do you mean--?" But the seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after all, instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry Valley Johnson. A Little Local Colour I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York scenes and incidents -- some- thing typical, I told him, without necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an "i." "Oh, for your writing business," said Rivington; "you couldn't have applied to a better shop. What I don't know about little old New York wouldn't make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I'll put you right in the middle of so much local colour that you won't know whether you are a magazine cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?" Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth, preference and incommutability. I told him that I would be glad to accept his escort and guardianship so that I might take notes of Manhattan's grand, gloomy and peculiar idiosyncrasies, and that the time of so doing would be at his own convenience. "We'll begin this very evening," said Rivington, him- self interested, like a good fellow. "Dine with me at seven, and then I'll steer 'you up against metropolitan phases so thick you'll have to have a kinetoscope to record 'em." So I dined with Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh street, and then we set forth in pursuit of the elusive tincture of affairs. As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near the steps in earnest conversation. "And by what process of ratiocination," said one of them, "do you arrive at the conclusion that the division of society into producing and non-possessing classes predicates failure when compared with competitive systems that are monopolizing in tendency and result inimically to industrial evolution?" "Oh, come off your perch!" said the other man, who wore glasses. "Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and Hyndman and Kautsky - what are they? -- shines! Tolstoi? -- his garret is full of rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the idea of a cooperative commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive systems simply takes the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The skoo- kum house for yours! I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook. "Oh, come ahead," said Rivington, somewhat ner- vously; "you don't want to listen to that." "Why man," I whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear more of it." "If I follow you," said the man who had spoken flrst, "you do not believe it possible to reorganize society on the basis of common interest?" "Shinny on your own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never heard any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin banqueting canister isn't exactly ready to join the Bible class. You can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up from the Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully old bloke like Cobden or some wise guy like old Ben Frank- lin to sashay up to the front and biff the nigger's head with the baseball. Do you catch my smoke? What?" Rivington pulled me by the arm impatiently. "Please come on," he said. "Let's go see something. This isn't what you want." "Indeed, it is," I said resisting. "This tough talk is the very stuff that counts. There is a picturesqueness about the speech of the lower order of people that is quite unique. Did you say that this is the Bowery variety of slang?" "Oh, well," said Rivington, giving it up, "I'll tell you straight. That's one of our college professors talking. He ran down for a day or two at the club. It's a sort of fad with him lately to use slang in his conversation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is talking to is one of New York's famous social economists. Now will you come on. You can't use that, you know." "No," I agreed; "I can't use that. Would you call that typical of New York?" "Of course not," said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. "I'm glad you see the difference. But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery slang I'll take you down where you'll get your fill of it." "I would like it," I said; "that is, if it's the real thing. I've often read it in books, but I never heard it. Do you think it will be dangerous to go unprotected among those characters ? "Oh, no," said Rivington; "not at this time of night. To tell the truth, I haven't been along the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as well as I do Broadway. We'll look up some of the typical Bowery boys and get them to talk. It'll be worth your while. They talk a peculiar dialect that you won't hear any-where else on earth." Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second street car and then south on the Third avenue line. At Houston street we got off and walked. "We are now on the famous Bowery," said Rivington; "the Bowery celebrated in song and story." We passed block after block of "gents'" furnishing stores -- the windows full of shirts with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows were neckties and no shirts. People walked up and down the sidewalks. "In some ways," said I, "this reminds me of Koko- mono, Ind., during the peach-crating season." Rivington was nettled. "Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows," said he, "with a large roll of money, and see how quickly the Bowery will sustain its reputation." "You make impossible conditions," said I, coldly. By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart of the Bowery. There was a policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew. "Hallo, Donahue!" said my guide. "How goes it? My friend and I are down this way looking up a bit of local colour. He's anxious to meet one of the Bowery types. Can't you put us on to something genuine in that line -- something that's got the colour, you know?" Policeman Donahue turned himself about ponder- ously, his florid face full of good-nature. He pointed with his club down the street. "Sure!" he said huskily. "Here comes a lad now that was born on the Bowery and knows every inch of it. If he's ever been above Bleecker street he's kept it to himself." A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was sauntering toward us with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman Donahue stopped him with a courteous wave of his club. "Evening, Kerry," he said. "Here's a couple of gents, friends of mine, that want to hear you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel 'em off a few yards?" "Certainly, Donahue," said the young man, pleas- antly. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked off on his beat. "This is the goods," whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow. "Look at his jaw!" "Say, cull," said Rivington, pushing back his hat, wot's doin'? Me and my friend's taking a look down de old line -- see? De copper tipped us off dat you was wise to de bowery. Is dat right?" I could not help admiring Rivington's power of adapt- ing himself to his surroundings. "Donahue was right," said the young man, frankly; "I was brought up on the Bowery. I have been news- boy, teamster, pugilist, member of an organized band of 'toughs,' bartender, and a 'sport' in various mean- ings of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the service of my friend Donahue's friends." Rivington seemed ill at ease. "I say," he said -- somewhat entreatingly, "I thought -- you're not stringing us, are you? It isn't just the kind of talk we expected. You haven't even said 'Hully gee!' once. Do you really belong on the Bowery?" "I am afraid," said the Bowery boy, smilingly, "that at some time you have been enticed into one of the dives of literature and had the counterfeit coin of the Bowery passed upon you. The 'argot' to which you doubtless refer was the invention of certain of your literary 'dis- coverers' who invaded the unknown wilds below Third avenue and put strange sounds into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes far to the north and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by this new 'dialect' perused and believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo Park -- pioneers indeed, but ambitious souls who could not draw the line of demarcation between dis- covery and invention -- the literary bones of these explorers are dotting the trackless wastes of the sub- way. While it is true that after the publication of the mythical language attributed to the dwellers along the Bowery certain of its pat phrases and apt metaphors were adopted and, to a limited extent, used in this locality, it was because our people are prompt in assimilating whatever is to their commercial advantage. To the tourists who visited our newly discovered clime, and who expected a realization of their literary guide books, they supplied the demands of the market. "But perhaps I am wandering from the question. In what way can I assist you, gentlemen? I beg you will believe that the hospitality of the street is extended to all. There are, I regret to say, many catchpenny places of entertainment, but I cannot conceive that they would entice you." I felt Rivington lean somewhat heavily against me. "Say!" he remarked, with uncertain utterance; "come and have a drink with us." "Thank you, but I never drink. I find that alcohol, even in the smallest quantities, alters the perspective. And I must preserve my perspective, for I am studyinc, the Bowery. I have lived in it nearly thirty years, and I am just beginning to understand its heartbeats. It is like a great river fed by a hundred alien streams. Each influx brings strange seeds on its flood, strange silt and weeds, and now and then a flower of rare promise. To construe this river requires a man who can build dykes against the overflow, who is a naturalist, a geologist, a humanitarian, a diver and a strong swimmer. I love my Bowery. It was my cradle and is my inspiration. I have published one book. The critics have been kind. I put my heart in it. I am writing another, into which I hope to put both heart and brain. Consider me your guide, gentlemen. Is there arything I can take you to see, any place to which I can conduct you?" I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye. "Thanks," said Rivington. "We were looking up . . . that is . . . my friend . . . confound it; it's against all precedent, you know . . . awfully obliged . . . just the same." "In case," said our friend, "you would like to meet some of our Bowery young men I would be pleased to have you visit the quarters of our East Side Kappa Delta Phi Society, only two blocks east of here." "Awfully sorry," said Rivington, "but my friend's got me on the jump to-nioht. He's a terror when he's out after local colour. Now, there's nothing I would like better than to drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi, but -- some other time!" We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit on upper Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner. "Well, anyhow," said he, braced and recovered, "it couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York." Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington. A Little Talk About Mobs "I see," remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch hat, "that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and walking a couple of blocks down the street." "Do you think they would have lynched him?" asked the New Yorker, in the next seat of the ferry station, who was also waiting for the boat. "Not until after the election," said the tall man, cutting a corner off his plug of tobacco. "I've been in your city long enough to know something about your mobs. The motorman's mob is about the least dangerous of them all, except the National Guard and the Dressmakers' Convention. "You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by his mother for pigs' knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he always crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then suddenly turns back to ask his inother whether it was pale ale or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells and throws himself on the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, with part of his trousers torn away by the fender, screaming for his lost nickel. "In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 infuriated citizens, crying, 'Lynch the motorman! Lynch the motorman!' at the top of their voices. Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a rope; but they find the last one has just been cut up and labelled. Hundreds of the excited mob press close to the cowering motorman, whose hand is observed to tremble perceptibly as he transfers a stick of pepsin gum from his pocket to his mouth. "When the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citizens has closed in on the motorman, some bringing camp stools and sitting quite close to him, and all shouting, 'Lynch him!' Policeman Fogarty forces his way through them to the side of their prospective victim. "'Hello, Mike,' says the motorman in a low voice, 'nice day. Shall I sneak off a block or so, or would you like to rescue me?' "'Well, Jerry, if you don't mind,' says the policeman, 'I'd like to disperse the infuriated mob singlehanded. I haven't defeated a lynching mob since last Tuesday; and that was a small one of only 300, that wanted to string up a Dago boy for selling wormy pears. It would boost me some down at the station.' "'All right, Mike,' says the motorman, 'anything to oblige. I'll turn pale and tremble.' "And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws his club and says, 'G'wan wid yez!' and in eight seconds the desperate mob has scattered and gone about its business, except about a hundred who remain to search for Willie's nickel." "I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence to a motorman because of an accident," said the New Yorker. "You are not liable to," said the tall man. "They know the motorman's all right, and that he wouldn't even run over a stray dog if he could help it. And they know that not a man among 'em would tie the knot to hang even a Thomas cat that had been tried and condemned and sentenced according to law." "Then why do they become infuriated and make threats of lynching?" asked the New Yorker. "To assure the motorman," answered the tall man, "that he is safe. If they really wanted to do him up they would go into the houses and drop bricks on him from the third-story windows." "New Yorkers are not cowards," said the other man, a little stiffly. "Not one at a time," agreed the tall man, promptly. "You've got a fine lot of single-handed scrappers in your town. I'd rather fight three of you than one; and I'd go up against all the Gas Trust's victims in a bunch before I'd pass two citizens on a dark corner, with my watch chain showing. When you get rounded up in a bunch you lose your nerve. Get you in crowds and you're easy. Ask the 'L' road guards and George B. Cortelyou and the tintype booths at Coney Island. Divided you stand, united you fall. E pluribus nihil. Whenever one of your mobs surrounds a man and begins to holler, "Lynch him!' he says to himself, "Oh, dear, I suppose I must look pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life insurance premium lapse to-morrow. This is a sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the board in the next handicap.' "I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned over to them for lynching. "For God's sake, officers,' cries the distracted wretch, 'have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let them wrest me from ye?' "'Sorry, Jimmy,' says one of the policemen, 'but it won't do. There's three of us--me and Darrel and the plain-clothes man; and there's only sivin thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the office if they took ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner, Darrel, and we'll be movin' along to the station.'" "Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so harmless," said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride. "I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin of mine who was on a visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of them." "That must have been during the Cooper Union riots," remarked the New Yorker. "Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man--"but it was a union riot--at the Vanastor wedding." "You seem to be in favor of lynch law," said the New Yorker, severely. "No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are certain cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a righteous vengeance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am an advocate of law and order, but I will say to you that less than six months ago I myself assisted at the lynching of one "of that race that is creating a wide chasm between your section of country and mine, sir." "It is a deplorable condition," said the New Yorker, "that exists in the South, but--" "I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking another chew; "and I don't think you will condemn my course when I tell you that the colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my own brother." Lost on Dress Parade (O·Henry) ___________________________________________Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom. One iron was heating on a small gas stove; the other was being pushed vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be seen later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler's patent leather shoes to the edge of his low-cut vest. So much of the hero's toilet may be intrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed by those whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next view of him shall be as he descends the steps of his lodging-house immaculately and correctly clothed; calm, assured, handsome--in appearance the typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly bored, to inaugurate the pleasures of the evening. Chandler's honorarium was $18 per week. He was employed in the office of an architect. He was twenty-two years old; he considered architecture to be truly an art; and he honestly believed--though he would not have dared to admit it in New York--that the Flatiron Building was inferior to design to the great cathedral in Milan. Out of each week's earnings Chandler set aside $1. At the end of each ten weeks with the extra capital thus accumulated, he purchased one gentleman's evening from the bargain counter of stingy old Father Time. He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he took himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showiest, and there dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a few hours, play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a well-considered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label, commensurate tips, a smoke, cab fare and the ordinary etceteras. This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the society bud comes but one debut; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened; but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among bon vivants under palms in the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the habitues of such a paradise and to be looked upon by them--what is a girl's first dance and short-sleeved tulle compared with this? Up Broadway Chandler moved with the vespertine dress parade. For this evening he was an exhibit as well as a gazer. For the next sixty-nine evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious table d'hotes, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hall-bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great city of razzle-dazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight made up for many dark ones. Chandler protracted his walk until the Forties began to intersect the great and glittering primrose way, for the evening was yet young, and when one is of the beau monde only one day in seventy, one loves to protract the pleasure. Eyes bright, sinister, curious, admiring, provocative, alluring were bent upon him, for his garb and air proclaimed him a devotee to the hour of solace and pleasure. At a certain corner he came to a standstill, proposing to himself the question of turning back toward the showy and fashionable restaurant in which he usually dined on the evenings of his especial luxury. Just then a girl scuddled lightly around the corner, slipped on a patch of icy snow and fell plump upon the sidewalk. Chandler assisted her to her feet with instant and solicitous courtesy. The girl hobbled to the wall of the building, leaned against it, and thanked him demurely. "I think my ankle is strained," she said. "It twisted when I fell." "Does it pain you much?" inquired Chandler. "Only when I rest my weight upon it. I think I will be able to walk in a minute or two." "If I can be of any further service," suggested the young man, "I will call a cab, or--" "Thank you," said the girl, softly but heartily. "I am sure you need not trouble yourself any further. It was so awkward of me. And my shoe heels are horridly common-sense; I can't blame them at all." Chandler looked at the girl and found her swiftly drawing his interest. She was pretty in a refined way; and her eye was both merry and kind. She was inexpensively clothed in a plain black dress that suggested a sort of uniform such as shop girls wear. Her glossy dark-brown hair showed its coils beneath a cheap hat of black straw whose only ornament was a velvet ribbon and bow. She could have posed as a model for the self-respecting working girl of the best type. A sudden idea came into the head of the young architect. He would ask this girl to dine with him. Here was the element that his splendid but solitary periodic feasts had lacked. His brief season of elegant luxury would be doubly enjoyable if he could add to it a lady's society. This girl was a lady, he was sure--her manner and speech settled that. And in spite of her extremely plain attire he felt that he would be pleased to sit at table with her. These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind, and he decided to ask her. It was a breach of etiquette, of course, but oftentimes wage- earning girls waived formalities in matters of this kind. They were generally shrewd judges of men; and thought better of their own judgment than they did of useless conventions. His ten dollars, discreetly expended, would enable the two to dine very well indeed. The dinner would no doubt be a wonderful experience thrown into the dull routine of the girl's life; and her lively appreciation of it would add to his own triumph and pleasure. "I think," he said to her, with frank gravity, "that your foot needs a longer rest than you suppose. Now, I am going to suggest a way in which you can give it that and at the same time do me a favour. I was on my way to dine all by my lonely self when you came tumbling around the corner. You come with me and we'll have a cozy dinner and a pleasant talk together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very nicely, I am sure." The girl looked quickly up into Chandler's clear, pleasant countenance. Her eyes twinkled once very brightly, and then she smiled ingenuously. "But we don't know each other--it wouldn't be right, would it?" she said, doubtfully. "There is nothing wrong about it," said the young man, candidly. "I'll introduce myself--permit me--Mr. Towers Chandler. After our dinner, which I will try to make as pleasant as possible, I will bid you good-evening, or attend you safely to your door, whichever you prefer." "But, dear me!" said the girl, with a glance at Chandler's faultless attire. "In this old dress and hat!" "Never mind that," said Chandler, cheerfully. "I'm sure you look more charming in them than any one we shall see in the most elaborate dinner toilette." "My ankle does hurt yet," admitted the girl, attempting a limping step. "I think I will accept your invitation, Mr. Chandler. You may call me--Miss Marian." "Come then, Miss Marian," said the young architect, gaily, but with perfect courtesy; "you will not have far to walk. There is a very respectable and good restaurant in the next block. You will have to lean on my arm--so--and walk slowly. It is lonely dining all by one's self. I'm just a little bit glad that you slipped on the ice." When the two were established at a well-appointed table, with a promising waiter hovering in attendance, Chandler began to experience the real joy that his regular outing always brought to him. The restaurant was not so showy or pretentious as the one further down Broadway, which he always preferred, but it was nearly so. The tables were well filled with Prosperous-looking diners, there was a good orchestra, playing softly enough to make conversation a possible pleasure, and the cuisine and service were beyond criticism. His companion, even in her cheap hat and dress, held herself with an air that added distinction to the natural beauty of her face and figure. And it is certain that she looked at Chandler, with his animated but self-possessed manner and his kindling and frank blue eyes, with something not far from admiration in her own charming face. Then it was that the Madness of Manhattan, the frenzy of Fuss and Feathers, the Bacillus of Brag, the Provincial Plague of Pose seized upon Towers Chandler. He was on Broadway, surrounded by pomp and style, and there were eyes to look at him. On the stage of that comedy he had assumed to play the one-night part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler of means and taste. He was dressed for the part, and all his good angels had not the power to prevent him from acting it. So he began to prate to Miss Marian of clubs, of teas, of golf and riding and kennels and cotillions and tours abroad and threw out hints of a yacht lying at Larchmont. He could see that she was vastly impressed by this vague talk, so he endorsed his pose by random insinuations concerning great wealth, and mentioned familiarly a few names that are handled reverently by the proletariat. It was Chandler's short little day, and he was wringing from it the best that could be had, as he saw it. And yet once or twice he saw the pure gold of this girl shine through the mist that his egotism had raised between him and all objects. "This way of living that you speak of," she said, "sounds so futile and purposeless. Haven't you any work to do in the world that might interest you more?" "My dear Miss Marian," he exclaimed--"work! Think of dressing every day for dinner, of making half a dozen calls in an afternoon--with a policeman at every corner ready to jump into your auto and take you to the station, if you get up any greater speed than a donkey cart's gait. We do-nothings are the hardest workers in the land." The dinner was concluded, the waiter generously fed, and the two walked out to the corner where they had met. Miss Marian walked very well now; her limp was scarcely noticeable. "Thank you for a nice time," she said, frankly. "I must run home now. I liked the dinner very much, Mr. Chandler." He shook hands with her, smiling cordially, and said something about a game of bridge at his club. He watched her for a moment, walking rather rapidly eastward, and then he found a cab to drive him slowly homeward. In his chilly bedroom Chandler laid away his evening clothes for a sixty-nine days' rest. He went about it thoughtfully. "That was a stunning girl," he said to himself. "She's all right, too, I'd be sworn, even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I'd told her the truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might--but, confound it! I had to play up to my clothes." Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams of the tribe of the Manhattans. The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously out the window. "Oh, you madcap!" exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered. "When will you quit frightening us this way? It is two hours since you ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie's hat. Mamma has been so alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad, thoughtless Puss." The elder girl touched a button, and a maid came in a moment. "Marie, tell mamma that Miss Marian has returned." "Don't scold, sister. I only ran down to Mme. Theo's to tell her to use mauve insertion instead of pink. My costume and Marie's hat were just what I needed. Every one thought I was a shopgirl, I am sure." "Dinner is over, dear; you stayed so late." "I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and sat there until I was better. That is why I was so long." The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the stream of hurrying vehicles in the avenue. The younger one cuddled down with her head in her sister's lap. "We will have to marry some day," she said dreamily--" both of us. We have so much money that we will not be allowed to disappoint the public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love, Sis?" "Go on, you scatterbrain," smiled the other. "I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and respectful to poor girls, who is handsome and good and does not try to flirt. But I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some work to do in the world. I would not care how poor he was if I could help him build his way up. But, sister dear, the kind of man we always meet--the man who lives an idle life between society and his clubs--I could not love a man like that, even if his eyes were blue and he were ever so kind to poor girls whom he met in the street." The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a- brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon. The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prcscription desk--pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside. Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not g1ace. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey's corniform, be-spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired. Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain--you must have guessed it--Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal--the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and valerianate of ammonia. The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk McGowan. Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no outfielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery. One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smooth-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool. "Ikey," said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder, "get busy with your ear. It's drugs for me if you've got the line I need." Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but found none. "Take your coat off," he ordered. "I guess already that you have been stuck in the ribs with a knife. I have many times told you those Dagoes would do you up." Mr. McGowan smiled. "Not them," he said. "Not any Dagoes. But you've located the diagnosis all right enough--it's under my coat, near the ribs. Say! Ikey--Rosy and me are goin' to run away and get married to-night." Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom. "That is," he continued, "if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We've been layin' pipes for the getaway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy. We've agreed on to-night, and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll stand me up when it comes to the scratch." "You said you wanted drugs," remarked Ikey. Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed--a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanour. He made a patent-medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger. "I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start to-night for a million," he said. "I've got a little flat up in Harlem all ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged a pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30. It's got to come off. And if Rosy don't change her mind again!"--Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts. "I don't see then yet," said Ikey, shortly, "what makes it that you talk of drugs, or what I can be doing about it." "Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit," went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments. "For a week he hasn't let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll never regret flyin' the coop with Chunk McGowan." "You will excuse me, Chunk," said Ikey. "I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon." "Say," said McGowan, looking up suddenly, "say, Ikey, ain't there a drug of some kind--some kind of powders that'11 make a girl like you better if you give 'em to her?" Ikey's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued: "Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed 'em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks." Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy's territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure. "I thought," went on Chunk hopefully, "that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff'll work just for a couple of hours it'll do the trick." "When is this foolishness of running away to be happening?" asked Ikey. "Nine o'clock," said Mr. McGowan. "Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine old Parvenzano lets me through to his back yard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I go under her window and help her down the fire-escape. We've got to make it early on the preacher's account. It's all dead easy if Rosy don't balk when the flag drops. Can you fix me one of them powders, Ikey?" Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly. "Chunk," said he, "it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To you alone of my acquaintance would I intrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosy to think of you." Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder would insure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleeper. This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinvar. The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr. Riddle was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action. "Much obliged," he said, briefly, to Ikey. "The lazy Irish loafer! My own room's just above Rosy's. I'll just go up there myself after supper and load the shot-gun and wait. If he comes in my back yard he'll go away in a ambulance instead of a bridal chaise." With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a many-hours deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture. All night in the Blue Light Drug Store he waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy, but none came. At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn the outcome. And, lo! as he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang from a passing street car and grasped his hand--Chunk McGowan with a victor's smile and flushed with joy. "Pulled it off," said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. "Rosy bit the fire-escape on time to a second, and we was under the wire at the Reverend's at 9.3O 1/4. She's up at the flat--she cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue kimono--Lord! how lucky I am! You must pace up some day, Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, and that's where I'm heading for now." "The--the--powder?" stammered Ikey. "Oh, that stuff you gave me!" said Chunk, broadening his grin; "well, it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at Riddle's, and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, 'Chunk, if you get the girl get her on the square--don't try any hocus-pocus with a thoroughbred like her.' And I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket. And then my lamps fall on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin' in a proper affection toward his comin' son-in- law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man Riddle's coffee--see?" Madame Bo-peep, of the Ranches "AUNT ELLEN," said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, "I'm a pauper." "You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, dear," said Aunt Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper. "If you find yourself temporarily in need of some small change for bonbons, you will find my purse in the drawer of the writing desk." Octavia Beaupree removed her hat and seated herself on a footstool near her aunt's chair, clasping her hands about her knees. Her slim and flexible figure, clad in a modish mourning costume, accommodated itself easily and gracefully to the trying position. Her bright and youthful face, with its pair of sparkling, life-enamoured eyes, tried to compose itself to the seriousness that the occasion seemed to demand. "You good auntie, it isn't a case of bonbons; it is abject, staring, unpicturesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and probably one o'clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I've just come from my lawyer, auntie, and, 'Please, ma'am, I ain't got nothink 't all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for five, to help a poor widow?' Do I do it nicely, auntie, or, as a bread-winner accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely wasted?" "Do be serious, my dear," said Aunt Ellen, letting her paper fall to the floor, "long enough to tell me what you mean. Colonel Beaupree's estate -- " "Colonel Beaupree's estate," interrupted Octavia, emphasizing her words with appropriate dramatic ges- tures, "is of Spanish castellar architecture. Colonel Beaupree's resources are -- wind. Colonel Beaupree's stocks are -- water. Colonel Beaupree's income is -- all in. The statement lacks the legal technicalities to which I have been listening for an hour, but that is what it means when translated." "Octavia!" Aunt Ellen was now visibly possessed by consternation. "I can hardly believe it. And it was the impression that he was worth a million. And the De Peysters themselves introduced him!" Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave. "De mortuis nil, auntie -- not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel -- what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly -- I'm all here, am I not? -- items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unques- tionable position in society as called for in the contract no wild-cat stock here." Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. "But I'm not going to 'squeal' -- isn't that what they call it when you rail at Fortune because you've, lost the game?" She turned the pages of the paper calmly. "'Stock market' -- no use for that. 'Society's doings' -- that's done. Here is my page -- the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to 'want' for anything, of course. 'Chamber- maids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers-" "Dear," said Aunt Ellen, with a little tremor in her voice, "please do not talk in that way. Even if your affairs are in so unfortunate a condition, there is my three thousand -- " Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate cheek of the prim little elderly maid. "Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized cream. I know I'd be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like Beelzebub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music from the side entrance. I'm going to earn my own living. There's nothing else to do. I'm a -- Oh, oh, oh! -- I had forgotten. There's one thing saved from the wreck. It's a corral -- no, a ranch in -- let me see -- Texas: an asset, dear old Mr. Bannister called it. How pleased he was to show me something he could describe as unencumbered! I've a description of it among those stupid papers he made me bring away with me from his office. I'll try to find it." Octavia found her shopping-bag, and drew from it a long envelope filled with typewritten documents. "A ranch in Texas," sighed Aunt Ellen. "It sounds to me more like a liability than an asset. Those are the places where the centipedes are found, and cowboys, and fandangos." "'The Rancho de las Sombras,'" read Octavia from a sheet of violently purple typewriting "'is situated one hundred and ten miles southeast of San Antonio, and thirty-eight miles from its nearest railroad station, Nopal, on the I. and G. N. Ranch, consists of 7,680 acres of well- watered land, with title conferred by State patents, and twenty-two sections, or 14,080 acres, partly under yearly running lease and partly bought under State's twenty- year-purchase act. Eight thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses, vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick, with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence. "'The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and is rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands, had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct. "'This property was secured by Colonel Beaupree in a deal with a Western irrigation syndicate, and the title to it seems to be perfect. With careful management and the natural increase of land values, it ought to be made the foundation for a comfortable fortune for its owner.'" When Octavia ceased reading, Aunt Ellen uttered something as near a sniff as her breeding permitted. "The prospectus," she said, with uncompromising metropolitan suspicion, "doesn't mention the centipedes, or the Indians. And you never did like mutton, Octavia. I don't see what advantage you can derive from this -- desert." But Octavia was in a trance. Her eyes were steadily regarding something quite beyond their focus. Her lips were parted, and her face was lighted by the kindling furor of the explorer, the ardent, stirring disquiet of the adventurer. Suddenly she clasped her hands together exultantly. "The problem solves itself, auntie," she cried. "I'm going to that ranch. I'm going to live on it. I'm going to learn to like mutton, and even concede the good qualities of centipedes -- at a respectful distance. It's just what I need. It's a new life that comes when my old one is just ending. It's a release, auntie; it isn't a narrow- ing. Think of the gallops over those leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the roots of your hair, the com- ing close to the earth and learning over again the stories of the growing grass and the little wild flowers without names! Glorious is what it will be. Shall I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the latter. And they'll have my picture, too, with the wild-cats I've slain, single-handed, hanging from my saddle horn. 'From the Four Hundred to the Flocks' is the way they'll headline it, and they'll print photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where I was married. They won't have my picture, but they'll get an artist to draw it. I'll be wild and woolly, and I'll grow my own wool." "Octavia!" Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests she was unable to utter. "Don't say a word, auntie. I'm going. I'll see the sky at night fit down on the world like a big butter-dish cover, and I'll make friends again with the stars that I haven't had a chat with since I was a wee child. I wish to go. I'm tired of all this. I'm glad I haven't any money. I could bless Colonel Beaupree for that ranch, and forgive him for all his bubbles. What if the life will be rough and lonely! I -- I deserve it. I shut my heart to everything except that miserable ambition. I -- oh, I wish to go away, and forget -- forget!" Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her aunt's lap, and shook with turbulent sobs. Aunt Ellen bent over her, and smoothed the coppery- brown hair. "I didn't know," she said, gently; "I didn't know -- that. Who was it, dear? When Mrs. Octavia Beaupree, née Van Dresser, stepped from the train at Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent estab- lishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms. Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and attempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string, of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been instructed by Mr. Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious, looking, elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she thought must be he. But, no; he passed by, removing his gaze from the lady as hers rested on him, according to the Southern custom. The manager, she thought, with some impatience at being kept waiting, should have no difficulty in selecting her. Young women wearing the most recent thing in ash-coloured travelling suits were not so plentiful in Nopal! Thus keeping a speculative watch on all persons of possible managerial aspect, Octavia, with a catching breath and a start of surprise, suddenly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in the direction of the train -- of Teddy Westlake or his sun- browned ghost in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat -- Theodore Westlake, Jr., amateur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cumberer of the soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than the one she had known a year ago when last she saw him. He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course, and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe came upon her as the strange- ness of his metamorphosis was brought into closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old, boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood. "Why, 'Tave!" he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to coherence. " How -- what -- when -- where?" "Train," said Octavia; "necessity; ten minutes ago; home. Your complexion's gone, Teddy. Now, how -- what -- when -- where?" "I'm working down here," said Teddy. He cast side glances about the station as one does who tries to combine politeness with duty. "You didn't notice on the train," he asked, "an old lady with gray curls and a poodle, who occupied two seats with her bundles and quarrelled with the conductor, did you?" "I think not," answered Octavia, reflecting. "And you haven't, by any chance, noticed a big, gray-mustached man in a blue shirt and six-shooters, with little flakes of merino wool sticking in his hair, have you?" "Lots of 'em," said Teddy, with symptoms of mental delirium under the strain. Do you happen to know any such individual?" "No; the description is imaginary. Is your interest in the old lady whom you describe a personal one?" "Never saw her in my life. She's painted entirely from fancy. She owns the little piece of property where I earn my bread and butter - the Rancho de las Sombras. I drove up to meet her according to arrangement with her lawyer." Octavia leaned against the wall of the telegraph office. Was this possible? And didn't he know? "Are you the manager of that ranch?" she asked weakly. "I am," said Teddy, with pride. "I am Mrs. Beaupree," said Octavia faintly; "but my hair never would curl, and I was polite to the conductor." For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed Teddy miles away from her. "I hope you'll excuse me," he said, rather awkwardly. "You see, I've been down here in the chaparral a year. I hadn't heard. Give me your checks, please, and I'll have your traps loaded into the wagon. José will follow with them. We travel ahead in the buckboard." Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild, cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and dis- appeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared gloriously in their ears. The motion was a?rial, ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent, possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be wrestling with some internal problem. "I'm going to call you madama," he announced as the result of his labours. "That is what the Mexicans will call you -- they're nearly all Mexicans on the ranch, you know. That seems to me about the proper thing." "Very well, Mr. Westlake," said Octavia, primly. "Oh, now," said Teddy, in some consternation, "that's carrying the thing too far, isn't it?" "Don't worry me with your beastly etiquette. I'm just beginning to live. Don't remind me of anything artificial. If only this air could be bottled! This much alone is worth coming for. Oh, look I there goes a deer!" "Jack-rabbit," said Teddy, without turning his head. "Could I -- might I drive?" suggested Octavia, pant- ing, with rose-tinted cheeks and the eye of an eager child. "On one condition. Could I -- might I smoke? " "Forever!" cried Octavia, taking the lines with solemn joy. "How shall I know which way to drive?" "Keep her sou' by sou'east, and all sail set. You see that black speck on the horizon under that lowermost Gulf cloud? That's a group of live-oaks and a land- mark. Steer halfway between that and the little hill to the left. I'll recite you the whole code of driving rules for the Texas prairies: keep the reins from under the horses' feet, and swear at 'em frequent." "I'm too happy to swear, Ted. Oh, why do people buy yachts or travel in palace-cars, when a buckboard and a pair of plugs and a spring morning like this can satisfy all desire?" "Now, I'll ask you," protested Teddy, who was futilely striking match after match on the dashboard, "not to call those denizens of the air plugs. They can kick out a hundred miles between daylight and dark." At last he succeeded in snatching a light for his cigar from the flame held in the hollow of his hands. "Room!" said Octavia, intensely. "That's what produces the effect. I know now what I've wanted -- scope -- range -- room! " "Smoking-room," said Teddy, unsentimentally. "I love to smoke in a buckboard. The wind blows the smoke into you and out again. It saves exertion." The two fell so naturally into their old-time goodfellow- ship that it was only by degrees that a sense of the strange- ness of the new relations between them came to be felt. "Madama," said Teddy, wonderingly, "however did you get it into your bead to cut the crowd and come down here? Is it a fad now among the upper classes to trot off to sheep ranches instead of to Newport?" "I was broke, Teddy," said Octavia, sweetly, with her interest centred upon steering safely between a Spanish dagger plant and a clump of chaparral; "I haven't a thing in the world but this ranch -- not even any other home to go to." "Come, now," said Teddy, anxiously but ineredu- lously, "you don't mean it?" "When my husband," said Octavia, with a shy slurring of the word, "died three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the world's goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you happen to know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of Manhattan that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become managers of sheep ranches?" "It's easily explained in my case," responded Teddy, promptly. "I had to go to work. I couldn't have earned my board in New York, so I chummed a while with old Sandford, one of the syndicate that owned the ranch before Colonel Beaupree bought it, and got a place down here. I wasn't manager at first. I jogged around on ponies and studied the business in detail, until I got all the points in my head. I saw where it was losing and what the reme- dies were, and then Sandford put me in charge. I get a hundred dollars a month, and I earn it." "Poor Teddy!" said Octavia, with a smile. "You needn't. I like it. I save half my wages, and I'm as hard as a water plug. It beats polo." "Will it furnish bread and tea and jam for another out- cast from civilization?" "The spring shearing," said the manager, "just cleaned up a deficit in last year's business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all expenses. Next year there will be jam." When, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the ponies rounded a gentle, brush-covered hill, and then swooped, like a double cream-coloured cyclone, upon the Rancho de las Sombras, Octavia gave a little cry of delight. A lordly grove of magnificent live-oaks cast an area of grateful, cool shade, whence the ranch had drawn its name, "de las Sombras" -- of the shadows. The house, of red brick, one story, ran low and long beneath the trees. Through its middle, dividing its six rooms in half, extended a broad, arched passageway, picturesque with flowering cactus and hanging red earthern jars. A "gallery," low and broad, encircled the building. Vines climbed about it, and the adjacent ground was, for a space, covered with transplanted grass and shrubs. A little lake, long and narrow, glimmered in the sun at the rear. Further away stood the shacks of the Mexican workers, the corrals, wool sheds and shearing pens. To the right lay the low hills, splattered with dark patches of chaparral; to the left the unbounded green prairie blending against the blue heavens. "It's a home, Teddy," said Octavia, breathlessly; that's what it is -- it's a home." "Not so bad for a sheep ranch," admitted Teddy, with excusable pride. "I've been tinkering on it at odd times." A Mexican youth sprang from somewhere in the grass, and took charge of the creams. The mistress and the manager entered the house. "Here's Mrs. MacIntyre," said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady came out upon the gallery to meet them. "Mrs. Mac, here's the boss. Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of beans after her drive." Mrs. MacIntyre, the housekeeper, as much a fixture on the place as the lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch's resources of refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it utterance when Octavia spoke. "Oh, Mrs. MacIntyre, don't apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him Teddy. So does every one whom he hasn't duped into taking him seriously. You see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages ago. No one minds what he says." "No," said Teddy, "no one minds what he says, just so he doesn't do it again." Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from beneath her lowered eyelids -- a glance that Teddy used to describe as an upper-cut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion -- nothing. Beyond a doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten. "Mr. Westlake likes his fun," said Mrs. Maclntyre, as she conducted Octavia to her rooms. "But," she added, loyally, "people around here usually pay attention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don't know what would have become of this place without him." Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch's mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves. She flew to these at once. Before her was a well-selected library. She caught glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of the press. Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to the fly-leaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr. Octavia, fatigued by her long journey, retired early that night. Lying upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliciously, but sleep coquetted long with her. She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her faculties on the alert -- the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the ceaseless, low symphony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs about the lake, the lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans' quarters. There were many conflicting feelings in her heart -- thankfulness and rebellion, peace and disquietude, loneliness and a sense of protecting care, happiness and an old, haunting pain. She did what any other woman would have done -- sought relief in a wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to herself before slumber, capitulating, came softly to woo her, were "He has forgotten." The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante. He was a "hustler." He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks and camps. This was the duty of the majordomo, a stately old Mexican with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal of confidence in his own eyesight. Except in the busy seasons, he nearly always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o'clock, with Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, at the little table set in the central hallway, bringing with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the health and flavour of the prairies. A few days after Octavia's arrival he made her get out one of her riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by the chaparral brakes. With some misgivings she donned this and the pair of buckskin leggings he prescribed in addition, and, mounted upon a dancing pony, rode with him to view her posses- sions. He showed her everything -- the flocks of ewes, muttons and grazing lambs, the dipping vats, the shearing pens, the uncouth merino rams in their little pasture, the water-tanks I prepared against the summer drought -- giving account of his stewardship with a boyish enthus- siasm that never flagged. Where was the old Teddy that she knew so well? This side of him was the same, and it was a side that pleased her; but this was all she ever saw of him now. Where was his sentimentality -- those old, varying moods of impetuous love-making, of fanciful, quixotic devotion, of heart-breaking gloom, of alternating, absurd tenderness and haughty dignity? His nature had been a sensitive one, his temperament bordering closely on the artistic. She knew that, besides being a follower of fashion and its fads and sports, he had cultivated tastes of a finer nature. He had written things, he had tampered with colours, he was something of a student in certain branches of art, and once she had been admitted to all his aspirations and thoughts. But now -- and she could not avoid the con- clusion -- Teddy had barricaded against her every side of himself except one -- the side that showed the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras and a jolly chum who had forgiven and forgotten. Queerly enough the words of Mr. Bannister's description of her property came into her mind -- "all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence." "Teddy's fenced, too," said Octavia to herself. It was not difficult for her to reason out the cause of his fortifications. It had originated one night at the Hammersmiths' ball. It occurred at a time soon after she had decided to accept Colonel Beaupree and his million, which was no more than her looks and the entrée she held to the inner circles were worth. Teddy had proposed with all his impetuosity and fire, and she looked him straight in the eyes, an said, coldly and finally: "Never let me hear any such silly nonsense from you again." "You won't," said Teddy, with an expression around his mouth, and -- now Teddy was inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence. It was on this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the inspiration that suggested the name of Mother Goose's heroine, and he at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a similarity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him as a peculiarly happy one, and he never tired of using it. The Mexicans on the ranch also took up the name, adding another syllable to accommodate their lingual incapacity for the final "p," gravely referring to her as "La Madama Bo-Peepy." Eventually it spread, and "Madame Bo- Peep's ranch" was as often mentioned as the "Rancho de las Sombras." Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater's dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old water-colour box and easel -- these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and Mrs. MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the lighter humour in which she was lacking. And the nights came, one after another, and were filed away by weeks and months -- nights soft and languorous and fragrant, that should have driven Strephon to Chloe over wires however barbed, that might have drawn Cupid himself to hunt, lasso in hand, among those amorous pastures -- but Teddy kept his fences up. One July night Madame Bo-Peep and her ranch man- ager were sitting on the east gallerv. Teddy had been exhausting the science of prognostication as to the proba- bilities of a price of twenty-four cents for the autumn clip, and had then subsided into an anesthetic cloud of Havana smoke. Only as incompetent a judge as a woman would have failed to note long ago that at least a third of his salary must have gone up in the fumes of those imported Regalias. "Teddy," said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, "what are you working down here on a ranch for?" "One hundred per," said Teddy, glibly, "and found." "I've a good mind to discharge you." "Can't do it," said Teddy, with a grin. "Why not?" demanded Octavia, with argumentative heat. "Under contract. Terms of sale respect all unexpired contracts. Mine runs until 12 P. m., December thirty-first. You might get up at midnight on that date and fire me. if you try it sooner I'll be in a position to bring legal proceedings." Octavia seemed to be considering the prospects of litigation. "But," continued Teddy cheerfully, "I've been think- ing of resigning anyway." Octavia's rocking-chair ceased its motion. There were centipedes in this country, she felt sure; and Indians, and vast, lonely, desolate, empty wastes; all within strong barbed-wire fence. There was a Van Dresser pride, but there was also a Van Dresser heart. She must know for certain whether or not he had forgotten. "Ah, well, Teddy," she said, with a fine assumption of polite interest, "it's lonely down here; you're longing to get back to the old life -- to polo and lobsters and theatres and balls." "Never cared much for balls," said Teddy virtuously. "You're getting old, Teddy. Your memory is failing. Nobody ever knew you to miss a dance, unless it occurred on the same night with another one which you attended. And you showed such shocking bad taste, too, in dancing too often with the same partner. Let me see, what was that Forbes girl's name -- the one with wall eyes -- Mabel, wasn't it?" "No; Adéle. Mabel was the one with the bony elbows. That wasn't wall in Adéle's eyes. It was soul. We used to talk sonnets together, and Verlaine. Just then I was trying to run a pipe from the Pierian spring." "You were on the floor with her," said Octavia, unde- flected, "five times at the Hammersmiths'." "Hammersmiths' what? " questioned Teddy, vacuously. "Ball -- ball," said Octavia, viciously. "What were we talking of?" "Eyes, I thought," said Teddy, after some reflection; "and elbows." "Those Hammersmiths," went on Octavia, in her sweetest society prattle, after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of sunburnt, sandy hair from the head lying back contentedly against the canvas of the steamer chair, "had too much money. Mines, wasn't it? It was something that paid something to the ton. You couldn't get a glass of plain water in their house. Everything at that ball was dreadfully overdone." "It was," said Teddy. "Such a crowd there was!" Octavia continued, con- scious that she was talking the rapid drivel of a school- girl describing her first dance. "The balconies were as warm as the rooms. I -- lost -- something at that ball." The last sentence was uttered in a tone calculated to remove the barbs from miles of wire. "So did I," confessed Teddy, in a lower voice. "A glove," said Octavia, falling back as the enemy approached her ditches. "Caste," said Teddy, halting his firing line without loss. "I hobnobbed, half the evening with one of Hammersmith's miners, a fellow who kept his hands in his pockets, and talked like an archangel about reduction plants and drifts and levels and sluice-boxes." "A pearl-gray glove, nearly new," sighed Octavia, mournfully. "A bang-up chap, that McArdle," maintained Teddy approvingly. " A man who hated olives and elevators; a man who handled mountains as croquettes, and built tunnels in the air; a man who never uttered a word of silly nonsense in his life. Did you sign those lease- renewal applications yet, madama? They've got to be on file in the land office by the thirty-first." Teddy turned his head lazily. Octavia's chair was vacant. A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate, expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre were trim- ming the honeysuckle on the west gallery. Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the night by a thunder-storm. The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor of the gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue, he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the furthermost west room, which was Teddy's. Arming themselves with domestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed. Once outside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their victim. Even in the midst of such a dangerous and absorbing adventure Octavia was conscious of an awed curiosity on finding herself in Teddy's sanctum. In that room he sat alone, silently communing with those secret thoughts that he now shared with no one, dreamed there whatever dreams he now called on no one to interpret. It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier. In one corner stood a wide, canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim stand of Winchesters and shotguns. An immense table, strewn with letters, papers and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeon- holes, occupied one side. The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare quarters. Mrs. Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase. Octavia approached Teddy's cot. The room was just as the manager had left it in his hurry. The Mexican maid had not yet given it her attention. There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still in the centre. She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot and hidden itself to bite Teddy. Centipedes were thus cruel and vindictive toward managers. She cautiously overturned the pillow, and then parted her lips to give the signal for reinforcements at sight of a long, slender, dark object lying there. But, repressing it in time, she caught up a glove, a pearl-gray glove, flattened -- it might be conceived -- by many, many months of nightly pressure beneath the pillow of the man who had forgotten the Hammersmiths' ball. Teddy must have left so hurriedly that morning that he had, for once, forgotten to transfer it to its resting-place by day. Even managers, who are notoriously wily and cunning, are sometimes caught up with. Octavia slid the gray glove into the bosom of her sum- mery morning gown. It was hers. Men who put them- selves within a strong barbed-wire fence, and remember Hammersmith balls only by the talk of miners about sluice- boxes, should not be allowed to possess such articles. After all, what a paradise this prairie country was! How it blossomed like the rose when you found things that were thought to be lost! How delicious was that morning breeze coming in the windows, fresh and sweet with the breath of the yellow ratama blooms! Might one not stand, for a minute, with shining, far-gazing eyes, and dream that mistakes might be corrected? Why was Mrs. Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom? "I've found it," said Mrs. MacIntyre, banging the door. "Here it is." "Did you lose something? asked Octavia, with sweetly polite non-interest. "The little devil!" said Mrs. Maclntyre, driven to violence. "Ye've no forgotten him alretty?" Between them they slew the centipede. Thus was he rewarded for his agency toward the recovery of things lost at the Hammersmiths' ball. It seems that Teddy, in due course, remembered the glove, and when he returned to the house at sunset made a secret but exhaustive search for it. Not until evening, upon the moonlit eastern gallery, did he find it. It was upon the hand that he had thought lost to him forever, and so he was moved to repeat certain nonsense that he had been commanded never, never to utter again. Teddy's fences were down. This time there was no ambition to stand in the way, and the wooing was as natural and successful as should be between ardent shepherd and gentle shepherdess. The prairies changed to a garden. The Rancho de las Sombras became the Ranch of Light. A few days later Octavia received a letter from Mr. Bannister, in reply to one she had written to him asking some questions about her business. A portion of the letter ran as follows: "I am at a loss to account for your references to the sheep ranch. Two months after your departure to take up your residence upon it, it was discovered that Colonel Beaupree's title was worthless. A deed came to light showing that he disposed of the property before his death. The matter was reported to your manager, Mr. Westlake, who at once repurchad the property. It is entirely beyond my powers of conjecture to imagine how you have remained in ignorance of this fact. I beg you that will at once confer with that gentleman, who will, at least, corroborate my statement." Octavia sought Teddy, with battle in her eye. "What are you working on this ranch for?" she asked once more. "One hundred -- " he began to repeat, but saw in her face that she knew. She held Mr. Bannister's letter in her hand. He knew that the game was up. "It's my ranch," said Teddy, like a schoolboy detected in evil. "It's a mighty poor manager that isn't able to absorb the boss's business if you give him time." "Why were you working down here?" pursued Octavia still struggling after the key to the riddle of Teddy. "To tell the truth, 'Tave," said Teddy, with quiet candour, "it wasn't for the salary. That about kept me in cigars and sunburn lotions. I was sent south by my doctor. 'Twas that right lung that was going to the bad on account of over-exercise and strain at polo and gym- nastics. I needed climate and ozone and rest and things of that sort." In an instant Octavia was close against the vicinity of the affected organ. Mr. Bannister's letter fluttered to the floor. "It's -- it's well now, isn't it, Teddy?" "Sound as a mesquite chunk. I deceived you in one thing. I paid fifty thousand for your ranch as soon as I found you had no title. I had just about that much income accumulated at my banker's while I've been herding sheep down here, so it was almost like picking the thing up on a bargain-counter for a penny. There's another little surplus of unearned increment piling up there, 'Tave. I've been thinking of a wedding trip in a yacht with white ribbons tied to the mast, through the Mediterranean, and then up among the Hebrides and down Norway to the Zuyder Zee." "And I was thinking," said Octavia, softly, "of a wedding gallop with my manager among the flocks of sheep and back to a wedding breakfast with Mrs. Mae- Intyre on the gallery, with, maybe, a sprig of orange blossom fastened to the red jar above the table." Teddy laughed, and began to chant: "Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,And doesn't know where to find 'em.Let 'em alone, and they'll come home,And -- "Octavia drew his head down, and whispered in his ear, But that is one of the tales they brought behind them. Man About Town There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery. So I began to inquire. It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases. And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned. The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown vest and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing something; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and opening it again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue wristlets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes polisbed within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him turquoises. But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About Town, was blank. I fancied that he bad a detachable sneer (like the smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all. Whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him. "Why," said he, "a 'Man About Town' something between a 'rounder' and a 'clubman.' He isn't exactly--well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish's receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn't--well, he doesn't belong either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron Workers' Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder Association. I don't exactly know how to describe him to you. You'll see him everywhere there's anything doing. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes every evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman and waiter in town by their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives. You generally see him alone or with another man." My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed, but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed. Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders hurried, skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no note of them. I knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had served. I wanted my Man About Town. He was a type, and to drop him would be an error--a typograph--but no! let us continue. Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an open window, and bending--but there, there! Mamma is interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w Yo_k. The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in Q., X. & Z. Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day. Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours' grip; and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the real estatc transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it introduces strong drink. I went into a cafe to -- and while it was being mixed I asked the man who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he undcrstood by the term, epithet, description, designation, characterisation or appellation, viz.: a "Man About Town." "Why," said he, carefully, "it means a fly guy that's wise to the all-night push--see? It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the rail anywhere between the Flatirons--see? I guess that's about what it means." I thanked him and departed. On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle gently against my waistcoat pocket. "Would you mind telling me," I asked her, "if you ever meet with the character commonly denominated as 'A Man About Town' during your daily wanderings?" "I think I know whom you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile. "We see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil's body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are, their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service." She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it. In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing from a cab. He seemed at leisure; and I put my question to him. He answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would. "There is a type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered. "The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' has done that. He is always on the scent of something new. He is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence. Hansoms were made for him, and gold-banded cigars; and the curse of music at dinner. There are not so many of him; but his minority report is adopted everywhere. "I'm glad you brought up the subject; I've felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it before. I can see now that your 'Man About Town' should havc been classified long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models; and the orchestra 'p1ays 'Let's All Go Up to Maud's' for him, by request, instead of Handel. He makes his rounds every evening; while you and I see the elephant once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away immune, while you and I search among the Presidents for names, and among the stars for addresses to give the desk sergeant." My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence. I seized my advantage. "You have classified him," I cried with joy. "You have painted his portrait in the gallery of city types. But I must meet one face to face. I must study the Man About Town at first hand. Where shall I find him? How shall I know him?" Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on. And his cab-driver was waiting for his fare, too. "He is the sublimated essence of Butt-in; the refined, intrinsic extract of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils; when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields with the indefatigability of a--" "Excuse me," I interrupted, "but can you produce one of this type? It is a new thing to me. I must study it. I will search the town over until I find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway." "I am about to dine here," said my friend. "Come inside, and if there is a Man About Town present I will point him out to you. I know most of the regular patrons here." "I am not dining yet," I said to him. "You will excuse me. I am going to find my Man About Town this night if I have to rake New York from the Battery to Little Coney Island." I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type gave a pleasant savour of life and interest to the air I breathed. I was glad to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leisurely and with something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige. I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos-Dumont. When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said aloud: "Hasn't it passed yet?" A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my brow that was not at all fevered. A young doctor came along, grinned, and handed me a morning newspaper. "Want to see how it happened?" he asked cheerily. I read the article. Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night before. It closed with these lines: Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not serious. He appeared to be a typica1 Man About Town." The Marry Month of May PRITHEE, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and country. In May nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember that we are not gods, but overconceited members of her own great family. She reminds us that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the donkey; lineal scions of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but cousins-german to the cooing doves, the quacking ducks and the housemaids and policemen in the parks. In May Cupid shoots blindfolded -- millionaires marry stenographers; wise professors woo white-aproned gum-chewers behind quick-lunch counters; schoolma'ams make big bad boys remain after school; lads with ladders steal lightly over lawns where Juliet waits in her trellissed window with her telescope packed; young couples out for a walk come home married; old chaps put on white spats and promenade near the Normal School; even married men, grown unwontedly tender and sentimental, whack their spouses on the back and growl: "How goes it, old girl:" This May, who is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance given in honour of the fair débutante, Summer, puts the kibosh on us all. Old Mr. Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up straight in his invalid's chair. He had the gout very bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park, half a million dollars and a daughter. And he had a housekeeper, Mrs. Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence each. They have it. When May poked Mr. Coulson he became elder brother to the turtle-dove. In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths, geraniums and pansies. The breeze brought their odour into the room. Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath of the flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old Mr. Coulson's nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false enchantress May was done. Across the park to the olfactories of Mr. Coulson came other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere outdoors. Never trust May. Mr. Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot, and pounded a bell on the table by his side. In came Mrs. Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty and foxy. "Higgins is out, sir," she said, with a smile suggestive of vibratory massage. "He went to post a letter. Can I do anything for you, sir?" "It's time for my aconite," said old Mr. Coulson. "Drop it for me. The bottle's there. Three drops. In water. D -- that is, confound Higgins! There's nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for want of attention." Mrs. Widdup sighed deeply. "Don't be saying that, sir," she said. "There's them that would care more than any one knows. Thirteen drops, you said, sir?" "Three," said old man Coulson. He took his dose and then Mrs. Widdup's hand. She blushed. Oh, yes, it can be done. Just hold your breath and compress the diaphragm. "Mrs. Widdup," said Mr. Coulson, "the springtime's full upon us." "Ain't that right?" said Mrs. Widdup. "The air's real warm. And there's bock-beer signs on every corner. And the park's all yaller and pink and blue with flowers; and I have such shooting pains up my legs and body." "'In the spring,'" quoted Mr. Coulson, curling his mustache, "'a y-- that is, a man's -- fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.'" "Lawsy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Widdup; "ain't that right? Seems like it's in the air." "'In the spring,'" continued old Mr. Coulson, "'a livelier iris shines upon the burnished dove.'" "They do be lively, the Irish," sighed Mrs. Widdup pensively. "Mrs. Widdup," said Mr. Coulson, making a face at a twinge of his gouty foot, "this would be a lonesome house without you. I'm an -- that is, I'm an elderly man -- but I'm worth a comfortable lot of money. If half a million dollars' worth of Government bonds and the true affection of a heart that, though no longer beating with the first ardour of youth, can still throb with genuine -- " The loud noise of an overturned chair near the portières of the adjoining room interrupted the venerable and scarcely suspecting victim of May. In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony, durable, tall, high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five, in-the-neighbourhood-of-Gramercy-Parkish. She put up a lorgnette. Mrs. Widdup hastily stooped and arranged the bandages on Mr. Coulson's gouty foot. "I thought Higgins was with you," said Miss Van Meeker Constantia. "Higgins went out," explained her father, "and Mrs. Widdup answered the bell. That is better now, Mrs. Widdup, thank you. No; there is nothing else I require." The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss Coulson. "This spring weather is lovely, isn't it, daughter?" said the old man, consciously conscious. "That's just it," replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat obscurely. "When does Mrs. Widdup start on her vacation, papa?" "I believe she said a week from to-day," said Mr. Coulson. Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at the window gazing, toward the little park, flooded with the mellow afternoon sunlight. With the eye of a botanist she viewed the flowers -- most potent weapons of insidious May. With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne she withstood the attack of the ethereal mildness. The arrows of the pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom. The odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the unexplored recesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows gave her a pain. She mocked at May. But although Miss Coulson was proof against the season, she was keen enough to estimate its power. She knew that elderly men and thick-waisted women jumped as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of May, the merry mocker of the months. She had heard of foolish old gentlemen marrying their housekeepers before. What a humiliating thing, after all, was this feeling called love! The next morning at 8 o'clock, when the iceman called, the cook told him that Miss Coulson wanted to see him in the basement. "Well, ain't I the Olcott and Depew; not mentioning the first name at all?" said the iceman, admiringly, of himself. As a concession he rolled his sleeves down, dropped his icehooks on a syringe and went back. When Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson addressed him he took off his bat. "There is a rear entrance to this basement," said Miss Coulson, "which can be reached by driving into the vacant lot next door, where they are excavating for a building. I want you to bring in that way within two hours 1,000 pounds of ice. You may have to bring another man or two to help you. I will show you where I want it placed. I also want 1,000 pounds a day delivered the same way for the next four days. Your company may charge the ice on our regular bill. This is for your extra trouble." Miss Coulson tendered a ten-dollar bill. The iceman bowed, and held his hat in his two hands behind him. "Not if you'll excuse me, lady. It'll be a pleasure to fix things up for you any way you please." Alas for May! About noon Mr. Coulson knocked two glasses off his table, broke the spring of his bell and yelled for Higgins at the same time. "Bring an axe," commanded Mr. Coulson, sardonically, or send out for a quart of prussic acid, or have a policeman come in and shoot me. I'd rather that than be frozen to death." "It does seem to be getting cool, Sir," said Higgins. "I hadn't noticed it before. I'll close the window, Sir." "Do," said Mr. Coulson. "They call this spring, do they? If it keeps up long I'll go back to Palm Beach. House feels like a morgue." Later Miss Coulson dutifully came in to inquire how the gout was progressing. "'Stantia," said the old man, "how is the weather outdoors?" "Bright," answered Miss Coulson, "but chilly." "Feels like the dead of winter to me," said Mr. Coulson. "An instance," said Constantia, gazing abstractedly out the window, " of 'winter lingering in the lap of spring,' though the metaphor is not in the most refined taste." A little later she walked down by the side of the little park and on westward to Broadway to accomplish a little shopping. A little later than that Mrs. Widdup entered the invalid's room. "Did you ring, Sir?" she asked, dimpling in many places. "I asked Higgins to go to the drug store, and I thought I heard your bell." "I did not," said Mr. Coulson. "I'm afraid," said Mrs. Widdup, "I interrupted you sir, yesterday when you were about to say something." "How comes it, Mrs. Widdup," said old man Coulson sternly, "that I find it so cold in this house?" "Cold, Sir?" said the housekeeper, "why, now, since you speak of it it do seem cold in this room. But, outdoors it's as warm and fine as June, sir. And how this weather do seem to make one's heart jump out of one's shirt waist, sir. And the ivy all leaved out on the side of the house, and the hand-organs playing, and the children dancing on the sidewalk -- 'tis a great time for speaking out what's in the heart. You were saying yesterday, sir -- " "Woman!" roared Mr. Coulson; "you are a fool. I pay you to take care of this house. I am freezing to death in my own room, and you come in and drivel to me about ivy and hand-organs. Get me an overcoat at once. See that all doors and windows are closed below. An old, fat, irresponsible, one-sided object like you prating about springtime and flowers in the middle of winter! When Higgins comes back, tell him to bring me a hot rum punch. And now get out!" But who shall shame the bright face of May? Rogue though she be and disturber of sane men's peace, no wise virgins cunning nor cold storage shall make her bow her head in the bright galaxy of months. Oh, yes, the story was not quite finished. A night passed, and Higgins helped old man Coulson in the morning to his chair by the window. The cold of the room was gone. Heavenly odours and fragrant mildness entered. In hurried Mrs. Widdup, and stood by his chair. Mr. Coulson reached his bony hand and grasped her plump one. "Mrs. Widdup," he said, "this house would be no home without you. I have half a million dollars. If that and the true affection of a heart no lonoer in its youthful prime, but still not cold, could -- " "I found out what made it cold," said Mrs. Widdup, leanin' against his chair. "'Twas ice -- tons of it -- in the basement and in the furnace room, everywhere. I shut off the registers that it was coming through into your room, Mr. Coulson, poor soul! And now it's Maytime again." "A true heart," went on old man Coulson, a little wanderingly, "that the springtime has brought to life again, and -- but what will my daughter say, Mrs. Widdup?" "Never fear, sir," said Mrs. Widdup, cheerfully. "Miss Coulson, she ran away with the iceman last night, sir!" A Matter of Mean Elevation ONE winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music- loving, impressionable Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and "vivas." The manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibitive climate he would have put forth the distinctive flower of his prosperity -- the overcoat of fur, braided, frogged and opulent. Almost was he persuaded to raise the salaries of his company. But with a mighty effort he conquered the impulse toward such an unprofitable effervescence of joy. At Macuto, on the coast of Venezuela, the company scored its greatest success. Imagine Coney Island translated into Spanish and you will comprehend Macuto. The fashionable season is from November to March. Down from La Guayra and Caracas and Valencia and other interior towns flock the people for their holiday sea- son. There are bathing and fiestas and bull fights and scandal. And then the people have a passion for music that the bands in the plaza and on the sea beach stir but do not satisfy. The coming of the Alcazar Opera Com- pany aroused the utmost ardour and zeal among the pleasure seekers. The illustrious Guzman Blanco, President and Dic- tator of Venezuela, sojourned in Macuto with his court for the season. That potent ruler -- who himself paid a subsidy of 40,000 pesos each year to grand opera in Caracas -- ordered one of the Government warehouses to be cleared for a temporary theatre. A stage was quickly constructed and rough wooden benches made for the audience. Private boxes were added for the use of the President and the notables of the army and Government. The company remained in Macuto for two weeks. Each performance filled the house as closely as it could be packed. Then the music-mad people fought for room in the open doors and windows, and crowded about, hundreds deep, on the outside. Those audiences formed a brilliantly diversified patch of colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the clear olive of the pure-blood Span- iards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets -- Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold dust in the coast towns. The spell cast upon these denizens of the interior fastnesses was remarkable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the excitable Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give evidence of their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these aboriginals find expression. During the rendition of "Faust," Guzman Blanco, extravagantly pleased by the "Jewel Song," cast upon the stage a purse of gold pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead to the extent of whatever loose coin they had convenient, while some of the fair and fashionable se?oras were moved, in imita- tion, to fling a jewel or a ring or two at the feet of the Marguerite -- who was, according to the bills, Mlle. Nina Giraud. Then, from different parts of the house rose sundry of the stolid hillmen and cast upon the stage little brown and dun bags that fell with soft "thumps" and did not rebound. It was, no doubt, pleasure at the tribute to her art that caused Mlle. Giraud's eyes to shine so brightly when she opened these little deerskin bags in her dressing room and found them to contain pure gold dust. If so, the pleasure was rightly hers, for her voice in song, pure, strong and thrilling with the feeling of the emotional artist, deserved the tribute that it earned. But the triumph of the Alcazar Opera Company is not the theme -- it but leans upon and colours it. There happened in Macuto a tragic thing, an unsolvable mystery, that sobered for a time the gaiety of the happy season. One evening between the short twilight and the time when she should have whirled upon the stage in the red and black of the ardent Carmen, Mlle. Nina Giraud dis- appeared from the sight and ken of 6,000 pairs of eyes and as many minds in Macuto. There was the usual turmoil and hurrying to seek her. Messengers flew to the little French-kept hotel where she stayed; others of the company hastened here or there where she might be lingering in some tienda or unduly prolonging her bath upon the beach. All search was fruitless. Mademoi- selle had vanished. Half an hour passed and she did not appear. The dictator, unused to the caprices of prime donne, became impatient. He sent an aide from his box to say to the manager that if the curtain did not at once rise he would immediately hale the entire company to the calabosa, though it would desolate his heart, indeed, to be com- pelled to such an act. Birds in Macuto could be made to sing. The manager abandoned hope for the time of Mlle. Giraud. A member of the chorus, who had dreamed hopelessly for years of the blessed opportunity, quickly Carmenized herself and the opera went on. Afterward, when the lost cantatrice appeared not, the aid of the authorities was invoked. The President at once set the army, the police and all citizens to the search. Not one clue to Mlle. Giraud's disappearance was found. The Alcazar left to fill engagements farther down the coast. On the way back the steamer stopped at Macuto and the manager made anxious inquiry. Not a trace of the lady had been discovered. The Alcazar could do no more. The personal belongings of the missing lady were stored in the hotel against her possible later reappearance and the opera company continued upon its homeward voyage to New Orleans. On the camino real along the beach the two saddle mules and the four pack mules of Don Se?or Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting the crack of the whip of the arriero, Luis. That would be the signal for the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules were loaded with a varied assortment of hard- ware and cutlery. These articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust that they washed from the Andean streams and stored in quills and bags against his coming. It was a profitable business, and Se?or Armstrong expected soon to be able to purchase the coffee plantation that he coveted. Armstrong stood on the narrow sidewalk, exchanging garbled Spanish with old Peralto, the rich native merchant who had just charged him four prices for half a gross of pot-metal hatchets, and abridged English with Rucker, the little German who was Consul for the United States. "Take with you, se?or," said Peralto, "the blessings of the saints upon your journey." "Better try quinine," growled Rucker through his pipe. "Take two grains every night. And don't make your trip too long, Johnny, because we haf needs of you. It is ein villainous game dot Melville play of whist, and dere is no oder substitute. Auf wiedersehen, und keep your eyes dot mule's ears between when you on der edge of der brecipices ride." The bells of Luis's mule jingled and the pack train filed after the warning note. Armstrong, waved a good- bye and took his place at the tail of the procession. Up the narrow street they turned, and passed the two-story wooden Hotel Ingles, where Ives and Dawson and Rich- ards and the rest of the chaps were dawdling on the broad piazza, reading week-old newspapers. They crowded to the railing and shouted many friendly and wise and foolish farewells after him. Across the plaza they trotted slowly past the bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, within its fence of bayoneted rifles captured from revolutionists, and out of the town between the rows of thatched huts swarming with the unclothed youth of Macuto. They plunged into the damp coolness of banana groves at length to emerge upon a bright stream, where brown women in scant raiment laundered clothes destructively upon the rocks. Then the pack train, fording the stream, attacked the sudden ascent, and bade adieu to such civilization as the coast afforded. For weeks Armstrong, guided by Luis, followed his regular route among the mountains. After he had col- lected an arroba of the precious metal, winning a profit of nearly $5,000, the heads of the lightened mules were turned down-trail again. Where the head of the Guarico River springs from a great gash in the mountain-side, Luis halted the train. "Half a day's journey from here, Se?or," said he, "is the village of Tacuzama, which we have never visited. I think many ounces of gold may be procured there. It is worth the trial." Armstrong concurred, and they turned again upward toward Tacuzama. The trail was abrupt and precipi- tous mounting through a dense forest. As night fell, dark and gloomy, Luis once more halted. Before them was a black chasm, bisecting the path as far as they could see. Luis dismounted. "There should be a bridge," he called, and ran along the cleft a distance. "It is here," he cried, and remounting, led the way. In a few moments Armstrong, heard a sound as though a thunderous drum were beating somewhere in the dark. It was the falling of the mules' hoofs upon the bridge made of strong hides lashed to poles and stretched across the chasm. Half a mile further was Tacuzama. The village was a congre- gation of rock and mud huts set in the profundity of an obscure wood. As they rode in a sound inconsistent with that brooding solitude met their ears. From a long, low mud hut that they were nearing rose the glorious voice of a woman in song. The words were English, the air familiar to Armstrong's memory, but not to his musical knowledge. He slipped from his mule and stole to a narrow window in one end of the house. Peering cautiously inside, he saw, within three feet of him, a woman of marvellous, imposing beauty, clothed in a splendid loose robe of leopard skins. The hut was packed close to the small space in which she stood with the squatting figures of Indians. The woman finished her song and seated herself close to the little window, as if grateful for the unpolluted air that entered it. When she had ceased several of the audience rose and cast little softly-falling bags at her feet. A harsh murmur -- no doubt a barbarous kind of applause and comment -- went through the grim assembly. Armstrong, was used to seizing opportunities promptly. Taking advantage of the noise he called to the woman in a low but distinct voice: "Do not turn your head this way, but listen. I am an American. If you need assistance tell me how I can render it. Answer as briefly as you can." The woman was worthy of his boldness. Only by a sudden flush of her pale cheek did she acknowledge understanding of his words. Then she spoke, scarcely moving her lips. "I am held a prisoner by these Indians. God knows I need help. In two hours come to the little hut twenty yards toward the Mountainside. There will be a light and a red curtain in the window. There is always a guard at the door, whom you will have to overcome. For the love of heaven, do not fail to come." The story seems to shrink from adventure and rescue and mystery. The theme is one too gentle for those brave and quickening tones. And yet it reaches as far back as time itself. It has been named "environment," which is as weak a word as any to express the unnameable kinship of man to nature, that queer fraternity that causes stones and trees and salt water and clouds to play upon our emotions. Why are we made serious and solemn and sublime by mountain heights, grave and contempla- tive by an abundance of overhanging trees, reduced to inconstancy and monkey capers by the ripples on a sandy beach? Did the protoplasm -- but enough. The chem- ists are looking into the matter, and before long they will have all life in the table of the symbols. Briefly, then, in order to confine the story within scientific bounds, John Armstrong, went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried away Mlle. Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of gold dust she had collected during her six months' forced engage- ment in Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic lovers of music between the equator and the French Opera House in New Orleans. They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson was good when he said: "The thing thou wantest, 0 discon- tented man -- take it, and pay the price." A number of them had attended the performance of the Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found Mlle. Giraud's style and technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they took her one evening suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her with much consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She was quite pleased at being rescued by Mr. Armstrong. So much for mystery and adventure. Now to resume the theory of the proto- plasm. John Armstrong and Mlle. Giraud rode among the Andean peaks, enveloped in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, furthest removed, in nature's great family become conscious of the tie. Among those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic silences and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are precipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another. They moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in unison with the stately heights. They travelled in a zone of majesty and peace. To Armstrong the woman seemed almost a holy thing. Yet bathed in the white, still dignity of her martyrdom that purified her earthly beauty and gave out, it seemed, an aura of transcendent loveliness, in those first hours of companionship she drew from him an adoration that was half human love, half the worship of a descended goddess. Never yet since her rescue had she smiled. Over her dress she still wore the robe of leopard skins, for mountain air was cold. She looked to be some splendid princess belonging to those wild and awesome altitudes. The spirit of the region chimed with hers. Her eyes were always turned upon the sombre cliffs, the blue gorges and the snow-clad turrets, looking a sublime melancholy equal to their own. At times on the journey she sang thrilling te deums and misereres that struck the true note of the hills, and made their route seem like a solemn march down a cathedral aisle. The rescued one spoke but seldom, her mood partaking of the hush of nature that surrounded them. Armstrong looked upon her as an angel. He could not bring himself to the sacrilege of attempting to woo her as other women may be wooed. On the third day they had descended as far as the tierra templada, the zona of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formidable heads. Here they met signs of man. They saw the white houses of coffee plantations gleam across the clear- ings. They struck into a road where they met travellers and pack-mules. Cattle were grazing on the slopes. They passed a little village where the round-eyed ni?os shrieked and called at sight of them. Mlle. Giraud laid aside her leopard-skin robe. It seemed to be a trifle incongruous now. In the moun- tains it had appeared fitting and natural. And if Arm- strong was not mistaken she laid aside with it something of the high dignity of her demeanour. As the country became more populous and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a woman -- an earth woman but no less enticing. A little colour crept to the surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that the removal of the robe now disclosed with the solicitous touch of one who is conscious of the eyes of others. She smoothed the careless sweep of her hair. A mundane interest, long latent in the chilling atmosphere of the ascetic peaks, showed in her eyes. This thaw in his divinity sent Armstrong's heart going faster. So might an Arctic explorer thrill at his first ken of green fields and liquescent waters. They were on a lower plane of earth and life and were succumbing to its peculiar, subtle influence. The austerity of the hills no longer thinned the air they breathed. About them was the breath of fruit and corn and builded homes, the comfortable smell of smoke and warm earth and the consolations man has placed between himself and the dust of his brother earth from which he sprung. While traversing those awful mountains, Mile. Giraud had seemed to be wrapped in their spirit of reverent reserve. Was this that same woman -- now palpitating, warm, eager, throbbing with conscious life and charm, feminine to her finger-tips? Pondering over this, Armstrong felt certain misgivings intrude upon his thoughts. He wished he could stop there with this changing creature, descending no farther. Here was the elevation and environment to which her nature seemed to respond with its best. He feared to go down upon the man-dominated levels. Would her spirit -not yield still further in that artificial zone to which they were descending? Now from a little plateau they saw the sea flash at the edge of the green lowlands. Mile. Giraud gave a little, catching sigh. "Oh! look, Mr. Armstrong, there is the sea! Isn't it lovely? I'm so tired of mountains." She heaved a pretty shoulder in a gesture of repugnance. "Those horrid Indians! Just think of what I suffered! Although I suppose I attained my ambition of becoming a stellar attraction, I wouldn't care to repeat the engagement. It was very nice of you to bring me away. Tell me, Mr. Armstrong -- honestly, now -- do I look such an awful, awful fright? I haven't looked into a mirror, you know, for months." Armstrong made answer according to his changed moods. Also he laid his hand upon hers as it rested upon the horn of her saddle. Luis was at the head of the pack train and could not see. She allowed it to remain there, and her eyes smiled frankly into his. Then at sundown they dropped upon the coast level under the palms and lemons among the vivid greens and searlets and ochres of the tierra caliente. They rode into Macuto, and saw the line of volatile bathers frolick- ing in the surf. The mountains were very far away. Mlle. Giraud's eyes were shining with a joy that could not have existed under the chaperonage of the mountain- tops. There were other spirits calling to her -- nymphs of the orange groves, pixies from the chattering surf, imps, born of the music, the perfumes, colours and the insinuating presence of humanity. She laughed aloud, musically, at a sudden thought. "Won't there be a sensation?" she called to Armstrong. "Don't I wish I had an engagement just now, though! What a picnic the press agent would have! 'Held a prisoner by a band of savage Indians subdued by the spell of her wonderful voice' -- wouldn't that make great stuff? But I guess I quit the game winner, anyhow -- there ought to be a couple of thousand dollars in that sack of gold dust I collected as encores, don't you think?" He left her at the door of the little Hotel de Buen Descansar, where she had stopped before. Two hours later he returned to the hotel. He glanced in at the open door of the little combined reception room and cafe. Half a dozen of Macuto's representative social and official caballeros were distributed about the room. Sefior Villablanca, the wealthy rubber concessionist, reposed his fat figure on two chairs, with an emollient smile beaming upon his chocolate-coloured face. Guil- bert, the French mining engineer, leered through his polished nose-glasses. Colonel Mendez, of the regular army, in gold-laced uniform and fatuous grin, was busily extracting corks from champagne bottles. Other pat- terns of Macutian gallantry and fashion pranced and posed. The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Wine dripped upon the floor. Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy preeminence was Mlle. Giraud. A chic costume of white lawn and cherry ribbons supplanted her travelling garb. There was a suggestion of lace, and a frill or two, with a discreet, small implication of hand- embroidered pink hosiery. Upon her lap rested a guitar. In her face was the light of resurrection, the peace of elysium attained through fire and suffering. She was singing to a lively accompaniment a little song: "When you see de big round moonComin' up like a balloon,Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lipsOb his stylish, black-faced coon."The singer caught sight of Armstrong. "Hi! there, Johnny," she called; "I've been expecting you for an hour. What kept you? Gee! but these smoked guys are the slowest you ever saw. They ain't on, at all. Come along in, and I'll make this coffee- coloured old sport with the gold epaulettes open one for you right off the ice." "Thank you," said Armstrong; "not just now, I believe. I've several things to attend to." He walked out and down the street, and met Rucker coming up from the Consulate. "Play you a game of billiards," said Armstrong. "I want something to take the taste of the sea level out of my mouth." Memoirs of a Yellow Dog I don't suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies that are still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelee horror. But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such as Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger, talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expcctcd to perform any tricks with the art of speech. I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown. The first thing I can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine Pomeranian-Hambletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis fox terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gros grain flannelette in her shopping bag till she cornered it, and gave up. From that moment I was a pet--a mamma's own wootsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallop her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice: "Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy- witsy skoodlums?" From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize. I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with Parian marble in the entrance hall and cobblestones above the first floor. Our fiat was three--well, not flights--climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things--1903 antique unholstered parlour set, oil chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea house, rubber plant and husband. By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?-- well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for a walk. If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the air-shaft--that's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff. I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my corner watching that fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose--but what could I do? A dog can't chew cloves. I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked so much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live. One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way: "What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone." The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face. "Why, doggie," says he, "good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie--Cats?" Cats! Could speak! But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction. In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan terrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation. "See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip," I says, "you know that it ain't the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it." "Him?" says the black-and-tan. "Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he's as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em all jackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors." The pointer I got from that terrier--vaudeville please copy--set me to thinking. One evening about 6 o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called "Tweetness." I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still "Lovey" is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the tail of one's self respect. At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead- ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press despatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook. "Why, darn my eyes," says the old man, with a grin; "darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see--how long's it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the foot-rest? I believe I'll--" I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home. When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street. "Poor doggie," says he; "good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. 'S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy." I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs happy as a pug on a rug. "You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser," I said to him--"you moon- baying, rabbit-pointing, eggstealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards forever more?" Maybe you'll say he didn't understand--maybe he didn't. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking. "Doggie," says he, finally, "we don't live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and that's no flattery. I'm offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund." There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them. On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun: "Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains." But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: "You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured son of a door mat, do you know what I'm going to call you?" I thought of "Lovey," and I whined dolefully. "I'm going to call you 'Pete,'" says my master; and if I'd had five tails I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion. The Missing Chord I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time when I called "Hallo!" at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas code, undeniable friends. After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the hardpacked loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably concerning the affairs of the rest of the world. As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring. An inventory must suffice. The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear, lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was a great, round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. In the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless panic would send a squad of them huddling together with a drumming rush. For other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped beyond the shearing-pen, and whippoorwills twittered in the long grass. But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright and imminent. Mr. Kinney's wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the house. She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties, in which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and contented pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other, as Kinney and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music. If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing, the construer of that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the secrets of the keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranch- house. I must have looked my surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed in his soft, Southern way, and nodded at me through the moonlit haze of our cigarettes. "You don't often hear as agreeable a noise as that on a sheep-ranch," he remarked; "but I never see any reason for not playing up to the arts and graces just because we happen to live out in the brush. It's a lonesome life for a woman; and if a little music can make it any better, why not have it? That's the way I look at it." "A wise and generous theory," I assented. "And Mrs. Kinney plays well. I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an uncommonly good performer. She has technic and more than ordinary power." The moon was very bright, you will understand, and I saw upon Kinney's face a sort of amused and pregnant expression, as though there were things behind it that might be expounded. "You came up the trail from the Double-Elm Fork," he said promisingly. "As you crossed it you must have seen an old deserted jacal to your left under a comma mott." "I did," said I. "There was a drove of javalis rooting around it. I could see by the broken corrals that no one lived there." "That's where this music proposition started," said Kinney. "I don't mind telling you about it while we smoke. That's where old Cal Adams lived. He had about eight hundred graded merinos and a daughter that was solid silk and as handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar pony. And I don't mind telling you that I was guilty in the second degree of hanging around old Cal's ranch all the time I could spare away from lambing and shearing. Miss Marilla was her name; and I had figured it out by the rule of two that she was destined to become the chatelaine and lady superior of Rancho Lomito, belonging to R. Kinney, Esq., where you are now a welcome and honoured guest. "I will say that old Cal wasn't distinguished as a sheepman. He was a little, old stoop-shouldered hombre about as big as a gun scabbard, with scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of language. Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he wasn't even hated by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don't get eminent enough to acquire the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to die unwept and considerably unsung. "But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbour, and I used to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new sheep-dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me got to be extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure I was going to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the Lomito. Only she was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments toward old Cal that I never could get her to talk about serious matters. "You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments of doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn't advance him any ideas on any of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and natural history and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek root up to the time it was sacked and on the market. "One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm with a lady's magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific paper for old Cal. "While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, 'tickled to death' with some news that couldn't wait. "'Oh, Rush,' she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification, 'what do you think! Dad's going to buy me a piano. Ain't it grand? I never dreamed I'd ever have one." "'It's sure joyful,' says I. 'I always admired the agreeable uproar of a piano. It'll be lots of company for you. That's mighty good of Uncle Cal to do that.' "'I'm all undecided,' says Marilla, 'between a piano and an organ. A parlour organ is nice.' "'Either of 'em,' says I, 'is first-class for mitigating the lack of noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,' I says, 'I shouldn't like anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano- stool and rounding up the notes.' "'Oh, hush about that,' says Marilla, 'and go on in the house. Dad hasn't rode out to-day. He's not feeling well.' "Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and cough. I stayed to supper. "'Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,' says I to him. "'Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,' says he. 'She's been hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with something in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all round this fall; and I'm going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes the price of the whole clip to do it.' "'Star wayno,' says I. 'The little girl deserves it.' "'I'm going to San Antone on the last load of wool,' says Uncle Cal, 'and select an instrument for her myself.' "'Wouldn't it be better,' I suggests, 'to take Marilla along and let her pick out one that she likes?' "I might have known that would set Uncle Cal going. Of course, a man like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as a reflection on his attainments. "'No, sir, it wouldn't,' says he, pulling at his white whiskers. 'There ain't a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world than what I am. I had an uncle,' says he, 'that was a partner in a piano-factory, and I've seen thousands of 'em put together. I know all about musical instruments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle. There ain't a man lives, sir, that can tell me any news about any instrument that has to be pounded, blowed, scraped, grinded, picked, or wound with a key.' "'You get me what you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her feet on the floor from joy. 'Of course you know what to select. I'd just as lief it was a piano or a organ or what.' "'I see in St. Louis once what they call a orchestrion,' says Uncle Cal, 'that I judged was about the finest thing in the way of music ever invented. But there ain't room in this house for one. Anyway, I imagine they'd cost a thousand dollars. I reckon something in the piano line would suit Marilla the best. She took lessons in that respect for two years over at Birdstail. I wouldn't trust the buying of an instrument to anybody else but myself. I reckon if I hadn't took up sheep-raising I'd have been one of the finest composers or piano- and-organ manufacturers in the world.' "That was Uncle Cal's style. But I never lost any patience with him, on account of his thinking so much of Marilla. And she thought just as much of him. He sent her to the academy over at Birdstail for two years when it took nearly every pound of wool to pay the expenses. "Along about Tuesday Uncle Cal put out for San Antone on the last wagonload of wool. Marilla's uncle Ben, who lived in Birdstail, come over and stayed at the ranch while Uncle Cal was gone. "It was ninety miles to San Antone, and forty to the nearest railroad- station, so Uncle Cal was gone about four days. I was over at the Double-Elm when he came rolling back one evening about sundown. And up there in the wagon, sure enough, was a piano or a organ--we couldn't tell which--all wrapped up in woolsacks, with a wagon-sheet tied over it in case of rain. And out skips Marilla, hollering, 'Oh, oh!' with her eyes shining and her hair a-flying. 'Dad--dad,' she sings out, 'have you brought it--have you brought it?'--and it right there before her eyes, as women will do. "'Finest piano in San Antone,' says Uncle Cal, waving his hand, proud. 'Genuine rosewood, and the finest, loudest tone you ever listened to. I heard the storekeeper play it, and I took it on the spot and paid cash down.' "Me and Ben and Uncle Cal and a Mexican lifted it out of the wagon and carried it in the house and set it in a corner. It was one of them upright instruments, and not very heavy or very big. "And then all of a sudden Uncle Cal flops over and says he's mighty sick. He's got a high fever, and he complains of his lungs. He gets into bed, while me and Ben goes out to unhitch and put the horses in the pasture, and Marilla flies around to get Uncle Cal something hot to drink. But first she puts both arms on that piano and hugs it with a soft kind of a smile, like you see kids doing with their Christmas toys. "When I came in from the pasture, Marilla was in the room where the piano was. I could see by the strings and woolsacks on the floor that she had had it unwrapped. But now she was tying the wagon-sheet over it again, and there was a kind of solemn, whitish look on her face. "'Ain't wrapping up the music again, are you, Marilla?' I asks. 'What's the matter with just a couple of tunes for to see how she goes under the saddle?' "'Not to-night, Rush,' says she. 'I don't want to play any to-night. Dad's too sick. Just think, Rush, he paid three hundred dollars for it --nearly a third of what the wool-clip brought!' "'Well, it ain't anyways in the neighbourhood of a third of what you are worth,' I told her. 'And I don't think Uncle Cal is too sick to hear a little agitation of the piano-keys just to christen the machine. "'Not to-night, Rush,' says Marilla, in a way that she had when she wanted to settle things. "But it seems that Uncle Cal was plenty sick, after all. He got so bad that Ben saddled up and rode over to Birdstail for Doc Simpson. I stayed around to see if I'd be needed for anything. "When Uncle Cal's pain let up on him a little he called Marilla and says to her: 'Did you look at your instrument, honey? And do you like it?' "'It's lovely, dad,' says she, leaning down by his pillow; 'I never saw one so pretty. How dear and good it was of you to buy it for me!' "'I haven't heard you play on it any yet,' says Uncle Cal; 'and I've been listening. My side don't hurt quite so bad now--won't you play a piece, Marilla?' "But no; she puts Uncle Cal off and soothes him down like you've seen women do with a kid. It seems she's made up her mind not to touch that piano at present. "When Doc Simpson comes over he tells us that Uncle Cal has pneumonia the worst kind; and as the old man was past sixty and nearly on the lift anyhow, the odds was against his walking on grass any more. "On the fourth day of his sickness he calls for Marilla again and wants to talk piano. Doc Simpson was there, and so was Ben and Mrs. Ben, trying to do all they could. "'I'd have made a wonderful success in anything connected with music,' says Uncle Cal. 'I got the finest instrument for the money in San Antone. Ain't that piano all right in every respect, Marilla?' "'It's just perfect, dad,' says she. 'It's got the finest tone I ever heard. But don't you think you could sleep a little while now, dad?' "'No, I don't,' says Uncle Cal. 'I want to hear that piano. I don't believe you've even tried it yet. I went all the way to San Antone and picked it out for you myself. It took a third of the fall clip to buy it; but I don't mind that if it makes my good girl happier. Won't you play a little bit for dad, Marilla?' "Doc Simpson beckoned Marilla to one side and recommended her to do what Uncle Cal wanted, so it would get him quieted. And her uncle Ben and his wife asked her, too. "'Why not hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?' I asks Marilla. 'Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a good deal to hear you touch up the piano he's bought for you. Don't you think you might?' "But Marilla stands there with big tears rolling down from her eyes and says nothing. And then she runs over and slips her arm under Uncle Cal's neck and hugs him tight. "'Why, last night, dad,' we heard her say, 'I played it ever so much. Honest--I have been playing it. And it's such a splendid instrument, you don't know how I love it. Last night I played "Bonnie Dundee" and the "Anvil Polka" and the "Blue Danube"--and lots of pieces. You must surely have heard me playing a little, didn't you, dad? I didn't like to play loud when you was so sick.' "'Well, well,' says Uncle Cal, 'maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot about it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the store play it fine. I'm mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I believe I could go to sleep a while if you'll stay right beside me till I do.' "There was where Marilla had me guessing. Much as she thought of that old man, she wouldn't strike a note on that piano that he'd bought her. I couldn't imagine why she told him she'd been playing it, for the wagon-sheet hadn't ever been off of it since she put it back on the same day it come. I knew she could play a little anyhow, for I'd once heard her snatch some pretty fair dance-music out of an old piano at the Charco Largo Ranch. "Well, in about a week the pneumonia got the best of Uncle Cal. They had the funeral over at Birdstail, and all of us went over. I brought Marilla back home in my buckboard. Her uncle Ben and his wife were going to stay there a few days with her. "That night Marilla takes me in the room where the piano was, while the others were out on the gallery. "'Come here, Rush,' says she; 'I want you to see this now.' "She unties the rope, and drags off the wagon-sheet. "If you ever rode a saddle without a horse, or fired off a gun that wasn't loaded, or took a drink out of an empty bottle, why, then you might have been able to scare an opera or two out of the instrument Uncle Cal had bought. "Instead of a piano, it was one of the machines they've invented to play the piano with. By itself it was about as musical as the holes of a flute without the flute. "And that was the piano that Uncle Cal had selected; and standing by it was the good, fine, all-wool girl that never let him know it. "And what you heard playing a while ago," concluded Mr. Kinney, "was that same deputy-piano machine; only just at present it's shoved up against a six-hundred-dollar piano that I bought for Marilla as soon as we was married." The Moment of Victory Ben Granger is a war veteran aged twenty-nine--which should enable you to guess the war. He is also principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz, a little town over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico perpetually blow. Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold in the Greater Antilles; and then, hiking across half the world, he marched as a corporal-usher up and down the blazing tropic aisles of the open-air college in which the Filipino was schooled. Now, with his bayonet beaten into a cheese-slicer, he rallies his corporal's guard of cronies in the shade of his well-whittled porch, instead of in the matted jungles of Mindanao. Always have his interest and choice been for deeds rather than for words; but the consideration and digestion of motives is not beyond him, as this story, which is his, will attest. "What is it," he asked me one moonlit eve, as we sat among his boxes and barrels, "that generally makes men go through dangers, and fire, and trouble, and starvation, and battle, and such rucouses? What does a man do it for? Why does he try to outdo his fellow-humans, and be braver and stronger and more daring and showy than even his best friends are? What's his game? What does he expect to get out of it? He don't do it just for the fresh air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, that an ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for his efforts along the line of ambition and extraordinary hustling in the marketplaces, forums, shooting-galleries, lyceums, battle-fields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of the civilized and vice versa places of the world?" "Well, Ben," said I, with judicial seriousness, "I think we might safely limit the number of motives of a man who seeks fame to three-to ambition, which is a desire for popular applause; to avarice, which looks to the material side of success; and to love of some woman whom he either possesses or desires to possess." Ben pondered over my words while a mocking-bird on the top of a mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars. "I reckon," said he, "that your diagnosis about covers the case according to the rules laid down in the copy-books and historical readers. But what I had in my mind was the case of Willie Robbins, a person I used to know. I'll tell you about him before I close up the store, if you don't mind listening. "Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. I was clerking there then for Brady & Murchison, wholesale dry-goods and ranch supplies. Willie and I belonged to the same german club and athletic association and military company. He played the triangle in our serenading and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three nights a week somewhere in town. "Willie jibed with his name considerable. He weighed about as much as a hundred pounds of veal in his summer suitings, and he had a 'where- is-Mary?' expression on his features so plain that you could almost see the wool growing on him. "And yet you couldn't fence him away from the girls with barbed wire. You know that kind of young fellows-a kind of a mixture of fools and angels-they rush in and fear to tread at the same time; but they never fail to tread when they get the chance. He was always on hand when 'a joyful occasion was had,' as the morning paper would say, looking as happy as a king full, and at the same time as uncomfortable as a raw oyster served with sweet pickles. He danced like he had hind hobbles on; and he had a vocabulary of about three hundred and fifty words that he made stretch over four germans a week, and plagiarized from to get him through two ice-cream suppers and a Sunday-night call. He seemed to me to be a sort of a mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive plant, and a member of a stranded Two Orphans company. "I'll give you an estimate of his physiological and pictorial make-up, and then I'll stick spurs into the sides of my narrative. "Willie inclined to the Caucasian in his coloring and manner of style. His hair was opalescent and his conversation fragmentary. His eyes were the same blue shade as the china dog's on the right-hand corner of your Aunt Ellen's mantelpiece. He took things as they come, and I never felt any hostility against him. I let him live, and so did others. "But what does this Willie do but coax his heart out of his boots and lose it to Myra Allison, the liveliest, brightest, keenest, smartest, and prettiest girl in San Augustine. I tell you, she had the blackest eyes, the shiniest curls, and the most tantalizing-- Oh, no, you're off--I wasn't a victim. I might have been, but I knew better. I kept out. Joe Granberry was It from the start. He had everybody else beat a couple of leagues and thence east to a stake and mound. But, anyhow, Myra was a nine-pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, sacked and loaded on a four-horse team for San Antone. "One night there was an ice-cream sociable at Mrs. Colonel Spraggins', in San Augustine. We fellows had a big room up-stairs opened up for us to put our hats and things in, and to comb our hair and put on the clean collars we brought along inside the sweat-bands of our hats-in short, a room to fix up in just like they have everywhere at high-toned doings. A little farther down the hall was the girls' room, which they used to powder up in, and so forth. Downstairs we--that is, the San Augustine Social Cotillion and Merrymakers' Club--had a stretcher put down in the parlor where our dance was going on. "Willie Robbins and me happened to be up in our--cloak-room, I believe we called it when Myra Allison skipped through the hall on her way down-stairs from the girls' room. Willie was standing before the mirror, deeply interested in smoothing down the blond grass-plot on his head, which seemed to give him lots of trouble. Myra was always full of life and devilment. She stopped and stuck her head in our door. She certainly was good-looking. But I knew how Joe Granberry stood with her. So did Willie; but he kept on ba-a-a-ing after her and following her around. He had a system of persistence that didn't coincide with pale hair and light eyes. "'Hello, Willie!' says Myra. 'What are you doing to yourself in the glass?' "I'm trying to look fly,' says Willie. "'Well, you never could be fly,' says Myra, with her special laugh, which was the provokingest sound I ever heard except the rattle of an empty canteen against my saddle-horn. "I looked around at Willie after Myra had gone. He had a kind of a lily-white look on him which seemed to show that her remark had, as you might say, disrupted his soul. I never noticed anything in what she said that sounded particularly destructive to a man's ideas of self-consciousness; but he was set back to an extent you could scarcely imagine. "After we went down-stairs with our clean collars on, Willie never went near Myra again that night. After all, he seemed to be a diluted kind of a skim-milk sort of a chap, and I never wondered that Joe Granberry beat him out. "The next day the battleship Maine was blown up, and then pretty soon somebody-I reckon it was Joe Bailey, or Ben Tillman, or maybe the Government-declared war against Spain. "Well, everybody south of Mason & Hamlin's line knew that the North by itself couldn't whip a whole country the size of Spain. So the Yankees commenced to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the call. 'We're coming, Father William, a hundred thousand strong--and then some,' was the way they sang it. And the old party lines drawn by Sherman's march and the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow street-car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided. country, with no North, very little East, a good-sized chunk of West, and a South that loomed up as big as the first foreign label on a new eight-dollar suit-case. "Of course the dogs of war weren't a complete pack without a yelp from the San Augustine Rifles, Company D, of the Fourteenth Texas Regiment. Our company was among the first to land in Cuba and strike terror into the hearts of the foe. I'm not going to give you a history of the war, I'm just dragging it in to fill out my story about Willie Robbins, just as the Republican party dragged it in to help out the election in 1898. "If anybody ever had heroitis, it was that Willie Robbins. From the minute he set foot on the soil of the tyrants of Castile he seemed to engulf danger as a cat laps up cream. He certainly astonished every man in our company, from the captain up. You'd have expected him to gravitate naturally to the job of an orderly to the colonel, or typewriter in the commissary--but not any. He created the part of the flaxen-haired boy hero who lives and gets back home with the goods, instead of dying with an important despatch in his hands at his colonel's feet. "Our company got into a section of Cuban scenery where one of the messiest and most unsung portions of the campaign occurred. We were out every day capering around in the bushes, and having little skirmishes with the Spanish troops that looked more like kind of tired-out feuds than anything else. The war was a joke to us, and of no interest to them. We never could see it any other way than as a howling farce-comedy that the San Augustine Rifles were actually fighting to uphold the Stars and Stripes. And the blamed little senors didn't get enough pay to make them care whether they were patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody would get killed. It seemed like a waste of life to me. I was at Coney Island when I went to New York once, and one of them down-hill skidding apparatuses they call 'roller-coasters' flew the track and killed a man in a brown sack-suit. Whenever the Spaniards shot one of our men, it struck me as just about as unnecessary and regrettable as that was. "But I'm dropping Willie Robbins out of the conversation. "He was out for bloodshed, laurels, ambition, medals, recommendations, and all other forms of military glory. And he didn't seem to be afraid of any of the recognized forms of military danger, such as Spaniards, cannon-balls, canned beef, gunpowder, or nepotism. He went forth with his pallid hair and china-blue eyes and ate up Spaniards like you would sardines a la canopy. Wars and rumbles of wars never flustered him. He would stand guard-duty, mosquitoes, hardtack, treat, and fire with equally perfect unanimity. No blondes in history ever come in comparison distance of him except the Jack of Diamonds and Queen Catherine of Russia. "I remember, one time, a little caballard of Spanish men sauntered out from behind a patch of sugar-cane and shot Bob Turner, the first sergeant of our company, while we were eating dinner. As required by the army regulations, we fellows went through the usual tactics of falling into line, saluting the enemy, and loading and firing, kneeling. "That wasn't the Texas way of scrapping; but, being a very important addendum and annex to the regular army, the San Augustine Rifles had to conform to the red-tape system of getting even. "By the time we had got out our 'Upton's Tactics,' turned to page fifty-seven, said 'one--two--three--one--two--three' a couple of times, and got blank cartridges into our Springfields, the Spanish outfit had smiled repeatedly, rolled and lit cigarettes by squads, and walked away contemptuously. "I went straight to Captain Floyd, and says to him: 'Sam, I don't think this war is a straight game. You know as well as I do that Bob Turner was one of the whitest fellows that ever threw a leg over a saddle, and now these wirepullers in Washington have fixed his clock. He's politically and ostensibly dead. It ain't fair. Why should they keep this thing up? If they want Spain licked, why don't they turn the San Augustine Rifles and Joe Seely's ranger company and a car-load of West Texas deputy-sheriffs onto these Spaniards, and let us exonerate them from the face of the earth? I never did,' says I, 'care much about fighting by the Lord Chesterfield ring rules. I'm going to hand in my resignation and go home if anybody else I am personally acquainted with gets hurt in this war. If you can get somebody in my place, Sam,' says I, 'I'll quit the first of next week. I don't want to work in an army that don't give its help a chance. Never mind my wages,' says I; 'let the Secretary of the Treasury keep 'em.' "'Well, Ben,' says the captain to me, 'your allegations and estimations of the tactics of war, government, patriotism, guard- mounting, and democracy are all right. But I've looked into the system of international arbitration and the ethics of justifiable slaughter a little closer, maybe, than you have. Now, you can hand in your resignation the first of next week if you are so minded. But if you do,' says Sam, 'I'll order a corporal's guard to take you over by that limestone bluff on the creek and shoot enough lead into you to ballast a submarine air-ship. I'm captain of this company, and I've swore allegiance to the Amalgamated States regardless of sectional, secessional, and Congressional differences. Have you got any smoking- tobacco?' winds up Sam. 'Mine got wet when I swum the creek this morning.' "The reason I drag all this non ex parte evidence in is because Willie Robbins was standing there listening to us. I was a second sergeant and he was a private then, but among us Texans and Westerners there never was as much tactics and subordination as there was in the regular army. We never called our captain anything but 'Sam' except when there was a lot of major-generals and admirals around, so as to preserve the discipline. "And says Willie Robbins to me, in a sharp construction of voice much unbecoming to his light hair and previous record: "'You ought to be shot, Ben, for emitting any such sentiments. A man that won't fight for his country is worse than a, horse-thief. If I was the cap, I'd put you in the guard-house for thirty days on round steak and tamales. War,' says Willie, 'is great and glorious. I didn't know you were a coward.' "'I'm not,' says I. 'If I was, I'd knock some of the pallidness off of your marble brow. I'm lenient with you,' I says, 'just as I am with the Spaniards, because you have always reminded me of something with mushrooms on the side. Why, you little Lady of Shalott,' says I, 'you underdone leader of cotillions, you glassy fashion and moulded form, you white-pine soldier made in the Cisalpine Alps in Germany for the late New-Year trade, do you know of whom you are talking to? We've been in the same social circle,' says I, 'and I've put up with you because you seemed so meek and self-un-satisfying. I don't understand why you have so sudden taken a personal interest in chivalrousness and murder. Your nature's undergone a complete revelation. Now, how is it?' "'Well, you wouldn't understand, Ben,' says Willie, giving one of his refined smiles and turning away. "'Come back here!' says I, catching him by the tail of his khaki coat. 'You've made me kind of mad, in spite of the aloofness in which I have heretofore held you. You are out for making a success in this hero business, and I believe I know what for. You are doing it either because you are crazy or because you expect to catch some girl by it. Now, if it's a girl, I've got something here to show you.' "I wouldn't have done it, but I was plumb mad. I pulled a San Augustine paper out of my hip-pocket, and showed him an item. It was a half a column about the marriage of Myra Allison and Joe Granberry. "Willie laughed, and I saw I hadn't touched him. "'Oh,' says he, 'everybody knew that was going to happen. I heard about that a week ago.' And then he gave me the laugh again. "'All right,' says I. 'Then why do you so recklessly chase the bright rainbow of fame? Do you expect to be elected President, or do you belong to a suicide club ?' "And then Captain Sam interferes. "'You gentlemen quit jawing and go back to your quarters,' says he, 'or I'll have you escorted to the guard-house. Now, scat, both of you! Before you go, which one of you has got any chewing-tobacco?' "'We're off, Sam,' says I. 'It's supper-time, anyhow. But what do you think of what we was talking about? I've noticed you throwing out a good many grappling-hooks for this here balloon called fame-- What's ambition, anyhow? What does a man risk his life day after day for? Do you know of anything he gets in the end that can pay him for the trouble? I want to go back home,' says I. 'I don't care whether Cuba sinks or swims, and I don't give a pipeful of rabbit tobacco whether Queen Sophia Christina or Charlie Culberson rules these fairy isles; and I don't want my name on any list except the list of survivors. But I've noticed you, Sam,' says I, 'seeking the bubble notoriety in the cannon's larynx a number of times. Now, what do you do it for? Is it ambition, business, or some freckle-faced Pheebe at home that you are heroing for ?' "'Well, Ben,' says Sam, kind of hefting his sword out from between his knees, 'as your superior officer I could court-martial you for attempted cowardice and desertion. But I won't. And I'll tell you why I'm trying for promotion and the usual honors of war and conquest. A major gets more pay than a captain, and I need the money.' "'Correct for you!' says I. 'I can understand that. Your system of fame-seeking is rooted in the deepest soil of patriotism. But I can't comprehend,' says I, 'why Willie Robbins, whose folks at home are well off, and who used to be as meek and undesirous of notice as a cat with cream on his whiskers, should all at once develop into a warrior bold with the most fire-eating kind of proclivities. And the girl in his case seems to have been eliminated by marriage to another fellow. I reckon,' says I, 'it's a plain case of just common ambition. He wants his name, maybe, to go thundering down the coroners of time. It must be that.' "Well, without itemizing his deeds, Willie sure made good as a hero. He simply spent most of his time on his knees begging our captain to send him on forlorn hopes and dangerous scouting expeditions. In every fight he was the first man to mix it at close quarters with the Don Alfonsos. He got three or four bullets planted in various parts of his autonomy. Once he went off with a detail of eight men and captured a whole company of Spanish. He kept Captain Floyd busy writing out recommendations of his bravery to send in to head- quarters; and he began to accumulate medals for all kinds of things- heroism and target-shooting and valor and tactics and uninsubordination, and all the little accomplishments that look good to the third assistant secretaries of the War Department. "Finally, Cap Floyd got promoted to be a major-general, or a knight commander of the main herd, or something like that. He pounded around on a white horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers and a Good Templar's hat, and wasn't allowed by the regulations to speak to us. And Willie Robbins was made captain of our company. "And maybe he didn't go after the wreath of fame then! As far as I could see it was him that ended the war. He got eighteen of us boys-- friends of his, too--killed in battles that he stirred up himself, and that didn't seem to me necessary at all. One night he took twelve of us and waded through a little nil about a hundred and ninety yards wide, and climbed a couple of mountains, and sneaked through a mile of neglected shrubbery and a couple of rock-quarries and into a rye-straw village, and captured a Spanish general named, as they said, Benny Veedus. Benny seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, being a blackish man without shoes or cuffs, and anxious to surrender and throw himself on the commissary of his foe. "But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The San Augustine News and the Galveston, St. Louis, New York, and Kansas City papers printed his picture and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine simply went crazy over its 'gallant son.' The News had an editorial tearfully begging the Government to call off the regular army and the national guard, and let Willie carry on the rest of the war single- handed. It said that a refusal to do so would be regarded as a proof that the Northern jealousy of the South was still as rampant as ever. "If the war hadn't ended pretty soon, I don't know to what heights of gold braid and encomiums Willie would have climbed; but it did. There was a secession of hostilities just three days after he was appointed a colonel, and got in three more medals by registered mail, and shot two Spaniards while they were drinking lemonade in an ambuscade. "Our company went back to San Augustine when the war was over. There wasn't anywhere else for it to go. And what do you think? The old town notified us in print, by wire cable, special delivery, and a nigger named Saul sent on a gray mule to San Antone, that they was going to give us the biggest blow-out, complimentary, alimentary, and elementary, that ever disturbed the kildees on the sand-flats outside of the immediate contiguity of the city. "I say 'we,' but it was all meant for ex-Private, Captain de facto, and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town was crazy about him. They notified us that the reception they were going to put up would make the Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury St. Edmunds with a curate's aunt. "Well, the San Augustine Rifles got back home on schedule time. Everybody was at the depot giving forth Roosevelt-Democrat--they used to be called Rebel--yells. There was two brass-bands, and the mayor, and schoolgirls in white frightening the street-car horses by throwing Cherokee roses in the streets, and-well, maybe you've seen a celebration by a town that was inland and out of water. "They wanted Brevet-Colonel Willie to get into a carriage and be drawn by prominent citizens and some of the city aldermen to the armory, but he stuck to his company and marched at the head of it up Sam Houston Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered with flags and audiences, and everybody hollered 'Robbins!' or 'Hello, Willie!' as we marched up in files of fours. I never saw a illustriouser-looking human in my life than Willie was. He had at least seven or eight medals and diplomas and decorations on the breast of his khaki coat; he was sunburnt the color of a saddle, and he certainly done himself proud. "They told us at the depot that the courthouse was to be illuminated at half-past seven, and there would be speeches and chili-con-came at the Palace Hotel. Miss Delphine Thompson was to read an original poem by James Whitcomb Ryan, and Constable Hooker had promised us a salute of nine guns from Chicago that he had arrested that day. "After we had disbanded in the armory, Willie says to me: "'Want to walk out a piece with me?' "'Why, yes,' says I, 'if it ain't so far that we can't hear the tumult and the shouting die away. I'm hungry myself,' says I, 'and I'm pining for some home grub, but I'll go with you.' "Willie steered me down some side streets till we came to a little white cottage in a new lot with a twenty-by-thirty-foot lawn decorated with brickbats and old barrel-staves. "'Halt and give the countersign,' says I to Willie. 'Don't you know this dugout? It's the bird's-nest that Joe Granberry built before he married Myra Allison. What you going there for?' "But Willie already had the gate open. He walked up the brick walk to the steps, and I went with him. Myra was sitting in a rocking-chair on the porch, sewing. Her hair was smoothed back kind of hasty and tied in a knot. I never noticed till then that she had freckles. Joe was at one side of the porch, in his shirtsleeves, with no collar on, and no signs of a shave, trying to scrape out a hole among the brickbats and tin cans to plant a little fruit-tree in. He looked up but never said a word, and neither did Myra. "Willie was sure dandy-looking in his uniform, with medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with his teeth: "'Oh, I don't know! Maybe I could if I tried!' "That was all that was said. Willie raised his hat, and we walked away. "And, somehow, when he said that, I remembered, all of a sudden, the night of that dance and Willie brushing his hair before the looking- glass, and Myra sticking her head in the door to guy him. "When we got back to Sam Houston Avenue, Willie says: "'Well, so long, Ben. I'm going down home and get off my shoes and take a rest.' "'You?' says I. 'What's the matter with you? Ain't the court-house jammed with everybody in town waiting to honor the hero? And two brass-bands, and recitations and flags and jags and grub to follow waiting for you?' "Willie sighs. "'All right, Ben,' says he. 'Darned if I didn't forget all about that.' "And that's why I say," concluded Ben Granger, "that you can't tell where ambition begins any more than you can where it is going to wind up." A Municipal Report Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are "story cities" - New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco. FRANK NORRIS. East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail. Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In this town there can be no romance - what could happen here?" Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally. NASHVILLE - A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational centre in the South. I stepped off the train at 8 P.M. Having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe. Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as pea-soup; but 'tis enough - 'twill serve. I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated. I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old "marster" or anything that happened "befo' de wah." The hotel was one of the kind described as 'renovated." That means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers en brochette. At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: "Well, boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doin' after sundown." Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there. It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum. As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with - no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, "Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned that I was merely a "fare" instead of a victim. I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they were "graded." On a few of the "main streets" I saw lights in stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor. The streets other than "main" seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little "doing." I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel. In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas. The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible conflict. All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor - the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship. Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything: Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip, And curse me the British vermin, the rat. Let us regard the word "British" as interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat. This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue - he was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder. I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to percieve that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squirrel rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me to the bar. I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Wurzburger and wish that Longstreet had - but what's the use? Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod. By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver money. When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: "If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally." "Why, no," said I, after some reflection; "I don't see my way clear to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town," I continued, "seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?" "Well, sir," said the clerk, "there will be a show here next Thursday. It is - I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night." After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange. "A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the room beneath mine. "Nothing of the life here that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town." Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing centres of the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods, grocery, and drug business. I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal connection between the publication and one of its contributors, Azalea Adair. Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract his or her output at two cents a word before some other publisher offered her ten or twenty. At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers en brochette (try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first corner, I came upon Uncle Caesar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyramids, with gray wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late King Cettiwayo. He wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles an had once been a Confederate gray in colors. But rain and sun and age had so variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story - the story that is so long in coming, because you can hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville. Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone save one. The second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened by other twine strings tied through the buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many mottled hues. The lone button was the size of a half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine. This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the door, drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep, rumbling tones: "Step right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it - jus' got back from a funeral, suh." I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb. I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair. "I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street," I said, and was about to step into the hack. But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like arm of the old Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly: "What are you gwine there for, boss?" "What is it to you?" I asked, a little sharply. "Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in. The seats is clean - jes' got back from a funeral, suh." A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of dim houses. The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, of which 137 miles are paved; a system of waterworks that cost $2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains. Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I have not yet got inside. When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter, feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so. He refused it. "It's two dollars, suh," he said. "How's that?" I asked. "I plainly heard you call out at the hotel: 'Fifty cents to any part of the town.'" "It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately. "It's a long ways from the hotel." "It is within the city limits and well within them." I argued. "Don't think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you see those hills over there?" I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle); "well, I was born and raised on their other side. You old fool nigger, can't you tell people from other people when you see 'em?" The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened. "Is you from the South, suh? I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. They is somethin' sharp in the toes for a Southern gen'lman to wear." "Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?" said I inexorably. His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished. "Boss," he said, "fifty cents is right; but I needs two dollars, suh; I'm obleeged to have two dollars. I ain't demandin' it now, suh; after I know whar you's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I has to have two dollars to-night, and business mighty po'." Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been luckier than he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance. "You confounded old rascal," I said, reaching down to my pocket, "you ought to be turned over to the police." For the first time I saw him smile. He knew; he knew. HE KNEW. I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability. Enough of the African bandit for the present: I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened a creaky gate. The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint brush had not touched it in twenty years. I could not see why a strong wind should not have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that hugged it close - the trees that saw the battle of Nashville and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold. Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen's, received me. The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket but they were not there. Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be repeated to you. She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists made. Whle she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody nowadays knows too much - oh, so much too much - of real life. I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor. A house and a dress she had, not much else, I fancied. So, divided between my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists who fought Thomas in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to her voice, which was like a harpsichord's, and found that I could not speak of contracts. In the presence of the nine Muses and the three Graces one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents. There would have to be another colloquy after I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the business proposition. "Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is the time for smooth generalities), "seems to be a quiet, sedate place. A home town, I should say, where few things out of the ordinary ever happen." It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity of more than 2,000 barrels. Azalea Adair seemed to reflect. "I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. "Isn't it in the still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the noisiest project in the world - I mean the building of the Tower of Bable - result in finally? A page and a half of Esperanto in the North American Review." "Of course," said I platitudinously, "human nature is the same everywhere; but there is more color - er - more drama and movement and - er - romance in some cities than in others." "On the surface," said Azalea Adair. "I have traveled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings - print and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered - with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart; but I wish you could have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh, yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses and mud and lumber yards." Some one knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound. She came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders. "You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, "and a sugar cake." She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small Negro girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in mouth and bulging eyes. Azlea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro - there was no doubt about it. "Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy," she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, "and get a quarter of a pound of tea - the kind he always sends me - and ten cents worth of sugar cakes. Now, hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted," she explained to me. Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek - I was sure it was hers - filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible words. Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared. For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then someting like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly to her chair. "This is a roomy house," she said, "and I have a tenant for part of it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps tomorrow, Mr. Baker will be able to supply me." I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name. But to-morrow would do. That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to be an accomplice - after the fact, if that is the correct legal term - to a murder. As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the ploychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeony door of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began his ritual: "Step right in, boss. Carriage is clean - jus' got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any -" And then he knew me and grinned broadly. "'Scuse me, boss; you is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you kindly, suh." "I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three," said I, "and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss Adair?" I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill. "I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh," he replied. "I judge that she is pretty poor," I said. "She hasn't much money to speak of, has she?" For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance of King Cettiwayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old Negro hack driver. "She ain't gwine to starve, suh," he said slowly. "She has reso'ces, suh; she has reso'ces." "I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip," said I. "Dat is puffeckly correct, suh," he answered humbly. "I jus' had to have dat two dollars dis mawnin', boss." I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the magazine: "A. Adair holds out for eight cents a word." The answer that came back was: "Give it to her quick you duffer." Just before dinner "Major" Wentworth Caswell bore down upon me with the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me; therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping, thereby, to escape another; but he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bibbers who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies. With an air of producing millions he drew two one-dollar bills from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was my dollar bill again. It could have been no other. I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clew to a tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleepily: "Seems as if a lot of people here own stock in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends promptly, too. Wonder if -" Then I fell asleep. King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and rattled my bones over the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I was ready. Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had looked on the day before. After she had signed the contract at eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of her chair. Whitout much trouble I managed to get her up on the antediluvian horsehair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-colored Pirate to bring a doctor. With a wisdom that I had not expected in him, he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired and capable man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each) I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of mystery. He bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old Negro. "Uncle Caesar," he said calmly, "Run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive - run. I want you to get back sometime this week." It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the speeding powers of the land-pirate's steeds. After Uncle Caesar was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he had decided that I might do. "It is only a case of insufficient nutrition," he said. "In other words, the result of poverty, pride, and starvation. Mrs. Caswell has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she will accept nothing except from that old Negro, Uncle Caesar, who was once owned by her family." "Mrs. Caswell!" said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the contract and saw that she had signed it "Azalea Adair Caswell." "I thought she was Miss Adair," I said. "Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir," said the doctor. "It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant contributes toward her support." When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that were then in season, and their height of color. She referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart. Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him to the door. I told him that it was within my power and intentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased. "By the way," he said, "perhaps you would like to know that you have had royalty for a coachman. Old Caesar's grandfather was a king in Congo. Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed." As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Caesar's voice inside: "Did he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?" "Yes, Caesar," I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor. I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain. And then Uncle Caesar drove me back to the hotel. Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The rest must be only bare statements of facts. At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Caesar was at his corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his duster and began his depressing formula: "Step right in, suh. Fifty cents to anywhere in the city - hack's puffickly clean, suh - - jus' got back from a funeral -" And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine strings were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button - the button of yellow horn - was gone. A motley descendant of kings was Uncle Caesar! About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of a drug store. In a desert where nothing happens this was manna; so I edged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of Major Wentworth Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was conspicuous by its absence. The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and brought by curious and ennuied citizens to the drug store. The late human being had been engaged in terrific battle - the details showed that. Loafer and reprobate though he had been, he had been also a warrior. But he had lost. His hands were yet clinched so tightly that his fingers would not be opened. The gentle citizens who had know him stood about and searched their vocabularies to find some good words, if it were possible, to speak of him. One kind-looking man said, after much thought: "When 'Cas' was about fo'teen he was one of the best spellers in school." While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of "the man that was" which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and dropped something at my feet. I covered it with one foot quietly, and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned that in his last struggle his hand must have seized that object unwittingly and held it in a death grip. At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of listeners: "In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by somme of these no-account niggers for his money. He had fifty dollars this afternoon which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel. When he was found the money was not on his person." I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River I took out of my pocket a yellow horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece, with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out of the window into the slow, muddy waters below. I wonder what's doing in Buffalo! A Newspaper Story AT 8 A. M. it lay on Giuseppi's news-stand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite comer, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot. This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and vade mecum. From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One was in simple and chaste but illuminat- ing language directed to parents and teachers, depreca- ting corporal punishment for children. Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a notorious labour leader who was on the point of instigating his clients to a troublesome strike. The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained and aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public guardians and servants. Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid out by the editor of the heart- to-heart column in the specific case of a young man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love, teaching him how he might win her. Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young lady inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright eyes, rosy cheeks and a beautiful countenance. One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief "personal," running thus: DEAR JACK: -- Forgive me. You were right. Meet me comer Madison and -th at 8.30 this morning. We leave at noon. PENITENT. At 8 o'clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam of unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he passed Giuseppi's stand. A sleepless night had left him a late riser. There was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup of coffee to be crowded into the interval. He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed his paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour. At the next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair of new gloves. Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned back fuming. Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and the paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek. He was holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and looking into two penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart. "Dear Jack," she said, "I knew you would be here on time." "I wonder what she means by that," he was saying to himself; "but it's all right, it's all right." A big wind puffed out of the west, picked up the paper from the sidewalk, opened it out and sent it flying and whirling down a side street. Up that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel buggy, the young man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for a recipe that he might win her for whom he sighed. The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay mingled with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for four blocks. Then a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony, the buggy became matchwood as foreordained, and the driver rested very quietly where he had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain brownstone mansion. They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one who made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes, bending over and saying, "Oh, it was you; it was you all the time, Bobby! Couldn't you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and -- " But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper. Policeman O'Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic. Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he stood a few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Café. One headline he spelled out ponderously: "The Papers to the Front in a Move to Help the Police." But, whisht! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the crack of the door: "Here's a nip for ye, Mike, ould man." Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman O'Brine receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart, refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view with pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had blessed his labours. Policeman O'Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the arm of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he took the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she had written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get some braid. Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of the paper Johnny had brought. When she walked the rustling sound was an exact imitation of the real thing. On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped to talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at $5 a yard could make the sound that she heard when Gladys moved. The Brown girl, consumed by jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with pinched lips. Gladys proceeded toward the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle, vivifying, smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the beauty editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer in the paper, I believe, about cultivating kind feelings toward others in order to make plain features attractive. The labour leader against whom the paper's solemn and weighty editorial injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked up the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic of silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage. The labour leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with table, pencil and paper and glued himself to his puzzle. Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed place, other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favour of arbitration, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted. Subsequent editions of the paper referred, in coloured inks, to the clarion tone of its successful denunciation of the labour leader's intended designs. The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the proving of its potency. When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in that morning's issue, and no doubt it had its effect. After this can any one doubt the power of the press? A Night In New Arabia The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden. Its palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy his spoils unsuccored, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not reshower the means of fresh misfortune. You will hardly find anywhere a hungry one who has not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift libraries, nor a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket of celery-crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the eleemosynary press. So then, fearfully through the Harun-haunted streets creep the one-eyed calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber's Sixth Brother, hoping to escape the ministrations of the roving horde of caliphoid sultans. Entertainment for many Arabian nights might be had from the histories of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of Commanders of the Faithful. Until dawn you might sit on the enchanted rug and listen to such stories as are told of the powerful genie Roc-Ef-El-Er who sent the Forty Thieves to soak up the oil plant of Ali Baba; of the good Caliph Kar-Neg-Ghe, who gave away palaces; of the Seven Voyages of Sailbad, the Sinner, who frequented wooden excursion steamers among the islands; of the Fisherman and the Bottle; of the Barmecides' Boarding house; of Aladdin's rise to wealth by means of his Wonderful Gasmeter. But now, there being ten sultans to one Sheherazade, she is held too valuable to be in fear of the bowstring. In consequence the art of narrative languishes. And, as the lesser caliphs are hunting the happy poor and the resigned unfortunate from cover to cover in order to heap upon them strange mercies and mysterious benefits, too often comes the report from Arabian headquarters that the captive refused "to talk." This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for the shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which shall be called: THE STORY OF THE CALIPH WHO ALLEVIATED HIS CONSCIENCE Old Jacob Spraggins mixed for himself some Scotch and lithia water at his $1,200 oak sideboard. Inspiration must have resulted from its imbibition, for immediately afterward he struck the quartered oak soundly with his fist and shouted to the empty dining room: "By the coke ovens of hell, it must be that ten thousand dollars! If I can get that squared, it'll do the trick." Thus, by the commonest artifice of the trade, having gained your interest, the action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you grumpily to consider a sort of dull biography beginning fifteen years before. When old Jacob was young Jacob he was a breaker boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine. I don't know what a breaker boy is; but his occupation seems to be standing by a coal dump with a wan look and a dinner-pail to have his picture taken for magazine articles. Anyhow, Jacob was one. But, instead of dying of overwork at nine, and leaving his helpless parents and brothers at the mercy of the union strikers' reserve fund, he hitched up his galluses, put a dollar or two in a side proposition now and then, and at forty-five was worth $20,000,000. There now! it's over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you? I've seen biographies that - but let us dissemble. I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, Esq., after he had arrived at the seventh stage of his career. The stages meant are, first, humble origin; second, deserved promotion; third, stockholder; fourth, capitalist; fifth, trust magnate; sixth, rich malefactor; seventh, caliph; eighth, x. The eighth stage shall be left to the higher mathematics. At fifty-five Jacob retired from active business. The income of a czar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil, railroads, manufactories, and corporations, but none of it touched Jacob's hands in a raw state. It was a sterilized increment, carefully cleaned and dusted and fumigated until it arrived at its ultimate stage of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of his private secretary. Jacob built a three-million-dollar palace on a corner lot fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Bagdad, and began to feel the mantle of the late H. A. Rashid descending upon him. Eventually Jacob slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it in a neat four-in-hand, and became a licensed harrier of our Mesopotamian proletariat. When a man's income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul's salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate "estimates" it. The rich malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the P. D. & Q. The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a "Where-to-Dine-Well" tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future divorce. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human - Count Tolstoi, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us. Don't lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers. There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon. When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the Zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th ult. with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of "Oddities of the Day's News" in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one "Jasper Spargyous" had "donated $100,000 to the U. B. A. of G." A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K. of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper. Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and presented it with a $200,000 laboratory. The college did not maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate lavatory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever discovered. The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his A B C degree. Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the C, added the proper punctuation marks, and all was well. While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, Jacob saw two professors strolling nearby. Their voices, long adapted to indoor acoustics, undesignedly reached his ear. "There goes the latest chevalier d'industrie," said one of them, "to buy a sleeping powder from us. He gets his degree to-morrow." "In foro conscientai," said the other. "Let's 'eave 'arf a brick at 'im." Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard for him. There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of learning that he had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act. Jacob wearied of philanthropy on a large scale. "If I could see folks made happier," he said to himself - "If I could see 'em myself and hear 'em express their gratitude for what I done for 'em it would make me feel better. This donatin' funds to institutions and societies is about as satisfactory as dropping money into a broken slot machine." So Jacob followed his nose, which led him through unswept streets to the homes of the poorest. "The very thing!" said Jacob. "I will charter two river steamboats, pack them full of these unfortunate children and - say ten thousand dolls and drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give them a delightful outing up the Sound. The sea breezes on that trip ought to blow the taint off some of this money that keeps coming in faster than I can work it off my mind." Jacob must have leaked some of his benevolent intentions, for an immense person with a bald face and a mouth that looked as if it ought to have a "Drop Letters Here" sign over it hooked a finger around him and set him in a space between a barber's pole and a stack of ash cans. Words came out of the post-office slit - smooth, husky words with gloves on 'em, but sounding as if they might turn to bare knuckles any moment. "Say, Sport, do you know where you are at? Well, dis is Mike O'Grady's district you're buttin' into - see? Mike's got de stomach-ache privilege for every kid in dis neighborhood - see? And if dere's any picnics or red balloons to be dealt out here, Mike's money pays for 'em - see? Don't you butt in, or something'll be handed to you. Youse d - - settlers and reformers with your social ologies and your millionaire detectives have got dis district in a hell of a fix, anyhow. With your college students and professors rough-housing de soda-water stands and dem rubber-neck coaches fillin' de streets, de folks down here are 'fraid to go out of de houses. Now, you leave 'em to Mike. Dey belongs to him, and he knows how to handle 'em. Keep on your own side of de town. Are you some wiser now, uncle, or do you want to scrap wit' Mike O'Grady for de Santa Claus belt in dis district?" Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted. So Caliph Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side. To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations to organized charity, presented the Y. M. C. A. of his native town with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond-filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph's heart. He tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping bellboys and waiters $10 and $20 bills. He got well snickered at and derided for that by the minions who accept with respect gratuities commensurate to the service performed. He sought out an ambitious and talented but poor young woman, and bought for her the star part in a new comedy. He might have gotten rid of $50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this philanthropy if he had not neglected to write letters to her. But she lost the suit for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and his optikos needleorum camelibus - or rich man's disease - was unrelieved. In Caliph Spraggins's $3,000,000 home lived his sister Henrietta, who used to cook for the coal miners in a twenty-five-cent eating house in Coketown, Pa., and who now would have offered John Mitchell only two fingers of her hand to shake. And his daughter Celia, nineteen, back from boarding-school and from being polished off by private instructors in the restaurant languages and those 'etudes and things. Celia is the heroine. Lest the artist's delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description. She was a nice-looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, and a perpetual smile. She had a wholesome, Spraggins-inherited love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower classes. She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of wealth. She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint-pepsin tablets rattling like hail from the slot-machine wherever she went, and she could whistle hornpipes. Keep this picture in mind; and let the artist do his worst. Celia looked out of her window one day and gave her heart to the grocer's young man. The receiver thereof was at that moment engaged in conceding immortality to his horse and calling down upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked; so he did not notice the transfer. A horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon. Young lady reader, you would have liked that grocer's young man yourself. But you wouldn't have given him your heart, because you are saving it for a riding-master, or a shoe-manufacturer with a torpid liver, or something quiet but rich in gray tweeds at Palm Beach. Oh, I know about it. So I am glad the grocer's young man was for Celia, and not for you. The grocer's young man was slim and straight and as confident and easy in his movements as the man in the back of the magazines who wears the new frictionless roller suspenders. He wore a gray bicycle cap on the back of his head, and his hair was straw-colored and curly, and his sunburned face looked like one that smiled a good deal when he was not preaching the doctrine of everlasting punishment to delivery-wagon horses. He slung imported A1 fancy groceries about as though they were only the stuff he delivered at boarding-houses; and when he picked up his whip, your mind instantly recalled Mr. Tacktt and his air with the buttonless foils. Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of the house. The grocer's wagon came about ten in the morning. For three days Celia watched the driver when he came, finding something new each time to admire in the lofty and almost contemptuous way he had of tossing around the choicest gifts of Pomona, Ceres, and the canning factories. Then she consulted Annette. To be explicit, Annette McCorkle, the second housemaid who deserves a paragraph herself. Annette Fletcherized large numbers of romantic novels which she obtained at a free public library branch (donated by one of the biggest caliphs in the business). She was Celia's sidekicker and chum, though Aunt Henrietta didn't know it, you may hazard a bean or two. "Oh, canary-bird seed!" exclaimed Annette. "Ain't it a corkin' situation? You a heiress, and fallin' in love with him on sight! He's a sweet boy, too, and above his business. But he ain't susceptible like the common run of grocer's assistants. He never pays no attention to me." "He will to me," said Celia. "Riches -" began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable feminine sting. "Oh, you're not so beautiful," said Celia, with her wide, disarming smile. "Neither am I; but he sha'n't know that there's any money mixed up with my looks, such as they are. That's fair. Now, I want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette." "Oh, marshmallows!" cried Annette. "I see. Ain't it lovely? It's just like 'Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, A Buttonhole Maker's Wrongs.' I'll bet he'll turn out to be a count." There was a long hallway (or "passageway," as they call it in the land of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear of the house. The grocer's young man went through this to deliver his goods. One morning he passed a girl in there with shining eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maid's cap and apron. But as he was cumbered with a basket of Early Drumhead lettuce and Trophy tomatoes and three bunches of asparagus and six bottles of the most expensive Queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids. But on his way out he came up behind her, and she was whistling "Fisher's Hornpipe" so loudly and clearly that all the piccolos in the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their cases for shame. The grocer's young man stopped and pushed back his cap until it hung on his collar button behind. "That's out o' sight, Kid," said he. "My name is Celia, if you please," said the whistler, dazzling him with a three-inch smile. That's all right. I'm Thomas McLeod. What part of the house do you work in?" "I'm the - the second parlor maid." "Do you know the 'Falling Waters'?" "No," said Celia, "we don't know anybody. We got rich too quick - that is, Mr. Spraggins did." "I'll make you acquainted," said Thomas McLeod. "It's a strathspey - the first cousin to a hornpipe." If Celia's whistling put the piccolos out of commission, Thomas McLeod's surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes. He could actually whistle bass. When he stopped Celia was ready to jump into his delivery wagon and ride with him clear to the end of the pier and on to the ferry-boat of the Charon line. "I'll be around to-morrow at 10:15," said Thomas, "with some spinach and a case of carbonic." "I'll practice that what-you-may-call-it," said Celia. "I can whistle a fine second." The processes of courtship are personal, and do not belong to general literature. They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements of iron tonics and in the secret by-laws of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Rat Trap. But genteel writing may contain a description of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon the province of the X-ray or of park policemen. A day came when Thomas McLeod and Celia lingered at the end of the latticed "passage." "Sixteen a week isn't much," said Thomas, letting his cap rest on his shoulder blades. Celia looked through the lattice-work and whistled a dead march. Shopping with Aunt Henrietta the day before, she had paid that much for a dozen handkerchiefs. "Maybe I'll get a raise next month," said Thomas. "I'll be around to-morrow at the same time with a bag of flour and the laundry soap." "All right," said Celia. "Annette's married cousin pays only $20 a month for a flat in the Bronx." Never for a moment did she count on the Spraggins money. She knew Aunt Henrietta's invincible pride of caste and pa's mightiness as a Colossus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas she and her grocer's young man might go whistle for a living. Another day came, Thomas violating the dignity of Nabob Avenue with "The Devil's Dream," whistled keenly between his teeth. "Raised to eighteen a week yesterday," he said. "Been pricing flats around Morningside. You want to start untying those apron strings and unpinning that cap, old girl." "Oh, Tommy!" said Celia, with her broadest smile. "Won't that be enough? I got Betty to show me how to make a cottage pudding. I guess we could call it a flat pudding if we wanted to." "And tell no lie," said Thomas. "And I can sweep and polish and dust - of course, a parlor maid learns that. And we cold whistle duets of evenings." "The old man said he'd raise me to twenty at Christmas if Bryan couldn't think of any harder name to call a Republican than a 'postponer,'" said the grocer's young man. "I can sew," said Celia; "and I know that you must make the gas company's man show his badge when he comes to look at the meter; and I know how to put up quince jam and window curtains." "Bully! you're all right, Cele. Yes, I believe we can pull it off on eighteen." As he was jumping into the wagon the second parlor maid braved discovery by running swiftly to the gate. "And, oh, Tommy, I forgot," she called, softly. "I believe I could make your neckties." "Forget it," said Thomas decisively. "And another thing," she continued. "Sliced cucumbers at night will drive away cockroaches." "And sleep, too, you bet," said Mr. McLeod. "Yes, I believe if I have a delivery to make on the West Side this afternoon I'll look in at a furniture store I know over there." It was just as the wagon dashed away that old Jacob Spraggins struck the sideboard with his fist and made the mysterious remark about ten thousand dollars that you perhaps remember. Which justifies the reflection that some stories, as well as life, and puppies thrown into wells, move around in circles. Painfully but briefly we must shed light on Jacob's words. The foundation of his fortune was made when he was twenty. A poor coal-digger (ever hear of a rich one?) had saved a dollar or two and bought a small tract of land on a hillside on which he tried to raise corn. Not a nubbin. Jacob, whose nose was a divining-rod, told him there was a vein of coal beneath. he bought the land from the miner for $125 and sold it a month afterward for $10,000. Luckily the miner had enough left of his sale money to drink himself into a black coat opening in the back, as soon as he heard the news. And so, for forty years afterward, we find Jacob illuminated with the sudden thought that if he could make restitution of this sum of money to the heirs or assigns of the unlucky miner, respite and Nepenthe might be his. And now must come swift action, for we have here some four thousand words and not a tear shed and never a pistol, joke, safe, nor bottle cracked. Old Jacob hired a dozen private detectives to find the heirs, if any existed, of the old miner, Hugh McLeod. Get the point? Of course I know as well as you do that Thomas is going to be the heir. I might have concealed the name; but why always hold back you mystery till the end? I say, let it come near the middle so people can stop reading there if they want to. After the detectives had trailed false clues about three thousand dollars - I mean miles - they cornered Thomas at the grocery and got his confession that Hugh McLeod had been his grandfather, and that there were no other heirs. They arranged a meeting for him and old Jacob one morning in one of their offices. Jacob liked the young man very much. He liked the way he looked straight at him when he talked, and the way he threw his bicycle cap over the top of a rose-colored vase on the centre-table. There was a slight flaw in Jacob's system of restitution. He did not consider that the act, to be perfect, should include confession. So he represented himself to be the agent of the purchaser of the land who had sent him to refund the sale price for the ease of his conscience. "Well, sir," said Thomas, "this sounds to me like an illustrated post-card from South Boston with 'We're having a good time here' written on it. I don't know the game. Is this ten thousand dollars money, or do I have to save so many coupons to get it?" Old Jacob counted out to him twenty five-hundred-dollar bills. That was better, he thought, than a check. Thomas put them thoughtfully into his pocket. "Grandfather's best thanks," he said, "to the party who sends it." Jacob talked on, asking him about his work, how he spent his leisure time, and what his ambitions were. The more he saw and heard of Thomas, the better he liked him. He had not met many young men in Bagdad so frank and wholesome. "I would like to have you visit my house," he said. "I might help you in investing or laying out your money. I am a very wealthy man. I have a daughter about grown, and I would like for you to know her. There are not many young men I would care to have call on her." "I'm obliged," said Thomas. "I'm not much at making calls. It's generally the side entrance for mine. And, besides, I'm engaged to a girl that has the Delaware peach crop killed in the blossom. She's a parlor maid in a house where I deliver goods. She won't be working there much longer, though. Say, don't forget to give your friend my grandfather's best regards. You'll excuse me now; my wagon's outside with a lot of green stuff that's got to be delivered. See you again, sir." At eleven Thomas delivered some bunches of parsley and lettuce at the Spraggins mansion. Thomas was only twenty-two; so, as he came back, he took out the handful of five-hundred-dollar bills and waved them carelessly. Annette took a pair of eyes as big as creamed onion to the cook. "I told you he was a count," she said, after relating. "He never would carry on with me." "But you say he showed money," said the cook. "Hundreds of thousands," said Annette. "Carried around loose in his pockets. And he never would look at me." "It was paid to me to-day," Thomas was explaining to Celia outside. "It came from my grandfather's estate. Say, Cele, what's the use of waiting now? I'm going to quit the job to-night. Why can't we get married next week?" "Tommy," said Celia. "I'm no parlor maid. I've been fooling you. I'm Miss Spraggins - Celia Spraggins. The newspapers say I'll be worth forty million dollars some day." Thomas pulled his cap down straight on his head for the first time since we have known him. "I suppose then," said he, "I suppose then you'll not be marrying me next week. But you can whistle." "No," said Celia, "I'll not be marrying you next week. My father would never let me marry a grocer's clerk. But I'll marry you to-night, Tommy, if you say so." Old Jacob Spraggins came home at 9:30 P. M., in his motor car. The make of it you will have to surmise sorrowfully; I am giving you unsubsidized fiction; had it been a street car I could have told you its voltage and the number of wheels it had. Jacob called for his daughter; he had bought a ruby necklace for her, and wanted to hear her say what a kind, thoughtful, dear old dad he was. There was a brief search in the house for her, and then came Annette, glowing with the pure flame of truth and loyalty well mixed with envy and histrionics. "Oh, sir," said she, wondering if she should kneel, "Miss Celia's just this minute running away out of the side gate with a young man to be married. I couldn't stop her, sir. They went in a cab." "What young man?" roared old Jacob. "A millionaire, if you please, sir - a rich nobleman in disguise. He carries his money with him, and the red peppers and the onions was only to blind us, sir. He never did seem to take to me." Jacob rushed out in time to catch his car. The chauffeur had been delayed by trying to light a cigarette in the wind. "Here, Gaston, or Mike, or whatever you call yourself, scoot around the corner quicker than blazes and see if you can see a cab. If you do, run it down." There was a cab in sight a block away. Gaston, or Mike, with his eyes half shut and his mind on his cigarette, picked up the trail, neatly crowded the cab to the curb and pocketed it. "What t'ell you doin'?" yelled the cabman. "Pa!" shrieked Celia. "Grandfather's remorseful friend's agent!" said Thomas. "Wonder what's on his conscience now." "A thousand thunders," said Gaston, or Mike. "I have no other match." "Young man," said old Jacob, severely, "how about that parlor maid you were engaged to?" A couple of years afterward old Jacob went into the office of his private secretary. "The Amalgamated Missionary Society solicits a contribution of $30,000 toward the conversion of the Koreans," said the secretary. "Pass 'em up," said Jacob. "The University of Plumville writes that its yearly endowment fund of $50,000 that you bestowed upon it is past due." "Tell 'em it's been cut out." "The Scientific Society of Clam Cove, Long Island, asks for $10,000 to buy alcohol to preserve specimens." "Waste basket." "The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course." "Tell 'em to see an undertaker." "Cut 'em all out," went on Jacob. "I've quit being a good thing. I need every dollar I can scrape or save. I want you to write to the directors of every company that I'm interested in and recommend a 10 per cent. cut in salaries. And say - I noticed half a cake of soap lying in a corner of the hall as I came in. I want you to speak to the scrubwoman about waste. I've got no money to throw away. And say - we've got vinegar pretty well in hand, haven't we?' "The Globe Spice & Seasons Company," said secretary, "controls the market at present." "Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches." Suddenly Jacob Spraggin's plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin. He walked over to the secretary's desk and showed a small red mark on his thick forefinger. "Bit it," he said, "darned if he didn't, and he ain't had the tooth three weeks - Jaky McLeod, my Celia's kid. He'll be worth a hundred millions by the time he's twenty-one if I can pile it up for him." As he was leaving, old Jacob turned at the door, and said: "Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two. I'll be back in an hour and sign the letters." The true history of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid relates that toward the end of his reign he wearied of philanthropy, and caused to be beheaded all his former favorites and companions of his "Arabian Nights" rambles. Happy are we in these days of enlightenment, when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the form of a tradesman's bill. No Story To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy "cub" reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story--no anything. But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the reporters' room of the Morning Beacon, I will repay the favor by keeping strictly my promises set forth above. I was doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put on a salary. Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, Congressional Records, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings about its streets. My income was not regular. One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something in the mechanical department--I think he had something to do with the pictures, for he smelled of photographers' supplies, and his hands were always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H20 that collateral will show on analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the other to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of lightness and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was useful in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed. This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight. "Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him. "Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his high- growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair. "I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I continued, "to meet a want--a hiatus--a demand--a need--an exigency--a requirement of exactly five dollars." I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of the dollars on the spot. "I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I breathed again. "I thought you'd like to get put onto a good story," he went on. "I've got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column at least. It'll make a dandy if you work it up right. It'll probably cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out of it myself." I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it. "What is the story ?" I asked, poising my pencil with a finely calculated editorial air. "I'll tell you," said Tripp. "It's a girl. A beauty. One of the howlingest Amsden's Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew- violets in their mossy bed--and truck like that. She's lived on Long Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She'd just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she's a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find George Brown in New York City! What do you think of that? "I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd--Hiram Dodd--next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada--her name's Ada Lowery--saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for the city. Looking for George, you know--you understand about women-- George wasn't there, so she wanted him. "Well, you know, I couldn't leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-Hudson. I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say: 'George Brown ?--why, yes--lemme see--he's a short man with light-blue eyes, ain't he? Oh yes--you'll find George on One Hundred and Twenty- fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He's bill-clerk in a saddle- and-harness store.' That's about how innocent and beautiful she is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like Greenburg- -a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine summer visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes from. But, say--you ought to see her! "What could I do? I don't know what money looks like in the morning. And she'd paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in soak for a dollar. That's old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll show you the house." "What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had a story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes away girls from Long Island." The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seriously from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his answer with one shaking forefinger. "Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make? You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling in a few stickfuls of funny business--joshing the Long Islanders about being green, and, well--you know how to do it. You ought to get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it'll. cost you only about four dollars. You'll make a clear profit of eleven." "How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked, suspiciously. "One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, promptly, "and two dollars to pay the girl's fare back home." "And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a rapid mental calculation. "One dollar to me," said Tripp. "For whiskey. Are you on?" I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became shiningly moist. "Don't you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, "that this girl has got to be sent home to-day--not to-night nor to-morrow, but to-day? I can't do anything for her. You know, I'm the janitor and corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club.. I thought you could make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money on general results. But, anyhow, don't you see that she's got to get back home before night?" And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation known as the sense of duty. Why should that sense fall upon one as a weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat. Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted me via the street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and the smallest minted coin were strangers. Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldly red-brick boarding- house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and crouched as a rabbit makes ready to spring away at the sound of a hunting-dog. I guessed what a life he had led, terror-haunted by the coming footsteps of landladies. "Give me one of the dollars--quick!" he said. The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white eyes--they were white, I say--and a yellow face, holding together at her throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp thrust the dollar through the space without a word, and it bought us entry. "She's in the parlor," said the McGinnis, turning the back of her sack upon us. In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced, and a gum-drop suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naive interest, such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a crawling beetle or a frog. Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood. But he looked the master of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned high, as if it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and linen. I thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the glade between his tangled hair and beard. For one ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having been introduced as his friend in the presence of so much beauty in distress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct the ceremonies, whatever they might be. I thought I detected in his actions and pose an intention of foisting the situation upon me as material for a newspaper story, in a lingering hope of extracting from me his whiskey dollar. "My friend" (I shuddered), "Mr. Chalmers," said Tripp, "will tell you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did. He's a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better than I can. That's why I brought him with me." (0 Tripp, wasn't it the silver-tongued orator you wanted?) "He's wise to a lot of things, and he'll tell you now what's best to do." I stood on one foot, as it were, as I sat in my rickety chair. "Why--er--Miss Lowery," I began, secretly enraged at Tripp's awkward opening, "I am at your service, of course, but--er--as I haven't been apprized of the circumstances of the case, I--er--" "Oh," said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, "it ain't as bad as that--there ain't any circumstances. It's the first time I've ever been in New York except once when I was five years old, and I had no idea it was such a big town. And I met Mr.--Mr. Snip on the street and asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked me to wait." "I advise you, Miss Lowery," said Tripp, "to tell Mr. Chalmers all. He's a friend of mine" (I was getting used to it by this time), "and he'll give you the right tip." "Why, certainly," said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop toward me. "There ain't anything to tell except that--well, everything's fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred acres of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best truck-farms on the Island. But this morning I had my horse saddled up--he's a white horse named Dancer--and I rode over to the station. I told 'em at home I was going to spend the day with Susie Adams. It was a story, I guess, but I don't care. And I came to New York on the train, and I met Mr.--Mr. Flip on the street and asked him if he knew where I could find G--G--" "Now, Miss Lowery," broke in Tripp, loudly, and with much bad taste, I thought, as she hesitated with her word, "you like this young man, Hiram Dodd, don't you? He's all right, and good to you, ain't he?" "Of course I like him," said Miss Lowery emphatically. "Hi's all right. And of course he's good to me. So is everybody." I could have sworn it myself. Throughout Miss Ada Lowery's life all men would be to good to her. They would strive, contrive, struggle, and compete to hold umbrellas over her hat, check her trunk, pick up her handkerchief, buy for her soda at the fountain. "But," went on Miss Lowery, "last night got to thinking about G-- George, and I--" Down went the bright gold head upon dimpled, clasped hands on the table. Such a beautiful April storm! Unrestrainedly sobbed. I wished I could have comforted her. But I was not George. And I was glad I was not Hiram--and yet I was sorry, too. By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, brave and half-way smiling. She would have made a splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright and tender. She took a gum-drop and began her story. "I guess I'm a terrible hayseed," she said between her little gulps and sighs, "but I can't help it. G--George Brown and I were sweet- hearts since he was eight and I was five. When he was nineteen--that was four years ago--he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he was going to be a policeman or a railroad president or something. And then he was coming back for me. But I never heard from him any more. And I--I--liked him." Another flow of tears seemed imminent, but Tripp hurled himself into the crevasse and dammed it. Confound him, I could see his game. He was trying to make a story of it for his sordid ends and profit. "Go on, Mr. Chalmers," said he, "and tell the lady what's the proper caper. That's what I told her--you'd hand it to her straight. Spiel up." I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. I saw my duty. Cunningly I had been inveigled, but I was securely trapped. Tripp's first dictum to me had been just and correct. The young lady must be sent back to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with, convinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, and returned without delay. I hated Hiram and despised George; but duty must be done. Noblesse oblige and only five silver dollars are not strictly romantic compatibles, but sometimes they can be made to jibe. It was mine to be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight. So I assumed an air that mingled Solomon's with that of the general passenger agent of the Long Island Railroad. "Miss Lowery," said I, as impressively as I could, "life is rather a queer proposition, after all." There was a familiar sound to these words after I had spoken them, and I hoped Miss Lowery had never heard Mr. Cohan's song. "Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize." The last three words sounded somewhat trite when they struck the air. "But those fondly cherished dreams," I went on, "may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy--that is, a contented and harmonious life with Mr.-er--Dodd--if in other ways than romantic recollections he seems to--er--fill the bill, as I might say?" "Oh, Hi's all right," answered Miss Lowery. "Yes, I could get along with him fine. He's promised me an automobile and a motor-boat. But somehow, when it got so close to the time I was to marry him, I couldn't help wishing--well, just thinking about George. Something must have happened to him or he'd have written. On the day he left, he and me got a hammer and a chisel and cut a dime into two pieces. I took one piece and he took the other, and we promised to be true to each other and always keep the pieces till we saw each other again. I've got mine at home now in a ring-box in the top drawer of my dresser. I guess I was silly to come up here looking for him. I never realized what a big place it is." And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh that he had, still trying to drag in a little story or drama to earn the miserable dollar that he craved. "Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city and learn something. I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey or the races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home, and you'll be all right." But now the time was come for action, for the hands of the clock were moving close to noon. Frowning upon Tripp, I argued gently and philosophically with Miss Lowery, delicately convincing her of the importance of returning home at once. And I impressed upon her the truth that it would not be absolutely necessary to her future happiness that she mention to Hi the wonders or the fact of her visit to the city that had swallowed up the unlucky George. She said she had left her horse (unfortunate Rosinante) tied to a tree near the railroad station. Tripp and I gave her instructions to mount the patient steed as soon as she arrived and ride home as fast as possible. There she was to recount the exciting adventure of a day spent with Susie Adams. She could "fix" Susie--I was sure of that-- and all would be well. And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of beauty, I warmed to the adventure. The three of us hurried to the ferry, and there I found the price of a ticket to Greenburg to be but a dollar and eighty cents. I bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, and stood watching her wave her handkerchief at us until it was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And then Tripp and I faced each other, brought back to earth, left dry and desolate in the shade of the sombre verities of life. The spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwindling. I looked at Tripp and almost sneered. He looked more careworn, contemptible, and disreputable than ever. I fingered the two silver dollars remaining in my pocket and looked at him with the half-closed eyelids of contempt. He mustered up an imitation of resistance. "Can't you get a story out of it?" he asked, huskily. "Some sort of a story, even if you have to fake part of it?" "Not a line," said I. "I can fancy the look on Grimes' face if I should try to put over any slush like this. But we've helped the little lady out, and that'll have to be our only reward." "I'm sorry," said Tripp, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry you're out your money. Now, it seemed to me like a find of a big story, you know-- that is, a sort of thing that would write up pretty well." "Let's try to forget it," said I, with a praiseworthy attempt at gayety, "and take the next car 'cross town." I steeled myself against his unexpressed but palpable desire. He should not coax, cajole, or wring from me the dollar he craved. I had had enough of that wild-goose chase. Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams to reach for something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in halves with a chisel. "What!" I said, looking at him keenly. "Oh yes," he responded, dully. "George Brown, alias Tripp. what's the use?" Barring the W. C. T. U., I'd like to know if anybody disapproves of my having produced promptly from my pocket Tripp's whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly laying it in his hand. Out of Nazareth Okochee, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a "wad." Okochee came out of it with a half-million-dollar debt, a two and a half per cent. city property tax, and a city council that showed a propensity for traveling the back streets of the town. These things came about through a fatal resemblance of the river Cooloosa to the Hudson, as set forth and expounded by a Northern tourist. Okochee felt that New York should not be allowed to consider itself the only alligator in the swamp, so to speak. And then that harmless, but persistent, individual so numerous in the South--the man who is always clamoring for more cotton mills, and is ready to take a dollar's worth of stock, provided he can borrow the dollar--that man added his deadly work to the tourist's innocent praise, and Okochee fell. The Cooloosa River winds through a range of small mountains, passes Okochee and then blends its waters trippingly, as fall the mellifluous Indian syllables, with the Chattahoochee. Okochee rose, as it were, from its sunny seat on the post-office stoop, hitched up its suspender, and threw a granite dam two hundred and forty feet long and sixty feet high across the Cooloosa one mile above the town. Thereupon, a dimpling, sparkling lake backed up twenty miles among the little mountains. Thus in the great game of municipal rivalry did Okochee match that famous drawing card, the Hudson. It was conceded that nowhere could the Palisades be judged superior in the way of scenery and grandeur. Following the picture card was played the ace of commercial importance. Fourteen thousand horsepower would this dam furnish. Cotton mills, factories, and manufacturing plants would rise up as the green corn after a shower. The spindle and the flywheel and turbine would sing the shrewd glory of Okochee. Along the picturesque heights above the lake would rise in beauty the costly villas and the splendid summer residences of capital. The naphtha launch of the millionaire would spit among the romantic coves; the verdured hills would take formal shapes of terrace, lawn, and park. Money would be spent like water in Okochee, and water would be turned into money. The fate of the good town is quickly told. Capital decided not to invest. Of all the great things promised, the scenery alone came to fulfilment. The wooded peaks, the impressive promontories of solemn granite, the beautiful green slants of bank and ravine did all they could to reconcile Okochee to the delinquency of miserly gold. The sunsets gilded the dreamy draws and coves with a minting that should charm away heart-burning. Okochee, true to the instinct of its blood and clime, was lulled by the spell. It climbed out of the arena, loosed its suspender, sat down again on the post-office stoop, and took a chew. It consoled itself by drawling sarcasms at the city council which was not to blame, causing the fathers, as has been said, to seek back streets and figure perspiringly on the sinking fund and the appropriation for interest due. The youth of Okochee--they who were to carry into the rosy future the burden of the debt--accepted failure with youth's uncalculating joy. For, here was sport, aquatic and nautical, added to the meagre round of life's pleasures. In yachting caps and flowing neckties they pervaded the lake to its limits. Girls wore silk waists embroidered with anchors in blue and pink. The trousers of the young men widened at the bottom, and their hands were proudly calloused by the oft- plied oar. Fishermen were under the spell of a deep and tolerant joy. Sailboats and rowboats furrowed the lenient waves, popcorn and ice- cream booths sprang up about the little wooden pier. Two small excursion steamboats were built, and plied the delectable waters. Okochee philosophically gave up the hope of eating turtle soup with a gold spoon, and settled back, not ill content, to its regular diet of lotus and fried hominy. And out of this slow wreck of great expectations rose up J. Pinkney Bloom with his "wad" and his prosperous, cheery smile. Needless to say J. Pinkney was no product of Georgia soil. He came out of that flushed and capable region known as the "North." He called himself a "promoter"; his enemies had spoken of him as a "grafter"; Okochee took a middle course, and held him to be no better nor no worse than a "Yank." Far up the lake--eighteen miles above the town--the eye of this cheerful camp-follower of booms had spied out a graft. He purchased there a precipitous tract of five hundred acres at forty-five cents per acre; and this he laid out and subdivided as the city of Skyland --the Queen City of the Switzerland of the South. Streets and avenues were surveyed; parks designed; corners of central squares reserved for the "proposed" opera house, board of trade, lyceum, market, public schools, and "Exposition Hall." The price of lots ranged from five to five hundred dollars. Positively, no lot would be priced higher than five hundred dollars. While the boom was growing in Okochee, J. Pinkney's circulars, maps, and prospectuses were flying through the mails to every part of the country. Investors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland Real Estate Company (J. Pinkney Bloom) returned to each a deed, duly placed on record, to the best lot, at the price, on hand that day. All this time the catamount screeched upon the reserved lot of the Skyland Board of Trade, the opossum swung by his tail over the site of the exposition hall, and the owl hooted a melancholy recitative to his audience of young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when the money was coming in fast, J. Pinkney caused to be erected in the coming city half a dozen cheap box houses, and persuaded a contingent of indigent natives to occupy them, thereby assuming the role of "poulation" in subsequent prospectuses, which became, accordingly, more seductive and remunerative. So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped back to digging bait and nursing its two and a half per cent. tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving of checks and drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) strapped about his fifty-two-inch waist a soft leather belt containing eight thousand dollars in big bills, and said that all was very good. One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad fields. Skyland was a regular post-office, and the steamboat, Dixie Belle, under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice a week. There was a little business there to be settled --the postmaster was to be paid off for his light but lonely services, and the "inhabitants" had to be furnished with another month's homely rations, as per agreement. And then Skyland would know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous, barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, or they might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate Company was finished. The little steamboat Dixie Belle was about to shove off on her regular up-the-lake trip, when a rickety hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and a tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signaling courteously but vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was of the least importance in the schedule of the Dixie Belle; Captain MacFarland gave the order, and the boat received its ultimate two passengers. For, upon the arm of the tall, elderly gentleman, as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, with a gray curl depending quaintly forward of her left ear. Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore it seemed to J. Pinkney Bloom, who was the only other passenger, that it should be his to play the part of host to the boat's new guests, who were, doubtless, on a scenery-viewing expedition. He stepped forward, with that translucent, child-candid smile upon his fresh, pink countenance, with that air of unaffected sincerity that was redeemed from bluffness only by its exquisite calculation, with that promptitude and masterly decision of manner that so well suited his calling--with all his stock in trade well to the front; he stepped forward to receive Colonel and Mrs. Peyton Blaylock. With the grace of a grand marshal or a wedding usher, he escorted the two passengers to a side of the upper deck, from which the scenery was supposed to present itself to the observer in increased quantity and quality. There, in comfortable steamer chairs, they sat and began to piece together the random lines that were to form an intelligent paragraph in the big history of little events. "Our home, sir," said Colonel Blaylock, removing his wide-brimmed, rather shapeless black felt hat, "is in Holly Springs--Holly Springs, Georgia. I am very proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bloom. Mrs. Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Okochee this morning, sir, on business--business of importance in connection with the recent rapid march of progress in this section of our state." The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping gesture, his long, smooth, locks. His dark eyes, still fiery under the heavy black brows, seemed inappropriate to the face of a business man. He looked rather to be an old courtier handed down from the reign of Charles, and re-attired in a modern suit of fine, but raveling and seam-worn, broadcloth. "Yes, sir," said Mr. Bloom, in his heartiest prospectus voice, "things have been whizzing around Okochee. Biggest industrial revival and waking up to natural resources Georgia ever had. Did you happen to squeeze in on the ground floor in any of the gilt- edged grafts, Colonel?" "Well, sir," said the Colonel, hesitating in courteous doubt, "if I understand your question, I may say that I took the opportunity to make an investment that I believe will prove quite advantageous--yes, sir, I believe it will result in both pecuniary profit and agreeable occupation." "Colonel Blaylock," said the little edlerly lady, shaking her gray curl and smiling indulgent explanation at J. Pinkney Bloom, "is so devoted to businesss. He has such a talent for financiering and markets and investments and those kind of things. I think myself extremely fortunate in having secured him for a partner on life's journey--I am so unversed in those formidable but very useful branches of learning." Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bow--a bow that belonged with silk stockings and lace ruffles and velvet. "Practical affairs," he said, with a wave of his hand toward the promoter, "are, if I may use the comparison, the garden walks upon which we tread through life, viewing upon either side of us the flowers which brighten that journey. It is my pleasure to be able to lay out a walk or two. Mrs. Blaylock, sir, is one of those fortunate higher spirits whose mission it is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, Mr. Bloom, you have perused the lines of Lorella, the Southern poetess. That is the name above which Mrs. Blaylock has contributed to the press of the South for many years." "Unfortunately," said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of the loss clearly written upon his frank face, "I'm like the Colonel--in the walk-making business myself--and I haven't had time to even take a sniff at the flowers. Poetry is a line I never dealt in. It must be nice, though --quite nice." "It is the region," smiled Mrs. Blaylock, "in which my soul dwells. My shawl, Peyton, if you please--the breeze comes a little chilly from yon verdured hills." The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat a small shawl of knitted silk and laid it solicitously about the shoulders of the lady. Mrs. Blaylock sighed contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes-- still as clear and unworldly as a child's--upon the steep slopes that were slowly slipping past. Very fair and stately they looked in the clear morning air. They seemed to speak in familiar terms to the responsive spirit of Lorella. "My native hills!" she murmured, dreamily. "See how the foliage drinks the sunlight from the hollows and dells." "Mrs. Blaylock's maiden days," said the Colonel, interpreting her mood to J. Pinkney Bloom, "were spent among the mountains of northern Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days. Holly Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I fear that she may have suffered in health and spirits by so long a residence there. That is one portent reason for the change we are making. My dear, can you not recall those lines you wrote--entitled, I think, 'The Georgia Hills'--the poem that was so extensively copied by the Southern press and praised so highly by the Atlanta critics?" Mrs. Blaylock turned a glance of speaking tenderness upon the Colonel, fingered for a moment the silvery curl that drooped upon her bosom, then looked again toward the mountains. Without preliminary or affectation or demurral she began, in rather thrilling and more deeply pitched tones to recite these lines: "The Georgia hills, the Georgia hills!--Oh, heart, why dost thou pine?Are not these sheltered lowlands fairWith mead and bloom and vine?Ah! as the slow-paced river hereBroods on its natal rillsMy spirit drifts, in longing sweet,Back to the Georgia hills. "And through the close-drawn, curtained nightI steal on sleep's slow wingsBack to my heart's ease--slopes of pine--Where end my wanderings.Oh, heaven seems nearer from their tops--And farther earthly ills--Even in dreams, if I may butDream of my Georgia hills. The grass upon their orchard sidesIs a fine couch to me;The common note of each small birdPasses all minstrelsy.It would not seem so dread a thingIf, when the Reaper wills,He might come there and take my handUp in the Georgia hills."Thats great stuff, ma'am," said J. Pinkney Bloom, enthusiastically, when the poetess had concluded. "I wish I had looked up poetry more than I have. I was raised in the pine hills myself." "The mountains ever call to their children," murmured Mrs. Blaylock. "I feel that life will take on the rosy hue of hope again in among these beautiful hills. Peyton--a little taste of the currant wine, if you will be so good. The journey, though delightful in the extreme, slightly fatigues me." Colonel Blaylock again visited the depths of his prolific coat, and produced a tightly corked, rough, black bottle. Mr. Bloom was on his feet in an instant. "Let me bring a glass, ma'am. You come along, Colonel--there's a little table we can bring, too. Maybe we can scare up some fruit or a cup of tea on board. I'll ask Mac." Mrs. Blaylock reclined at ease. Few royal ladies have held their royal prerogative with the serene grace of the petted Southern woman. The Colonel, with an air as gallant and assiduous as in the days of his courtship, and J. Pinkney Bloom, with a ponderous agility half professional and half directed by some resurrected, unnamed, long- forgotten sentiment, formed a diversified but attentive court. The currant wine--wine home made from the Holly Springs fruit--went round, and then J. Pinkney began to hear something of Holly Springs life. It seemed (from the conversation of the Blaylocks) that the Springs was decadent. A third of the population had moved away. Business-- and the Colonel was an authority on business--had dwindled to nothing. After carefully studying the field of opportunities open to capital he had sold his little property there for eight hundred dollars and invested it in one of the enterprises opened up by the book in Okochee. "Might I inquire, sir," said Mr. Bloom, "in what particular line of business you inserted your coin? I know that town as well as I know the regulations for illegal use of the mails. I might give you a hunch as to whether you can make the game go or not." J. Pinkney, somehow, had a kindly feeling toward these unsophisticated representatives of by-gone days. They were so simple, impractical, and unsuspecting. He was glad that he happened not to have a gold brick or a block of that western Bad Boy Silver Mine stock along with him. He would have disliked to unload on people he liked so well as he did these; but there are some temptations toe enticing to be resisted. "No, sir," said Colonel Blaylock. pausing to arrange the queen's wrap. "I did not invest in Okochee. I have made an exhaustive study of business conditions, and I regard old settled towns as unfavorable fields in which to place capital that is limited in amount. Some months ago, through the kindness of a friend, there came into my hands a map and description of this new town of Skyland that has been built upon the lake. The description was so pleasing, the future of the town set forth in such convincing arguments, and its increasing prosperity portrayed in such an attractive style that I decided to take advantage of the opportunity it offered. I carefully selected a lot in the centre of the business district, although its price was the highest in the schedule--five hundred dollars--and made the purchase at once." "Are you the man--I mean, did you pay five hundred dollars for a lot in Skyland" asked J. Pinkney Bloom. "I did, sir," answered the Colonel, with the air of a modest millionaire explaining his success; "a lot most excellently situated on the same square with the opera house, and only two squares from the board of trade. I consider the purchase a most fortuitous one. It is my intention to erect a small building upon it at once, and open a modest book and stationery store. During past years I have met with many pecuniary reverses, and I now find it necessary to engage in some commercial occupation that will furnish me with a livelihood. The book and stationery business, though an humble one, seems to me not inapt nor altogether uncongenial. I am a graduate of the University of Virginia; and Mrs. Blaylock's really wonderful acquaintance with belles-lettres and poetic literature should go far toward insuring success. Of course, Mrs. Blaylock would not personally serve behind the counter. With the nearly three hundred dollars I have remaining I can manage the building of a house, by giving a lien on the lot. I have an old friend in Atlanta who is a partner in a large book store, and he has agreed to furnish me with a stock of goods on credit, on extremely easy terms. I am pleased to hope, sir, that Mrs. Blaylock's health and happiness will be increased by the change of locality. Already I fancy I can perceive the return of those roses that were once the hope and despair of Georgia cavaliers." Again followed that wonderful bow, as the Colonel lightly touched the pale cheek of the poetess. Mrs. Blaylock, blushing like a girl, shook her curl and gave the Colonel an arch, reproving tap. Secret of eternal youth--where art thou? Every second the answer comes--"Here, here, here." Listen to thine own heartbeats, 0 weary seeker after external miracles. "Those years," said Mrs. Blaylock, "in Holly Springs were long, long, long. But now is the promised land in sight. Skyland!--a lovely name." "Doubtless," said the Colonel, "we shall be able to secure comfortable accommodations at some modest hotel at reasonable rates. Our trunks are in Okochee, to be forwarded when we shall have made permanent arrangements." J. Pinkney Bloom excused himself, went forward, and stood by the captain at the wheel. "Mac," said he, "do you remember my telling you once that I sold one of those five-hundred-dollar lots in Skyland?" "Seems I do," grinned Captain MacFarland. "I'm not a coward, as a general rule," went on the promoter, "but I always said that if I ever met the sucker that bought that lot I'd run like a turkey. Now, you see that old babe-in-the-wood over there? Well, he's the boy that drew the prize. That was the only five-hundred-dollar lot that went. The rest ranged from ten dollars to two hundred. His wife writes poetry. She's invented one about the high grounds of Georgia, that's way up in G. They're going to Skyland to open a book store." "Well," said MacFarland, with another grin, "it's a good thing you are along, J. P.; you can show 'em around town until they begin to feel at home." "He's got three hundred dollars left to build a house and store with," went on J. Pinkney, as if he were talking to himself. "And he thinks there's an open house up there." Captain MacFarland released the wheel long enough to give his leg a roguish slap. "You old fat rascal!" he chuckled, with a wink. "Mac, you're a fool," said J. Pinkney Bloom, coldly. He went back and joined the Blaylocks, where he sat, less talkative, with that straight furrow between his brows that always stood as a signal of schemes being shaped within. "There's a good many swindles connected with these booms," he said presently. "What if this Skyland should turn out to be one--that is, suppose business should be sort of dull there, and no special sale for books?" "My dear sir," said Colonel Blaylock, resting his hand upon the back of his wife's chair, "three times I have been reduced to almost penury by the duplicity of others, but I have not yet lost faith in humanity. If I have been deceived again, still we may glean health and content, if not worldly profit. I am aware that there are dishonest schemers in the world who set traps for the unwary, but even they are not altogether bad. My dear, can you recall those verses entitled 'He Giveth the Increase,' that you composed for the choir of our church in Holly Springs?" "That was four years ago," said Mrs. Blaylock; "perhans I can repeat a verse or two. "The lily springs from the rotting mould;Pearls from the deep sea slime;Good will come out of NazarethAll in God's own time. "To the hardest heart the softening graceCometh, at last, to bless;Guiding it right to help and cheerAnd succor in distress."I cannot remember the rest. The lines were not ambitious. They were written to the music composed by a dear friend." "It's a fine rhyme, just the same," declared Mr. Bloom. "It seems to ring the bell, all right. I guess I gather the sense of it. It means that the rankest kind of a phony will give you the best end of it once in a while." Mr. Bloom strayed thoughtfully back to the captain, and stood meditating. "Ought to be in sight of the spires and gilded domes of Skyland now in a few minutes," chirruped MacFarland, shaking with enjoyment. "Go to the devil," said Mr. Bloom, still pensive. And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse of a white village, high up on the hills, smothered among green trees. That was Cold Branch--no boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay on the edge of the grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just back of the heights. Cold Branch had nothing in common with the frisky ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake. "Mac," said J. Pinkney suddenly, "I want you to stop at Cold Branch. There's a landing there that they made to use sometimes when the river was up." "Can't," said the captain, grinning more broadly. "I've got the United States mails on board. Right to-day this boat's in the government service. Do you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam? And the great city of Skyland, all disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I'm ashamed of your extravagance, J. P." "Mac," almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his danger-line voice, "I looked into the engine room of the Dixie Belle a while ago. Don't you know of somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black Japan can't hide flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and loan that you traded for repairs--they were all yours, of course. I hate to mention these things, but--" "Oh, come now, J. P.," said the captain. "You know I was just fooling. I'll put you off at Cold Branch, if you say so." "The other passengers get off there, too," said Mr. Bloom. Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes the Dixie Belle turned her nose toward a little, cranky wooden pier on the left bank, and the captain, relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the passenger deck and made the remarkable announcement: "All out for Skyland." The Blaylocks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, and the Dixie Belle proceeded on her way up the lake. Guided by the indefatigable promoter, they slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to rest and admire the view. Finally they entered the village of Cold Branch. Warmly both the Colonel and his wife praised it for its homelike and peaceful beauty. Mr. Bloom conducted them to a two-story building on a shady street that bore the legend, "Pine-top Inn." Here he took his leave, receiving the cordial thanks of the two for his attentions, the Colonel remarking that he thought they would spend the remainder of the day in rest, and take a look at his purchase on the morrow. J.Pinkney Bloom walked down Cold Branch's main street. He did not know this town, but he knew towns, and his feet did not falter. Presently he saw a sign over a door: "Frank E. Cooly, Attorney-at-Law and Notary Public." A young man was Mr. Cooly, and awaiting business. "Get your hat, son," said Mr. Bloom, in his breezy way, "and a blank deed, and come along. It's a job for you." "Now," he continued, when Mr. Cooly had responded with alacrity, "is there a bookstore in town?" "One," said the lawyer. "Henry Williams's." "Get there," said Mr. Bloom. "We're going to buy it." Henry Williams was behind his counter. His store was a small one, containing a mixture of books, stationery, and fancy rubbish. Adjoining it was Henry's home--a decent cottage, vine-embowered and cosy. Henry was lank and soporific, and not inclined to rush his business. "I want to buy your house and store," said Mr. Bloom. "I haven't got time to dicker--name your price." "It's worth eight hundred," said Henry, too much dazed to ask more than its value. "Shut that door," said Mr. Bloom to the lawyer. Then he tore off his coat and vest, and began to unbutton his shirt. "Wanter fight about it, do yer?" said Henry Williams, jumping up and cracking his heels together twice. "All right, hunky--sail in and cut yer capers." "Keep your clothes on," said Mr. Bloom. "I'm only going down to the bank." He drew eight one-hundred-dollar bills from his money belt and planked them down on the counter. Mr. Cooly showed signs of future promise, for he already had the deed spread out, and was reaching across the counter for the ink bottle. Never before or since was such quick action had in Cold Branch. "Your name, please?" asked the lawyer. "Make it out to Peyton Blaylock," said Mr. Bloom. "God knows how to spell it." Within thirty minutes Henry Williams was out of business, and Mr. Bloom stood on the brick sidewalk with Mr. Cooly, who held in his hand the signed and attested deed. "You'll find the party at the Pinetop Inn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Get it recorded, and take it down and give it to him. He'll ask you a hell's mint of questions; so here's ten dollars for the trouble you'll have in not being able to answer 'em. Never run much to poetry, did you, young man?" "Well," said the really talented Cooly, who even yet retained his right mind, "now and then." "Dig into it," said Mr. Bloom, "it'll pay you. Never heard a poem, now, that run something like this, did you?-- A good thing out of NazarethComes up sometimes, I guess,On hand, all right, to help and cheerA sucker in distress.""I believe not," said Mr. Cooly. "It's a hymn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Now, show me the way to a livery stable, son, for I'm going to hit the dirt road back to Okochee." The Pimienta Pancakes 比绵塔薄饼 While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week. On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was bereaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience. Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud's obmutescence. Betimes I was stirred by invalid longings for something to eat that did not come under the caption of "grub." I had visions of the maternal pantry "deep as first love, and wild with all regret," and then I asked: "Jud, can you make pancakes?" Jud laid down his six-shooter, with which he was preparing to pound an antelope steak, and stood over me in what I felt to be a menacing attitude. He further endorsed my impression that his pose was resentful by fixing upon me with his light blue eyes a look of cold suspicion. "Say, you," he said, with candid, though not excessive, choler, "did you mean that straight, or was you trying to throw the gaff into me? Some of the boys been telling you about me and that pancake racket?" "No, Jud," I said, sincerely, "I meant it. It seems to me I'd swap my pony and saddle for a stack of buttered brown pancakes with some first crop, open kettle, New Orleans sweetening. Was there a story about pancakes?" Jud was mollified at once when he saw that I had not been dealing in allusions. He brought some mysterious bags and tin boxes from the grub wagon and set them in the shade of the hackberry where I lay reclined. I watched him as he began to arrange them leisurely and untie their many strings. "No, not a story," said Jud, as he worked, "but just the logical disclosures in the case of me and that pink-eyed snoozer from Mired Mule Canada and Miss Willella Learight. I don't mind telling you. "I was punching then for old Bill Toomey, on the San Miguel. One day I gets all ensnared up in aspirations for to eat some canned grub that hasn't ever mooed or baaed or grunted or been in peck measures. So, I gets on my bronc and pushes the wind for Uncle Emsley Telfair's store at the Pimienta Crossing on the Nueces. "About three in the afternoon I throwed my bridle rein over a mesquite limb and walked the last twenty yards into Uncle Emsley's store. I got up on the counter and told Uncle Emsley that the signs pointed to the devastation of the fruit crop of the world. In a minute I had a bag of crackers and a long-handled spoon, with an open can each of apricots and pineapples and cherries and greengages beside of me with Uncle Emsley busy chopping away with the hatchet at the yellow clings. I was feeling like Adam before the apple stampede, and was digging my spurs into the side of the counter and working with my twenty-four-inch spoon when I happened to look out of the window into the yard of Uncle Emsley's house, which was next to the store. "There was a girl standing there--an imported girl with fixings on-- philandering with a croquet maul and amusing herself by watching my style of encouraging the fruit canning industry. "I slid off the counter and delivered up my shovel to Uncle Emsley. "'That's my niece,' says he; 'Miss Willella Learight, down from Palestine on a visit. Do you want that I should make you acquainted?' "'The Holy Land,' I says to myself, my thoughts milling some as I tried to run 'em into the corral. 'Why not? There was sure angels in Pales--Why, yes, Uncle Emsley,' I says out loud, 'I'd be awful edified to meet Miss Learight.' "So Uncle Emsley took me out in the yard and gave us each other's entitlements. "I never was shy about women. I never could understand why some men who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a bold of calico draped around what belongs to it. Inside of eight minutes me and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around as amiable as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of canned fruit I had eaten, and I got back at her, flat-footed, about how a certain lady named Eve started the fruit trouble in the first free-grass pasture--'Over in Palestine, wasn't it?' says I, as easy and pat as roping a one-year-old. "That was how I acquired cordiality for the proximities of Miss Willella Learight; and the disposition grew larger as time passed. She was stopping at Pimienta Crossing for her health, which was very good, and for the climate, which was forty per cent. hotter than Palestine. I rode over to see her once every week for a while; and then I figured it out that if I doubled the number of trips I would see her twice as often. "One week I slipped in a third trip; and that's where the pancakes and the pink-eyed snoozer busted into the game. "That evening, while I set on the counter with a peach and two damsons in my mouth, I asked Uncle Emsley how Miss Willella was. "'Why,' says Uncle Emsley, 'she's gone riding with Jackson Bird, the sheep man from over at Mired Mule Canada.' "I swallowed the peach seed and the two damson seeds. I guess somebody held the counter by the bridle while I got off; and then I walked out straight ahead till I butted against the mesquite where my roan was tied. "'She's gone riding,' I whisper in my bronc's ear, 'with Birdstone Jack, the hired mule from Sheep Man's Canada. Did you get that, old Leather-and-Gallops?' "That bronc of mine wept, in his way. He'd been raised a cow pony and he didn't care for snoozers. "I went back and said to Uncle Emsley: 'Did you say a sheep man?' "'I said a sheep man,' says Uncle Emsley again. 'You must have heard tell of Jackson Bird. He's got eight sections of grazing and four thousand head of the finest Merinos south of the Arctic Circle.' "I went out and sat on the ground in the shade of the store and leaned against a prickly pear. I sifted sand into my boots with unthinking hands while I soliloquised a quantity about this bird with the Jackson plumage to his name. "I never had believed in harming sheep men. I see one, one day, reading a Latin grammar on hossback, and I never touched him! They never irritated me like they do most cowmen. You wouldn't go to work now, and impair and disfigure snoozers, would you, that eat on tables and wear little shoes and speak to you on subjects? I had always let 'em pass, just as you would a jack-rabbit; with a polite word and a guess about the weather, but no stopping to swap canteens. I never thought it was worth while to be hostile with a snoozer. And because I'd been lenient, and let 'em live, here was one going around riding with Miss Willella Learight! "An hour by sun they come loping back, and stopped at Uncle Emsley's gate. The sheep person helped her off; and they stood throwing each other sentences all sprightful and sagacious for a while. And then this feathered Jackson flies up in his saddle and raises his little stewpot of a hat, and trots off in the direction of his mutton ranch. By this time I had turned the sand out of my boots and unpinned myself from the prickly pear; and by the time he gets half a mile out of Pimienta, I singlefoots up beside him on my bronc. "I said that snoozer was pink-eyed, but he wasn't. His seeing arrangement was grey enough, but his eye-lashes was pink and his hair was sandy, and that gave you the idea. Sheep man?--he wasn't more than a lamb man, anyhow--a little thing with his neck involved in a yellow silk handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots. "'Afternoon!' says I to him. 'You now ride with a equestrian who is commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way I shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.' "'Ah,' says he, just like that--'Ah, I'm glad to know you, Mr. Judson. I'm Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.' "Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill with a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the other with my forty-five, just to show him. 'Two out of three,' says I. 'Birds just naturally seem to draw my fire wherever I go.' "'Nice shooting,' says the sheep man, without a flutter. 'But don't you sometimes ever miss the third shot? Elegant fine rain that was last week for the young grass, Mr. Judson?' says he. "'Willie,' says I, riding over close to his palfrey, 'your infatuated parents may have denounced you by the name of Jackson, but you sure moulted into a twittering Willie--let us slough off this here analysis of rain and the elements, and get down to talk that is outside the vocabulary of parrots. That is a bad habit you have got of riding with young ladies over at Pimienta. I've known birds,' says I, 'to be served on toast for less than that. Miss Willella,' says I, 'don't ever want any nest made out of sheep's wool by a tomtit of the Jacksonian branch of ornithology. Now, are you going to quit, or do you wish for to gallop up against this Dead-Moral-Certainty attachment to my name, which is good for two hyphens and at least one set of funeral obsequies?' "Jackson Bird flushed up some, and then he laughed. "'Why, Mr. Judson,' says he, 'you've got the wrong idea. I've called on Miss Learight a few times; but not for the purpose you imagine. My object is purely a gastronomical one.' "I reached for my gun. "'Any coyote,' says I, 'that would boast of dishonourable--' "'Wait a minute,' says this Bird, 'till I explain. What would I do with a wife? If you ever saw that ranch of mine! I do my own cooking and mending. Eating--that's all the pleasure I get out of sheep raising. Mr. Judson, did you ever taste the pancakes that Miss Learight makes?' "'Me? No,' I told him. 'I never was advised that she was up to any culinary manoeuvres.' "'They're golden sunshine,' says he, 'honey-browned by the ambrosial fires of Epicurus. I'd give two years of my life to get the recipe for making them pancakes. That's what I went to see Miss Learight for,' says Jackson Bird, 'but I haven't been able to get it from her. It's an old recipe that's been in the family for seventy-five years. They hand it down from one generation to another, but they don't give it away to outsiders. If I could get that recipe, so I could make them pancakes for myself on my ranch, I'd be a happy man,' says Bird. "'Are you sure,' I says to him, 'that it ain't the hand that mixes the pancakes that you're after?' "'Sure,' says Jackson. 'Miss Learight is a mighty nice girl, but I can assure you my intentions go no further than the gastro--' but he seen my hand going down to my holster and he changed his similitude--'than the desire to procure a copy of the pancake recipe,' he finishes. "'You ain't such a bad little man,' says I, trying to be fair. 'I was thinking some of making orphans of your sheep, but I'll let you fly away this time. But you stick to pancakes,' says I, 'as close as the middle one of a stack; and don't go and mistake sentiments for syrup, or there'll be singing at your ranch, and you won't hear it.' "'To convince you that I am sincere,' says the sheep man, 'I'll ask you to help me. Miss Learight and you being closer friends, maybe she would do for you what she wouldn't for me. If you will get me a copy of that pancake recipe, I give you my word that I'll never call upon her again.' "'That's fair,' I says, and I shook hands with Jackson Bird. 'I'll get it for you if I can, and glad to oblige.' And he turned off down the big pear flat on the Piedra, in the direction of Mired Mule; and I steered northwest for old Bill Toomey's ranch. "It was five days afterward when I got another chance to ride over to Pimienta. Miss Willella and me passed a gratifying evening at Uncle Emsley's. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with quotations from the operas. I gave imitations of a rattlesnake, and told her about Snaky McFee's new way of skinning cows, and described the trip I made to Saint Louis once. We was getting along in one another's estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be persuaded to migrate, I win. I recollect his promise about the pancake receipt, and I thinks I will persuade it from Miss Willella and give it to him; and then if I catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I'll make him hop the twig. "So, along about ten o'clock, I put on a wheedling smile and says to Miss Willella: 'Now, if there's anything I do like better than the sight of a red steer on green grass it's the taste of a nice hot pancake smothered in sugar-house molasses.' "Miss Willella gives a little jump on the piano stool, and looked at me curious. "'Yes,' says she, 'they're real nice. What did you say was the name of that street in Saint Louis, Mr. Odom, where you lost your hat?' "'Pancake Avenue,' says I, with a wink, to show her that I was on about the family receipt, and couldn't be side-corralled off of the subject. 'Come, now, Miss Willella,' I says; 'let's hear how you make 'em. Pancakes is just whirling in my head like wagon wheels. Start her off, now--pound of flour, eight dozen eggs, and so on. How does the catalogue of constituents run?' "'Excuse me for a moment, please,' says Miss Willella, and she gives me a quick kind of sideways look, and slides off the stool. She ambled out into the other room, and directly Uncle Emsley comes in in his shirt sleeves, with a pitcher of water. He turns around to get a glass on the table, and I see a forty-five in his hip pocket. 'Great post- holes!' thinks I, 'but here's a family thinks a heap of cooking receipts, protecting it with firearms. I've known outfits that wouldn't do that much by a family feud.' "'Drink this here down,' says Uncle Emsley, handing me the glass of water. 'You've rid too far to-day, Jud, and got yourself over-excited. Try to think about something else now.' "'Do you know how to make them pancakes, Uncle Emsley?' I asked. "'Well, I'm not as apprised in the anatomy of them as some,' says Uncle Emsley, 'but I reckon you take a sifter of plaster of Paris and a little dough and saleratus and corn meal, and mix 'em with eggs and buttermilk as usual. Is old Bill going to ship beeves to Kansas City again this spring, Jud?' "That was all the pancake specifications I could get that night. I didn't wonder that Jackson Bird found it uphill work. So I dropped the subject and talked with Uncle Emsley for a while about hollow-horn and cyclones. And then Miss Willella came and said 'Good-night,' and I hit the breeze for the ranch. "About a week afterward I met Jackson Bird riding out of Pimienta as I rode in, and we stopped on the road for a few frivolous remarks. "'Got the bill of particulars for them flapjacks yet?' I asked him. "'Well, no,' says Jackson. 'I don't seem to have any success in getting hold of it. Did you try?' "'I did,' says I, 'and 'twas like trying to dig a prairie dog out of his hole with a peanut hull. That pancake receipt must be a jookalorum, the way they hold on to it.' "'I'm most ready to give it up,' says Jackson, so discouraged in his pronunciations that I felt sorry for him; 'but I did want to know how to make them pancakes to eat on my lonely ranch,' says he. 'I lie awake at nights thinking how good they are.' "'You keep on trying for it,' I tells him, 'and I'll do the same. One of us is bound to get a rope over its horns before long. Well, so- long, Jacksy.' "You see, by this time we were on the peacefullest of terms. When I saw that he wasn't after Miss Willella, I had more endurable contemplations of that sandy-haired snoozer. In order to help out the ambitions of his appetite I kept on trying to get that receipt from Miss Willella. But every time I would say 'pancakes' she would get sort of remote and fidgety about the eye, and try to change the subject. If I held her to it she would slide out and round up Uncle Emsley with his pitcher of water and hip-pocket howitzer. "One day I galloped over to the store with a fine bunch of blue verbenas that I cut out of a herd of wild flowers over on Poisoned Dog Prairie. Uncle Emsley looked at 'em with one eye shut and says: "'Haven't ye heard the news?' "'Cattle up?' I asks. "'Willella and Jackson Bird was married in Palestine yesterday,' says he. 'Just got a letter this morning.' "I dropped them flowers in a cracker-barrel, and let the news trickle in my ears and down toward my upper left-hand shirt pocket until it got to my feet. "'Would you mind saying that over again once more, Uncle Emsley?' says I. 'Maybe my hearing has got wrong, and you only said that prime heifers was 4.80 on the hoof, or something like that.' "'Married yesterday,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and gone to Waco and Niagara Falls on a wedding tour. Why, didn't you see none of the signs all along? Jackson Bird has been courting Willella ever since that day he took her out riding.' "'Then,' says I, in a kind of yell, 'what was all this zizzaparoola he gives me about pancakes? Tell me that.' "When I said 'pancakes' Uncle Emsley sort of dodged and stepped back. "'Somebody's been dealing me pancakes from the bottom of the deck,' I says, 'and I'll find out. I believe you know. Talk up,' says I, 'or we'll mix a panful of batter right here.' "I slid over the counter after Uncle Emsley. He grabbed at his gun, but it was in a drawer, and he missed it two inches. I got him by the front of his shirt and shoved him in a corner. "'Talk pancakes,' says I, 'or be made into one. Does Miss Willella make 'em?' "'She never made one in her life and I never saw one,' says Uncle Emsley, soothing. 'Calm down now, Jud--calm down. You've got excited, and that wound in your head is contaminating your sense of intelligence. Try not to think about pancakes.' "'Uncle Emsley,' says I, 'I'm not wounded in the head except so far as my natural cognitive instincts run to runts. Jackson Bird told me he was calling on Miss Willella for the purpose of finding out her system of producing pancakes, and he asked me to help him get the bill of lading of the ingredients. I done so, with the results as you see. Have I been sodded down with Johnson grass by a pink-eyed snoozer, or what?' "'Slack up your grip in my dress shirt,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and I'll tell you. Yes, it looks like Jackson Bird has gone and humbugged you some. The day after he went riding with Willella he came back and told me and her to watch out for you whenever you got to talking about pancakes. He said you was in camp once where they was cooking flapjacks, and one of the fellows cut you over the head with a frying pan. Jackson said that whenever you got overhot or excited that wound hurt you and made you kind of crazy, and you went raving about pancakes. He told us to just get you worked off of the subject and soothed down, and you wouldn't be dangerous. So, me and Willella done the best by you we knew how. Well, well,' says Uncle Emsley, 'that Jackson Bird is sure a seldom kind of a snoozer.'" During the progress of Jud's story he had been slowly but deftly combining certain portions of the contents of his sacks and cans. Toward the close of it he set before me the finished product--a pair of red-hot, rich-hued pancakes on a tin plate. From some secret hoarding he also brought a lump of excellent butter and a bottle of golden syrup. "How long ago did these things happen?" I asked him. "Three years," said Jud. "They're living on the Mired Mule Ranch now. But I haven't seen either of 'em since. They say Jackson Bird was fixing his ranch up fine with rocking chairs and window curtains all the time he was putting me up the pancake tree. Oh, I got over it after a while. But the boys kept the racket up." "Did you make these cakes by the famous recipe?" I asked. "Didn't I tell you there wasn't no receipt?" said Jud. "The boys hollered pancakes till they got pancake hungry, and I cut this recipe out of a newspaper. How does the truck taste?" "They're delicious," I answered. "Why don't you have some, too, Jud?" I was sure I heard a sigh. "Me?" said Jud. "I don't ever eat 'em." 比绵塔薄饼 当我们在弗里奥山麓,骑着马把一群烙有圆圈三角印记的牛赶拢在一起时,一株枯死的牧豆树的枝桠钩住了我的木马镫,害得我扭伤了脚踝,在营地里躺了一个星期。 被迫休息的第三天,我一拐一拐地挨到炊事车旁,在营地厨师贾德森•奥多姆的连珠炮似的谈话下一筹莫展地躺着。贾德天生爱说话,说起来没完没了,可是造化作弄人,让他当了厨师,害得他在大部分时间里找不到听他说话的人。 因此,在贾德一声不吭的沙漠里,我便成了他的灵食①。 『①《旧约•出埃及记》十六章十四至三十五节:摩西率领以色列人逃出埃及,在荒野中漂泊了四十年,饥饿时,上帝便撒下灵食。』不多一会儿,我起了一阵病人的贪馋,想吃一些不在“伙食”项下的东西。我想起了母亲的食柜,不由得“情深如初恋,惆怅复黯然”。②于是我问道:『②引自英国诗人丁尼生的叙事诗《公主》中的歌曲:“情深如初恋,惆怅复黯然;人生如流云,往日不再回。”』 “贾德,你会做薄饼吗?” 贾德放下刚准备用来捣羚羊肉排的六响手枪,带着我认为是威胁的态度,走到我面前。他那双浅蓝色的眼睛猜疑地瞪着我,更叫我感到了他的忿恨。 “喂,”他说,虽然怒形于色,但还没有出格,“你是真心问我,还是想挖苦我?是不是有人把我和薄饼的底细告诉了你?” “不,贾德,”我诚恳地说,“决没有别的用意。我只不过很想吃一些用黄油烙得黄黄的薄饼,上面还浇着新上市的,大铁皮桶装的新奥尔良蜂蜜。我愿意拿我的小马和马鞍来换一叠这样的薄饼。说起薄饼,难道还有什么故事吗?” 贾德明白了我不是含沙射影之后,神色马上和缓了。他从炊事车里取出一些神秘的口袋和铁皮盒子,放在我依靠的那株树下。我看他不慌不忙地张罗起来,解开拴口袋的绳子。 “其实也算不上是什么故事,”贾德一面干活,一面说,“只是我同陷骡山谷来的那个粉红眼睛的牧羊人以及威莱拉•利赖特小姐之间一桩事情的合乎逻辑的结局罢了。告诉你也不妨。” “那时候,我在圣米格尔牧场替老比尔•图米赶牛。有一天,我一心想吃些罐头食品,只要不哞,不咩,不哼或者不啄的东西都行。①于是我跨上我那匹还未调教好的小野马,飞快地直奔纽西斯河比绵塔渡口埃姆斯利•特尔费尔大叔的店铺。 『①指牛、羊、猪和家禽。』“下午三点钟左右,我把缰绳往一根牧豆树枝上一套,下马走了二十码,来到埃姆斯利大叔的铺子。我登上柜台,对埃姆斯利大叔说,看情况全世界的水果收成都要受灾了。不出一分钟,我拿着一袋饼干和一把长匙,身边摆着一个个打开的杏子、菠萝、樱桃和青梅罐头,埃姆斯利还在手忙脚乱地用斧头砍开罐头的黄色铁皮箍。我快活得象是没闹苹果乱子以前的亚当。我把靴子上的踢马刺往柜台板壁里插,手里挥弄着那把二十四英寸的匙子;这当儿,我偶然抬头一望,从窗口里看到铺子隔壁埃姆斯利大叔家的后院。 “有个姑娘站在那儿——一个打扮得漂漂亮亮的外路来的姑娘——她一面玩弄着槌球棍,一面看着我那促进水果罐头工业的劲头,在那里暗自发笑。 “我从柜台上滑下来,把手里的匙子交给埃姆斯利大叔。 “‘那是我的外甥女儿,’他说,‘威莱拉•利赖特小姐,从巴勒斯坦①来做客。要不要我替你们介绍介绍?’『①巴勒斯坦在亚洲西南,原为《圣经》中的迦南古国,是基督教的圣地;这里是指美国得克萨斯州东部一城市,原文相同。』“‘圣地哪。’我暗忖道,我的思想象牛群一样,我要把它们赶进栅栏里去,它们却乱兜圈子。‘怎么不是呢?天使们当然在巴勒——当然啦,埃姆斯利大叔,’我高声说,‘我非常高兴见见利赖特小姐。’“于是,埃姆斯利大叔把我引到后院,替我们介绍了一下。 “我在女人面前从不腼腆。我一直弄不明白,有的男人没吃早饭都能制服一匹野马,在漆黑的地方都能刮胡子,为什么一见到穿花衣裳的大姑娘却变得缩手缩脚,汗流浃背,连话都说不上来了。不出八分钟,我同利赖特小姐已经在作弄槌球,混得象表兄妹那般亲热了。她取笑我,说我吃了那么多罐头水果。我马上回敬她,说水果乱子是一位叫做夏娃的太太在第一个天然牧场里闹出来的——‘在巴勒斯坦那面,对吗?’我随机应变地说,正象用套索捕捉一头一岁的小马那样轻松。 “就那样,我获得了接近威莱拉•利赖特小姐的机会;日子一久,关系逐渐密切。她待在比绵塔渡口是为了她的健康和比绵塔的气候,其实她的健康情况非常好,而比绵塔的气候要比巴勒斯坦热百分之四十。开始时,我每星期骑马到她那里去一次;后来我盘算了一下,如果我把去的次数加一倍,我见到她的次数也会增加一倍了。 “有一星期,我去了三次;就在那第三次里,薄饼和淡红眼睛的牧羊人插进来了。 “那晚,我坐在柜台上,嘴里含着一只桃子和两只李子,一边问埃姆斯利大叔,威莱拉小姐可好。 “‘哟,’埃姆斯利大叔说,‘她同陷骡山谷里的那个牧羊人杰克逊•伯德出去骑马了。’“我把一颗桃核、两颗李核囫囵吞了下去。我跳下柜台时,大概有人抓住了柜台,不然它早就翻了。接着,我两眼发直地跑出去,直到撞在我拴那匹杂毛马的牧豆树上才停住。 “‘她出去骑马了,’我凑在那头小野马耳朵旁边说,‘同伯德斯通•杰克,牧羊人山谷那头驮骡一起去的。明白了吗,你这个挨鞭子才跑的老家伙?’“我那匹小马以它自己的方式哭了一通。它是从小就给驯养来牧牛的,它才不关心牧羊人呢。 “我又回到埃姆斯利大叔那儿,问他:‘你说的是牧羊人吗?’“‘是牧羊人。’大叔又说了一遍。‘你一定听人家谈起过杰克逊•伯德。他有八个牧场和四千头在北冰洋以南数最好的美利奴绵羊。’“我走进来,在店铺背阳的一边坐下,往一株带刺的霸王树上一靠。我自言自语,说了许多关于这个名叫杰克逊的恶鸟①的话,两手不知不觉地抓起沙子往靴筒里灌。 『①杰克逊•伯德的姓原文是Bird,有“鸟”的含义。』“我一向不愿意欺侮牧羊人。有一次,我看到一个牧羊人坐在马背上读拉丁文法,我连碰都没有碰他!我不象大多数牧牛人那样,看见他们就有气。牧羊人都在桌上吃饭,穿着小尺码的鞋子,同你有说有笑,难道你能跟他们动粗,整治他们,害得他们破相吗?我总是抬抬手放他们过去,正如放兔子过去那样;最多讲一两句客套话,寒暄寒暄,从来不停下来同他们喝两杯。我认为根本犯不着同一个牧羊人过不去。正因为我宽大为怀,网开一面,现在居然有个牧羊人跑来同威莱拉•利赖特小姐骑马了! “太阳下山前一小时,他们骑着马缓缓而来,在埃姆斯利大叔家门口停住了。牧羊人扶她下了马。他们站着,兴致勃勃,风趣横生地交谈了一会儿。随后,这个有羽毛的杰克逊跃上马鞍,掀掀他那顶小燉锅似的帽子,朝他的羊肉牧场那方向跑去。这时候,我把靴子里的沙子抖搂了出来,挣脱了霸王树上的刺;在离比绵塔半英里光景的地方,我策马赶上了他。 “我先前说过,牧羊人的眼睛是粉红色的,其实不然。他那看东西的家什倒是灰色的,只不过睫毛泛红,头发又是沙黄色,因此给人以一种错觉。那个牧羊人——其实只能算是牧羔人——身材瘦小,脖子上围着一条黄绸巾,鞋带打成蝴蝶结。 “‘借光。’我对他说。‘现在骑马同你一道走的是素有“百发百中”之称的贾德森,那是由于我打枪的路数。每当我要让一个陌生人知道我时,我拔枪之前总是要自我介绍一下,因为我向来不喜欢同死鬼握手。’“‘啊,’他说,说话时就是那副神气——‘啊,幸会幸会,贾德森先生。我是陷骡牧场那儿的杰克逊•伯德。’“这时,我一眼见到一只槲鸡叼着一只毒蜘蛛从山上跳下来,另一眼见到一只猎兔鹰栖息在水榆的枯枝上。我拔出四五口径的手枪,呯呯两响,把它们先后打翻,给杰克逊•伯德看看我的枪法。‘不管在哪儿,’我说,‘我见到鸟儿就想打,三回当中有两回是这样。’“‘枪法不坏。’牧羊人不动声色地说。‘不过你第三回打的时候会不会偶尔失风呢?上星期的那场雨水对新草大有好处,是吗,贾德森先生?’他说。 “‘威利,’我靠近他那匹小马说,‘宠你的爹妈也许管你叫杰克逊,可是你换了羽毛之后却成了一个嘁嘁喳喳的威利——我们不必研究雨水和气候,还是用鹦哥词汇以外的言语来谈谈吧。你同比绵塔的年轻姑娘一起骑马,这个习惯可不好。我知道有些鸟儿,’我说,‘还没有坏到那个地步就给烤来吃了。威莱拉小姐,’我说,‘并不需要鸟族杰克逊科的山雀替她用羊毛筑一个窝。现在,你打算撒手呢,还是想试试我这包办丧事的百发百中的诨名?’“杰克逊•伯德脸有点红,接着却呵呵笑了。 “‘哎,贾德森先生,’他说,‘你误会啦。我确实去看过几次利赖特小姐;但是决没有你所说的那种动机。我的目的纯粹是胃口方面的。’ “我伸手去摸枪。 “‘哪个浑蛋,’我说,‘胆敢无耻——’“‘慢着,’这个伯德赶紧说,‘让我解释一下。我娶了老婆该怎么办呢?你只要见过我的牧场就明白了!我自己做饭,自己补衣服。我牧羊的唯一乐趣就是吃。贾德森先生,你可尝过利赖特小姐做的薄饼?’“‘我?这倒没有。’我对他说。‘我从没有听说,她在烹调方面还有几手。’“‘那些薄饼简直象是金黄色的阳光,’他说,‘是用伊壁鸠鲁①天厨神火烤出来的黄澄澄、甜蜜蜜的好东西。我如果搞到那种薄饼的配方,即使少活两年也心甘情愿。我去看利赖特小姐就是为这个原因,’杰克逊•伯德说,‘可是直到现在还搞不到。那个老配方在他们家里传了七十五年。他们世代相传,从不透露给外人。假如我能搞到那个配方,在牧场上自己做薄饼吃,那我就幸福了。’伯德说。 『①伊壁鸠鲁(前342~前270):古希腊哲学家。』“‘你敢担保,’我对他说,‘你追求的不是调制薄饼的手吗?’“‘当然。’杰克逊说。‘利赖特小姐是个极好的姑娘,但是我可以向你保证,我的目的只限于胃口——’他见到我的手又去摸枪套,立即改口——‘只限于设法弄一张调制配方。’他结束说。 “‘你这小子还不算顶坏。’我装得很大方地说。‘我本来打算让你的羊儿再也见不到爹娘,这次姑且放你飞掉。但是你最多守住薄饼,千万别出格,并且别把感情错当糖浆,否则你再也听不到你牧场里的歌声了。’“‘为了让你相信我的诚意,’牧羊人说,‘我还要请你帮个忙。利赖特小姐和你是好朋友,她不愿意替我做的事,也许愿意替你做。假如你能代我搞到那个配方,我向你担保,我以后再也不去找她了。’“‘那倒也合情合理。’我说罢同杰克逊•伯德握握手。‘只要办得到,我一定替你去搞来,我乐于替你效劳。’于是,他掉头走下皮德拉的大梨树平地,往陷骡山谷去了;我策马朝西北方向回到老比尔•图米的牧场。 “五天之后,我才有机会去比绵塔。威莱拉小姐和我在埃姆斯利大叔家过了一个愉快的傍晚。她唱了几支歌,砰砰嘭嘭地在钢琴上弹了许多歌剧的调子。我学响尾蛇的模样,告诉她‘长虫’麦克菲剥牛皮的新法子,还告诉她有一次我去圣路易斯的情况。我们两个处得很投机。我想,如果现在能叫杰克逊•伯德转移牧场,我就赢了。我记起他说搞到薄饼调制配方就离开的保证,便打算劝威莱拉小姐交出来给他;以后我再在陷骡山谷以外的地方见到他,就要他的命。 “因此,十点钟左右,我脸上堆着哄人的笑容,对威莱拉小姐说:‘如果现在有什么东西比青草地上的红马更叫我高兴的话,那就是涂着糖浆的好吃的薄饼了。’“威莱利小姐在钢琴凳上微微一震,吃惊地瞅着我。 “‘是啊,’她说,‘薄饼的味道确实不错。奥多姆先生,刚才你说你在圣路易斯掉帽子的那条街叫什么来着?’“‘薄饼街。’我眨眨眼睛说,表示我拿定主意要搞到她的家传秘方,不会轻易给岔开去的。‘喂,威莱拉小姐,’我说,‘谈谈你怎么做薄饼的吧。薄饼象车轮似地在我脑袋里打转。说吧——一磅面粉,八打鸡蛋,等等。配料的成分是怎么样的?’“‘对不起,我出去一会儿。’威莱拉小姐说。她斜着眼睛飞快地瞟我一下,溜下凳子,慢慢地退到隔壁的房里去。紧接着,埃姆斯利大叔拿了一罐水,连上衣也没穿就进来了。他转过身去拿桌子上的玻璃杯时,我发现他裤袋里揣着一把四五口径的手枪。‘好家伙!’我想道,‘这个人家把食谱配方看得这么重,竟然要用火器来保护它。有的人家即使有世仇宿怨也不至于这样。’“‘喝下去。’埃姆斯利递给我一杯水说。‘你今天骑马赶路累了,贾德,搞得太兴奋了。还是想些别的事情吧。’“‘你知道怎么做那种薄饼吗,埃姆斯利大叔?’我问道。 “‘嗯,在做薄饼方面,我不象某些人那样高明,’埃姆斯利大叔回答说,‘不过我想,你可以按照通常的办法,拿一筛子石膏粉,一小点儿生面,小苏打和玉米面,用鸡蛋和全脂牛奶搅和起来就成了。今年春天老比尔是不是又要把牛群赶到堪萨斯城去,贾德?’“那晚上,我所能打听到的有关薄饼的细节只有这么些。难怪杰克逊•伯德觉得棘手。于是我撇开这个话题不谈,和埃姆斯利大叔聊聊羊角风和旋风之类的事。没多久,威莱拉小姐进来道了晚安,我便骑马回牧场。 “约莫一个星期后,我骑马去比绵塔,正遇到杰克逊•伯德从那里回来,我们便停在路上,随便聊聊。 “‘你搞到薄饼的详细说明了吗?’我问他。 “‘没有哪。’杰克逊说。‘看样子,我没有希望了。你试过没有?’“‘试过,’我说,‘可是毫无结果,正象要用花生壳把草原犬鼠从洞里挖出来一样。看他们死抱住不放的样子,那个薄饼配方准是好宝贝。’“‘我几乎准备放弃啦,’杰克逊说,他的口气是那么失望,连我也替他难过;‘可是我一心只想知道那种薄饼的调制方法,以便在我那寂寞的牧场上自己做来吃。’他说。‘我晚上睡不着觉,光捉摸薄饼的好滋味。’“‘你还是尽力想想办法,’我对他说,‘我也同时进行。用不了多久,我们中间总有一个能用套索把它兜住的。好吧,再见,杰克逊。’“你瞧,这会儿我们已经水乳交融,相得无间了。当我发现那个沙黄头发的牧羊人并不在追求威莱拉小姐时,我对他也就比较宽容了。为了帮助他达到满足口腹之欲的雄心,我一直在想办法把威莱拉小姐的配方弄到手。但是每当我提起‘薄饼’时,她眼睛里总流露出疏远和不安的神色,并且设法岔开话题。假如我坚持下去的话,她就溜出去,换了手里拿着水壶,裤袋里揣着山炮的埃姆斯利大叔进来。 “一天,我在毒狗草原的野花丛中摘了一束美丽的蓝马鞭草,驰马来到那家铺子。埃姆斯利大叔眯起一只眼睛,看着马鞭草说:“‘你没听到那个消息吗?’“‘牛价上涨了吗?’我问道。 “‘威莱拉和杰克逊•伯德昨天在巴勒斯坦结婚啦。’他说。‘今天早晨刚收到信。’“我把那束马鞭草扔进饼干桶,让那个消息慢慢灌进我耳朵,流到左边衬衫口袋①,再流到脚底。 『①指心。』 “‘请你再说一遍好不好,埃姆斯利大叔?’我说。‘也许我的耳朵出了毛病,你刚才说的只是活的甲级小母牛每头四块八毛钱,或者别的类似的话。’“‘昨天结的婚,’埃姆斯利大叔说,‘到韦科和尼亚加拉大瀑布去度蜜月了。怎么,难道你一直没有看出苗头吗?杰克逊•伯德带威莱拉出去骑马那天,就开始追求她了。’“‘那么,’我几乎嚷了起来,‘他对我讲的有关薄饼的那套话,究竟是什么意思?你倒说说看。’“我一提起薄饼,埃姆斯利大叔立即闪开,后退了几步。 “‘有人用薄饼来欺骗我,’我说,‘我要弄弄清楚。我相信你是知道的。讲出来,’我说,‘不然我跟你没完。’“我翻过柜台去抓埃姆斯利大叔。他去抓枪,可是枪在抽屉里,差两英寸没够着。我揪住他的前襟,把他推到角落里。 “‘说说薄饼的事,’我说,‘不然我就把你挤成薄饼。威莱拉小姐会不会做薄饼?’“‘她一辈子没有做过一张薄饼,我也没有见她做过。’埃姆斯利大叔安慰我说。‘安静一些,贾德——安静一些。你太激动啦,你头上的老伤使你神志不清。别去想薄饼。’“‘埃姆斯利大叔,’我说,‘我的头没有受过伤,最多只是天生的思考本能不太高明。杰克逊•伯德对我说,他来看威莱拉小姐的目的是为了打听她做薄饼的法子,他还请我帮他弄一份配料的清单。我照办了,结果你也看到了。我是被一个粉红眼睛的牧羊人用约翰逊青草给蒙住了,还是怎么的?’“‘你先放松我的衬衫,’埃姆斯利大叔说,‘我再告诉你。哎,看情形杰克逊•伯德把你骗了一下,自己跑了。他同威莱拉小姐出去骑马的第二天,又来通知我和威莱拉,赶上你提起薄饼的时候,就要加意提防。他说,有一次你们营地里在烙薄饼,有个人用平底锅砸破了你的头。杰克逊说,你一激动或紧张,老伤就要复发,使你有点儿疯癫,胡言乱语念叨着薄饼。他告诉我们,只要把你从这个话题上岔开,让你安静下来,就没有危险。因此我和威莱拉尽我们的力量帮助了你。哎,哎,’埃姆斯利大叔说,‘象杰克逊•伯德这样的牧羊人倒是少见的。’” 贾德讲故事的时候,已经不慌不忙、十分熟练地把那些口袋和铁皮罐里的东西调和起来。快讲完时,他把完成的产品端到我面前——两张搁在铁皮碟子上的、滚烫的、深黄色的薄饼。他又从某些秘密的贮藏处取出一块上好的黄油和一瓶金黄色的糖浆。 “这是多久以前的事啦?”我问他说。 “有三年了。”贾德答道。“如今他们住在陷骡山谷。可是我以后一直没有见过他们。有人说,当杰克逊•伯德用薄饼计把我骗得走投无路的时候,他一直在布置他的牧场,摇椅啦,窗帘啦,摆设得漂漂亮亮。喔,过一阵子,我就把这件事抛开了,可是弟兄们还闹个不休。” “这些薄饼,你是不是按照那个著名的配方做的呢?”我问道。 “我不是早就说过,配方是根本不存在的吗?”贾德说。“弟兄们老是拿薄饼来取笑我,后来搞得想吃薄饼了,于是我从报上剪下了这个调制方法。这玩意儿的味道怎么样?” “好吃得很。”我回答说。“你自己干吗不吃一点,贾德?”我清晰地听到一声叹息。 “我吗?”贾德说。“我一向不吃薄饼。” The Poet And The Peasant The other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams. When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment: "Too artificial." Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County chianti, and swallowed indignation with slippery forkfuls. And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a well-arrived writer of fiction - a man who had trod on asphalt all his life, and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains. Conant wrote a poem and called it "The Doe and the Brook." It was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose sole ornithological discussion had been carried on with a waiter. Conant signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor. But this has very little to do with the story. Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem, on the next morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat, and loped slowly up Forty-second Street. The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip and hair the exact color of the little orphan's (afterward discovered to be the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the middle of his back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You looked expectantly, though in vain, at his straw hat for ear holes, its shape inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged from a former equine possessor. In his hand was a valise - description of it is an impossible task; a Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay - the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering to shame the gold-brick men. Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw stranger stand in the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall buildings. At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him. It had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney "attraction" or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street cars. At Eighth Avenue stood "Bunco Harry," with his dyed mustache and shiny, good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a jewelry store window, and shook his head. "Too thick, pal," he said, critically - "too thick by a couple of inches. I don't know what your lay is; but you've got the properties too thick. That hay, now - why, they don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any more." "I don't understand you, mister," said the green one. "I'm not lookin' for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to look at the town, bein' that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times as big." "Oh, well," said "Bunco Harry," raising his eyebrows, "I didn't mean to butt in. You don't have to tell. I thought you ought to tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you success at your graft, whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow." "I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer," acknowledged the other. They went to a cafe frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty eyes, and sat at their drinks. "I'm glad I come across you, mister," said Haylocks. "How'd you like to play a game or two of seven-up? I've got the keerds." He fished them out of Noah's valise - a rare, inimitable deck, greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields. "Bunco Harry" laughed loud and briefly. "Not for me, sport," he said, firmly. "I don't go against that make-up of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs haven't dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that layout." "Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money," boasted Haylocks. He drew forth a tightly rolled mass of bills as large as a teacup, and laid it on the table. "Got that for my share of grandmother's farm," he announced. "There's $950 in that roll. Thought I'd come to the city and look around for a likely business to go into." "Bunco Harry" took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost respect in his smiling eyes. "I've seen worse," he said, critically. "But you'll never do it in them clothes. You want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and a straw hat with a colored band, and talk a good deal about Pittsburg and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to work off phony stuff like that." "What's his line?" asked two or three shifty-eyed men of "Bunco Harry" after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and departed. "The queer, I guess," said Harry. "Or else he's one of Jerome's men. Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that his - I wonder now - oh, no, it couldn't have been real money." Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he dived into a dark groggery on a side street and bought beer. At first sight of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exaggerated rusticity became apparent their expressions changed to wary suspicion. Haylocks swung his valise across the bar. "Keep that a while for me, mister," he said, chewing at the end of a virulent claybank cigar. "I'll be back after I knock around a spell. And keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you wouldn't think so to look at me." Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece, and Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back. "Divvy, Mike," said the men hanging upon the bar, winking openly at one another. "Honest, now," said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. "You don't think I'd fall to that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't no jay. One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a shine if he made himself up. There ain't no parts of the country now where they dress like that since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's got nine-fifty in that valise it's a ninety-eight cent Waterbury that's stopped at ten minutes to ten." When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore Broadway rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the oldest of the "gags" that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly impossible, so ultra rustic, so exaggerated beyond the most freakish products of the barnyard, the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only weariness and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine, so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural that even a shellgame man would have put up his peas and folded his table at the sight of it. Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once more exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy. "Son," said he, "run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm mighty nigh out of chicken feed. I guess you'll get a nickel if you'll hurry up." A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face. "Aw, watchert'ink! G'wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself. Dey ain't no farm clothes yer got on. G'wan wit yer stage money." On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gambling-house. He was Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold and virtuous. "Mister," said the rural one. "I've heard of places in this here town where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a card at keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old Ulster to see the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on about $9 or $10? I'm goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll buy out a business of some kind." The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left forefinger nail. "Cheese it, old man," he murmured, reproachfully. "The Central Office must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie. You couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in them Tony Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat a crosstown block in the way of Elizabethan scenery and mechanical accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours. Nay, I know of no gilded halls where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace." Rebuffed once again by the great city that is so swift to detect artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the curb and presented his thoughts to hold a conference. "It's my clothes," said he; "durned if it ain't. They think I'm a hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never made fun of this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in New York you must dress up like they do." So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake through their noses and rubbed their hands and ran the tape line ecstatically over the buldge in his inside pocket where reposed a red nubbin of corn with an even number of rows. And messengers bearing parcels and boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway within the lights of Long Acre. At 9 o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk whom Ulster County would have foresworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the latest block. His light gray trousers were deeply creased; a gay blue silk handkerchief flapped from the breast pocket of his elegant English walking coat. His collar might have graced a laundry window; his blond hair was trimmed close; the wisp of hay was gone. For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a boulevardier concocting in his mind the route for his evening pleasures. And then he turned down the gay, bright street with the easy and graceful tread of a millionaire. But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in the city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man with gray eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows from the row of loungers in front of the hotel. "The juiciest jay I've seen in six months," said the man with gray eyes. "Come along." It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-seventh Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs. "Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of grandmother's farm." The desk seargeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of Locust Valley farm, Ulster County, and then bagan to take descriptions of the strong-arm gentlemen. When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was received over the head of the office boy into the inner office that is decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown. "When I read the first line of 'The Doe and the Brook,'" said the editor, "I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been heart to heart with Nature. The finished art of the line did not blind me to that fact. To use a somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a wild, free child of the woods and fields were to don the garb of fashion and walk down Broadway. Beneath the apparel the man would show." "Thanks," said Conant. "I suppose the check will be round on Thursday, as usual." The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can take your choice of "Stay on the Farm" or "Don't Write Poetry." A Poor Rule I have always maintained, and asserted ime to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As "Harper's Drawer" used to say in bygone years: "The following good story is told of Miss --, Mr. --, Mr. --and Mr. --." We shall have to omit "Bishop X" and "the Rev. --," for they do not belong. In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of the Southern Pacific. A reporter would have called it a "mushroom" town; but it was not. Paloma was, first and last, of the toadstool variety. The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink and for the passengers both to drink and to dine. There was a new yellow-pine hotel, also a wool warehouse, and perhaps three dozen box residences. The rest was composed of tents, cow ponies, "black-waxy" mud, and mesquite-trees, all bound round by a horizon. Paloma was an about-to- be city. The houses represented faith; the tents hope; the twice-a- day train by which you might leave, creditably sustained the role of charity. The Parisian Restaurant occupied the muddiest spot in the town while it rained, and the warmest when it shone. It was operated, owned, and perpetrated by a citizen known as Old Man Hinkle, who had come out of Indiana to make his fortune in this land of condensed milk and sorghum. There was a four-room, unpainted, weather-boarded box house in which the family lived. From the kitchen extended a "shelter" made of poles covered with chaparral brush. Under this was a table and two benches, each twenty feet long, the product of Paloma home carpentry. Here was set forth the roast mutton, the stewed apples, boiled beans, soda- biscuits, puddinorpie, and hot coffee of the Parisian menu. Ma Hinkle and a subordinate known to the ears as "Betty," but denied to the eyesight, presided at the range. Pa Hinkle himself, with salamandrous thumbs, served the scalding viands. During rush hours a Mexican youth, who rolled and smoked cigarettes between courses, aided him in waiting on the guests. As is customary at Parisian banquets, I place the sweets at the end of my wordy menu. Ileen Hinkle! The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. No doubt she had been named by ear; but she so splendidly bore the orthography that Tom Moore himself (had he seen her) would have indorsed the phonography. Ileen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady Cashier to invade the territory south of an east-and-west line drawn through Galveston and Del Rio. She sat on a high stool in a rough pine grand- stand--or was it a temple?--under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. There was a barbed-wire protection in front of her, with a little arch under which you passed your money. Heaven knows why the barbed wire; for every man who dined Parisianly there would have died in her service. Her duties were light; each meal was a dollar; you put it under the arch, and she took it. I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty--roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness--the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes. Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde-strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, "It is engendered in the eyes." There are three kinds of beauties--I was foreordained to be homiletic; I can never stick to a story. The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you like. The second is Maud Adams. The third is, or are, the ladies in Bouguereau's paintings. Ileen Hinkle was the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming to her as Helen of the Troy laundries. The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even from beyond its circumference men rode in to Paloma to win her smiles. They got them. One meal--one smile--one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. According to the rules of politeness, I will mention myself last. The first was an artificial product known as Bryan Jacks--a name that had obviously met with reverses. Jacks was the outcome of paved cities. He was a small man made of some material resembling flexible sandstone. His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meeting-house; his eyes were twin cranberries; his mouth was like the aperture under a drop-letters-here sign. He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point in Florida. He had mastered every art, trade, game, business, profession, and sport in the world, had been present at, or hurrying on his way to, every head- line event that had ever occurred between oceans since he was five years old. You might open the atlas, place your finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks would tell you the front names of three prominent citizens before you could close it again. He spoke patronizingly and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon Hill, Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the St. Louis Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the Wandering Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He had learned everything the world could teach him, and he would tell you about it. I hate to be reminded of Pollock's Course of Time, and so do you; but every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poet's description of another poet by the name of G. G. Byron who "Drank early; deeply drank--drank draughts that common millions might have quenched; then died of thirst because there was no more to drink." That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma, which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station- and express-agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such an obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out a hint once that it was as a personal favor to the president and stockholders of the S. P. Ry. Co. One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over to you. He wore bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and a bow tie made of the same cloth as his shirt. My rival No.2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services had been engaged by a ranch near Paloma to assist in compelling refractory cattle to keep within the bounds of decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off the stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore the sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at the back of his neck. Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch to sup at the Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many-high-handed Kentucky horse at a tremendously fast lope, which animal he would rein up so suddenly under the big mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his hoofs would plough canals yards long in the loam. Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, of course. The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as there was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking- chairs, and home-knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright piano in one comer. Here Jacks and Bud and I--or sometimes one or two of us, according to our good-luck--used to sit of evenings when the tide of trade was over, and "visit" Miss Hinkle. Ileen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher things (if there can be anything higher) than taking in dollars all day through a barbed-wire wicket. She had read and listened and thought. Her looks would have formed a career for a less ambitious girl; but, rising superior to mere beauty, she must establish something in the nature of a salon--the only one in Paloma. "Don't you think that Shakespeare was a great writer?" she would ask, with such a pretty little knit of her arched brows that the late Ignatius Donnelly, himself, had he seen it, could scarcely have saved his Bacon. Ileen was of the opinion, also, that Boston is more cultured than Chicago; that Rosa Bonheur was one of the greatest of women painters; that Westerners are more spontaneous and open-hearted than Easterners; that London must be a very foggy city, and that California must be quite lovely in the springtime. And of many other opinions indicating a keeping up with the world's best thought. These, however, were but gleaned from hearsay and evidence: Ileen had theories of her own. One, in particular, she disseminated to us untiringly. Flattery she detested. Frankness and honesty of speech and action, she declared, were the chief mental ornaments of man and woman. If ever she could like any one, it would be for those qualities. "I'm awfully weary," she said, one evening, when we three musketeers of the mesquite were in the little parlor, "of having compliments on my looks paid to me. I know I'm not beautiful." (Bud Cunningham told me afterward that it was all he could do to keep from calling her a liar when she said that.) "I'm only a little Middle-Western girl," went on Ileen, "who justs wants to be simple and neat, and tries to help her father make a humble living." (Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand silver dollars a month, clear profit, to a bank in San Antonio.[)] Bud twisted around in his chair and bent the rim of his hat, from which he could never be persuaded to separate. He did not know whether she wanted what she said she wanted or what she knew she deserved. Many a wiser man has hesitated at deciding. Bud decided. "Why--ah, Miss Ileen, beauty, as you might say, ain't everything. Not sayin' that you haven't your share of good looks, I always admired more than anything else about you the nice, kind way you treat your ma and pa. Any one what's good to their parents and is a kind of home- body don't specially need to be too pretty." Ileen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. "Thank you, Mr. Cunningham," she said. "I consider that one of the finest compliments I've had in a long time. I'd so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk about my eyes and hair. I'm glad you believe me when I say I don't like flattery." Our cue was there for us. Bud had made a good guess. You couldn't lose Jacks. He chimed in next. "Sure thing, Miss Ileen," he said; "the good-lookers don't always win out. Now, you ain't bad looking, of course-but that's nix-cum-rous. I knew a girl once in Dubuque with a face like a cocoanut, who could skin the cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. Now, a girl might have the California peach crop mashed to a marmalade and not be able to do that. I've seen--er--worse lookers than you, Miss Ileen; but what I like about you is the business way you've got of doing things. Cool and wise--that's the winning way for a girl. Mr. Hinkle told me the other day you'd never taken in a lead silver dollar or a plugged one since you've been on the job. Now, that's the stuff for a girl--that's what catches me." Jacks got his smile, too. "Thank you, Mr. Jacks," said Ileen. "If you only knew how I appreciate any one's being candid and not a flatterer! I get so tired of people telling me I'm pretty. I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who tell you the truth." Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen's face as she glanced toward me. I had a wild, sudden impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all the beautiful handiwork of the Great Artificer she was the most exquisite--that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure and serene in a setting of black mud and emerald prairies--that she was--a--a corker; and as for mine, I cared not if she were as crtiel as a serpent's tooth to her fond parents, or if she couldn't tell a plugged dollar from a bridle buckle, if I might sing, chant, praise, glorify, and worship her peerless and wonderful beauty. But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had witnessed her delight at the crafty and discreet words of Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle was not one to be beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. So I joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once I became mendacious and didactic. "In all ages, Miss Hinkle," said I, "in spite of the poetry and romance of each, intellect in woman has been admired more than beauty. Even in Cleopatra, herself, men found more charm in her queenly mind than in her looks." "Well, I should think so!" said Ileen. "I've seen pictures of her that weren't so much. she had an awfully long nose." "If I may say so," I went on, "you remind me of Cleopatra, Miss Ileen." "Why, my nose isn't so long!" said she, opening her eyes wide and touching that comely feature with a dimpled forefinger. "Why--er--I mean," said I--" I mean as to mental endowments." "Oh!" said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud and Jacks had got theirs. "Thank every one of you," she said, very, very sweetly, "for being so frank and honest with me. That's the way I want you to be always. Just tell me plainly and truthfully what you think, and we'll all be the best friends in the world. And now, because you've been so good to me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do nothing but pay me exaggerated compliments, I'll sing and play a little for you." Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we would have been better pleased if Ileen had remained in her low rocking-chair face to face with us and let us gaze upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti-- not even on the fare-wellest of the diva's farewell tours. She had a cooing little voice like that of a turtle-dove that could almost fill the parlor when the windows and doors were closed, and Betty was not rattling the lids of the stove in the kitchen. She had a gamut that I estimate at about eight inches on the piano; and her runs and trills sounded like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother's iron wash-pot. Believe that she must have been beautiful when I tell you that it sounded like music to us. "She Must Have Been Beautiful When I Tell You That It Sounded Like Music To Us" Ileen's musical taste was catholic. She would sing through a pile of sheet music on the left-hand top of the piano, laying each slaughtered composition on the right-hand top. The next evening she would sing from right to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody and Sankey. By request she always wound up with Sweet Violets and When the Leaves Begin to Turn. When we left at ten o'clock the three of us would go down to Jacks' little wooden station and sit on the platform, swinging our feet and trying to pump one another for dews as to which way Miss Ileen's inclinations seemed to lean. That is the way of rivals--they do not avoid and glower at one another; they convene and converse and construe--striving by the art politic to estimate the strength of the enemy. One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young lawyer who at once flaunted his shingle and himself spectacularly upon the town. His name was C. Vincent Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a recent graduate of a southwestern law school. His Prince Albert coat, light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft black hat, and narrow white muslin bow tie proclaimed that more loudly than any diploma could. Vesey was a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau Brummell, and Little Jack Horner. His coming boomed Paloma. The next day after he arrived an addition to the town was surveyed and laid off in lots. Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, must mingle with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. And, as well as with the soldier men, he was bound to seek popularity with the gay dogs of the place. So Jacks and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored by his acquaintance. The doctrine of predestination would have been discredited had not Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made me dumb with gloom. For Vesey had the rhetoric. Words flowed from him like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eulogy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for pre-eminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Ileen could resist his oratory and Prince Albert. But a day came that gave us courage. About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little gallery in front of the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Ileen to come, when I heard voices inside. She had come into the room with her father, and Old Man Hinkle began to talk to her. I had observed before that he was a shrewd man, and not unphilosophic. "Ily," said he, "I notice there's three or four young fellers that have been callin' to see you regular for quite a while. Is there any one of 'em you like better than another?" "Why, pa," she answered, "I like all of 'em very well. I think Mr. Cuninngham and Mr. Jacks and Mr. Harris are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest in everything they say to me. I haven't known Mr. Vesey very long, but I think he's a very nice young man, he's so frank and honest in everything he says to me." "Now, that's what I'm gittin' at," says old Hinkle. "You've always been sayin' you like people what tell the truth and don't go humbuggin' you with compliments and bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test of these fellers, and see which one of 'em will talk the straightest to you." "But how'll I do it, pa?" "I'll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, Ily; you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logansport. It wasn't long, but it was all we could afford then. And your teacher said you didn't have any voice, and it was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you ask the fellers what they think of your singin', and see what each one of 'em tells you. The man that 'll tell you the truth about it 'll have a mighty lot of nerve, and 'll do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?" "All right, pa," said Ileen. "I think it's a good idea. I'll try it." Ileen and Mr. Hinkle went out of the room through the inside doors. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o'clock to come. It was Bud's night in town, and when he rode in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be. Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an uplifting thought. Surely this test would eliminate Vesey from the contest. He, with his unctuous flattery, would be driven from the lists. Well we remembered Ileen's love of frankness and honesty--how she treasured truth and candor above vain compliment and blandishment. Linking arms, we did a grotesque dance of joy up and down the platform, singing Muldoon Was a Solid Man at the top of our voices. That evening four of the willow rocking-chairs were filled besides the lucky one that sustained the trim figure of Miss Hinkle. Three of us awaited with suppressed excitement the application of the test. It was tried on Bud first. "Mr. Cunningham," said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, after she had sung When the Leaves Begin to Turn, "what do you really think of my voice? Frankly and honestly, now, as you know I want you to always be toward me." Bud squirmed in his chair at his chance to show the sincerity that he knew was required of him. "Tell you the truth, Miss Ileen," he said, earnestly, "you ain't got much more voice than a weasel--just a little squeak, you know. Of course, we all like to hear you sing, for it's kind of sweet and soothin' after all, and you look most as mighty well sittin' on the piano-stool as you do faced around. But as for real singin'--I reckon you couldn't call it that." I looked closely at Ileen to see if Bud had overdone his frankness, but her pleased smile and sweetly spoken thanks assured me that we were on the right track. "And what do you think, Mr. Jacks?" she asked next. "Take it from me," said Jacks, "you ain't in the prima donna class. I've heard 'em warble in every city in the United States; and I tell you your vocal output don't go. Otherwise, you've got the grand opera bunch sent to the soap factory--in looks, I mean; for the high screechers generally look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But nix for the gargle work. Your epiglottis ain't a real side-stepper--its footwork ain't good." With a merry laugh at Jacks' criticism, Ileen looked inquiringly at me. I admit that I faltered a little. Was there not such a thing as being too frank? Perhaps I even hedged a little in my verdict; but I stayed with the critics. "I am not skilled in scientific music, Miss Ileen," I said, "but, frankly, I cannot praise very highly the singing-voice that Nature has given you. It has long been a favorite comparison that a great singer sings like a bird. Well, there are birds and birds. I would say that your voice reminds me of the thrush's--throaty and not strong, nor of much compass or variety--but still--er--sweet--in--er--its--way, and-- er--" "Thank you, Mr. Harris," interrupted Miss Hinkle. "I knew I could depend Upon your frankness and honesty." And then C. Vincent Vesey drew back one sleeve from his snowy cuff, and the water came down at Lodore. My memory cannot do justice to his masterly tribute to that priceless, God-given treasure--Miss Hinkle's voice. He raved over it in terms that, if they had been addressed to the morning stars when they sang together, would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric shower of flaming self-satisfaction. He marshalled on his white finger-tips the grand opera stars of all the continents, from Jenny Lind to Emma Abbott, only to depreciate their endowments. He spoke of larynxes, of chest notes, of phrasing, arpeggios, and other strange paraphernalia of the throaty art. He admitted, as though driven to a corner, that Jenny Lind had a note or two in the high register that Miss Hinkle had not yet acquired--but-- "!!!"-that was a mere matter of practice and training. And, as a peroration, he predicted--solemnly predicted--a career in vocal art for the "coming star of the Southwest--and one of which grand old Texas may well be proud," hitherto unsurpassed in the annals of musical history. When we left at ten, Ileen gave each of us her usual warm, cordial handshake, entrancing smile, and invitation to call again. I could not see that one was favored above or below another--but three of us knew--we knew. We knew that frankness and honesty had won, and that the rivals now numbered three instead of four. Down at the station Jacks brought out a pint bottle of the proper stuff, and we celebrated the downfall of a blatant interloper. Four days went by without anything happening worthy of recount. On the fifth, Jacks and I, entering the brush arbor for our supper, saw the Mexican youth, instead of a divinity in a spotless waist and a navy-blue skirt, taking in the dollars through the barbed-wire wicket. We rushed into the kitchen, meeting Pa Hinkle coming out with two cups of hot coffee in his hands. "Where's Ileen?" we asked, in recitative. Pa Hinkle was a kindly man. "Well, gents," said he, "it was a sudden notion she took; but I've got the money, and I let her have her way. She's gone to a corn--a conservatory in Boston for four years for to have her voice cultivated. Now, excuse me to pass, gents, for this coffee's hot, and my thumbs is tender." That night there were four instead of three of us sitting on the station platform and swinging our feet. C. Vincent Vesey was one of us. We discussed things while dogs barked at the moon that rose, as big as a five-cent piece or a flour barrel, over the chaparral. And what we discussed was whether it is better to lie to a woman or to tell her the truth. And as all of us were young then, we did not come to a decision. The Princess and the Puma There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they called the man "Whispering Ben." When he came to own 50,000 acres of land and more cattle than he could count, they called him O'Donnell "the Cattle King." The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good, mild, Colorado-claro wife, and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify his voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of Espinosa Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible and oppressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought down from San Antone in the wagons, she bowed her smooth, dark head, and shared the fate of the Danae. To avoid lese-majeste you have been presented first to the king and queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called "The Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that Bungled his Job." Josefa O'Donnell was the surviving daughter, the princess. From her mother she inherited warmth of nature and a dusky, semi-tropic beauty. From Ben O'Donnell the royal she acquired a store of intrepidity, common sense, and the faculty of ruling. The combination was one worth going miles to see. Josefa while riding her pony at a gallop could put five out of six bullets through a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. She could play for hours with a white kitten she owned, dressing it in all manner of absurd clothes. Scorning a pencil, she could tell you out of her head what 1545 two-year-olds would bring on the hoof, at $8.50 per head. Roughly speaking, the Espinosa Ranch is forty miles long and thirty broad--but mostly leased land. Josefa, on her pony, had prospected over every mile of it. Every cow-puncher on the range knew her by sight and was a loyal vassal. Ripley Givens, foreman of one of the Espinosa outfits, saw her one day, and made up his mind to form a royal matrimonial alliance. Presumptuous? No. In those days in the Nueces country a man was a man. And, after all, the title of cattle king does not presuppose blood royalty. Often it only signifies that its owner wears the crown in token of his magnificent qualities in the art of cattle stealing. One day Ripley Givens rode over to the Double Elm Ranch to inquire about a bunch of strayed yearlings. He was late in setting out on his return trip, and it was sundown when he struck the White Horse Crossing of the Nueces. From there to his own camp it was sixteen miles. To the Espinosa ranch it was twelve. Givens was tired. He decided to pass the night at the Crossing. There was a fine water hole in the river-bed. The banks were thickly covered with great trees, undergrown with brush. Back from the water hole fifty yards was a stretch of curly mesquite grass--supper for his horse and bed for himself. Givens staked his horse, and spread out his saddle blankets to dry. He sat down with his back against a tree and rolled a cigarette. From somewhere in the dense timber along the river came a sudden, rageful, shivering wail. The pony danced at the end of his rope and blew a whistling snort of comprehending fear. Givens puffed at his cigarette, but he reached leisurely for his pistol-belt, which lay on the grass, and twirled the cylinder of his weapon tentatively. A great gar plunged with a loud splash into the water hole. A little brown rabbit skipped around a bunch of catclaw and sat twitching his whiskers and looking humorously at Givens. The pony went on eating grass. It is well to be reasonably watchful when a Mexican lion sings soprano along the arroyos at sundown. The burden of his song may be that young calves and fat lambs are scarce, and that he has a carnivorous desire for your acquaintance. In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former sojourner. Givens caught sight of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In his coat pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or two of ground coffee. Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more? In two minutes he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with his can, for the water hole. When within fifteen yards of its edge he saw, between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with down-dropped reins cropping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her hands and knees on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O'Donnell. She had been drinking water, and she brushed the sand from the palms of her hands. Ten yards away, to her right, half concealed by a clump of sacuista, Givens saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion. His amber eyeballs glared hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the tail stretched straight, like a pointer's. His hind-quarters rocked with the motion of the cat tribe preliminary to leaping. Givens did what he could. His six-shooter was thirty-five yards away lying on the grass. He gave a loud yell, and dashed between the lion and the princess. The "rucus," as Givens called it afterward, was brief and somewhat confused. When he arrived on the line of attack he saw a dim streak in the air, and heard a couple of faint cracks. Then a hundred pounds of Mexican lion plumped down upon his head and flattened him, with a heavy jar, to the ground. He remembered calling out: "Let up, now--no fair gouging!" and then he crawled from under the lion like a worm, with his mouth full of grass and dirt, and a big lump on the back of his head where it had struck the root of a water-elm. The lion lay motionless. Givens, feeling aggrieved, and suspicious of fouls, shook his fist at the lion, and shouted: "I'll rastle you again for twenty--" and then he got back to himself. Josefa was standing in her tracks, quietly reloading her silver- mounted .38. It had not been a difficult shot. The lion's head made an easier mark than a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. There was a provoking, teasing, maddening smile upon her mouth and in her dark eyes. The would-be-rescuing knight felt the fire of his fiasco burn down to his soul. Here had been his chance, the chance that he had dreamed of; and Momus, and not Cupid, had presided over it. The satyrs in the wood were, no doubt, holding their sides in hilarious, silent laughter. There had been something like vaudeville--say Signor Givens and his funny knockabout act with the stuffed lion. "Is that you, Mr. Givens?" said Josefa, in her deliberate, saccharine contralto. "You nearly spoilt my shot when you yelled. Did you hurt your head when you fell?" "Oh, no," said Givens, quietly; "that didn't hurt." He stooped ignominiously and dragged his best Stetson hat from under the beast. It was crushed and wrinkled to a fine comedy effect. Then he knelt down and softly stroked the fierce, open-jawed head of the dead lion. "Poor old Bill!" he exclaimed mournfully. "What's that?" asked Josefa, sharply. "Of course you didn't know, Miss Josefa," said Givens, with an air of one allowing magnanimity to triumph over grief. "Nobody can blame you. I tried to save him, but I couldn't let you know in time." "Save who?" "Why, Bill. I've been looking for him all day. You see, he's been our camp pet for two years. Poor old fellow, he wouldn't have hurt a cottontail rabbit. It'll break the boys all up when they hear about it. But you couldn't tell, of course, that Bill was just trying to play with you." Josefa's black eyes burned steadily upon him. Ripley Givens met the test successfully. He stood rumpling the yellow-brown curls on his head pensively. In his eye was regret, not unmingled with a gentle reproach. His smooth features were set to a pattern of indisputable sorrow. Josefa wavered. "What was your pet doing here?" she asked, making a last stand. "There's no camp near the White Horse Crossing." "The old rascal ran away from camp yesterday," answered Givens readily. "It's a wonder the coyotes didn't scare him to death. You see, Jim Webster, our horse wrangler, brought a little terrier pup into camp last week. The pup made life miserable for Bill--he used to chase him around and chew his hind legs for hours at a time. Every night when bedtime came Bill would sneak under one of the boy's blankets and sleep to keep the pup from finding him. I reckon he must have been worried pretty desperate or he wouldn't have run away. He was always afraid to get out of sight of camp." Josefa looked at the body of the fierce animal. Givens gently patted one of the formidable paws that could have killed a yearling calf with one blow. Slowly a red flush widened upon the dark olive face of the girl. Was it the signal of shame of the true sportsman who has brought down ignoble quarry? Her eyes grew softer, and the lowered lids drove away all their bright mockery. "I'm very sorry," she said humbly; "but he looked so big, and jumped so high that--" "Poor old Bill was hungry," interrupted Givens, in quick defence of the deceased. "We always made him jump for his supper in camp. He would lie down and roll over for a piece of meat. When he saw you he thought he was going to get something to eat from you." Suddenly Josefa's eyes opened wide. "I might have shot you!" she exclaimed. "You ran right in between. You risked your life to save your pet! That was fine, Mr. Givens. I like a man who is kind to animals." Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was a hero rising out of the ruins of the anti-climax. The look on Givens's face would have secured him a high position in the S.P.C.A. "I always loved 'em," said he; "horses, dogs, Mexican lions, cows, alligators--" "I hate alligators," instantly demurred Josefa; "crawly, muddy things!" "Did I say alligators?" said Givens. "I meant antelopes, of course." Josefa's conscience drove her to make further amends. She held out her hand penitently. There was a bright, unshed drop in each of her eyes. "Please forgive me, Mr. Givens, won't you? I'm only a girl, you know, and I was frightened at first. I'm very, very sorry I shot Bill. You don't know how ashamed I feel. I wouldn't have done it for anything." Givens took the proffered hand. He held it for a time while he allowed the generosity of his nature to overcome his grief at the loss of Bill. At last it was clear that he had forgiven her. "Please don't speak of it any more, Miss Josefa. 'Twas enough to frighten any young lady the way Bill looked. I'll explain it all right to the boys." "Are you really sure you don't hate me?" Josefa came closer to him impulsively. Her eyes were sweet--oh, sweet and pleading with gracious penitence. "I would hate anyone who would kill my kitten. And how daring and kind of you to risk being shot when you tried to save him! How very few men would have done that!" Victory wrested from defeat! Vaudeville turned into drama! Bravo, Ripley Givens! It was now twilight. Of course Miss Josefa could not be allowed to ride on to the ranch-house alone. Givens resaddled his pony in spite of that animal's reproachful glances, and rode with her. Side by side they galloped across the smooth grass, the princess and the man who was kind to animals. The prairie odours of fruitful earth and delicate bloom were thick and sweet around them. Coyotes yelping over there on the hill! No fear. And yet-- Josefa rode closer. A little hand seemed to grope. Givens found it with his own. The ponies kept an even gait. The hands lingered together, and the owner of one explained: "I never was frightened before, but just think! How terrible it would be to meet a really wild lion! Poor Bill! I'm so glad you came with me!" O'Donnell was sitting on the ranch gallery. "Hello, Rip!" he shouted--"that you?" "He rode in with me," said Josefa. "I lost my way and was late." "Much obliged," called the cattle king. "Stop over, Rip, and ride to camp in the morning." But Givens would not. He would push on to camp. There was a bunch of steers to start off on the trail at daybreak. He said good-night, and trotted away. An hour later, when the lights were out, Josefa, in her night-robe, came to her door and called to the king in his own room across the brick-paved hallway: "Say, pop, you know that old Mexican lion they call the 'Gotch-eared Devil'--the one that killed Gonzales, Mr. Martin's sheep herder, and about fifty calves on the Salado range? Well, I settled his hash this afternoon over at the White Horse Crossing. Put two balls in his head with my .38 while he was on the jump. I knew him by the slice gone from his left ear that old Gonzales cut off with his machete. You couldn't have made a better shot yourself, daddy." "Bully for you!" thundered Whispering Ben from the darkness of the royal chamber. Proof Of The Pudding Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square. The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a pastoral; the color motif was green - the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation. The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with "true" and "Sue" and "coo." The one natural and frank color visible was the ostensible green of the newly painted benches - a shade between the color of a pickled cucumber and that of a last year's fast-black cravenette raincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape appeared a masterpiece. And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor's mind. Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene. The April number of the Minerva had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of the month - a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies more if he had 'em. The owners of the magazine had raised his (the editor's) salary; he had just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and the morning papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers' banquet. Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he left his up-town apartment that morning. She was taking enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practising early and diligently. When he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards of the convalescent city. While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park benches (already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his captor was - Dawe - Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteel scracely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby. While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight biography of Dawe is offered. He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances. At one time they might have called each other old friends. Dawe had some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house near Westbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinners together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became "dearest" friends. Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the Gramercy Park neighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one's trunk under eight-branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble mantels and watch the mice play upon the floor. Dawe thought to live by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted many to Westbrook. The Minerva printed one or two of them; the rest were returned. Westbrook sent a careful and conscientious personal letter with each rejected manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasons for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clear conception of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe was mainly concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of food that she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had been spouting to her about the excellencies of certain French writers. At dinner they sat down to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp. Dawe commented. "It's Maupassant hash," said Mrs. Dawe. "It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry." As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor Westbrook's sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Dawe in several months. "Why, Shack, is this you?" said Westbrook, somewhat awkwardly, for the form of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance. "Sit down for a minute," said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. "This is my office. I can't come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down - you won't be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber. They won't know you are only an editor." "Smoke, Shack?" said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield. Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a chocolate cream. "I have just -" began the editor. "Oh, I know; don't finish," said Dawe. "Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn't read the 'Keep off the Grass' signs." "How goes the writing?" asked the editor. "Look at me," said Dawe, "for your answer. Now don't put on that embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a job as a wine agent or a cab driver. I'm in the fight to a finish. I know I can write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'll make you change the spelling of 'regrets' to 'c-h-e-q-u-e' before I'm done with you." Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression - the copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the unavailable contributor. "Have you read the last story I sent you - 'The Alarum of the Soul'?" asked Dawe. "Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret -" "Never mind the regrets," said Dawe, grimly. "There's neither salve nor sting in 'em any more. What I want to know is why. Come now; out with the good points first." "The story," said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, "is written around an almost original plot. Characterization - the best you have done. Construction - almost as good, except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good story, except -" "I can write English, can't I?" interrupted Dawe. "I have always told you," said the editor, "that you had a style." "Then the trouble is -" "Same old thing," said Editor Westbrook. "You work up to your climax like an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don't know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of its impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes at your door." "Oh, fiddles and footlights!" cried Dawe, derisively. "You've got that old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: 'May high heaven witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of another's vengeance!'" Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency. "I think," said he, "that in real life the woman would express herself in those words or in very similar ones." "Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage," said Dawe hotly. "I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say: 'What! Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's one trouble after another! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station. Why wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know? For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat - the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she's usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I'm upset!' "That's the way she'd talk," continued Dawe. "People in real life don't fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can't do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas a little more, that's all." "Shack," said Editor Westbrook impressively, "did you ever pick up the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?" "I never did," said Dawe. "Did you?" "Well, no," said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. "But I can well imagine what she would say." "So can I," said Dawe. And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the oracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for an unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes and heroines of the Minerva Magazine, contrary to the theories of the editor thereof. "My dear Shack," said he, "if I know anything of life I know that every sudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an apposite, concordant, conformable and proportionate expression of feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also true that all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion - a sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance and histrionic value." "And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius, where did the stage and literature get the stunt?" asked Dawe. "From life," answered the editor, triumphantly. The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his dissent. On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that his moral support was due a downtrodden brother. "Punch him one, Jack," he called hoarsely to Dawe. "W'at's he come makin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen that comes in the square to set and think?" Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure. "Tell me," asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, "what especial faults in 'The Alarum of the Soul' caused you to throw it down?" "When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrook, "goes to his telephone and is told that his fiancee has been shot by a burglar, he says - I do not recall the exact words, but -" "I do," said Dawe. "He says: 'Damn Central; she always cuts me off.' (And then to his friend) 'Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a big hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it? Could you get me a drink from the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side.'" "And again," continued the editor, without pausing for argument, "when Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are - let me see -" "She says," interposed the author: "'Well, what do you think of that!'" "Absurdly inappropriate words," said Westbrook, "presenting an anti-climax - plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; they mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy." "Wrong," said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. "I say no man or woman ever spouts 'high-falutin' talk when they go up against a real climax. They talk naturally and a little worse." The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside information. "Say, Westbrook," said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, "would you have accepted 'The Alarum of the Soul' if you had believed that the actions and words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story that we discussed?" "It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way," said the editor. "But I have explained to you that I do not." "If I could prove to you that I am right?" "I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further just now." "I don't want to argue," said Dave. "I want to demonstrate to you from life itself that my view is the correct one." "How could you do that?" asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone. "Listen," said the writer, seriously. "I have thought of a way. It is important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as correct by the magazines. I've fought for it for three years, and I'm down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due." "I have applied the opposite of your theory," said the editor, "in selecting the fiction for the Minerva Magazine. The circulation has gone up from ninety thousand to -" "Four hundred thousand," said Dawe. "Whereas it should have been boosted to a million." "You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory." "I will. If you'll give me about half an hour of your time I'll prove to you that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise." "Your wife!" exclaimed Westbrook. "How?" "Well, not exactly by her, but with her," said Dawe. "Now, you know how devoted and loving Louse has always been. She thinks I'm the only genuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor's signature. She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I've been cast for the neglected genius part." "Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion," agreed the editor. "I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bring Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those informal chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much." "Later," said Dawe. "When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you my scheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast - if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast - Louise told me she was going to visit her aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return at three o'clock. She is always on time to a minute. It is now -" Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket. "Twenty-seven minutes to three," said Westbrook, scanning his time-piece. "We have just enough time," said Dawe. "We will go to my flat at once. I will write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table where she will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining-room concealed by the portieres. In that note I'll say that I have fled from her forever with an affinity who understands the need of my artistic soul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one - yours or mine." "Oh, never!" exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. "That would be inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings played upon in such a manner." "Brace up," said the writer. "I guess I think as much of her as you do. It's for her benefit as well as mine. I've got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It'll last for only a minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to me to give me the chance, Westbrook." Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity 'tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to go around. The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward and then to that south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood. Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coat of vernal green, and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outside the railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. Sic transit gloria urbis. A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated fa,cade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door of one of the front flats. When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished. "Get a chair, if you can find one," said Dawe, "while I hunt up pen and ink. Hello, what's this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning." He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open. He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once having begun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the words that Editor Westbrook heard: "Dear Shackleford: "By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away and still a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o'clock. I didn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own living. I'm not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, iceberg and dictionary, and she's not coming back, either. We've been practising the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful, and get along all right! Good-bye. "Louise." Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and cried out in a deep, vibrating voice: "My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting by-words of traitors and fiends!" Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips: "Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you off your perch, Shack? Ain't it hell, now, Shack - ain't it?" Psyche And The Pskyscraper If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about idiotically without aim or purpose. They do not even move with the admirable intelligence of ants, for ants always know when they are going home. The ant is of a lowly station, but he will often reach home and get his slippers on while you are left at your elevated station. Man, then, to the housetopped philosopher, appears to be but a creeping, contemptible beetle. Brokers, poets, millionaires, bootblacks, beauties, hod-carriers and politicians become little black specks dodging bigger black specks in streets no wider than your thumb. From this high view the city itself becomes degraded to an unintelligible mass of distorted buildings and impossible perspectives; the revered ocean is a duck pond; the earth itself a lost golf ball. All the minutiae of life are gone. The philosopher gazes into the infinite heavens above him, and allows his soul to expand to the influence of his new view. He feels that he is the heir to Eternity and the child of Time. Space, too, should be his by the right of his immortal heritage, and he thrills at the thought that some day his kind shall traverse theose mysterious aerial roads between planet and planet. The tiny world beneath his feet upon which this towering structure of steel rests as a speck of dust upon a Himalayan mountain - it is but one of a countless number of such whirling atoms. What are the ambitions, the achievements, the paltry conquests and loves of those restless black insects below compared with the serene and awful immensity of the universe that lies above and around their insignificant city? It is guaranteed that the philosopher will have these thoughts. They have been expressly compiled from the philosophies of the world and set down with the proper interrogation point at the end of them to represent the invariable musings of deep thinkers on high places. And when the philosopher takes the elevator down his mind is broader, his heart is at peace, and his conception of the cosmogony of creation is as wide as the buckle of Orion's summer belt. But if your name happened to be Daisy, and you worked in an Eighth Avenue candy store and lived in a little cold hall bedroom, five feet by eight, and earned $6 per week, and ate ten-cent lunches and were nineteen years old, and got up at 6:30 and worked till 9, and never had studied philosophy, maybe things wouldn't look that way to you from the top of a skyscraper. Two sighed for the hand of Daisy, the unphilosophical. One was Joe, who kept the smallest store in New York. It was about the size of a tool-box of the D. P. W., and was stuck like a swallow's nest against a corner of a down-town skyscraper. Its stock consisted of fruit, candies, newspapers, song books, cigarettes, and lemonade in season. When stern winter shook his congealed locks and Joe had to move himself and the fruit inside, there was exactly room in the store for the proprietor, his wares, a stove the size of a vinegar cruet, and one customer. Joe was not of the nation that keeps us forever in a furore with fugues and fruit. He was a capable American youth who was laying by money, and wanted Daisy to help him spend it. Three times he had asked her. "I got money saved up, Daisy," was his love song; "and you know how bad I want you. That store of mine ain't very big, but -" "Oh, ain't it?" would be the antiphony of the unphilosophical one. "Why, I heard Wanamaker's was trying to get you to sublet part of your floor space to them for next year." Daisy passed Joe's corner every morning and evening. "Hello, Two-by-Four!" was her usual greeting. "Seems to me your store looks emptier. You must have sold a pack of chewing gum." Ain't much room in here, sure," Joe would answer, with his slow grin, "except for you, Daise. Me and the store are waitin' for you whenever you'll take us. Don't you think you might before long?" "Store!" - a fine scorn was expressed by Daisy's uptilted nose - "sardine box! Waitin' for me, you say? Gee! you'd have to throw out about a hundred pounds of candy before I could get inside of it, Joe." "I wouldn't mind an even swap like that," said Joe, complimentary. Daisy's existence was limited in every way. She had to walk sideways between the counter and the shelves in the candy store. In her own hall bedroom coziness had been carried close to cohesiveness. The walls were so near to one another that the paper on them made a perfect Babel of noise. She could light the gas with one hand and close the door with the other without taking her eyes off the reflection of her brown pompadour in the mirror. She had Joe's picture in a gilt frame on the dresser, and sometimes - but her next thought would always be of Joe's funny little store tacked like a soap box to the corner of that great building, and away would go her sentiment in a breeze of laughter. Daisy's other suitor followed Joe by several months. He came to board in the house where she lived. His name was Dabster, and he was a philosopher. Though young, attainments stood out upon him like continental labels on a Passaic (N. J.) suit-case. Knowledge he had kidnapped from cyclopedias and handbooks of useful information; but as for wisdom, when she passed he was left sniffling in the road without so much as the number of her motor car. He could and would tell you the proportion of water and muscle-making properties of peas and veal, the shortest verse in the Bible, the number of pounds of shingle nails required to fasten 256 shingles laid four inches to the weather, the population of Kankakee, Ill., the theories of Spinoza, the name of Mr. H. McKay Twombly's second hall footman, the length of the Hoosac Tunnel, the best time to set a hen, the salary of the railway post-office messenger between Driftwood and Red Bank Furnace, Pa., and the number of bones in the foreleg of a cat. The weight of learning was no handicap to Dabster. His statistics were the sprigs of parsley with which he garnished the feast of small talk that he would set before you if he conceived that to be your taste. And again he used them as breastworks in foraging at the boardinghouse. Firing at you a volley of figures concerning the weight of a lineal foot of bar-iron 5 x 2 3/4 inches, and the average annual rainfall at Fort Snelling, Minn., he would transfix with his fork the best piece of chicken on the dish while you were trying to rally sufficiently to ask him weakly why does a hen cross the road. Thus, brightly armed, and further equipped with a measure of good looks, of a hair-oily, shopping-district-at-three-in-the-afternoon kind, it seems that Joe, of the Lilliputian emporium, had a rival worthy of his steel. But Joe carried no steel. There wouldn't have been room in his store to draw it if he had. One Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dabster stopped before Joe's booth. Dabster wore a silk hat, and - well, Daisy was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its box until Joe had seen it. A stick of pineapple chewing gum was the ostensible object of the call. Joe supplied it through the open side of his store. He did not pale or falter at sight of the hat. "Mr. Dabster's going to take me on top of the building to observe the view," said Daisy, after she had introduced her admirers. "I never was on a skyscraper. I guess it must be awfully nice and funny up there." "H'm!" said Joe. "The panorama," said Mr. Dabster, "exposed to the gaze from the top of a lofty building is not only sublime, but instructive. Miss Daisy has a decided pleasure in store for her." "It's windy up there, too, as well as here," said Joe. "Are you dressed warm enough, Daise?" "Sure thing! I'm all lined," said Daisy, smiling slyly at his clouded brow. "You look just like a mummy in a case, Joe. Ain't you just put in an invoice of a pint of peanuts or another apple? Your stock looks awful over-stocked." Daisy giggled at her favorite joke; and Joe had to smile with her. "Your quarters are somewhat limited, Mr. - er - er," remarked Dabster, "in comparison with the size of this building. I understand the area of its side to be about 340 by 100 feet. That would make you occupy a proportionate space as if half of Beloochistan were placed upon a territory as large as the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, with the Province of Ontario and Belgium added." "Is that so, sport?" said Joe, genially. "You are Weisenheimer on figures, all right. How many square pounds of baled hay do you think a jackass could eat if he stopped brayin' long enough to keep still a minute and five eighths?" A few minutes later Daisy and Mr. Dabster stepped from an elevator to the top floor of the skyscraper. Then up a short, steep stairway and out upon the roof. Dabster led her to the parapet so she could look down at the black dots moving in the street below. "What are they?" she asked, trembling. She had never before been on a height like this before. And then Dabster must needs play the philosopher on the tower, and conduct her soul forth to meet the immensity of space. "Bipeds," he said, solemnly. "See what they become even at the small elevation of 340 feet - mere crawling insects going to and fro at random." "Oh, they ain't anything of the kind," exclaimed Daisy, suddenly - "they're folks! I saw an automobile. Oh, gee! are we that high up?" "Walk over this way," said Dabster. He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon lights of the winter afternoon. And then the bay and sea to the south and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky. "I don't like it," declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes. "Say we go down." But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity. He would let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-nelson he had on the infinite, and the memory he had for statistics. And then she would nevermore be content to buy chewing gum aat the smallest store in New York. And so he began to prate of the smallness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a removal from earth made man and his works look like one tenth part of a dollar thrice computed. And that one should consider the sidereal system and the maxims of Epictetus and be comforted. "You don't carry me with you," said Daisy. "Say, I think it's awful to be up so high that folks look like fleas. One of them we saw might have been Joe. Why, Jiminy! we might as well be in New Jersey! Say, I'm afraid up here!" The philosopher smiled fatuously. "The earth," said he, "is itself only as a grain of wheat in space. Look up there." Daisy gazed upward apprehensively. The short day was spent and the stars were coming out above. "Yonder star," said Dabster, "is Venus, the evening star. She is 66,000,000 miles from the sun." "Fudge!" said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, "where do you think I come from - Brooklyn? Susie Price, in our store - her brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco - that's only three thousand miles." The philosopher smiled indulgently. "Our world," he said, "is 91,000,000 miles from the sun. There are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times further from us than the sun is. If one of them should be extinguished it would be three years before we would see its light go out. There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude. It takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the earth. With an eighteen-foot telescope we can see 43,000,000 stars, including those of the thirteenth magnitude, whose light takes 2,700 years to reach us. Each of these stars -" "You're lyin'," cried Daisy, angrily. "You're tryin' to scare me. And you have; I want to go down!" She stamped her foot. "Arcturus -" began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was interrupted by a demonstration out of the vastness of the nature that he was endeavoring to portray with his memory instead of his heart. For to the heart-expounder of nature the stars were set in the firmament expressly to give soft light to lovers wandering happily beneath them; and if you stand tiptoe some September night with your sweetheart on your arm you can almost touch them with your hand. Three years for their light to reach us, indeed! Out of the west leaped a meteor, lighting the roof of the skyscraper almost to midday. Its fiery parabola was limned against the sky toward the east. It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed. "Take me down," she cried, vehemently, "you - you mental arithmetic!" Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it. She was wild-eyed, and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating drop. Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the philosopher lost her. She vanished; and he stood, bewildered, without figures or statistics to aid him. Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded in lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the attenuated stove. The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, crying, scattering fruit and candies, tumbled into his arms. "Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper. Ain't it cozy and warm and homelike in here! I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me." A Ramble In Aphasia My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me to take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting - the lever kiss of domesticity flavored with Young Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf pin; and then, as I closed the door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea. When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came suddenly. For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous railroad law case that I won triumphantly but a few days previously. In fact, I had been digging away at the law almost without cessation for many years. Once or twice good Doctor Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me. "If you don't slacken up, Belford," he said, "you'll go suddenly to pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me, does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of aphasia - of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his identity blotted out - and all from that little brain clot made by overwork or worry?" "I always thought," said I, "that the clot in those instances was really to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters." Doctor Volney shook his head. "The disease exists," he said. "You need a change or a rest. Court-room, office and home - there is the only route you travel. For recreation you - read law books. Better take warning in time." "On Thursday nights," I said, defensively, "my wife and I play cribbage. On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her mother. That law books are not a recreation remains yet to be established." That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words. I was feeling as well as I usually did - possibly in better spirits than usual. I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to myself: "I must have a name of some sort." I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram could I find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large denomination. "I must be some one, of course," I repeated to myself, and began again to consider. The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good humor and spirits. One of them - a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes - took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my companion said: "You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York; I've never been East before. My name's R. P. Bolder - Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri." Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of drugs from my compainion supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further. "My name," said I, glibly, "is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas." "I knew you were a druggist," said my fellow traveler, affably. "I saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention." "Are all these men druggists?" I asked, wonderingly. "They are. This car came through from the West. And they're your old-time druggists, too - none of your patent tablet-and-granule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a side line of confectionery and shoes. I tell you Hampinker, I've got an idea to spring on this convention - new ideas is what they want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart. - one's poison, you know, and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep 'em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side by side, so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea?" "It seems to me a very good one," I said. "All right! When I spring it on the convention you back it up. We'll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream professors that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic tablets." "If I can be of any aid," I said, warming, "the two bottles of - er -" "Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash." "Shall henceforth sit side by side," I concluded, firmly. "Now, there's another thing," said Mr. Bolder. "For an excipient in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer - the magnesia carbonate or the pulverised glycerrhiza radix?" "The - er - magnesia," I said. It was easier to say than the other word. Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles. "Give me the glycerrhiza," said he. "Magnesia cakes." "Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases," he said, presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. "I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory - don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't they stay at home and forget?" I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following: "DENVER, June 12. - Elwyn C. Belford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappearance, it my be found in the fact that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man." "It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder," I said, after I had read the despatch. "This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married, and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without a name, a history or a home." "Oh, gammon and jalap!" said Mr. Bolder. "It's larks they're after. There's too much education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it's all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say: 'He hypnotized me.'" Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid, me with his comments and philosophy. We arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel, and I wrote my name "Edward Pinkhammer" in the register. As I did so I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy - a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibilities. I was just born into the world. The old fetters - whatever they had been - were stricken from my hands and feet. The future lay before me a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's learning and experience. I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no baggage. "The Druggists' Convention," I said. "My trunk has somehow failed to arrive." I drew out a roll of money. "Ah!" said he, showing an auriferous tooth, "we have quite a number of the Western delegates stopping here." He struck a bell for the boy. I endeavored to give color to my role. "There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners," I said, "in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles containing the tartrate of antimoney and potash, and the tartrate of sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf." "Gentleman to three-fourteen," said the clerk, hastily. I was whisked away to my room. The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live the life of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavors to solve problems of the past. It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held up to my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan belong to him who is able to bear them. You must be either the city's guest or its victim. The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a world full-fledged and unrestrained. I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof-gardens, that transported one into strange and delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls and grotesque drolly extravagant parodies upon human kind. I went here and there at my own dear will, bound by no limits of space, time or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder tables d'hote to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of mercurial artists and sculptors. Or, again, where the night life quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture, and the millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they adorn, and the men who make all three possible are met for good cheer and the spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that I have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before. And that is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of License, but Convention holds it. Comity has a toll-gate at which you must pay, or you may not enter the land of Freedom. In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles. Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly murmuring palm rooms, redolent with high-born life and delicate restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked love-making clerks and shop-girls to their crude pleasures on the island shores. And there was always Broadway - glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable Broadway - growing upon one like an opium habit. One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed around him, he greet me with offensive familiarity. "Hello, Bellford!" he cried, loudly. "What the deuce are you doing in New York? Didn't know anything could drag you away from that old book den of yours. Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little business run alone, eh?" "You have made a mistake, sir," I said, coldly, releasing my hand from his grasp. "My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me." The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the clerk's desk I heard him call to a bell boy and say something about telegraph blanks. "You will give me my bill," I said to the clerk, "and have my baggage brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am annoyed by confidence men." I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned one on lower Fifth Avenue. There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could be served almost al fresco in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet and luxury and a perfect service made it an ideal place in which to take luncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there picking my way to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught. "Mr. Bellford!" exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice. I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone - a lady of about thirty, with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been her very dear friend. "You were about to pass me," she said, accusingly. "Don't tell me you do not know me. Why should we not shake hands - at least once in fifteen years?" I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at the table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a creme de menthe. Her hair was reddish bronze. You could not look at it, because you could not look away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it as you are conscious of sunset while you look into the profundities of a wood at twilight. "Are you sure you know me?" I asked. "No," she said, smiling. "I was never sure of that." "What would you think," I said, a little anxiously, "if I were to tell you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis, Kansas?" "What would I think?" she repeated, with a merry glance. "Why, that you had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York with you, of course. I do wish you had. I would have liked to see Marian." Her voice lowered slightly - "You haven't changed much, Elwyn." I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely. "Yes, you have," she amended, and there was a soft, exultant note in her latest tones; "I see it now. You haven't forgotten. You haven't forgotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could." I poked my straw anxiously in the creme de menthe. "I'm sure I beg your pardon," I said, a little uneasy at her gaze. "But that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything." She flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she seemed to see in my face. "I've heard of you at times," she went on. "You're quite a big lawyer out West - Denver, isn't it, or Los Angeles? Marian must be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand dollars." She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time. "Would it be too late," I asked, somewhat timorously, "to offer you congratulations?" "Not if you dare do it," she answered, with such fine intrepidity that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my thumb nail. "Tell me one thing," she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly - "a thing I have wanted to know for many years - just from a woman's curiosity, of course - have you ever dared since that night to touch, smell or look at white roses - at white roses wet with rain and dew?" I took a sip of creme de menthe. "It would be useless, I suppose," I said, with a sigh, "for me to repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is completely at fault. I need not say how much I regret it." The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained my words and went traveling by their own route direct to my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound - it was a laugh of happiness - yes, and of content - and of misery. I tried to look away from her. "You lie, Elwyn Bellford," she breathed, blissfully. "Oh, I know you lie!" I gazed dully into the ferns. "My name is Edward Pinkhammer," I said. "I came with the delegates to the Druggists' National Convention. There is a movement on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which, very likely, you would take little interest." A shining landau stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I took her hand, and bowed. "I am deeply sorry," I said to her, "that I cannot remember. I could explain, but fear you would not understand. You will not concede Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the - the roses and other things." "Good-by, Mr. Bellford," she said, with her happy, sorrowful smile, as she stepped into her carriage. I attended the theatre that night. When I returned to my hotel, a quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his finger nails with a silk handkerchief, appeared, magically, at my side. "Mr. Pinkhammer," he said, giving the bulk of his attention to his forefinger, "may I request you to step aside with me for a little conversation? There is a room here." "Certainly," I answered. He conducted me into a small, private parlor. A lady and a gentleman were there. The lady, I surmised, would have been unusually good-looking had her features not been clouded by an expression of keen worry and fatigue. She was of a style of figure and possessed coloring and features that were agreeable to my fancy. She was in a traveling dress; she fixed upon me an earnest look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unsteady hand to her bosom. I think she would have started forward, but the gentleman arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his hand. He then came, himself, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little gray about the temples, and with a strong, thoughtful face. "Bellford, old man," he said, cordially, "I'm glad to see you again. Of course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you know, that you were overdoing it. Now, you'll go back with us, and be yourself again in no time." I smiled ironically. "I have been 'Bellforded' so often," I said, "that it has lost its edge. Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome. Would you be willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life?" Before the man could reply a wailing cry came from the woman. She sprang past his detaining arm. "Elwyn!" she sobbed, and cast herself upon me, and clung tight. "Elwyn," she cried again, "don't break my heart. I am your wife - call my name once - just once. I could see you dead rather than this way." I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly. "Madam," I said, severely, "pardon me if I suggest that you accept a resemblance too precipitately. It is a pity," I went on, with an amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, "that this Bellford and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like tartrates of sodium and antimony for purposes of identification. In order to understand the allusion," I concluded airily, "it may be necessary for you to keep an eye on the proceedings of the Druggists' National Convention." The lady turned to her companion, and grasped his arm. "What is it, Doctor Volney? Oh, what is it?" she moaned. "Go to your room for a while," I heard him say. "I will remain and talk with him. His mind? No, I think not - only a portion of the brain. Yes, I am sure he will recover. Go to your room and leave me with him." The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went outside, still manicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall. "I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pinkhammer, if I may," said the gentleman who remained. "Very well, if you care to," I replied, "and will excuse me if I take it comfortably; I am rather tired." I stretched myself upon a couch by a window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair nearby. "Let us speak to the point," he said, soothingly. "Your name is not Pinkhammer." "I know that as well as you do," I said, coolly. "But a man must have a name of some sort. I can assure you that I do not extravagantly admire the name of Pinkhammer. But when one christens one's self suddenly, the fine names do not seem to suggest themselves. But, suppose it had been Scheringhausen or Scroggins! I think I did very well with Pinkhammer." "Your name," said the other man, seriously, "is Elwyn C. Bellford. You are one of the first lawyers in Denver. You are suffering from an attack of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity. The cause of it was over-application to your profession, and, perhaps, a life too bare of natural recreation and pleasures. The lady who has just left the room is your wife." "She is what I would call a fine-looking woman," I said, after a judicial pause. "I particularly admire the shade of brown in her hair." "She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disappearance, nearly two weeks ago, she has scarcely closed her eyes. We learned that you were in New York through a telegram sent by Isidore Newman, a traveling man from Denver. He said that he had met you in a hotel here, and that you did not recognize him." "I think I remember the occasion," I said. "The fellow called me 'Bellford,' if I am not mistaken. But don't you think it about time, now, for you to introduce yourself?" "I am Robert Volney - Doctor Volney. I have been your close friend for twenty years, and your physician for fifteen. I came with Mrs. Bellford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram. Try, Elwyn, old man - try to remember!" "What's the use to try?" I asked, with a little frown. "You say you are a physician. Is aphasia curable? When a man loses his memory does it return slowly, or suddenly?" "Sometimes gradually and imperfectly; sometimes as suddenly as it went." "Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doctor Volney?" I asked. "Old friend," said he, "I'll do everything in my power, and will have done everything that science can do to cure you." "Very well," said I. "Then you will consider that I am your patient. Everything is in confidence now - professional confidence." "Of course," said Doctor Volney. I got up from the couch. Some one had set a vase of white roses on the centre table - a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant. I threw them far out of the window, and then laid myself upon the couch again. "It will be best, Bobby," I said, "to have this cure happen suddenly. I'm rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in. But, oh, Doc," I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin - "good old Doc - it was glorious!" The Ransom of Mack Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say "old" Mack; but he wasn't old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old. "Andy," he says to me, "I'm tired of hustling. You and me have been working hard together for three years. Say we knock off for a while, and spend some of this idle money we've coaxed our way." "The proposition hits me just right," says I. "Let's be nabobs for a while and see how it feels. What'll we do--take in the Niagara Falls, or buck at faro?" "For a good many years," says Mack, "I've thought that if I ever had extravagant money I'd rent a two-room cabin somewhere, hire a Chinaman to cook, and sit in my stocking feet and read Buckle's History of Civilisation." "That sounds self-indulgent and gratifying without vulgar ostentation," says I; "and I don't see how money could be better invested. Give me a cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner's Self-Instructor for the Banjo, and I'll join you." A week afterwards me and Mack hits this small town of Pina, about thirty miles out from Denver, and finds an elegant two-room house that just suits us. We deposited half-a-peck of money in the Pina bank and shook hands with every one of the 340 citizens in the town. We brought along the Chinaman and the cuckoo clock and Buckle and the Instructor with us from Denver; and they made the cabin seem like home at once. Never believe it when they tell you riches don't bring happiness. If you could have seen old Mack sitting in his rocking-chair with his blue-yarn sock feet up in the window and absorbing in that Buckle stuff through his specs you'd have seen a picture of content that would have made Rockefeller jealous. And I was learning to pick out "Old Zip Coon" on the banjo, and the cuckoo was on time with his remarks, and Ah Sing was messing up the atmosphere with the handsomest smell of ham and eggs that ever laid the honeysuckle in the shade. When it got too dark to make out Buckle's nonsense and the notes in the Instructor, me and Mack would light our pipes and talk about science and pearl diving and sciatica and Egypt and spelling and fish and trade-winds and leather and gratitude and eagles, and a lot of subjects that we'd never had time to explain our sentiments about before. One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in the habits and policies of women folks. "Why, yes," says I, in a tone of voice; "I know 'em from Alfred to Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude," says I, "is as plain to my sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I'm onto all their little side-steps and punctual discrepancies." "I tell you, Andy," says Mack, with a kind of sigh, "I never had the least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took the time. I made my own living since I was fourteen; and I never seemed to get my ratiocinations equipped with the sentiments usually depicted toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had," says old Mack. "They're an adverse study," says I, "and adapted to points of view. Although they vary in rationale, I have found 'em quite often obviously differing from each other in divergences of contrast." "It seems to me," goes on Mack, "that a man had better take 'em in and secure his inspirations of the sect when he's young and so preordained. I let my chance go by; and I guess I'm too old now to go hopping into the curriculum." "Oh, I don't know," I tells him. "Maybe you better credit yourself with a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of uncontent. Still, I don't regret my knowledge of 'em," I says. "It takes a man who understands the symptoms and by-plays of women-folks to take care of himself in this world." We stayed on in Pina because we liked the place. Some folks might enjoy their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and Mack we had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were friendly; Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked; Mack and Buckle were as thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial resemblance to "Buffalo Gals, Can't You Come Out To-night," on the banjo. One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working on a mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there; and I was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Pina and enjoy life once more. When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be smiling then. That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid with colic. "Hello, Andy," says Mack, out of his face. "Glad to see you back. Things have happened since you went away." "I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this presumptuous kind of ribaldry?" "Why, Andy," says he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since you left." I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged. Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by. "No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather shoes! All this in two little short months!" "I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says Mack, in a kind of flutter. "I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away quick. I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from the "Two Orphans." "I understand you are to be married to-night," I said. "Correct," says she. "You got any objections?" "Listen, sissy," I begins. "My name is Miss Rebosa Redd," says she in a pained way. "I know it," says I. "Now, Rebosa, I'm old enough to have owed money to your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled, sea-sick ptomaine prancing about avidiously like an irremediable turkey gobbler with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go and get him invested in this marriage business?" "Why, he was the only chance there was," answers Miss Rebosa. "Nay," says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion and style of features; "with your beauty you might pick any kind of a man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain't the man you want. He was twenty- two when you was nee Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into bloom won't last with him. He's all ventilated with oldness and rectitude and decay. Old Mack's down with a case of Indian summer. He overlooked his bet when he was young; and now he's suing Nature for the interest on the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the cash. Rebosa, are you bent on having this marriage occur?" "Why, sure I am," says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, "and so is somebody else, I reckon." "What time is it to take place?" I asks. "At six o'clock," says she. I made up my mind right away what to do. I'd save old Mack if I could. To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a girl that hadn't quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back was more than I could look on with easiness. "Rebosa," says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge concerning the feminine intuitions of reason--"ain't there a young man in Pina--a nice young man that you think a heap of?" "Yep," says Rebosa, nodding her pansies--"Sure there is! What do you think! Gracious!" "Does he like you?" I asks. "How does he stand in the matter?" "Crazy," says Rebosa. "Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him from sitting there all the time. But I guess that'll be all over after to-night," she winds up with a sigh. "Rebosa," says I, "you don't really experience any of this adoration called love for old Mack, do you?" "Lord! no," says the girl, shaking her head. "I think he's as dry as a lava bed. The idea!" "Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?" I inquires. "It's Eddie Bayles," says she. "He clerks in Crosby's grocery. But he don't make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him once." "Old Mack tells me," I says, "that he's going to marry you at six o'clock this evening." "That's the time," says she. "It's to be at our house." "Rebosa," says I, "listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand dollars cash--a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of his own--if you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would you consent to marry him this evening at five o'clock?" The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible cogitations going on inside of her, as women will. "A thousand dollars?" says she. "Of course I would." "Come on," says I. "We'll go and see Eddie." We went up to Crosby's store and called Eddie outside. He looked to be estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my proposition. "At five o'clock?" says he, "for a thousand dollars? Please don't wake me up! Well, you are the rich uncle retired from the spice business in India! I'll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself." We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to them. And then I gave 'em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age and the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes with a lifetime. I passed myself congratulations that I had probably saved my old friend Mack from his attack of Indian summer. I knew when he got well of it and shed his infatuation and his patent leather shoes, he would feel grateful. "To keep old Mack disinvolved," thinks I, "from relapses like this, is worth more than a thousand dollars." And most of all I was glad that I'd made a study of women, and wasn't to be deceived any by their means of conceit and evolution. It must have been half-past five when I got back home. I stepped in; and there sat old Mack on the back of his neck in his old clothes with his blue socks on the window and the History of Civilisation propped up on his knees. "This don't look like getting ready for a wedding at six," I says, to seem innocent. "Oh," says Mack, reaching for his tobacco, "that was postponed back to five o'clock. They sent me over a note saying the hour had been changed. It's all over now. What made you stay away so long, Andy?" "You heard about the wedding?" I asks. "I operated it," says he. "I told you I was justice of the peace. The preacher is off East to visit his folks, and I'm the only one in town that can perform the dispensations of marriage. I promised Eddie and Rebosa a month ago I'd marry 'em. He's a busy lad; and he'll have a grocery of his own some day." "He will," says I. "There was lots of women at the wedding," says Mack, smoking up. "But I didn't seem to get any ideas from 'em. I wish I was informed in the structure of their attainments like you said you was." "That was two months ago," says I, reaching up for the banjo. The Ransom of Red Chief IT LOOKED like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama -- Bill Driscoll and myself -- when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later. There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants Of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole. Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good. We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you. About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence. "Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?" The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick. "That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill, climbing over the wheel. That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain. Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tailfeathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says: "Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains? "He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard." Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive, himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun. Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this: "I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got Six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve?" Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start. "Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?" "Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?" "Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while." "All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life." We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair. Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yalps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs -- they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak. I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing, bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before. I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock. "What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill. "Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it." "You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?" "Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre." I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have home away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast. When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut. "He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill, "and the mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam? I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!" After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it. "What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think he'll run away, do you, Sam?" "No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return." Just then we heard a kind Of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head. I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour. By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?" "Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently." "King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?" I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled. "If you don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?" "I was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? "I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day." "I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once." I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid. "You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood -- in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?" "I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorset." Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me." So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way: Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.: We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply -- as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box. The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit. If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again. If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted. TWO DESPERATE MEN. I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says: "Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone." "Play it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?" "I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout." "All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages." "What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously. "You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?" "You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the scheme going. Loosen up." Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap. "How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner of voice. "Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!" The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side. "For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good." I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post-office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit. When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response. So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments. In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him. "Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit." "What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him. "I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized. "But he's gone" -- continues Bill -- "gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse." Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features. "Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there? "No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?" "Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a took behind you." Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the round and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him is soon as he felt a little better. I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left -- and the money later on -- was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive. Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit. I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this: Two Desperate Men. Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very respectfully,EBENEZER DORSET. "Great pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impudent -- " But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute. "Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?" "Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away." We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day. It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand. When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster. "How long can you hold him?" asks Bill. "I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think I can promise you ten minutes." "Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border." And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him. The Red Roses of Tonia A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south- bound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver's Easter hat. Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he had learned of the delayed train and, having no commands to wait, turned his ponies toward the ranch again. Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more for the after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex., a mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. And now it was Good Friday, and Tonia Weaver's Easter hat blushed unseen in the desert air of an impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On Saturday noon the Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the Anchor-O, and Mrs. Bennet and Ida, from Green Valley, would convene at the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks carefully wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation would then merrily jog the ten miles to Cactus, where on the morrow they would array themselves, subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and cause jealous agitation among the lilies of the field. Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily with a quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite. She displayed a frown and a contumelious lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness and tragedy. "I hate railroads," she announced positively. "And men. Men pretend to run them. Can you give any excuse why a trestle should burn? Ida Bennet's hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step toward Cactus without a new hat. If I were a man I would get one." Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One was Wells Pearson, foreman of the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana Valley. Both thought Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she railed at railroads and menaced men. Either would have given up his epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich gives up his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency against the coming Sabbath. Pearson's deep brown face and sunburned light hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia's plight grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and was made dumb by woman's presence. "The big water-hole on Sandy Creek," said Pearson, scarcely hoping to make a hit, "was filled up by that last rain." "Oh! Was it?" said Tonia sharply. "Thank you for the information. I suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think a woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as you do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle you might have some reason to talk about it." "I am deeply sorry," said Burrows, warned by Pearson's fate, "that you failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver--deeply sorry, indeed. If there was anything I could do--" "Don't bother," interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. "If there was anything you could do, you'd be doing it, of course. There isn't." Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her frown smoothed away. She had an inspiration. "There's a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces," she said, "that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was the latest style. It might have some left. But it's twenty-eight miles to Lone Elm." The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost smiled. The Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their rowels rust. "Of course," said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud sailing across the cerulean dome, "nobody could ride to Lone Elm and back by the time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon I'll have to stay at home this Easter Sunday." And then she smiled. "Well, Miss Tonia," said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful as a sleeping babe. "I reckon I'll be trotting along back to Mucho Calor. There's some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in the morning; and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It's too bad your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they'll get that trestle mended yet in time for Easter." "I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia," announced Burrows, looking at his watch. "I declare, it's nearly five o'clock! I must be out at my lambing camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes." Tonia's suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste. They bade her a ceremonious farewell, and then shook each other's hands with the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the Southwesterner. "Hope I'll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson," said Burrows. "Same here," said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose friend goes upon a whaling voyage. "Be gratified to see you ride over to Mucho Calor any time you strike that section of the range." Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow-pony on the Frio, and let him pitch for a minute, as he always did on being mounted, even at the end of a day's travel. "What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia," he called, "that you ordered from San Antone? I can't help but be sorry about that hat." "A straw," said Tonia; "the latest shape, of course; trimmed with red roses. That's what I like--red roses." "There's no color more becoming to your complexion and hair," said Burrows, admiringly. "It's what I like," said Tonia. "And of all the flowers, give me red roses. Keep all the pinks and blues for yourself. But what's the use, when trestles burn and leave you without anything? It'll be a dry old Easter for me!" Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Bunner at a gallop into the chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch house. As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's long-legged sorrel struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest. Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room. "I'm mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn't get your hat," said her mother. "Oh, don't worry, mother," said Tonia, coolly. "I'll have a new hat, all right, in time to-morrow." When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled his sorrel to the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista flat through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a gravelly hill, matted with bush, the hoarse scrambled, and at length emerged, with a snort of satisfaction into a stretch of high, level prairie, grassy and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their fresh spring foliage. Always to the right Burrows bore, until in a little while he struck the old Indian trail that followed the Nueces southward, and that passed, twenty-eight miles to the southeast, through Lone Elm. Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself in the saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs, the hollow "thwack" of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the trail like a precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg. Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place in Pearson's bosom. In Tonia's presence his voice was as soft as a summer bullfrog's in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, a mile away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful fronds. "Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven't you, neighbor?" asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel's side. "Twenty-eight miles," said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson's laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on the river bank, half a mile away. "All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We're two locoed he-milliners hat-hunting in the wilderness. I notify you. Burr, to mind your corrals. We've got an even start, and the one that gets the headgear will stand some higher at the Espinosa." "You've got a good pony," said Burrows, eyeing Road Runner's barrel- like body and tapering legs that moved as regularly as the pistonrod of an engine. "It's a race, of course; but you're too much of a horseman to whoop it up this soon. Say we travel together till we get to the home stretch." "I'm your company," agreed Pearson, "and I admire your sense. If there's hats at Lone Elm, one of 'em shall set on Miss Tonia's brow to-morrow, and you won't be at the crowning. I ain't bragging, Burr, but that sorrel of yours is weak in the fore-legs." "My horse against yours," offered Burrows, "that Miss Tonia wears the hat I take her to Cactus to-morrow." "I'll take you up," shouted Pearson. "But oh, it's just like horse- stealing for me! I can use that sorrel for a lady's animal when-- when somebody comes over to Mucho Calor, and--" Burrows' dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke off his sentence. But Pearson could never feel any pressure for long. "What's all this Easter business about, Burr?" he asked, cheerfully. "Why do the women folks have to have new hats by the almanac or bust all cinches trying to get 'em?" "It's a seasonable statute out of the testaments," explained Burrows. "It's ordered by the Pope or somebody. And it has something to do with the Zodiac I don't know exactly, but I think it was invented by the Egyptians." "It's an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on it," said Pearson; "or else Tonia wouldn't have anything to do with it. And they pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain't but one hat in the Lone Elm store, Burr!" "Then," said Burrows, darkly, "the best man of us'll take it back to the Espinosa." "Oh, man!" cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it again, "there's nothing like you come off the sheep ranges before. You talk good and collateral to the occasion. And if there's more than one?" "Then," said Burrows, "we'll pick our choice and one of us'll get back first with his and the other won't." "There never was two souls," proclaimed Pearson to the stars, "that beat more like one heart than yourn and mine. Me and you might be riding on a unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind." At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone Elm. The half a hundred houses of the big village were dark. On its only street the big wooden store stood barred and shuttered. In a few moments the horses were fastened and Pearson was pounding cheerfully on the door of old Sutton, the storekeeper. The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny of a solid window shutter followed by a short inquiry. "Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Burrows, of Green Valley," was the response. "We want to buy some goods in the store. Sorry to wake you up but we must have 'em. Come on out, Vncle Tommy, and get a move on you." Uncle Tommy was slow, but at length they got him behind his counter with a kerosene lamp lit, and told him of their dire need. "Easter hats?" said Uncle Tommy, sleepily. "Why, yes, I believe I have got just a couple left. I only ordered a dozen this spring. I'll show 'em to you." Now, Uncle Tommy Sutton was a merchant, half asleep or awake. In dusty pasteboard boxes under the counter he had two left-over spring hats. But, alas! for his commercial probity on that early Saturday morn--they were hats of two springs ago, and a woman's eye would have detected the fraud at half a glance. But to the unintelligent gaze of the cowpuncher and the sheepman they seemed fresh from the mint of contemporaneous April. The hats were of a variety once known as "cart-wheels." They were of stiff straw, colored red, and flat brimmed. Both were exactly alike, and trimmed lavishly around their crowns with full blown, immaculate, artificial white roses. "That all you got, Uncle Tommy?" said Pearson. "All right. Not much choice here, Burr. Take your pick." "They're the latest styles" lied Uncle Tommy. "You'd see 'em on Fifth Avenue, if you was in New York." Uncle Tommy wrapped and tied each hat in two yards of dark calico for a protection. One Pearson tied carefully to his calfskin saddle- thongs; and the other became part of Road Runner's burden. They shouted thanks and farewells to Uncle Tommy, and cantered back into the night on the home stretch. The horsemen jockeyed with all their skill. They rode more slowly on their way back. The few words they spoke were not unfriendly. Burrows had a Winchester under his left leg slung over his saddle horn. Pearson had a six shooter belted around him. Thus men rode in the Frio country. At half-past seven in the morning they rode to the top of a hill and saw the Espinosa Ranch, a white spot under a dark patch of live-oaks, five miles away. The sight roused Pearson from his drooping pose in the saddle. He knew what Road Runner could do. The sorrel was lathered, and stumbling frequently; Road Runner was pegging away like a donkey engine. Pearson turned toward the sheepman and laughed. "Good-bye, Burr," he cried, with a wave of his hand. "It's a race now. We're on the home stretch." He pressed Road Runner with his knees and leaned toward the Espinosa. Road Runner struck into a gallop, with tossing head and snorting nostrils, as if he were fresh from a month in pasture. Pearson rode twenty yards and heard the unmistakable sound of a Winchester lever throwing a cartridge into the barrel. He dropped flat along his horse's back before the crack of the rifle reached his ears. It is possible that Burrows intended only to disable the horse-- he was a good enough shot to do that without endangering his rider. But as Pearson stooped the ball went through his shoulder and then through Road Runner's neck. The horse fell and the cowman pitched over his head into the hard road, and neither of them tried to move. Burrows rode on without stopping. In two hours Pearson opened his eyes and took inventory. He managed to get to his feet and staggered back to where Road Runner was lying. Road Runner was lying there, but he appeared to be comfortable. Pearson examined him and found that the bullet had "creased" him. He had been knocked out temporarily, but not seriously hurt. But he was tired, and he lay there on Miss Tonia's hat and ate leaves from a mesquite branch that obligingly hung over the road. Pearson made the horse get up. The Easter hat, loosed from the saddle-thongs, lay there in its calico wrappings, a shapeless thing from its sojourn beneath the solid carcass of Road Runner. Then Pearson fainted and fell head long upon the poor hat again, crumpling it under his wounded shoulders. It is hard to kill a cowpuncher. In half an hour he revived--long enough for a woman to have fainted twice and tried ice-cream for a restorer. He got up carefully and found Road Runner who was busy with the near-by grass. He tied the unfortunate hat to the saddle again, and managed to get himself there, too, after many failures. At noon a gay and fluttering company waited in front of the Espinosa Ranch. The Rogers girls were there in their new buckboard, and the Anchor-O outfit and the Green Valley folks--mostly women. And each and every one wore her new Easter hat, even upon the lonely prairies, for they greatly desired to shine forth and do honor to the coming festival. At the gate stood Tonia. with undisguised tears upon her cheeks. In her hand she held Burrow's Lone Elm hat, and it was at its white roses, hated by her, that she wept. For her friends were telling her, with the ecstatic joy of true friends, that cart-wheels could not be worn, being three seasons passed into oblivion. "Put on your old hat and come, Tonia," they urged. "For Easter Sunday?" she answered. "I'll die first." And wept again. The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and twisted into the style of spring's latest proclamation. A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his horse languidly. He was stained and disfigured with the green of the grass and the limestone of rocky roads. "Hallo, Pearson," said Daddy Weaver. "Look like you've been breaking a mustang. What's that you've got tied to your saddle--a pig in a poke?" "Oh, come on, Tonia, if you're going," said Betty Rogers. "We mustn't wait any longer. We've saved a seat in the buckboard for you. Never mind the hat. That lovely muslin you've got on looks sweet enough with any old hat." Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia looked at him with a sudden hope. Pearson was a man who created hope. He got the thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the strings. "Best I could do," said Pearson slowly. "What Road Runner and me done to it will be about all it needs." "Oh, oh! it's just the right shape," shrieked Tonia. "And red roses! Wait till I try it on!" She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, radiating, blossomed. "Oh, don't red become her?" chanted the girls in recitative. "Hurry up, Tonia!" Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road Runner. "Thank you, thank you, Wells," she said, happily. "It's just what I wanted. Won't you come over to Cactus to-morrow and go to church with me?" "If I can," said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and then he grinned weakly. Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The vehicles sped away for Cactus. "What have you been doing, Pearson?" asked Daddy Weaver. "You ain't looking so well as common." "Me?" said Pearson. "I've been painting flowers. Them roses was white when I left Lone Elm. Help me down, Daddy Weaver, for I haven't got any more paint to spare." The Reformation of Calliope Calliope Catesby was in his humours again. Ennui was upon him. This goodly promontory, the earth--particularly that portion of it known as Quicksand--was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, especially, was wont to express his ennui according to his lights. Over night Calliope had hung out signals of approaching low spirits. He had kicked his own dog on the porch of the Occidental Hotel, and refused to apologise. He had become capricious and fault-finding in conversation. While strolling about he reached often for twigs of mesquite and chewed the leaves fiercely. That was always an ominous act. Another symptom alarming to those who were familiar with the different stages of his doldrums was his increasing politeness and a tendency to use formal phrases. A husky softness succeeded the usual penetrating drawl in his tones. A dangerous courtesy marked his manners. Later, his smile became crooked, the left side of his mouth slanting upward, and Quicksand got ready to stand from under. At this stage Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about midnight, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope's melancholy at the danger point. He would seat himself at the window of the room he occupied over Silvester's tonsorial parlours and there chant lugubrious and tuneless ballads until morning, accompanying the noises by appropriate maltreatment of a jangling guitar. More magnanimous than Nero, he would thus give musical warning of the forthcoming municipal upheaval that Quicksand was scheduled to endure. A quiet, amiable man was Calliope Catesby at other times--quiet to indolence, and amiable to worthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch property. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six feet, slurring rhythm of speech, and sectional idioms giving evidence of his birthplace. And yet, after taking on Western adjustments, this languid pine-box whittler, cracker barrel hugger, shady corner lounger of the cotton fields and sumac hills of the South became famed as a bad man among men who had made a life-long study of the art of truculence. At nine the next morning Calliope was fit. Inspired by his own barbarous melodies and the contents of his jug, he was ready primed to gather fresh laurels from the diffident brow of Quicksand. Encircled and criss-crossed with cartridge belts, abundantly garnished with revolvers, and copiously drunk, he poured forth into Quicksand's main street. Too chivalrous to surprise and capture a town by silent sortie, he paused at the nearest corner and emitted his slogan--that fearful, brassy yell, so reminiscent of the steam piano, that had gained for him the classic appellation that had superseded his own baptismal name. Following close upon his vociferation came three shots from his forty-five by way of limbering up the guns and testing his aim. A yellow dog, the personal property of Colonel Swazey, the proprietor of the Occidental, fell feet upward in the dust with one farewell yelp. A Mexican who was crossing the street from the Blue Front grocery carrying in his hand a bottle of kerosene, was stimulated to a sudden and admirable burst of speed, still grasping the neck of the shattered bottle. The new gilt weather-cock on Judge Riley's lemon and ultramarine two-story residence shivered, flapped, and hung by a splinter, the sport of the wanton breezes. The artillery was in trim. Calliope's hand was steady. The high, calm ecstasy of habitual battle was upon him, though slightly embittered by the sadness of Alexander in that his conquests were limited to the small world of Quicksand. Down the street went Calliope, shooting right and left. Glass fell like hail; dogs vamosed; chickens flew, squawking; feminine voices shrieked concernedly to youngsters at large. The din was perforated at intervals by the staccato of the Terror's guns, and was drowned periodically by the brazen screech that Quicksand knew so well. The occasions of Calliope's low spirits were legal holidays in Quicksand. All along the main street in advance of his coming clerks were putting up shutters and closing doors. Business would languish for a space. The right of way was Calliope's, and as he advanced, observing the dearth of opposition and the few opportunities for distraction, his ennui perceptibly increased. But some four squares farther down lively preparations were being made to minister to Mr. Catesby's love for interchange of compliments and repartee. On the previous night numerous messengers had hastened to advise Buck Patterson, the city marshal, of Calliope's impending eruption. The patience of that official, often strained in extending leniency toward the disturber's misdeeds, had been overtaxed. In Quicksand some indulgence was accorded the natural ebullition of human nature. Providing that the lives of the more useful citizens were not recklessly squandered, or too much property needlessly laid waste, the community sentiment was against a too strict enforcement of the law. But Calliope had raised the limit. His outbursts had been too frequent and too violent to come within the classification of a normal and sanitary relaxation of spirit. Buck Patterson had been expecting and awaiting in his little ten-by- twelve frame office that preliminary yell announcing that Calliope was feeling blue. When the signal came the city marshal rose to his feet and buckled on his guns. Two deputy sheriffs and three citizens who had proven the edible qualities of fire also stood up, ready to bandy with Calliope's leaden jocularities. "Gather that fellow in," said Buck Patterson, setting forth the lines of the campaign. "Don't have no talk, but shoot as soon as you can get a show. Keep behind cover and bring him down. He's a nogood 'un. It's up to Calliope to turn up his toes this time, I reckon. Go to him all spraddled out, boys. And don't git too reckless, for what Calliope shoots at he hits." Buck Patterson, tall, muscular, and solemn-faced, with his bright "City Marshal" badge shining on the breast of his blue flannel shirt, gave his posse directions for the onslaught upon Calliope. The plan was to accomplish the downfall of the Quicksand Terror without loss to the attacking party, if possible. The splenetic Calliope, unconscious of retributive plots, was steaming down the channel, cannonading on either side, when he suddenly became aware of breakers ahead. The city marshal and one of the deputies rose up behind some dry-goods boxes half a square to the front and opened fire. At the same time the rest of the posse, divided, shelled him from two side streets up which they were cautiously manoeuvring from a well-executed detour. The first volley broke the lock of one of Calliope's guns, cut a neat underbit in his right ear, and exploded a cartridge in his crossbelt, scorching his ribs as it burst. Feeling braced up by this unexpected tonic to his spiritual depression, Calliope executed a fortissimo note from his upper register, and returned the fire like an echo. The upholders of the law dodged at his flash, but a trifle too late to save one of the deputies a bullet just above the elbow, and the marshal a bleeding cheek from a splinter that a ball tore from the box he had ducked behind. And now Calliope met the enemy's tactics in kind. Choosing with a rapid eye the street from which the weakest and least accurate fire had come, he invaded it at a double-quick, abandoning the unprotected middle of the street. With rare cunning the opposing force in that direction--one of the deputies and two of the valorous volunteers-- waited, concealed by beer barrels, until Calliope had passed their retreat, and then peppered him from the rear. In another moment they were reinforced by the marshal and his other men, and then Calliope felt that in order to successfully prolong the delights of the controversy he must find some means of reducing the great odds against him. His eye fell upon a structure that seemed to hold out this promise, providing he could reach it. Not far away was the little railroad station, its building a strong box house, ten by twenty feet, resting upon a platform four feet above ground. Windows were in each of its walls. Something like a fort it might become to a man thus sorely pressed by superior numbers. Calliope made a bold and rapid spurt for it, the marshal's crowd "smoking" him as he ran. He reached the haven in safety, the station agent leaving the building by a window, like a flying squirrel, as the garrison entered the door. Patterson and his supporters halted under protection of a pile of lumber and held consultations. In the station was an unterrified desperado who was an excellent shot and carried an abundance of ammunition. For thirty yards on either side of the besieged was a stretch of bare, open ground. It was a sure thing that the man who attempted to enter that unprotected area would be stopped by one of Calliope's bullets. The city marshal was resolved. He had decided that Calliope Catesby should no more wake the echoes of Quicksand with his strident whoop. He had so announced. Officially and personally he felt imperatively bound to put the soft pedal on that instrument of discord. It played bad tunes. Standing near was a hand truck used in the manipulation of small freight. It stood by a shed full of sacked wool, a consignment from one of the sheep ranches. On this truck the marshal and his men piled three heavy sacks of wool. Stooping low, Buck Patterson started for Calliope's fort, slowly pushing this loaded truck before him for protection. The posse, scattering broadly, stood ready to nip the besieged in case he should show himself in an effort to repel the juggernaut of justice that was creeping upon him. Only once did Calliope make demonstration. He fired from a window, and some tufts of wool spurted from the marshal's trustworthy bulwark. The return shots from the posse pattered against the window frame of the fort. No loss resulted on either side. The marshal was too deeply engrossed in steering his protected battleship to be aware of the approach of the morning train until he was within a few feet of the platform. The train was coming up on the other side of it. It stopped only one minute at Quicksand. What an opportunity it would offer to Calliope! He had only to step out the other door, mount the train, and away. Abandoning his breastwork, Buck, with his gun ready, dashed up the steps and into the room, driving upon the closed door with one heave of his weighty shoulder. The members of the posse heard one shot fired inside, and then there was silence. ***** At length the wounded man opened his eyes. After a blank space he again could see and hear and feel and think. Turning his eyes about, he found himself lying on a wooden bench. A tall man with a perplexed countenance, wearing a big badge with "City Marshal" engraved upon it, stood over him. A little old woman in black, with a wrinkled face and sparkling black eyes, was holding a wet handkerchief against one of his temples. He was trying to get these facts fixed in his mind and connected with past events, when the old woman began to talk. "There now, great, big, strong man! That bullet never tetched ye! Jest skeeted along the side of your head and sort of paralysed ye for a spell. I've heerd of sech things afore; cun-cussion is what they names it. Abel Wadkins used to kill squirrels that way--barkin' 'em, Abe called it. You jest been barked, sir, and you'll be all right in a little bit. Feel lots better already, don't ye! You just lay still a while longer and let me bathe your head. You don't know me, I reckon, and 'tain't surprisin' that you shouldn't. I come in on that train from Alabama to see my son. Big son, ain't he? Lands! you wouldn't hardly think he'd ever been a baby, would ye? This is my son, sir." Half turning, the old woman looked up at the standing man, her worn face lighting with a proud and wonderful smile. She reached out one veined and calloused hand and took one of her son's. Then smiling cheerily down at the prostrate man, she continued to dip the handkerchief, in the waiting-room tin washbasin and gently apply it to his temple. She had the benevolent garrulity of old age. "I ain't seen my son before," she continued, "in eight years. One of my nephews, Elkanah Price, he's a conductor on one of them railroads and he got me a pass to come out here. I can stay a whole week on it, and then it'll take me back again. Jest think, now, that little boy of mine has got to be a officer--a city marshal of a whole town! That's somethin' like a constable, ain't it? I never knowed he was a officer; he didn't say nothin' about it in his letters. I reckon he thought his old mother'd be skeered about the danger he was in. But, laws! I never was much of a hand to git skeered. 'Tain't no use. I heard them guns a-shootin' while I was gettin' off them cars, and I see smoke a-comin' out of the depot, but I jest walked right along. Then I see son's face lookin' out through the window. I knowed him at oncet. He met me at the door, and squeezes me 'most to death. And there you was, sir, a-lyin' there jest like you was dead, and I 'lowed we'd see what might be done to help sot you up." "I think I'll sit up now," said the concussion patient. "I'm feeling pretty fair by this time." He sat, somewhat weakly yet, leaning against the wall. He was a rugged man, big-boned and straight. His eyes, steady and keen, seemed to linger upon the face of the man standing so still above him. His look wandered often from the face he studied to the marshal's badge upon the other's breast. "Yes, yes, you'll be all right," said the old woman, patting his arm, "if you don't get to cuttin' up agin, and havin' folks shooting at you. Son told me about you, sir, while you was layin' senseless on the floor. Don't you take it as meddlesome fer an old woman with a son as big as you to talk about it. And you mustn't hold no grudge ag'in' my son for havin' to shoot at ye. A officer has got to take up for the law--it's his duty--and them that acts bad and lives wrong has to suffer. Don't blame my son any, sir--'tain't his fault. He's always been a good boy--good when he was growin' up, and kind and 'bedient and well-behaved. Won't you let me advise you, sir, not to do so no more? Be a good man, and leave liquor alone and live peaceably and goodly. Keep away from bad company and work honest and sleep sweet." The black-mitted hand of the old pleader gently touched the breast of the man she addressed. Very earnest and candid her old, worn face looked. In her rusty black dress and antique bonnet she sat, near the close of a long life, and epitomised the experience of the world. Still the man to whom she spoke gazed above her head, contemplating the silent son of the old mother. "What does the marshal say?" he asked. "Does he believe the advice is good? Suppose the marshal speaks up and says if the talk's all right?" The tall man moved uneasily. He fingered the badge on his breast for a moment, and then he put an arm around the old woman and drew her close to him. She smiled the unchanging mother smile of three-score years, and patted his big brown hand with her crooked, mittened fingers while her son spake. "I says this," he said, looking squarely into the eyes of the other man, "that if I was in your place I'd follow it. If I was a drunken, desp'rate character, without shame or hope, I'd follow it. If I was in your place and you was in mine I'd say: 'Marshal, I'm willin' to swear if you'll give me the chance I'll quit the racket. I'll drop the tanglefoot and the gun play, and won't play hoss no more. I'll be a good citizen and go to work and quit my foolishness. So help me God!' That's what I'd say to you if you was marshal and I was in your place." "Hear my son talkin'," said the old woman softly. "Hear him, sir. You promise to be good and he won't do you no harm. Forty-one year ago his heart first beat ag'in' mine, and it's beat true ever since." The other man rose to his feet, trying his limbs and stretching his muscles. "Then," said he, "if you was in my place and said that, and I was marshal, I'd say: 'Go free, and do your best to keep your promise.'" "Lawsy!" exclaimed the old woman, in a sudden flutter, "ef I didn't clear forget that trunk of mine! I see a man settin' it on the platform jest as I seen son's face in the window, and it went plum out of my head. There's eight jars of home-made quince jam in that trunk that I made myself. I wouldn't have nothin' happen to them jars for a red apple." Away to the door she trotted, spry and anxious, and then Calliope Catesby spoke out to Buck Patterson: "I just couldn't help it, Buck. I seen her through the window a-comin' in. She never had heard a word 'bout my tough ways. I didn't have the nerve to let her know I was a worthless cuss bein' hunted down by the community. There you was lyin' where my shot laid you, like you was dead. The idea struck me sudden, and I just took your badge off and fastened it onto myself, and I fastened my reputation onto you. I told her I was the marshal and you was a holy terror. You can take your badge back now, Buck." With shaking fingers Calliope began to unfasten the disc of metal from his shirt. "Easy there!" said Buck Patterson. "You keep that badge right where it is, Calliope Catesby. Don't you dare to take it off till the day your mother leaves this town. You'll be city marshal of Quicksand as long as she's here to know it. After I stir around town a bit and put 'em on I'll guarantee that nobody won't give the thing away to her. And say, you leather-headed, rip-roarin', low-down son of a locoed cyclone, you follow that advice she give me! I'm goin' to take some of it myself, too." "Buck," said Calliope feelingly, "ef I don't I hope I may--" "Shut up," said Buck. "She's a-comin' back." The Roads we Take TWIENTY miles West of Tucson, the "Sunset Express" stopped at a tank to take on water. Besides the aqueous, addition the engine of that famous flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it. While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, "Shark" Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of ordnance that the carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer with their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as accompanies the ejaculation "Do tell!" At the crisp command of Shark Dodson, who was leader of the attacking force the engineer descended to the ground and uncoupled the engine and tender. Then John Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively held two guns upon the engine driver and the fireman, and suggested that they run the engine fifty yards away and there await further orders. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning to put such low-grade ore as the passengers through the mill, struck out for the rich pocket of the express car. They found the messenger serene in the belief that the "Sunset Express" was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous than aqua pura. While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with the butt-end of his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the express-car safe with dynamite. The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for the thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine. The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was accomplished the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball's persuader to neutrality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle and took a trick in the game. Mr. John Big Dog, sitting on the coal tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a target, and the messenger trumped him. With a ball exactly between his shoulder blades the Creek chevalier of industry rolled off to the ground, thus increasing the share of his comrades in the loot by one-sixth each. Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop. The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope into the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing through a thicket of chapparal brought them to open woods, where three horses were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discre- tion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg. They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a council of flight. Made secure for the present by the tortuous trail they- had travelled, the question of time was no longer so big. Many miles and hours lay between them and the spryest posse that could follow. Shark Dodson's horse, with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted and cropped thankfully of the grass along the stream in the gorge. Bob Tidball opened the sack, drew out double handfuls of the neat packages of currency and the one sack of gold and chuckled with the glee of a child. "Say, you old double-decked pirate," he called joyfully to Dodson, "you said we could do it -- you got a head for financing that knocks the horns off of anything in Arizona." "What are we going to do about a hoss for you, Bob? We ain't got long to wait here. They'll be on our trail before daylight in the mornin'." "Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn'll carry double for a while," answered the sanguine Bob. "We'll annex the first animal we come across. By jingoes, we made a haul, didn't we? Accordin' to the marks on this money there's $30,000 -- $15,000 apiece!" "It's short of what I expected," said Shark Dodson, kicking softly at the packages with the toe of his boot and then he looked pensively at the wet sides of his tired horse. "Old Bolivar's mighty nigh played out," he said, slowly. "I wish that sorrel of yours hadn't got hurt." "So do I," said Bob, heartily, "but it can't be helped. Bolivar's got plenty of bottom -- he'll get us both far enough to get fresh mounts. Dang it, Shark, I can't belp thinkin' how funny it is that an Easterner like you can come out here and give us Western fellows cards and spades in the desperado business. What part of the East was you from, anyway?" "New York State," said Shark Dodson, sitting down on a boulder and chewing a twig. "I was born on a farm in Ulster County. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my coming West. I was walkin' along the road with my clothes in a bundle, makin' for New York City. I had an idea of goin' there and makin' lots of money. I always felt like I could do it. I came to a place one evenin' where the road forked and I didn't know which fork to take. I studied about it for half an hour, and then I took the left- hand. That night I run into the camp of a Wild West show that was travellin' among the little towns, and I went West with it. I've often wondered if I wouldn't have turned out different if I'd took the other road." "Oh, I reckon you'd have ended up about the same," said Bob Tidball, cheerfully philosophical. "It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do." Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree. "I'd a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn't hurt himself, Bob," he said again, almost pathetically. "Same here," agreed Bob; "he was sure a first-rate kind of a crowbait. But Bolivar, he'll pull us through all right. Reckon we'd better be movin' on, hadn't we, Shark? I'll bag this boodle ag'in and we'll hit the trail for higher timber." Bob Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag and tied the mouth of it tightly with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that he saw was the muzzle of Shark Dodson's .45 held upon him without a waver. "Stop your funnin'," said Bob, with a grin. "We got to be hittin' the breeze." "Set still," said Shark. "You ain't goin' to hit no breeze, Bob. I hate to tell you, but there ain't any chance for but one of us. Bolivar, he's plenty tired, and he can't carry double." "We been pards, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three year," Bob said quietly. "We've risked our lives together time and again. I've always give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I've heard some queer stories about you shootin' one or two men in a peculiar way, but I never believed 'em. Now if you're just havin' a little fun with me, Shark, put your gun up, and we'll get on Bolivar and vamose. If you mean to shoot -- shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!" Shark Dodson's face bore a deeply sorrowful look. "You don't know how bad I feel," he sighed, "about that sorrel of yourn breakin' his leg, Bob." The expression on Dodson's face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house. Truly Bob Tidball was never to "hit the breeze" again. The deadly .45 of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the "Sunset Express," not put to the stress of "carrying double." But as "Shark" Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge of a quartered-oak desk. I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & Decker, Wall Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan. "Ahem! Peabody," said Dodson, blinking. "I must have fallen asleep. I had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?" "Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in X. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember." "Yes, I remember. What is X. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?" "One eighty-five, sir." "Then that's his price." "Excuse me," said Peabody, rather nervously "for speaking of it, but I've been talking to Williams. He's an old friend of yours, Mr. Dodson, and you practically have a corner in X. Y. Z. I thought you might -- that is, I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98. If he settles at the market price it will take every cent he has in the world and his home too to deliver the shares." The expression on Dodson's face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house. "He will settle at one eighty-five," said Dodson. "Bolivar cannot carry double." The Robe Of Peace Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so strange and incredible to the mind of the average man that only a select few who were in close touch with Bellchambers will give it full credence. Johnny Bellchambers, as is well known, belonged to the intrinsically inner circle of the elite. Without any of the ostentation of the fashionable ones who endeavor to attract notice by eccentric display of wealth and show he still was au fait in everything that gave deserved lustre to his high position in the ranks of society. Especially did he shine in the matter of dress. In this he was the despair of imitators. Always correct, exquisitely groomed, and possessed of an unlimited wardrobe, he was conceded to be the best-dressed man in New York, and, therefore, in America. There was not a tailor in Gotham who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the privilege of making Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay. As he wore them, they would have been a priceless advertisement. Trousers were his special passion. Here nothing but perfection would he notice. He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he would wear these garments without exchanging. Bellchambers disappeared very suddenly. For three days his absence brought no alarm to his friends, and then they began to operate the usual methods of inquiry. All of them failed. He had left absolutely no trace behind. Then the search for a motive was instituted, but none was found. He had no enemies, he had no debts, there was no woman. There were several thousand dollars in his bank to his credit. He had never showed any tendency toward mental eccentricity; in fact, he was of a particularly calm and well-balanced temperament. Every means of tracing the vanished man was made use of, but without avail. It was one of those cases - more numerous in late years - where men seem to have gone out like the flame of a candle, leaving not even a trail of smoke as a witness. In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers' old friends, went for a little run on the other side. While pottering around in Italy and Switzerland, they happened, one day, to hear of a monastery in the Swiss Alps that promised something outside of the ordinary tourist-beguiling attractions. The monastery was almost inaccessible to the average sightseer, being on an extremely rugged and precipitous spur of the mountains. The attractions it possessed but did not advertise were, first, an exclusive and divine cordial made by the monks that was said to far surpass benedictine and chartreuse. Next a huge brass bell so purely and accurately cast that it had not ceased sounding since it was first rung three hundred years ago. Finally, it was asserted that no Englishman had ever set foot within its walls. Eyres and Gilliam decided that these three reports called for investigation. It took them two days with the aid of two guides to reach the monastery of St. Gondrau. It stood upon a frozen, wind-swept crag with the snow piled about it in treacherous, drifting masses. They were hospitably received by the brothers whose duty it was to entertain the infrequent guest. They drank of the precious cordial, finding it rarely potent and reviving. They listened to the great, ever-echoing bell, and learned that they were pioneer travelers, in those gray stone walls, over the Englishman whose restless feet have trodden nearly every corner of the earth. At three o'clock on the afternoon they arrived, the two young Gothamites stood with good Brother Cristofer in the great, cold hallway of the monastery to watch the monks march past on their way to the refectory. They came slowly, pacing by twos, with their heads bowed, treading noiselessly with sandaled feet upon the rough stone flags. As the procession slowly filed past, Eyres suddenly gripped Gilliam by the arm. "Look," he whispered, eagerly, "at the one just opposite you now - the one on this side, with his hand at his waist - if that isn't Johnny Bellchambers then I never saw him!" Gilliam saw and recognized the lost glass of fashion. "What the deuce," said he, wonderingly, "is old Bell doing here? Tommy, it surely can't be he! Never heard of Bell having a turn for the religious. Fact is, I've heard him say things when a four-in-hand didn't seem to tie up just right that would bring him up for court-martial before any church." "It's Bell, without a doubt," said Eyres, firmly, "or I'm pretty badly in need of an oculist. But think of Johnny Bellchambers, the Royal High Chancellor of swell togs and the Mahatma of pink teas, up here in cold storage doing penance in a snuff-colored bathrobe! I can't get it straight in my mind. Let's ask the jolly old boy that's doing honors." Brother Cristofer was appealed to for information. By that time the monks had passed into the refectory. He could not tell to which one they referred. Bellchambers? Ah, the brothers of St. Gondrau abandoned their worldly names when they took the vows. Did the gentlemen wish to speak with one of the brothers? If they would come to the refectory and indicate the one they wished to see, the reverend abbot in authority would, doubtless, permit it. Eyres and Gilliam went into the dining hall and pointed out to Brother Cristofer the man they had seen. Yes, it was Johnny Bellchambers. They saw his face plainly now, as he sat among the dingy brothers, never looking up, eating broth from a coarse, brown bowl. Permission to speak to one of the brothers was granted to the two travelers by the abbot, and they waited in a reception room for him to come. When he did come, treading softly in his sandals, both Eyres and Gilliam looked at him in perplexity and astonishment. It was Johnny Bellchambers, but he had a different look. Upon his smooth-shaven face was an expression of ineffable peace, of rapturous attainment, of perfect and complete happiness. His form was proudly erect, his eyes shone with a serene and gracious light. He was as neat and well-groomed as in the old New York days, but how differently was he clad! Now he seemed clothed in but a single garment - a long robe of rough brown cloth, gathered by a cord at the waist, and falling in straight, loose folds nearly to his feet. He shook hands with his visitors with his old ease and grace of manner. If there was any embarrassment in that meeting it was not manifested by Johnny Bellchambers. The room had no seats; they stood to converse. "Glad to see you, old man," said Eyres, somewhat awkwardly. "Wasn't expecting to find you up here. Not a bad idea though, after all. Society's an awful sham. Must be a relief to shake the giddy whirl and retire to - er - contemplation and - er - prayer and hymns, and those things. "Oh, cut that, Tommy," said Bellchambers, cheerfully. "Don't be afraid that I'll pass around the plate. I go through these thing-um-bobs with the rest of these old boys because they are the rules. I'm Brother Ambrose here, you know. I'm given just ten minutes to talk to you fellows. That's rather a new design in waistcoats you have on, isn't it, Gilliam? Are they wearing those things on Broadway now?" "It's the same old Johnny," said Gilliam, joyfully. "What the devil - I mean why - Oh, confound it! what did you do it for, old man?" "Peel the bathrobe," pleaded Eyres, almost tearfully, "and go back with us. The old crowd'll go wild to see you. This isn't in your line, Bell. I know half a dozen girls that wore the willow on the quiet when you shook us in that unaccountable way. Hand in your resignation, or get a dispensation, or whatever you have to do to get a release from this ice factory. You'll get catarrh here, Johnny - and - My God! you haven't any socks on!" Bellchambers looked down at his sandaled feet and smiled. "You fellows don't understand," he said, soothingly. "It's nice of you to want me to go back, but the old life will never know me again. I have reached here the goal of all my ambitions. I am entirely happy and contented. Here I shall remain for the remainder of my days. You see this robe that I wear?" Bellchambers caressingly touched the straight-hanging garment: "At last I have found something that will not bag at the knees. I have attained -" At that moment the deep boom of the great brass bell reverberated through the monastery. It must have been a summons to immediate devotions, for Brother Ambrose bowed his head, turned and left the chamber without another word. A slight wave of his hand as he passed through the stone doorway seemed to say a farewell to his old friends. They left the monastery without seeing him again. And this is the story that Tommy Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam brought back with them from their latest European tour. The Rose of Dixie When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, and Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, fit, and logical editor. So, a committee of the patriotic Georgia citizens who had subscribed the founding fund of $100,000 called upon Colonel Telfair at his residence, Cedar Heights, fearful lest the enterprise and the South should suffer by his possible refusal. The colonel received them in his great library, where he spent most of his days. The library had descended to him from his father. It contained ten thousand volumes, some of which had been published as late as the year 1861. When the deputation arrived, Colonel Telfair was seated at his massive white-pine centre-table, reading Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. He arose and shook hands punctiliously with each member of the committee. If you were familiar with The Rose of Dixie you will remember the colonel's portrait, which appeared in it from time to time. You could not forget the long, carefully brushed white hair; the hooked, high-bridged nose, slightly twisted to the left; the keen eyes under the still black eyebrows; the classic mouth beneath the drooping white mustache, slightly frazzled at the ends. The committee solicitously offered him the position of managing editor, humbly presenting an outline of the field that the publication was designed to cover and mentioning a comfortable salary. The colonel's lands were growing poorer each year and were much cut up by red gullies. Besides, the honor was not one to be refused. In a forty-minute speech of acceptance, Colonel Telfair gave an outline of English literature from Chaucer to Macaulay, re-fought the battle of Chancellorsville, and said that, God helping him, he would so conduct The Rose of Dixie that its fragrance and beauty would permeate the entire world, hurling back into the teeth of the Northern minions their belief that no genius or good could exist in the brains and hearts of the people whose property they had destroyed and whose rights they had curtailed. Offices for the magazine were partitioned off and furnished in the second floor of the First National Bank building; and it was for the colonel to cause The Rose of Dixie to blossom and flourish or to wilt in the balmy air of the land of flowers. The staff of assistants and contributors that Editor-Colonel Telfair drew about him was a peach. It was a whole crate of Georgia peaches. The first assistant editor, Tolliver Lee Fairfax, had had a father killed during Pickett's charge. The second assistant, Keats Unthank, was the nephew of one of Morgan's Raiders. The book reviewer, Jackson Rockingham, had been the youngest soldier in the Confederate army, having appeared on the field of battle with a sword in one hand and a milk-bottle in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, was a third cousin to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss Lavinia Terhune, the colonel's stenographer and typewriter, had an aunt who had once been kissed by Stonewall Jackson. Tommy Webster, the head office-boy, got his job by having recited Father Ryan's poems, complete, at the commencement exercises of the Toombs City High School. The girls who wrapped and addressed the magazines were members of old Southern families in Reduced Circumstances. The cashier was a scrub named Hawkins, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommendations and a bond from a guarantee company filed with the owners. Even Georgia stock companies sometimes realize that it takes live ones to bury the dead. Well, sir, if you believe me, The Rose of Dixie blossomed five times before anybody heard of it except the people who buy their hooks and eyes in Toombs City. Then Hawkins climbed off his stool and told on 'em to the stock company. Even in Ann Arbor he had been used to having his business propositions heard of at least as far away as Detroit. So an advertising manager was engaged -- Beauregard Fitzhugh Banks, a young man in a lavender necktie, whose grandfather had been the Exalted High Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan. In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out every month. Although in every issue it ran photos of either the Taj Mahal or the Luxembourg Gardens, or Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of people bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor- Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jackson's old home, "The Hermitage," a full-page engraving of the second battle of Manassas, entitled "Lee to the Rear!" and a five-thousand-word biography of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue by Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the Haricots of Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thompson, nephew of one of the stockholders. And an article from a special society correspondent describing a tea-party given by the swell Boston and English set, where a lot of tea was spilled overboard by some of the guests masquerading as Indians. One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a mirror, he was so much alive, entered the office of The Rose of Dixie. He was a man about the size of a real-estate agent, with a self-tied tie and a manner that he must have borrowed conjointly from W J. Bryan, Hackenschmidt, and Hetty Green. He was shown into the editor- colonel's pons asinorum. Colonel Telfair rose and began a Prince Albert bow. "I'm Thacker," said the intruder, taking the editor's chair--"T. T. Thacker, of New York." He dribbled hastily upon the colonel's desk some cards, a bulky manila envelope, and a letter from the owners of The Rose of Dixie. This letter introduced Mr. Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair to give him a conference and whatever information about the magazine he might desire. "I've been corresponding with the secretary of the magazine owners for some time," said Thacker, briskly. "I'm a practical magazine man myself, and a circulation booster as good as any, if I do say it. I'll guarantee an increase of anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred thousand a year for any publication that isn't printed in a dead language. I've had my eye on The Rose of Dixie ever since it started. I know every end of the business from editing to setting up the classified ads. Now, I've come down here to put a good bunch of money in the magazine, if I can see my way clear. It ought to be made to pay. The secretary tells me it's losing money. I don't see why a magazine in the South, if it's properly handled, shouldn't get a good circulation in the North, too. "Colonel Telfair leaned back in his chair and polished his gold-rimmed glasses. "Mr. Thacker," said he, courteously but firmly, "The Rose of Dixie is a publication devoted to the fostering and the voicing of Southern genius. Its watchword, which you may have seen on the cover, is 'Of, For, and By the South.'" "But you wouldn't object to a Northern circulation, would you?" asked Thacker. "I suppose," said the editor-colonel, "that it is customary to open the circulation lists to all. I do not know. I have nothing to do with the business affairs of the magazine. I was called upon to assume editorial control of it, and I have devoted to its conduct such poor literary talents as I may possess and whatever store of erudition I may have acquired." "Sure," said Thacker. "But a dollar is a dollar anywhere, North, South, or West--whether you're buying codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford cantaloupes. Now, I've been looking over your November number. I see one here on your desk. You don't mind running over it with me? "Well, your leading article is all right. A good write-up of the cotton-belt with plenty of photographs is a winner any time. New York is always interested in the cotton crop. And this sensational account of Hatfield-McCoy feud, by a schoolmate of a niece of the Governor of Kentucky, isn't such a bad idea. It happened so long ago that most people have forgotten it. Now, here's a poem three pages long called 'The Tyrant's Foot,' by Lorella Lascelles. I've pawed around a good deal over manuscripts, but I never saw her name on a rejection slip." "Miss Lascelles," said the editor, "is one of our most widely recognized Southern poetesses. She is closely related to the Alabama Lascelles family, and made with her own hands the silken Confederate banner that was presented to the governor of that state at his inauguration." "But why," persisted Thacker, "is the poem illustrated with a view of the M. & 0. Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?" "The illustration," said the colonel, with dignity, "shows a corner of the fence surrounding the old homestead where Miss Lascelles was born." "All right," said Thacker. "I read the poem, but I couldn't tell whether it was about the depot of the battle of Bull Run. Now, here's a short story called 'Rosies' Temptation,' by Fosdyke Piggott. It's rotten. What is a Piggott, anyway?" "Mr. Piggott," said the editor, "is a brother of the principal stockholder of the magazine." "All's right with the world--Piggott passes," said Thacker. "Well this article on Arctic exploration and the one on tarpon fishing might go. But how about this write-up of the Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, and Savannah breweries? It seems to consist mainly of statistics about their output and the quality of their beer. What's the chip over the bug?" "If I understand your figurative language," answered Colonel Telfair, "it is this: the article you refer to was handed to me by the owners of the magazine with instructions to publish it. The literary quality of it did not appeal to me. But, in a measure, I feel impelled to conform, in certain matters, to the wishes of the gentlemen who are interested in the financial side of The Rose." "I see," said Thacker. "Next we have two pages of selections from 'Lalla Rookh,' by Thomas Moore. Now, what Federal prison did Moore escape from, or what's the name of the F. F. V. family that he carries as a handicap?" "Moore was an Irish poet who died in 1852," said Colonel Telfair, pityingly. "He is a classic. I have been thinking of reprinting his translation of Anacreon serially in the magazine." "Look out for the copyright laws," said Thacker, flippantly. Who's Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the essay on the newly completed water-works plant in Milledgeville?" "The name, sir," said Colonel Telfair, "is the nom de guerre of Miss Elvira Simpkins. I have not the honor of knowing the lady; but her contribution was sent to us by Congressman Brower, of her native state. Congressman Brower's mother was related to the Polks of Tennessee. "Now, see here, Colonel," said Thacker, throwing down the magazine, "this won't do. You can't successfully run a magazine for one particular section of the country. You've got to make a universal appeal. Look how the Northern publications have catered to the South and encouraged the Southern writers. And you've got to go far and wide for your contributors. You've got to buy stuff according to its quality without any regard to the pedigree of the author. Now, I'll bet a quart of ink that this Southern parlor organ you've been running has never played a note that originated about Mason & Hamlin's line. Am I right?" "I have carefully and conscientiously rejected all contributions from that section of the country--if I understand your figurative language aright," replied the colonel. "All right. Now I'll show you something." Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and dumped a mass of typewritten manuscript on the editors desk. "Here's some truck," said he, "that I paid cash for, and brought along with me." One by one he folded back the manuscripts and showed their first pages to the colonel. Here are four short stories four of the highest priced authors in the United States--three of 'em living in New York, and one commuting. There's a special article on Vienna-bred society by Tom Vampson. Here's an Italian serial by Captain Jack--no--it's the other Crawford. Here are three separate exposes of city governments by Sniffings, and here's a dandy entitled 'What Women Carry in Dress-Suit Cases'--a Chicago newspaper woman hired herself out for five years as a lady's maid to get that information. And here's a Synopsis of Preceding Chapters of Hall Caine's new serial to appear next June. And here's a couple of pounds of vers de societe that I got at a rate from the clever magazines. That's the stuff that people everywhere want. And now here's a writeup with photographs at the ages of four, twelve, twenty-two, and thirty of George B. McClellan. It's a prognostication. He's bound to be elected Mayor of New York. It '11 make a big hit all over the country. He--" "I beg your pardon," said Colonel Telfair, stiffening in his chair. "What was the name?" "Oh, I see," said Thacker, with half a grin. Yes, he's a son of the General. We'll pass that manuscript up. But, if you'll excuse me, Colonel, it's a magazine we're trying to make go off--not the first gun at Fort Sumter. Now, here's a thing that's bound to get next to you. It's an original poem by James Whitcomb Riley. J.W. himself. You know what that means to a magazine. I won't tell you what I had to pay for that poem; but I'll tell you this--Riley can make more money writing with a fountain-pen than you or I can with one that lets the ink run. I'll read you the last two stanzas: "'Pa lays around 'n' loafs all day,'N' reads and makes us leave him be.He lets me do just like I please,'N' when I'm in bad he laughs at me,'N' when I holler loud 'n' sayBad words 'n' then begin to teaseThe cat, 'n' pa just smiles, ma's mad'N' gives me Jesse crost her knees.I always wondered why that wuz-I guess it's causePa never does. "''N' after all the lights are outI'm sorry 'bout it; so I creepOut of my trundle bed to ma's'N' say I love her a whole heap,'N' kiss her, 'n' I hug her tight.'N' it's too dark to see her eyes,But every time I do I knowShe cries 'n' cries 'n' cries 'n' cries.I always wondered why that wuz-I guess it's 'causePa never does.'"That's the stuff," continued Thacker. "What do you think of that?" "I am not unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Riley," said the colonel, deliberately. "I believe he lives in Indiana. For the last ten years I have been somewhat of a literary recluse, and am familiar with nearly all the books in the Cedar Heights library. I am also of the opinion that a magazine should contain a certain amount of poetry. Many of the sweetest singers of the South have already contributed to the pages of The Rose of Dixie. I, myself, have thought of translating from the original for publication in its pages the works of the great Italian poet Tasso. Have you ever drunk from the fountain of this immortal poet's lines, Mr. Thacker?" "Not even a demi-Tasso," said Thacker. Now, let's come to the point, Colonel Telfair. I've already invested some money in this as a flyer. That bunch of manuscripts cost me $4,000. My object was to try a number of them in the next issue-I believe you make up less than a month ahead--and see what effect it has on the circulation. I believe that by printing the best stuff we can get in the North, South, East, or West we can make the magazine go. You have there the letter from the owning company asking you to co-operate with me in the plan. Let's chuck out some of this slush that you've been publishing just because the writers are related to the Skoopdoodles of Skoopdoodle County. Are you with me?" "As long as I continue to be the editor of The Rose," said Colonel Telfair, with dignity, "I shall be its editor. But I desire also to conform to the wishes of its owners if I can do so conscientiously." "That's the talk," said Thacker, briskly. "Now, how much of this stuff I've brought can we get into the January number? We want to begin right away." "There is yet space in the January number," said the editor, "for about eight thousand words, roughly estimated." "Great!" said Thacker. "It isn't much, but it'll give the readers some change from goobers, governors, and Gettysburg. I'll leave the selection of the stuff I brought to fill the space to you, as it's all good. I've got to run back to New York, and I'll be down again in a couple of weeks." Colonel Telfair slowly swung his eye-glasses by their broad, black ribbon. "The space in the January number that I referred to," said he, measuredly, "has been held open purposely, pending a decision that I have not yet made. A short time ago a contribution was submitted to The Rose of Dixie that is one of the most remarkable literary efforts that has ever come under my observation. None but a master mind and talent could have produced it. It would just fill the space that I have reserved for its possible use." Thacker looked anxious. "What kind of stuff is it?" he asked. "Eight thousand words sounds suspicious. The oldest families must have been collaborating. Is there going to be another secession ?" "The author of the article," continued the colonel, ignoring Thacker's allusions, "is a writer of some reputation. He has also distinguished himself in other ways. I do not feel at liberty to reveal to you his name--at least not until I have decided whether or not to accept his contribution." "Well," said Thacker, nervously, "is it a continued story, or an account of the unveiling of the new town pump in Whitmire, South Carolina, or a revised list of General Lee's body-servants, or what?" "You are disposed to be facetious," said Colonel Telfair, calmly. "The article is from the pen of a thinker, a philosopher, a lover of mankind, a student, and a rhetorician of high degree." "It must have been written by a syndicate," said Thacker. "But, honestly, Colonel, you want to go slow. I don't know of any eight- thousand-word single doses of written matter that are read by anybody these days, except Supreme Court briefs and reports of murder trials. You haven't by any accident gotten hold of a copy of one of Daniel Webster's speeches, have you?" Colonel Telfair swung a little in his chair and looked steadily from under his bushy eyebrows at the magazine promoter. "Mr. Thacker," he said, gravely, "I am willing to segregate the somewhat crude expression of your sense of humor from the solicitude that your business investments undoubtedly have conferred upon you. But I must ask you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon the South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not be tolerated in the office of The Rose of Dixie for one moment. And before you proceed with more of your covert insinuations that I, the editor of this magazine, am not a competent judge of the merits of the matter submitted to its consideration, I beg that you will first present some evidence or proof that you are my superior in any way, shape, or form relative to the question in hand." "Oh, come, Colonel," said Thacker, good-naturedly. "I didn't do anything like that to you. It sounds like an indictment by the fourth assistant attorney-general. Let's get back to business. What's this 8,000 to 1 shot about?" "The article," said Colonel Telfair, acknowledging the apology by a slight bow, "covers a wide area of knowledge. It takes up theories and questions that have puzzled the world for centuries, and disposes of them logically and concisely. One by one it holds up to view the evils of the world, points out the way of eradicating them; and then conscientiously and in detail comments the good. There is hardly a phase of human life that it does not discuss wisely, calmly, and equitably. The great policies of governments, the duties of private citizens, the obligations of home life, law, ethics, morality--all these important subjects are handled with a calm wisdom and confidence that I must confess has captured my admiration." "It must be a crackerjack," said Thacker, impressed. "It is a great contribution to the world's wisdom," said the colonel. "The only doubt remaining in my mind as to the tremendous advantage it would be to us to give it publication in The Rose of Dixie is that I have not yet sufficient information about the author to give his work publicity in our magazine. "I thought you said he is a distinguished man," said Thacker. "He is," replied the colonel, "both in literary and in other more diversified and extraneous fields. But I am extremely careful about the matter that I accept for publication. My contributors are people of unquestionable repute and connections, which fact can be verified at any time. As I said, I am holding this article until I can acquire more information about its author. I do not know whether I will publish it or not. If I decide against it, I shall be much pleased, Mr. Thacker, to substitute the matter that you are leaving with me in its place." Thacker was somewhat at sea. "I don't seem to gather," said he, "much about the gist of this inspired piece of literature. It sounds more like a dark horse than Pegasus to me." "It is a human document," said the colonel-editor, confidently, "from a man of great accomplishments who, in my opinion, has obtained a stronger grasp on the world and its outcomes than that of any man living to-day." Thacker rose to his feet excitedly. "Say!" he said. "It isn't possible that you've cornered John D. Rockefeller's memoirs, is it? Don't tell me that all at once." No, sir," said Colonel Telfair. "I am speaking of mentality and literature not of the less worthy intricacies of trade." Well, what's the trouble about running the article," asked Thacker, a little impatiently, "if the man's well known and has got the stuff ?" Colonel Telfair sighed. "Mr. Thacker," said he, "for once I have been tempted. Nothing has yet appeared in The Rose of Dixie that has not been from the pen of one of its sons or daughters. I know little about the author of this article except that he has acquired prominence in a section of the country that has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have instituted an investigation of his personality. Perhaps it will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is finished, I must leave open the question of filling the vacant space in our January number." Thacker arose to leave. "All right, Colonel," he said, as cordially as he could. "You use your own judgment. If you've really got a scoop or something that will make 'em sit up, run it instead of my stuff. I'll drop in again in about two weeks. Good luck!" Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook hands. Returning a fortnight later, Thacker dropped off a very rocky Pullman at Toombs City. He found the January number of the magazine made up and the forms closed. The vacant space that had been yawning for type was filled by an article that was headed thus: SECOND MESSAGE TO CONGRESS Written for THE ROSE OF DIXIE BY A Member of the Well-known BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA T. Roosevelt Round The Circle "Find yo' shirt all right, Sam?" asked Mrs. Webber, from her chair under the live-oak, where she was comfortably seated with a paper- back volume for company. "It balances perfeckly, Marthy," answered Sam, with a suspicious pleasantness in his tone. "At first I was about ter be a little reckless and kick 'cause ther buttons was all off, but since I diskiver that the button holes is all busted out, why, I wouldn't go so fur as to say the buttons is any loss to speak of." "Oh, well," said his wife, carelessly, "put on your necktie--that'll keep it together." Sam Webber's sheep ranch was situated in the loneliest part of the country between the Nueces and the Frio. The ranch house--a two-room box structure--was on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the midst of a wilderness of high chaparral. In front of it was a small clearing where stood the sheep pens, shearing shed, and wool house. Only a few feet back of it began the thorny jungle. Sam was going to ride over to the Chapman ranch to see about buying some more improved merino rams. At length he came out, ready for his ride. This being a business trip of some importance, and the Chapman ranch being almost a small town in population and size, Sam had decided to "dress up" accordingly. The result was that he had transformed himself from a graceful, picturesque frontiersman into something much less pleasing to the sight. The tight white collar awkwardly constricted his muscular, mahogany-colored neck. The buttonless shirt bulged in stiff waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. The suit of "ready-made" effectually concealed the fine lines of his straight, athletic figure. His berry-brown face was set to the melancholy dignity befitting a prisoner of state. He gave Randy, his three-year-old son, a pat on the head, and hurried out to where Mexico, his favorite saddle horse, was standing. Marthy, leisurely rocking in her chair, fixed her place in the book with her finger, and turned her head, smiling mischievously as she noted the havoc Sam had wrought with his appearance in trying to "fix up." ~Well, ef I must say it, Sam," she drawled, "you look jest like one of them hayseeds in the picture papers, 'stead of a free and independent sheepman of the State o' Texas." Sam climbed awkwardly into the saddle. "You're the one ought to be 'shamed to say so," he replied hotly. "'Stead of 'tendin' to a man's clothes you're al'ays setting around a-readin' them billy-by-dam yaller-back novils." "Oh, shet up and ride along," said Mrs. Webber, with a little jerk at the handles of her chair; "you always fussin' 'bout my readin'. I do a-plenty; and I'll read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like a varmint, never seein' nor hearin' nothin', and what other 'musement kin I have? Not in listenin' to you talk, for it's complain, complain, one day after another. Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace." Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and "shoved" down the wagon trail that connected his ranch with the old, open Government road. It was eight o'clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He should have started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only eighteen miles away, but there was a road for only three miles of the distance. He had ridden over there once with one of the Half-Moon cowpunchers, and he had the direction well-defined in his mind. Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and struck down the arroyo of the Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch of smiling valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite grass; and Mexico consumed those few miles quickly with his long, easy lope. Again, upon reaching Wild Duck Waterhole, must he abandon well-defined ways. He turned now to his right up a little hill, pebble-covered, upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny prickly pear and chaparral. At the summit of this he paused to take his last general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through brakes and thickets of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part seeing scarcely farther than twenty yards in any direction, choosing his way by the prairie-dweller's instinct, guided only by an occasional glimpse of a far distant hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or the position of the sun. Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat that lies between the Quintanilla and the Piedra. In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was anxious to redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master's sureness of the route had failed his horse had divined the fact. There were no hills now that they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They came upon a few, but so dense and interlaced was the brush that scarcely could a rabbit penetrate the mass. They were in the great, lonely thicket of the Frio bottoms. It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheepman to be lost for a day or a night. The thing often happened. It was merely a matter of missing a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blankets on a soft mattress of mesquite grass. But in Sam's case it was different. He had never been away from his ranch at night. Marthy was afraid of the country--afraid of Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, even of sheep. So he had never left her alone. It must have been about four in the afternoon when Sam's conscience awoke. He was limp and drenched, rather from anxiety than the heat or fatigue. Until now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to the Frio crossing and the Chapman ranch. He must have crossed it at some dim part of it and ridden beyond. If so he was now something like fifty miles from home. If he could strike a ranch-- a camp--any place where he could get a fresh horse and inquire the road, he would ride all night to get back to Marthy and the kid. So, I have hinted, Sam was seized bv remorse. There was a big lump in his throat as he thought of the cross words he had spoken to his wife. Surely it was hard enough for her to live in that horrible country witnout having to bear the burden of his abuse. He cursed himself grimly, and felt a sudden flush of shame that over-glowed the summer heat as he remembered the many times he had flouted and railed at her because she had a liking for reading fiction. "Ther only so'ce ov amusement ther po' gal's got," said Sam aloud, with a sob, which unaccustomed sound caused Mexico to shy a bit. A-livin with a sore-headed kiote like me--a low-down skunk that ought to be licked to death with a saddle cinch--a-cookin' and a-washin' and a-livin' on mutton and beans and me abusin' her fur takin' a squint or two in a little book!" He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in Dogtown--smart, pretty, and saucy--before the sun had turned the roses in her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her ambitions. "Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little gal," muttered Sam, "or fails in the love and affection that's coming to her in the deal, I hopes a wildcat'll t'ar me to pieces." He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his San Antonio merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool, and have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for Marthy. Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a little piano could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house without the family having to move out of doors. In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong arm with a sigh of peaceful content and dependence. And were her fears so groundless? Sam thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that sometimes invaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would cry, and call for dada to come. Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and mesquite. Hollow after hollow, slope after slope--all exactly alike --all familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he could only arrive somewhere. The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward man is more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in the snow travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their footprints have attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other mental processes frequently wind up at their starting-point. It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves that Mexico, with a heavy sigh, subsided from his regular, brisk trot into a slow complacent walk. They were winding up an easy slope covered with brush ten or twelve feet high. "I say now, Mex," demurred Sam, "this here won't do. I know you're plumb tired out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, ain't there no mo' houses in the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick with his heels. Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: "What's the use of that, now we're so near?" He quickened his gait into a languid trot. Rounding a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam dropped the bridle reins and sat, looking into the back door of his own house, not ten yards away. Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking-chair before the door in the shade of the house, with her feet resting luxuriously upon the steps. Randy, who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground, looked up for a moment at his father and went on spinning the rowels and singing a little song. Marthy turned her head lazily against the back of the chair and considered the arrivals with emotionless eyes. She held a book in her lap with her finger holding the place. Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming out of a dream, and slowly dismounted. He moistened his dry lips. "I see you are still a-settin'," he said, "a-readin' of them billy- by-dam yaller-back novils." Sam had traveled round the circle and was himself again. Rus in Urbe Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money than they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the least liking for the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer Grenville North pretty well, although he had something like two or ten or thirty millions-- I've forgotten exactly how many. I did not leave town that summer. I usually went down to a village on the south shore of Long Island. The place was surrounded by duck- farms, and the ducks and dogs and whippoorwills and rusty windmills made so much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied: "Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort in the world." You have heard that phrase before. But that is what I told him. I was press-agent that year for Binkly & Bing, the theatrical managers and producers. Of course you know what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the secret of being one. Binkly was touring France in his new C. & N. Williamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York, which I had decided was the finest summer resort in-- But I said that before. On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of course it was in the woods--if Mr. Pinchot wants to preserve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved. North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, extra charge for light when used extravagantly or all night. He slapped me on the back (I would rather have my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with out-door obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively well dressed. "Just ran down for a few days," said he, "to sign some papers and stuff like that. My lawyer wired me to come. Well, you indolent cockney, what are you doing in town? I took a chance and telephoned, and they said you were here. What's the matter with that Utopia on Long Island where you used to take your typewriter and your villanous temper every summer? Anything wrong with the--er--swans, weren't they, that used to sing on the farms at night?" "Ducks," said I. "The songs of swans are for luckier ears. They swim and curve their necks in artificial lakes on the estates of the wealthy to delight the eyes of the favorites of Fortune." "Also in Central Park," said North, "to delight the eyes of immigrants and bummers. I've seen em there lots of times. But why are you in the city so late in the summer?" "New York City," I began to recite, "is the finest sum--" "No, you don't," said North, emphatically. "You don't spring that old one on me. I know you know better. Man, you ought to have gone up with us this summer. The Prestons are there, and Tom Volney and the Monroes and Lulu Stanford and the Miss Kennedy and her aunt that you liked so well." "I never liked Miss Kennedy's aunt," I said. "I didn't say you did," said North. "We are having the greatest time we've ever had. The pickerel and trout are so ravenous that I believe they would swallow your hook with a Montana copper-mine prospectus fastened on it. And we've a couple of electric launches; and I'll tell you what we do every night or two--we tow a rowboat behind each one with a big phonograph and a boy to change the discs in 'em. On the water, and twenty yards behind you, they are not so bad. And there are passably good roads through the woods where we go motoring. I shipped two cars up there. And the Pinecliff Inn is only three miles away. You know the Pinecliff. Some good people are there this season, and we run over to the dances twice a week. Can't you go back with me for a week, old man?" I laughed. "Northy," said I--"if I may be so familiar with a millionaire, because I hate both the names Spencer and Grenville--your invitation is meant kindly, but--the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived-barring, thank heaven, the fiddling-while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for trout, you know, yourself, that Jean, at Maurice's, cooks them better than any one else in the world." "Be advised," said North. "My chef has pinched the blue ribbon from the lot. He lays some slices of bacon inside the trout, wraps it all in corn-husks--the husks of green corn, you know--buries them in hot ashes and covers them with live coals. We build fires on the bank of the lake and have fish suppers." "I know," said I. "And the servants bring down tables and chairs and damask cloths, and you eat with silver forks. I know the kind of camps that you millionaires have. And therc are champagne pails set about, disgracing the wild flowers, and, no doubt, Madame Tetrazzini to sing in the boat pavilion after the trout." "Oh no," said North, concernedly, "we were never as bad as that. We did have a variety troupe up from the city three or four nights, but they weren't stars by as far as light can travel in the same length of time. I always like a few home comforts even when I'm roughing it. But don't tell me you prefer to stay in the city during summer. I don't believe it. If you do, why did you spend your summers there for the last four years, even sneaking away from town on a night train, and refusing to tell your friends where this Arcadian village was?" "Because," said I, "they might have followed me and discovered it. But since then I have learned that Amaryllis has come to town. The coolest things, the freshest, the brightest, the choicest, are to be found in the city. If you've nothing on hand this evening I will show you." "I'm free," said North, "and I have my light car outside. I suppose, since you've been converted to the town, that your idea of rural sport is to have a little whirl between bicycle cops in Central Park and then a mug of sticky ale in some stuffy rathskeller under a fan that can't stir up as many revolutions in a week as Nicaragua can in a day." "We'll begin with the spin through the Park, anyhow," I said. I was choking with the hot, stale air of my little apartment, and I wanted that breath of the cool to brace me for the task of proving to my friend that New York was the greatest--and so forth. "Where can you find air any fresher or purer than this?" I asked, as we sped into Central's boskiest dell. "Air!" said North, contemptuously. "Do you call this air?--this muggy vapor, smelling of garbage and gasoline smoke. Man, I wish you could get one sniff of the real Adirondack article in the pine woods at daylight." "I have heard of it," said I. "But for fragrance and tang and a joy in the nostrils I would not give one puff of sea breeze across the bay, down on my little boat dock on Long Island, for ten of your turpentine-scented tornadoes." "Then why," asked North, a little curiously, "don't you go there instead of staying cooped up in this Greater Bakery?" "Because," said I, doggedly, "I have discovered that New York is the greatest summer--" "Don't say that again," interrupted North, "unless you've actually got a job as General Passenger Agent of the Subway. You can't really believe it." I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to my friend. The Weather Bureau and the season had conspired to make the argument worthy of an able advocate. The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above the furnaces of Avernus. There was a kind of tepid gayety afoot and awheel in the boulevards, mainly evinced by languid men strolling about in straw hats and evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags up, looking like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. The hotels kept up a specious brilliancy and hospitable outlook, but inside one saw vast empty caverns, and the footrails at the bars gleamed brightly from long disacquaintance with the sole-leather of customers. In the cross-town streets the steps of the old brownstone houses were swarming with "stoopers," that motley race hailing from sky-light room and basement, bringing out their straw doorstep mats to sit and fill the air with strange noises and opinions. North and I dined on the top of a hotel; and here, for a few minutes, I thought I had made a score. An east wind, almost cool, blew across the roofless roof. A capable orchestra concealed in a bower of wistaria played with sufficient judgment to make the art of music probable and the art of conversation possible. Some ladies in reproachless summer gowns at other tables gave animation and color to the scene. And an excellent dinner, mainly from the refrigerator, seemed to successfully back my judgment as to summer resorts. But North grumbled all during the meal, and cursed his lawyers and prated so of his confounded camp in the woods that I began to wish he would go back there and leave me in my peaceful city retreat. After dining we went to a roof-garden vaudeville that was being much praised. There we found a good bill, an artificially cooled atmosphere, cold drinks, prompt service, and a gay, well-dressed audience. North was bored. "If this isn't comfortable enough for you on the hottest August night for five years," I said, a little sarcastically, "you might think about the kids down in Delancey and Hester streets lying out on the fire-escapes with their tongues hanging out, trying to get a breath of air that hasn't been fried on both sides. The contrast might increase your enjoyment." "Don't talk Socialism," said North. "I gave five hundred dollars to the free ice fund on the first of May. I'm contrasting these stale, artificial, hollow, wearisome 'amusements' with the enjoyment a man can get in the woods. You should see the firs and pines do skirt- dances during a storm; and lie down flat and drink out of a mountain branch at the end of a day's tramp after the deer. That's the only way to spend a summer. Get out and live with nature." "I agree with you absolutely," said I, with emphasis. For one moment I had relaxed my vigilance, and had spoken my true sentiments. North looked at me long and curiously. "Then why, in the name of Pan and Apollo," he asked, "have you been singing this deceitful paean to summer in town?" I suppose I looked my guilt. "Ha," said North, "I see. May I ask her name?" "Annie Ashton," said I, simply. "She played Nannette in Binkley & Bing's production of The Silver Cord. She is to have a better part next season." "Take me to see her," said North. Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. They were out of the West, and had a little money that bridged the seasons. As press- agent of Binkley & Bing I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert James Vandiver I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, it was the Ashton set forth above. But she had a soul above ducks--above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & Bing's press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial role. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone. Miss Ashton would be very glad to see Mr. Vandiver and Mr. North. We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I never saw her look more charming. North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He was a good talker, and had a way with him. Besides, he had two, ten, or thirty millions, I've for gotten which. I incautiously admired the mother's cap, whereupon she brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a course in edgings and frills. Even though Annie's fingers had pinked, or ruched, or hemmed, or whatever you do to 'em, they palled upon me. And I could hear North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack camp. Two days after that I saw North in his motor-car with Miss Ashton and her mother. On the next afternoon he dropped in on me. "Bobby," said he, "this old burg isn't such a bad proposition in the summer-time, after all. Since I've keen knocking around it looks better to me. There are some first-rate musical comedies and light operas on the roofs and in the outdoor gardens. And if you hunt up the right places and stick to soft drinks, you can keep about as cool here as you can in the country. Hang it! when you come to think of it, there's nothing much to the country, anyhow. You get tired and sunburned and lonesome, and you have to eat any old thing that the cook dishes up to you." "It makes a difference, doesn't it?" said I. "It certainly does. Now, I found some whitebait yesterday, at Maurice's, with a new sauce that beats anything in the trout line I ever tasted." "It makes a difference, doesn't it?" I said. "Immense. The sauce is the main thing with whitebait." "It makes a difference, doesn't it?" I asked, looking him straight in the eye. He understood. "Look here, Bob," he said, "I was going to tell you. I couldn't help it. I'll play fair with you, but I'm going in to win. She is the 'one particular' for me." "All right," said I. "It's a fair field. There are no rights for you to encroach upon." On Thursday afternoon Miss Ashton invited North and myself to have tea in her apartment. He was devoted, and she was more charming than usual. By avoiding the subject of caps I managed to get a word or two into and out of the talk. Miss Ashton asked me in a make- conversational tone something about the next season's tour. "Oh," said I, "I don't know about that. I'm not going to be with Binkley & Bing next season." "Why, I thought," said she, "that they were going to put the Number One road company under your charge. I thought you told me so." "They were," said I, "but they won't.. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to the south shore of Long Island and buy a small cottage I know there on the edge of the bay. And I'll buy a catboat and a rowboat and a shotgun and a yellow dog. I've got money enough to do it. And I'll smell the salt wind all day when it blows from the sea and the pine odor when it blows from the land. And, of course, I'll write plays until I have a trunk full of 'em on hand. "And the next thing and the biggest thing I'll do will be to buy that duck-farm next door. Few people understand ducks. I can watch 'em for hours. They can march better than any company in the National Guard, and they can play 'follow my leader' better than the entire Democratic party. Their voices don't amount to much, but I like to hear 'em. They wake you up a dozen times a night, but there's a homely sound about their quacking that is more musical to me than the cry of 'Fresh strawber-rees!' under your window in the morning when you want to sleep. "And," I went on, enthusiastically, "do you know the value of ducks besides their beauty and intelligence and order and sweetness of voice? Picking their feathers gives you an unfailing and never ceasing income. On a farm that I know the feathers were sold for $400 in one year. Think of that! And the ones shipped to the market will bring in more money than that. Yes, I am for the ducks and the salt breeze coming over the bay. I think I shall get a Chinaman cook, and with him and the dog and the sunsets for company I shall do well. No more of this dull, baking, senseless, roaring city for me." Miss Ashton looked surprised. North laughed. "I am going to begin one of my plays tonight," I said, "so I must be going." And with that I took my departure. A few days later Miss Ashton telephoned to me, asking me to call at four in the afternoon. I did. "You have been very good to me," she said, hesitatingly, "and I thought I would tell you. I am going to leave the stage." "Yes," said I, "I suppose you will. They usually do when there's so much money." "There is no money," she said, "or very little. Our money is almost gone." "But I am told," said I, "that he has something like two or ten or thirty millions--I have forgotten which." "I know what you mean," she said. "I will not pretend that I do not. I am not going to marry Mr. North." "Then why are you leaving the stage ?" I asked, severely. "What else can you do to earn a living?" She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her eyes yet as she spoke. "I can pick ducks," she said. We sold the first year's feathers for $350. A Sacrifice Hit The editor of the Hearthstone Magazine his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eye- glasses. "The Hearthstone," he will say, "does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers." That is the editor's theory; and this is the way he carries it out: When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty --th street, the cook and maid at his home -- these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the Hearthstone Magazine. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and con- siders the verdict of his assorted readers. This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful record of speed. The Hearthstone Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works -- all recommended, says the editor, by the Hearthstone'8 army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the Hearthstone has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by other houses. For instance (the gossips say), "The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham" was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected "The Boss"; "In the Bishop's Carriage" was contemptuously looked upon by the street-car conductor; "The Deliver- ance" was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife's mother had just begun a two- months' visit at his home; "The Queen's Quair" came back from the janitor with the comment: "So is the book." But nevertheless the Hearthstone adheres to its theory and system, and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the Hearth- stone Company the manuscript of "The Under World"), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day. This method of the Hearthstone was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled "Love Is All." Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of every one in Gotham. He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS. around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories of sentimental love- interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor's stenographer. Another of the editor's peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports. Slayton made "Love Is All" the effort of his life. He gave it six months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate -- a prose poem that set the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven's choicest rewards. Slayton's literary ambition was intense. He would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered himself to the knife of the appendi- citis fancier to have realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the Hearthstone. Slayton finished "Love Is All," and took it to thy Hearthstone in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor. As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a potato masher flew through the hall, wreck- ing, Slayton's hat, and smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, tall woman with flying hair followed the missile. The janitor's foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily. Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor got to his feet, blown and humiliated. "This is married life," he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised humour. "That's the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about. Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don't snitch to the tenants about this, will yer? I don't want to lose me job." Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the Hearthstone. He left the MS. of "Love Is All" with the editor, who agreed to give, him an answer as to its availability at the end of a week. Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about carry- ing it into execution. Miss Puffkin, the Hearthstone stenographer, boarded in the same house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing, sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time before. The writer's daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin's judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of "Love Is All" was love at first sight -- the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling, feeling that com- pels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally! -- would she not surely indorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the Hearthstone the novelette "Love Is All" ? Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boarding-house. He quoted freely from "Love Is All"; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin's head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head. But Slayton did not stop at love-making. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he "went the limit." On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married. Brave Slayton! Chateaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chica-o, James kept on doing it, Dic Kens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame! On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the Hearthstone office, hand in one or two manu- ripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer. "Was there anything -- er -- that -- er -- you particu- larly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?" asked Slayton with a thumping heart. "There was one a novelette, that I liked so much," said his wife. "I haven't read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to life." That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the Hearth- stone office. He felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the Hearthstone, literary reputation would soon be his. The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor except at rare intervals. Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming success. He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more than the bulk of a thousand diecks. "The boss told me to tell you he's sorry," said the boy, "but your manuscript ain't available for the magazine." Slayton stood, dazed. "Can you tell me," he stammered, "whether or no Miss Puff -- that is my -- I mean Miss ruffkin -- handed in a novelette this morning that she had been asked to read?" "Sure she did," answered the office boy wisely. "I heard the old man say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, 'Married for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl's Triumph.'" "Say, you!" said the office boy confidentially, "your name's Slayton, ain't it? I guess I mixed cases on vou without meanin' to do it. The boss give me some manu- script to hand around the other day and I got the ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it's all right, though." And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title "Love Is All," the janitor's comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal: "The -- you say!" Schools and Schools I Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down-town broker, so rich that he could afford to walk--for his health--a few blocks in the direction of his office every morning, and then call a cab. He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert--Cyril Scott could play him nicely--who was becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the household was Barbara Ross, a stepniece. Man is born to trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the burdens of others. Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome's money in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be introduced. Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody else's fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic and the spelling St. Vitusy. It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish for the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them part. Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail- fence; and that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the turtle has to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like old Jerome. I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so, I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them? They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was frankly unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you would expect to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting glass balls or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black skirt she sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she swung along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain to wrest from her. "I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Barbara, pecking at the firm, sunburned cheek. "I hope so," said Nevada. "Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as welcome to my home as if it were your father's own." "Thanks," said Nevada. "And I am going to call you 'cousin,'" said Gilbert, with his charming smile. "Take the valise, please," said Nevada. "It weighs a million pounds. It's got samples from six of dad's old mines in it," she explained to Barbara. "I calculate they'd assay about nine cents to the thousand tons, but I promised him to bring them along." II It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and a nobleman, or--well, any of those problems--as the triangle. But they are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles--never equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert and Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that triangle Barbara formed the hypotenuse. One morning old Jerome was lingering long after breakfast over the dullest morning paper in the city before setting forth to his down- town fly-trap. He had become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her much of his dead brother's quiet independence and unsuspicious frankness. A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren. "A messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please," she said. "He's waiting for an answer." Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between her teeth, and watching the carriages and autos roll by in the street, took the envelope. She knew it was from Gilbert, before she opened it, by the little gold palette in the upper left-hand corner. After tearing it open she pored over the contents for a while, absorbedly. Then, with a serious face, she went and stood at her uncle's elbow. "Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn't he?" "Why, bless the child!" said old Jerome, crackling his paper loudly; "of course he is. I raised him myself." "He wouldn't write anything to anybody that wasn't exactly--I mean that everybody couldn't know and read, would he?" "I'd just like to see him try it," said uncle, tearing a handful from his newspaper. "Why, what--" "Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you think it's all right and proper. You see, I don't know much about city people and their ways." Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet upon it. He took Gilbert's note and fiercely perused it twice, and then a third time. "Why, child," said he, "you had me almost excited, although I was sure of that boy. He's a duplicate of his father, and he was a gilt-edged diamond. He only asks if you and Barbara will be ready at four o'clock this afternoon for an automobile drive over to Long Island. I don't see anything to criticise in it except the stationery. I always did hate that shade of blue." "Would it be all right to go?" asked Nevada, eagerly. "Yes, yes, yes, child; of course. Why not? Still, it pleases me to see you so careful and candid. Go, by all means." "I didn't know," said Nevada, demurely. "I thought I'd ask you. Couldn't you go with us, uncle?" "I? No, no, no, no! I've ridden once in a car that boy was driving. Never again! But it's entirely proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes, yes. But I will not. No, no, no, no!" Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid: "You bet we'll go. I'll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say to Mr. Warren, 'You bet we'll go.'" "Nevada," called old Jerome, "pardon me, my dear, but wouldn't it be as well to send him a note in reply? Just a line would do." "No, I won't bother about that," said Nevada, gayly. "Gilbert will understand--he always does. I never rode in an automobile in my life; but I've paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse Canon, and if it's any livelier than that I'd like to know!" III Two months are supposed to have elapsed. Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was a good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men and women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from divers difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering- places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyer's offices, beauty parlors, air-ships, and studies; and the greatest of these are studies. It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the longest side of a triangle. But it's a long line that has no turning. Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre. Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose taste for the oxidized-silver setting of a musical comedy. Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her right arm rested upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed letter. The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert's little gold palette. It had been delivered at nine o'clock, after Nevada had left. Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods, because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had too good a taste in stationery to make that possible. At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. it was a delicious winter night. Even so far as from the cab to the door they were powdered thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the cast. Old Jerome growled good-naturedly about villanous cab service and blockaded streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the mountains around dad's cabin. During all these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood--the only appropriate thing she could think of to do. Old Jerome went immediately up-stairs to hot-water-bottles and quinine. Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted room, subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task of unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits of the "show." "Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing--sometimes," said Barbara. "Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just after you had gone." "Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button. "Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert calls a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a school- girl's valentine." "I wonder what he's writing to me about" remarked Nevada, listlessly. "We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what is in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use scissors, and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is." She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada. "Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are a nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the hide off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get these gloves off!" "Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's for you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!" Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves. "Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said. "Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again to-morrow." Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter, with an indulgent, slightly bored air. "Well, dear," said she, "I'll read it if you want me to." She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling eyes; read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who, for the time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest, and letters from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars. For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth only the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than a twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face. Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman Swift as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another, sifts her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most hidden desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like hairs from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and fingers before letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental doubt. Long ago Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence in Paradise Park, bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he introduced. Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic eyebrow. "The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a palm. ''I suppose you've been there, of course?" "Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes have made your dress open a little in the back." So, then and there--according to the records--was the alliance formed by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed that woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass-though glass was yet to be discovered-to other women, and that she should palm herself off on man as a mystery. Barbara seemed to hesitate. "Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I-I'm sure it wasn't meant for any one else to know." Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment. "Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any one else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody should know it." "Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says: 'Dearest Nevada--Come to my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not fail.'" Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm awfully sorry," she said, "that I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I have such a headache. I'm sure I don't understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!" IV Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs. The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away. By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the city from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot deep on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling- ladders against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as quiet as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars- -sustaining the comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys. Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray, drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her. A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and weight. "Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?" "I--I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past him. The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib, full-fledged in intellect and wiles? Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well- remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art, was darkened and silent. The elevator stopped at ten. Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly at the door numbered "89." She had been there many times before, with Barbara and Uncle Jerome. Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in one hand, a green shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his mouth. The pipe dropped to the floor. "Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I could. Uncle and me were at the theatre this evening. Here I am, Gilbert!" Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed from a statue of stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted Nevada, got a whiskbroom, and began to brush the snow from her clothes. A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where the artist had been sketching in crayon. "You wanted me," said Nevada simply, " and I came. You said so in your letter. What did you send for me for?" "You read my letter?" inquired Gilbert, sparring for wind. "Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 'Come to my studio at twelve to-night, and do not fail.' I thought you were sick, of course, but you don't seem to be." "Aha!" said Gilbert irrelevantly. "I'll tell you why I asked you to come, Nevada. I want you to marry me immediately -- to-night. What's a little snow-storm? Will you do it?" "You might have noticed that I would, long ago," said Nevada. "And I'm rather stuck on the snow-storm idea, myself. I surely would hate one of these flowery church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn't know you had grit enough to propose it this way. Let's shock 'em--it's our funeral, ain't it?" "You bet!" said Gilbert. "Where did I hear that expression?" he added to himself. "Wait a minute, Nevada; I want to do a little 'phoning." He shut himself in a little dressing-room, and called upon the lightnings of tile heavens--condensed into unromantic numbers and districts. "That you, Jack? You confounded sleepyhead! Yes, wake up; this is me--or I--oh, bother the difference in grammar! I'm going to be married right away. Yes! Wake up your sister--don't answer me back; bring her along, too--you must!. Remind Agnes of the time I saved her from drowning in Lake Ronkonkoma--I know it's caddish to refer to it, but she must come with you. Yes. Nevada is here, waiting. We've been engaged quite a while. Some opposition among the relatives, you know, and we have to pull it off this way. We're waiting here for you. Don't let Agnes out-talk you--bring her! You will? Good old boy! I'll order a carriage to call for you, double-quick time. Confound you, Jack, you're all right!" Gilbert returned to the room where Nevada waited. "My old friend, Jack Peyton, and his sister were to have been here at a quarter to twelve," he explained; "but Jack is so confoundedly slow. I've just 'phoned them to hurry. They'll be here in a few minutes. I'm the happiest man in the world, Nevada! What did you do with the letter I sent you to-day ?" "I've got it cinched here," said Nevada, pulling it out from beneath her opera-cloak. Gilbert drew the letter from the envelope and looked it over carefully. Then he looked at Nevada thoughtfully. "Didn't you think it rather queer that I should ask you to come to my studio at midnight?" he asked. "Why, no," said Nevada, rounding her eyes. "Not if you needed me. Out West, when a pal sends you a hurry call--ain't that what you say here ?--we get there first and talk about it after the row is over. And it's usually snowing there, too, when things happen. So I didn't mind." Gilbert rushed into another room, and came back burdened with overcoats warranted to turn wind, rain, or snow. "Put this raincoat on," he said, holding it for her. "We have a quarter of a mile to go. Old Jack and his sister will be here in a few minutes." He began to struggle into a heavy coat. "Oh, Nevada," he said, "just look at the head-lines on the front page of that evening paper on the table, will you? It's about your section of the West, and I know it will interest you." He waited a full minute, pretending to find trouble in the getting on of his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada had not moved. She was looking at him with strange and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a flush on them beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind and snow; but her eyes were steady. "I was going to tell you," she said, "anyhow, before you--before we-- before-well, before anything. Dad never gave me a day of schooling. I never learned to read or write a darned word. Now if--" Pounding their uncertain way up-stairs, the feet of Jack, the somnolent, and Agnes, the grateful, were heard. V When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert s said: "Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter that you received to-night?" "Fire away!" said his bride. "Word for word," said Gilbert, "it was this: 'My dear Miss Warren-You were right about the flower. It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac.' "All right," said Nevada. "But let's forget it. The joke's on Barbara, anyway!" Seats of the Haughty Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across the Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found our Bombay of the West; and few be their trails that do not lead down to Broadway on their journey for to admire and for to see. If chance should ever lead you near a hotel that transiently shelters some one of these splendid touring grandees, I counsel you to seek Lucullus Polk among the republican tuft-hunters that besiege its entrances. He will be there. You will know him by his red, alert, Wellington-nosed face, by his manner of nervous caution mingled with determination, by his assumed promoter's or broker's air of busy impatience, and by his bright-red necktie, gallantly redressing the wrongs of his maltreated blue serge suit, like a battle standard still waving above a lost cause. I found him profitable; and so may you. When you do look for him, look among the light-horse troop of Bedouins that besiege the picket-line of the travelling potentate's guards and secretaries--among the wild-eyed genii of Arabian Afternoons that gather to make astounding and egregrious demands upon the prince's coffers. I first saw Mr. Polk coming down the steps of the hotel at which sojourned His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda, most enlightened of the Mahratta princes, who, of late, ate bread and salt in our Metropolis of the Occident. Lucullus moved rapidly, as though propelled by some potent moral force that imminently threatened to become physical. Behind him closely followed the impetus--a hotel detective, if ever white Alpine hat, hawk's nose, implacable watch chain, and loud refinement of manner spoke the truth. A brace of uniformed porters at his heels preserved the smooth decorum of the hotel, repudiating by their air of disengagement any suspicion that they formed a reserve squad of ejectment. Safe on the sidewalk, Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist at the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective in strange words: "Rides in howdays, does he?" he cried loudly and sneeringly. "Rides on elephants in howdahs and calls himself a prince! Kings--yah! Comes over here and talks horse till you would think he was a president; and then goes home and rides in a private dining-room strapped onto an elephant. Well, well, well!" The ejecting committee quietly retired. The scorner of princes turned to me and snapped his fingers. "What do you think of that?" he shouted derisively. "The Gaekwar of Baroda rides in an elephant in a howdah! And there's old Bikram Shamsher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a motor-cycle. Wouldn't that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he's got the palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea--wouldn't you think he could afford to amble around on a milk-white palfrey once in a dynasty or two? Nothing doing! His idea of a Balaklava charge is to tuck his skirts under him and do his mile in six days over the hog- wallows of Seoul in a bull-cart. That's the kind of visiting potentates that come to this country now. It's a hard deal, friend." I murmured a few words of sympathy. But it was uncomprehending, for I did not know his grievance against the rulers who flash, meteor-like, now and then upon our shores. "The last one I sold," continued the displeased one, "was to that three-horse-tailed Turkish pasha that came over a year ago. Five hundred dollars he paid for it, easy. I says to his executioner or secretary--he was a kind of a Jew or a Chinaman--'His Turkey Gibbets is fond of horses, then?' "'Him?' says the secretary. 'Well, no. He's got a big, fat wife in the harem named Bad Dora that he don't like. I believe he intends to saddle her up and ride her up and down the board-walk in the Bulbul Gardens a few times every day. You haven't got a pair of extra-long spurs you could throw in on the deal, have you?' Yes, sir; there's mighty few real rough-riders among the royal sports these days." As soon as Lucullus Polk got cool enough I picked him up, and with no greater effort than you would employ in persuading a drowning man to clutch a straw, I inveigled him into accompanying me to a cool corner in a dim cafe. And it came to pass that man-servants set before us brewage; and Lucullus Polk spake unto me, relating the wherefores of his beleaguering the antechambers of the princes of the earth. "Did you ever hear of the S.A. & A.P. Railroad in Texas? Well, that don't stand for Samaritan Actor's Aid Philanthropy. I was down that way managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to pieces when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of Beeville. I don't know what became of the rest of the company. I believe there were some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe was when I told them that forty-three cents was all the treasury contained. I say I never saw any of them after that; but I heard them for about twenty minutes. I didn't have time to look back. But after dark I came out of the woods and struck the S.A. & A.P. agent for means of transportation. He at once extended to me the courtesies of the entire railroad, kindly warning me, however, not to get aboard any of the rolling stock. "About ten the next morning I steps off the ties into a village that calls itself Atascosa City. I bought a thirty-cent breakfast and a ten-cent cigar, and stood on the Main Street jingling the three pennies in my pocket--dead broke. A man in Texas with only three cents in his pocket is no better off than a man that has no money and owes two cents. "One of luck's favourite tricks is to soak a man for his last dollar so quick that he don't have time to look it. There I was in a swell St. Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen- carat sulphate-of-copper scarf-pin, with no hope in sight except the two great Texas industries, the cotton fields and grading new railroads. I never picked cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick, so the outlook had ultramarine edges. "All of a sudden, while I was standing on the edge of the wooden sidewalk, down out of the sky falls two fine gold watches in the middle of the street. One hits a chunk of mud and sticks. The other falls hard and flies open, making a fine drizzle of little springs and screws and wheels. I looks up for a balloon or an airship; but not seeing any, I steps off the sidewalk to investigate. "But I hear a couple of yells and see two men running up the street in leather overalls and high-heeled boots and cartwheel hats. One man is six or eight feet high, with open-plumbed joints and a heartbroken cast of countenance. He picks up the watch that has stuck in the mud. The other man, who is little, with pink hair and white eyes, goes for the empty case, and says, 'I win.' Then the elevated pessimist goes down under his leather leg-holsters and hands a handful of twenty- dollar gold pieces to his albino friend. I don't know how much money it was; it looked as big as an earthquake-relief fund to me. "'I'll have this here case filled up with works,' says Shorty, 'and throw you again for five hundred.' "'I'm your company,' says the high man. 'I'll meet you at the Smoked Dog Saloon an hour from now.' "The little man hustles away with a kind of Swiss movement toward a jewelry store. The heartbroken person stoops over and takes a telescopic view of my haberdashery. "'Them's a mighty slick outfit of habiliments you have got on, Mr. Man,' says he. 'I'll bet a hoss you never acquired the right, title, and interest in and to them clothes in Atascosa City.' "'Why, no,' says I, being ready enough to exchange personalities with this moneyed monument of melancholy. 'I had this suit tailored from a special line of coatericks, vestures, and pantings in St. Louis. Would you mind putting me sane,' says I, 'on this watch-throwing contest? I've been used to seeing time-pieces treated with more politeness and esteem--except women's watches, of course, which by nature they abuse by cracking walnuts with 'em and having 'em taken showing in tintype pictures.' "'Me and George,' he explains, 'are up from the ranch, having a spell of fun. Up to last month we owned four sections of watered grazing down on the San Miguel. But along comes one of these oil prospectors and begins to bore. He strikes a gusher that flows out twenty thousand --or maybe it was twenty million--barrels of oil a day. And me and George gets one hundred and fifty thousand dollars--seventy-five thousand dollars apiece--for the land. So now and then we saddles up and hits the breeze for Atascosa City for a few days of excitement and damage. Here's a little bunch of the dinero that I drawed out of the bank this morning,' says he, and shows a roll of twenties and fifties as big around as a sleeping-car pillow. The yellowbacks glowed like a sunset on the gable end of John D.'s barn. My knees got weak, and I sat down on the edge of the board sidewalk. "'You must have knocked around a right smart,' goes on this oil Grease-us. 'I shouldn't be surprised if you have saw towns more livelier than what Atascosa City is. Sometimes it seems to me that there ought to be some more ways of having a good time than there is here, 'specially when you've got plenty of money and don't mind spending it.' "Then this Mother Cary's chick of the desert sits down by me and we hold a conversationfest. It seems that he was money-poor. He'd lived in ranch camps all his life; and he confessed to me that his supreme idea of luxury was to ride into camp, tired out from a round-up, eat a peck of Mexican beans, hobble his brains with a pint of raw whisky, and go to sleep with his boots for a pillow. When this barge-load of unexpected money came to him and his pink but perky partner, George, and they hied themselves to this clump of outhouses called Atascosa City, you know what happened to them. They had money to buy anything they wanted; but they didn't know what to want. Their ideas of spendthriftiness were limited to three--whisky, saddles, and gold watches. If there was anything else in the world to throw away fortunes on, they had never heard about it. So, when they wanted to have a hot time, they'd ride into town and get a city directory and stand in front of the principal saloon and call up the population alphabetically for free drinks. Then they would order three or four new California saddles from the storekeeper, and play crack-loo on the sidewalk with twenty-dollar gold pieces. Betting who could throw his gold watch the farthest was an inspiration of George's; but even that was getting to be monotonous. "Was I on to the opportunity? Listen. "In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we called the roll of Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except the ladies and minors under the table, except one man named Horace Westervelt St. Clair. Just for that we bought a couple of hatfuls of cheap silver watches and egged him out of town with 'em. We wound up by dragging the harness-maker out of bed and setting him to work on three new saddles; and then we went to sleep across the railroad track at the depot, just to annoy the S.A. & A.P. Think of having seventy- five thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that! "The next day George, who was married or something, started back to the ranch. Me and Solly, as I now called him, prepared to shake off our moth balls and wing our way against the arc-lights of the joyous and tuneful East. "'No way-stops,' says I to Solly, 'except long enough to get you barbered and haberdashed. This is no Texas feet shampetter,' says I, 'where you eat chili-concarne-con-huevos and then holler "Whoopee!" across the plaza. We're now going against the real high life. We're going to mingle with the set that carries a Spitz, wears spats, and hits the ground in high spots.' "Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S.A. & A.P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient. "We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes, and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger Hotel, and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and white Angora suaderos to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made a big jump to St. Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put our thumb-prints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city. "'Now,' says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, 'here's the first dinner-station we've struck where we can get a real good plate of beans.' And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of the gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter's Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up again. "'Frankoyse,' says I, 'I have a pal here for dinner that's been subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef and order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the general passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We've got more than Bernhardt's tent full of money; and we want the nose- bags crammed with all the Chief Deveries de cuisine. Object is no expense. Now, show us.' "At six o'clock me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There's nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at once. The chef called it dinnay a la poker. It's a famous thing among the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind. There was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness's stout; roast veal, mock turtle soup, and chicken pate; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca; canvas-back duck, canvas-back ham, and cotton-tail rabbit; Philadelphia capon, fried snails, and sloe-gin--and so on, in threes. The idea was that you eat nearly all you can of them, and then the waiter takes away the discard and gives you pears to fill on. "I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after the bobtail flushes he'd been eating on the ranch; and I was a little anxious that he should, for I didn't remember his having honoured my efforts with a smile since we left Atascosa City. "We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics, the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And over in the corner was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I, Solly will become conscious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing and exhilarating his system. But nong, mong frang. "He gazed across the table at me. There was four square yards of it, looking like the path of a cyclone that has wandered through a stock- yard, a poultry-farm, a vegetable-garden, and an Irish linen mill. Solly gets up and comes around to me. "'Luke,' says he, 'I'm pretty hungry after our ride. I thought you said they had some beans here. I'm going out and get something I can eat. You can stay and monkey with this artificial layout of grub if you want to.' "'Wait a minute,' says I. "I called the waiter, and slapped 'S. Mills' on the back of the check for thirteen dollars and fifty cents. "'What do you mean,' says I, 'by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck only suitable for deck-hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We're going out to get something decent to eat.' "I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman. He saw a saddle- shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes. We went in, and he ordered and paid for two more saddles--one with a solid silver horn and nails and ornaments and a six-inch border of rhinestones and imitation rubies around the flaps. The other one had to have a gold- mounted horn, quadruple-plated stirrups, and the leather inlaid with silver beadwork wherever it would stand it. Eleven hundred dollars the two cost him. "Then he goes out and heads toward the river, following his nose. In a little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no houses, he finds what he is looking for. We go into a shanty and sit on high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin spoons. Yes, sir, beans--beans boiled with salt pork. "'I kind of thought we'd strike some over this way,' says Solly. "'Delightful,' says I, 'That stylish hotel grub may appeal to some; but for me, give me the husky /table d'goat.' "When we had succumbed to the beans I leads him out of the tarpaulin- steam under a lamp post and pulls out a daily paper with the amusement column folded out. "'But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure,' says I. 'Here's one of Hall Caine's shows, and a stock-yard company in "Hamlet," and skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sarah Bernhardt, and the Shapely Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely--' "But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily. "'Reckon I'll be going to bed,' says he; 'it's about my time. St. Louis is a kind of quiet place, ain't it?' "'Oh, yes,' says I; 'ever since the railroads ran in here the town's been practically ruined. And the building-and-loan associations and the fair have about killed it. Guess we might as well go to bed. Wait till you see Chicago, though. Shall we get tickets for the Big Breeze to-morrow?' "'Mought as well,' says Solly. 'I reckon all these towns are about alike.' "Well, maybe the wise cicerone and personal conductor didn't fall hard in Chicago! Loolooville-on-the-Lake is supposed to have one or two things in it calculated to keep the rural visitor awake after the curfew rings. But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas! I tried him with theatres, rides in automobiles, sails on the lake, champagne suppers, and all those little inventions that hold the simple life in check; but in vain. Solly grew sadder day by day. And I got fearful about my salary, and knew I must play my trump card. So I mentioned New York to him, and informed him that these Western towns were no more than gateways to the great walled city of the whirling dervishes. "After I bought the tickets I missed Solly. I knew his habits by then; so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop. They had some new ideas there in the way of trees and girths that had strayed down from the Canadian mounted police; and Solly was so interested that he almost looked reconciled to live. He invested about nine hundred dollars in there. "At the depot I telegraphed a cigar-store man I knew in New York to meet me at the Twenty-third Street ferry with a list of all the saddle-stores in the city. I wanted to know where to look for Solly when he got lost. "Now I'll tell you what happened in New York. I says to myself: 'Friend Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty to the sad sultan of the sour countenance, or it'll be the bowstring for yours.' But I never had any doubt I could do it. "I began with him like you'd feed a starving man. I showed him the horse-cars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferry-boats. And then I piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer ones up my sleeve. "At the end of the third day he looked like a composite picture of five thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat, and I was wilting down a collar every two hours wondering how I could please him and whether I was going to get my thou. He went to sleep looking at the Brooklyn Bridge; he disregarded the sky-scrapers above the third story; it took three ushers to wake him up at the liveliest vaudeville in town. "Once I thought I had him. I nailed a pair of cuffs on him one morning before he was awake; and I dragged him that evening to the palm-cage of one of the biggest hotels in the city--to see the Johnnies and the Alice-sit-by-the-hours. They were out in numerous quantities, with the fat of the land showing in their clothes. While we were looking them over, Solly divested himself of a fearful, rusty kind of laugh--like moving a folding bed with one roller broken. It was his first in two weeks, and it gave me hope. "'Right you are,' says I. 'They're a funny lot of post-cards, aren't they?' "'Oh, I wasn't thinking of them dudes and culls on the hoof,' says he. 'I was thinking of the time me and George put sheep-dip in Horsehead Johnson's whisky. I wish I was back in Atascosa City,' says he. "I felt a cold chill run down my back. 'Me to play and mate in one move,' says I to myself. "I made Solly promise to stay in the cafe for half an hour and I hiked out in a cab to Lolabelle Delatour's flat on Forty-third Street. I knew her well. She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy. "'Jane,' says I when I found her, 'I've got a friend from Texas here. He's all right, but--well, he carries weight. I'd like to give him a little whirl after the show this evening--bubbles, you know, and a buzz out to a casino for the whitebait and pickled walnuts. Is it a go?' "'Can he sing?' asks Lolabelle. "'You know,' says I, 'that I wouldn't take him away from home unless his notes were good. He's got pots of money--bean-pots full of it.' "'Bring him around after the second act,' says Lolabelle, 'and I'll examine his credentials and securities.' "So about ten o'clock that evening I led Solly to Miss Delatour's dressing-room, and her maid let us in. In ten minutes in comes Lolabelle, fresh from the stage, looking stunning in the costume she wears when she steps from the ranks of the lady grenadiers and says to the king, 'Welcome to our May-day revels.' And you can bet it wasn't the way she spoke the lines that got her the part. "As soon as Solly saw her he got up and walked straight out through the stage entrance into the street. I followed him. Lolabelle wasn't paying my salary. I wondered whether anybody was. "'Luke,' says Solly, outside, 'that was an awful mistake. We must have got into the lady's private room. I hope I'm gentleman enough to do anything possible in the way of apologies. Do you reckon she'd ever forgive us?' "'She may forget it,' says I. 'Of course it was a mistake. Let's go find some beans.' "That's the way it went. But pretty soon afterward Solly failed to show up at dinner-time for several days. I cornered him. He confessed that he had found a restaurant on Third Avenue where they cooked beans in Texas style. I made him take me there. The minute I set foot inside the door I threw up my hands. "There was a young woman at the desk, and Solly introduced me to her. And then we sat down and had beans. "Yes, sir, sitting at the desk was the kind of a young woman that can catch any man in the world as easy as lifting a finger. There's a way of doing it. She knew. I saw her working it. She was healthy-looking and plain dressed. She had her hair drawn back from her forehead and face--no curls or frizzes; that's the way she looked. Now I'll tell you the way they work the game; it's simple. When she wants a man, she manages it so that every time he looks at her he finds her looking at him. That's all. "The next evening Solly was to go to Coney Island with me at seven. At eight o'clock he hadn't showed up. I went out and found a cab. I felt sure there was something wrong. "'Drive to the Back Home Restaurant on Third Avenue,' says I. 'And if I don't find what I want there, take in these saddle-shops.' I handed him the list. "'Boss,' says the cabby, 'I et a steak in that restaurant once. If you're real hungry, I advise you to try the saddle-shops first.' "'I'm a detective,' says I, 'and I don't eat. Hurry up!' "As soon as I got to the restaurant I felt in the lines of my palms that I should beware of a tall, red, damfool man, and I was going to lose a sum of money. "Solly wasn't there. Neither was the smooth-haired lady. "I waited; and in an hour they came in a cab and got out, hand in hand. I asked Solly to step around the corner for a few words. He was grinning clear across his face; but I had not administered the grin. "'She's the greatest that ever sniffed the breeze,' says he. "'Congrats,' says I. 'I'd like to have my thousand now, if you please.' "'Well, Luke,' says he, 'I don't know that I've had such a skyhoodlin' fine time under your tutelage and dispensation. But I'll do the best I can for you--I'll do the best I can,' he repeats. 'Me and Miss Skinner was married an hour ago. We're leaving for Texas in the morning.' "'Great!' says I. 'Consider yourself covered with rice and Congress gaiters. But don't let's tie so many satin bows on our business relations that we lose sight of 'em. How about my honorarium?' "'Missis Mills,' says he, 'has taken possession of my money and papers except six bits. I told her what I'd agreed to give you; but she says it's an irreligious and illegal contract, and she won't pay a cent of it. But I ain't going to see you treated unfair,' says he. 'I've got eighty-seven saddles on the ranch what I've bought on this trip; and when I get back I'm going to pick out the best six in the lot and send 'em to you.'" "And did he?" I asked, when Lucullus ceased talking. "He did. And they are fit for kings to ride on. The six he sent me must have cost him three thousand dollars. But where is the market for 'em? Who would buy one except one of these rajahs and princes of Asia and Africa? I've got 'em all on the list. I know every tan royal dub and smoked princerino from Mindanao to the Caspian Sea." "It's a long time between customers," I ventured. "They're coming faster," said Polk. "Nowadays, when one of the murdering mutts gets civilised enough to abolish suttee and quit using his whiskers for a napkin, he calls himself the Roosevelt of the East, and comes over to investigate our Chautauquas and cocktails. I'll place 'em all yet. Now look here." From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with much- worn edges, and indicated a paragraph. "Read that," said the saddler to royalty. The paragraph ran thus: His Highness Seyyid Feysal bin Turkee, Imam of Muskat, is one of the most progressive and enlightened rulers of the Old World. His stables contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian breeds. It is said that this powerful prince contemplates a visit to the United States at an early date. "There!" said Mr. Polk triumphantly. "My best saddle is as good as sold--the one with turquoises set in the rim of the cantle. Have you three dollars that you could loan me for a short time?" It happened that I had; and I did. If this should meet the eye of the Imam of Muskat, may it quicken his whim to visit the land of the free! Otherwise I fear that I shall be longer than a short time separated from my dollars three. Sisters of the Golden Circle The Rubberneck Auto was about ready to start. The merry top-riders had been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers, justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by some other creature. The megaphone man raised his instrument of torture; the inside of the great automobile began to thump and throb like the heart of a coffee drinker. The top-riders nervously clung to the seats; the old lady from Valparaiso, Indiana, shrieked to be put ashore. But, before a wheel turns, listen to a brief preamble through the cardiaphone, which shall point out to you an object of interest on life's sightseeing tour. Swift and comprehensive is the recognition of white man for white man in African wilds; instant and sure is the spiritual greeting between mother and babe; unhesitatingly do master and dog commune across the slight gulf between animal and man; immeasurably quick and sapient are the brief messages between one and one's beloved. But all these instances set forth only slow and groping interchange of sympathy and thought beside one other instance which the Rubberneck coach shall disclose. You shall learn (if you have not learned already) what two beings of all earth's living inhabitants most quickly look into each other's hearts and souls when they meet face to face. The gong whirred, and the Glaring-at-Gotham car moved majestically upon its instructive tour. On the highest, rear seat was James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri, and his Bride. Capitalise it, friend typo--that last word--word of words in the epiphany of life and love. The scent of the flowers, the booty of the bee, the primal drip of spring waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon peel on the cocktail of creation--such is the bride. Holy is the wife; revered the mother; galliptious is the summer girl--but the bride is the certified check among the wedding presents that the gods send in when man is married to mortality. The car glided up the Golden Way. On the bridge of the great cruiser the captain stood, trumpeting the sights of the big city to his passengers. Wide-mouthed and open-eared, they heard the sights of the metropolis thundered forth to their eyes. Confused, delirious with excitement and provincial longings, they tried to make ocular responses to the megaphonic ritual. In the solemn spires of spreading cathedrals they saw the home of the Vanderbilts; in the busy bulk of the Grand Central depot they viewed, wonderingly, the frugal cot of Russell Sage. Bidden to observe the highlands of the Hudson, they gaped, unsuspecting, at the upturned mountains of a new- laid sewer. To many the elevated railroad was the Rialto, on the stations of which uniformed men sat and made chop suey of your tickets. And to this day in the outlying districts many have it that Chuck Connors, with his hand on his heart, leads reform; and that but for the noble municipal efforts of one Parkhurst, a district attorney, the notorious "Bishop" Potter gang would have destroyed law and order from the Bowery to the Harlem River. But I beg you to observe Mrs. James Williams--Hattie Chalmers that was--once the belle of Cloverdale. Pale-blue is the bride's, if she will; and this colour she had honoured. Willingly had the moss rosebud loaned to her cheeks of its pink--and as for the violet!--her eyes will do very well as they are, thank you. A useless strip of white chaf--oh, no, he was guiding the auto car--of white chiffon--or perhaps it was grenadine or tulle--was tied beneath her chin, pretending to hold her bonnet in place. But you know as well as I do that the hatpins did the work. And on Mrs. James Williams's face was recorded a little library of the world's best thoughts in three volumes. Volume No. 1 contained the belief that James Williams was about the right sort of thing. Volume No. 2 was an essay on the world, declaring it to be a very excellent place. Volume No. 3 disclosed the belief that in occupying the highest seat in a Rubberneck auto they were travelling the pace that passes all understanding. James Williams, you would have guessed, was about twenty-four. It will gratify you to know that your estimate was so accurate. He was exactly twenty-three years, eleven months and twenty-nine days old. He was well built, active, strong-jawed, good-natured and rising. He was on his wedding trip. Dear kind fairy, please cut out those orders for money and 40 H. P. touring cars and fame and a new growth of hair and the presidency of the boat club. Instead of any of them turn backward--oh, turn backward and give us just a teeny-weeny bit of our wedding trip over again. Just an hour, dear fairy, so we can remember how the grass and poplar trees looked, and the bow of those bonnet strings tied beneath her chin--even if it was the hatpins that did the work. Can't do it? Very well; hurry up with that touring car and the oil stock, then. Just in front of Mrs. James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams and milliners' shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form of pepsin chewing gum. At this girl's right hand sat a young man about twenty-four. He was well-built, active, strong-jawed and good-natured. But if his description seems to follow that of James Williams, divest it of anything Cloverdalian. This man belonged to hard streets and sharp corners. He looked keenly about him, seeming to begrudge the asphalt under the feet of those upon whom he looked down from his perch. While the megaphone barks at a famous hostelry, let me whisper you through the low-tuned cardiaphone to sit tight; for now things are about to happen, and the great city will close over them again as over a scrap of ticker tape floating down from the den of a Broad street bear. The girl in the tan jacket twisted around to view the pilgrims on the last seat. The other passengers she had absorbed; the seat behind her was her Bluebeard's chamber. Her eyes met those of Mrs. James Williams. Between two ticks of a watch they exchanged their life's experiences, histories, hopes and fancies. And all, mind you, with the eye, before two men could have decided whether to draw steel or borrow a match. The bride leaned forward low. She and the girl spoke rapidly together, their tongues moving quickly like those of two serpents-- a comparison that is not meant to go further. Two smiles and a dozen nods closed the conference. And now in the broad, quiet avenue in front of the Rubberneck car a man in dark clothes stood with uplifted hand. From the sidewalk another hurried to join him. The girl in the fruitful hat quickly seized her companion by the arm and whispered in his ear. That young man exhibited proof of ability to act promptly. Crouching low, he slid over the edge of the car, hung lightly for an instant, and then disappeared. Half a dozen of the top-riders observed his feat, wonderingly, but made no comment, deeming it prudent not to express surprise at what might be the conventional manner of alighting in this bewildering city. The truant passenger dodged a hansom and then floated past, like a leaf on a stream between a furniture van and a florist's delivery wagon. The girl in the tan jacket turned again, and looked in the eyes of Mrs. James Williams. Then she faced about and sat still while the Rubberneck auto stopped at the flash of the badge under the coat of the plainclothes man. "What's eatin' you?" demanded the megaphonist, abandoning his professional discourse for pure English. "Keep her at anchor for a minute," ordered the officer. "There's a man on board we want--a Philadelphia burglar called 'Pinky' McGuire. There he is on the back seat. Look out for the side, Donovan." Donovan went to the hind wheel and looked up at James Williams. "Come down, old sport," he said, pleasantly. "We've got you. Back to Sleepytown for yours. It ain't a bad idea, hidin' on a Rubberneck, though. I'll remember that." Softly through the megaphone came the advice of the conductor: "Better step off, sir, and explain. The car must proceed on its tour." James Williams belonged among the level heads. With necessary slowness he picked his way through the passengers down to the steps at the front of the car. His wife followed, but she first turned her eyes and saw the escaped tourist glide from behind the furniture van and slip behind a tree on the edge of the little park, not fifty feet away. Descended to the ground, James Williams faced his captors with a smile. He was thinking what a good story he would have to tell in Cloverdale about having been mistaken for a burglar. The Rubberneck coach lingered, out of respect for its patrons. What could be a more interesting sight than this? "My name is James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri," he said kindly, so that they would not be too greatly mortified. "I have letters here that will show--" "You'll come with us, please," announced the plainclothes man. "'Pinky' McGuire's description fits you like flannel washed in hot suds. A detective saw you on the Rubberneck up at Central Park and 'phoned down to take you in. Do your explaining at the station- house." James Williams's wife--his bride of two weeks--looked him in the face with a strange, soft radiance in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks, looked him in the face and said: "Go with 'em quietly, 'Pinky,' and maybe it'll be in your favour." And then as the Glaring-at-Gotham car rolled away she turned and threw a kiss--his wife threw a kiss--at some one high up on the seats of the Rubberneck. "Your girl gives you good advice, McGuire," said Donovan. "Come on, now." And then madness descended upon and occupied James Williams. He pushed his hat far upon the back of his head. "My wife seems to think I am a burglar," he said, recklessly. "I never heard of her being crazy; therefore I must be. And if I'm crazy, they can't do anything to me for killing you two fools in my madness." Whereupon he resisted arrest so cheerfully and industriously that cops had to be whistled for, and afterwards the reserves, to disperse a few thousand delighted spectators. At the station-house the desk sergeant asked for his name. "McDoodle, the Pink, or Pinky the Brute, I forget which," was James Williams's answer. "But you can bet I'm a burglar; don't leave that out. And you might add that it took five of 'em to pluck the Pink. I'd especially like to have that in the records." In an hour came Mrs. James Williams, with Uncle Thomas, of Madison Avenue, in a respect-compelling motor car and proofs of the hero's innocence--for all the world like the third act of a drama backed by an automobile mfg. co. After the police had sternly reprimanded James Williams for imitating a copyrighted burglar and given him as honourable a discharge as the department was capable of, Mrs. Williams rearrested him and swept him into an angle of the station-house. James Williams regarded her with one eye. He always said that Donovan closed the other while somebody was holding his good right hand. Never before had he given her a word of reproach or of reproof. "If you can explain," he began rather stiffly, "why you--" "Dear," she interrupted, "listen. It was an hour's pain and trial to you. I did it for her--I mean the girl who spoke to me on the coach. I was so happy, Jim--so happy with you that I didn't dare to refuse that happiness to another. Jim, they were married only this morning --those two; and I wanted him to get away. While they were struggling with you I saw him slip from behind his tree and hurry across the park. That's all of it, dear--I had to do it." Thus does one sister of the plain gold band know another who stands in the enchanted light that shines but once and briefly for each one. By rice and satin bows does mere man become aware of weddings. But bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of. The Skylight Room 天窗室 First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlours. Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second- floor-back at $8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper. If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder's large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent. Then--oh, then--if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word" Clara," she would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or storeroom. In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well--and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity. "Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her half-contemptuous, half- Tuskegeenial tones. One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me ! Why didn't you keep up with us?" Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. "In this closet," she said, "one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal " "But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," said Miss Leeson, with a shiver. Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the way to the second floor back. "Eight dollars?" said Miss Leeson. "Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I do look green. I'm just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower." Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his door. "Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at his pale looks. "I didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins." "They're too lovely for anything," said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly the way the angels do. After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features. "Anna Held'll jump at it," said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish. Presently the tocsin call of "Clara!" sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words "Two dollars!" "I'll take it!" sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed. Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a sky-light room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, "It's No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway." There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, "Well, really!" to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her. Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especially Mr. Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolish. And especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her "the funniest and jolliest ever," but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable. * * * * * * I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights and drops an epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried out, Falstaff might have rendered more romance to the ton than would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen herself; Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdition. There was never a chance for you, Hoover. As Mrs. Parker's roomers sat thus one summer's evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh: "Why, there's Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too." All looked up--some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jackson-guided. "It's that star," explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. "Not the big one that twinkles--the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson." "Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "I didn't know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson." "Oh, yes," said the small star gazer, "I know as much as any of them about the style of sleeves they're going to wear next fall in Mars." "Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "The star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian passage is--" "Oh," said the very young Mr. Evans, "I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it." "Same here," said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. "I think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old astrologers had." "Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "I wonder whether it's a shooting star," remarked Miss Dorn. "I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday." "He doesn't show up very well from down here," said Miss Leeson. "You ought to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with." There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went out in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner. As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand, and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder's door as he was red-inking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in his (unaccepted) comedy, to "pirouette across stage from L to the side of the Count." Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last and opened the door of the skylight room. She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled. For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma. As she lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply. "Good-bye, Billy," she murmured faintly. "You're millions of miles away and you won't even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn't anything else but darkness to look at, didn't you? . . . Millions of miles. . . . Good-bye, Billy Jackson." Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at 10 the next day, and they forced it open. Vinegar, and the slapping of wrists and burnt feathers proving of no avail, some one ran to 'phone for an ambulance. In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. "Ambulance call to 49," he said briefly. "What's the trouble?" "Oh, yes, doctor," sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there should be trouble in the house was the greater. "I can't think what can be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It's a young woman, a Miss Elsie--yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my house--" "What room?" cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger. "The skylight room. It-- Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker followed slowly, as her dignity demanded. On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterward there remained crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her. "Let that be," she would answer. "If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied." The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead. They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was: "Drive like h**l, Wilson," to the driver. That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning's paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together. It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East -- street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded with these words: "Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover." 天窗室 首先,帕克太太会领你去看那双开间的客厅。当她在滔滔不绝地夸说屋子的优点以及那位住了八年的先生的好处时,你根本不敢打断她的话头。接着,你总算吞吞吐吐地说,你既不是大夫,也不是牙医。帕克太太听取这番话时的神气,准会使你对你的父母大起反感,嗔怪他们当初为什么没有把你培养成为适合帕克太太的客厅的人才。 然后,你走上一溜楼梯,去看看租金每周八块钱的二楼后房。她换了一副二楼的嘴脸,告诉你说,图森贝雷先生没有到佛罗里达去接管他兄弟在棕榈滩附近的柑桔种植园时,就住在这里。房租一直是十二块钱,绝不吃亏。又说住在双开间前房,有独用浴室的麦金太尔太太,每年冬天都要到那个棕榈滩去。你听了一阵之后,支支吾吾地说,你希望看看租金更便宜一点的房间。 如果你没有被帕克太太的鄙夷神情吓倒,你就会给领到三楼去看看斯基德先生的大房间。斯基德先生的房间并没有空出来。他整天待在里面写剧本,抽香烟。可是每一个找房子的人总是给引到他的房间里去欣赏门窗的垂饰。每次参观之后,斯基德先生害怕有勒令搬家的可能,就会付一部分欠租。 接着——啊,接着——假如你仍旧侷促不安地站着,滚烫的手插在口袋里,攥紧那三块汗渍渍的钱,嘶哑地说出了你那可耻可恶的贫困,帕克太太就不再替你当向导了。她拉开嗓门,叫一声“克拉拉”,便扭过头,迈开步子下楼去了。于是,那个黑人使女克拉拉会陪你爬上那代替四楼楼梯的、铺着毡毯的梯子,让你看天窗室。它位于房屋中央,有七英尺宽、八英尺长。两边都是黑黢黢的堆放杂物的贮藏室。 屋子里有一张小铁床、一个洗脸架和一把椅子。一个木头架子算是梳妆台。四堵空墙咄咄逼人,仿佛棺材的四壁似的,逼得你透不过气来。你的手不由自主地摸到了喉咙上,你喘着气,仿佛坐在井里似的抬头一望——总算恢复了呼吸。透过小天窗的玻璃望出去,你见到了一方蓝天。 “两块钱,先生。”克拉拉会带着半是轻蔑、半是特斯基吉式①的温和说。 『①美国南方阿拉巴马州的城市,黑人居民较多。』有一天,丽森小姐来找房子。她随身带着一台远不是她这样娇小的人所能带的打字机。她身材非常娇小,在停止发育后,眼睛和头发却长个不停。它们仿佛在说:“天哪!你为什么不跟着我们一块儿长啊?” 帕克太太领着丽森小姐去看双开间的客厅。“这个壁柜里,”她说,“可以放一架骨骼标本,或者麻醉剂,或者煤——” “我不是大夫,也不是牙医。”丽森小姐打了个寒战说。 帕克太太把她专门用来对付那些不够大夫和牙医资格的人的猜疑、怜悯、轻蔑和冰冷的眼色使了出来,瞪了丽森小姐一眼,然后领她去看二楼后房。 “八块钱吗?”丽森小姐说。“啊呀!我样子虽然年轻,可不是富家小姐②。我只是一个穷苦的做工小姑娘。带我去看看位置高一点儿,租金低一点儿的房间吧。” 『②此处原文为“我可不是赫蒂”,指亨里埃塔•格林。她是美国金融家,航运及贸易巨头,据说是当时美国最富有的女人,去世时财产已达一亿美元。』斯基德先生听到叩门声,连忙跳起来,把烟蒂撒了一地。 “对不起,斯基德先生。”帕克太太说,看到他大惊失色的模样,便露出一脸奸笑。“我不知道你在家。我请这位小姐来看看你的门窗垂饰。” “这太美啦。”丽森小姐嫣然一笑说,她的笑容跟天使一般美。 她们走了之后,斯基德先生着实忙了一阵子,把他最近的(没有上演的)剧本里那个高身材、黑头发的女主角全部抹去,换上一个头发浓密光泽,容貌秀丽活泼,娇小顽皮的姑娘。 “安娜•赫尔德①准会争着扮演这个角色呐。”斯基德先生自言自语地说。他抬起双脚,踩在窗饰上,然后象一只空中的墨斗鱼一样,消失在香烟雾中了。 『①安娜•赫尔德:当时美国著名演员。』不久便响起了一声“克拉拉!”象警钟似地向全世界宣布了丽森小姐的经济情况。一个黑皮肤的小鬼抓住了她,带她爬上阴森森的梯子,把她推进一间顶上透着微光的拱形屋子,吐出了那几个带有威胁和神秘意味的字眼:“两块钱!” “我租下来!”丽森小姐嘘了一口气,接着便在那张吱嘎作响的铁床上坐了下去。 丽森小姐每天出去工作。晚上她带了一些有字迹的纸张回家,用她那架打字机誊清。逢到没有工作的晚上,她就跟别的房客一起坐在门口的高台阶上。上帝创造丽森小姐的时候,并没有打算让她住在天窗室里。她心胸豁朗,脑袋里满是微妙的、异想天开的念头。有一次,她甚至让斯基德先生把他那伟大的(没有出版的)喜剧《并非玩笑》(一名《地下铁道的继承人》)念了三幕给她听。 每逢丽森小姐有空在台阶上坐一两个钟头的时候,男房客们都乐开了。可是,那位在公立学校教书的,碰到什么便说“可不是吗!”的高个儿金发的朗纳克小姐,却坐在石阶顶级,嘿嘿冷笑着。那位在百货商店工作,每星期日在康奈岛打活动木鸭的多恩小姐,坐在石阶底级,也嘿嘿冷笑着。丽森小姐坐在石阶中级,男人们马上在她身边围了拢来。 尤其是斯基德先生,他虽然没有说出口,心里却早就把丽森小姐在他现实生活中的私人浪漫剧中派充了主角。还有胡佛先生,那位四十五岁,楞头楞脑,血气旺盛的大胖子。还有那位极年轻的埃文斯先生,他老是吭吭地干咳着,好让丽森小姐来劝他戒烟。男人们一致公认丽森小姐是“最有趣、最快活的人儿”,然而顶级和底级的冷笑却是难以与之妥协的。 我请求诸位允许戏文暂停片刻,让合唱队走到台前,为胡佛先生的肥胖洒一滴哀悼之泪。为哀悼脂肪的凄惨,臃肿的灾害和肥胖的祸殃而唱哀歌吧。情场的得意与否如果取决于油脂的多寡,那么福斯塔夫可能要远远胜过瘦骨稜稜的罗密欧①。但是情人不妨叹息,可千万不能喘气。胖子是归莫默斯②发落的。腰围五十二英寸的人,任你心脏跳得多么忠诚,到头来还是白搭。去你的吧,胡佛!四十五岁,楞头楞脑,血气旺盛的胡佛可能把海伦③拐了逃跑;然而四十五岁,楞头楞脑,血气旺盛,脑肥肠满的胡佛,只是一具永不超生的臭皮囊罢了。胡佛,你是永远没有机会的。 『①福斯塔夫和罗密欧都是莎士比亚剧本中的主角。福斯塔夫肥胖好色,爱吹牛,爱开玩笑。』『②莫默斯:希腊神话中喜欢嘲弄指摘的小神。』『③海伦:希腊传说中斯巴达国王的妻子,艳丽绝伦,被特洛伊王子拐跑,引起特洛伊十年战争。』一个夏天的傍晚,帕克太太的房客们这样闲坐着,丽森小姐忽然抬头看看天空,爽朗地笑了起来,嚷道:“哟,那不是比利•杰克逊吗!我在这儿楼下也能见到。” 大伙都抬起头——有的看摩天大楼的窗子,有的东张西望,寻找一艘杰克逊操纵的飞艇。 “那颗星星。”丽森小姐解释道,同时用一个纤细的指头指点着。“不是那颗一闪一闪的大星星,而是它旁边那颗不动的蓝星星。每天晚上我都可以从天窗里望到它。我管它叫比利•杰克逊。” “可不是吗!”朗纳克小姐说。“我倒不知道你是个天文学家呢,丽森小姐。” “是啊,”这个观望星象的小人儿说,“我跟任何一个天文学家一样,知道火星居民的秋季服装会是什么新式样。” “可不是吗!”朗纳克小姐说。“你指的那颗星是仙后星座里的伽马。它的亮度几乎同二等星相当,它的子午线程是——” “哦,”非常年轻的埃文斯先生说,“我认为比利•杰克逊这个名字好得多。” “我也同意。”胡佛先生说,呼噜呼噜地喘着气,反对朗纳克小姐。“我认为那些占星的老头儿既然有权利给星星起名字,丽森小姐当然也有权利。” “可不是吗!”朗纳克小姐说。 “我不知道它是不是流星。”多恩小姐说。“星期日我在康奈岛的游乐场里打枪,十枪当中打中了九次鸭子,一次兔子。” “从这儿望去还不是顶清楚。”丽森小姐说。“你们应该在我的屋子里看。你们知道,如果坐在井底的话,即使白天也看得见星星。一到晚上,我的屋子就象是煤矿的竖井,比利•杰克逊就象是夜晚女神用来扣住她的睡衣的大钻石别针了。” 之后有一段时期,丽森小姐没有带那些冠冕堂皇的纸张回来打字。她早晨出门并不是去工作,而是挨家挨户地跑事务所,央求傲慢的工友通报,受尽了冷落和拒绝,弄得她垂头丧气。这种情形持续了很久。 有一晚,正是丽森小姐以往在饭店里吃了晚饭回家的时候,她筋疲力竭地爬上了帕克太太的石阶。但她并没有吃过晚饭。 在她踏进门厅的当儿,胡佛先生遇到了她,看中了这个机会。他向她求婚,一身肥肉颤巍巍地挡在她面前,活象一座随时可以崩坍的雪山。丽森小姐闪开了,抓住了楼梯的扶手。他想去抓她的手,她却举起手来,有气没力地给了他一个耳光。她拉着扶手,一步一顿地挨上楼去。她经过斯基德先生的房门口,斯基德先生正在用红墨水修改他那(没有被接受的)喜剧中的舞台说明,指示女主角梅特尔•德洛姆(也就是丽森小姐)应该“从舞台左角一阵风似地跑向子爵身边”。最后,她爬上了铺着毡毯的梯子,打开了天窗室的门。 她没有气力去点灯和换衣服了。她倒在那张铁床上,她那纤弱的身体在老旧的弹簧垫上简直没有留下凹洼。在那个地府般幽暗的屋子里,她慢慢地抬起沉重的眼皮,微微笑了一下。 因为比利•杰克逊正透过天窗,在安详、明亮而不渝地照耀着她。她周围一片空虚。她仿佛坠入一个黑暗的深渊,顶上只是一方嵌着一颗星的、苍白的夜空。她给那颗星起了一个异想天开的名字,可起得并不恰当。朗纳克小姐准是对的:它原是仙后星座的伽马星,不是什么比利•杰克逊。尽管如此,她还是不愿意称它为伽马。 她仰躺着,想抬起胳臂,可是抬了两次都没有成功。第三次,她总算把两只瘦削的手指举到了嘴唇上,从黑暗的深渊中朝比利•杰克逊飞了一吻。她的胳臂软绵绵地落了下来。 “再见啦,比利。”她微弱地咕哝着。“你远在几百万英里之外,甚至不肯眨一眨眼睛。可是当四周漆黑一片,什么也看不见的时候,你多半还待在我能看见的地方,是吗?……几百万英里……再见啦,比利•杰克逊。” 第二天上午十点钟,黑使女克拉拉发觉丽森小姐的房门还锁着,他们把它撞开。擦生醋,打手腕,给她嗅烧焦的羽毛都不见效,有人便跑去打电话叫救护车。 没多久,救护车铛啷铛啷地开到,倒退着停在门口。那位穿着白亚麻布罩衣的年轻干练的医生跳上了石阶,他的举止沉着、灵活、镇静,他那光洁的脸上显得又潇洒,又严肃。 “四十九号叫的救护车来了。”他简洁地说。“出了什么事?” “哦,不错,大夫。”帕克太太没好气地说,仿佛她屋子里出了事而引起的麻烦比什么都麻烦。“我不知道她是怎么搞的。我们用尽了各种办法,还是救不醒她。是个年轻的女人,一个叫做埃尔西——是的,埃尔西•丽森小姐。我这里从来没有出过——” “什么房间?”医生暴喊起来,帕克太太生平没有听到过这种询问房间的口气。 “天窗室。就在——” 救护车的随车医生显然很熟悉天窗室的位置。他四级一跨,已经上了楼。帕克太太唯恐有失尊严,便慢条斯理地跟了上去。 她刚走到第一个楼梯口,就看见医生抱着那个天文学家下来了。他站住后,那训练有素,象解剖刀一般锋利的舌头,就任性地把她数落了一顿,可声音却不高。帕克太太象是一件从钉子上滑落下来的浆硬的衣服,慢慢地皱缩起来。此后,她的身心上永远留下了皱纹。有时,她的好奇的房客们问她,医生究竟对她说了些什么。 “算了吧,”她会这样回答。“如果我听了那番话,就能得到宽恕,我就很满意了。” 救护车的随车医生抱着病人,大踏步穿过那群围在四周看热闹的人,甚至他们也羞愧地退到了人行道上,因为医生的神情象是抱着一个死去的亲人。 他们注意到,医生并没有把他抱着的人安顿在救护车里专用的担架上,他只是对司机说:“拚命快开吧,威尔逊。” 完了。难道这也算是一篇故事吗?第二天早晨,我在报纸上看到一小段消息,其中最后一句话可以帮助诸位(正如帮助了我一样)把一鳞半爪的情况联系起来。 它报道说,贝尔维尤医院收了一个住在东区某街四十九号,因饥饿而引起虚脱的年轻女人。结尾是这样的:“负责治疗的随车医生威廉•杰克逊大夫声称,病人定能复元。”①『①“比利”(Billy)是英文人名“威廉”(William)的昵称,这里的威廉•杰克逊即是上文的比利•杰克逊。』 The Snow Man EDITORIAL NOTE.--Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter (known through his literary work as "O. Henry") this American master of short-story writing had begun for Hampton's Magazine the story printed below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up writing about at the point where the girl enters the story. When he realized that he could do no more (it was his lifelong habit to write with a pencil, never dictating to a stenographer), O. Henry told in detail the remainder of The Snow Man to Harris Merton Lyon, whom he had often spoken of as one of the most effective short-story writers of the present time. Mr. Porter had delineated all of the characters, leaving only the rounding out of the plot in the final pages to Mr. Lyon. Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand the test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Reaumur, or Moses's carven tablets of stone. Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the canyon of Big Lost River, and I urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. The flakes were as large as an hour's circular tatting by Miss Wilkins's ablest spinster, betokening a heavy snowfall and less entertainment and more adventure than the completion of the tatting could promise. I knew Ross Curtis of the Bay Horse, and that I would be welcome as a snow-bound pilgrim, both for hospitality's sake and because Ross had few chances to confide in living creatures who did not neigh, bellow, bleat, yelp, or howl during his discourse. The ranch house was just within the jaws of the canyon where its builder may have fatuously fancied that the timbered and rocky walls on both sides would have protected it from the wintry Colorado winds; but I feared the drift. Even now through the endless, bottomless rift in the hills--the speaking tube of the four winds--came roaring the voice of the proprietor to the little room on the top floor. At my "hello," a ranch hand came from an outer building and received my thankful horse. In another minute, Ross and I sat by a stove in the dining-room of the four-room ranch house, while the big, simple welcome of the household lay at my disposal. Fanned by the whizzing norther, the fine, dry snow was sifted and bolted through the cracks and knotholes of the logs. The cook room, without a separating door, appended. In there I could see a short, sturdy, leisurely and weather-beaten man moving with professional sureness about his red-hot stove. His face was stolid and unreadable--something like that of a great thinker, or of one who had no thoughts to conceal. I thought his eye seemed unwarrantably superior to the elements and to the man, but quickly attributed that to the characteristic self-importance of a petty chef. "Camp cook" was the niche that I gave him in the Hall of Types; and he fitted it as an apple fits a dumpling. Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross and I sat and talked, shuddering frequently, half from nerves and half from the freezing draughts. So he brought the bottle and the cook brought boiling water, and we made prodigious hot toddies against the attacks of Boreas. We clinked glasses often. They sounded like icicles dropping from the eaves, or like the tinkle of a thousand prisms on a Louis XIV chandelier that I once heard at a boarder's dance in the parlor of a ten-a-week boarding-house in Gramercy Square. Sic transit. Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of the Sphinx and of the stars; but they who believe that all things, from a without-wine table d'hote to the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music, might have found a nocturne or a symphony to express the isolation of that blotted-out world. The clink of glass and bottle, the aeolian chorus of the wind in the house crannies, its deeper trombone through the canyon below, and the Wagnerian crash of the cook's pots and pans, united in a fit, discordant melody, I thought. No less welcome an accompaniment was the sizzling of broiling ham and venison cutlet indorsed by the solvent fumes of true Java, bringing rich promises of comfort to our yearning souls. The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. He nodded to me democratically as he cast the heavy plates around as though he were pitching quoits or hurling the discus. I looked at him with some appraisement and curiosity and much conciliation. There was no prophet to tell us when that drifting evil outside might cease to fall; and it is well, when snow-bound, to stand somewhere within the radius of the cook's favorable consideration. But I could read neither favor nor disapproval in the face and manner of our pot-wrestler. He was about five feet nine inches, and two hundred pounds of commonplace, bull-necked, pink-faced, callous calm. He wore brown duck trousers too tight and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with sleeves rolled above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his features that looked to me as though he had fixed it there purposely as a protection against the weakness of an inherent amiability that, he fancied, were better concealed. And then I let supper usurp his brief occupancy of my thoughts. "Draw up, George," said Ross. "Let's all eat while the grub's hot." "You fellows go on and chew," answered the cook. "I ate mine in the kitchen before sun-down." "Think it'll be a big snow, George?" asked the ranchman. George had turned to reenter the cook room. He moved slowly around and, looking at his face, it seemed to me that he was turning over the wisdom and knowledge of centuries in his head. "It might," was his delayed reply. At the door of the kitchen he stopped and looked back at us. Both Ross and I held our knives and forks poised and gave him our regard. Some men have the power of drawing the attention of others without speaking a word. Their attitude is more effective than a shout. "And again it mightn't," said George, and went back to his stove. After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the emptied dishes. He stood for a moment, while his spurious frown deepened. "It might stop any minute," he said, "or it might keep up for days." At the farther end of the cook room I saw George pour hot water into his dishpan, light his pipe, and put the tableware through its required lavation. He then carefully unwrapped from a piece of old saddle blanket a paperback book, and settled himself to read by his dim oil lamp. And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the cleared table and set forth again the bottles and glasses; and I saw that I stood in a deep channel through which the long dammed flood of his discourse would soon be booming. But I was half content, comparing my fate with that of the late Thomas Tucker, who had to sing for his supper, thus doubling the burdens of both himself and his host. "Snow is a hell of a thing," said Ross, by way of a foreword. "It ain't, somehow, it seems to me, salubrious. I can stand water and mud and two inches below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and medium-sized cyclones, but this here fuzzy white stuff naturally gets me all locoed. I reckon the reason it rattles you is because it changes the look of things so much. It's like you had a wife and left her in the morning with the same old blue cotton wrapper on, and rides in of a night and runs across her all outfitted in a white silk evening frock, waving an ostrich-feather fan, and monkeying with a posy of lily flowers. Wouldn't it make you look for your pocket compass? You'd be liable to kiss her before you collected your presence of mind." By and by, the flood of Ross's talk was drawn up into the clouds (so it pleased me to fancy) and there condensed into the finer snowflakes of thought; and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and bitter enemies will do. I thought of Boss's preamble about the mysterious influence upon man exerted by that ermine-lined monster that now covered our little world, and knew he was right. Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, Indian gifts, rat-traps, and well-disguised blessings that the gods chuck down to us from the Olympian peaks, the most disquieting and evil-bringing is the snow. By scientific analysis it is absolute beauty and purity --so, at the beginning we look doubtfully at chemistry. It falls upon the world, and lo! we live in another. It hides in a night the old scars and familiar places with which we have grown heart-sick or enamored. So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our embroidered robes and hie us on Prince Camaralzaman's horse or in the reindeer sleigh into the white country where the seven colors converge. This is when our fancy can overcome the bane of it. But in certain spots of the earth comes the snow-madness, made known by people turned wild and distracted by the bewildering veil that has obscured the only world they know. In the cities, the white fairy who sets the brains of her dupes whirling by a wave of her wand is cast for the comedy role. Her diamond shoe buckles glitter like frost; with a pirouette she invites the spotless carnival. But in the waste places the snow is sardonic. Sponging out the world of the outliers, it gives no foothold on another sphere in return. It makes of the earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing and stumbling in space in an inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes its strangeness and beauty, There Nature, low comedienne, plays her tricks on man. Though she has put him forth as her highest product, it appears that she has fashioned him with what seems almost incredible carelessness and indexterity. One-sided and without balance, with his two halves unequally fashioned and joined, must he ever jog his eccentric way. The snow falls, the darkness caps it, and the ridiculous man-biped strays in accurate circles until he succumbs in the ruins of his defective architecture. In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In appearance as plausible as the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the mouth as ginger, increasing the pangs of the water-famished. It is a derivative from water, air, and some cold, uncanny fire from which the caloric has been extracted. Good has been said of it; even the poets, crazed by its spell and shivering in their attics under its touch, have indited permanent melodies commemorative of its beauty. Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plague--a corroding plague that Pharaoh successfully side-stepped. It beneficently covers the wheat fields, swelling the crop--and the Flour Trust gets us by the throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white kirtle over the red seams of the rugged north--and the Alaskan short story is born. Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing from the icy air--and, melting to-morrow, drowns his brother in the valley below. At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe. When it corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest huts, the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the bosoms of weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles, their hearts to lawlessness and spleen. It is not all from the isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; it is a Chemical Test. It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine. This is no story, you say; well, let it begin. There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and reminiscence oh, best buyers of best sellers?). We drew the latch, and in stumbled Etienne Girod (as he afterward named himself). But just then he was no more than a worm struggling for life, enveloped in a killing white chrysalis. We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, and waterproofs, and dragged forth a living thing with a Van Dyck beard and marvellous diamond rings. We put it through the approved curriculum of snow- rubbing, hot milk, and teaspoonful doses of whiskey, working him up to a graduating class entitled to a diploma of three fingers of rye in half a glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had already come from the quarters at Ross's bugle-like yell and kicked the stranger's staggering pony to some sheltered corral where beasts were entertained. Let a paragraphic biography of Girod intervene. Etienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered; but adversity and the snow had made him non compos vocis. The adversity consisted of the stranded San Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second- story work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to town. For, like other professional palmists, every time he worked the Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the Line of Least Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we surmised that he had moved out into the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most sacred blue language he dilated upon the subject of snow; for Etienne was Paris-born and loved the snow with the same passion that an orchid does. "Mee-ser-rhable!" commented Etienne, and took another three fingers. "Complete, cast-iron, pussy-footed, blank... blank!" said Ross, and followed suit. "Rotten," said I. The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst; and insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages (via the M. A. M wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation against the snow childish; the other was that George did not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the message wrong. So I queried the other: "Bright eyes, you don't really mean Dagoes, do you?" and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: "Yes." Then I reflected that to George all foreigners were probably "Dagoes." I had once known another camp cook who had thought Mons., Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for Mlle.) were Italian given names; this cook used to marvel therefore at the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why not-- I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, Etienne stood at the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and shrieking and moaning at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as unbearable as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my collarbone, and thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the test of flat-on-the-back. A test that comes once too often for any man to stand. However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us is so valuable to the litterateur, and American writers to the faro-dealer. "I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser-rhable place!" was Etienne's constant prediction. "Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before," said Ross, over and over. He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal deposited on one side of him, and "Roughing It," "The Jumping Frog," and "Life on the Mississippi" on the other. For every chapter he lit a new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time, gave him a recurrent premonition of cramps, gastritis, smoker's colic or whatever it is they have in Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals. To fend off the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still's Amber-Colored U. S. A. Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight hours--nerves. "Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before. Positive fact." Ross slammed "Roughing It" on the floor. "When you're snowbound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just seems to bring out all your cussedness. You read a man's poor, pitiful attempts to be funny and it makes you so nervous you want to tear the book up, get out your bandana, and have a good, long cry." At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out of his mouth long enough to exclaim: "Humor! Humor at such a time as thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable--" "Supper," announced George. These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who said, "the great God makes the planets and we make the platters neat." By that time, the ranch-house meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction, not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten by Ross or me or Etienne. After supper, the stogies and finger nails began again. My shoulder ached wretchedly, and with half-closed eyes I tried to forget it by watching the deft movements of the stolid cook. Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, with a swift step, he moved to the door, threw it open, and stood there. The rest of us had heard nothing. "What is it, George?" asked Ross. The cook reached out his hand into the darkness alongside the jamb. With careful precision he prodded something. Then he made one careful step into the snow. His back muscles bulged a little under the arms as he stooped and lightly lifted a burden. Another step inside the door, which he shut methodically behind him, and he dumped the burden at a safe distance from the fire. He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None of us moved under that Orphic suspense until, "A woman," remarked George. Miss Willie Adams was her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops; the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, the murmur of the evening June wind in the leaves; her mouth, the berries of the wintergreen; fingers as light as ferns; her toe as small as a deer track. General impression upon the dazed beholder--you could not see the forest for the trees. Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a lynx, at this juncture stalks into the ranch house. Three men, a cook, a pretty young woman --all snowbound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, anyway. I never did, with women. Count the cook out, if you like. But note the effect upon Ross and Etienne Girod. Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked the trunk. Also, he discarded the Pittsburg scandals. Also, he shaved off a three days' beard. Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. He pomaded it, from a little tube of grease Hongroise in his vest pocket. He combed it with a little aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He trimmed it with manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious troubadour, could not have equalled Etienne. Ross's method of advance was brusque, domineering. "Little woman," he said, "you're welcome here!"--and with what he thought subtle double meaning--"welcome to stay here as long as you like, snow or no snow." Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the wintergreen berries creeping into the birch bark. She looked around hurriedly as if seeking escape. But there was none, save the kitchen and the room allotted her. She made an excuse and disappeared into her own room. Later I, feigning sleep, heard the following: "Mees Adams, I was almost to perislh-die-of monotony w'en your fair and beautiful face appear in thees mee-ser-rhable house." I opened my starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a finger, the Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to the school-teacher's. "I am French--you see--temperamental--nervous! I cannot endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; but--a woman comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine 'rahs and a tiger. "What a difference! All is light and gay; ever'ting smile w'en you smile. You have 'eart, beauty, grace. My 'eart comes back to me w'en I feel your 'eart. So!" He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he suddenly snatched at the school-teacher's own hand, "Ah! Mees Adams, if I could only tell you how I ad--" "Dinner," remarked George. He was standing just behind the Frenchman's ear. His eyes looked straight into the school-teacher's eyes. After thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, frozen maelstrom of his face: "Dinner," he concluded, "will be ready in two minutes." Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. "I must get ready for dinner," she said brightly, and went into her room. Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned away, I waited until a propitious time when the room was temporarily ours alone, and told him what had happened. He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking. "Yeller- hided, unwashed, palm-readin' skunk," he said under his breath. "I'll shoot him full o' holes if he don't watch out--talkin' that way to my wife!" I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another week. "Your wife!" I gasped. "Well, I mean to make her that," he announced. The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was tense with pent-up emotions, oh, best buyers of best sellers. Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a henhouse. He paid no attention to Ross. The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought-after, was feverish. Lately escaped from the agony and long torture of the white cold, where for hours Nature had kept the little school-teacher's vision locked in and turned upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine introspections she had gone. Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of finding relief and security, she beheld herself plunged anew into other discomforts. Even in her own room she could hear the loud voices of her imposed suitors. "I'll blow you full o' holes!" shouted Ross. "Witnesses," shrieked Etienne, waving his hand at the cook and me. She could not have known the previous harassed condition of the men, fretting under indoor conditions. All she knew was, that where she had expected the frank freemasonry of the West, she found the subtle tangle of two men's minds, bent upon exacting whatever romance there might be in her situation. She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me. They also came over to help nurse. This combination aroused such a natural state of invalid cussedness on my part that they were all forced to retire. Once she did manage to whisper: "I am so worried here. I don't know what to do." To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a hunch-savant and that the Eighth House under this sign, the Moon being in Virgo, showed that everything would turn out all right. But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her palm and felt that perhaps I might have to recast her horoscope, and try for a dark man coming with a bundle. Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few moments and Ross, who had been sitting taciturn and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain, made another dash. It was typical Ross talk. He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool and perfect spot where Miss Adams' forehead met the neat part in her fragrant hair. First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I was in a profound slumber. "Little woman," he began, "it's certainly tough for a man like me to see you bothered this way. You"--gulp--"you have been alone in this world too long. You need a protector. I might say that at a time like this you need a protector the worst kind--a protector who would take a three-ring delight in smashing the saffron-colored kisser off of any yeller-skinned skunk that made himself obnoxious to you. Hem. Hem. I am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so far had to carry on my life without the"--gulp--"sweet radiance"--gulp--"of a woman around the house. I feel especially doggoned lonely at a time like this, when I am pretty near locoed from havin' to stall indoors, and hence it was with delight I welcomed your first appearance in this here shack. Since then I have been packed jam full of more different kinds of feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy, and superb, than has fallen my way in years." Miss Adams made a useless movement toward escape. The Ross chin stuck firm. "I don't want to annoy you, Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it comes to that you'll have to be annoyed. And I'll have to have my say. This palm-ticklin' slob of a Frenchman ought to be kicked off the place and if you'll say the word, off he goes. But I don't want to do the wrong thing. You've got to show a preference. I'm gettin' around to the point, Miss--Miss Willie, in my own brick fashion. I've stood about all I can stand these last two days and somethin's got to happen. The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a sheepherder. Miss Willie"--he lassooed her hand by main force--"just say the word. You need somebody to take your part all your life long. Will you mar--" "Supper," remarked George, tersely, from the kitchen door. Miss Adams hurried away. Ross turned angrily. "You--" "I have been revolving it in my head," said George. He brought the coffee pot forward heavily. Then bravely the big platter of pork and beans. Then somberly the potatoes. Then profoundly the biscuits. "I have been revolving it in my mind. There ain't no use waitin' any longer for Swengalley. Might as well eat now." >From my excellent vantage-point on the couch I watched the progress of that meal. Ross, muddled, glowering, disappointed; Etienne, eternally blandishing, attentive, ogling; Miss Adams, nervous, picking at her food, hesitant about answering questions, almost hysterical; now and then the solid, flitting shadow of the cook, passing behind their backs like a Dreadnaught in a fog. I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat three minutes before it struck the hour. I know, therefore, the slow freight of Anticipation. For I have awakened at three in the morning, heard the clock gurgle, and waited those three minutes for the three strokes I knew were to come. Alors. In Ross's ranch house that night the slow freight of Climax whistled in the distance. Etienne began it after supper. Miss Aclams had suddenly displayed a lively interest in the kitchen layout and I could see her in there, chatting brightly at George--not with him--the while he ducked his head and rattled his pans. "My fren'," said Etienne, exhaling a large cloud from his cigarette and patting Ross lightly on the shoulder with a bediamonded hand which, hung limp from a yard or more of bony arm, "I see I mus' be frank with you. Firs', because we are rivals; second, because you take these matters so serious. I--I am Frenchman. I love the women" --he threw back his curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an unsavory kiss toward the kitchen. "It is, I suppose, a trait of my nation. All Frenchmen love the women--pretty women. Now, look: Here I am!" He spread out his arms. "Cold outside! I detes' the col-l-l! Snow! I abominate the mees-ser-rhable snow! Two men! This--" pointing to me--"an' this!" Pointing to' Ross. "I am distracted! For two whole days I stan' at the window an' tear my 'air! I am nervous, upset, pr-r-ro-foun'ly distress inside my 'ead! An' suddenly--be'old! A woman, a nice, pretty, charming, innocen' young woman! I, naturally, rejoice. I become myself again--gay, light-'earted, "appy. I address myself to mademoiselle; it passes the time. That, m'sieu', is wot the women are for--pass the time! Entertainment--like the music, like the wine! "They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the temperamen'. To play with thees woman, follow her through her humor, pursue her--ah! that is the mos' delightful way to sen' the hours about their business." Ross banged the table. "Shut up, you miserable yeller pup!" he roared. "I object to your pursuin' anything or anybody in my house. Now, you listen to me, you--" He picked up the box of stogies and used it on the table as an emphasizer. The noise of it awoke the attention of the girl in the kitchen. Unheeded, she crept into the room. "I don't know anything about your French ways of lovemakin' an' I don't care. In my section of the country, it's the best man wins. And I'm the best man here, and don't you forget it! This girl's goin' to be mine. There ain't g'oing to be any playing, or philandering, or palm reading about it. I've made up my mind I'll have this girl, and that settles it. My word is the law in this neck o' the woods. She's mine, and as soon as she says she's mine, you pull out." The box made one final, tremendous punctuation point. Etienne's bravado was unruffled. "Ah! that is no way to win a woman," he smiled, easily. "I make prophecy you will never win 'er that way. No. Not thees woman. She mus' be played along an' then keessed, this charming, delicious little creature. One kees! An' then you 'ave her." Again he displayed his unpleasant teeth. "I make you a bet I will kees her--" As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate that the hand which fell upon Etienne's amorous lips was not his own. There was one sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and then--through the swinging doors of oblivion for Etienne. I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost absent-minded affair. I had thought the cook was rehearsing the proper method of turning a flapjack. Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching his head. Then he began rolling down his sleeves. "You'd better get your things on, Miss, and we'll get out of here," he decided. "Wrap up warm." I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went to get her cloak, sweater, and hat. Ross jumped to his feet, and said: "George, what are you goin' to do?" George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around and faced his employer. "Bein' a camp cook, I ain't over-burdened with hosses," George enlightened us. "Therefore, I am going to try to borrow this feller's here." For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. "If it's for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you like," I said, grandly. The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my words. "No," he replied. "It's for mine and the young lady's purposes, and we'll go only three miles--to Hicksville. Now let me tell you somethin', Ross." Suddenly I was confronted with the cook's chunky back and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot through the room at my host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak. "You're nutty. That's what's the matter with you. You can't stand the snow. You're getting nervouser, and nuttier every day. That and this Dago"--he jerked a thumb at the half-dead Frenchman in the corner--"has got you to the point where I thought I better horn in. I got to revolving it around in my mind and I seen if somethin' wasn't done, and done soon, there'd be murder around here and maybe" --his head gave an imperceptible list toward the girl's room--"worse." He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep any one else from speaking. Then he plowed slowly through the drift of his ideas. "About this here woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely think about women. If she hadn't happened in here durin' this here snow, you'd never have given two thoughts to the whole woman question. Likewise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys go hustlin' out, this here whole business 'll clear out of your head and you won't think of a skirt again until Kingdom Come. Just because o' this snow here, don't forget you're living in the selfsame world you was in four days ago. And you're the same man, too. Now, what's the use o' getting all snarled up over four days of stickin' in the house? That there's what I been revolvin' in my mind and this here's the decision I've come to." He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the ranch hands to saddle my horse. Ross lit a stogy and stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. Then he began: "I've a durn good notion, George, to knock your confounded head off and throw you into that snowbank, if--" "You're wrong, mister. That ain't a durned good notion you've got. It's durned bad. Look here!" He pointed steadily out of doors until we were both forced to follow his finger. "You're in here for more'n a week yet." After allowing this fact to sink in, he barked out at Ross: "Can you cook?" Then at me: "Can you cook?" Then he looked at the wreck of Etienne and sniffed. There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I thought solemnly of a foodless week. "If you just use hoss sense," concluded George, "and don't go for to hurt my feelin's, all I want to do is to take this young gal down to Hicksville; and then I'll head back here and cook fer you." The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, both of them very serious and quiet. The horse because he knew what he had before him in that weather; the girl because of what she had left behind. Then all at once I awoke to a realization of what the cook was doing. "My God, man!" I cried, "aren't you afraid to go out in that snow?" Behind my back I heard Ross mutter, "Not him." George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, drew on his gloves, put his foot in the stirrup, and turned to inspect me leisurely. As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind's eye the algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in the man before me. "Snow is my last name," said George. He swung into the saddle and they started cautiously out into the darkening swirl of fresh new currency just issuing from the Snowdrop Mint. The girl, to keep her place, clung happily to the sturdy figure of the camp cook. I brought three things away from Ross Curtis's ranch house--yes, four. One was the appreciation of snow, which I have so humbly tried here to render; (2) was a collarbone, of which I am extra careful; (3) was a memory of what it is to eat very extremely bad food for a week; and (4) was the cause of (3) a little note delivered at the end of the week and hand-painted in blue pencil on a sheet of meat paper. "I cannot come back there to that there job. Mrs. Snow say no, George. I been revolvin' it in my mind; considerin' circumstances she's right." Sociology in Serge and Straw The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields. Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length, the convexity of the earth hid from our view all but the vessel's topmast. But we picked up a telescope and looked, and saw the decks and hull again. Then the wise men said: "Oh, pshaw! anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the equator and the ecliptic proves it." We could not see this through our telescope, so we remained silent. But it stands to reason that, if the world were round, the queues of China-Men would stand straight up from their heads instead of hanging down their backs, as travellers assure us they do. Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory is the fact that all of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate -- and sit upon a bench. The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may have sailed the rim of a watery circle back to the same port again. The truly great return at the high tide of their attainments to the simplicity of a child. The billionaire sits down at his mahogany to his bowl of bread and milk. When you reach the end of your career, just take down the sign "Goal" and look at the other side of it. You will find "Beginning Point" there. It has been reversed while you were going around the track. But this is humour, and must be stopped. Let us get back to the serious questions that arise whenever Sociology turns summer boarder. You are invited to consider the scene of the story-wild, Atlantic waves, thundering against a wooded and rock-bound shore -- in the Greater City of New York. The town of Fishampton, on the south shore of Long Island, is noted for its clam fritters and the summer residence of the Van Plushvelts. The Van Plushvelts have a hundred million dollars, and their name is a household word with tradesmen and photographers. On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone the shade -- Amaryllis not being in their class. If a subscriber to the Toadies' Magazine, you have often -- You say you are not? Well, you buy it at a news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to you. But he knows about it all. HE knows -- HE knows! I say that you have often seen in the Toadies' Magazine pictures of the Van Plushvelts' summer home; so it will not be described here. Our business is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers. One afternoon young Haywood Van Plushvelt strolled out between the granite gate posts of "Dolce far Niente" -- that's what they called the place; and it was an improvement on dolce Far Rockaway, I can tell you. Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and his prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon him its direfullest. He was the product of private tutors. Even under his first hobby-horse had tan bark been strewn. He had been born with a gold spoon, lobster fork and fish-set in his mouth. For which I hope, later, to submit justification, I must ask your consideration of his haberdashery and tailoring. Young Fortunatus was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat, white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, of the well-known "immaculate" trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat, bamboo cane. Down Persimmon Street (there's never tree north of Hagerstown, Md.) came from the village "Smoky" Dodson, fifteen and a half, worst boy in Fishampton. "Smoky" was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "Smoky" carried a baseball bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and passed the time of day. "Going to play ball?" he asked. "Smoky's" eyes and countenance confronted him with a frank blue-and-freckled scrutiny. "Me?" he said, with deadly mildness; "sure not. Can't you see I've got a divin' suit on? I'm goin' up in a submarine balloon to catch butterflies with a two-inch auger. "Excuse me," said Haywood, with the insulting politeness of his caste, "for mistaking you for a gentleman. I might have known better." "How might you have known better if you thought I was one?" said "Smoky," unconsciously a logician. "By your appearances," said Haywood. "No gentleman is dirty, ragged and a liar." "Smoky" hooted once like a ferry-boat, spat on his hand, got a firm grip on his baseball bat and then dropped it against the fence. "Say," said he, "I knows you. You're the pup that belongs in that swell private summer sanitarium for city-guys over there. I seen you come out of the gate. You can't bluff nobody because you're rich. And because you got on swell clothes. Arabella! Yah!" "Ragamuffin!" said Hay-wood. "Smoky" picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder. "Dare you to knock it off," he challenged. "I wouldn't soil my hands with you," said the aristocrat. "'Fraid," said "Smoky" concisely. "Youse city-ducks ain't got the I sand. I kin lick you with one hand." "I don't wish to have any trouble with you," said Haywood. "I asked you a civil question; and you replied, like a -- like a -- a cad." "Wot's a cad?" asked "Smoky." "A cad is a disagreeable person," answered Haywood, "who lacks manners and doesn't know his place. They, sometimes play baseball." "I can tell you what a mollycoddle is," said "Smoky." "It's a monkey dressed up by its mother and sent out too pick daisies on the lawn." "When you have the honour to refer to the members of my family," said Haywood, with some dim ideas of a code in his mind, "you'd better leave the ladies out of your remarks." "Ho! ladies!" mocked the rude one. "I say ladies! I know what them rich women in the city does. They, drink cocktails and swear and give parties to gorillas. The papers says so." Then Haywood knew that it must be. He took off his coat, folded it neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and began to unknot his blue silk tie. "Hadn't yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?" taunted "Smoky." "Wot yer going to do -- go to bed?" "I'm going to give you a good trouncing," said the hero. He did not hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two columns, first page. And the Toadies' Magazine had a special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton. "Wot's trouncing?" asked "Smoky," suspiciously. "I don't want your old clothes. I'm no -- oh, you mean to scrap! My, my! I won't do a thing to mamma's pet. Criminy! I'd hate to be a hand-laundered thing like you. "Smoky" waited with some awkwardness for his adversary to prepare for battle. His own decks were always clear for action. When he should spit upon the palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to "You may fire now, Gridley." The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up. "Smoky" waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be conducted according to Fishampton's rules of war. These allowed combat to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse and insult gradually increasing in emphasis and degree. After a round of these "you're anothers" would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the advance across the "dare" line drawn with a toe on the ground. Next light taps given and taken, these also increasing in force until finally the blood was up and fists going at their best. But Haywood did not know Fishampton's rules. Noblesse oblige kept a faint smile on his face as he walked slowly up to "Smoky" and said: "Going to play ball?" "Smoky" quickly understood this to be a putting of the previous question, giving him the chance to make practical apology by answering it with civility and relevance. "Listen this time,' said he. "I'm goin' skatin' on the river. Don't you see me automobile with Chinese lanterns on it standin' and waitin' for me?" Haywood knocked him down. "Smoky" felt wronged. To thus deprive him of preliminary wrangle and objurgation was to send an armoured knight full tilt against a crashing lance without permitting him first to caracole around the list to the flourish of trumpets. But he scrambled up and fell upon his foe, head, feet and fists. The fight lasted one round of an hour and ten minutes. It was lengthened until it was more like a war or a family feud than a fight. Haywood had learned some of the science of boxing and wrestling from his tutors, but these he discarded for the more instinctive methods of battle handed down by the cave-dwelling Van Plushvelts. So, when he found himself, during the mêlée, seated upon the kicking and roaring "Smoky's" chest, he improved the opportunity by vigorously kneading handfuls of sand and soil into his adversary's ears, eyes and mouth, and when "Smoky" got the proper leg hold and "turned" him, he fastened both hands in the Plushvelt hair and pounded the Plushvelt head against the lap of mother earth. Of course, the strife was not incessantly active. There were seasons when one sat upon the other, holding him down, while each blew like a grampus, spat out the more inconveniently large sections of gravel and and strove to subdue the spirit of his opponent with a frightful and soul-paralyzing glare. At last, it seemed that in the language of the ring, their efforts lacked steam. They broke away, and each disappeared in a cloud as he brushed away the dust of the conflict. As soon as his breath permitted, Haywood walked close to "Smoky" and said: "Going to play ball?" "Smoky" looked pensively at the sky, at his bat lying on the ground, and at the "leaguer" rounding his pocket. "Sure," he said, offhandedly. "The 'Yellowjackets'" plays the 'Long Islands.' I'm cap'n of the 'Long Islands.' "I guess I didn't mean to say you were ragged," said Haywood. "But you are dirty, you know." "Sure," said "Smoky." "Yer get that way knockin' around. Say, I don't believe them New York papers about ladies drinkin' and havin' monkeys dinin' at the table with 'em. I guess they're lies, like they print about people eatin' out of silver plates, and ownin' dogs that cost $100." "Certainly," said Haywood. "What do you play on your team?" "Ketcher. Ever play any?" "Never in my life," said Haywood. "I've never known any fellows except one or two of my cousins." "Jer like to learn? We're goin' to have a practice- game before the match. Wanter come along? I'll put yer in left-field, and yer won't be long ketchin' on." "I'd like it bully," said Haywood. "I've alway wanted to play baseball." The ladies' maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The Toadies' Magazine got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs' ball -- illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man. One afternoon I was reclining under the trees near the shore at Fishampton in the esteemed company of an eminent, bald-headed young sociologist. By way of note it may be inserted that all sociologists are more or less bald, and exactly thirty-two. Look 'em over. The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as the most important "uplift" symptom of a generation, and as an excuse for his own existence. Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now came the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shouting, about the diamond. "There," said the sociologist, pointing, "there is young Van Plushvelt." I raised myself (so far a cosycophant with Mary Ann) and gazed. Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground. He was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather- worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust clinging to the moisture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "That is he," repeated the sociologist. If he had said "him" I could have been less vindictive. On a bench, with an air, sat the young millionaire's chum. He was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, linen of the well-known "immaculate" trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a- slender, neat bamboo cane. I laughed loudly and vulgarly. "What you want to do," said I to the sociologist, "is to establish a reformatory for the Logical Vicious Circle. Or else I've got wheels. It looks to me as if things are running round and round in circles instead of getting anywhere." "What do you mean?" asked the man of progress. "Why, look what he has done to "Smoky," I replied. "You will always be a fool," said my friend, the sociologist, getting up and walking away. The Song and the Sergeant Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their argument had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager's gaze. It was midnight, and the restaurant was filled with patrons from the theatres of that district. Some among the dispersed audiences must have recognized among the quarrelsome sextet the faces of the players belonging to the Carroll Comedy Company. Four of the six made up the company. Another was the author of the comedietta, "A Gay Coquette," which the quartette of layers had been presenting with fair success at several vaudeville houses in the city. The sixth at the table was a person inconsequent in the realm of art, but one at whose bidding many lobsters had perished. Loudly the six maintained their clamorous debate. No one of the Party was silent except when answers were stormed from him by the excited ones. That was the comedian of "A Gay Coquette." He was a young man with a face even too melancholy for his profession. The oral warfare of four immoderate tongues was directed at Miss Clarice Carroll, the twinkling star of the small aggregation. Excepting the downcast comedian, all members of the party united in casting upon her with vehemence the blame of some momentous misfortune. Fifty times they told her: "It is your fault, Clarice- it is you alone who spoilt the scene. It is only of late that you have acted this way. At this rate the sketch will have to be taken off." Miss Carroll was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a vivacity that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a scorching denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly menaced the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would have been a scream had it not possessed so pure a musical quality. She hurled back at the attacking four their denunciations in tones sweet, but of too great carrying power for a Broadway restaurant. Finally they exhausted her patience both as a woman and an artist. She sprang up like a panther, managed to smash half a dozen plates and glasses with one royal sweep of her arm, and defied her critics. They rose and wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked a trifle sadder and disinterested. The manager came tripping and suggested peace. He was told to go to the popular synonym for war so promptly that the affair might have happened at The Hague. Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign with his hand and a waiter slipped out of the door. In twenty minutes the party of six was in a police station facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant. "Disorderly conduct in a restaurant," said the police- man who had brought the party in. The author of "A Gay Coquette" stepped to the front. He wore nose-glasses and evening clothes, even if his shoes had been tans before they met the patent-leather-polish bottle. "Mr. Sergeant," said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, "I would like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are performing in a little play that I have written, in company with a friend and myself were having a little supper. We became deeply interested in the discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible for a scene in the sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece is about to become a failure. We may have been rather noisy and intolerant of interruption by the restaurant people; but the matter was of considerable importance to all of us. You see that we are sober and are not the kind of people who desire to raise disturbances. I hope that the case will not be pressed and that we may be allowed to go." "Who makes the charge?" asked the sergeant. "Me," said a white-aproned voice in the rear. "De restaurant sent me to. De gang was raisin' a rough- house and breakin' dishes." "The dishes were paid for," said the playwright. "They were not broken purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for spoiling the scene, Miss -- " "It's not true, sergeant," cried the clear voice of Miss. Clarice Carroll. In a long coat of tan silk and a red- plumed hat, she bounded before the desk. "It's not my fault," she cried indignantly. "How- dare they say such a thing! I've played the title r?le ever since it was staged, and if you want to know who made it a success, ask the public -- that's all." "What Miss Carroll says is true in part," said the author. "For five months the comedietta was a drawing- card in the best houses. But during the last two weeks it has lost favour. There is one scene in it in which Miss Carroll made a big hit. Now she hardly gets a hand out of it. She spoils it by acting it entirely different from her old way." "It is not my fault," reiterated the actress. "There are only two of you on in the scene," argued the playwright hotly, "you and Delmars, here -- " "Then it's his fault," declared Miss Carroll, with a lightning glance of scorn from her dark eyes. The comedian caught it, and gazed with increased melancholy at the panels of the sergeant's desk. The night was a dull one in that particular police station. The sergeant's long-blunted curiosity awoke a little. "I've heard you," he said to the author. And then he addressed the thin-faced and ascetic-looking lady of the company who played "Aunt Turnip-top" in the little comedy. "Who do you think spoils the scene you are fussing about?" he asked. "I'm no knocker," said that lady, "and everybody knows it. So, when I say that Clarice falls down every time in that scene I'm judging her art and not herself. She was great in it once. She does it something fierce now. It'll dope the show if she keeps it up." The sergeant looked at the comedian. "You and the lady have this scene together, I under- stand. I suppose there's no use asking you which one of you queers it?" The comedian avoided the direct rays from the two fixed stars of Miss Carroll's eyes. "I don't know," he said, looking down at his patent- leather toes. "Are you one of the actors?" asked the sergeant of a dwarfish youth with a middle-aged face. "Why, say!" replied the last Thespian witness, "you don't notice any tin spear in my hands, do you? You haven't heard me shout: 'See, the Emperor comes!' since I've been in here, have you? I guess I'm on the stage long enough for 'em not to start a panic by mistaking me for a thin curl of smoke rising above the footlights." "In your opinion, if you've got one," said the sergeant, "is the frost that gathers on the scene in question the work of the lady or the gentleman who takes part in it?" The middle-aged youth looked pained. "I regret to say," he answered, "that Miss Carroll seems to have lost her grip on that scene. She's all right in the rest of the play, but -- but I tell you, sergeant, she can do it -- she has done it equal to any of 'em -- and she can do it again." Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating. "Thank you, Jimmy, for the first good word I've had in many a day," she cried. And then she turned her eager face toward the desk. "I'll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. I'll show them whether I can do that same. Come, Mr. Delmars; let us begin. You will let us, won't you, sergeant?" "How long will it take?" asked the sergeant, dubiously. "Eight minutes," said the playwright. "The entire play consumes but thirty." "You may go ahead," said the sergeant. "Most of you seem to side against the little lady. Maybe she had a right to crack up a saucer or two in that restaurant. We'll see how she does the turn before we take that up." The matron of the police station had been standing near, listening to the singular argument. She came nigher and stood near the sergeant's chair. Two or three of the reserves strolled in, big and yawning. "Before beginning the scene," said the playwright, "and assuming that you have not seen a production of 'A Gay Coquette,' I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy -- burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll's r?le is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same coquettish idea. "Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll's acting is called the 'gorilla dance.' She is costumed to represent a wood nymph, and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla -- played by Mr. Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set. "That used to get four and five recalls. The main thing was the acting and the dance -- it was the funniest thing in New York for five months. Delmars's song, 'I'll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home,' while he and Miss Carroll were cutting hide-and-seek capers among the tropical plants, was a winner." "What's the trouble with the scene now?" asked the sergeant. "Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it," said the playwright wrathfully. With a wide gesture of her ever-moving arms the actress waved back the little group of spectators, leaving a space in front of the desk for the scene of her vindication or fall. Then she whipped off her long tan cloak and tossed it across the arm of the policeman who still stood officially among them. Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was like a humming- bird -- green and golden and purple. And then she danced a fluttering, fantastic dance, so agile and light and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll Comedy Company broke into applause at the art of it. And at the proper time Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking the uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled sergeant himself gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand from all. Then began the most fantastic part of the scene -- the wooing of the nymph by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself -- eccentric and prankish, with the nymph coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the gorilla as he sang "I'll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home." The song was a lyric of merit. The words were non- sense, as befitted the play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words. During one verse of the song the wood nymph per- formed the grotesque evolutions designed for the scene. At the middle of the second verse she stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla's last leap had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand, until he had finished the haunting-lyric that was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a piece of putty. When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of tears with both hands. "There!" cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; "there you have it, sergeant. For two weeks she has spoiled that scene in just that manner at every performance. I have begged her to consider that it is not Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing. Do you wonder now at our impatience? Tears for the gorilla song! The play is lost!" Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared suddenly, and pointed a desperate finger at Delmars. "It is you -- you who have done this," she cried wildly. "You never sang that song that way until lately. It is your doing." "I give it up," said the sergeant. And then the gray-haired matron of the police station came forward from behind the sergeant's chair. "Must an old woman teach you all?" she said. She went up to Miss Carroll and took her hand. "The man's wearing his heart out for you, my dear. Couldn't you tell it the first note you heard him sing? All of his monkey flip-flops wouldn't have kept it from me. Must you be deaf as well as blind? That's why you couldn't act your part, child. Do you love him or must he be a gorilla for the rest of his days?" Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning glance of her eye. He came toward her, melancholy. "Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?" she asked, with a catching breath. "I did," said the comedian. "It is true. I didn't think there was any use. I tried to let you know with the song." "Silly!" said the matron; "why didn't you speak?" "No, no," cried the wood nymph, "his way was the best. I didn't know, but -- it was just what I wanted, Bobby." She sprang like a green grasshopper; and the comedian opened his arms, and -- smiled. "Get out of this," roared the desk sergeant to the waiting waiter from the restaurant. "There's nothing doing here for you." The Sparrows in Madison Square The young man in straitened circumstances who comes to New York City to enter literature has but one thing to do, provided he has studied carefully his field in advance. He must go straight to Madison Square, write an article about the sparrows there, and sell it to the Sun for $15. I cannot recall either a novel or a story dealing with the popular theme of the young writer from the provinces who comes to the metropolis to win fame and fortune with his pen in which the hero does not get his start that way. It does seem strange that some author, in casting about for startlingly original plots, has not hit upon the idea of having his hero write about the bluebirds in Union Square and sell it to the Herald. But a search through the files of metropolitan fiction counts up overwhelmingly for the sparrows and the old Garden Square, and the Sun always writes the check. Of course it is easy to understand why this first city venture of the budding author is always successful. He is primed by necessity to a superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city he has found this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees; every tender sentiment in his nature is baffling with the sweet pain of homesickness; his genius is aroused as it never may be again; the birds chirp, the tree branches sway, the noise of wheels is forgotten; he writes with his soul in his pen--and he sells it to the Sun for $15. I had read of this custom during many years before I came to New York. When my friends were using their strongest arguments to dissuade me from coming, I only smiled serenely. They did not know of that sparrow graft I had up my sleeve. When I arrived in New York, and the car took me straight from the ferry up Twenty-third Street to Madison Square, I could hear that $15 check rustling in my inside pocket. I obtained lodging at an unhyphenated hostelry, and the next morning I was on a bench in Madison Square almost by the time the sparrows were awake. Their melodious chirping, the benignant spring foliage of the noble trees and the clean, fragrant grass reminded me so potently of the old farm I had left that tears almost came into my eyes. Then, all in a moment, I felt my inspiration. The brave, piercing notes of those cheerful small birds formed a keynote to a wonderful, light, fanciful song of hope and joy and altruism. Like myself, they were creatures with hearts pitched to the tune of woods and fields; as I was, so were they captives by circumstance in the discordant, dull city--yet with how much grace and glee they bore the restraint! And then the early morning people began to pass through the square to their work--sullen people, with sidelong glances and glum faces, hurrying, hurrying, hurrying. And I got my theme cut out clear from the bird notes, and wrought it into a lesson, and a poem, and a carnival dance, and a lullaby; and then translated it all into prose and began to write. For two hours my pencil traveled over my pad with scarcely a rest. Then I went to the little room I had rented for two days, and there I cut it to half, and then mailed it, white-hot, to the Sun. The next morning I was up by daylight and spent two cents of my capital for a paper. If the word "sparrow" was in it I was unable to find it. I took it up to my room and spread it out on the bed and went over it, column by column. Something was wrong. Three hours afterward the postman brought me a large envelope containing my MS. and a piece of inexpensive paper, about 3 inches by 4--I suppose some of you have seen them--upon which was written in violet ink, "With the Sun's thanks." I went over to the square and sat upon a bench. No; I did not think it necessary to eat any breakfast that morning. The confounded pests of sparrows were making the square hideous with their idiotic "cheep, cheep." I never saw birds so persistently noisy, impudent, and disagreeable in all my life. By this time, according to all traditions, I should have been standing in the office of the editor of the Sun. That personage--a tall, grave, white-haired man--would strike a silver bell as he grasped my hand and wiped a suspicious moisture from his glasses. "Mr. McChesney," he would be saying when a subordinate appeared, "this is Mr. Henry, the young man who sent in that exquisite gem about the sparrows in Madison Square. You may give him a desk at once. Your salary, sir, will be $80 a week, to begin with." This was what I had been led to expect by all writers who have evolved romances of literary New York. Something was decidedly wrong with tradition. I could not assume the blame, so I fixed it upon the sparrows. I began to hate them with intensity and heat. At that moment an individual wearing an excess of whiskers, two hats, and a pestilential air slid into the seat beside me. "Say, Willie," he muttered cajolingly, "could you cough up a dime out of your coffers for a cup of coffee this morning?" "I'm lung-weary, my friend," said I. "The best I can do is three cents." "And you look like a gentleman, too," said he. "What brung you down?--boozer?" "Birds," I said fiercely. "The brown-throated songsters carolling songs of hope and cheer to weary man toiling amid the city's dust and din. The little feathered couriers from the meadows and woods chirping sweetly to us of blue skies and flowering fields. The confounded little squint-eyed nuisances yawping like a flock of steam pianos, and stuffing themselves like aldermen with grass seeds and bugs, while a man sits on a bench and goes without his breakfast. Yes, sir, birds! look at them!" As I spoke I picked up a dead tree branch that lay by the bench, and hurled it with all my force into a close congregation of the sparrows on the grass. The flock flew to the trees with a babel of shrill cries; but two of them remained prostrate upon the turf. In a moment my unsavory friend had leaped over the row of benches and secured the fluttering victims, which he thrust hurriedly into his pockets. Then he beckoned me with a dirty forefinger. "Come on, cully," he said hoarsely. "You're in on the feed." Thank you very much! Weakly I followed my dingy acquaintance. He led me away from the park down a side street and through a crack in a fence into a vacant lot where some excavating had been going on. Behind a pile of old stones and lumber he paused, and took out his birds. "I got matches," said he. "You got any paper to start a fire with?" I drew forth my manuscript story of the sparrows, and offered it for burnt sacrifice. There were old planks, splinters, and chips for our fire. My frowsy friend produced from some interior of his frayed clothing half a loaf of bread, pepper, and salt. In ten minutes each of us was holding a sparrow spitted upon a stick over the leaping flames. "Say," said my fellow bivouacker, "this ain't so bad when a fellow's hungry. It reminds me of when I struck New York first--about fifteen years ago. I come in from the West to see if I could get a job on a newspaper. I hit the Madison Square Park the first mornin' after, and was sitting around on the benches. I noticed the sparrows chirpin', and the grass and trees so nice and green that I thought I was back in the country again. Then I got some papers out of my pocket, and--" "I know," I interrupted. "You sent it to the Sun and got $15." "Say," said my friend, suspiciously, "you seem to know a good deal. Where was you? I went to sleep on the bench there, in the sun, and somebody touched me for every cent I had--$15." The Sphinx Apple 苹果之谜 Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level. The remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping along the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both snow and night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be thought of, said Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses, and delivered to his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom. Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore, to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a young woman, remained in the coach. Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the upper fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small house. Upon this house descended--or rather ascended--Judge Menefee and his cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They called; they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence they waxed restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers, and invaded the premises. The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered, glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply pitched than the clarion--even orchestral in volume--the voice of Judge Menefee proclaimed the succour that lay in apposition with their state of travail. The one room of the house was uninhabited, he said, and bare of furniture; but it contained a great fireplace, and they had discovered an ample store of chopped wood in a lean-to at the rear. Housing and warmth against the shivering night were thus assured. For the placation of Bildad Rose there was news of a stable, not ruined beyond service, with hay in a loft, near the house. "Gentlemen," cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and robes, "tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That is old man Redruth's shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took him to the foolish house in August." Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The driver and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee opened the door of the coach, and removed his hat. "I have to announce, Miss Garland," said he, "the enforced suspension of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in travelling the mountain road by night is too great even to consider. It will be necessary to remain in the shelter of this house until morning. I beg that you will feel that there is nothing to fear beyond a temporary inconvenience. I have personally inspected the house, and find that there are means to provide against the rigour of the weather, at least. You shall be made as comfortable as possible. Permit me to assist you to alight." To the Judge's side came the passenger whose pursuit in life was the placing of the Little Goliath windmill. His name was Dunwoody; but that matters not much. In travelling merely from Paradise to Sunrise City one needs little or no name. Still, one who would seek to divide honours with Judge Madison L. Menefee deserves a cognomenal peg upon which Fame may hang a wreath. Thus spake, loudly and buoyantly, the aerial miller: "Guess you'll have to climb out of the ark, Mrs. McFarland. This wigwam isn't exactly the Palmer House, but it turns snow, and they won't search your grip for souvenir spoons when you leave. We've got a fire going; and we'll fix you up with dry Tilbys and keep the mice away, anyhow, all right, all right." One of the two passengers who were struggling in a melee of horses, harness, snow, and the sarcastic injunctions of Bildad Rose, called loudly from the whirl of his volunteer duties: "Say! some of you fellows get Miss Solomon into the house, will you? Whoa, there! you confounded brute!" Again must it be gently urged that in travelling from Paradise to Sunrise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge Menefee-- sanctioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread repute--had introduced himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself, sweetly breathed a name, in response, that the hearing of the male passengers had variously interpreted. In the not unjealous spirit of rivalry that eventuated, each clung stubbornly to his own theory. For the lady passenger to have reasseverated or corrected would have seemed didactic if not unduly solicitous of a specific acquaintance. Therefore the lady passenger permitted herself to be Garlanded and McFarlanded and Solomoned with equal and discreet complacency. It is thirty-five miles from Paradise to Sunrise City. Compagnon de voyage is name enough, by the gripsack of the Wandering Jew! for so brief a journey. Soon the little party of wayfarers were happily seated in a cheerful arc before the roaring fire. The robes, cushions, and removable portions of the coach had been brought in and put to service. The lady passenger chose a place near the hearth at one end of the arc. There she graced almost a throne that her subjects had prepared. She sat upon cushions and leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe bespread, which formed a defence from the invading draughts. She extended her feet, delectably shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved her hands, but retained about her neck her long fur boa. The unstable flames half revealed, while the warding boa half submerged, her face-- a youthful face, altogether feminine, clearly moulded and calm with beauty's unchallenged confidence. Chivalry and manhood were here vying to please and comfort her. She seemed to accept their devoirs--not piquantly, as one courted and attended; nor preeningly, as many of her sex unworthily reap their honours; not yet stolidly, as the ox receives his hay; but concordantly with nature's own plan--as the lily ingests the drop of dew foreordained to its refreshment. Outside the wind roared mightily, the fine snow whizzed through the cracks, the cold besieged the backs of the immolated six; but the elements did not lack a champion that night. Judge Menefee was attorney for the storm. The weather was his client, and he strove by special pleading to convince his companions in that frigid jury-box that they sojourned in a bower of roses, beset only by benignant zephyrs. He drew upon a fund of gaiety, wit, and anecdote, sophistical, but crowned with success. His cheerfulness communicated itself irresistibly. Each one hastened to contribute his own quota toward the general optimism. Even the lady passenger was moved to expression. "I think it is quite charming," she said, in her slow, crystal tones. At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously explore the room. There was little evidence to be collected of its habitation by old man Redruth. Bildad Rose was called upon vivaciously for the ex-hermit's history. Now, since the stage-driver's horses were fairly comfortable and his passengers appeared to be so, peace and comity returned to him. "The old didapper," began Bildad, somewhat irreverently, "infested this here house about twenty year. He never allowed nobody to come nigh him. He'd duck his head inside and slam the door whenever a team drove along. There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right. He used to buy his groceries and tobacco at Sam Tilly's store, on the Little Muddy. Last August he went up there dressed in a red bedquilt, and told Sam he was King Solomon, and that the Queen of Sheba was coming to visit him. He fetched along all the money he had--a little bag full of silver--and dropped it in Sam's well. 'She won't come,' says old man Redruth to Sam, 'if she knows I've got any money.' "As soon as folks heard he had that sort of a theory about women and money they knowed he was crazy; so they sent down and packed him to the foolish asylum." "Was there a romance in his life that drove him to a solitary existence?" asked one of the passengers, a young man who had an Agency. "No," said Bildad, "not that I ever heard spoke of. Just ordinary trouble. They say he had had unfortunateness in the way of love derangements with a young lady when he was young; before he contracted red bed-quilts and had his financial conclusions disqualified. I never heard of no romance." "Ah!" exclaimed Judge Menefee, impressively; "a case of unrequited affection, no doubt." "No, sir," returned Bildad, "not at all. She never married him. Marmaduke Mulligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from old Redruth's town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady--Miss Alice-- something was her name; I've forgot. This man said she was the kind of girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare. Well, there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and fixed up with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. Although she was a staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a mutual kind of a clip. They had calls and coincidences of going to the post office and such things as sometimes make a girl send back the engagement ring and other presents--'a rift within the loot,' the poetry man calls it. "One day folks seen Redruth and Miss Alice standing talking at the gate. Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last anybody in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew." "What about the young lady?" asked the young man who had an Agency. "Never heard," answered Bildad. "Right there is where my lode of information turns to an old spavined crowbait, and folds its wings, for I've pumped it dry." "A very sad--" began Judge Menefee, but his remark was curtailed by a higher authority. "What a charming story!" said the lady passenger, in flute-like tones. A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of the fire. The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man who was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to ease his cramped muscles. Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from a dusky corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was an apple--a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a paper bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could have been no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious soundness repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf since August. No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the deserted house, had left it there. Dunwoody--again his exploits demand for him the honours of nomenclature--flaunted his apple in the faces of his fellow-marooners. "See what I found, Mrs. McFarland!" he cried, vaingloriously. He held the apple high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still richer red. The lady passenger smiled calmly--always calmly. "What a charming apple!" she murmured, clearly. For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated. Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of comedy--and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the windmill man swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods, puffed up with the wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward the domain of the star. While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin's apple, was receiving the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed a plan to recover his own laurels. With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the hand of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A. "A fine apple," he said, approvingly. "Really, my dear Mr. Dudwindy, you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This apple shall become an emblem, a token, a symbol, a prize bestowed by the mind and heart of beauty upon the most deserving." The audience, except one, applauded. "Good on the stump, ain't he?" commented the passenger who was nobody in particular to the young man who had an Agency. The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself reduced to the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to declare his apple an emblem. He had intended, after it had been divided and eaten, to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead and naming them for young ladies of his acquaintance. One he was going to name Mrs. McFarland. The seed that fell off first would be--but 'twas too late now. "The apple," continued Judge Menefee, charging his jury, "in modern days occupies, though undeservedly, a lowly place in our esteem. Indeed, it is so constantly associated with the culinary and the commercial that it is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits. But in ancient times this was not so. Biblical, historical, and mythological lore abounds with evidences that the apple was the aristocrat of fruits. We still say 'the apple of the eye' when we wish to describe something superlatively precious. We find in Proverbs the comparison to 'apples of silver.' No other product of tree or vine has been so utilised in figurative speech. Who has not heard of and longed for the 'apples of the Hesperides'? I need not call your attention to the most tremendous and significant instance of the apple's ancient prestige when its consumption by our first parents occasioned the fall of man from his state of goodness and perfection." "Apples like them," said the windmill man, lingering with the objective article, "are worth $3.50 a barrel in the Chicago market." "Now, what I have to propose," said Judge Menefee, conceding an indulgent smile to his interrupter, "is this: We must remain here, perforce, until morning. We have wood in plenty to keep us warm. Our next need is to entertain ourselves as best we can, in order that the time shall not pass too slowly. I propose that we place this apple in the hands of Miss Garland. It is no longer a fruit, but, as I said, a prize, in award, representing a great human idea. Miss Garland, herself, shall cease to be an individual--but only temporarily, I am happy to add"--(a low bow, full of the old-time grace). "She shall represent her sex; she shall be the embodiment, the epitome of womankind--the heart and brain, I may say, of God's masterpiece of creation. In this guise she shall judge and decide the question which follows: "But a few minutes ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favoured us with an entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of the former professor of this habitation. The few facts that we have learned seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for the study of human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination--in short, for story-telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each one of us relate his own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit, and his lady-love, beginning where Mr. Rose's narrative ends--at the parting of the lovers at the gate. This much should be assumed and conceded--that the young lady was not necessarily to blame for Redruth's becoming a crazed and world-hating hermit. When we have done, Miss Garland shall render the JUDGEMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit of her Sex she shall decide which version of the story best and most truly depicts human and love interest, and most faithfully estimates the character and acts of Redruth's betrothed according to the feminine view. The apple shall be bestowed upon him who is awarded the decision. If you are all agreed, we shall be pleased to hear the first story from Mr. Dinwiddie." The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger in the dumps. "That's a first-rate scheme, Judge," he said, heartily. "Be a regular short-story vaudeville, won't it? I used to be correspondent for a paper in Springfield, and when there wasn't any news I faked it. Guess I can do my turn all right." "I think the idea is charming," said the lady passenger, brightly. "It will be almost like a game." Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand impressively. "In olden days," he said, orotundly, "Paris awarded the golden apple to the most beautiful." "I was at the Exposition," remarked the windmill man, now cheerful again, "but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the time I wasn't at the machinery exhibit." "But now," continued the Judge, "the fruit shall translate to us the mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss Garland. Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as you may deem it just." The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath her robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark, brightly and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might have listened hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon the fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. "Will you oblige us with the initial story?" he asked. The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his head on account of the draughts. "Well," he began, without any embarrassment, "this is about the way I size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and gold bonds when he's got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to see her. Well, maybe he's hot, and talks like the proprietor, and forgets that an engagement ain't always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I guess that makes Alice warm under the lacy yoke. Well, she answers back sharp. Well, he--" "Say!" interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, "if you could put up a windmill on every one of them 'wells' you're using, you'd be able to retire from business, wouldn't you?" The windmill man grinned good-naturedly. "Oh, I ain't no Guy de Mopassong," he said, cheerfully. "I'm giving it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this: 'Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,' says she; 'but he takes me riding and buys me theatre tickets, and that's what you never do. Ain't I to never have any pleasure in life while I can?' 'Pass this chatfield- chatfield thing along,' says Redruth;--'hand out the mitt to the Willie with creases in it or you don't put your slippers under my wardrobe.' "Now that kind of train orders don't go with a girl that's got any spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and caramels before she settled down to patch George's other pair, and be a good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won't come down. Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away and hits the booze. Yep. That's what done it. I bet that girl fired the cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left. George boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. 'Me for the hermit's hut,' says George, 'and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that isn't there.' "But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept a cat that came when you said 'weeny--weeny--weeny!' I got too much faith in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they're stuck on every time for the dough." The windmill man ceased. "I think," said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly throne, "that that is a char--" "Oh, Miss Garland!" interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand, "I beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other contestants. Mr.--er--will you take the next turn?" The Judge addressed the young man who had the Agency. "My version of the romance," began the young man, diffidently clasping his hands, "would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted. Mr. Redruth bade her good-by and went out into the world to seek his fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates landed and captured him while at work, and--" "Hey! what's that?" sharply called the passenger who was nobody in particular--"a crew of pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you tell us how they sailed--" "Landed from a train," said the narrator, quietly and not without some readiness. "They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with the diamonds--" "What diamonds?" asked the unimportant passenger, almost with acerbity. "The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple," said the other, somewhat obscurely. "When he reached home, Alice's mother led him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. 'Her heart was broken when you left,' said her mother. 'And what of my rival--of Chester McIntosh?' asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice's grave. 'When he found out,' she answered, 'that her heart was yours, he pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture store in Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by an infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to forget scenes of civilisation.' With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen. "My story," concluded the young man with an Agency, "may lack the literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think otherwise." The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where reclined the lady passenger. Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver's essay was brief. "I'm not one of them lobo wolves," he said, "who are always blaming on women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth was pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey that tried to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in the grape-vine swing with the blind-bridle on, all would have been well. The woman you want is sure worth taking pains for. "'Send for me if you want me again,' says Redruth, and hoists his Stetson, and walks off. He'd have called it pride, but the nixycomlogical name for it is laziness. No woman don't like to run after a man. 'Let him come back, hisself,' says the girl; and I'll be bound she tells the boy with the pay ore to trot; and then spends her time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocket-book and the tickly moustache. "I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don't. 'This game won't work,' says Redruth; 'then so won't I.' And he goes in the hermit business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was what done the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with long whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got 'em? "Now, this Alice didn't never marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of articles is as good as a husband to some women. I'd say she played out a lone hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's abandonment of barber shops and clean shirts." Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular. Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City. But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds to the Judge's call. A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth, oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned, tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed itself into words. "Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange blossoms! Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified checks in his trouserings. "Take 'em as they parted at the gate? All right. 'You never loved me,' says Redruth, wildly, 'or you wouldn't speak to a man who can buy you the ice-cream.' 'I hate him,' says she. 'I loathe his side-bar buggy; I despise the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered with real lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he presents me with a solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls running in a vine around the border. Away with him! 'Tis only you I love.' 'Back to the cosey corner!' says Redruth. 'Was I bound and lettered in East Aurora? Get platonic, if you please. No jack-pots for mine. Go and hate your friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on Avenue B, and gum, and a trolley ride.' "Around that night comes John W. Croesus. 'What! tears?' says he, arranging his pearl pin. 'You have driven my lover away,' says little Alice, sobbing: 'I hate the sight of you.' 'Marry me, then,' says John W., lighting a Henry Clay. 'What!' she cries indignantly, 'marry you! Never,' she says, 'until this blows over, and I can do some shopping, and you see about the licence. There's a telephone next door if you want to call up the county clerk.'" The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle. "Did they marry?" he continued. "Did the duck swallow the June-bug? And then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There's where you are all wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a hermit? One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say women did it. How old is the old man now?" asked the speaker, turning to Bildad Rose. "I should say about sixty-five." "All right. He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years. Say he was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he spend that ten and two fives? I'll give you my idea. Up for bigamy. Say there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they are through with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline. The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to 'em for work. The jolly hermit's life for me. No more long hairs in the comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.' You tell me they pinched old Redruth for the noodle villa just because he said he was King Solomon? Figs! He was Solomon. That's all of mine. I guess it don't call for any apples. Enclosed find stamps. It don't sound much like a prize winner." Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon the stories, all were silent when the passenger who was nobody in particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the contest cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize. Though seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search in vain for any abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now diminishing firelight played softly upon his face, as clearly chiselled as a Roman emperor's on some old coin, and upon the thick waves of his honourable grey hair. "A woman's heart!" he began, in even but thrilling tones--"who can hope to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think that the hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the same old tune of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be worthy of the name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine devotion. "Gentlemen of the--er--I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth versus love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial? Not Redruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal passions that clothe our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of us here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon of approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and taste. "In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have not found woman to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere, among man's baser nature and lower motives for the cause. "There was, in all probability, a lover's quarrel as they stood at the gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There is no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman's goodness, in her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face of proffered riches. "I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about the world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life had to offer him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible. "But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away as the years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a form and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now. Her hair is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door and gazes longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting there at the gate, just as he left her--his forever, but not here below. Yes; my belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted forever on earth, but waiting! She in anticipation of a meeting in Elysium; he in the Slough of Despond." "I thought he was in the bughouse," said the passenger who was nobody in particular. Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in grotesque attitudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in fitful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a mass of red coals which shed but a dim light within the room. The lady passenger in her cosey nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass of coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead above her clinging boa. Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet. "And now, Miss Garland," he announced, "we have concluded. It is for you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument--especially, I may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood--approaches nearest to your own conception." No answer came from the lady passenger. Judge Menefee bent over solicitously. The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold, round, irregular something in her lap. "She has eaten the apple," announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as he held up the core for them to see. 苹果之谜 出了乐园城二十英里,离日出城还有十五英里时,马车夫比尔达•罗斯勒住了马。鹅毛大雪下了一整天。平地上的积雪已有八英寸厚。剩下的路程都是狭隘崎岖的山脊,即使白天行车都难免不出危险。现在大雪和夜色掩盖了险情,再往前赶路根本不能考虑,比尔达•罗斯这样说。因此,他勒住了四匹健壮的马,把他那明智的推论传达给五位乘客。 法官梅尼菲立刻跳下马车。他在人们的心目中好象茶具中的银盘子一样,总是处于领导的和首要的地位。在他的启发下,三个同车的乘客也下了车,准备随时去探路,谴责,反对,屈服,或者继续上路,全凭他们头子高兴怎样去支配了。第五个乘客是位年轻妇女,她留在车子里没有下来。 比尔达把马车停在第一道山脊的隆起部。路边是两道参差不齐的黑色木栅栏。离那道较高的栅栏五十码远,有一幢小房子,在白茫茫的积雪中象是一块黑斑。法官梅尼菲和他的部下由于下雪和紧张,仿佛孩子似地闹闹嚷嚷地向那座房子跑去。他们呼喊,敲打门窗。屋里不好客的阒寂使他们感到不耐烦;他们便向不牢固的障碍物发动进攻,硬闯了进去。 呆在马车上的人听到那座遭到入侵的房子里传出碰撞声和叫喊声。没多久,里面透出了颤动的火光,越来越旺,烧得明亮欢快。接着,兴高采烈的探索者们冒着大雪跑回来。法官梅尼菲宣布他们的困境有了解救,他的声音比号角还要响亮,几乎可以和管弦乐队的音量相比。他说,那座屋子只有一个房间,没人住,也没有家具;可是有个大壁炉;他们还在后面的披屋里找到许多砍好的木柴。这一来,躲避寒夜的宿处和取暖就有了保证。让比尔达安心的是,房子附近还有一个马厩,虽然年久失修,但还能凑和使用,阁楼上还有干草。 “先生们,”在赶车座位上把大衣和车毯裹得严严的比尔达嚷道,“替我把栅栏上的木板卸下两块,我就可以把马车赶进去了。那是雷德鲁斯的小房子。我原想我们准在它附近。雷德鲁斯八月份给送进了疯人院。” 四个乘客向顶上积雪的栅栏扑去。马匹在吆喝声下把车子拖上斜坡,到了那座被仲夏的疯狂夺去主人的建筑物的门口。车夫和两个乘客开始卸马。法官梅尼菲打开车门,脱掉帽子。 “加兰小姐,我必须声明,”他说,“我们不得不中止旅行。车夫断言,晚上走山路的风险太大,简直不容考虑。形势要求我们在这座房子里宿一晚。除了暂时不便外,我希望你不必有所顾虑。我亲自检查了那座房屋,发现至少有避寒的条件。我们一定尽可能地照料你,让你舒服。现在允许我扶你下车。” 这时,另一个乘客走到法官身边来。他是在小巨人风车公司里工作的,姓邓武迪;不过那没有多大关系。在从乐园城到日出城的短短路程中,旅客们不需要十分清楚彼此的姓名,即使完全不知道也无所谓。不过,想同法官麦迪逊勒•梅尼菲分庭抗礼的人理应有一个姓名的钉子,好让名誉之神挂上花环。因此,这个靠风吃饭的人轻快地高声说:“看情形你得下车啦,麦克法兰太太。这座小房子固然抵不上帕尔默大旅店,不过可以避风雪,走的时候也没有人搜查你的手提箱,看你有没有把他们的匙子带走当作纪念品。我们已经生了火;我们会替你安排得舒舒服服,不让你的脚受潮,我们会把耗子赶跑,总之,没问题,没问题。” 有两个乘客被马匹、马具、大雪和比尔达•罗斯的讥刺的命令搞得晕头转向,其中一个在混乱的义务劳动中高声嚷道:“喂!你们把所罗门小姐送进屋里去,好吗?嗨,喂!该死的畜生!” 这里还得罗唆几句:从乐园城到日出城这么短的旅程中,正确的姓名完全是多余的。当法官梅尼菲向那位女乘客自我介绍时(他的年龄和声望允许他这样做),她甜蜜地轻声报了一个姓,其余的男乘客根据各人不同的听法,有了不同的理解。在当时必然发生的不无妒忌的竞争状态下,各人固执地坚持自己的意见。在女乘客那方面来说,如果重新声明或更正,即使不被人误会为她想获得更深一步的交情,也显得斤斤计较。因此,她一视同仁地让人家称呼她加兰,麦克法兰,或者所罗门,并没有表示不满。从乐园城到日落城总共不过三十五英里。在这么短的旅程中,凭“流浪的犹太人”①的手提包起誓,“旅伴”这个称呼也就够了。 『①“流浪的犹太人”:传说中的人物,据说他侮辱了被押赴刑场的耶稣,被罚永世流浪。』没多久,这一小群旅客在熊熊的炉火前快活地围坐成一道弧线。马车上的毯子、座垫和能取下的东西都被搬来用上了。女乘客在壁炉侧边、弧线的一端就座。她雍容华贵地坐在那儿,仿佛登上了臣民们替她准备的宝座。她身下是马车座垫,背靠空木箱和空木桶,那上面蒙了毯子,挡住门窗缝里钻进来的寒风。她那双穿着暖和的鞋袜的脚伸向可亲的炉火。她的手套已经脱去,但仍旧裹着一条毛皮的长围脖。摇曳的火光照亮了她那半掩在围脖里的脸——一张年轻的、充满女性妩媚的脸蛋,眉清目秀,安详宁谧,流露着对无懈可击的美貌的自信。骑士精神和男子气概竞争着讨她的欢心,使她舒适。她仿佛也接受了他们奉献的殷勤——不象一个受到追求和照顾的女人那样轻佻;不象许多受宠若惊的女人那样顾影自怜;也不象牛接受干草时那样漠然无动于衷;而同自然界固有的计划完全一致——有如百合花摄取那注定要使它清新的露珠时的情形。 外面狂风怒号,细雪从罅隙里钻进来,寒气围攻着六个落难者的背脊;尽管如此,那晚的风雪却不缺乏拥护人。法官梅尼菲是暴风雪的律师。气候委托他陈述,他特别卖力地进行辩护,要让那些待在寒冷的陪审席上的伙伴相信,他们所处的地方是一个遍地玫瑰,和风徐来的凉亭。他找出许多俏皮风趣的奇闻轶事,虽然不够庄重,可是很受欢迎。他的兴致不可抗拒地感染了别人。大伙赶紧各尽所能,来促进欢乐的气氛。甚至那位女乘客也被打动了。 “我认为这样相当可爱。”她说,声调徐缓而清脆。 每隔一个时候,总会有一个乘客站起来,诙谐地探索这间屋子。可是雷德鲁斯居住过的迹象已经找不到了。 大伙七嘴八舌地要求比尔达•罗斯讲讲这个曾经隐居在这儿的老头的故事。现在,车夫的马匹已经安置好了,他的乘客们仿佛也定了心,他自己便恢复了平静与礼貌。 “那个老家伙,”他很不尊敬地开始说,“把这座房子糟蹋了二十年光景。他从来不许人家走近。每逢马车经过时,他总是缩回头,砰地把门关上。毫无疑问,他脑瓜子里出了毛病。他一向在小泥口的山姆•蒂利的铺子里买食品和烟草。八月里,他披了一条红被子跑到那儿,对老山姆说,他是所罗门国王,还说示巴王后要来看他。他把所有的钱都带了去——满满一袋子银币——把它扔进山姆的水井。‘如果她知道我有钱,’雷德鲁斯老头对山姆说,‘她就不来啦。’“人们一听到他对女人和银钱有了那种看法,就知道他发疯了;因此把他送进了疯人院。” “他生平有没有什么浪漫史,促使他过这种孤独的生活呢?”一个开代理行的年轻乘客问道。 “没有,”比尔达说,“我可没有听说过。只不过是普通的小麻烦。据说他年轻时,在他犯红被子病,取消自己的经济资格之前,他同一位年轻小姐有过爱情之类不幸的事儿。浪漫史我可从来没有听说过。” “啊!”法官梅尼菲声容并茂地说,“毫无疑问,一件单相思的案子。” “不,先生,”比尔达接口说,“不尽然。她根本没有同他结婚。乐园城的马默杜克•马林根有一次碰到从雷德鲁斯老头家乡来的人。他说雷德鲁斯原是一个很不错的小伙子,不过如果你踢踢他的口袋,你听到的不会是钱币声,而只是一副袖扣和一串钥匙的金属声。他同那位年轻小姐订过婚——她大概叫艾丽斯吧——我记不清了。据说她是人们会抢着替她付车钱的那种姑娘。唔,后来镇上来了一个有钱而大方的小伙子,他有马车、矿山股票和空闲。艾丽斯小姐虽然已经有了主,可是和那新来的家伙过从频繁。他们互相拜访,还碰巧一起去邮政局,产生了一些往往会促使姑娘们退还订婚戒指和别的礼物的事——正如诗人所说,造成了‘赃物上的裂缝。’①『①英国诗人丁尼生的长诗《默林与维维恩》中有“琵琶上的小裂缝”句,指在小事上的不忠实能发展成为在大事方面的不忠实,正如琵琶上的小裂缝延伸后能使整个乐器失音一样。比尔达在这里把“琵琶”说成在英文里同音的“赃物”了。』“一天,人们见到雷德鲁斯同艾丽斯小姐站在门口谈话。接着,他抬帽行礼后走开了。据雷德鲁斯家乡来的人所知,镇上的人此后再也没有见过他。” “那位年轻小姐怎么样了呢?”开代理行的年轻人问道。 “没听说。”比尔达回答说。“我听到的故事就到此为止,象匹瘸腿的老驽马,任你怎么鞭策,它再也不往前走了。” “一件非常悲惨的——”法官梅尼菲正要评论,他的话却被更高的权威给打断了。 “一个多么可爱的故事!”女乘客说,音调象笛子一般悦耳。 屋子里静默了好一会儿,只听得外面的风声和炉火的劈啪声。 男人们都坐在地上,只垫了一些零碎的木板和膝毯,使地板那不好客的表面稍稍缓和一点。在小巨人风车公司干活的人站起来,走了几圈,遛遛腿,舒散舒散痠痛的筋骨。 突然间,他发出一声得意的呼喊。他手里高举着什么东西,从屋子一个满布尘埃的角落奔回来。他手里是一只苹果——一只漂亮的、有红色斑点的、茁壮的大苹果。那是在角落里一个高木架上的纸口袋里找到的。不可能是那个被爱情毁掉的雷德鲁斯的遗物,因为它还是那样新鲜完好,说它从八月份起一直就搁在那个霉臭的架子上的假设根本不能成立。准是最近有什么露营的人在这所荒废的房子里吃饭,遗忘在这里的。 邓武迪——他的功绩给了他再次扬名的资格——在落难的伙伴面前夸示那只苹果。“瞧我找到了什么,麦克法兰太太!”他自负地嚷道。他在火光前面高举着那只苹果,使它显得更其红润。女乘客平静地笑了一笑——她总是那么平静。 “多么可爱的苹果!”她清晰地喃喃说道。 片刻之间,法官梅尼菲觉得自己被打垮了,受了屈辱和贬谪。低人一等的处境使他不胜恼怒。为什么命运之神偏偏挑了这个闹闹嚷嚷、粗鲁冒失的做风车生意的家伙,而不挑他去发现这只激动人心的苹果呢?否则他就可以使这件事成为一篇风趣横生的即席演说或者一幕喜剧的场景、仪式或背景——从而永远保持令人瞩目的地位。事实上,那位女乘客正带着羡慕的微笑在看着这个可笑的邓博迪或者武邦迪,仿佛认为这家伙干了一件了不起的事呢!这个做风车买卖的人象他自己的货物样品一般,被尘世吹向太空的风刮得胀鼓鼓的,转个不停。 踌躇满志的邓武迪拿着那只宝贝苹果,陶醉在大伙趋炎附势的注意中,这时,足智多谋的法学家已经想出了一个恢复名誉的计策。 法官梅尼菲那肥胖然而典雅的脸上堆着最有礼貌的笑容,走上前去,从邓武迪手里拿过那只苹果,象是要审查它似的。在他手里,苹果成了第一号物证。 “好漂亮的苹果。”他赞许地说。“不错,我亲爱的邓温迪先生,作为粮秣征收员,你使我们黯然失色。不过我有一个主意。这只苹果将成为美的心灵授予最合适的人选的标志、象征、奖品和纪念。” 除了一个人之外,大伙都喝彩赞同。“嘴皮子真能说,可不是吗?”一个乘客说,同那个开代理行的年轻人相比,他是无足轻重的。 不表态的就是那个做风车生意的人。他发现自己被贬低到一般人的地位上了。他做梦也没想到他的苹果竟被充公作为标志。他原打算把苹果分开吃掉,然后来个余兴节目,把苹果籽贴在前额上,每一颗代表他所认识的一位年轻小姐。他还打算把其中一颗代表麦克法兰太太。哪一颗苹果籽先掉下来就表示——但是现在已经太晚了。 “苹果这样东西,”法官梅尼菲继续对他的陪审团说,“近代受了委屈,在人们心目中所占的地位不高。事实上,它经常同烹调和商业沾边,以致很难被列为高等水果。古时的情况就不同了。《圣经》、历史和神话中有许多事实可以证明,苹果是水果中的贵族。我们想形容一件特别珍贵的东西时,仍旧说‘眼中的苹果’。我们在成语里可以找到‘银苹果’这个比喻。任何别的果实,无论是树上长的,还是藤上结的,在比喻用法中都没有苹果这么广泛。谁没有听说过和向往过‘赫斯贝里狄斯的金苹果’①?至于苹果的古老声誉的最重要、最有意义的例子,我想不用我说诸位也已知道了。我们的始祖吃了它,才从善良完美的境界堕落到人间。” 『①赫斯贝里狄斯:希腊神话中看守金苹果园的三仙女。』“象这样的苹果,”做风车生意的人说,他还是跳不出具体事物的圈子,“在芝加哥市场上卖三块五毛钱一桶。” “我现在要建议的是,”法官梅尼菲对打断他的话的人宽容地笑笑,接着往下说,“我们不得不守在这里,直到明天早晨。我们有了足以取暖的柴火。其次需要的就是要尽可能找些消遣,以打发时间。我提议把这只苹果交给加兰小姐保管。它不再是一个水果,而是象我刚才所说的,成了一个悬而未决的奖品,代表人类的一个伟大思想。加兰小姐也不再代表她个人——当然是暂时的,请允许我补充一句,”——(他深深地一鞠躬,完全是古时候那温文尔雅的气派。)“她将代表整个女性;将体现和概括女性——也许还可以说,在感性和理性上代表上帝的杰作。她将以这一身份来判断和决定下面的问题:“几分钟之前,承我们的朋友罗斯先生把这所房子的前任主人的浪漫史讲了一个有趣然而不完整的故事。在我看来,我们听到的少数事实展开了一个美妙的境界,可以由我们去推测、研究人类的心理,发挥想象——简言之,就是讲故事。让我们利用这个机会。我们每个人把隐士雷德鲁斯和他情人的故事按照自己的想法讲下去,从罗斯先生讲完的地方接着往下讲——也就是那对情人在门口分手之后的情形。有一个原则应该得到确定和承认——雷德鲁斯之所以变成精神错乱、愤世嫉俗的隐士,不能归罪于那位年轻小姐。我们讲完之后,再请加兰小姐作出女人的判断。她将根据女人的精神和见解来决定,哪一个故事最好,最真实地描绘了人类和爱情的实质,最确切地判断了雷德鲁斯的未婚妻的性格和行为。她认为谁的故事最好,这个苹果就给谁。如果各位都同意,我们乐于听邓温迪先生讲第一个故事。” 最后一句话把那个做风车生意的人将了一军。不过他可不是容易沮丧的人。 “那倒是第一流的计划,法官。”他兴致勃勃地说。“一个绝妙的故事会,可不是吗?我一向是斯普林菲尔德一家报馆的通讯员,新闻不够的时候,我就捏造。我想这件事我办得了。” “我觉得这个主意很可爱,”女乘客伶俐地说,“几乎象是游戏啦。” 法官梅尼菲走上前去,做作地把苹果放到她手上。 “在古时候,”他意味深长地说,“帕里斯曾把金苹果赠给了最美的人①。” 『①据古希腊神话,赫拉、雅典娜和阿弗洛狄忒三女神争夺金苹果,特洛伊王子帕里斯把金苹果断给了最美丽的爱神阿弗洛狄忒,引起了赫拉和雅典娜的妒恨。她们在特洛伊十年战争中帮助帕里斯的敌人打败了他的国家。帕里斯(Paris)的原文与法国首都巴黎的拼法相同,因而有了下文的误会。』“我参加过巴黎的博览会,”做风车生意的人插嘴说,他现在又很高兴了,“我不在机械馆的时候,就老是待在博览会的娱乐场里。我可从没有听说过这件事呀。” “现在,”法官接下去说,“这个苹果将把女性心理的神秘和智慧传达给我们。把苹果拿着,加兰小姐。听听我们浅薄的传奇故事,然后根据你的判断,奖给当之无愧的人。” 女乘客甜蜜地笑笑。苹果搁在她膝头上毯子的下面。她懒洋洋地靠在她的堡垒上,又愉快又惬意。如果没有人声和风声,也许可以听到她在象小猫似地打呼噜呢。有人在壁炉里添了木柴。法官梅尼菲文雅地点点头。“请你先开场讲吧。”他说。 做风车生意的人象土耳其人那样盘膝而坐,为了挡风,把帽子推到了后脑勺上。 “呃,”他毫不忸怩地开始说,“我对这个难题的估计大概是这样的:当然啦,雷德鲁斯被那个有钱挥霍,想夺掉他的姑娘的小子惹急了。他自然要跑去,责问她讲过的话算不算数。唔,不管是谁,挑中一位姑娘的时候,总不希望另一个有马车和金矿股票的家伙插进来。呃,他跑去找她。唔,也许他火气大了一些,说话的口气象老板似的,忘了订婚并不是永远肯定可靠的。呃,我猜想那一来叫艾丽斯也冒火了。唔,她就顶了两句嘴。呃,他——” “喂!”那个无足轻重的乘客插嘴说,“假如你能在你说的每一个‘唔’呀‘呃’呀的上面安装一台风车,那你就可以发财退休了,是吗?” 做风车生意的人和气地咧嘴笑笑。 “呃,我本来就不是什么莫泊桑。”他快活地说。“我讲的是地道的美国话。唔,她这样说:‘金股先生同我无非是朋友关系,’她说,‘但是他带我乘车兜风,请我看戏,你却从来没这样做过。我能找快活的时候,难道叫我永远不去找吗?’‘别罗里罗唆,’雷德鲁斯说,——‘只要你一句话,你不同那家伙一刀两断,就别想把你的拖鞋搁在我的衣橱里。’“那种盛气凌人的话对一个有个性的姑娘来说是不合适的。我敢打赌,那姑娘始终爱她的未婚夫。也许她象一般姑娘那样,在安下心来,替乔治补补袜子,成为一个好妻子之前,也想找找快活,寻寻开心。但他下不了台阶。唔,她把戒指退还给他;乔治同她分手后就喝上了酒。是啊。准是这样的。我敢打赌,他走了两天,那姑娘就和那个打扮得花里胡哨的有钱家伙断绝了往来。乔治带了一点行李,搭上一辆货车,不知到什么地方去了。他喝了好几年酒;阿尼林①和酒精替他作出了决定。‘我要隐居去了,’乔治说,‘我要留起长胡子,守着一罐并不存在的埋在地下的钱。’『①阿尼林:即苯胺,油状液体,有毒性,化学工业上用以制染料,劣质酒用它来上色。』“至于艾丽斯呢,照我的看法,她倒是公平交易的。她再也不结婚,一等脸上长了皱纹便去做打字员,养了一只猫,只要你对它说‘咪咪——咪咪——咪咪!’它便跑过来。我对善良的女人有足够的信心,不相信她们会为了钱而抛弃心上人。”做风车生意的人结束了他的话。 “我认为,”女乘客在她那简陋的宝座上挪动了一下说道,“这个故事很可——” “喔,加兰小姐!”法官梅尼菲举起手,打断了她的话,“我请求你暂时别发表意见!否则对其余参加比赛的人就不公平了。这位——呃——请你接着讲,好不好?”法官对那个开代理行的年轻人说。 “我对这个爱情故事的看法是这样的,”年轻人腼腆地合抱着手说,“他们分手的时候并没有闹翻。雷德鲁斯先生向她道别,到世上去寻求财富了。他知道他的情人始终会对他忠实的。他根本不信他的情敌能打动这样一颗温柔纯真的心。我要说,雷德鲁斯先生到怀俄明的落基山脉去找金矿了。一天,一群海盗上了岸,在他干活的时候抓住了他,于是——” “嗨!你说什么?”那个无足轻重的乘客突然嚷道——“一群海盗在落基山脉上岸!请问,他们是怎么乘船——” “乘火车去的。”讲故事的人镇静地、并非毫无准备地说。“他们把他幽禁在一个山洞里,过了几个月又把他带到几百英里远的阿拉斯加的森林里。在那里,一个美丽的印第安姑娘爱上了他,但他仍旧忠于艾丽斯。他在森林里流浪了一年,然后带着许多钻石出发——” “什么钻石?”那个无足轻重的乘客又问道,口气近乎刻薄了。 “马鞍匠在秘鲁庙堂给他看的钻石。”对方含混地说。“他一到家乡,艾丽斯的母亲便哭哭啼啼地带他到柳树底下一个新坟那儿。‘你走了之后,她心就碎了。’她母亲说。‘我的情敌——切斯特•麦金托什——怎么样啦?’雷德鲁斯先生悲伤地跪在艾丽斯的坟墓前,问道。‘等他发现,’她母亲说,‘她的心是属于你的之后,他也一天天地憔悴下去,终于在大拉皮兹开了一家木器店。后来我们听说,他到印第安纳州去,想忘掉文明社会,结果在南本德附近被一头惹怒了的麋鹿咬死了。’后来,雷德鲁斯先生就避不见人,象我们已经知道的那样,成了一个隐士。 “我的故事,”开代理行的年轻人结束说,“可能缺少文艺气息;不过我要说明那位年轻小姐始终是忠实的。在她眼里,财富绝不能同真正的爱情相比。我非常景慕和信任女性,因此不可能有另外的看法。” 讲故事的人说完后,朝女乘客坐着的角落瞟了一眼。 接下来,法官梅尼菲请比尔达•罗斯提出他的故事,参加争夺苹果的比赛。马车夫讲的故事很短。 “我不是那种把种种不幸都归罪于女人的家伙,”他说,“关于你要我说的故事,法官,我的看法是这样的:雷德鲁斯的毛病全出在懒惰上。这个珀西瓦尔•德莱西既然想把他挤到外档去,想给艾丽斯蒙上眼罩笼头,哄得她晕头转向,雷德鲁斯就该振作起来,狠狠地揍他一顿,也就太平无事了。你要一个女人当然得花些力气。 “‘再需要我的时候,你来找我好啦。’雷德鲁斯掀掀他的斯特森呢帽走开了。他管这叫做自尊,其实是懒惰。没有哪个女人愿意主动去追男人的。‘让他自己回来吧。’那姑娘说;她准保同那个有钱的家伙断绝了往来,然后整天待在窗口前,等候那个空荷包、小胡子的人。 “我想雷德鲁斯等了九年光景,指望她派个黑人送信来,请求他原谅。但是没有动静。‘这一套行不通了,’雷德鲁斯说,‘我也不干啦。’于是他就隐居起来,留起胡子。是啊,毛病就出在懒惰和胡子上。它们是一起来的。你可曾听说过哪一个走运的人留长头发和长胡子?没有。你不妨看看马尔巴勒公爵和经营美孚石油公司的骗子。他们有没有留长头发和长胡子? “再说,这个艾丽斯再也没有结婚,我可以拿一匹马来打赌。如果雷德鲁斯同别人结了婚,她也许会嫁人的。但是他就此没有露脸。艾丽斯珍藏着所谓爱情的纪念品,也许是一绺头发,也许是他弄断的胸衣里的钢丝。对某些女人来说,这种东西跟丈夫差不多。我要说,她孤单单地守了一辈子。雷德鲁斯老头不同理发铺和干净衬衫打交道的事,我可不责怪女人。” 下面轮到了那个无足轻重的乘客。我们不知道他的姓名,只知道他是从乐园城到日出城的旅客。 当他答应法官时,如果火光不太暗淡,你们倒可以看清他的模样。 瘦削的身材,锈褐色的衣服,胳臂抱着脚,下巴搁在膝盖上,象青蛙似地坐着。麻絮似的光滑的头发,长鼻子,萨蒂尔①式的嘴巴,被烟叶染污的往上翘的嘴角。鱼目一般的眼睛,用一支马蹄形别针扣住的红领带。他没开口,先咯咯地干笑一阵子,慢慢地形成了话语。 『①萨蒂尔:希腊神话中半人半羊的森林神。』“到现在为止,大伙说的都不对头。嘿!没有香橙花来点缀的爱情故事!嗬,嗬!我支持那个打蝴蝶结领带,口袋里揣着保付支票的小伙子。 “从他们在门口分手的时候讲起吗?好吧。‘你从没有真心爱过我,’雷德鲁斯莽撞地说,‘不然你不会同一个请你吃冰淇淋的男人谈话的。’‘我恨他。’她说。‘我讨厌他的蹩脚马车;我瞧不起他送给我的高级奶油糖,尽管装在金色的盒子里,还用真正的花边织品包扎;他送我一只有蓝宝石和珍珠镶边、刻出浮雕的足金鸡心时,我真想把他一刀捅死。去他的!我爱的只是你。’‘别假惺惺啦!’雷德鲁斯说。‘难道我是那种东部的冤大头吗?别哄人啦,对不起。我可不上当。你去恨你的朋友吧。我可要去找乙马路上的尼克森家的姑娘,嚼口香搪,乘电车去了。’“那晚上,约翰•伍•克里塞斯来了。‘怎么!在哭吗?’他整整珍珠领带别针说。‘你把我的情人给轰走了,’小艾丽斯抽噎着说:‘我不喜欢见到你。’‘那么跟我结婚吧。’约翰•伍点燃一支亨利•克莱牌的雪茄说。‘什么!’她怒冲冲地嚷道,‘跟你结婚!休想,’她说,‘除非等我气顺下来,能上街去买点东西,你去办结婚证的时候。隔壁有电话,你要找县里的教会文书办结婚证,可以去啦。’” 讲故事的人停下来,又讥讽地干笑一阵子。 “他们结婚没有?”他接着说。“那还用问,哪有猫儿不爱荤的?我还要谈谈雷德鲁斯老头的事。照我的理论说来,你们的看法又都错了。他为什么隐居?一个说是懒惰;一个说是伤心;另一个说是酗酒。我说这是女人害的。这个老头现在有多大年纪啦?”他转向比尔达•罗斯问道。 “我想大概有六十五左右吧。” “好。他在这里隐居了二十年。他在门口脱帽离开时,假定算他是二十五岁。那么还应该有二十年,否则凑不齐数。那二十年是怎么过的呢?我把我的看法告诉你们吧。因为犯了重婚罪,坐了二十年牢。假定说,他在圣乔有个金发的胖婆娘,在煎锅山有个黑发的瘦女人,在考谷有个镶金牙的姑娘。雷德鲁斯把事情弄僵了,被关进监狱。刑满释放后,他说:‘除了在裙边讨生活之外,我什么都可以干。隐士的买卖还不太兴隆,从没有速记员去他们那儿找工作。我还是过过快活的隐士生活吧。梳齿里不会再有女人的长头发,雪茄烟灰缸里也不会再有醃菜用的大茴香了。’你对我说老雷德鲁斯自以为是所罗门王,便给送进了疯人院,是吗?无聊!他本来就是所罗门。我的故事到此为止。我猜我是得不到苹果的。附上退稿邮资。这个故事不象是能得奖的。” 法官梅尼菲早就声明过,不希望事先对故事发表评论,等那无足轻重的乘客讲完之后,大家唯恐法官责难,也就不言语。接着,竞赛会的天才的发起人清了清嗓子,开始讲最后一个参加评比的故事。法官梅尼菲坐在地上虽然很不舒服,可是你在他身上找不到丝毫有损尊严的迹象。逐渐暗下去的火光柔和地映照着他那象古币上罗马帝王浮雕那样轮廓分明的脸,映照着他那一头浓密的令人肃然起敬的银发。 “女人的心!”他用平稳而动人的声调说——“有谁能够揣摩?男人的作风和欲望各各不同。我认为普天之下女人的心都按同一个节奏跳动,都和同一的爱情的旋律协调。对女人来说,爱情就意味着牺牲。只要她不辜负女人这个称号,对于她,金钱或地位都无法同真实的情感相比。 “各位陪审——呃——我该说,各位朋友,雷德鲁斯对爱情一案已经进行了审理。可是,谁在受审呢?不是雷德鲁斯,因为他已经受到了惩罚。也不是那些赋与我们生命以天使的欢乐的不朽的情感。那么是谁呢?是我们。今晚,我们每一个人都站在法庭里,从我们的回答中就可以知道我们的心灵是崇高的还是愚昧的。女性通过一位最秀丽的代表坐在这儿来审判我们。她手里拿着那个奖品,价值虽然不大,但是值得我们努力争取,因为它是那位女性判断和鉴赏的可敬代表表示赞许的酬报。 “在叙述雷德鲁斯和他所倾心的美人的假想的故事之前,我必须大声疾呼地反对那种卑鄙的想法,也就是把雷德鲁斯看破红尘的原因归诸女人的自私、不忠、或是爱慕虚荣。我从不认为女人会如此庸俗、会如此崇拜金钱。我们要在别的地方,在男人的比较卑劣的天性和比较低下的动机中,才找得到原因。 “在那个值得纪念的日子里,当他们站在门口的时候,很可能发生了一场情人之间常有的口角。年轻的雷德鲁斯受到妒忌的折磨,就此背井离乡。他这种行为有没有充分的理由?正反两方面的证据都不足。但是有高于证据的东西:那就是对女人的善良、不受诱惑、不为金钱所动的伟大而永恒的信心。 “我能想象那个鲁莽的情人自怨自艾到处流浪的情景。我能想象他逐渐消沉,最后领悟到失去了生活所给他的最可贵的礼物时完全绝望的模样。他之所以退出这个悲惨的尘世,以及后来的神经错乱,都是可以理解的了。 “我对另一方的看法是怎样的呢?一个孤独的女人随着年华的消逝而憔悴;但是依然忠实,依然在等待,依然期望着一个不会再见到的形象和不会再听到的脚步声。现在她已经老了。她的头发已经雪白,扎得整整齐齐。她每天坐在门口,满怀希望地瞅着尘土飞扬的大路。在精神上,她等在门口,等在他们分手的地点——她永远属于他,只是不在这个世界罢了。是的;我对女人的信心使我有了这种看法。人间诀别,但仍在等候!她企望在极乐世界重新聚首;他企望在失望的泥沼里再相会。” “我原以为他在疯人院里呢。”那个无足轻重的乘客说。 法官梅尼菲有点不耐烦地动了一下。男人们都垂头丧气,怪模怪样地坐着。风势小了一些,断断续续地吹着。炉火烧剩了一堆红炭,散发出暗淡的光线。女乘客坐着的那个舒适的角落里,只有一堆不成形的黑黢黢的东西,一头盘绕的、光滑的头发,皮围脖中间只露出一小块雪白的前额。 法官梅尼菲僵直地站了起来。 “现在,加兰小姐,”他说,“我们已经结束了。我们中间哪一个人讲的故事——特别是对真正的女性的估计——最接近你自己的想法,该由你颁发奖品了。” 女乘客没有回答。法官梅尼菲关切地弯下身子。那个无足轻重的乘客刺耳地低声笑起来。原来女乘客睡得正香。法官梅尼菲想拉她的手,叫醒她。他伸手过去时,在她膝头上碰到一个冰凉的、不规则的圆形小东西。 “她把苹果吃掉了。”法官梅尼菲吃惊地说,同时捡起苹果核给大家看。 Springtime a la Carte It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation. Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card! To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinee. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed. The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice any one try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way? Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah's battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg's Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she ball- roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg's 40-cent, five- course table d'hote (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman's head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week. The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from "hors d'oeuvre" to "not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas." Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant--a new bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required. In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter--an obsequious one if possible--and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg's customers on the morrow. Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing with her. And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the crosstown streets. The hand-organs still played "In the Good Old Summertime," with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam. And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter. One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom; "house heated; scrupulously clean; conveniences; seen to be appreciated." She had no work to do except Schulenberg's menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the window. The calendar on the wall kept crying to her: "Springtime is here, Sarah-- springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You've got a neat figure yourself, Sarah--a--nice springtime figure--why do you look out the window so sadly?" Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal; and Sarah was looking down a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses. Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must have the flowering crocus, the wood-starring dogwood, the voice of bluebird--even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in Green to their dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kin there come straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no stepchildren unless they choose to be. On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer. (In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and cripples interest. Let it march, march.) Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old Farmer Franklin's son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow house, and he could figure up exactly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon. It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands. They were to marry in the spring--at the very first signs of spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter. A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant's next day fare in old Schulenberg's angular hand. Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally in an hour and a half the twenty-one menu cards were written and ready. To-day there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups were lighter; pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was diminuendo con amore. The frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled; the richer puddings had vanished; the sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant thanatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet but doomed maple. Sarah's fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream. Down through the courses she worked, giving each item its position according to its length with an accurate eye. Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables. Carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima beans, cabbage--and then-- Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs. For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions--dandelions with some kind of egg--but bother the egg!--dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride--dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow's crown of sorrow--reminder of her happiest days. Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test: Let the Marechal Niel roses that Percy brought you on the night you gave him your heart be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a Schulenberg table d'hote. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens dishonoured the sooner would she have sought the lethean herbs of the good apothecary. But what a witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it but the little hardy courier of the fields with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this dent-de-lion-- this lion's tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he will assist at love-making, wreathed in my lady's nut-brown hair; young and callow and unblossomed, he goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress. By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker's motor car. At 6 o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true affection. At 7:30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel: the man in the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload--the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out "The Cloister and the Hearth," the best non- selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard. The front door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, just as she did! And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bear's. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners. "Why haven't you written--oh, why?" cried Sarah. "New York is a pretty large town," said Walter Franklin. "I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it didn't prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since! "I wrote!" said Sarah, vehemently. "Never got it!" "Then how did you find me?" The young farmer smiled a springtime smile. "I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening," said he. "I don't care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived." "I remember," sighed Sarah, happily. "That was dandelions below cabbage." "I'd know that cranky capital W 'way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world," said Franklin. "Why, there's no W in dandelions," said Sarah, in surprise. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to a line. Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item: "DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG." Strictly Business I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You've been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and the long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your ideas about the mysterious stageland would boil down to something like this: Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no better than your own (madam) if they weren't padded. Chorus girls are inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg. All shows walk back to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties. Irreproachable actresses reserve the comic-landlady part for their mothers on Broadway and their step-aunts on the road. Kyrle Bellew's real name is Boyle O'Kelley. The ravings of John McCullough in the phonograph were stolen from the first sale of the Ellen Terry memoirs. Joe Weber is funnier than E. H. Sothern; but Henry Miller is getting older than he was. All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink champagne and eat lobsters until noon the next day. After all, the moving pictures have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp. Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority - and we go home and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking glasses. Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It seems to have been divulged that instead of being motoring bacchanalias and diamond-hungry loreleis they are businesslike folk, students and ascetics with children and homes and libraries, owning real estate, and conducting their private affairs in as orderly and unsensational a manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen. Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the true one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch - and where I last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act. The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. But Hart had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house - than which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of good work. The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to give himself this pleausre he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinee offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles - the audible contact of the palm of one hand against the palm of the other. One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat. A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces and passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom. Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded; but Bob Hart, "All the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself," sat with his face as long and his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn for his grandmother to wind into a ball. But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight. H was the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in Character Songs and Impersonations. There were scarcely more than two bites to Cherry; but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and charged to the old man's account. She first showed you a deliciously dewy and ginghamy country girl with a basket of property daisies who informed you ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at the old log school-house besides cipherin' and nouns, especially "When the Teach-er Kept Me in." Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings, she reappeared in considerably less than a "trice" as a fluffy "Parisienne" - so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin Rouge. And then - But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody else. He thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short order stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of "Helen Grimes" in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the tray of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play tucked away somewhere. They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks of trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit vaults, handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call. They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds. But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He called it "Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of "Helen Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his critical taste demanded. After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and got Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon he called at the musty old house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card. By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain voile skirt, with her hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the great (unwritten) New England drama not yet entitled anything. "I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his card carefully. "What did you wish to see me about?" "I saw you work last night," said Hart. "I've written a sketch that I've been saving up. It's for two; and I think you can do the other part. I thought I'd see you about it." "Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry. "I've been wishing for something of the sort. I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns." Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, and read it to her. "Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry. And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her. Hart yielded to all her strictures without argument. She had at once put her finger on the sketch's weaker points. That was her woman's intuition that he had lacked. At the end of their talk Hart was willing to stake the judgment, experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that "Mice Will Play" would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the circuits. Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puckerings of her smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of a lead pencil she gave out her dictum. "Mr. Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out. That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar. And I've seen you work. I know what you can do with the other part. But business is business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now?" "Two hundred," answered Hart. "I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry. "That's about the natural discount for a woman. But I live on it and put a few simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all right. I love it; but there's something else I love better - that's a little country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard. "Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS. If you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it. And I believe we can make it go. And there's something else I want to say: There's no nonsense in my make-up; I'm on the level, and I'm on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices. I'm going to save my money to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts. No Old Ladies' Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me. "If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it. I know something about vaudeville teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular. I want you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it every pay-day in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the flap. It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to cravenette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I want you to know just how I am. I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I've got money in five savings banks." "Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're in on your own terms. I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat and stenciled on my make-up box. When I dream of nights I always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanleys 'Explorations into Africa.' And nobody else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?" "Not any," said Cherry. "What I'm going to do with my money is to bank it. You can get four percent on deposits. Even at the salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business - say, trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more." "Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right, anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd save their money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped up." The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol - put the sketch through all the known processes of condensation and improvement. They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling climax of the sketch. Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father, "Arapahoe" Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, owning a ranch that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad Lands or Amagensett, L. I. Desmond (in private life Mr. Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow Brook Hunt riding trousers, and gives his address as New York, leaving you to wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman should want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em. Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of play, whether we admit it or not - something along in between "Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian. There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play." Hart and Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part always played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a Tuxedo coat and a panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to turn down the gas fire in the grate by the manager's orders. There was another girl in the sketch - a Fifth Avenue society swelless - who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack Valentine when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third Avenue before he lost his money. This girl appeared on the stage only in the photographic state - Jack had her Sarony stuck up on the mantel of the Amagan - of the Bad Lands droring room. Helen was jealous, of course. And now for the thriller. Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina pectoris one night - so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat whisper over the footlights - while only his secretary was present. And that same day he was known to have had $647,000 in cash in his (ranch) library just received for the sale of a drove of beeves in the East (that accounts for the price we pay for steak!). The cash disappears at the same time. Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranchman when he made his (alleged) croak. "Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed -" you sabe, don't you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth Avenue Girl - who doesn't come on the stage - and can we blame her, with the vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actually must be buttoned in the back by a call boy, maids cost so much? But, wait. Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she can be, is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides like the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever patient is enough to make any perfect lady mad. So, then! They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the d'enouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a play unless it be when the prologue ends. Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it? The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra hadn't left their seats; and no man could get past "Old Jimmy," the stage door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier or an automobile as a guarantee of eligibility. Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack Valentine: "Robber and thief - and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts, this should be your fate!" With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber. "But I will be merciful," goes on Helen. "You shall live - that will be your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you to the death that you deserve. There is her picture on the mantel. I will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have pierced your craven heart." And she does it. And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistants pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet - the actual bullet - goes through the face of the photograph - and then strikes the hidden spring of the sliding panel in the wall - and lo! the panel slides, and there is the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold. It's great. You know how it is. Cherry practised for two months at a target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shooting. In the sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three inches in diameter, covered by wall paper in the panel; and she had to stand in exactly the same spot every night, and the photo had to be in exactly the same spot, and she had to shoot steady and true every time. Of course old "Arapahoe" had tucked the funds away there in the secret place; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his salary (which really might have come under the head of "obtaining money under"; but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, the New York girl was really engaged to a concrete house contractor in the Bronx; and, necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in a half-Nelson - and there you are. After Hart and Cherry had gotten "Mice Will Play" flawless, they had a try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was a house wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that inundates a theatre from the roof down. The gallery wept; and the orchestra seats, being dressed for it, swam in tears. After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was what it panned out. That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good night at her boarding-house door. "Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, "come inside just a few minutes. We've got our chance now to make good and make money. What we want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all we can." "Right," said Bob. "It's business with me. You've got your scheme for banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention." "Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful. "I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help me work out mine - and all on business principles." "Mice Will Play" had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten weeks - rather neat for a vaudeville sketch - and then it started on the circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid drawing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity. Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor's New York houses, said of Hart & Cherry: "As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit. It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute, straight home after their act, and each of 'em as gentlemanlike as a lady. I don't expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble or more respect for the profession." And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of the story: At the end of its second season "Mice Will Play" came back to New York for another run at the roof gardens and summer theatres. There was never any trouble in booking it at the top-notch price. Bob Hart had his bungalow nearly paid for, and Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank books that she had begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment plan to hold them. I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it, that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding ambitions - just the same as the man who wants to be president, or the grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is anxious to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire. And I hope I may be allowed to say, without chipping into the contribution basket, that they often move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. But, listen. At the first performance of "Mice Will Play" in New York at the Westphalia (no hams alluded to) Theatre, Winona Cherry was nervous. When she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty on the mantel, the bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then striking the disk, went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck. Not expecting to get it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry fainted in a most artistic manner. The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great enjoyment. The Cool Head, who always graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of scene shifters respectively and more or less respectfully removed Hart & Cherry from the stage. The next turn went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bell. The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who was waiting for a patient with a decoction of Am. B'ty roses. The doctor examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily. "No headlines for you, Old Sport," was his diagnosis. "If it had been two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid artery as far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back Again. As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the parlor-floor practitioner on your block, and you'll be all right. Excuse me; I've got a serious case outside to look after." After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente had moved on the same circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend. "Bob," said Vincente in his serious way, "I'm glad it's no worse. The little lady is wild about you." "Who?" asked Hart. "Cherry," said the juggler. "We didn't know how bad you were hurt; and we kept her away. It's taking the manager and three girls to hold her." "It was an accident, of course," said Hart. "Cherry's all right. She wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it. There's no hard feelings. She's strictly business. The doctor says I'll be on the job again in three days. Don't let her worry." "Man," said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, lined face, "are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion? Cherry's crying her heart out for you - calling 'Bob, Bob,' every second, with them holding her hands and keeping her from coming to you." "What's the matter with her?" asked Hart, with wide-open eyes. "The sketch'll go on again in three days. I'm not hurt bad, the doctor says. She won't lose out half a week's salary. I know it was an accident. What's the matter with her?" "You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool," said Vincente. "The girl loves you and is almost mad about your hurt. What's the matter with you? Is she nothing to you? I wish you could hear her call you." "Loves me?" asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on which he lay. "Cherry loves me? Why, it's impossible." "I wish you could see her and hear her," said Griggs. "But, man," said Bob Hart, sitting up, "it's impossible. It's impossible, I tell you. I never dreamed of such a thing." "No human being," said the Tramp Juggler, "could mistake it. She's wild for love of you. How have you been so blind?" "But, my God," said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, "it's too late. It's too late, I tell you, Sam; it's too late. It can't be. You must be wrong. It's impossible. There's some mistake. "She's crying for you," said the Tramp Juggler. "For love of you she's fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare to raise the curtain. Wake up, man." "For love of me?" said Bob Hart with staring eyes. "Don't I tell you it's too late? It's too late, man. Why, Cherry and I have been married two years!" Suite Homes and their Romance FEW young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs. Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and accommodations like those of a sleepingcar; they were living as expensively as the couple on the next floor above who had twice their income; and their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferryboat and first acquaintance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice with their names attached to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M. Santos-Dumont. Turpin's income was $200 per month. On pay day, after calculating the amounts due for rent, instalments on furniture and piano, gas, and bills owed to the florist, confectioner, milliner, tailor, wine merchant and cab company, the Turpins would find that they still had $200 left to spend. How to do this is one of the secrets of metropolitan life. The domestic life of the Turpins was a beautiful picture to see. But you couldn't gaze upon it as you could at an oleograph of "Don't Wake Grandma," or "Brooklyn by Moonlight." You had to blink when looked at it; and you heard a fizzing sound just like the machine with a "scope" at the end of it. Yes; there wasn't much repose about the picture of the Turpins' domestic life. It was something like "Spearing Salmon in the Columbia River," or "Japanese Artillery in Action." Every day was just like another; as the days are in New York. In the morning Turpin would take bromoseltzer, his pocket change from under the clock, his hat, no breakfast and his departure for the office. At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono, airs, and the water to boil for coffee. Turpin lunched downtown. He came home at 6 to dress for dinner. They always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d'h?te, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from café to casino, from Maria's to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wedding march you now hear only "Come with the Gypsy Bride." You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and, besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir silver sugar bowl to blow over. The Turpins were therefore happy. They made many warm and delightful friends, some of whom they remembered the next day. Their home life was an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of the Book of Bluff. There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was getting away with too much money. If you belong to the near-swell class in the Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the end of the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that you, yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become of the other $50. So you suspect your wife. And perhaps you give her a hint that something needs explanation. "I say, Vivien," said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, "you've been creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month's honorarium. You haven't been paying your dressmaker anything on account, have you?" There was a moment's silence. No sounds could be heard except the breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of Vivien's fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons. Claude Turpin, sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the convolutions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely face of his wife. "Claudie, dear," said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and testing the unresponsive curling irons, "you do me an injustice. Mme. Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor ten dollars on account." Turpin's suspicions were allayed for the time. But one day soon there came an anonymous letter to him that read: "Watch your wife. She is blowing in your money secretly. I was a sufferer just as you are. The place is No. 345 Blank Street. A word to the wise, etc. "A MAN WHO KNOWS" Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that he lived in. "My precinct is as clean as a hound's tooth," said the captain. "The lid's shut down as close there as it is over the eye of a Williamsburg girl when she's kissed at a party. But if you think there's anything queer at the address, I'll go there with ye." On the next afternoon at 3, Turpin and the captain crept softly up the stairs of No. 345 Blank Street. A dozen plain-clothes men, dressed in full police uniforms, so as to allay suspicion, waited in the hall below. At the top of the stairs was a door, which was found to be locked. The captain took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. The two men entered. They found themselves in a large room, occupied by twenty or twenty-five elegantly clothed ladies. Racing charts hung against the walls, a ticker clicked in one corner; with a telephone receiver to his ear a man was calling out the various positions of the horses in a very exciting race. The occupants of the room looked up at the intruders; but, as if reassured by the sight of the captain's uniform, they reverted their attention to the man at the telephone. "You see," said the captain to Turpin, "the value of an anonymous letter! No high-minded and self-respecting gentleman should consider one worthy of notice. Is your wife among this assembly, Mr. Turpin?" "She is not," said Turpin. "And if she was," continued the captain, "would she be within the reach of the tongue of slander? These ladies constitute a Browning Society. They meet to discuss the meaning of the great poet. The telephone is connected with Boston, whence the parent society transmits frequently its interpretations of the poems. Be ashamed of yer suspicions, Mr. Turpin." "Go soak your shield," said Turpin. "Vivien knows how to take care of herself in a pool-room. She's not dropping anything on the ponies. There must be something queer going on here." "Nothing but Browning," said the captain. "Hear that?" "Thanatopsis by a nose," drawled the man at the telephone. "That's not Browning; that's Longfellow," said Turpin, who sometimes read books. "Back to the pasture!" exclaimed the captain. "longfellow made the pacing-to-wagon record of 7.53 'way back in 1868." "I believe there's something queer about this joint," repeated Turpin. "I don't see it," said the captain. "I know it looks like a pool-room, all right," persisted Turpin, "but that's all a blind. Vivien has been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I believe there's some underhanded work going on here." A number of racing sheets were tacked close together, covering a large space on one of the walls. Turpin, suspicious, tore several of them down. A door, previously hidden, was revealed. Turpin placed an ear to the crack and listened intently. He heard the soft hum of many voices, low and guarded laughter, and a sharp, metallic clicking and scraping as if from a multitude of tiny but busy objects. "My God! It is as I feared!" whispered Turpin to himself. "Summon your men at once!" he called to the captain. "She is in there, I know." At the blowing of the captain's whistle the uniformed plain-clothes men rushed up the stairs into the poolroom. When they saw the betting paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to know why they had been summoned. But the captain pointed to the lock-ed door and bade them break it down. In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried. Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels. The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin's mind. Nearly a score of women -- women expensively and fashionably clothed, many beautiful and of refined appearance -- had been seated at little marble-topped tables. When the police burst open the door they shrieked and ran here and there like gayly plumed birds that had been disturbed in a tropical grove. Some became hysterical; one or two fainted; several knelt at the feet of the officers and besought them for mercy on account of their families and social position. A man who had been seated behind a desk had seized a roll of currency as large as the ankle of a Paradise Roof Gardens chorus girl and jumped out of the window. Half a dozen attendants huddled at one end of the room, breathless from fear. Upon the tables remained the damning and incontrovertible evidences of the guilt of the habituées of that sinister room -- dish after dish heaped high with ice cream, and surrounded by stacks of empty ones, scraped to the last spoonful. "Ladies," said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoner "I'll not hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and good standing in the community, with hard-working husbands and childer at home. But I'll read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the next room there's a 20-to-1 shot just dropped in under the wire three lengths ahead of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands' money instead of helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid's on the ice-cream freezer in this precinct." Claude Turpin's wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He led her to their apartment in stem silence. There she wept so remorsefully and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot his just anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien in his arms and forgave her. "Darling," she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, "I know I done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt some strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only eleven saucers." "Say no more," said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving curls. "And you are sure that you fully forgive me?" asked Vivien, gazing at him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue. "Almost sure, little one," answered Claude, stooping and lightly touching her snowy forehead with his lips. "I'll let you know later on. I've got a month's salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old steeplechase to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you are It again -- see?" Supply and Demand Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you-wait establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. Once a customer, you are always his. I do not know his secret process, but every four days your hat needs to be cleaned again. Finch is a leathern, sallow, slowfooted man, between twenty and forty. You would say he had been brought up a bushelman in Essex Street. When business is slack he likes to talk, so I had my hat cleaned even oftener than it deserved, hoping Finch might let me into some of the secrets of the sweatshops. One afternoon I dropped in and found Finch alone. He began to anoint my headpiece de Panama with his mysterious fluid that attracted dust and dirt like a magnet. "They say the Indians weave 'em under water," said I, for a leader. "Don't you believe it," said Finch. "No Indian or white man could stay under water that long. Say, do you pay much attention to politics? I see in the paper something about a law they've passed called 'the law of supply and demand.'" I explained to him as well as I could that the reference was to a politico-economical law, and not to a legal statute. "I didn't know," said Finch. "I heard a good deal about it a year or so ago, but in a one-sided way." "Yes," said I, "political orators use it a great deal. In fact, they never give it a rest. I suppose you heard some of those cart-tail fellows spouting on the subject over here on the east side." "I heard it from a king," said Finch--"the white king of a tribe of Indians in South America." I was interested but not surprised. The big city is like a mother's knee to many who have strayed far and found the roads rough beneath their uncertain feet. At dusk they come home and sit upon the door- step. I know a piano player in a cheap cafe who has shot lions in Africa, a bell-boy who fought in the British army against the Zulus, an express-driver whose left arm had been cracked like a lobster's claw for a stew-pot of Patagonian cannibals when the boat of his rescuers hove in sight. So a hat-cleaner who had been a friend of a king did not oppress me. "A new band ?" asked Finch, with his dry, barren smile. "Yes," said I, "and half an inch wider." I had had a new band five days before. "I meets a man one night," said Finch, beginning his story--"a man brown as snuff, with money in every pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in Schlagel's. That was two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for No. 98. His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that certain mountains in a country down South that he calls Gaudymala is full of it. He says the Indians wash it out of the streams in plural quantities. "'Oh, Geronimo!' says I. 'Indians! There's no Indians in the South,' I tell him, 'except Elks, Maccabees, and the buyers for the fall dry- goods trade. The Indians are all on the reservations,' says I. "'I'm telling you this with reservations,' says he. 'They ain't Buffalo Bill Indians; they're squattier and more pedigreed. They call 'em Inkers and Aspics, and they was old inhabitants when Mazuma was King of Mexico. They wash the gold out of the mountain streams,' says the brown man, 'and fill quills with it; and then they empty 'em into red jars till they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba each--an arroba is twenty-five pounds--and store it in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing a flute, over the door.' "'How do they work off this unearth increment?' I asks. "'They don't,' says the man. 'It's a case of "Ill fares the land with the great deal of velocity where wealth accumulates and there ain't any reciprocity."' "After this man and me got through our conversation, which left him dry of information, I shook hands with him and told him I was sorry I couldn't believe him. And a month afterward I landed on the coast of this Gaudymala with $1,300 that I had been saving up for five years. I thought I knew what Indians liked, and I fixed myself accordingly. I loaded down four pack-mules with red woollen blankets, wrought-iron pails, jewelled side-combs for the ladies, glass necklaces, and safety-razors. I hired a black mozo, who was supposed to be a mule- driver and an interpreter too. It turned out that he could interpret mules all right, but he drove the English language much too hard. His name sounded like a Yale key when you push it in wrong side up, but I called him McClintock, which was close to the noise. "Well, this gold village was forty miles up in the mountains, and it took us nine days to find it. But one afternoon McClintock led the other mules and myself over a rawhide bridge stretched across a precipice five thousand feet deep, it seemed to me. The hoofs of the beasts drummed on it just like before George M. Cohan makes his first entrance on the stage. "This village was built of mud and stone, and had no streets. Some few yellow-and-brown persons popped their heads out-of-doors, looking about like Welsh rabbits with Worcester sauce on em. Out of the biggest house, that had a kind of a porch around it, steps a big white man, red as a beet in color, dressed in fine tanned deerskin clothes, with a gold chain around his neck, smoking a cigar. I've seen United States Senators of his style of features and build, also head-waiters and cops. "He walks up and takes a look at us, while McClintock disembarks and begins to interpret to the lead mule while he smokes a cigarette. "'Hello, Buttinsky,' says the fine man to me. 'How did you get in the game? I didn't see you buy any chips. Who gave you the keys of the city?' "'I'm a poor traveller,' says I. 'Especially mule-back. You'll excuse me. Do you run a hack line or only a bluff?' "'Segregate yourself from your pseudo-equine quadruped,' says he, 'and come inside.' "He raises a finger, and a villager runs up. "'This man will take care of your outfit,' says he, 'and I'll take care of you.' "He leads me into the biggest house, and sets out the chairs and a kind of a drink the color of milk. It was the finest room I ever saw. The stone walls was hung all over with silk shawls, and there was red and yellow rugs on the floor, and jars of red pottery and Angora goat skins, and enough bamboo furniture to misfurnish half a dozen seaside cottages. "'In the first place,' says the man, 'you want to know who I am. I'm sole lessee and proprietor of this tribe of Indians. They call me the Grand Yacuma, which is to say King or Main Finger of the bunch. I've got more power here than a charge d'affaires, a charge of dynamite, and a charge account at Tiffany's combined. In fact, I'm the Big Stick, with as many extra knots on it as there is on the record run of the Lusitania. Oh, I read the papers now and then,' says he. 'Now, let's hear your entitlements,' he goes on, 'and the meeting will be open.' "'Well,' says I, 'I am known as one W. D. Finch. Occupation, capitalist. Address, 54' East Thirty-second--' "'New York,' chips in the Noble Grand. 'I know,' says he, grinning. 'It ain't the first time you've seen it go down on the blotter. I can tell by the way you hand it out. Well, explain "capitalist."' "I tells this boss plain what I come for and how I come to came. "'Gold-dust ?' says he, looking as puzzled as a baby that's got a feather stuck on its molasses finger. 'That's funny. This ain't a gold-mining country. And you invested all your capital on a stranger's story? Well, well! These Indians of mine--they are the last of the tribe of Peehes--are simple as children. They know nothing of the purchasing power of gold. I'm afraid you've been imposed on,' says he. "'Maybe so,' says I, 'but it sounded pretty straight to me.' "'W. D.,' says the King, all of a sudden, 'I'll give you a square deal. It ain't often I get to talk to a white man, and I'll give you a show for your money. It may be these constituents of mine have a few grains of gold-dust hid away in their clothes. To-morrow you may get out these goods you've brought up and see if you can make any sales. Now, I'm going to introduce myself unofficially. My name is Shane--Patrick Shane. I own this tribe of Peche Indians by right of conquest--single handed and unafraid. I drifted up here four years ago, and won 'em by my size and complexion and nerve. I learned their language in six weeks-it's easy: you simply emit a string of consonants as long as your breath holds out and then point at what you're asking for. "'I conquered 'em, spectacularly,' goes on King Shane, 'and then I went at 'em with economical politics, law, sleight-of-hand, and a kind of New England ethics and parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I can guess at it, I preach to 'em in the council-house (I'm the council) on the law of supply and demand. I praise supply and knock demand. I use the same text every time. You wouldn't think, W. D.,' says Shane, 'that I had poetry in me, would you?' "'Well,' says I, 'I wouldn't know whether to call it poetry or not.' "'Tennyson,' says Shane, 'furnishes the poetic gospel I preach. I always considered him the boss poet. Here's the way the text goes: "For, not to admire, if a man could learn it, were moreThan to walk all day like a Sultan of old in a garden of spice." "'You see, I teach 'em to cut out demand--that supply is the main thing. I teach 'em not to desire anything beyond their simplest needs. A little mutton, a little cocoa, and a little fruit brought up from the coast--that's all they want to make 'cm happy. I've got 'em well trained. They make their own clothes and hats out of a vegetable fibre and straw, and they're a contented lot. It's a great thing,' winds up Shane, 'to have made a people happy by the incultivation of such simple institutions.' "Well, the next day, with the King's permission, I has the McClintock open up a couple of sacks of my goods in the little plaza of the village. The Indians swarmed around by the hundred and looked the bargain-counter over. I shook red blankets at 'em, flashed finger- rings and ear-bobs, tried pearl necklaces and sidecombs on the women, and a line of red hosiery on the men. 'Twas no use. They looked on like hungry graven images, but I never made a sale. I asked McClintock what was the trouble. Mac yawned three or four times, rolled a cigarette, made one or two confidential side remarks to a mule, and then condescended to inform me that the people had no money. "Just then up strolls King Patrick, big and red 'and royal as usual, with the gold chain over his chest and his cigar in front of him. "'How's business, W. D.?' he asks. "'Fine,' says I. 'It's a bargain-day rush. I've got one more line of goods to offer before I shut up shop. I'll try 'em with safety- razors. I've' got two gross that I bought at 'a fire sale.' "Shane laughs till some kind of mameluke or private secretary he carries with him has to hold him up. "'0 my sainted Aunt Jerusha!' says he, 'ain't you one of the Babes in the Goods, W. D.? Don't you know that no Indians ever shave? They pull out their whiskers instead.' "'Well,' says I, 'that's just what these razors would do for 'em--they wouldn't have any kick coming if they used 'em once.' "Shane went away, and I could hear him laughing a block, if there had been any block. "'Tell 'em,' says I to McClintock, 'it ain't money I want--tell 'em I'll take gold-dust. Tell 'em I'll allow 'em sixteen dollars an ounce for it in trade. That's what I'm out for--the dust.' "Mac interprets, and you'd have thought a squadron of cops had charged the crowd to disperse it. Every uncle's nephew and aunt's niece of 'em faded away inside of two minutes. "At the royal palace that night me and the King talked it over. "'They've got the dust hid out somewhere,' says I, 'or they wouldn't have been so sensitive about it.' "'They haven't,' says Shane. 'What's this gag you've got about gold? You been reading Edward Allen Poe? They ain't got any gold.' "'They put it in quills,' says I, 'and then they empty it in jars, and then into sacks of twenty-five pounds each. I got it straight.' "'W. D.,' says Shane, laughing and chewing his cigar, 'I don't often see a white man, and I feel like putting you on. I don't think you'll get away from here alive, anyhow, so I'm going to tell you. Come over here.' ''He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the room and shows me a pile of buckskin sacks. "'Forty of 'em,' says Shane. 'One arroba in each one. In round numbers, $220,000 worth of gold-dust you see there. It's all mine. It belongs to the Grand Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred and twenty thousand dollars--think of that, you glass-bead peddler,' says Shane--' and all mine.' "'Little good it does you,' says I, contemptuously and hatefully. 'And so you are the government depository of this gang of money-less money-makers? Don't you pay enough interest on it to enable one of your depositors to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond worth $200 for $4.85 ?' "'Listen,' says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming out on his brow. ' I'm confidant with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards. Did you ever,' he says, 'feel the avoirdupois power of gold--not the troy weight of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?' "'Never,' says I. 'I never take in any bad money.' "Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms over the sacks of gold-dust. "'I love it,, says he. 'I want to feel the touch of it day and night. It's my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and I'm a king and a rich man. I'll be a millionaire in another year. The pile's getting bigger every month. I've got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the creeks. I'm the happiest man in the world, W. D. I just want to be near this gold, and know it's mine and it's increasing every day. Now, you know,' says he, 'why my Indians wouldn't buy your goods. They can't. They bring all the dust to me. I'm their king. I've taught 'em not to desire or admire. You might as well shut up shop.' "'I'll tell you what you are,' says I. 'You're a plain, contemptible miser. You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply,' I goes on, 'is never anything but supply. On the contrary,' says I, 'demand is a much broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the rights of our women and children, and charity and friendship, and even a little begging on the street corners. They've both got to harmonize equally. And I've got a few things up my commercial sleeve yet,' says I, 'that may jostle your preconceived ideas of politics and economy. "The next morning I had McClintock bring tip another mule-load of goods to the plaza and open it up. The people gathered around the same as before. "I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair-combs, and earrings that I carried, and had the women put 'em on. And then I played trumps. "Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand-mirrors, with solid tinfoil backs, and passed 'em around among the ladies. That was the first introduction of looking-glasses among the Peche Indians. "Shane walks by with his big laugh. "'Business looking up any?' he asks. "'It's looking at itself right now,' says I. "By-and-by a kind of a murmur goes through the crowd. The women had looked into the magic crystal and seen that they were beautiful, and was confiding the secret to the men. The men seemed to be urging the lack of money and the hard times just before the election, but their excuses didn't go. "Then was my time. "I called McClintock away from an animated conversation with his mules and told him to do some interpreting. "'Tell 'em,' says I, 'that gold-dust will buy for them these befitting ornaments for kings and queens of the earth. Tell 'em the yellow sand they wash out of the waters for the High Sanctified Yacomay and Chop Suey of the tribe will buy the precious jewels and charms that will make them beautiful and preserve and pickle them from evil spirits. Tell 'em the Pittsburg banks are paying four per cent. interest on deposits by mail, while this get-rich-frequently custodian of the public funds ain't even paying attention. Keep telling 'em, Mac,' says I, 'to let the gold-dust family do their work. Talk to 'em like a born anti-Bryanite,' says I. 'Remind 'em that Tom Watson's gone back to Georgia,' says I. "McClintock waves his hand affectionately at one of his mules, and then hurls a few stickfuls of minion type at the mob of shoppers. "A gutta-percha Indian man, with a lady hanging on his arm, with three strings of my fish-scale jewelry and imitation marble beads around her neck, stands up on a block of stone and makes a talk that sounds like a man shaking dice in a box to fill aces and sixes. "'He says,' says McClintock, 'that the people not know that gold-dust will buy their things. The women very mad. The Grand Yacuma tell them it no good but for keep to make bad spirits keep away.' "'You can't keep bad spirits away from money,' says I. "'They say,' goes on McClintock, 'the Yacuma fool them. They raise plenty row.' "'Going! Going!' says I. 'Gold-dust or cash takes the entire stock. The dust weighed before you, and taken at sixteen dollars the ounce-- the highest price on the Gaudymala coast.' "Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don't know what's up. Mac and me packs away the hand-mirrors and jewelry they had handed back to us, and we had the mules back to the corral they had set apart for our garage. "While we was there we hear great noises of shouting, and down across the plaza runs Patrick Shane, hotfoot, with his clothes ripped half off, and scratches on his face like a cat had fought him hard for every one of its lives. "'They're looting the treasury, W. D.,' he sings out. 'They're going to kill me and you, too. Unlimber a couple of mules at once. We'll have to make a get-away in a couple of minutes.' "'They've found out,' says I,' the truth about the law of supply and demand.' "'It's the women, mostly,' says the King. 'And they used to admire me so!' "'They hadn't seen looking-glasses then,' says I. "'They've got knives and hatchets,' says Shane; 'hurry !' "'Take that roan mule,' says I. 'You and your law of supply! I'll ride the dun, for he's two knots per hour the faster. The roan has a stiff knee, but he may make it,' says I. 'If you'd included reciprocity in your political platform I might have given you the dun,' says I. "Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules and rode across the rawhide bridge just as the Peches reached the other side and began firing stones and long knives at us. We cut the thongs that held up our end of the bridge and headed for the coast." A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch's shop at that moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch nodded at him friendly. "I heard down at Casey's," said the cop, in rumbling, husky tones, "that there was going to be a picnic of the Hat-Cleaners' Union over at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is that right?" "Sure," said Finch. "There'll be a dandy time." "Gimme five tickets," said the cop, throwing a five-dollar bill on the showcase. "Why,'' said Finch, "ain't you going it a little too--" "Go to h--!" said the cop. "You got 'em to sell, ain't you? Somebody's got to buy 'em. Wish I could go along." I was glad to See Finch so well thought of in his neighborhood. And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress. "Mamma says," she recited shrilly, "that you must give me eighty cents for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to buy hokey-pokey with--but she didn't say that," the elf concluded, with a hopeful but honest grin. Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents. "That's the right kind of a law," remarked Finch, as he carefully broke some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly come off within a few days--"the law of supply and demand. But they've both got to work together. I'll bet," he went on, with his dry smile, "she'll get jelly beans with that nickel--she likes 'em. What's supply if there's no demand for it?" "What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously. ''Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was Shane came in and bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now." A Technical Error I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact. I was on a visit to Sam Durkee's ranch, where I had a great time falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about twenty- five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance. Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum. I was told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family was growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them. But I gathered that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and aimed at the division of their enemies' suspenders in the back -- partly, perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been harmed. In those days -- and you will find it so yet -- their women were safe. Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I expect to sell this story to, I should say, "Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a fiancée.") Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all couples do who are and have or aren't and haven't. She was tolerably pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates. Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived on a gallop between the two places. One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small, with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries about the business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cognominally. He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his yellow shoes and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I rode in for the mail. He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed rather improbable. There were active times on the ranch, just then, and Sam was too busy to go to town often. As an incompetent and generally worthless guest, it devolved upon me to ride in for little things such as post cards, barrels of flour, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and -- letters from Ella. One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit. I knew that this information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam's soul, so I refrained from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my return. But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of Simmons, an oldtime pal of Sam's, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher, rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he would talk. When he did make oration, his words were these: "Say, Sam, there's been a description of a galoot miscallin' himself Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the past two weeks. You know who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle Newt shot last February. You know what he done this morning? He killed your brother Lester -- shot him in the co't-house yard." I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said: "He did, did he? He killed Lester?" "The same," said Simmons. "And he did more. He run away with your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know, so I rode out to impart the information." "I am much obliged, Jim," said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his mouth. "Yes, I'm glad you rode Out. Yes, I'm right glad." "Well, I'll be ridin' back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store don't know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the back." "Shot him in the back?" "Yes, while he was hitchin' his hoss." "I'm much obliged, Jim." "I kind of thought you'd like to know as soon as you could." "Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?" "Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store." "And you say -- " "Yes, Sam. Everybody seen 'em drive away together in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin' the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They'll be hard to overtake right away." "And which -- " "I was goin' on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there's no tellin' which forks they'll take -- you know that." "All right, Jim; much obliged." "You're welcome, Sam." Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty yards away he reined up and called back: "You don't want no -- assistance, as you might say?" "Not any, thanks." "I didn't think you would. Well, so long!" Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite "The Gipsy's Curse." The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco's thrilling melodramas demanded instead. "I wonder," said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, "if the cook has any cold beans left over!" He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into Sam's private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling "The Cowboy's Lament" abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post. Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging. You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West. It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef. Nothing like a good meal before a long ride," said Sam. "Eat hearty." I had a sudden suspicion. "Why did you have two horses saddled?" I asked. "One, two -- one, two," said Sam. "You can count, can't you?" His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice. It was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat more beans. In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben Tatum's steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags. I knew that Ben Tatum's card to play was flight -- flight until he came within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it might lead. During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some subjects too big even for the words in the "Unabridged." Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the right place -- laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour to have suppressed those anecdotes. Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table. In the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their meal, but looked around at times uneasily. The girl was dressed in brown - one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere. There they were -- the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we were -- the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary who writes these words. For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose the killing instinct. For one moment he joined the force of combatants -- orally. "What are you waiting for, Sam?" I said in a whisper. "Let him have it now!" Sam gave a melancholy sigh. "You don't understand; but he does," he said. "He knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You can't do it. You've got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That's why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that's Mr. Ben Tatum! One of the 'pretty men'! I'll cut him out of the herd before they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!" After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam haunted lobby and stairway and halls half the night, in some mysterious way the fugitives eluded him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the brown dress with the accordion-plaited skirt and the dapper young man with the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with the prancing nags, were gone. It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed. Once again we overtook them on a road. We were about fifty yards behind. They turned in the buckboard and looked at us; then drove on without whipping up their horses. Their safety no longer lay in speed. Ben Tatum knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It seemed likely that he was no coward. So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead of precipitating conflict between man and man. But not willingly or consciously. She is oblivious of codes. Five miles farther, we came upon the future great Western city of Chandler. The horses of pursuers and pursued were starved and weary. There was one hotel that offered danger to man and entertainment to beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at the ringing of a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long ago. The dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie. Just as we were eating apple pie -- how Ben Davises and tragedy impinge upon each other! -- I noticed Sam looking with keen intentness at our quarry where they were seated at a table across the room. The girl still wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the veil drawn down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with his close cropped head held low. "There's a code," I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, "that won't let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder, there ain't one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a man!" And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped a Colt's automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into the body that the brown dress covered -- the brown dress with the lace collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt. The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose life a woman's glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code. Telemachus, Friend 刎颈之交 Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los Pinos, in New Mexico, for the south-bound train, which was one hour late. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed the functions of life with Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor. Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, I asked him what species of beast had long ago twisted and mutilated his left ear. Being a hunter, I was concerned in the evils that may befall one in the pursuit of game. "That ear," says Hicks, "is the relic of true friendship." "An accident?" I persisted. "No friendship is an accident," said Telemachus; and I was silent. "The only perfect case of true friendship I ever knew," went on my host, "was a cordial intent between a Connecticut man and a monkey. The monkey climbed palms in Barranquilla and threw down cocoanuts to the man. The man sawed them in two and made dippers, which he sold for two reales each and bought rum. The monkey drank the milk of the nuts. Through each being satisfied with his own share of the graft, they lived like brothers. "But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory art, subject to discontinuance without further notice. "I had a friend once, of the entitlement of Paisley Fish, that I imagined was sealed to me for an endless space of time. Side by side for seven years we had mined, ranched, sold patent churns, herded sheep, took photographs and other things, built wire fences, and picked prunes. Thinks I, neither homocide nor flattery nor riches nor sophistry nor drink can make trouble between me and Paisley Fish. We was friends an amount you could hardly guess at. We was friends in business, and we let our amicable qualities lap over and season our hours of recreation and folly. We certainly had days of Damon and nights of Pythias. "One summer me and Paisley gallops down into these San Andres mountains for the purpose of a month's surcease and levity, dressed in the natural store habiliments of man. We hit this town of Los Pinos, which certainly was a roof-garden spot of the world, and flowing with condensed milk and honey. It had a street or two, and air, and hens, and a eating-house; and that was enough for us. "We strikes the town after supper-time, and we concludes to sample whatever efficacy there is in this eating-house down by the railroad tracks. By the time we had set down and pried up our plates with a knife from the red oil-cloth, along intrudes Widow Jessup with the hot biscuit and the fried liver. "Now, there was a woman that would have tempted an anchovy to forget his vows. She was not so small as she was large; and a kind of welcome air seemed to mitigate her vicinity. The pink of her face was the in hoc signo of a culinary temper and a warm disposition, and her smile would have brought out the dogwood blossoms in December. "Widow Jessup talks to us a lot of garrulousness about the climate and history and Tennyson and prunes and the scarcity of mutton, and finally wants to know where we came from. "'Spring Valley,' says I. "'Big Spring Valley,' chips in Paisley, out of a lot of potatoes and knuckle-bone of ham in his mouth. "That was the first sign I noticed that the old fidus Diogenes business between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how I hated a talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversation with his amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was Big Spring Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley a thousand times. "Without saying any more, we went out after supper and set on the railroad track. We had been pardners too long not to know what was going on in each other's mind. "'I reckon you understand,' says Paisley, 'that I've made up my mind to accrue that widow woman as part and parcel in and to my hereditaments forever, both domestic, sociable, legal, and otherwise, until death us do part.' "'Why, yes,' says I, 'I read it between the lines, though you only spoke one. And I suppose you are aware,' says I, 'that I have a movement on foot that leads up to the widow's changing her name to Hicks, and leaves you writing to the society column to inquire whether the best man wears a japonica or seamless socks at the wedding!' "'There'll be some hiatuses in your program,' says Paisley, chewing up a piece of a railroad tie. 'I'd give in to you,' says he, 'in 'most any respect if it was secular affairs, but this is not so. The smiles of woman,' goes on Paisley, 'is the whirlpool of Squills and Chalybeates, into which vortex the good ship Friendship is often drawn and dismembered. I'd assault a bear that was annoying you,' says Paisley, 'or I'd endorse your note, or rub the place between your shoulder-blades with opodeldoc the same as ever; but there my sense of etiquette ceases. In this fracas with Mrs. Jessup we play it alone. I've notified you fair.' "And then I collaborates with myself, and offers the following resolutions and by-laws: "'Friendship between man and man,' says I, 'is an ancient historical virtue enacted in the days when men had to protect each other against lizards with eighty-foot tails and flying turtles. And they've kept up the habit to this day, and stand by each other till the bellboy comes up and tells them the animals are not really there. I've often heard,' I says, 'about ladies stepping in and breaking up a friendship between men. Why should that be? I'll tell you, Paisley, the first sight and hot biscuit of Mrs. Jessup appears to have inserted a oscillation into each of our bosoms. Let the best man of us have her. I'll play you a square game, and won't do any underhanded work. I'll do all of my courting of her in your presence, so you will have an equal opportunity. With that arrangement I don't see why our steamboat of friendship should fall overboard in the medicinal whirlpools you speak of, whichever of us wins out.' "'Good old hoss!' says Paisley, shaking my hand. 'And I'll do the same,' says he. 'We'll court the lady synonymously, and without any of the prudery and bloodshed usual to such occasions. And we'll be friends still, win or lose.' "At one side of Mrs. Jessup's eating-house was a bench under some trees where she used to sit in the breeze after the south-bound had been fed and gone. And there me and Paisley used to congregate after supper and make partial payments on our respects to the lady of our choice. And we was so honorable and circuitous in our calls that if one of us got there first we waited for the other before beginning any gallivantery. "The first evening that Mrs. Jessup knew about our arrangement I got to the bench before Paisley did. Supper was just over, and Mrs. Jessup was out there with a fresh pink dress on, and almost cool enough to handle. "I sat down by her and made a few specifications about the moral surface of nature as set forth by the landscape and the contiguous perspective. That evening was surely a case in point. The moon was attending to business in the section of sky where it belonged, and the trees was making shadows on the ground according to science and nature, and there was a kind of conspicuous hullabaloo going on in the bushes between the bullbats and the orioles and the jack-rabbits and other feathered insects of the forest. And the wind out of the mountains was singing like a Jew's-harp in the pile of old tomato-cans by the railroad track. "I felt a kind of sensation in my left side--something like dough rising in a crock by the fire. Mrs. Jessup had moved up closer. "'Oh, Mr. Hicks,' says she, 'when one is alone in the world, don't they feel it more aggravated on a beautiful night like this?' "I rose up off the bench at once. "'Excuse me, ma'am,' says I, 'but I'll have to wait till Paisley comes before I can give a audible hearing to leading questions like that.' "And then I explained to her how we was friends cinctured by years of embarrassment and travel and complicity, and how we had agreed to take no advantage of each other in any of the more mushy walks of life, such as might be fomented by sentiment and proximity. Mrs. Jessup appears to think serious about the matter for a minute, and then she breaks into a species of laughter that makes the wildwood resound. "In a few minutes Paisley drops around, with oil of bergamot on his hair, and sits on the other side of Mrs. Jessup, and inaugurates a sad tale of adventure in which him and Pieface Lumley has a skinning-match of dead cows in '95 for a silver-mounted saddle in the Santa Rita valley during the nine months' drought. "Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled and tied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching out for the easy places in the female heart. Paisley's scheme was to petrify 'em with wonderful relations of events that he had either come across personally or in large print. I think he must have got his idea of subjugation from one of Shakespeare's shows I see once called 'Othello.' There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke's daughter by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out by Rider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and Dr. Parkhurst. But that style of courting don't work well off the stage. "Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state of affairs when she can be referred to as 'nee Jones.' Learn how to pick up her hand and hold it, and she's yours. It ain't so easy. Some men grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of the shoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear 'em tearing off bandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at arm's length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafoetida in a bottle. And most of 'em catch hold of it and drag it right out before the lady's eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, without giving her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end of her arm. Them ways are all wrong. "I'll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn't got a thing in his hand, and that the cat don't see him, and that he don't see the cat. That's the idea. Never drag her hand out where she'll have to take notice of it. Don't let her know that you think she knows you have the least idea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of tactics; and as far as Paisley's serenade about hostilities and misadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a time- table of the Sunday trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey. "One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my friendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if she didn't think a 'H' was easier to write than a 'J.' In a second her head was mashing the oleander flower in my button-hole, and I leaned over and--but I didn't. "'If you don't mind,' says I, standing up, 'we'll wait for Paisley to come before finishing this. I've never done anything dishonourable yet to our friendship, and this won't be quite fair.' "'Mr. Hicks,' says Mrs. Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark, 'if it wasn't for but one thing, I'd ask you to hike yourself down the gulch and never disresume your visits to my house.' "'And what is that, ma'am?' I asks. "'You are too good a friend not to make a good husband,' says she. "In five minutes Paisley was on his side of Mrs. Jessup. "'In Silver City, in the summer of '98,' he begins, 'I see Jim Batholomew chew off a Chinaman's ear in the Blue Light Saloon on account of a crossbarred muslin shirt that--what was that noise?' "I had resumed matters again with Mrs. Jessup right where we had left off. "'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, 'has promised to make it Hicks. And this is another of the same sort.' "Paisley winds his feet round a leg of the bench and kind of groans. "'Lem,' says he, 'we been friends for seven years. Would you mind not kissing Mrs. Jessup quite so loud? I'd do the same for you.' "'All right,' says I. 'The other kind will do as well.' "'This Chinaman,' goes on Paisley, 'was the one that shot a man named Mullins in the spring of '97, and that was--' "Paisley interrupted himself again. "'Lem,' says he, 'if you was a true friend you wouldn't hug Mrs. Jessup quite so hard. I felt the bench shake all over just then. You know you told me you would give me an even chance as long as there was any.' "'Mr. Man,' says Mrs. Jessup, turning around to Paisley, 'if you was to drop in to the celebration of mine and Mr. Hicks's silver wedding, twenty-five years from now, do you think you could get it into that Hubbard squash you call your head that you are nix cum rous in this business? I've put up with you a long time because you was Mr. Hicks's friend; but it seems to me it's time for you to wear the willow and trot off down the hill.' "'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, without losing my grasp on the situation as fiance, 'Mr. Paisley is my friend, and I offered him a square deal and a equal opportunity as long as there was a chance.' "'A chance!' says she. 'Well, he may think he has a chance; but I hope he won't think he's got a cinch, after what he's been next to all the evening.' "Well, a month afterwards me and Mrs. Jessup was married in the Los Pinos Methodist Church; and the whole town closed up to see the performance. "When we lined up in front and the preacher was beginning to sing out his rituals and observances, I looks around and misses Paisley. I calls time on the preacher. 'Paisley ain't here,' says I. 'We've got to wait for Paisley. A friend once, a friend always--that's Telemachus Hicks,' says I. Mrs. Jessup's eyes snapped some; but the preacher holds up the incantations according to instructions. "In a few minutes Paisley gallops up the aisle, putting on a cuff as he comes. He explains that the only dry-goods store in town was closed for the wedding, and he couldn't get the kind of a boiled shirt that his taste called for until he had broke open the back window of the store and helped himself. Then he ranges up on the other side of the bride, and the wedding goes on. I always imagined that Paisley calculated as a last chance that the preacher might marry him to the widow by mistake. "After the proceedings was over we had tea and jerked antelope and canned apricots, and then the populace hiked itself away. Last of all Paisley shook me by the hand and told me I'd acted square and on the level with him and he was proud to call me a friend. "The preacher had a small house on the side of the street that he'd fixed up to rent; and he allowed me and Mrs. Hicks to occupy it till the ten-forty train the next morning, when we was going on a bridal tour to El Paso. His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and poison ivy, and it looked real festal and bowery. "About ten o'clock that night I sets down in the front door and pulls off my boots a while in the cool breeze, while Mrs. Hicks was fixing around in the room. Right soon the light went out inside; and I sat there a while reverberating over old times and scenes. And then I heard Mrs. Hicks call out, 'Ain't you coming in soon, Lem?' "'Well, well!' says I, kind of rousing up. 'Durn me if I wasn't waiting for old Paisley to--' "But when I got that far," concluded Telemachus Hicks, "I thought somebody had shot this left ear of mine off with a forty-five. But it turned out to be only a lick from a broomhandle in the hands of Mrs. Hicks." 刎颈之交 我狩猎归来,在新墨西哥州的洛斯比尼奥斯小镇等候南下的火车。火车误点,迟了一小时。我便坐在“顶点”客栈的阳台上,同客栈老板泰勒马格斯•希克斯闲聊,议论生活的意义。 我发现他的性情并不乖戾,不象是爱打架斗殴的人,便问他是哪种野兽伤残了他的左耳。作为猎人,我认为狩猎时很容易遭到这类不幸的事件。 “那只耳朵,”希克斯说,“是真挚友情的纪念。” “一件意外吗?”我追问道。 “友情怎么能说是意外呢?”泰勒马格斯反问道,这下子可把我问住了。 “我所知道的仅有的一对亲密无间,真心实意的朋友,”客栈老板接着说,“要算是一个康涅狄格州人和一只猴子了。猴子在巴兰基利亚①爬椰子树,把椰子摘下来扔给那个人。那个人把椰子锯成两片,做成水勺,每只卖两个雷阿尔②,换了钱来沽酒。椰子汁归猴子喝。他们两个坐地分赃,各得其所,象兄弟一般,生活得非常和睦。 『①巴兰基利亚:哥伦比亚北部马格达莱纳河口的港市。』『②雷阿尔:旧时西班牙和拉丁美洲某些国家用的辅币,有银质的,也有镍质的。』“换了人类,情况就不同了;友情变幻无常,随时可以宣告失效,不再另行通知。 “以前我有个朋友,名叫佩斯利•菲什,我认为我同他的交情是地久天长,牢不可破的。有七年了,我们一起挖矿,办牧场,兜销专利的搅乳器,放羊,摄影,打桩拉铁丝网,摘水果当临时工,碰到什么就干什么。我想,我同佩斯利两人的感情是什么都离间不了的,不管它是凶杀,谄谀,财富,诡辩或者老酒。我们交情之深简直使你难以想象。干事业的时候,我们是朋友;休息娱乐的时候,我们也让这种和睦相好的特色持续下去,给我们的生活增添了不少乐趣。不论白天黑夜,我们都难舍难分,好比达蒙和派西斯①。 『①达蒙和派西斯:公元前四世纪锡拉丘兹的两个朋友。派西斯被暴君狄奥尼西斯判处死刑,要求回家料理后事,由达蒙代受监禁。执行死刑之日,派西斯及时赶回,狄奥尼西斯为他们崇高的友谊所感动,便赦免了他们。』“有一年夏天,我和佩斯利两人打扮得整整齐齐,骑马来到这圣安德烈斯山区,打算休养一个月,消遣消遣。我们到了这个洛斯比尼奥斯小镇,这里简直算得上是世界的屋顶花园,是流炼乳和蜂蜜之地②。这里空气新鲜,有一两条街道,有鸡可吃,有客栈可住;我们需要的也就是这些东西。 『②《旧约》记载:上帝遣摩西率领以色列人出埃及,前往丰饶的迦南,即流奶与蜜之地。』“我们进镇时,天色已晚,便决定在铁路旁边的这家客栈里歇歇脚,尝尝它所能供应的任何东西。我们刚坐定,用刀把粘在红油布上的盘子撬起来,寡妇杰塞普就端着刚出炉的热面包和炸肝进来了。 “哎呀,这个女人叫鳀鱼看了都会动心。她长得不肥不瘦,不高不矮;一副和蔼的样子,使人觉得分外可亲。红润的脸颊是她喜爱烹调和为人热情的标志,她的微笑叫山茱萸在寒冬腊月都会开花。 “寡妇杰塞普谈风很健地同我们扯了起来,聊着天气,历史,丁尼生①,梅干,以及不容易买到羊肉等等,最后才问我们是丛哪儿来的。 『①丁尼生(1809~1892):英国桂冠诗人。』 “‘春谷。’我回答说。 “‘大春谷。’佩斯利嘴里塞满了土豆和火腿骨头,突然插进来说。 “我注意到,这件事的发生标志着我同佩斯利•菲什的忠诚友谊的结束。他明知我最恨多嘴的人,可还是冒冒失失地插了嘴,替我作了一些措辞上的修正和补充。地图上的名称固然是大春谷;然而佩斯利自己也管它叫春谷,我听了不下一千遍。 “我们也不多话,吃了晚饭便走出客栈,在铁轨上坐定。我们合伙的时间太长了,不可能不了解彼此的心情。 “‘我想你总该明白,’佩斯利说,‘我已经打定主意,要让那位寡妇太太永远成为我的不动产的主要部分,在家庭、社会、法律等等方面都是如此,到死为止。’“‘当然啦,’我说,‘你虽然只说了一句话,我已经听到了弦外之音。不过我想你也该明白,’我说,‘我准备采取步骤,让那位寡妇改姓希克斯,我劝你还是等着写信给报纸的社会新闻栏,问问举行婚礼时,男傧相是不是在钮扣孔里插了山茶花,穿了无缝丝袜!’“‘你的如意算盘打错了。’佩斯利嚼着一片铁路枕木屑说。‘遇到世俗的事情,’他说,‘我几乎任什么都可以让步,这件事可不行。女人的笑靥,’佩斯利继续说,‘是海葱和含铁矿泉的漩涡①,友谊之船虽然结实,碰上它也往往要撞碎沉没。我象以前一样,’佩斯利说,‘愿意同一头招惹你的狗熊拚命,替你的借据担保,用肥皂樟脑搽剂替你擦脊梁;但是在这件事情上,我可不能讲客气。在同杰塞普太太打交道这件事上,我们只能各干各的了。我丑话说在前头,先跟你讲清楚。’『①“海葱和含铁矿泉”原文是“the whirlpool of Squills and Chalybe ates”。英文成语有“between Scylla and Charybdis”,意为危险之地。“Scylla”是意大利墨西那海峡的岩礁,读音与海葱的拉丁名“Scilla”相近;“Chary-bdis”是它对面的大漩涡,读音与含铁矿泉“Chalybeate”相近,作者故意混淆了这两个字。』“于是,我暗自寻思一番,提出了下面的结论和附则:“‘男人与男人的友谊,’我说,‘是一种古老的,具有历史意义的美德。当男人们互相保护,共同对抗尾巴有八十英尺长的蜥蜴和会飞的海鳖时,这种美德就已经制定了。他们把这种习惯一直保留到今天,一直在互相支持,直到旅馆侍者跑来告诉他们说,这种动物实际上并不存在。我常听人说,’我说,‘女人牵涉进来之后,男人之间的交情就破裂了。为什么要这样呢?我告诉你吧,佩斯利,杰塞普太太的出现和她的热面包,仿佛使我们两人的心都怦然跳动了。让我们中间更棒的一个赢得她吧。我要跟你公平交易,决不搞不光明正大的小动作。我追求她的时候,一举一动都要当着你的面,那你的机会也就均等了。这样安排,无论哪一个得手,我想我们的友谊大轮船决不至于翻在你所说的药水气味十足的漩涡里了。’“‘这才够朋友!’佩斯利握握我的手说。‘我一定照样行事。’他说。‘我们齐头并进,同时追求那位太太,不让通常那种虚假和流血的事情发生。无论成败,我们仍是朋友。’“杰塞普太太客栈旁的几株树下有一条长凳,等南行火车上的乘客打过尖,离开之后,她就坐在那里乘凉。晚饭后,我和佩斯利在那里集合,分头向我们的意中人献殷勤。我们追求的方式很光明正大,瞻前顾后,如果一个先到,非得等另一个也来了之后才开始调情。 “杰塞普太太知道我们的安排后的第一晚,我比佩斯利先到了长凳那儿。晚饭刚开过,杰塞普太太换了一套干净的粉红色的衣服在那儿乘凉,并且凉得几乎可以对付了。 “我在她身边坐下,稍稍发表了一些意见,谈到自然界通过近景和远景所表现出来的精神面貌。那晚确实是一个典型的环境。月亮升到空中应有的地方来应景凑趣,树木根据科学原理和自然规律把影子洒在地上,灌木丛中的蚊母鸟、金莺、长耳兔和别的有羽毛的昆虫此起彼伏地发出一片喧嘈声。山间吹来的微风,掠过铁轨旁边一堆旧蕃茄酱罐头,发出了小口琴似的声音。 “我觉得左边有什么东西在蠢蠢欲动——正如火炉旁瓦罐里的面团在发酵。原来是杰塞普太太挨近了一些。 “‘哦,希克斯先生,’她说,‘一个举目无亲、孤独寂寞的人,在这样一个美丽的夜晚,是不是更会感到凄凉?’ “我赶紧从长凳上站起来。 “‘对不起,夫人,’我说,‘对于这样一个富于诱导性的问题,我得等佩斯利来了以后,才能公开答复。’“接着,我向她解释,我和佩斯利•菲什是老朋友,多年的甘苦与共、浪迹江湖和同谋关系,已经使我们的友谊牢不可破;如今我们正处在生活的缠绵阶段,我们商妥决不乘一时感情冲动和近水楼台的机会互相钻空子。杰塞普太太仿佛郑重其事地把这件事考虑了一会儿,忽然哈哈大笑,周围的林子都响起了回声。 “没几分钟,佩斯利也来了,他头上抹了香柠檬油,在杰塞普太太的另一边坐下,开始讲一段悲惨的冒险事迹:一八九五年圣丽塔山谷连旱了九个月,牛群一批批地死去,他同扁脸拉姆利比赛剥牛皮,赌一只镶银的马鞍。 “那场追求一开头,我就比垮了佩斯利•菲什,弄得他束手无策。我们两人各有一套打动女人内心弱点的办法。佩斯利的办法是讲一些他亲身体验的,或是从通俗书刊里看来的惊险事迹,吓唬女人。我猜想,他准是从莎士比亚的一出戏里学到那种慑服女人的主意的。那出戏叫‘奥塞罗’,我以前也看过,里面是说一个黑人,把赖德•哈格德、卢•多克斯塔德和帕克赫斯特博士①三个人的话语混杂起来,讲给一位公爵的女儿听,把她弄到了手。可是那种求爱方式下了舞台就不中用了。 『①赖德•哈格德(1856~1925):英国小说家,作品多以南非蛮荒为背景;帕克赫斯特博士(1842~1933):美国长老会牧师,攻击纽约腐败的市政甚力,促使市长改选。』“现在,我告诉你,我自己是怎样迷住一个女人,使她落到改姓的地步的。你只要懂得怎么抓起她的手,把它握住,她就成了你的人。讲讲固然容易,做起来并不简单。有的男人使劲拉住女人的手,仿佛要把脱臼的肩胛骨复位一样,简直叫你可以闻到山金车酊剂的气味,听到撕绷带的声音了。有的男人象拿一块烧烫的马蹄铁那样握着女人的手,又象药剂师把阿魏酊往瓶里灌时那样,伸直手臂,隔得远远的。大多数男人握到了女人的手,便把它拉到她眼皮下面,象小孩在草里寻找棒球似的,不让她忘掉她的手长在胳臂上。这种种方式都是错误的。 “我把正确的方式告诉你吧。你可曾见过一个人偷偷地溜进后院,捡起一块石头,想扔一只蹲在篱笆上盯着他直瞧的公猫?他假装手里没有东西,假装猫没有看见他,他也没有看见猫。就是那么一回事。千万别把她的手拉到她自己注意得到的地方。你虽然清楚她知道你握着她的手,可是你得装出没事的样子,别露痕迹。那就是我的策略。至于佩斯利用战争和灾祸的故事来博得她的欢心,正象把星期日的火车时刻表念给她听一样。那天的火车连新泽西州欧欣格罗夫①之类的小地方也要停站的。 『①欧欣格罗夫:新泽西州的滨海小镇,当时人口只有三千左右。』“有一晚,我先到长凳那儿,比佩斯利早了一袋烟的工夫。我的友谊出了一会儿毛病,我竟然问杰塞普太太是不是认为‘希’字要比‘杰’字好写一点。她的头立刻压坏了我钮扣孔里的夹竹桃,我也凑了过去——可是我没有干。 “‘假如你不在意的话,’我站起来说,‘我们等佩斯利来了之后再完成这件事吧。到目前为止,我还没有干过对不起我们朋友交情的事,这样不很光明。’“‘希克斯先生,’杰塞普太太说,她在黑暗里瞅着我,神情有点异样,‘如果不是另有原因的话,我早就请你走下山谷,永远别来见我啦。’“‘请问是什么原因呢,夫人?’我问道。 “‘你既然是这样忠诚的朋友,当然也能成为忠诚的丈夫。’她说。 “五分钟之后,佩斯利也坐在杰塞普太太身边了。 “‘一八九八年夏天,’他开始说,‘我在锡尔弗城见到吉姆•巴塞洛缪在蓝光沙龙里咬掉了一个中国人的耳朵,起因只是一件横条花纹的平布衬衫——那是什么声音呀?’“我跟杰塞普太太重新做起了刚才中断的事。 “‘杰塞普太太已经答应改姓希克斯了。’我说。‘这只不过是再证实一下而已。’“佩斯利把他的两条腿盘在长凳脚上,呻吟起来。 “‘勒姆,’他说,‘我们已经交了七年朋友。你能不能别跟杰塞普太太吻得这么响?以后我也保证不这么响。’“‘好吧,’我说,‘轻一点也可以。’“‘这个中国人,’佩斯利继续说,‘在一八九七年春天枪杀了一个名叫马林的人,那是——’“佩斯利又打断了他自己的故事。 “‘勒姆,’他说,‘假如你真是个仗义的朋友,你就不该把杰塞普太太搂得这么紧。刚才我觉得整个长凳都在晃。你明白,你对我说过,只要还有机会,你总是同我平分秋色的。’“‘你这个家伙,’杰塞普太太转身向佩斯利说,‘再过二十五年,假如你来参加我和希克斯先生的银婚纪念,你那个南瓜脑袋还认为你在这件事上有希望吗?只因为你是希克斯先生的朋友,我才忍了好久;不过我认为现在你该死了这条心,下山去啦。’“‘杰塞普太太,’我说,不过我并没有丧失未婚夫的立场,‘佩斯利先生是我的朋友,只要有机会,我总是同他公平交易,利益均等的。’“‘机会!’她说。‘好吧,让他自以为还有机会吧;今晚他在旁边看到了这一切,我希望他别自以为很有把握。’“一个月之后,我和杰塞普太太在洛斯比尼奥的卫理公会教堂结婚了;全镇的人都跑来看结婚仪式。 “当我们并排站在最前面,牧师开始替我们主持婚礼的时候,我四下里扫了一眼,没找到佩斯利。我请牧师等一会儿。‘佩斯利不在这儿。’我说。‘我们非等佩斯利不可。交朋友要交到老——泰勒马格斯•希克斯就是这种人。’我说。杰塞普太太的眼睛里有点冒火;但是牧师根据我的吩咐,没立即诵读经文。 “过了几分钟,佩斯利飞快地跑进过道,一边跑,一边还在安上一只硬袖口。他说镇上唯一的卖服装的铺子关了门来看婚礼,他搞不到他所喜欢的上过浆的衬衫,只得撬开铺子的后窗,自己取了一件。接着,他站到新娘的那一边去,婚礼在继续进行。我一直在琢磨,佩斯利还在等最后一个机会,盼望牧师万一搞错,替他同寡妇成亲呢。 “婚礼结束后,我们吃了茶、羚羊肉干和罐头杏子,镇上的居民便纷纷散去。最后同我握手的是佩斯利,他说我为人光明磊落,同我交朋友脸上有光。 “牧师在街边有一幢专门出租的小房子;他让我和希克斯太太占用到第二天早晨十点四十分,那时候,我们就乘火车去埃尔帕索度蜜月旅行。牧师太太用蜀葵和毒藤把那幢房子打扮起来,看上去喜气洋洋的,并且有凉亭的风味。 “那晚十点钟左右,我在门口坐下,脱掉靴子凉快凉快,希克斯太太在屋里张罗。没有多久,里面的灯熄了;我还坐在那儿,回想以前的时光和情景。我听到希克斯太太招呼说:‘你就进来吗,勒姆?’“‘哎,哎!’我仿佛惊醒似地说。‘我刚才在等老佩斯利——’“可是这句话还没说完,”泰勒马格斯•希克斯结束他的故事说,“我觉得仿佛有人用四五口径的手枪把我这只左耳朵打掉了。后来我才知道,那只是希克斯太太用扫帚把揍了一下。” The Theory and the Hound NOT many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb tide, we were walking up a street that parallels and parodies Broadway. A woman with a comely and mundane countenance passed us, holding in leash a wheezing, vicious, waddling, brute of a yellow pug. The dog entangled himself with Bridger's legs and mumbled his ankles in a snarling, peevish, sulky bite. Bridger, with a happy smile, kicked the breath out of the brute; the woman showered us with a quick rain of well-conceived adjectives that left us in no doubt as to our place in her opinion, and we passed on. Ten yards farther an old woman with dis- ordered white hair and her bankbook tucked well hidden beneath her tattered shawl begged. Bridger stopped and disinterred for her a quarter from his holiday waist- coat. On the next corner a quarter of a ton of well-clothed man with a rice-powdered, fat, white jowl, stood holding the chain of a devil-born bulldog whose forelegs were strangers by the length of a dachshund. A little woman in a last-season's hat confronted him and wept, which was plainly all she could do, while he cursed her in low sweet, practised tones. Bridger smiled again -- strictly to himself -- and this time he took out a little memorandum book and made a note of it. This he had no right to do without due explanation, and I said so. "It's a new theory," said Bridger, "that I picked up down in Ratona. I've been gathering support for it as I knock about. The world isn't ripe for it yet, but -- well I'll tell you; and then you run your mind back along the people you've known and see what you make of it." And so I cornered Bridger in a place where they have artificial palms and wine; and he told me the story which is here in my words and on his responsibility. One afternoon at three o'clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced alongthe beach screaming, "Pajaro, ahoy!" Thus he made known the keenness of his hearing and the justice of his discrimination in pitch. He who first heard and made oral proclamation con- cerning the toot of an approaching steamer's whistle, and correctly named the steamer, was a small hero in Ratona -until the' next steamer came. Wherefore, there was rivalry among the barefoot youth of Ratona, and many fell victims to the softly blown conch shells of sloops which, as they enter harbour, sound surprisingly like a distant steamer's signal. And some could name you the vessel when its call, in your duller ears, sounded no louder than the sigh of the wind through the branches of the cocoa- nut palms. But to-day he who proclaimed the Pajaro gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low "joint" the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour. You must know that Ratona is an island twenty miles off the south of a South American republic. It is a port of that republic; and it sleeps sweetly in a smiling sea, toiling not nor spinning; fed by the abundant tropics where all things "ripen, cease and fall toward the grave." Eight hundred people dream life away in a green- embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine matter at the island and that is about all the touch Ratona gets with the world. The Pajaro paused at the mouth of the harbour, roll ing heavily in the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside. Already two dories from the village -- one conveying fruit inspectors, the other going for what it could get -- were halfway out to the steamer. The inspectors' dory was taken on board with them, and the Pajaro steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit. The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contri- bution from the Pajaro's store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one passenger -- Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky. Bridger, the United States consul at Ratona, was clean- ing his rifle in the official shanty under a bread-fruit tree twenty yards from the water of the harbour. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his political party's procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others. Bridger's share of the spoils -- the consulship at Ratona -- was little more than a prune -- a dried prune from the boarding-house department of the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his consulate, and was not unhappy. He looked up from a careful inspection of his rifle lock a broad man filling his doorway. A broad, noiseless, slow-moving man, sunburned almost to the Vandyke. A man of forty-five, neatly clothed in homespun, with scanty light hair, a close-clipped brown- and-gray beard and pale-blue eyes expressing mildness implicity. "You are Mr. Bridger, the consul," said the broad man. "They directed me here. Can you tell me what those big bunches of things like gourds are in those trees that look like feather dusters along the edge of the water?" "Take that chair," said the consul, reoiling his clean- ing rag. "No, the other one -- that bamboo thing won't hold you. Why, they're cocoanuts -- green cocoanuts. The shell of 'em is always a light green before they're ripe." "Much obliged," said the other man, sitting down carefully. "I didn't quite like to tell the folks at home they were olives unless I was sure about it. My name is Plunkett. I'm sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky. I've got extradition papers in my pocket authorizing the arrest of a man on this island. They've been signed by the President of this country, and they're in correct shape. The man's name is Wade Williams. He's in the cocoa- nut raising business. What he's wanted for is the murder of his wife two years ago. Where can I find him?" The consul squinted an eye and looked through his rifle barrel. "There's nobody on the island who calls himself 'Wil- liams,'" he remarked. "Didn't suppose there was," said Plunkett mildly. "He'll do by any other name." "Besides myself," said Bridger, "there are only two Americans on Ratona -- Bob Reeves and Henry Morgan." "The man I want sells cocoanuts," suggested Plunkett. "You see that cocoanut walk extending up to the point?" said the consul, waving his hand toward the open door. "That belongs to Bob Reeves. Henry Morgan owns half the trees to loo'ard on the island." "One, month ago," said the sheriff, "Wade Williams wrote a confidential letter to a man in Chatham county, telling him where he was and how he was getting along. The letter was lost; and the person that found it gave it away. They sent me after him, and I've got the papers. I reckon he's one of your cocoanut men for certain." "You've got his picture, of course," said Bridger. "It might be Reeves or Morgan, but I'd hate to think it. They're both as fine fellows as you'd meet in an all-day auto ride." "No," doubtfully answered Plunkett; "there wasn't any picture of Williams to be had. And I never saw him myself. I've been sheriff only a year. But I've got a pretty accurate description of him. About 5 feet 11; dark-hair and eyes; nose inclined to be Roman; heavy about the shoulders; strong, white teeth, with none miss- ing; laughs a good deal, talkative; drinks considerably but never to intoxication; looks you square in the eye when talking; age thirty-five. Which one of your men does that description fit?" The consul grinned broadly. "I'll tell you what you do," he said, laying down his rifle and slipping on his dingy black alpaca coat. "You come along, Mr. Plunkett, -- and I'll take you up to see the boys. If you can tell which one of 'em your descrip- tion fits better than it does the other you have the advan- tage of me." Bridger conducted the sheriff out and along the hard beach close to which the tiny houses of the village were distributed. Immediately back of the town rose sudden, small, thickly wooded hills. Up one of these, by means of steps cut in the hard clay, the consul led Plunkett. the very verge of an eminence was perched, a two- room wooden cottage with a thatched roof. A Carib woman was washing clothes outside. The consul ushered the sheriff to the door of the room that over- looked the harbour. Two men were in the room, about to sit down, in their shirt sleeves, to a table spread for dinner. They bore little resemblance one to the other in detail; but the general description given by Plunkett could have been justly applied to either. In height, colour of hair, shape of nose, build and manners each of them tallied with it. They were fair types of jovial, ready-witted, broad- gauged Americans who had gravitated together for com- panionship in an alien land. "Hello, Bridger" they called in unison at sight Of the consul. "Come and have dinner with us!" And then they noticed Plunkett at his heels, and came forward with hospitable curiosity. "Gentlemen," said the consul, his voice taking on unaccustomed formality, "this is Mr. Plunkett. Mr. Plunkett -- Mr. Reeves and Mr. Morgan." The cocoanut barons greeted the newcomer joyously. Reeves seemed about an inch taller than Morgan, but his laugh was not quite as loud. Morgan's eyes were- deep brown; Reeves's were black. Reeves was the host and busied himself with fetching other chairs and calling to the Carib woman for supplemental table ware. It was explained that Morgan lived in a bamboo shack to. loo'ard, but that every day the two friends dined together. Plunkett stood still during the preparations, looking about mildly with his pale-blue eyes. Bridger looked apologetic and uneasy. At length two other covers were laid and the company- was assigned to places. Reeves and Morgan stood side by side across the table from the visitors. Reeves nodded genially as a signal for all to seat themselves. And then suddenly Plunkett raised his hand with a gesture of authority. He was looking straight between Reeves and Morgan. "Wade Williams," he said quietly, "you are under arrest for murder." Reeves and Morgan instantly exchanged a quick, bright glance, the quality of which was interrogation, with a seasoning of surprise. Then, simultaneously they turned to the speaker with a puzzled and frank depre- cation in their gaze. "Can't say that we understand you, Mr. Plunkett," said Morgan, cheerfully. "Did you say 'Williams'?" "What's the joke, Bridgy?" asked Reeves, turning, to the consul with a smile. Before Bridger could answer Plunkett spoke again. "I'll explain," he said, quietly. "One of you don't need any explanation, but this is for the other one. One of you is Wade Williams of Chatham County, Kentucky. You murdered your wife on May 5, two years ago, after ill-treating and abusing her continually for five years. I have the proper papers in my pocket for taking you back with me, and you are going. We will return on the fruit steamer that comes back by this island to-morrow to leave its inspectors. I acknowledge, gentlemen, that I'm not quite sure which one of you is Williams. But Wade Williams goes back to Chatham County to-morrow. I want you to understand that." A great sound of merry laughter from Morgan and Reeves went out over the still harbour. Two or three fishermen in the fleet of sloops anchored there looked up at the house of the diablos Americanos on the hill and wondered. "My dear Mr. Plunkett," cried Morgan, conquering his mirth, "the dinner is getting, cold. Let us sit down and eat. I am anxious to get my spoon into that shark- fin soup. Business afterward." "Sit down, gentlemen, if you please," added Reeves, pleasantly. "I am sure Mr. Plunkett will not object. Perhaps a little time may be of advantage to him in identi- fying -- the gentlemen he wishes to arrest." "No objections, I'm sure," said Plunkett, dropping into his chair heavily. "I'm hungry myself. I didn't want to accept the hospitality of you folks without giving you notice; that's all." Reeves set bottles and glasses on the table. "There's cognac," he said, "and anisada, and Scotch 'smoke,' and rye. Take your choice." Bridger chose rye, Reeves poured three fingers of Scotch for himself, Morgan took the same. The sheriff, against much protestation, filled his glass from the water bottle. "Here's to the appetite," said Reeves, raising his glass, "of Mr. Williams!" Morgan's laugh and his drink encountering sent him into a choking splutter. All began to pay attention to the dinner, which was well cooked and palatable. "Williams!" called Plunkett, suddenly and sharply. All looked up wonderingly. Reeves found the sheriff's mild eye resting upon him. He flushed a little. "See here," he said, with some asperity, "my name's Reeves,and I don't want you too -- " But the comedy of the thing came to his rescue, and he ended with a laugh. "I suppose, Mr. Plunkett," said Morgan, carefully seasoning an alligator pear, "that you are aware of the fact that you will import a good deal of trouble for your- self into Kentucky if you take back the wrong man -- that is, of course, if you take anybody back?" "Thank you for the salt," said the sheriff. "Oh, I'll take somebody back. It'll be one of you two gentlemen. Yes, I know I'd get stuck for damages if I make a mis- take. But I'm going to try to get the right man." "I'll tell you what you do," said Morgan, leaning for- ward with a jolly twinkle in his eyes. "You take me. I'll go without any trouble. The cocoanut business hasn't panned out well this year, and I'd like to make some extra money out of your bondsmen." "That's not fair," chimed in Reeves. "I got only $16 a thousand for my last shipment. Take me, Mr. Plunkett." "I'll take Wade Williams," said the sheriff, patiently, "or I'll come pretty close to it." "It's like dining with a ghost," remarked Morgan, with a pretended shiver. "The ghost of a murderer, too! Will somebody pass the toothpicks to the shade of the naughty Mr. Williams?" Plunkett seemed as unconcerned as if he were dining at his own table in Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken with sur- prising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge of wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if wrongly solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, yet there he sat puzzling his soul (to all appearances) over the novel flavour of a broiled iguana cutlet. The consul felt a decided discomfort. Reeves and Morgan were his friends and pals; yet the sheriff from Kentucky had a certain right to his official aid and moral support. So Bridger sat the silentest around the board and tried to estimate the peculiar situation. His con- clusion was that both Reeves and Morgan, quickwitted, as he knew them to be, had conceived at the moment of Plunkett's disclosure of his mission -- and in the brief space of a lightning flash -- the idea that the other might be the guilty Williams; and that each of them had decided in that moment loyally to protect his comrade against the doom that threatened him. This was the consul's theory. and if he had been a bookmaker at a race of wits for life and liberty he would have offered heavy odds against the plodding sheriff from Chatham County, Kentucky. When the meal was concluded the Carib woman came and removed the dishes and cloth. Reeves strewed them table with excellent cigars, and Plunkett, with the others, lighted one of these with evident gratification. "I may be dull," said Morgan, with a grin and a wink at Bridger; "but I want to know if I am. Now, I say this is all a joke of Mr. Plunkett's, concocted to frighten. two babes-in-the-woods. Is this Williamson to be taken seriously or not?" "'Williams,'" corrected Plunkett gravely. "I never got off any jokes in my life. I know I wouldn't travel 2,000 miles to get off a poor one as this would be if I didn't take Wade Williams back with me. Gentlemen!" continued the sheriff, now letting his mild eyes travel impartially from one of the company to another, "see if you can find any joke in this case. Wade Williams is listening to the words I utter now; but out of politeness, I will speak of him as a third person. For five years he made his wife lead the life of a dog -- No; I'll take that back. No dog in Kentucky was ever treated as she was. He spent the money that she brought him -- spent it at races, at the card table and on horses and hunting. He was a good fellow to his friends, but a cold, sullen demon at home. He wound up the five years of neglect by strik- ing her with his closed hand -- a hand as hard as a stone -- when she was ill and weak from suffering. She died the next day; and he skipped. That's all there is to it. It's enough. I never saw Williams; but I knew his wife. I'm not a man to tell half. She and I were keep- ing company when she met him. She went to Louisville on a visit and saw him there. I'll admit that he spoilt my chances in no time. I lived then on the edge of the Cumberland mountains. I was elected sheriff of Chatham County a year after Wade Williams killed his wife. My official duty sends me out here after him; but I'll admit that there's personal feeling, too. And he's going back with me. Mr. -- er -- Reeves, will you pass me a match? "Awfully imprudent of Williams," said Morgan, putting his feet up against the wall, "to strike a Kentucky lady. Seems to me I've heard they were scrappers." "Bad, bad Williams," said Reeves, pouring out more Scotch." The two men spoke lightly, but the consul saw and felt the tension and the carefulness in their actions and words. "Good old fellows," he said to himself; "they're both all right. Each of 'em is standing by the other like a little brick church." And then a dog walked into the room where they sat -- a black-and-tan hound, long-eared, lazy, confident of welcome. Plunkett turned his head and looked at the animal, which halted, confidently, within a few feet of his chair. Suddenly the sheriff, with a deep-mouthed oath, left his seat and, bestowed upon the dog a vicious and heavy kick, with his ponderous shoe. The hound, heartbroken, astonished, with flapping ears and incurved tail, uttered a piercing yelp of pain and surprise. Reeves and the consul remained in their chairs, say- ing nothing, but astonished at the unexpected show of intolerance from the easy-going-man from Chatham county. But Morgan, with a suddenly purpling face, leaped, to his feet and raised a threatening arm above the guest. "You -- brute!" he shouted, passionately; "why did you do that?" Quickly the amenities returned, Plunkett muttered some indistinct apology and regained his seat. Morgan with a decided effort controlled his indignation and also returned to his chair. And then Plunkett with the spring of a tiger, leaped around the corner of the table and snapped handcuffs on the paralyzed Morgan's wrists. "Hound-lover and woman-killer!" he cried; "get ready to meet your God." When Bridger had finished I asked him: "Did he get the right man?" "He did," said the Consul. "And how did he know?" I inquired, being in a kind of bewilderment. "When he put Morgan in the dory," answered Bridger, "the next day to take him aboard the Pajaro, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands with me and I asked him the same question." "'Mr. Bridger,' said he, 'I'm a Kentuckian, and I've seen a great deal of both men and animals. And I never yet saw a man that was overfond of horses and dogs but what was cruel to women.'" Thimble, Thimble These are the directions for finding the I office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting: You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Canons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton, four-horse dray and hop, skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the office of Carteret & Carteret. The factory where they make the mill supplies and leather belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities--to say nothing of Brooklyn--not being of interest to you, let us hold the incidents within the confines of a one-act, one-scene play, thereby lessening the toil of the reader and the expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the courage to face four pages of type and Carteret & Carteret's office boy, Percival, you shall sit on a varnished chair in the inner office and peep at the little comedy of the Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch, and the Open-Faced Question--mostly borrowed from the late Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude. First, biography (but pared to the quick) must intervene. I am for the inverted sugar-coated quinine pill--the bitter on the outside. The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule), an old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had worn lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings. (Of course you can perceive at once that this flavor has been shoplifted from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the "et" after "Carter.") Well, anyhow: In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you farther back than the year 1620. The two original American Carterets came over in that year, but by different means of transportation. One brother, named John, came in the Mayflower and became a Pilgrim Father. You've seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting turkeys in the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother, crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the Virginia coast, and became an F.F.V. John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations. Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this historical interpolation.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; Lee surrendered; Grant toured the world; cotton went to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim Crow cars were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers returned to the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves the battle flag of Lundy's Lane which they bought at a second-hand store in Chelsea kept by a man named Skzchnzski; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound watermelon--and that brings us up to the time when the story begins. My! but that was sparring for an opening! I really must brush op on my Aristotle. The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York long before the war. Their house, as far as Leather Belting and Mill Supplies was concerned, was as musty and arrogant and solid as one of those old East India tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens. There were some rumors of a war behind its counters, but not enough to affect the business. During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F.F.V., lost his plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little more than his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that Blandford Carteret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the leather-and-millsupplies branch of that name to come North and learn business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the glory of his fathers on the reduced acres of his impoverished family. The boy jumped at the chance; and, at the age of twenty-five, sat in the office of the firm equal partner with John, the Fifth, of the blunderbuss-and-turkey branch. Here the story begins again. The young men were about the same age, smooth of face, alert, easy of manner, and with an air that promised mental and physical quickness. They were razored, blue-serged, straw-hatted, and pearl stick-pinned like other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires or bill clerks. One afternoon at four o'clock, in the private office of the firm, Blandford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk had just brought to his desk. After reading it, he chuckled audibly for nearly a minute. John looked around from his desk inquiringly. "It's from mother," said Blandford. "I'll read you the funny part of it. She tells me all the neighborhood news first, of course, and then cautions me against getting my feet wet and musical comedies. After that come some vital statistics about calves and pigs and an estimate of the wheat crop. And now I'll quote some: "'And what do you think! Old Uncle Jake, who was seventy-six last Wednesday, must go travelling. Nothing would do but he must go to New York and see his "young Marster Blandford." Old as he is, he has a deal of common sense, so I've let him go. I couldn't refuse him--he seemed to have concentrated all his hopes and desires into this one adventure into the wide world. You know he was born on the plantation, and has never been ten miles away from it in his life. And he was your father's body servant during the war, and has been always a faithful vassal and servant of the family. He has often seen the gold watch--the watch that was your father's and your father's father's. I told him it was to be yours, And he begged me to allow him to take it to you and to put it into your hands himself. "'So he has it, carefully inclosed in a buck-skin case, and is bringing it to you with all the pride and importance of a king's messenger. I gave him money for the round trip and for a two weeks' stay in the city. I wish you would see to it that he gets comfortable quarters--Jake won't need much looking after--he's able to take care of himself. But I have read in the papers that African bishops and colored potentates generally have much trouble in obtaining food and lodging in the Yankee metropolis. That may be all right; but I don't see why the best hotel there shouldn't take Jake in. Still, I suppose it's a rule. "'I gave him full directions about finding you, and packed his valise myself. You won't have to bother with him; but I do hope you'll see that he is made comfortable. Take the watch that he brings you--it's almost a decoration. It has been worn by true Carterets, and there isn't a stain upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. Bringing it to you is the crowning joy of old Jake's life. I wanted him to have that little outing and that happiness before it is too late. You have often heard us talk about how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself, crawled through the reddened grass at Chancellorsville to where your father lay with the bullet in his dear heart, and took the watch from his pocket to keep it from the "Yanks." "'So, my son, when the old man comes consider him as a frail but worthy messenger from the old-time life and home. "'You have been so long away from home and so long among the people that we have always regarded as aliens that I'm not sure that Jake will know you when he sees you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I rather believe that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I can't conceive that even ten years in Yankee-land could change a boy of mine. Anyhow, I'm sure you will know Jake. I put eighteen collars in his valise. If he should have to buy others, he wears a number 15 1/2. Please see that he gets the right ones. He will be no trouble to you at all. "'If you are not too busy, I'd like for you to find him a place to board where they have white-meal corn-bread, and try to keep him from taking his shoes off in your office or on the street. His right foot swells a little, and he likes to be comfortable. "'If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs when they come back from the wash. I bought him a dozen new ones before he left. He should be there about the time this letter reaches you. I told him to go straight to your office when he arrives.'" As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, something happened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the stage). Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world's output of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a colored gentleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret. "Bring him in," said Blandford, rising. John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival: "Ask him to wait a few minutes outside. We'll let you know when to bring him in." Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said: "Bland, I've always had a consuming curiosity to understand the differences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between 'you all ' and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you consider yourselves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don't know why. I never could understand the differences between us." "Well, John," said Blandford, laughing, "what you don't understand about it is just the difference, of course. I suppose it was the feudal way in which we lived that gave us our lordly baronial airs and feeling of superiority." "But you are not feudal, now," went on John. "Since we licked you and stole your cotton and mules you've had to go to work just as we 'damyankees,' as you call us, have always been doing. And you're just as proud and exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the war. So it wasn't your money that caused it." "Maybe it was the climate," said Blandford, lightly, "or maybe our negroes spoiled us. I'll call old Jake in, now. I'll be glad to see the old villain again." "Wait just a moment," said John. "I've got a little theory I want to test. You and I are pretty much alike in our general appearance. Old Jake hasn't seen you since you were fifteen. Let's have him in and play fair and see which of us gets the watch. The old darky surrey ought to be able to pick out his 'young marster' without any trouble. The alleged aristocratic superiority of a 'reb' ought to be visible to him at once. He couldn't make the mistake of handing over the timepiece to a Yankee, of course. The loser buys the dinner this evening and two dozen 15 1/2 collars for Jake. Is it a go?" Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, and told to usher the "colored gentleman" in. Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. He was a little old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a fringe of white wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and around his head. There was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him: his black suit nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he carried something carefully concealed by his closed fingers. Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two young men sat in their revolving desk-chairs ten feet apart and looked at him in friendly silence. His gaze slowly shifted many times from one to the other. He felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of the revered family among whose fortunes his life had begun and was to end. One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the other had the unmistakable straight, long family nose. Both had the keen black eyes, horizontal brows, and thin, smiling lips that had distinguished both the Carteret of the Mayflower and him of the brigantine. Old Jake had thought that he could have picked out his young master instantly from a thousand Northerners; but he found himself in difficulties. The best he could do was to use strategy. "Howdy, Marse Blandford--howdy, suh ?" he said, looking midway between the two young men. "Howdy, Uncle Jake?" they both answered pleasantly and in unison. "Sit down. Have you brought the watch ?" Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful distance, sat on the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully on the floor. The watch in its buckskin case he gripped tightly. He had not risked his life on the battle-field to rescue that watch from his "old marster's" foes to hand it over again to the enemy without a struggle. "Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I'm gwine give it to you right away in jus' a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse Blandford's hand and tell him to wear it for the family pride and honor. It was a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make-- ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi'ginia, suh. You've growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn't have reconnized you but for yo' powerful resemblance to old marster." With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes roaming in the space between the two men. His words might have been addressed to either. Though neither wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign. Blandford and John exchanged winks. "I reckon you done got you ma's letter," went on Uncle Jake. "She said she was gwine to write to you 'bout my comin' along up this er- way. "Yes, yes, Uncle Jake," said John briskly. "My cousin and I have just been notified to expect you. We are both Carterets, you know." "Although one of us," said Blandford, "was born and raised in the North." "So if you will hand over the watch--" said John. "My cousin and I-" said Blandford. 'Will then see to it--" said John. "That comfortable quarters are found for you," said Blandford. With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched, protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the brim in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded him a mask behind which he could roll his eyes impartially between, above, and beyond his two tormentors. "I sees what!" he chuckled, after a while. "You gen'lemen is tryin' to have fun with the po' old nigger. But you can't fool old Jake. I knowed you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po' skimpy little boy no mo' than about fo'teen when you lef' home to come No'th; but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of old marster. The other gen'leman resembles you mightily, suh; but you can't fool old Jake on a member of the old Vi'ginia family. No suh." At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand for the watch. Uncle Jake's wrinkled, black face lost the expression of amusement to which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased, and that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into which of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But it seemed to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of the Virginia Carterets' was at stake. He had heard down South during the war about that other branch of the family that lived in the North and fought on "the yuther side," and it had always grieved him. He had followed his "old marster's" fortunes from stately luxury through war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by "old missus," and intrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the lives of the Carterets--of Virginia. His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression of tyrants--"low-down, common trash"--in blue, laying waste with fire and sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And now he was face to face with one of them--and he could not distinguish him from his "young marster" whom he had come to find and bestow upon him the emblem of his kingship--even as the arm "clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful" laid Excalibur in the right hand of Arthur. He saw before him two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming, either of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled, bewildered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated against the buckskin cover of the watch. He was deeply humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one difference between them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white pearl stickpin. The other's "four-in-hand " was a narrow blue one pinned with a black pearl. And then, to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set face over the footlights. Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, which he handed, with the manner of one bearing a cartel, to Blue-Tie. "'Olivia De Ormond,'" read Blue-Tie from the card. He looked inquiringly at his cousin. "Why not have her in," said Black-Tie, "and bring matters to a conclusion?" "Uncle Jake," said one of the young men, "would you mind taking that chair over there in the corner for a while? A lady is coming in--on some business. We'll take up your case afterward." The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decidedly, freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore would have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of the merry helmet of Navarre. Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue-Tie's desk. Then the gentlemen drew leather-upholstered seats conveniently near, and spoke of the weather. "Yes," said she, "I noticed it was warmer. But I mustn't take up too much of your time during business hours. That is," she continued, "unless we talk business." She addressed her words to Blue-Tie, with a charming smile. "Very well," said he. "You don't mind my cousin being present, do you? We are generally rather confidential with each other-especially in business matters." "Oh no," caroled Miss De Ormond. "I'd rather he did hear. He knows all about it, anyhow. In fact, he's quite a material witness because he was present when you--when it happened. I thought you might want to talk things over before--well, before any action is taken, as I believe the lawyers say." "Have you anything in the way of a proposition to make?" asked Black- Tie. Miss De Ormond looked reflectively at the neat toe of one of her dull kid-pumps. "I had a proposal made to me," she said. "If the proposal sticks it cuts out the proposition. Let's have that settled first." "Well, as far as--" began Blue-Tie. "Excuse me, cousin," interrupted Black-Tie, "if you don't mind my cutting in." And then he turned, with a good-natured air, toward the lady. "Now, let's recapitulate a bit," he said cheerfully. "All three of us, besides other mutual acquaintances, have been out on a good many larks together." "I'm afraid I'll have to call the birds by another name," said Miss De Ormond. "All right," responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired cheerfulness; "suppose we say 'squabs' when we talk about the 'proposal' and 'larks' when we discuss the 'proposition.' You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond. Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for day's run into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced to do so, of course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny that you possess." "I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret," said the beauty, with a dazzling smile. "You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond," went on Black-Tie. "You have had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You must remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion. There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of marriage was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn't it been your experience that, by common consent, such things lose their seriousness when viewed in the next day's sunlight? Isn't there something of a 'code' among good 'sports'--I use the word in its best sense--that wipes out each day the follies of the evening previous?" "Oh yes," said Miss De Ormond. "I know that very well. And I've always played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case-- with the silent consent of the defendant--I'll tell you something more. I've got letters from him repeating the proposal. And they're signed, too." "I understand," said Black-Tie gravely. "What's your price for the letters?" "I'm not a cheap one," said Miss De Ormond. "But I had decided to make you a rate. You both belong to a swell family. Well, if I am on the stage nobody can say a word against me truthfully. And the money is only a secondary consideration. It isn't the money I was after. I--I believed him--and--and I liked him." She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from under her long eyelashes. "And the price?" went on Black-Tie, inexorably. "Ten thousand dollars," said the lady, sweetly. "Or--" "Or the fulfillment of the engagement to marry." "I think it is time," interrupted Blue-Tie, "for me to be allowed to say a word or two. You and I, cousin, belong to a family that has held its head pretty high. You have been brought up in a section of the country very different from the one where our branch of the family lived. Yet both of us are Carterets, even if some of our ways and theories differ. You remember, it is a tradition of the family, that no Carteret ever failed in chivalry to a lady or failed to keep his word when it was given." Then Blue-Tie, with frank decision showing on his countenance, turned to Miss De Ormond. "Olivia," said he, "on what date will you marry me?" Before she could answer, Black-Tie again interposed. "It is a long journey," said he, "from Plymouth rock to Norfolk Bay. Between the two points we find the changes that nearly three centuries have brought. In that time the old order has changed. We no longer burn witches or torture slaves. And to-day we neither spread our cloaks on the mud for ladies to walk over nor treat them to the ducking-stool. It is the age of common sense, adjustment, and proportion. All of us--ladies, gentlemen, women, men, Northerners, Southerners, lords, caitiffs, actors, hardware-drummers, senators, hodcarriers, and politicians--are coming to a better understanding. Chivalry is one of our words that changes its meaning every day. Family pride is a thing of many constructions--it may show itself by maintaining a moth-eaten arrogance in cobwebbed Colonial mansion or by the prompt paying of one's debts. "Now, I suppose you've had enough of my monologue. I've learned something of business and a little of life; and I somehow believe, cousin, that our great-great-grandfathers, the original Carterets, would indorse my view of this matter." Black-Tie wheeled around to his desk, wrote in a check-book and tore out the check, the sharp rasp of the perforated leaf making the only sound in the room. He laid the check within easy reach of Miss De Ormond's hand. "Business is business," said he. "We live in a business age. There is my personal check for $10,000. What do you say, Miss De Ormond-- will it he orange blossoms or cash ?" Miss De Ormond picked up the cheek carelessly, folded it indifferently, and stuffed it into her glove. "Oh, this'll do," she said, calmly. "I just thought I'd call and put it up to you. I guess you people are all right. But a girl has feelings, you know. I've heard one of you was a Southerner--I wonder which one of you it is?" She arose, smiled sweetly, and walked to the door. There, with a flash of white teeth and a dip of the heavy plume, she disappeared. Both of the cousins had forgotten Uncle Jake for the time. But now they heard the shuffling of his shoes as he came across the rug toward them from his seat in the corner. "Young marster," he said, "take yo' watch." And without hesitation he laid the ancient timepiece in the hand of its rightful owner. The Things The Play Being acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free passes, I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one of the popular vaudeville houses. One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking-looking man not much past forty, but with very gray thick hair. Not being afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of noises drift past my ears while I regarded the man. "There was a story about that chap a month or two ago," said the reporter. "They gave me the assignment. It was to run a column and was to be on the extremely light and joking order. The old man seems to like the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh, yes, I'm working on a farce comedy now. Well, I went down to the house and got all the details; but I certainly fell down on that job. I went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral instead. Why? Oh, I couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny hooks, somehow. Maybe you could make a one-act tragedy out of it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the details." After the performance my friend, the reporter, recited to me the facts over Wurzburger. "I see no reason," said I, when he had concluded, "why that shouldn't make a rattling good funny story. Those three people couldn't have acted in a more absurd and preposterous manner if they had been real actors in a real theatre. I'm really afraid that all the stage is a world, anyhow, and all the players men and women. 'The thing's the play,' is the way I quote Mr. Shakespeare." "Try it," said the reporter. "I will," said I; and I did, to show him how he could have made a humorous column of it for his paper. There stands a house near Abingdon Square. On the ground floor there has been for twenty-five years a little store where toys and notions and stationery are sold. One night twenty years ago there was a wedding in the rooms above the store. The Widow Mayo owned the house and store. Her daughter Helen was married to Frank Barry. John Delaney was best man. Helen was eighteen, and her picture had been printed in a morning paper next to the headlines of a "Wholesale Female Murderess" story from Butte, Mont. But after your eye and intelligence had rejected the connection, you seized your magnifying glass and read beneath the portrait her description as one of a series of Prominent Beauties and Belles of the lower west side. Frank Barry and John Delaney were "prominent" young beaux of the same side, and bosom friends, whom you expected to turn upon each other every time the curtain went up. One who pays his money for orchestra seats and fiction expects this. That is the first funny idea that has turned up in the story yet. Both had made a great race for Helen's hand. When Frank won, John shook his hand and congratulated him - honestly, he did. After the ceremony Helen ran upstairs to put on her hat. She was getting married in a traveling dress. She and Frank were going to Old Point Comfort for a week. Downstairs the usual horde of gibbering cave-dwellers were waiting with their hands full of old Congress gaiters and paper bags of hominy. Then there was a rattle of the fire-escape, and into her room jumps the mad and infatuated John Delaney, with a damp curl drooping upon his forehead, and made violent and reprehensible love to his lost one, entreating her to flee or fly with him to the Riviera, or the Bronx, or any old place where there are Italian skies and dolce far niente. It would have carried Blaney off his feet to see Helen repulse him. With blazing and scornful eyes she fairly withered him by demanding whatever he meant by speaking to respectable people that way. In a few moments she had him going. The manliness that had possessed him departed. He bowed low, and said something about "irresistible impulse" and "forever carry in his heart the memory of" - and she suggested that he catch the first fire-escape going down. "I will away," said John Delaney, "to the furthermost parts of the earth. I cannot remain near you and know that you are another's. I will to Africa, and there amid other scenes strive to for -" "For goodness sake, get out," said Helen. "Somebody might come in." He knelt upon one knee, and she extended him one white hand that he might give it a farewell kiss. Girls, was this choice boon of the great little god Cupid ever vouchsafed you - to have the fellow you want hard and fast, and have the one you don't want come with a damp curl on his forehead and kneel to you and babble of Africa and love which, in spite of everything, shall forever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to feel the sweet security of your own happy state; to send the unlucky one, broken-hearted, to foreign climes, while you congratulate yourself as he presses his last kiss upon your knuckles, that your nails are well manicured - say, girls, it's galluptious - don't ever let it get by you. And then, of course - how did you guess it? - the door opened and in stalked the bridegroom, jealous of slow-tying bonnet strings. The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen's hand, and out of the window and down the fire-escape sprang John Delaney, Africa bound. A little slow music, if you please - faint violin, just a breath in the clarinet and a touch of the 'cello. Imagine the scene. Frank, white-hot, with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from him. Helen, rushing and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears them from his shoulders - once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and that - the stage manager will show you how - and throws her from him to the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing. Never, he cries, will he look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring groups of astonished guests. And, now because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience must stroll out into the real lobby of the world and marry, die, grow gray, rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of twenty years which must precede the rising of the curtain again. Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house. At thirty-eight she could have bested many an eighteen-year-old at a beauty show on points and general results. Only a few people remembered her wedding comedy, but she made of it no secret. She did not pack it in lavender or moth balls, nor did she sell it to a magazine. One day a middle-aged money-making lawyer, who bought his legal cap and ink of her, asked her across the counter to marry him. "I'm really much obliged to you," said Helen, cheerfully, "but I married another man twenty years ago. He was more a goose than a man, but I think I love him yet. I have never seen him since about half an hour after the ceremony. Was it copying ink that you wanted or just writing fluid?" The lawyer bowed over the counter with old-time grace and left a respectful kiss on the back of her hand. Helen sighed. Parting salutes, however romantic, may be overdone. Here she was at thirty-eight, beautiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have got from her lovers were approaches and adieus. Worse still, in the last one she had lost a customer, too. Business languished, and she hung out a Room to Let card. Two large rooms on the third floor were prepared for desirable tenants. Roomers came, and went regretfully, for the house of Mrs. Barry was the abode of neatness, comfort and taste. One day came Ramonti, the violinist, and engaged the front room above. The discord and clatter uptown offended his nice ear; so a friend had sent him to this oasis in the desert of noise. Ramonti, with his still youthful face, his dark eyebrows, his short, pointed, foreign, brown beard, his distinguished head of gray hair, and his artist's temperament - revealed in his light, gay and sympathetic manner - was a welcome tenant in the old house near Abingdon Square. Helen lived on the floor above the store. The architecture of it was singular and quaint. The hall was large and almost square. Up one side of it, and then across the end of it ascended an open stairway to the floor above. This hall space she had furnished as a sitting room and office combined. There she kept her desk and wrote her business letters; and there she sat of evenings by a warm fire and a bright red light and sewed or read. Ramonti found the atmosphere so agreeable that he spent much time there, describing to Mrs. Barry the wonders of Paris, where he had studied with a particularly notorious and noisy fiddler. Next comes lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the early 40's, with a brown, mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, haunting eyes. He, too, found the society of Helen a desirable thing. With the eyes of Romeo and Othello's tongue, he charmed her with tales of distant climes and wooed her by respectful innuendo. From the first Helen felt a marvelous and compelling thrill in the presence of this man. His voice somehow took her swiftly back to the days of her youth's romance. This feeling grew, and she gave way to it, and it led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a factor in that romance. And then with a woman's reasoning (oh, yes, they do, sometimes) she leaped over common syllogism and theory, and logic, and was sure that her husband had come back to her. For she saw in his eyes love, which no woman can mistake, and a thousand tons of regret and remorse, which aroused pity, which is perilously near to love requited, which is the sine qua non in the house that Jack built. But she made no sign. A husband who steps around the corner for twenty years and then drops in again should not expect to find his slippers laid out too conveniently near nor a match ready lighted for his cigar. There must be expiation, explanation, and possibly execration. A little purgatory, and then, maybe, if he were properly humble, he might be trusted with a harp and crown. And so she made no sign that she knew or suspected. And my friend, the reporter, could see nothing funny in this! Sent out on an assignment to write up a roaring, hilarious, brilliant joshing story of - but I will not knock a brother - let us go on with the story. One evening Ramonti stopped in Helen's hall-office-reception-room and told his love with the tenderness and ardor of the enraptured artist. His words were a bright flame of the divine fire that glows in the heart of a man who is a dreamer and doer combined. "But before you give me an answer," he went on, before she could accuse him of suddenness, "I must tell you that 'Ramonti' is the only name I have to offer you. My manager gave me that. I do not know who I am or where I came from. My first recollection is of opening my eyes in a hospital. I was a young man, and I had been there for weeks. My life before that is a blank to me. They told me that I was found lying in the street with a wound on my head and was brought there in an ambulance. They thought I must have fallen and struck my head upon the stones. There was nothing to show who I was. I have never been able to remember. After I was discharged from the hospital, I took up the violin. I have had success. Mrs. Barry - I do not know your name except that - I love you; the first time I saw you I realized that you were the one woman in the world for me - and" - oh, a lot of stuff like that. Helen felt young again. First a wave of pride and a sweet little thrill of vanity went all over her; and then she looked Ramonti in the eyes, and a tremendous throb went through her heart. She hadn't expected that throb. It took her by surprise. The musician had become a big factor in her life, and she hadn't been aware of it. "Mr. Ramonti," she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage, remember; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm a married woman." And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must do, sooner or later, either to a theatrical manager or to a reporter. Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to his room. Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand. Well she might. Three suitors had kissed it, mounted their red roan steeds and ridden away. In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes. Helen was in the willow rocker, knitting a useless thing in cotton-wool. He ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a chat. Sitting across the table from her, he also poured out his narrative of love. And then he said: "Helen, do you not remember me? I think I have seen it in your eyes. Can you forgive the past and remember the love that has lasted for twenty years? I wronged you deeply - I was afraid to come back to you - but my love overpowered my reason. Can you, will you, forgive me?" Helen stood up. The mysterious stranger held one of her hands in a strong and trembling clasp. There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a scene like that and her emotions to portray. For she stood with a divided heart. The fresh, unforgettable, virginal love for her bridegroom was hers; the treasured, sacred, honored memory of her first choice filled half her soul. She leaned to that pure feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bound her to it. But the other half of her heart and soul was filled with something else - a later, fuller, nearer influence. And so the old fought against the new. And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from the neck. This music and the musician caller her, and at her side honor and the old love held her back. "Forgive me," he pleaded. "Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you love," she declared, with a purgatorial touch. "How could I tell?" he begged. "I will conceal nothing from you. That night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined him. His head had struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and jealousy. I hid near by and saw an ambulance take him away. Although you married him, Helen -" "Who are you?" cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching her hand away. "Don't you remember me, Helen - the one who has always loved you best? I am John Delaney. If you can forgive -" But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the stairs toward the music and him who had forgotten, but who had known her for his in each of his two existences, and as she climbed up she sobbed, cried and sang: "Frank! Frank! Frank!" Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard balls, and my friend, the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it! The Third Ingredient The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not an apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and head-gear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the sophistical promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You may have a room there for two dollars a week or you may have one for twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa's roomers are stenographers, musicians, brokers, shop-girls, space-rate writers, art students, wire-tappers, and other people who lean far over the banister-rail when the door-bell rings. This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Vallambrosians-- though meaning no disrespect to the others. At six o'clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back to her third-floor rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa with her nose and chin more sharply pointed than usual. To be discharged from the department store where you have been working four years, and with only fifteen cents in your purse, does have a tendency to make your features appear more finely chiseled. And now for Hetty's thumb-nail biography while she climbs the two flights of stairs. She walked into the Biggest Store one morning four years before with seventy-five other girls, applying for a job behind the waist department counter. The phalanx of wage-earners formed a bewildering scene of beauty, carrying a total mass of blond hair sufficient to have justified the horseback gallops of a hundred Lady Godivas. The capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man whose task it was to engage six of the contestants, was aware of a feeling of suffocation as if he were drowning in a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail hove in sight. Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, with small, contemptuous, green eyes and chocolate-colored hair, dressed in a suit of plain burlap and a common-sense hat, stood before him with every one of her twenty-nine years of life unmistakably in sight. "You're on!." shouted the bald-headed young man, and was saved. And that is how Hetty came to be employed in the Biggest Store. The story of her rise to an eight-dollar-a-week salary is the combined stories of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. You shall not learn from me the salary that was paid her as a beginner. There is a sentiment growing about such things, and I want no millionaire store-proprietors climbing the fire-escape of my tenement- house to throw dynamite bombs into my skylight boudoir. The story of Hetty's discharge from the Biggest Store is so nearly a repetition of her engagement as to be monotonous. In each department of the store there is an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnivorous person carrying always a mileage book and a red necktie, and referred to as a "buyer." The destinies of the girls in his department who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics)--so much per week are in his hands. This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man. As he walked along the aisles of his department lie seemed to be sailing on a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, machine-embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring surfeit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper's homely countenance, emerald eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a desert of cloying beauty. In a quiet angle of a counter he pinched her arm kindly, three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three feet away with one good blow of her muscular and not especially lily- white right. So, now you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the Biggest Store at thirty minutes' notice, with one dime and a nickel in her purse. This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per (butcher's) pound. But on the day that Hetty was "released" by the B. S. the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes this story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have-- But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned with shorts who were unable to cover; so you can find no fault with this one. Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan out of the 2x4-foot china--er--I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a rats'-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out with her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed. There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef- Stew can you make out of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup without oysters, turtle-soup without turtles, coffee-cake without coffee, but you can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions. But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a little cold water) 'twill serve--'tis not so deep as a lobster a la Newburg nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve. Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor hall. According to the advertisements of the Vallambrosa there was running water to be found there. Between you and me and the water-meter, it only ambled or walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no place here. There was also a sink where housekeeping roomers often met to dump their coffee grounds and glare at one another's kimonos. At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, artistic hair and plaintive eyes, washing two large "Irish" potatoes. Hetty knew the Vallambrosa as well as any one not owning "double hextra- magnifying eyes" could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her encyclopedia, her "Who's What?" her clearinghouse of news, of goers and comers. From a rose-pink kimono edged with Nile green she had learned that the girl with the potatoes was a miniature-painter living in a kind of attic--or "studio," as they prefer to call it--on the top floor. Hetty was not certain in her mind what a miniature was; but it certainly wasn't a house; because house-painters, although they wear splashy overalls and poke ladders in your face on the street, are known to indulge in a riotous profusion of food at home. The potato girl was quite slim and small, and handled her potatoes as an old bachelor uncle handles a baby who is cutting teeth. She had a dull shoemaker's knife in her right hand, and she had begun to peel one of the potatoes with it. Hetty addressed her in the punctiliously formal tone of one who intends to be cheerfully familiar with you in the second round. "Beg pardon," she said, "for butting into what's not my business, but if you peel them potatoes you lose out. They're new Bermudas. You want to scrape 'em. Lemme show you." She took a potato and the knife, and began to demonstrate. "Oh, thank you," breathed the artist. "I didn't know. And I did hate to see the thick peeling go; it seemed such a waste. But I thought they always had to be peeled. When you've got only potatoes to eat, the peelings count, you know." "Say, kid," said Hetty, staying her knife, "you ain't up against it, too, are you?" The miniature artist smiled starvedly. "I suppose I am. Art--or, at least, the way I interpret it--doesn't seem to be much in demand. I have only these potatoes for my dinner. But they aren't so bad boiled and hot, with a little butter and salt." "Child," said Hetty, letting a brief smile soften her rigid features, "Fate has sent me and you together. I've had it handed to me in the neck, too; but I've got a chunk of meat in my, room as big as a lap-dog. And I've done everything to get potatoes except pray for 'em. Let's me and you bunch our commissary departments and make a stew of 'em. We'll cook it in my room. If we only had an onion to go in it! Say, kid, you haven't got a couple of pennies that've slipped down into the lining of your last winter's sealskin, have you? I could step down to the corner and get one at old Giuseppe's stand. A stew without an onion is worse'n a matinee without candy." "You may call me Cecilia," said the artist. "No; I spent my last penny three days ago." "Then we'll have to cut the onion out instead of slicing it in," said Hetty. "I'd ask the janitress for one, but I don't want 'em hep just yet to the fact that I'm pounding the asphalt for another job. But I wish we did have an onion." In the shop-girl's room the two began to prepare their supper. Cecilia's part was to sit on the couch helplessly and beg to be allowed to do something, in the voice of a cooing ring-dove. Hetty prepared the rib beef, putting it in cold salted water in the stew-pan and setting it on the one-burner gas-stove. "I wish we had an onion," said Hetty, as she scraped the two potatoes. On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, gorgeous advertising picture of one of the new ferry-boats of the P. U. F. F. Railroad that had been built to cut down the time between Los Angeles and New York City one-eighth of a minute. Hetty, turning her head during her continuous monologue, saw tears running from her guest's eyes as she gazed on the idealized presentment of the speeding, foam-girdled transport. "Why, say, Cecilia, kid," said Hetty, poising her knife, "is it as bad art as that? I ain't a critic; but I thought it kind of brightened up the room. Of course, a manicure-painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute. I'll take it down if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint Potluck we had an onion." But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled down, sobbing, with her nose indenting the hard-woven drapery of the couch. Something was here deeper than the artistic temperament offended at crude lithography. Hetty knew. She had accepted her role long ago. How scant the words with which we try to describe a single quality of a human being! When we reach the abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the babbling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. Figuratively (let us say), some people are Bosoms, some are Hands, some are Heads, some are Muscles, some are Feet, some are Backs for burdens. Hetty was a Shoulder. Hers was a sharp, sinewy shoulder; but all her life people had laid their heads upon it, metaphorically or actually, and had left there all or half their troubles. Looking at Life anatomically, which is as good a way as any, she was preordained to be a Shoulder. There were few truer collar-bones anywhere than hers. Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet outlived the little pang that visited her whenever the head of youth and beauty leaned upon her for consolation. But one glance in her mirror always served as an instantaneous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the crinkly old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned down the flame a little lower from the bubbling beef and potatoes, went over to the couch, and lifted Cecilia's head to its confessional. "Go on and tell me, honey," she said. "I know now that it ain't art that's worrying you. You met him on a ferry-boat, didn't you? Go on, Cecilia, kid, and tell your--your Aunt Hetty about it." But youth and melancholy must first spend the surplus of sighs and tears that waft and float the barque of romance to its harbor in the delectable isles. Presently, through the stringy tendons that formed the bars of the confessional, the penitent--or was it the glorified communicant of the sacred flame--told her story without art or illumination. "It was only three days ago. I was coming back on the ferry from Jersey City. Old Mr. Schrum, an art dealer, told me of a rich man in Newark who wanted a miniature of his daughter painted. I went to see him and showed him some of my work. When I told him the price would be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hyena. He said an enlarged crayon twenty times the size would cost him only eight dollars. "I had just enough money to buy my ferry ticket back to New York. I felt as if I didn't want to live another day. I must have looked as I felt, for I saw him on the row of seats opposite me, looking at me as if he understood. He was nice-looking, but oh, above everything else, he looked kind. When one is tired or unhappy or hopeless, kindness counts more than anything else. "When I got so miserable that I couldn't fight against it any longer, I got up and walked slowly out the rear door of the ferry-boat cabin. No one was there, and I slipped quickly over the rail and dropped into the water. Oh, friend Hetty, it was cold, cold! "For just one moment I wished I was back in the old Vallambrosa, starving and hoping. And then I got numb, and didn't care. And then I felt that somebody else was in the water close by me, holding me up. He had followed me, and jumped in to save me. "Somebody threw a thing like a big, white doughnut at us, and he made me put my arms through the hole. Then the ferry-boat backed, and they pulled us on board. Oh, Hetty, I was so ashamed of my wickedness in trying to drown myself; and, besides, my hair had all tumbled down and was sopping wet, and I was such a sight. "And then some men in blue clothes came around; and he gave them his card, and I heard him tell them he had seen me drop my purse on the edge of the boat outside the rail, and in leaning over to get it I had fallen overboard. And then I remembered having read in the papers that people who try to kill themselves are locked up in cells with people who try to kill other people, and I was afraid. "But some ladies on the boat took me downstairs to the furnace-room and got me nearly dry and did up my hair. When the boat landed, he came and put me in a cab. He was all dripping himself, but laughed as if he thought it was all a joke. He begged me, but I wouldn't tell him my name nor where I lived, I was so ashamed." "You were a fool, child," said Hetty, kindly. "Wait till I turn the light up a bit. I wish to Heaven we had an onion." "Then he raised his hat," went on Cecilia, "and said: 'Very well. But I'll find you, anyhow. I'm going to claim my rights of salvage.' Then he gave money to the cab-driver and told him to take me where I wanted to go, and walked away. What is 'salvage,' Hetty?" "The edge of a piece of goods that ain't hemmed," said the shop-girl. "You must have looked pretty well frazzled out to the little hero boy." "It's been three days," moaned the miniature-painter, "and he hasn't found me yet." "Extend the time," said Hetty. "This is a big town. Think of how many girls he might have to see soaked in water with their hair down before he would recognize you. The stew's getting on fine--but oh, for an onion! I'd even use a piece'of garlic if I had it." The beef and potatoes bubbled merrily, exhaling a mouth-watering savor that yet lacked something, leaving a hunger on the palate, a haunting, wistful desire for some lost and needful ingredient. "I came near drowning in that awful river," said Cecilia, shuddering. "It ought to have more water in it," said Hetty; "the stew, I mean. I'll go get some at the sink." "It smells good," said the artist. "That nasty old North River?" objected Hetty. "It smells to me like soap factories and wet setter-dogs--oh, you mean the stew. Well, I wish we had an onion for it. Did he look like he had money?" "First, he looked kind,'' said Cecilia. "I'm sure he was rich; but that matters so little. When he drew out his bill-folder to pay the cab-man you couldn't help seeing hundreds and thousands of dollars in it. And I looked over the cab doors and saw him leave the ferry station in a motor-car; and the chauffeur gave him his bearskin to put on, for he was sopping wet. And it was only three days ago." "What a fool!" said Hetty, shortly. "Oh, the chauffeur wasn't wet," breathed Cecilia. "And he drove the car away very nicely." "I mean you," said Hetty. "For not giving him your address." "I never give my address to chauffeurs," said Cecilia, haughtily. "I wish we had one," said Hetty, disconsolately. "What for?" "For the stew, of course--oh, I mean an onion." Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the end of the hall. A young man came down the stairs from above just as she was opposite the lower step. He was decently dressed, but pale and haggard. His eyes were dull with the stress of some burden of physical or mental woe. In his hand he bore an onion--a pink, smooth, solid, shining onion as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock. Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was something Joan of Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in the look and pose of the shoplady-- she had cast off the roles of Job and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The young man stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed distractedly. He felt marooned, held up, attacked, assailed, levied upon, sacked, assessed, panhandled, browbeaten, though he knew not why. It was the look in Hetty's eyes that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly to the masthead and an able seaman with a dirk between his teeth scurry up the ratlines and nail it there. But as yet he did not know that the cargo he carried was the thing that had caused him to be so nearly blown out of the water without even a parley. "Beg your pardon," said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid tones permitted, "but did you find that onion on the stairs? There was a hole in the paper bag; and I've just come out to look for it." The young man coughed for half a minute. The interval may have given him the courage to defend his own property. Also, he clutched his pungent prize greedily, and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim waylayer. "No," he said huskily, "I didn't find it on the stairs. It was given to me by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If you don't believe it, ask him. I'll wait until you do." "I know about Bevens," said Hetty, sourly. "He writes books and things up there for the paper-and-rags man. We can hear the postman guy him all over the house when he brings them thick envelopes back. Say--do you live in the Vallambrosa?" "I do not," said the young man. "I come to see Bevens sometimes. He's my friend. I live two blocks west." "What are you going to do with the onion? --begging your pardon," said Hetty. "I'm going to eat it." "Raw?" "Yes: as soon as I get home." "Haven't you got anything else to eat with it?" The young man considered briefly. "No," he confessed; "there's not another scrap of anything in my diggings to eat. I think old Jack is pretty hard up for grub in his shack, too. He hated to give up the onion, but I worried him into parting with it." "Man," said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient eyes, and laying a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, "you've known trouble, too, haven't you?" "Lots," said the onion owner, promptly. "But this onion is my own property, honestly come by. If you will excuse me, I must be going." "Listen," said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. "Raw onion is a mighty poor diet. And so is a beef-stew without one. Now, if you're Jack Bevens' friend, I guess you're nearly right. There's a little lady--a friend of mine--in my room there at the end of the hall. Both of us are out of luck; and we had just potatoes and meat between us. They're stewing now. But it ain't got any soul. There's something lacking to it. There's certain things in life that are naturally intended to fit and belong together. One is pink cheese-cloth and green roses, and one is ham and eggs, and one is Irish and trouble. And the other one is beef and potatoes with onions. And still another one is people who are up against it and other people in the same fix." The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of coughing. With one hand he hugged his onion to his bosom. "No doubt; no doubt," said he, at length. "But, as I said, I must be going, because--" Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly. "Don't be a Dago, Little Brother. Don't cat raw onions. Chip it in toward the dinner and line yourself inside with the best stew you ever licked a spoon over. Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and drag him inside for the honor of dining with 'em? No harm shall befall you, Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into line." The young man's pale face relaxed into a grin. "Believe I'll go you," he said, brightening. "If my onion is good as a credential, I'll accept the invitation gladly." "It's good as that, but better as seasoning," said Hetty. "You come and stand outside the door till I ask my lady friend if she has any objections. And don't run away with that letter of recommendation before I come out." Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The young man waited outside. "Cecilia, kid," said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw of her voice as well as she could, "there's an onion outside. With a young man attached. I've asked him in to dinner. You ain't going to kick, are you?" "Oh, dear!" said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her artistic hair. She cast a mournful glance at the ferry-boat poster on the wall. "Nit," said Hetty. "It ain't him. You're up against real life now. I believe you said your hero friend had money and automobiles. This is a poor skeezicks that's got nothing to eat but an onion. But he's easy-spoken and not a freshy. I imagine he's been a gentleman, he's so low down now. And we need the onion. Shall I bring him in? I'll guarantee his behavior." "Hetty, dear," sighed Cecilia, "I'm so hungry. What difference does it make whether he's a prince or a burglar? I don't care. Bring him in if he's got anything to eat with him." Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was gone. Her heart missed a beat, and a gray look settled over her face except on her nose and cheek-bones. And then the tides of life flowed in again, for she saw him leaning out of the front window at the other end of the hall. She hurried there. He was shouting to some one below. The noise of the street overpowered the sound of her footsteps. She looked down over his shoulder, saw whom he was speaking to, and heard his words. He pulled himself in from the window-sill and saw her standing over him. Hetty's eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets. "Don't lie to me," she said, calmly. "What were you going to do with that onion?" The young man suppressed a cough and faced her resolutely. His manner was that of one who had been bearded sufficiently. "I was going to eat it," said he, with emphatic slowness; "just as I told you before." "And you have nothing else to eat at home?" "Not a thing." "What kind of work do you do?" "I am not working at anything just now." "Then why," said Hetty, with her voice set on its sharpest edge, "do you lean out of windows and give orders to chauffeurs in green automobiles in the street below?" The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to sparkle. "Because, madam," said he, in accelerando tones, "I pay the chauffeur's wages and I own the automobile--and also this onion--this onion, madam." He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty's nose. The shop-lady did not retreat a hair's-breadth. "Then why do you eat onions," she said, with biting contempt, "and nothing else?" "I never said I did," retorted the young man, heatedly. "I said I had nothing else to eat where I live. I am not a delicatessen store- keeper." "Then why," pursued Hetty, inflexibly, "were you going to eat a raw onion?" "My mother," said the young man, "always made me eat one for a cold. Pardon my referring to a physical infirmity; but you may have noticed that I have a very, very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion and go to bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing to you for it." "How did you catch this cold?" went on Hetty, suspiciously. The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme height of feeling. There were two modes of descent open to him--a burst of rage or a surrender to the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall echoed his hoarse laughter. "You're a dandy," said he. "And I don't blame you for being careful. I don't mind telling you. I got wet. I was on a North River ferry a few days ago when a girl jumped overboard. Of course, I--" Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story. "Give me the onion," she said. The young man set his jaw a trifle harder. "Give me the onion," she repeated. He grinned, and laid it in her hand. Then Hetty's infrequent, grim, melancholy smile showed itself. She took the young man's arm and pointed with her other hand to the door of her room. "Little Brother," she said, "go in there. The little fool you fished out of the river is there waiting for you. Go on in. I'll give you three minutes before I come. Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on in, Onions." After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty began to peel and wash the onion at the sink. She gave a gray look at the gray roofs outside, and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and twitches. "But it's us," she said, grimly, to herself, "it's us that furnishes the beef." To Him Who Waits The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual animation. The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that had strayed down to the river's edge, and, not having a ferry ticket, had to stop there. The bijou mountains were densely wooded and were infested by ferocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced the summer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, a macadamized road ran between the green skirt of the hills and the foamy lace of the river's edge. A dim path wound from the comfortable road up a rocky height to the hermit's cave. One mile upstream was the Viewpoint Inn, to which summer folk from the city came; leaving cool, electric-fanned apartments that they might be driven about in burning sunshine, shrieking, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged Modreds bearing the blankest of shields. Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the personal touch that shall endear you to the hero. A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair curling at the ends, dramatic eyes, and a forked brown beard like those that were imposed upon the West some years ago by self-appointed "divine healers" who succeeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture appeared to be kind of gunny-sacking cut and made into a garment that would have made the fortune of a London tailor. His long, well-shaped fingers, delicate nose, and poise of manner raised him high above the class of hermits who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in their caves in spots indicated by rude crosses chipped in the stone wall above. The hermit's home was not altogether a cave. The cave was an addition to the hermitage, which was a rude hut made of poles daubed with clay and covered with the best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing. In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a rustic bookcase made of unplaned poplar planks, and a table formed of a wooden slab laid across two upright pieces of granite--something between the furniture of a Druid temple and that of a Broadway beefsteak dungeon. Hung against the walls were skins of wild animals purchased in the vicinity of Eighth Street and University Place, New York. The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There the hermit cooked his meals on a rude stone hearth. With infinite patience and an old axe he had chopped natural shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood his stores of flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking- powder, soda-mint tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo Emulsion for chaps and roughness of the hands and face. The hermit had hermited there for ten years. He was an asset of the Viewpoint Inn. To its guests he was second in interest only to the Mysterious Echo in the Haunted Glen. And the Lover's Leap beat him only a few inches, flat-footed. He was known far (but not very wide, on account of the topography) as a. scholar of brilliant intellect who had forsworn the world because he had been jilted in a love affair. Every Saturday night the Viewpoint Inn sent to him surreptitiously a basket of provisions. He never left the immediate outskirts of his hermitage. Guests of the inn who visited him said his store of knowledge, wit, and scintillating philosophy were simply wonderful, you know. That summer the Viewpoint Inn was crowded with guests. So, on Saturday nights, there were extra cans of tomatoes, and sirloin steak, instead of "rounds," in the hermit's basket. Now you have the material allegations in the case. So, make way for Romance. Evidently the hermit expected a visitor. He carefully combed his long hair and parted his apostolic beard. When the ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock on a stone shelf announced the hour of five he picked up his gunny-sacking skirts, brushed them carefully, gathered an oaken staff, and strolled slowly into the thick woods that surrounded the hermitage. He had not long to wait. Up the faint pathway, slippery with its carpet of pine-needles, toiled Beatrix, youngest and fairest of the famous Trenholme sisters. She was all in blue from hat to canvas pumps, varying in tint from the shade of the tinkle of a bluebell at daybreak on a spring Saturday to the deep hue of a Monday morning at nine when the washer-woman has failed to show up. Beatrix dug her cerulean parasol deep into the pine-needles and sighed. The hermit, on the q. t., removed a grass burr from the ankle of one sandalled foot with the big toe of his other one. She blued--and almost starched and ironed him--with her cobalt eyes. "It must be so nice," she said in little, tremulous gasps, "to be a hermit, and have ladies climb mountains to talk to you." The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. Beatrix, with a sigh, settled down upon the mat of pine-needles like a bluebird upon her nest. The hermit followed suit; drawing his feet rather awkwardly under his gunny-sacking. "It must be nice to be a mountain," said he, with ponderous lightness, "and have angels in blue climb up you instead of flying over you." "Mamma had neuralgia," said Beatrix, "and went to bed, or I couldn't have come. It's dreadfully hot at that horrid old inn. But we hadn't the money to go anywhere else this summer." "Last night," said the hermit, "I climbed to the top of that big rock above us. I could see the lights of the inn and hear a strain or two of the music when the wind was right. I imagined you moving gracefully in the arms of others to the dreamy music of the waltz amid the fragrance of flowers. Think how lonely I must have been!" The youngest, handsomest, and poorest of the famous Trenholme sisters sighed. "You haven't quite hit it," she said, plaintively. "I was moving gracefully at the arms of another. Mamma had one of her periodical attacks of rheumatism in both elbows and shoulders, and I had to rub them for an hour with that horrid old liniment. I hope you didn't think that smelled like flowers. You know, there were some West Point boys and a yachtload of young men from the city at last evening's weekly dance. I've known mamma to sit by an open window for three hours with one-half of her registering 85 degrees and the other half frostbitten, and never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of ineligibles come around where I am, and she'll begin to swell at the knuckles and shriek with pain. And I have to take her to her room and rub her arms. To see mamma dressed you'd be surprised to know the number of square inches of surface there are to her arms. I think it must be delightful to be a hermit. That--cassock-- gabardine, isn't it?--that you wear is so becoming. Do you make it--or them--of course you must have changes- yourself? And what a blessed relief it must be to wear sandals instead of shoes! Think how we must suffer--no matter how small I buy my shoes they always pinch my toes. Oh, why can't there be lady hermits, too!" The beautifulest and most adolescent Trenholme sister extended two slender blue ankles that ended in two enormous blue-silk bows that almost concealed two fairy Oxfords, also of one of the forty-seven shades of blue. The hermit, as if impelled by a kind of reflex- telepathic action, drew his bare toes farther beneath his gunny- sacking. "I have heard about the romance of your life," said Miss Trenholme, softly. "They have it printed on the back of the menu card at the inn. Was she very beautiful and charming?" "On the bills of fare!" muttered the hermit; "but what do I care for the world's babble? Yes, she was of the highest and grandest type. Then," he continued, "then I thought the world could never contain another equal to her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fastness to spend the remainder of my life alone--to devote and dedicate my remaining years to her memory." "It's grand," said Miss Trenholme, "absolutely grand. I think a hermit's life is the ideal one. No bill-collectors calling, no dressing for dinner--how I'd like to be one! But there's no such luck for me. If I don't marry this season I honestly believe mamma will force me into settlement work or trimming hats. It isn't because I'm getting old or ugly; but we haven't enough money left to butt in at any of the swell places any more. And I don't want to marry--unless it's somebody I like. That's why I'd like to be a hermit. Hermits don't ever marry, do they ?" "Hundreds of 'em," said the hermit, "when they've found the right one." "But they're hermits," said the youngest and beautifulest, "because they've lost the right one, aren't they?" "Because they think they have," answered the recluse, fatuously. "Wisdom comes to one in a mountain cave as well as to one in the world of 'swells,' as I believe they are called in the argot." "When one of the 'swells' brings it to them," said Miss Trenholme. "And my folks are swells. That's the trouble. But there are so many swells at the seashore in the summer-time that we hardly amount to more than ripples. So we've had to put all our money into river and harbor appropriations. We were all girls, you know. There were four of us. I'm the only surviving one. The others have been married off. All to money. Mamma is so proud of my sisters. They send her the loveliest pen-wipers and art calendars every Christmas. I'm the only one on the market now. I'm forbidden to look at any one who hasn't money." "But--" began the hermit. "But, oh," said the beautifulest "of course hermits have great pots of gold and doubloons buried somewhere near three great oak-trees. They all have." "I have not," said the hermit, regretfully. "I'm so sorry," said Miss Trenholme. "I always thought they had. I think I must go now." Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest. "Fair lady--" began the hermit. "I am Beatrix Trenholme--some call me Trix," she said. "You must come to the inn to see me." "I haven't been a stone's--throw from my cave in ten years," said the hermit. "You must come to see me there," she repeated. "Any evening except Thursday." The hermit smiled weakly. "Good-bye," she said, gathering the folds of her pale-blue skirt. "I shall expect you. But not on Thursday evening, remember." What an interest it would give to the future menu cards of the Viewpoint Inn to have these printed lines added to them: "Only once during the more than ten years of his lonely existence did the mountain hermit leave his famous cave. That was when he was irresistibly drawn to the inn by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix Trenholme, youngest and most beautiful of the celebrated Trenholme sisters, whose brilliant marriage to--" Aye, to whom? The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the door stood Bob Binkley, his old friend and companion of the days before he had renounced the world--Bob, himself, arrayed like the orchids of the greenhouse in the summer man's polychromatic garb--Bob, the millionaire, with his fat, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond rings, sparkling fob-chain, and pleated bosom. He was two years older than the hermit, and looked five years younger. "You're Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and that going-away bathrobe," he shouted. "I read about you on the bill of fare at the inn. They've run your biography in between the cheese and 'Not Responsible for Coats and Umbrellas.' What 'd you do it for, Hamp? And ten years, too--geewhilikins!" "You're just the same," said the hermit. "Come in and sit down. Sit on that limestone rock over there; it's softer than the granite." "I can't understand it, old man," said Binkley. "I can see how you could give up a woman for ten years, but not ten years for a woman. Of course I know why you did it. Everybody does. Edith Carr. She jilted four or five besides you. But you were the only one who took to a hole in the ground. The others had recourse to whiskey, the Klondike, politics, and that similia similibus cure. But, say--Hamp, Edith Carr was just about the finest woman in the world--high-toned and proud and noble, and playing her ideals to win at all kinds of odds. She certainly was a crackerjack." "After I renounced the world," said the hermit, "I never heard of her again." "She married me," said Binkley. The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante-cave and wriggled his toes. "I know how you feel about it," said Binkley. "What else could she do? There were her four sisters and her mother and old man Carr--you remember how he put all the money he had into dirigible balloons? Well, everything was coming down and nothing going up with 'em, as you might say. Well, I know Edith as well as you do--although I married her. I was worth a million then, but I've run it up since to between five and six. It wasn't me she wanted as much as--well, it was about like this. She had that bunch on her hands, and they had to be taken care of. Edith married me two months after you did the ground-squirrel act. I thought she liked me, too, at the time." "And now?" inquired the recluse. "We're better friends than ever now. She got a divorce from me two years ago. Just incompatibility. I didn't put in any defence. Well, well, well, Hamp, this is certainly a funny dugout you've built here. But you always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you'd have been the very one to strike Edith's fancy. Maybe you did--but it's the bank - roll that catches 'em, my boy--your caves and whiskers won't do it. Honestly, Hamp, don't you think you've been a darned fool?" The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was and always had been so superior to the crude and mercenary Binkley that even his vulgarities could not anger him. Moreover, his studies and meditations in his retreat had raised him far above the little vanities of the world. His little mountain-side had been almost an Olympus, over the edge of which he saw, smiling, the bolts hurled in the valleys of man below. Had his ten years of renunciation, of thought, of devotion to an ideal, of living scorn of a sordid world, been in vain? Up from the world had come to him the youngest and beautifulest--fairer than Edith--one and three-seventh times lovelier than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the hermit smiled in his beard. When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from the blot of his presence and the first faint star showed above the pines, the hermit got the can of baking-powder from his cupboard. He still smiled behind his beard. There was a slight rustle in the doorway. There stood Edith Carr, with all the added beauty and stateliness and noble bearing that ten years had brought her. She was never one to chatter. She looked at the hermit with her large, thinking, dark eyes. The hermit stood still, surprised into a pose as motionless as her own. Only his subconscious sense of the fitness of things caused him to turn the baking-powder can slowly in his hands until its red label was hidden against his bosom. "I am stopping at the inn," said Edith, in low but clear tones. "I heard of you there. I told myself that I must see you. I want to ask your forgiveness. I sold my happiness for money. There were others to be provided for--but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see you and ask your forgiveness. You have lived here ten years, they tell me, cherishing my memory! I was blind, Hampton. I could not see then that all the money in the world cannot weigh in the scales against a faithful heart. If--but it is too late now, of course." Her assertion was a question clothed as best it could be in a loving woman's pride. But through the thin disguise the hermit saw easily that his lady had come back to him--if he chose. He had won a golden crown--if it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of faithfulness was ready for his hand--if he desired to stretch it forth. For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone upon him with a reflected radiance. And then by turns he felt the manly sensations of indignation at having been discarded, and of repugnance at having been--as it were--sought again. And last of all--how strange that it should have come at last!--the pale-blue vision of the beautifulest of the Trenholme sisters illuminated his mind's eye and left him without a waver. "It is too late," he said, in deep tones, pressing the baking-powder can against his heart. Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards down the path. The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly through the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his shack and made no sign. Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit was seized by the world-madness. Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elf-land, came now and then a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was broadened by the night into an illimitable sea--those lights, dimly seen on its opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley- lines, but low-set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front of the inn were gay with fireflies--or were they motor-boats, smelling of gasoline and oil? Once the hermit had known these things and had sported with Amaryllis in the shade of the red-and-white-striped awnings. But for ten years he had turned a heedless ear to these far- off echoes of a frivolous world. But to-night there was something wrong. The casino band was playing a waltz--a waltz. What a fool he had been to tear deliberately ten years of his life from the calendar of existence for one who had given him up for the false joys that wealth- -"tum ti tum ti tum ti"--how did that waltz go? But those years had not been sacrificed--had they not brought him the star and pearl of all the world, the youngest and beautifulest of-- "But do not come on Thursday evening," she had insisted. Perhaps by now she would be moving slowly and gracefully to the strains of that waltz, held closely by West-Pointers or city commuters, while he, who had read in her eyes things that had recompensed him for ten lost years of life, moped like some wild animal in its mountain den. Why should--" "Damn it," said the hermit, suddenly, "I'll do it!" He threw down his Marcus Aurelius and threw off his gunny-sack toga. he dragged a dust-covered trunk from a corner of the cave, and with difficulty wrenched open its lid. Candles he had in plenty, and the cave was soon aglow. Clothes--ten years old in cut--scissors, razors, hats, shoes, all his discarded attire and belongings, were dragged ruthlessly from their renunciatory rest and strewn about in painful disorder. A pair of scissors soon reduced his beard sufficiently for the dulled razors to perform approximately their office. Cutting his own hair was beyond the hermit's skill. So he only combed and brushed it backward as smoothly as he could. Charity forbids us to consider the heartburnings and exertions of one so long removed from haberdashery and society. At the last the hermit went to an inner corner of his cave and began to dig in the soft earth with a long iron spoon. Out of the cavity he thus made he drew a tin can, and out of the can three thousand dollars in bills, tightly rolled and wrapped in oiled silk. He was a real hermit, as this may assure you. You may take a brief look at him as he hastens down the little mountain-side. A long, wrinkled black frock-coat reached to his calves. White duck trousers, unacquainted with the tailor's goose, a pink shirt, white standing collar with brilliant blue butterfly tie, and buttoned congress gaiters. But think, sir and madam--ten years! >From beneath a narrow-brimmed straw hat with a striped band flowed his hair. Seeing him, with all your shrewdness you could not have guessed him. You would have said that he played Hamlet--or the tuba--or pinochle--you would never have laid your hand on your heart and said: "He is a hermit who lived ten years in a cave for love of one lady--to win another." The dancing pavilion extended above the waters of the river. Gay lanterns and frosted electric globes shed a soft glamour within it. A hundred ladies and gentlemen from the inn and summer cottages flitted in and about it. To the left of the dusty roadway down which the hermit had tramped were the inn and grill-room. Something seemed to be on there, too. The windows were brilliantly lighted, and music was playing--music different from the two-steps and waltzes of the casino band. A negro man wearing a white jacket came through the iron gate, with its immense granite posts and wrought-iron lamp-holders. "What is going on here to-night?" asked the hermit. "Well, sah," said the servitor, "dey is having de reg'lar Thursday- evenin' dance in de casino. And in de grill-room dere's a beefsteak dinner, sah." The hermit glanced up at the inn on the hillside whence burst suddenly a triumphant strain of splendid harmony. "And up there," said he, "they are playing Mendelssohn--what is going on up there?" "Up in de inn," said the dusky one, "dey is a weddin' goin' on. Mr. Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin' Miss Trenholme, sah--de young lady who am quite de belle of de place, sah." An Unfinished Story 没有完的故事 We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy. There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme--chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of pretty Polly's small talk. I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher criticism that it had to do with the ancient, respectable, and lamented bar-of- judgment theory. Gabriel had played his trump; and those of us who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination. I noticed at one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind; but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles; and they did not appear to be getting any of us out. A fly cop--an angel policeman--flew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment. "Do you belong with that bunch?" the policeman asked. "Who are they?" was my answer. "Why," said he, "they are--" But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy. Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per week. The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else's account in the ledger kept by G-- Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend Doctor--Well then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy. During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week. It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount. Don't care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on six dollars per week. One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hat-pin within an eighth of an inch of her medulla oblongata, she said to her chum, Sadie--the girl that waits on you with her left side: "Say, Sade, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy." "You never did!" exclaimed Sadie admiringly. "Well, ain't you the lucky one? Piggy's an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. You'll have a swell time, Dulce." Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of life's--real life's--approaching dawn. It was Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her last week's wages. The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were glowing--calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors' homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them. Manhattan, the night-blooming cereus, was beginning to unfold its dead-white, heavy-odoured petals. Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her fifty cents. That money was to have been spent otherwise--fifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops--the kind that made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice was an extravagance-- almost a carouse--but what is life without pleasures? Dulcie lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a furnished room and a boardinghouse. In a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry. Dulcie went up to her room--the third floor back in a West Side brownstone-front. She lit the gas. Scientists tell us that the diamond is the hardest substance known. Their mistake. Landladies know of a compound beside which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips of gas-burners; and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain until one's fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it; therefore let us call it immovable. So Dulcie lit the gas. In its one-fourth-candlepower glow we will observe the room. Couch-bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair--of this much the landlady was guilty. The rest was Dulcie's. On the dresser were her treasures--a gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon. Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O'Callahan in a Roman helmet. Near it was a violent oleograph of a lemon-coloured child assaulting an inflammatory butterfly. This was Dulcie's final judgment in art; but it had never been upset. Her rest had never been disturbed by whispers of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile entomologist. Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let us discreetly face the other way and gossip. For the room, Dulcie paid two dollars per week. On week-days her breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee and cooked an egg over the gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally on veal chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a cost of twenty-five cents--and tipped the waitress ten cents. New York presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had her lunches in the department-store restaurant at a cost of sixty cents for the week; dinners were $1.05. The evening papers--show me a New Yorker going without his daily paper! --came to six cents; and two Sunday papers--one for the personal column and the other to read--were ten cents. The total amounts to $4.76. Now, one has to buy clothes, and-- I give it up. I hear of wonderful bargains in fabrics, and of miracles performed with needle and thread; but I am in doubt. I hold my pen poised in vain when I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys that belong to woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural, inactive ordinances of the equity of heaven. Twice she had been to Coney Island and had ridden the hobby-horses. 'Tis a weary thing to count your pleasures by summers instead of by hours. Piggy needs but a word. When the girls named him, an undeserving stigma was cast upon the noble family of swine. The words-of-three- letters lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography. He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat. . . He wore expensive clothes; and was a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea. He hung about the shopping districts, and prowled around in department stores with his invitations to dinner. Men who escort dogs upon the streets at the end of a string look down upon him. He is a type; I can dwell upon him no longer; my pen is not the kind intended for him; I am no carpenter. At ten minutes to seven Dulcie was ready. She looked at herself in the wrinkly mirror. The reflection was satisfactory. The dark blue dress, fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the but-slightly-soiled gloves--all representing self- denial, even of food itself--were vastly becoming. Dulcie forgot everything else for a moment except that she was beautiful, and that life was about to lift a corner of its mysterious veil for her to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her out before. Now she was going for a brief moment into the glitter and exalted show. The girls said that Piggy was a "spender." There would be a grand dinner, and music, and splendidly dressed ladies to look at, and things to eat that strangely twisted the girls' jaws when they tried to tell about them. No doubt she would be asked out again. There was a blue pongee suit in a window that she knew--by saving twenty cents a week instead of ten, in--let's see--Oh, it would run into years! But there was a second-hand store in Seventh Avenue where-- Somebody knocked at the door. Dulcie opened it. The landlady stood there with a spurious smile, sniffing for cooking by stolen gas. "A gentleman's downstairs to see you," she said. "Name is Mr. Wiggins." By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take him seriously. Dulcie turned to the dresser to get her handkerchief; and then she stopped still, and bit her underlip hard. While looking in her mirror she had seen fairyland and herself, a princess, just awakening from a long slumber. She had forgotten one that was watching her with sad, beautiful, stern eyes--the only one there was to approve or condemn what she did. Straight and slender and tall, with a look of sorrowful reproach on his handsome, melancholy face, General Kitchener fixed his wonderful eyes on her out of his gilt photograph frame on the dresser. Dulcie turned like an automatic doll to the landlady. "Tell him I can't go," she said dully. "Tell him I'm sick, or something. Tell him I'm not going out." After the door was closed and locked, Dulcie fell upon her bed, crushing her black tip, and cried for ten minutes. General Kitchener was her only friend. He was Dulcie's ideal of a gallant knight. He looked as if he might have a secret sorrow, and his wonderful moustache was a dream, and she was a little afraid of that stern yet tender look in his eyes. She used to have little fancies that he would call at the house sometime, and ask for her, with his sword clanking against his high boots. Once, when a boy was rattling a piece of chain against a lamp-post she had opened the window and looked out. But there was no use. She knew that General Kitchener was away over in Japan, leading his army against the savage Turks; and he would never step out of his gilt frame for her. Yet one look from him had vanquished Piggy that night. Yes, for that night. When her cry was over Dulcie got up and took off her best dress, and put on her old blue kimono. She wanted no dinner. She sang two verses of "Sammy." Then she became intensely interested in a little red speck on the side of her nose. And after that was attended to, she drew up a chair to the rickety table, and told her fortune with an old deck of cards. "The horrid, impudent thing!" she said aloud. "And I never gave him a word or a look to make him think it!" At nine o'clock Dulcie took a tin box of crackers and a little pot of raspberry jam out of her trunk, and had a feast. She offered General Kitchener some jam on a cracker; but he only looked at her as the sphinx would have looked at a butterfly--if there are butterflies in the desert. "Don't eat it if you don't want to," said Dulcie. "And don't put on so many airs and scold so with your eyes. I wonder if you'd he so superior and snippy if you had to live on six dollars a week." It was not a good sign for Dulcie to be rude to General Kitchener. And then she turned Benvenuto Cellini face downward with a severe gesture. But that was not inexcusable; for she had always thought he was Henry VIII, and she did not approve of him. At half-past nine Dulcie took a last look at the pictures on the dresser, turned out the light, and skipped into bed. It's an awful thing to go to bed with a good-night look at General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. This story really doesn't get anywhere at all. The rest of it comes later--sometime when Piggy asks Dulcie again to dine with him, and she is feeling lonelier than usual, and General Kitchener happens to be looking the other way; and then-- As I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of prosperous-looking angels, and a policeman took me by the wing and asked if I belonged with them. "Who are they?" I asked. "Why," said he, "they are the men who hired working-girls, and paid 'em five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch?" "Not on your immortality," said I. "I'm only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum, and murdered a blind man for his pennies." 没有完的故事 如今人们提到地狱的火焰时,我们不再唉声叹气,把灰涂在自己头上了①。因为连传教的牧师也开始告诉我们说,上帝是镭锭,或是以太,或是某种科学的化合物;因此我们这伙坏人可能遭到的最恶的报应,无非只是个化学反应。这倒是一个可喜的假设;但是正教所启示的古老而巨大的恐怖,还有一部分依然存在。 『①犹太风俗,悲切忏悔时,身穿麻衣,须发涂灰。』你能海阔天空地信口开河,而不致于遭到驳斥的只有两种话题。你可以叙说你梦见的东西;还可以谈谈从鹦哥那儿听来的话。摩非斯②和鹦哥都不够证人资格,别人听到了你的高谈阔论也不敢指摘。我不在美丽的鹦哥的絮语中寻找素材,而挑了一个毫无根据的梦象作为主题,因为鹦哥说话的范围比较狭窄;那是我深感抱歉和遗憾的。 『②摩非斯:罗马神话中的梦神,为睡神之子。』我做了一个梦,这个梦同《圣经》考证绝无关系,它只牵涉到那个历史悠久,值得敬畏,令人悲叹的末日审判问题。 加百列摊出了他的王牌;我们之中无法跟进的人只得被提去受审③。我看到一边是些穿着庄严的黑袍,反扣着硬领的职业保人④,但是他们自己的职权似乎出了一些问题,所以他们不象是保得了我们中间任何一个人的样子。 『③加百列:希伯来神话中最高级的天使之一,上帝的主要传达吏,据说末日审判时的号角将由他吹响。原文中“王牌”与“号声”相同,原意是“天堂门开,天使吹响了他的号角”。』 『④指教会的神职人员。』一个包探——也就是充当警察的天使——向我飞过来,挟了我的左臂就走。附近候审的是一群看上去境况极好的鬼灵。 “你是那一拨人里面的吗?”警察问道。 “他们是谁呀?”我反问说。 “嘿,”他说,“他们是——” 这些题外的闲话已经占去正文应有的篇幅,我暂且不谈它了。 达尔西在一家百货公司工作。她经售的可能是汉堡的花边,或是呢绒,或是汽车,或是百货公司常备的小饰物之类的商品。达尔西在她所创造的财富中,每星期只领到六块钱。其余的在上帝经管的总帐上——哦,牧师先生,你说那叫“原始能量”吗?好吧,就算“原始能量总帐”吧——记在某一个人名下的贷方,达尔西名下的借方。 达尔西进公司后的第一年,每星期只有五块钱工资。要研究她怎样靠那个数目来维持生活,倒是一件给人以启发的事。你不感兴趣吗?好吧,也许你对大一些的数目才感兴趣。六块钱是个较大的数目。我来告诉你,她怎样用六块钱来维持一星期的生活吧。 一天下午六点钟,达尔西在距离延髓八分之一英寸的地方插帽针时,对她的好友——老是侧着左身接待主顾的姑娘——萨迪说:“喂,萨迪,今晚我跟皮吉约好了去吃饭。” “真的吗!”萨迪羡慕地嚷道。“唷,你真运气。皮吉是个大阔佬;他总是带着姑娘上阔气的地方去。有一晚,他带了布兰奇上霍夫曼大饭店,那儿的音乐真棒,还可以看到许多阔佬。你准会玩得痛快的,达尔西。” 达尔西急急忙忙地赶回家去。她的眼睛闪闪发亮,她的脸颊泛出了生命的娇红——真正的生命的曙光。那天是星期五;她上星期的工资还剩下五毛钱。 街道上挤满了潮水般下班回家的人们。百老汇路的电灯光亮夺目,招致几英里、几里格①、甚至几百里格以外的飞蛾从黑暗中扑来,参加焦头烂额的锻炼。衣冠楚楚,面目模糊不清,象是海员养老院里的老水手在樱桃核上刻出来的男人们,扭过头来凝视着一意奔跑,打他们身边经过的达尔西。曼哈顿,这朵晚上开放的仙人掌花,开始舒展它那颜色死白,气味浓烈的花瓣了。 『①里格:长度名,约合三英里。』达尔西在一家卖便宜货的商店里停了一下,用她的五毛钱买了一条仿花边的纸衣领。那笔款子本来另有用途——晚饭一毛五,早饭一毛,中饭一毛。另外一毛是准备加进她那寒酸的储蓄里的;五分钱准备浪费在甘草糖上——那种糖能使你的脸颊鼓得象牙痛似的,含化的时间也象牙痛那么长。吃甘草糖是一种奢侈——几乎是狂欢——可是没有乐趣的生活又算是什么呢? 达尔西住的是一间连家具出租的房间。这种房间同包伙食的寄宿舍是有区别的。住在这种屋子里,挨饿的时候别人是不会知道的。 达尔西上楼到她的房间里去——西区一座褐石房屋的三楼后房。她点上煤气灯。科学家告诉我们,金刚石是世界上最坚硬的物质。他们错了。房东太太掌握了一种化合物,同它一比,连金刚石都软得象油灰了。她们把这种东西塞在煤气灯灯头上,任你站在椅子上挖得手指发红起泡,仍旧白搭。发针不能动它分毫,所以我们姑且管它叫做“牢不可移的”吧。 达尔西点燃了煤气灯。在那相当于四分之一支烛光的灯光下,我们来看看这个房间。 榻床,梳妆台,桌子,洗脸架,椅子——造孽的房东太太所提供的全在这儿了。其余是达尔西自己的。她的宝贝摆在梳妆台上:萨迪送给她的一个描金磁瓶,腌菜作坊送的一组日历,一本详梦的书,一些盛在玻璃碟子里的扑粉,以及一束扎着粉红色缎带的假樱桃。 那面起皱的镜子前靠着基钦纳将军、威廉•马尔登、马尔巴勒公爵夫人①和本范努托•切利尼的相片。一面墙上挂着一个戴罗马式头盔的爱尔兰人的石膏像饰板,旁边有一幅色彩强烈的石印油画,画的是一个淡黄色的孩子在捉弄一只火红色的蝴蝶。达尔西认为那是登峰造极的艺术作品;也没有人对此提出反对意见。从没有人私下议论这幅画的真赝而使她心中不安,也从没有批评家来奚落她的幼年昆虫学家。 『①基钦纳将军(1850~1916):第一次世界大战中英国的名将,曾任陆军元帅和陆军大臣。马尔巴勒公爵夫人:马尔巴勒系英国世袭公爵的称号,第一任约翰•邱吉尔(1650~1722)为第二次世界大战期间英国首相温斯顿•邱吉尔的祖先。』皮吉说好七点钟来邀她。她正在迅速地打扮准备,我们不要冒昧,且掉过脸去,随便聊聊。 达尔西这个房间的租金是每星期两块钱。平日,她早饭花一毛钱。她一面穿衣服,一面在煤气灯上煮咖啡,煎一只蛋。星期日早晨,她花上两毛五分钱在比利饭馆阔气地大吃小牛肉排和菠萝油煎饼——还给女侍者一毛钱的小帐。纽约市有这么多的诱惑,很容易使人趋于奢华。她在百货公司的餐室里包了饭;每星期中饭是六毛钱,晚饭是一块零五分。那些晚报——你说有哪个纽约人不看报纸的!——要花六分钱;两份星期日的报纸——一份是买来看招聘广告栏的,另一份是预备细读的——要一毛钱。总数是四块七毛六分。然而,你总得添置些衣服,还是——我没法算下去了。我常听说有便宜得惊人的衣料和针线做出来的奇迹;但是我始终表示怀疑。我很想在达尔西的生活里加上一些根据那神圣,自然,既无明文规定,又不生效的天理的法令而应该是属于女人的乐趣,可是我搁笔长叹,没法写了。她去过两次康奈岛,骑过轮转木马。一个人盼望乐趣要以年份而不是以钟点为期,也未免太乏味了。 形容皮吉只要一个词儿。姑娘们提到他时,高贵的猪族就蒙上了不应有的污名。在那本蓝封皮的老拼音读本中,用三个字母拼成生字的一课就是皮吉的外传。他长得肥胖,有着耗子的心灵,蝙蝠的习性和狸猫那爱戏弄捕获物的脾气①……他衣著华贵,是鉴别饥饿的专家。他只要朝一个女店员瞅上一眼,就能告诉你,她多久没有吃到比茶和棉花糖更有营养的东西了,并且误差不会超出一小时。他老是在商业区徘徊,在百货公司里打转,相机邀请女店员们下馆子。连街上牵着绳子遛狗的人都瞧不起他。他是个典型;我不能再写他了;我的笔不是为他服务的;我不是木匠。 『①“肥胖”,“耗子”,“蝙蝠”,“狸猫”(fat,rat,bat,cat)在英语中都由三个字母组成。“皮吉”(Piggy)意为“小猪”。』七点差十分的时候,达尔西准备停当了。她在那面起皱的镜子里照了一下。照出来的形象很称心。那套深蓝色的衣服非常合身,带着飘拂的黑羽毛的帽子,稍微有点脏的手套——这一切都代表苦苦地省吃俭用——都非常漂亮。 达尔西暂时忘了一切,只觉得自己是美丽的,生活就要把它神秘的帷幕揭开一角,让她欣赏它的神奇。以前从没有男人邀请她出去过。现在她居然就要投入那种绚烂夺目的高贵生活中去,在里面逗留片刻了。 姑娘们说,皮吉是舍得花钱的。一定会有一顿丰盛的大餐,音乐,还有服饰华丽的女人可以看,有姑娘们讲得下巴都要掉下来的好东西可以吃。无疑的,她下次还会被邀请出去。 在她所熟悉的一个橱窗里,有一件蓝色的柞蚕丝绸衣服——如果每星期的储蓄从一毛钱增加到两毛,在——让我们算算看——喔,得积上好几年呢!但是七马路有一家旧货商店,那儿——有人敲门。达尔西把门打开。房东太太站在那儿,脸上堆着假笑,嗅嗅有没有偷用煤气烧食物的气味。 “楼下有一位先生要见你,”她说,“姓威金斯。” 对于那些把皮吉当作一回事的倒霉女人,皮吉总是用那个姓出面。 达尔西转向梳妆台去拿手帕;她突然停住了,使劲咬着下唇。先前她照镜子的时候,只看到仙境里的自己,仿佛刚从大梦中醒过来的公主。她忘了有一个人带着忧郁、美妙而严肃的眼神在瞅她——只有这个人关心她的行为,或是赞成,或是反对。他的身材颀长笔挺,他那英俊而忧郁的脸上带着伤心和谴责的神情,那是基钦纳将军从梳妆台上的描金镜框里用他奇妙的眼睛在瞪着她。 达尔西象一个自动玩偶似地转过身来向着房东太太。 “对他说我不能去了。”她呆呆地说。“对他说我病了,或者随便找些理由。对他说我不出去了。” 等房门关上锁好之后,达尔西扑在床上,压坏了黑帽饰,哭了十分钟。基钦纳将军是她唯一的朋友。他是达尔西理想中的英武的男子汉。他好象怀有隐痛,他的胡髭美妙得难以形容,他眼睛里那严肃而温存的神色使她有些畏惧。她私下里常常幻想,但愿有一天他佩着碰在长靴上铿锵作响的宝剑,专诚降临这所房屋来看她。有一次,一个小孩用一段铁链把灯柱擦得嘎嘎发响,她竟然打开窗子,伸出头去看看。可是大失所望。据她所知,基钦纳将军远在日本①,正率领大军同野蛮的土耳其人作战;他绝不会为了她从那描金镜框里踱出来的。可是那天晚上,基钦纳的一瞥却把皮吉打垮了。是的,至少在那一晚是这样的。 『①基钦纳于一九一○年前后去澳大利亚及新西兰视察,先此,曾前往日本游历。』达尔西哭过之后站起来,把身上那套外出时穿的衣服脱掉,换上蓝色的旧睡袍。她不想吃饭了。她唱了两节《萨美》歌曲。接着,她对鼻子旁边的一个小粉刺产生了强烈的兴趣。那桩事做完后,她把椅子拖到那张站不稳的桌子边,用一副旧纸牌替自己算命。 “可恶无礼的家伙!”她脱口说道。“我的谈吐和举止有哪些使他起意的地方!” 九点钟,达尔西从箱子里取出一盒饼干和一小罐木莓果酱,大吃了一顿。她敬了基钦纳将军一块涂好果酱的饼干;但是基钦纳却象斯芬克斯①望蝴蝶飞舞似地望着她——如果沙漠里也有蝴蝶的话。 『①斯芬克斯:希腊的斯芬克斯是女首狮身展翅的石像;在埃及的是男首狮身无翼的石像,在大金字塔附近。』“你不爱吃就别吃好啦。”达尔西说。“何必这样神气活现地瞪着眼责备我。如果你每星期也靠六块钱来维持生活,我倒想知道,你是不是仍旧这样优越,这样神气。” 达尔西对基钦纳将军不敬并不是个好现象。接着,她用严厉的姿态把本范努托•切利尼的脸翻了过去。那倒不是不可原谅的;因为她总把他当作亨利八世②,对他很不满意。 『②亨利八世(1491~1547):英国国王,他曾多次离婚,并处决过第二个妻子。』九点半钟,达尔西对梳妆台上的相片看了最后一眼,便熄了灯,跳上床去。临睡前还向基钦纳将军、威廉•马尔登、马尔巴勒公爵夫人和本范努托•切利尼行了一个晚安注目礼,真是不痛快的事情。 到这里为止,这个故事并不说明问题。其余的情节是后来发生的——有一次,皮吉再请达尔西一起下馆子,她比平时更感到寂寞,而基钦纳将军的眼光碰巧又望着别处;于是——我在前面说过,我梦见自己站在一群境况很好的鬼灵旁边,一个警察挟着我的胳臂,问我是不是同那群人一起的。 “他们是谁呀?”我问。 “唷,”他说,“他们是那种雇用女工,每星期给她们五、六块钱维持生活的老板。你是那群人里面的吗?” “对天起誓,我绝对不是。”我说。“我的罪孽没有那么重,我只不过放火烧了一所孤儿院,为了少许钱财谋害了一个瞎子的性命。” The Unknown Quantity The poet Longfellow - or was it Confucius, the inventor of wisdom? - remarked: "Life is real, life is earnest; And things are not what they seem." As mathematics are - or is: thanks, old subscriber! - the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column of the great goddess Two-and-Two-Makes-Four. Figures - unassailable sums in addition - shall be set over against whatever oposing element there may be. A mathematician, after scanning the above two lines of poetry, would say: "Ahem! young gentlemen, if we assume that X plus - that is, that life is real - then things (all of which life includes) are real. Anything that is real is what it seems. Then if we consider the proposition that 'things are not what they seem,' why -" But this is heresy, and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra; we would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, seductive, pursued, satisfying, mysterious X. Not long before the beginning of this century, Septimus Kinsolving, an old New Yorker, invented an idea. He originated the discovery that bread is made from flour and not from wheat futures. Perceiving that the flour crop was short, and that the Stock Exchange was having no perceptible effect on the growing wheat, Mr. Kinsolving cornered the flour market. The result was that when you or my landlady (before the war she never had to turn her hand to anything; Southerners accomodated) bought a five-cent load of bread you laid down an additional two cents, which went to Mr. Kinsolving as a testimonial to his perspicacity. A second result was that Mr. Kinsolving quit the game with $2,000,000 prof - er - rake-off. Mr. Kinsolving's son Dan was at college when the mathematical experiment in breadstuffs was made. Dan came home during vacation, and found the old gentleman in a red dressing-gown reading "Little Dorrit" on the porch of his estimable red brick mansion in Washington Square. He had retired from business with enough extra two-cent pieces from bread buyers to reach, if laid side by side, fifteen times around the earth and lap as far as the public debt of Paraguay. Dan shook hands with his father, and hurried over to Greenwich Village to see his old high-school friend, Kenwitz. Dan had always admired Kenwitz. Kenwitz was pale, curly-haired, intense, serious, mathematical, studious, altruistic, socialistic, and the natural foe of oligarchies. Kenwitz had foregone college, and was learning watch-making in his father's jewelry store. Dan was smiling, jovial, easy-tempered and tolerant alike of kings and ragpickers. The two foregathered joyously, being opposites. And then Dan went back to college, and Kenwitz to his mainsprings - and to his private library in the rear of the jewelry shop. Four years later Dan came back to Washington Square with the accumulations of B. A. and two years of Europe thick upon him. He took a filial look at Septimus Kinsolving's elaborate tombstone in Greenwood and a tedious excursion through typewritten documents with the family lawyer; and then, feeling himself a lonely and hopeless millionaire, hurried down to the old jewelry store across Sixth Avenue. Kenwitz unscrewed a magnifying glass from his eye, routed out his parent from a dingy rear room, and abandoned the interior of watches for outdoors. He went with Dan, and they sat on a bench in Washington Square. Dan had not changed much; he was stalwart, and had a dignity that was inclined to relax into a grin. Kenwitz was more serious, more intense, more learned, philosophical and socialistic. "I know about it now," said Dan, finally. "I pumped it out of the eminent legal lights that turned over to me poor old dad's collections of bonds and boodle. It amounts to $2,000,000, Ken. And I am told that he squeezed it out of the chaps that pay their pennies for loaves of bread at little bakeries around the corner. You've studied economics, Dan, and you know all about monopolies, and the masses, and octopuses, and the rights of laboring people. I never thought about those things before. Football and trying to be white to my fellowman were about the extent of my college curriculum. "But since I came back and found out how dad made his money I've been thinking. I'd like awfully well to pay back those chaps who had to give up too much money for bread. I know it would buck the line of my income for a good many yards; but I'd like to make it square with 'em. Is there any way it can be done, old Ways and Means?" Kenwitz's big black eyes glowed fierily. His thin, intellectual face took on almost a sardonic cast. He caught Dan's arm with the grip of a friend and a judge. "You can't do it!" he said, emphatically. "One of the chief punishments of you men of ill-gotten wealth is that when you do repent you find that you have lost the power to make reparation or restitution. I admire your good intentions, Dan, but you can't do anything. Those people were robbed of their precious pennies. It's too late to remedy the evil. You can't pay them back" "Of course," said Dan, lighting his pipe, "we couldn't hunt up every one of the duffers and hand 'em back the right change. There's an awful lot of 'em buying bread all the time. Funny taste they have - I never cared for bread especially, except for a toasted cracker with the Roquefort. But we might find a few of 'em and chuck some of dad's cash back where it came from I'd feel better if I could. It seems tough for people to be held up for a soggy thing like bread. One wouldn't mind standing a rise in broiled lobsters or deviled crabs. Get to work and think, Ken. I want to pay back all that money I can." "There are plenty of charities," said Kenwitz, mechanically. "Easy enough," said Dan, in a cloud of smoke. "I suppose I could give the city a park, or endow an asparagus bed in a hospital. But I don't want Paul to get away with the proceeds of the gold brick we sold Peter. It's the bread shorts I want to cover, Ken." The thin fingers of Kenwitz moved rapidly. "Do you know how much money it would take to pay back the losses of consumers during that corner in flour?" he asked. "I do not." said Dan, stoutly. "My lawyer tells me that I have two millions." "If you had a hundred millions," said Kenwitz, vehemently, "you couldn't repair a thousandth part of the damage that has been done. You cannot conceive of the accumulated evils produced by misapplied wealth. Each penny that was wrung from the lean purses of the poor reacted a thousandfold to their harm. You do not understand. You do not see how hopeless is your desire to make restitution. Not in a single instance can it be done." "Back up, philosopher!" said Dan. "The penny has no sorrow that the dollar cannot heal." "Not in one instance," repeated Kenwitz. "I will give you one, and let us see. Thomas Boyne had a little bakery over there in Varick Street. He sold bread to the poorest people. When the price of flour went up he had to raise the price of bread. His customers were too poor to pay it, Boyne's business failed and he lost his $1,000 capital - all he had in the world." Dan Kinsolving struck the park bench a mighty blow with his fist. "I accept the instance," he cried. "Take me to Boyne. I will repay his thousand dollars and buy him a new bakery." "Write your check," said Kenwitz, without moving, "and then begin to write checks in payment of the train of consequences. Draw the next one for $50,000. Boyne went insane after his failure and set fire to the building from which he was about to be evicted. The loss amounted to that much. Boyne died in an asylum." "Stick to the instance," said Dan. "I haven't noticed any insurance companies on my charity list." "Draw your next check for $100,000," went on Kenwitz. "Boyne's son fell into bad way after the bakery closed, and was accused of murder. he was acquitted last week after a three years' legal battle, and the state draws upon taxpayers for that much expense." "Back to the bakery!" exclaimed Dan, impatiently. "The Government doesn't need to stand in the bread line." "The last item of the instance is - come and I will show you," said Kenwitz, rising. The Socialistic watchmaker was happy. He was a millionaire-baiter by nature and a pessimist by trade. Kenwitz would assure you in one breath that money was but evil and corruption, and that your brand-new watch needed cleaning and a new ratchet-wheel. He conducted Kinsolving southward out of the square and into ragged, poverty-haunted Varick Street. Up the narrow stairway of a squalid brick tenement he led the penitent offspring of the Octupus. He knocked on a door, and a clear voice called to them to enter. In that almost bare room a young woman sat sewing at a machine. She nodded to Kenwitz as to a familiar acquaintance. One little stream of sunlight through the dingy window burnished her heavy hair to the color of an ancient Tuscan's shield. She flashed a rippling smile at Kenwitz and a look of somewhat flustered inquiry. Kinsolving stood regarding her clear and pathetic beauty in heart-throbbing silence. Thus they came into the presence of the last item of the Instance. "How many this week, Miss Mary?" asked the watchmaker. A mountain of coarse gray shirts lay upon the floor. "Nearly thirty dozen," said the young woman cheerfully. "I've made almost $4. I'm improving, Mr. Kenwitz. I hardly know what to do with so much money." Her eyes turned, brightly soft, in the direction of Dan. A little pink spot came out on her round, pale cheek. Kenwitz chuckled like a diabolic raven. "Miss Boyne," he said, "let me present Mr. Kinsolving, the son of the man who put bread up five years ago. He thinks he would like to do something to aid those who where inconvenienced by that act." The smile left the young woman's face. She rose and pointed her forefinger toward the door. This time she looked Kinsolving straight in the eye, but it was not a look that gave delight. The two men went down Varick Street. Kenwitz, letting all his pessimism and rancor and hatred of the Octopus come to the surface, gibed at the moneyed side of his friend in an acrid torrent of words. Dan appeared to be listening, and then turned to Kenwitz and shook hands with him warmly. "I'm obliged to you, Ken, old man," he said, vaguely -"a thousand times obliged." "Mein Gott! you are crazy!" cried the watchmaker, dropping his spectacles for the first time in years. Two months afterward Kenwitz went into a large bakery on lower Broadway with a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses that he had mended for the proprietor. A lady was giving an order to a clerk as Kenwitz passed her. "These loaves are ten cents," said the clerk. "I always get them at eight cents uptown," said the lady. "You need not fill the order. I will drive by there on my way home." The voice was familiar. The watchmaker paused. "Mr. Kenwitz!" cried the lady, heartily. "How do you do?" Kenwitz was trying to train his socialistic and economic comprehension on her wonderful fur boa and the carriage waiting outside. "Why, Miss Boyne!" he began. "Mrs. Kinsolving," she corrected. "Dan and I were married a month ago." The Venturers Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the Non Sequitur. Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation car "Raison d'etre" for one moment. It is for no longer than to consider a brief essay on the subject - let us call it: "What's Around the Corner." Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est - men who wear rubbers and pay poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents. There are no more continents to discover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be paralleling the canals of Mars with radium railways. Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synonymous in the dictionaries. To the knowing each has a different meaning. Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside. The face of Fortune is radiant and alluring; that of Adventure is flushed and heroic. The face of Chance is the beautiful countenance - perfect because vague and dream-born - that we see in our tea-cups at breakfast while we growl over our chops and toast. The VENTURER is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune. That is the difference between him and the Adventurer. Eating the forbidden fruit was the best record ever made by a Venturer. Trying to prove that it happened is the highest work of the Adventuresome. To be either is disturbing to the cosmogony of creation. So, as bracket-sawed and city-directoried citizens, let us light our pipes, chide the children and the cat, arrange ourselves in the willow rocker under the flickering gas jet at the coolest window and scan this little tale of two modern followers of Chance. "Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West?" asked Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate the interior of the Powhatan Club. "Doubtless," said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the room. Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again long before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked out of the air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, must have his opinions corroborated and his moods matched by some one else. (I had written that "somebody"; but an A. D. T. boy who once took a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word. This is a vice versa case). Forster's favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower of Chance. He was a Venturer by nature, but convention, birth, tradition and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan had denied him full privilege. He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve the tedium of life. But none had sufficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found at the end of every street. He knew from experience and logic almost precisely to what end each digression from routine must lead. He found a depressing monotony in all the variations that the music of his sphere had grafted upon the tune of life. He had not learned that, although the world was made round, the circle has been squared, and that it's true interest is to be in "What's Around the Corner." Forster walked abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown, uptown, and downtown you may move without seeing her. At the end of an hour's stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad, smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old hotel softly but brilliantly lit. Disconsolately, because he knew that he must dine; and dining in that hotel was no venture. It was one of his favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be the service and so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the hunger that must be appeased by the "dead perfection" of the place's cuisine. Even the music there seemed to be always playing da capo. Fancy came to him that he would dine at some cheap, even dubious, restaurant lower down in the city, where the erratic chefs from all countries of the world spread their national cookery for the omnivorous American. Something might happen there out of the routine - he might come upon a subject without a predicate, a road without an end, a question without an answer, a cause without an effect, a gulf stream in life's salt ocean. He had not dressed for evening; he wore a dark business suit that would not be questioned even where the waiters served the spaghetti in their shirt sleeves. So John Reginald Forster began to search his clothes for money; because the more cheaply you dine, the more surely must you pay. All of the thirteen pockets, large and small, of his business suit he explored carefully and found not a penny. His bank book showed a balance of five figures to his credit in the Old Ironsides Trust Company, but - Forster became aware of a man nearby at his left hand who was really regarding him with some amusement. he looked like any business man of thirty or so, neatly dressed and standing in the attitude of one waiting for a street car. But there was no car line on that avenue. So his proximity and unconcealed curiosity seemed to Forster to partake of the nature of a personal intrusion. But, as he was a consistent seeker after "What's Around the Corner," instead of manifesting resentment he only turned a half-embarrassed smile upon the other's grin of amusement. "All in?" asked the intruder, drawing nearer. "Seems so," said Forster. "Now, I thought there was a dollar in -" "Oh, I know," said the other man, with a laugh. "But there wasn't. I've just been through the same process myself, as I was coming around the corner. I found in an upper vest pocket - I don't know how they got there - exactly two pennies. You know what kind of a dinner exactly two pennies will buy!" "You haven't dined, then?" asked Forster. "I have not. But I would like to. Now, I'll make you a proposition. You look like a man who would take up one. Your clothes look neat and respectable. Excuse personalities. I think mine will pass the scrutiny of a head waiter, also. Suppose we go over to that hotel and dine together. We will choose from the menu like millionaires - or, if you prefer, like gentlemen in moderate circumstances dining extravagantly for once. When we have finished we will match with my two pennies to see which of us will stand the brunt of the house's displeasure and vengeance. My name is Ives. I think we have lived in the same station of life - before our money took wings." "You're on," said Forster, joyfully. Here was a venture at least within the borders of the mysterious country of Change - anyhow, it promised something better than the stale infestivity of a table d'hote. The two were soon seated at a corner table in the hotel dining room. Ives chucked one of his pennies across the table to Forster. "Match for which of us gives the order," he said. Forster lost. Ives laughed and began to name liquids and viands to the waiter with the absorbed but calm deliberation of one who was to the menu born. Forster, listening, gave his admiring approval of the order. "I am a man," said Ives, during the oysters, "Who has made a lifetime search after the to-be-continued-in-our-next. I am not like the ordinary adventurer who strikes for a coveted prize. Nor yet am I like a gambler who knows he is either to win or lose a certain set stake. What I want is to encounter an adventure to which I can predict no conclusion. It is the breath of existence to me to dare Fate in its blindest manifestations. The world has come to run so much by rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any footpath of chance in which you do not find signboards informing you of what you may expect at its end. I am like the clerk in the Circumlocution Office who always complained bitterly when any one came in to ask information. 'He wanted to know, you know!' was the kick he made to his fellow-clerks. Well, I don't want to know, I don't want to reason, I don't want to guess - I want to bet my hand without seeing it." "I understand," said Forster delightedly. "I've often wanted the way I feel put into words. You've done it. I want to take chances on what's coming. Suppose we have a bottle of Moselle with the next course." "Agreed," said Ives. "I'm glad you catch my idea. It will increase the animosity of the house toward the loser. If it does not weary you, we will pursue the theme. Only a few times have I met a true venturer - one who does not ask a schedule and map from Fate when he begins a journey. But, as the world becomes more civilized and wiser, the more difficult it is to come upon an adventure the end of which you cannot foresee. In the Elizabethan days you could assault the watch, wring knockers from doors and have a jolly set-to with the blades in any convenient angle of a wall and 'get away with it.' Nowadays, if you speak disrespectfully to a policeman, all that is left to the most romantic fancy is to conjecture in what particular police station he will land you." "I know - I know," said Forster, nodding approval. "I returned to New York to-day," continued Ives, "from a three years' ramble around the globe. Things are not much better abroad than they are at home. The whole world seems to be overrun by conclusions. The only thing that interests me greatly is a premise. I've tried shooting big game in Africa. I know what an express rifle will do at so many yards; and when an elephant or a rhinoceros falls to the bullet, I enjoy it about as much as I did when I was kept in after school to do a sum in long division on the blackboard." "I know - I know," said Forster. "There might be something in aeroplanes," went on Ives, reflectively. "I've tried ballooning; but it seems to be merely a cut-and-dried affair of wind and ballast." "Women," suggested Forster, with a smile. "Three months ago," said Ives. "I was pottering around in one of the bazaars in Constantinople. I noticed a lady, veiled, of course, but with a pair of especially fine eyes visible, who was examining some amber and pearl ornaments at one of the booths. With her was an attendant - a big Nubian, as black as coal. After a while the attendant drew nearer to me by degrees and slipped a scrap of paper into my hand. I looked at it when I got a chance. On it was scrawled hastily in pencil: 'The arched gate of the Nghtingale Garden at nine to-night.' Does that appear to you to be an interesting premise, Mr. Forster?" "I made inquiries and learned that the Nightingale Garden was the property of an old Turk - a grand vizier, or something of the sort. Of course I prospected for the arched gate and was there at nine. The same Nubian attendant opened the gate promptly on time, and I went inside and sat on a bench by a perfumed fountain with the veiled lady. We had quite an extended chat. She was Myrtle Thompson, a lady journalist, who was writing up the Turkish harems for a Chicago newspaper. She said she noticed the New York cut of my clothes in the bazaar and wondered if I couldn't work something into the metropolitan papers about it." "I see," said Forster. "I see." "I've canoed through Canada," said Ives, "down many rapids and over many falls. But I didn't seem to get what I wanted out of it because I knew there were only two possible outcomes - I would either go to the bottom or arrive at the sea level. I've played all games at cards; but the mathematicians have spoiled that sport by computing the percentages. I've made acquaintances on trains, I've answered advertisements, I've rung strange door-bells, I've taken every chance that presented itself; but there has always been the conventional ending - the logical conclusion to the premise." "I know," repeated Forster. "I've felt it all. But I've had few chances to take my chance at chances. Is there any life so devoid of impossibilities as life in this city? There seems to be a myriad of opportunities for testing the undeterminable; but not one in a thousand fails to land you where you expected it to stop. I wish the subways and street cars disappointed one as seldom." "The sun has risen," said Ives, "on the Arabian nights. There are no more caliphs. The fisherman's vase is turned to a vacuum bottle, warranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen for forty-eight hours. Life moves by rote. Science has killed adventure. There are no more opportunities such as Columbus and the man who ate the first oyster had. The only certain thing is that there is nothing uncertain." "Well," said Forster, "my experience has been the limited one of a city man. I haven't seen the world as you have; but it seems that we view it with the same opinion. But, I tell you I am grateful for even this little venture of ours into the borders of the haphazard. There may be at least one breathless moment when the bill for the dinner is presented. Perhaps, after all, the pilgrims who traveled without scrip or purse found a keener taste to life than did the knights of the Round Table who rode abroad with a retinue and King Arthur's certified checks in the lining of their helmets. And now, if you've finished your coffee, suppose we match one of your insufficient coins for the impending blow of Fate. What have I up?" "Heads," called Ives. "Heads it is," said Forster, lifting his hand. "I lose. We forgot to agree upon a plan for the winner to escape. I suggest that when the waiter comes you make a remark about telephoning to a friend. I will hold the fort and the dinner check long enough for you to get your hat and be off. I thank you for an evening out of the ordinary, Mr. Ives, and wish we might have others." "If my memory is not at fault," said Ives, laughing, "the nearest police station is in MacDougal Street. I have enjoyed the dinner, too, let me assure you." Forster crooked his finger for the waiter. Victor, with a locomotive effort that seemed to owe more to pneumatics than to pedestrianism, glided to the table and laid the card, face downward, by the loser's cup. Forster took it up and added the figures with deliberate care. Ives leaned back comfortably in his chair. "Escuse me," said Forster; "but I though you were going to ring Grimes about that theatre party for Thursday night. Had you forgotten about it?" "Oh," said Ives, settling himself more comfortably, "I can do that later on. Get me a glass of water, waiter." "Want to be in at the death, do you?" asked Forster. "I hope you don't object," said Ives, pleadingly. "Never in my life have I seen a gentleman arrested in a public restaurant for swindling it out of a dinner." "All right," said Forster, calmly. "You are entitled to see a Christian die in the arena as your pousse-cafe." Victor came with the glass of water and remained, with the disengaged air of an inexorable collector. Forster hesitated for fifteen seconds, and then took a pencil from his pocket and scribbled his name on the dinner check. The waiter bowed and took it away. "The fact is," said Forster, with a little embarrassed laugh, "I doubt whether I'm what they call a 'game sport,' which means the same as a 'soldier of Fortune.' I'll have to make a confession. I've been dining at this hotel two or three times a week for more than a year. I always sign my checks." And then, with a note of appreciation in his voice: "It was first-rate of you to stay to see me through with it when you knew I had no money, and that you might be scooped in, too." "I guess I'll confess, too," said Ives, with a grin. "I own the hotel. I don't run it, of course, but I always keep a suite on the third floor for my use when I happen to stray into town." He called a waiter and said: "Is Mr. Gilmore still behind the desk? All right. Tell him that Mr. Ives is here, and ask him to have my rooms made ready and aired." "Another venture cut short by the inevitable," said Forster. "Is there a conundrum without an answer in the next number? But let's hold to our subject just for a minute or two, if you will. It isn't often that I meet a man who understands the flaws I pick in existence. I am engaged to be married a month from to-day." "I reserve comment," said Ives. "Right; I am going to add to the assertion. I am devotedly fond of the lady; but I can't decide whether to show up at the church or make a sneak for Alaska. It's the same idea, you know, that we were discussing - it does for a fellow as far as possibilities are concerned. Everybody knows the routine - you get a kiss flavored with Ceylon tea after breakfast; you go to the office; you come back home and dress for dinner - theatre twice a week - bills - moping around most evenings trying to make conversation - a little quarrel occasionally - maybe sometimes a big one, and a separation - or else a settling down into a middle-aged contentment, which is worst of all." "I know," said Ives, nodding wisely. "It's the dead certainty of the thing," went on Forster, "that keeps me in doubt. There'll nevermore be anything around the corner." "Nothing after the 'Little Church,'" said Ives. "I know." "Understand," said Forster, "that I am in no doubt as to my feelings toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out against any form of the calculable. I do not know what I want; but I know that I want it. I'm talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I'm sure of what I mean." "I understand you," said Ives, with a slow smile. "Well, I think I will be going up to my rooms now. If you would dine with me here one evening soon, Mr. Forster, I'd be glad." "Thursday?" suggested Forster. "At seven, if it's convenient," answered Ives. "Seven goes," assented Forster. At halft-past eight Ives got into a cab and was driven to a number in one of the correct West Seventies. His card admitted him to the reception room of an old-fashioned house into which the spirits of Fortune, Chance and Adventure had never dared to enter. On the walls were the Whistler etchings, the steel engravings by Oh-what's-his-name?, the still-life paintings of the grapes and garden truck with the watermelon seeds spilled on the table as natural as life, and the Greuze head. It was a household. There was even brass andirons. On a table was an album, half-morocco, with oxidized-silver protections on the corners of the lids. A clock on the mantel ticked loudly, with a warning click at five minutes to nine. Ives looked at it curiously, remembering a time-piece in his grandmother's home that gave such a warning. And then down the stairs and into the room came Mary Marsden. She was twenty-four, and I leave her to your imagination. But I must say this much - youth and health and simplicity and courage and greenish-violet eyes are beautiful, and she had all these. She gave Ives her hand with the sweet cordiality of an old friendship. "You can't think what a pleasure it is," she said, "to have you drop in once every three years or so." For half an hour they talked. I confess that I cannot repeat the conversation. You will find it in books in the circulating library. When that part of it was over, Mary said: "And did you find what you wanted while you were abroad?" "What I wanted?" said Ives. "Yes. You know you were always queer. Even as a boy you wouldn't play marbles or baseball or any game with rules. You wanted to dive in water where you didn't know whether it was ten inches or ten feet deep. And when you grew up you were just the same. We've often talked about your peculiar ways." "I suppose I am an incorrigible," said Ives. "I am opposed to the doctrine of predestination, to the rule of three, gravitation, taxation, and everything of the kind. Life has always seemed to me something like a serial story would be if they printed above each instalment a synopsis of succeeding chapters." Mary laughed merrily. "Bob Ames told us once," she said, "of a funny thing you did. It was when you and he were on a train in the South, and you got off at a town where you hadn't intended to stop just because the brakeman hung up a sign in the end of the car with the name of the next station on it." "I remember," said Ives. "That 'next station' has been the thing I've always tried to get away from." "I know it," said Mary. "And you've been very foolish. I hope you didn't find what you wanted not to find, or get off at the station where there wasn't any, or whatever it was you expected wouldn't happen to you during the three years you've been away." "There was something I wanted before I went away," said Ives. Mary looked in his eyes clearly, with a slight, but perfectly sweet smile. "There was," she said. "You wanted me. And you could have had me, as you very well know." Without replying, Ives let his gaze wander slowly about the room. There had been no change in it since last he had been in it, three years before. He vividly recalled the thoughts that had been in his mind then. The contents of that room were as fixed in their way, as the everlasting hills. No change would ever come there except the inevitable ones wrought by time and decay. That silver-mounted album would occupy that corner of that table, those pictures would hang on the walls, those chairs be found in their same places every morn and noon and night while the household hung together. The brass andirons were monuments to order and stability. Herre and there were relics of a hundred years ago which were still living mementos and would be for many years to come. One going from and coming back to that house would never need to forecast or doubt. He would find what he left, and leave what he found. The veiled lady, Chance, would never lift her hand to the knocker on the outer door. And before him sat the lady who belonged in the room. Cool and sweet and unchangeable she was. She offered no surprises. If one should pass his life with her, though she might grow white-haired and wrinkled, he would never perceive the change. Three years he had been away from her, and she was still waiting for him as established and constant as the house itself. He was sure that she had once cared for him. It was the knowledge that she would always do so that had driven him away. Thus his thoughts ran. "I am going to be married soon," said Mary. On the next Thursday afternoon Forster came hurriedly to Ive's hotel. "Old man," said he, "we'll have to put that dinner off for a year or so; I'm going abroad. The steamer sails at four. That was a great talk we had the other night, and it decided me. I'm going to knock around the world and get rid of that incubus that has been weighing on both you and me - the terrible dread of knowing what's going to happen. I've done one thing that hurts my conscience a little; but I know it's best for both of us. I've written to the lady to whom I was engaged and explained everything - told her plainly why I was leaving - that the monotony of matrimony would never do for me. Don't you think I was right?" "It is not for me to say," answered Ives. "Go ahead and shoot elephants if you think it will bring the element of chance into your life. We've got to decide these things for ourselves. But I tell you one thing, Forster, I've found the way. I've found out the biggest hazard in the world - a game of chance that never is concluded, a venture that may end in the highest heaven or the blackest pit. It will keep a man on edge until the clods fall on his coffin, because he will never know - not until his last day, and not then will he know. It is a voayge without a rudder or compass, and you must be captain and crew and keep watch, every day and night, yourself, with no one to relieve you. I have found the VENTURE. Don't bother yourself about leaving Mary Marsden, Forster. I married her yesterday at noon." The Whirligig of Life JUSTICE-OF-THE-PEACE Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Halfway to the zenith the Cumberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the "settlement," cackling foolishly. Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The cart stopped at the Justice's door, and the two climbed down. Ransie was a narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armour. The woman was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown desires. Through it all gleamed a faint protest of cheated youth unconscious of its loss. The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake of dignity, and moved to let them enter. "We-all," said the woman, in a voice like the wind blowing through pine boughs, "wants a divo'ce." She looked at Ransie to see if he noted any flaw or ambiguity or evasion or partiality or self-partisanship in her statement of their business. "A divo'ce," repeated Ransie, with a solemn Dod. "We-all can't git along together nohow. It's lonesome enough fur to live in the mount'ins when a man and a woman keers fur one another. But when she's a-spittin' like a wildcat or a-sullenin' like a hoot-owl in the cabin, a man ain't got no call to live with her." "When he's a no-'count varmint," said the woman, "without any especial warmth, a-traipsin' along of scalawags and moonshiners and a-layin' on his back pizen 'ith co'n whiskey, and a-pesterin' folks with a pack o' hungry, triflin' houn's to feed!" "When she keeps a-throwin' skillet lids," came Ransie's antiphony, "and slings b'ilin' water on the best coon-dog in the Cumberlands, and sets herself agin' cookin' a man's victuals, and keeps him awake o' nights accusin' him of a sight of doin's!" "When he's al'ays a-fightin' the revenues, and gits a hard name in the mount'ins fur a mean man, who's gwine to be able fur to sleep o' nights?" The Justice of the Peace stirred deliberately to his duties. He placed his one chair and a wooden stool for his petitioners. He opened his book of statutes on the table and scanned the index. Presently he wiped his spectacles and shifted his inkstand. "The law and the statutes," said he, "air silent on the subjeck of divo'ce as fur as the jurisdiction of this co't air concerned. But, accordin' to equity and the Constitution and the golden rule, it's a bad barg'in that can't run both ways. If a justice of the peace can marry a couple, it's plain that he is bound to be able to divo'ce 'em. This here office will issue a decree of divo'ce and abide by the decision of the Supreme Co't to hold it good." Ransie Bilbro drew a small tobacco-bag from his trousers pocket. Out of this he shook upon the table a five-dollar note. "Sold a b'arskin and two foxes fur that," he remarked. "It's all the money we got." "The regular price of a divo'ce in this co't," said the Justice, "air five dollars." He stuffed the bill into the pocket of his homespun vest with a deceptive air of indifference. With much bodily toil and mental travail he wrote the decree upon half a sheet of foolscap, and then copied it upon the other. Ransie Bilbro and his wife listened to his reading of the document that was to give them freedom: "Know all men by these presents that Ransie Bilbro and his wife, Ariela Bilbro, this day personally appeared before me and promises that hereinafter they will neither love, honour, nor obey each other, neither for better nor worse, being of sound mind and body, and accept summons for divorce according to the peace and dignity of the State. Herein fail not, so help you God. Benaja Widdup, justice of the peace in and for the county of Piedmont, State of Tennessee." The Justice was about to hand one of the documents to Ransie. The voice of Ariela delayed the transfer. Both men looked at her. Their dull masculinity was confronted by something sudden and unexpected in the woman. "Judge, don't you give him that air paper yit. 'Tain't all settled, nohow. I got to have my rights first. I got to have my ali-money. 'Tain't no kind of a way to do fur a man to divo'ce his wife 'thout her havin' a cent fur to do with. I'm a-layin' off to be a-goin' up to brother Ed's up on Hogback Mount'in. I'm bound fur to hev a pa'r of shoes and some snuff and things besides. Ef Rance kin affo'd a divo'ce, let him pay me ali-money." Ransie Bilbro was stricken to dumb perplexity. There had been no previous hint of alimony. Women were always bringing up startling and unlooked-for issues. Justice Benaja Widdup felt that the point demanded judicial decision. The authorities were also silent on the subject of alimony. But the woman's feet were bare. The trail to Hogback Mountain was steep and flinty. "Ariela Bilbro," he asked, in official tones, "how much did you 'low would be good and sufficient ali-money in the case befo' the co't." "I 'lowed," she answered, "fur the shoes and all, to say five dollars. That ain't much fur ali-money, but I reckon that'll git me to up brother Ed's." "The amount," said the Justice, "air not onreasonable. Ransie Bilbro, you air ordered by the co't to pay the plaintiff the sum of five dollars befo' the decree of divo'ce air issued." "I hain't no mo' money," breathed Ransie, heavily. "I done paid you all I had." "Otherwise," said the Justice, looking severely over his spectacles, "you air in contempt of co't." "I reckon if you gimme till to-morrow," pleaded the husband, "I mout be able to rake or scrape it up somewhars. I never looked for to be a-payin' no alimoney." "The case air adjourned," said Benaja Widdup, "till to-morrow, when you-all will present yo'selves and obey the order of the co't. Followin' of which the decrees of divo'ce will be delivered." He sat down in the door and began to loosen a shoestring. "We mout as well go down to Uncle Ziah's," decided Ransie, "and spend the night." He climbed into the cart on one side, and Ariela climbed in on the other. Obeying the flap of his rope, the little red bull slowly came around on a tack, and the cart crawled away in the nimbus arising from its wheels. Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup smoked his elderstem pipe. Late in the afternoon he got his weekly paper, and read it until the twilight dimmed its lines. Then he lit the tallow candle on his table, and read until the moon rose, marking the time for supper. He lived in the double log cabin on the slope near the girdled poplar. Going home to supper he crossed a little branch darkened by a laurel thicket. The dark figure of a man stepped from the laurels and pointed a rifle at his breast. His hat was pulled down low, and something covered most of his face. "I want yo' money," said the figure, "'thout any talk. I'm gettin' nervous, and my finger's a-wabblin' on this here trigger." "I've only got f-f-five dollars," said the Justice, producing it from his vest pocket. "Roll it up," came the order, "and stick it in the end of this here gun-bar'l." The bill was crisp and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trembling found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle. "Now I reckon you kin be goin' along," said the robber. The Justice lingered not on his way. The next day came the little red bull, drawing the cart to the office door. Justice Benaja Widdup had his shoes on, for he was expecting the visit. In his presence Ransie Bilbro handed to his wife a five-dollar bill. The official's eye sharply viewed it. It seemed to curl up as though it had been rolled and inserted into the end of a gun-barrel. But the Justice refrained from comment. It is true that other bills might be inclined to curl. He handed each one a decree of divorce. Each stood awkwardly silent, slowly folding the guarantee of freedom. The woman cast a shy glance full of constraint at Ransie. "I reckon you'll be goin' back up to the cabin," she said, along 'ith the bull-cart. There's bread in the tin box settin' on the shelf. I put the bacon in the b'ilin'-pot to keep the hounds from gittin' it. Don't forget to wind the clock to-night." "You air a-goin' to your brother Ed's?" asked Ransie, with fine unconcern. "I was 'lowin' to get along up thar afore night. I ain't sayin' as they'll pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain't nowhar else fur to go. It's a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be goin'. I'll be a-sayin' good-bye, Ranse - that is, if you keer fur to say so." "I don't know as anybody's a hound dog," said Ransie, in a martyr's voice, "fur to not want to say good-bye -- 'less you air so anxious to git away that you don't want me to say it." Ariela was silent. She folded the five-dollar bill and her decree carefully, and placed them in the bosom of her dress. Benaja Widdup watched the money disappear with mournful eyes behind his spectacles. And then with his next words he achieved rank (as his thoughts ran) with either the great crowd of the world's sympathizers or the little crowd of its great financiers. "Be kind o' lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ranse," he said. Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the sunlight. He did not look at Ariela. "I 'low it might be lonesome," he said; "but when folks gits mad and wants a divo'ce, you can't make folks stay." "There's others wanted a divo'ce," said Ariela, speaking to the wooden stool. "Besides, nobody don't want nobody to stay." "Nobody never said they didn't." "Nobody never said they did. I reckon I better start on now to brother Ed's." "Nobody can't wind that old clock." "Want me to go back along 'ith you in the cart and wind it fur you, Ranse?" The mountaineer's countenance was proof against emotion. But he reached out a big hand and enclosed Ariela's thin brown one. Her soul peeped out once through her impassive face, hallowing it. "Them hounds shan't pester you no more," said Ransie. "I reckon I been mean and low down. You wind that clock, Ariela." "My heart hit's in that cabin, Ranse," she whispered, "along 'ith you. I ai'nt a-goin' to git mad no more. Le's be startin', Ranse, so's we kin git home by sundown." Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup interposed as they started for the door, forgetting his presence. "In the name of the State of Tennessee," he said, "I forbid you-all to be a-defyin' of its laws and statutes. This co't is mo' than willin' and full of joy to see the clouds of discord and misunderstandin' rollin' away from two lovin' hearts, but it air the duty of the co't to p'eserve the morals and integrity of the State. The co't reminds you that you air no longer man and wife, but air divo'ced by regular decree, and as such air not entitled to the benefits and 'purtenances of the mattermonal estate." Ariela caught Ransie's arm. Did those words mean that she must lose him now when they had just learned the lesson of life? "But the co't air prepared," went on the Justice, "fur to remove the disabilities set up by the decree of divo'ce. The co't air on hand to perform the solemn ceremony of marri'ge, thus fixin' things up and enablin' the parties in the case to resume the honour'ble and elevatin' state of mattermony which they desires. The fee fur performin' said ceremony will be, in this case, to wit, five dollars." Aricla caught the gleam of promise in his words. Swiftly her hand went to her bosom. Freely as an alighting dove the bill fluttered to the Justice's table. Her sallow cheek coloured as she stood hand in hand with Ransie and listened to the reuniting words. Ransie helped her into the cart, and climbed in beside her. The little red bull turned once more, and they set out, hand-clasped, for the mountains. Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup sat in his door and took off his shoes. Once again he fingered the bill tucked down in his vest pocket. Once again he smoked his elder-stem pipe. Once again the speck-led hen swaggered down the main street of the "settlement," cackling foolishly. The World and the Door A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer El Carrero swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S. vice-consul at La Paz - a person who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them. As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in punc- turing it by affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the line: "'Be it so,' said the police- man." Nothing so strange has yet cropped out in Truth. When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor and man-about-New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word of it went "down the line," bouncers took a precautionary turn at the Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables, cab drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafés, and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to his account by way of preface and introduction. As a money power a one-millionaire is of small account in a city where the man who cuts your slice of beef behind the free-lunch counter rides to work in his own automobile. But Hedges spent his money as lavishly, loudly and showily as though he were only a clerk squandering a week's wages. And, after all, the bartender takes no interest in your reserve fund. He would rather look you up on his cash register than in Bradstreet. On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges was bidding dull care begone in the com- pany of five or six good fellows -- acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake. Among them were two younger men -- Ralph Merriam, a broker, and Wade, his friend. Two deep-sea cabmen were chartered. At Columbus Circle they hove to long enough to revile the statue of the great navigator, unpatriotically rebuking him for having voyaged in search of land instead of liquids. Midnight overtook the party marooned in the rear of a cheap café far uptown. Hedges was arrogant, overriding and quarrelsome. He was burly and tough, iron-gray but vigorous, "good" for the rest of the night. There was a dispute -- about nothing that matters -- and the five-fingered words were passed -- the words that represent the glove cast into the lists. Merriam played the r?le of the verbal Hotspur. Hedges rose quickly, seized his chair, swung it once and smashed wildly dowp at Merriam's head. Merriam dodged, drew a small revolver and shot Hedges in the chest. The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in a wry heap, and lay still. Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of prompt- ness. He juggled Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small saloon betrayed its hectic hospitality. "Go in the back room of that saloon," said Wade, "and wait. I'll go find out what's doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while I am gone - no more." At ten minutes to one o'clock Wade returned. "Brace up, old chap," he said. "The ambulance got there just as I did. The doctor says he's dead. You may have one more drink. You let me run this thing for you. You've got to skip. I don't believe a chair is legally a deadly weapon. You've got to make tracks, that's all there is to it." Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another drink. "Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his hands?" he said. "I never could stand -- I never could -- " "Take one more," said Wade, "and then come on. I'll see you through." Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o'clock the next morning Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes, stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River pier. The vessel had brought the season's first cargo of limes from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was no time for anything more. From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the discursive skipper from his course. It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land -- La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud- piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain's dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained. Kalb, the vice-consul, a Gr?co-Armenian citizen of the United States, born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and edu- cated in Cincinnati ward primaries, considered all Ameri- cans his brothers and bankers. He attached himself to Merriam's elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock. There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the t,ri,qte Peruvian town. At Kalb's introductory: "Shake hands with -- ," he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men -- anything but men of living tissue. After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front galeria with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch "smoke." The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disas- trous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories. "One year more," said Bibb, "and I'll go back to God's country. Oh, I know it's pretty here, and you get dolce far niente banded to you in chunks, but this country wasn't made for a white man to live in. You've got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs. Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It's nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation." "Many like her here?" asked Merriam. "Not anywhere," said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. She's the only white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the colour of a b-flat piano key. She's been here a year. Comes from -- well, you know how a woman can talk -- ask 'em to say 'string' and they'll say 'crow's foot' or 'cat's cradle.' Some- times you'd think she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod." "Mystery?" ventured Merriam. "M -- well, she looks it; but her talk's translucent enough. But that's a woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she'd merely say: 'Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but the sand which is here.' But you won't think about that when you meet her, Merriam. You'll propose to her too." To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her. He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze turkey's wings, and mysterious, remembering eyes that - well, that looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent life suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz. all in all, charmed her. Merriam's courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although be did not know that he was courting her. He was using her as an antidote for remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit. During that time he had received no news from home. Wade did not know where he was; and he was not sure of Wade's exact address, and was afraid to write. He thought he had better let matters rest as they were for a while. One afternoon he and Mrs. Conant hired two ponies and rode out along the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke his piece -- he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied. Mrs. Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out of his intoxication and back to his senses. "I beg your pardon, Florence," he said, releasing her hand; "but I'll have to hedge on part of what I said. I can't ask you to marry me, of course. I killed a man in New York -- a man who was my friend - shot him down -- in quite a cowardly manner, I understand. Of course, the drinking didn't excuse it. Well, I couldn't resist having my say; and I'll always mean it. I'm here as a fugitive from justice, and -- I suppose that ends our acquaintance." Mrs. Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging branch of a lime tree. "I suppose so," she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; "but that depends upon you. I'll be as honest as you were. I poisoned my husband. I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So I suppose that ends our acquaintance." She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what it was all about. She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes blazing. "Don't look at me like that!" she cried, as though she were in acute pain. "Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don't look that way. Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you -- here on my arms, and on my back are scars -- and it has been more than a year -- scars that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it -- because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me. That night when the maid brought it to me I sent her downstairs on an errand. Before taking him his drink I went to my little private cabinet and poured into it more than a tea- spoonful of tincture of aconite -- enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you open your mouth?" Merriam came back to life. "Florence," he said earnestly, "I want you. I don't care what you've done. If the world -- " "Ralph," she interrupted, almost with a scream, "be my world!" Her eyes melted; she relaxed magnificentlv and swayed toward Merriam so suddenly that he had to jump to catch her. Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But it can't be helped. It's the subconscious smell of the footlights' smoke that's in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook's soul sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese. Merriam and Mrs. Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry- phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy. They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other's world. Mrs. Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes Merriam was with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. "Good night, my world," would say Mrs. Conant every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that nothing could sever. One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o'clock tea. When the steamer was near enough, wise ones pro- claimed that she was the Pajaro, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama. The Paiaro put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the pas- sengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away. When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: "Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn't expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New York -- Merriam, Mr. Quinby." Merriam gave Hedges and then Quinby an ice-cold hand. "Br-r-r-r!" said Hedges. "But you've got a frappéd flipper! Man, you're not well. You're as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a bar if there is such a thing, and let's take a prophylactic." Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del Mar. "Quinby and I" explained Hedges, puffing through the slippery sand, "are looking out along the coast for some investments. We've just come up from Concepción and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this sub- sidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around here in silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that café, Merriam? Oh, in this portable soda water pavilion?" Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam side. "Now, what does this mean?" he said, with gruff kindness. "Are you sulking about that fool row we had?" "I thought," stammered Merriam -- "I heard -- they told me you were -- that I had " "Well, you didn't, and I'm not," said Hedges. "That fool young ambulance surgeon told Wade I was a can- didate for a coffin just because I'd got tired and quit breathing. I laid up in a private hospital for a month; but here I am, kicking as hard as ever. Wade and I tried to find you, but couldn't. Now, Merriam, shake hands and forget it all. I was as much to blame as you were; and the shot really did me good -- I came out of the hospital as healthy and fit as a cab horse. Come on; that drink's waiting." "Old man," said Merriam, brokenly, "I don't know how to thank you -- I -- well, you know -- " "Oh, forget it," boomed Hedges. "Quinby'll die of thirst if we don't join him." Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the eleven-o'clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him. His eye was strangely bright. "Bibb, my boy," said he, slowly waving his hand, "do you see those mountains and that sea and sky and sun- shine? -- they're mine, Bibbsy -- all mine." "You go in," said Bibb, "and take eight grains of quinine, right away. It won't do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he's Rockefeller, or James O'Neill either. Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the Pajaro to be distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scatter news and enter- tainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains. Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver- rimmed aiteojos upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls. A barefooted muchacho dashed in, desiring the post of messenger. "Bien venido," said Tio Pancho. "This to Se?ora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel -- Dios! what a name to say! - that to Se?or Davis -- one for Don Alberto. These two for the Casa de Huespedes, Numero 6, en la calle de las Buenas Gracias. And say to them all, muchacho, that the Pajaro sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the correo." Mrs. Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o'clock. The boy was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send. She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she occupied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she and Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was content now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon of her life. They had shut out the world and closed the door. Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the hotel. She would put on a white dress and an apricot-coloured lace mantilla, and they would walk an hour under the cocoanut palms by the lagoon. She smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the roll the boy had brought. At first the words of a certain headline of a Sunday newspaper meant nothing to her; they conveyed only a visualized sense of familiarity. The largest type ran thus: "Lloyd B. Conant secures divorce." And then the subheadings: "Well-known Saint Louis paint manufac- turer wins suit, pleading one year's absence of wife." "Her mysterious disappearance recalled." "Nothing has been heard of her since." Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, Mrs. Conant's eye soon traversed the half-column of the "Recall." It ended thus: "It will be remembered that Mrs. Conant disappeared one evening in March of last year. It was freely rumoured that her marriage with Lloyd B. Conant resulted in much unhappiness. Stories were not wanting to the effect that his cruelty toward his wife had more than once taken the form of physical abuse. After her departure a full bottle of tincture of aconite, a deadly poison, was found in a small medicine cabinet in her bedroom. This might have been an indication that she meditated suicide. It is supposed abandoned such an intention if she possessed it, and left her home instead." Mrs. Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her hands tightly. "Let me think -- O God! -- let me think," she whis- pered. "I took the bottle with me . . . I threw it out of the window of the train . . . I -- . . . there was another bottle in the cabinet . . . there were two, side by side -- the aconite -- and the valerian that I took when I could not sleep . . . If they found the aconite bottle full, why -- but, he is alive, of course -- I gave him only a harmless dose of valerian . . . I am not a murderess in fact . . . Ralph, I -- 0 God, don't let this be a dream!" She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down her room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam's photograph stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a smile of exquisite tenderness, and -- dropped four tears on it. And Merriam only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes, looking into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening door. On her side of the door was the building material for a castle of Romance -- love, an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on the shore of a haven of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy ease and security -- a life of poetry and heart's ease and refuge. Romanticist, will you tell me what Mrs. Conant saw on the other side of the door? You cannot? -- that is, you will not? Very well; then listen. She saw herself go into a department store and buy five spools of silk thread and three yards of gingham to make an apron for the cook. "Shall I charge it, ma'am?" asked the clerk. As she walked out a lady whom she met greeted her cordially. "Oh, where did you get the pattern for those sleeves, dear Mrs. Conant?" she said. At the corner a policeman helped her across the street and touched his helmet. "Any callers?" she asked the maid when she reached home. "Mrs. Waldron," answered the maid, and the tqvo Misses Jenkinson." "Very well," she said. You may bring me a cup of tea, Maggie." Mrs. Conant went to the door and called Angela, the old Peruvian woman. "If Mateo is there send him to me." Mateo, a half-breed, shuffling and old but efficient, came. "Is there a steamer or a vessel of any kind leaving this coast to-night or to-morrow that I can get passage on?" she asked. Mateo considered. "At Punta Reina, thirty miles down the coast, se?ora," he answered, "there is a small steamer loading with cinchona and dyewoods. She sails for San Francisco to-morrow at sunrise. So says my brother, who arrived in his sloop to-day, passing by Punta Reina." "You must take me in that sloop to that steamer to-night. Will you do that?" "Perhaps -- " Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoul- der. Mrs. Conant took a handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him. "Get the sloop ready behind the little point of land below the town," she ordered. "Get sailors, and be ready to sail at six o'clock. In half an hour bring a cart partly filled with straw into the patio here, and take my trunk to the sloop. There is more money yet. Now, hurry." For one time Mateo walked away without shuffling his feet. "Angela," cried Mrs. Conant, almost fiercely, "come and help me pack. I am going away. Out with this trunk. My clothes first. Stir yourself. Those dark dresses first. Hurry." From the first she did not waver from her decision. Her view was clear and final. Her door had opened and let the world in. Her love for Merriam was not lessened; but it now appeared a hopeless and unrealizable thing. The visions of their future that had seemed so blissful and complete had vanished. She tried to assure herself that her renunciation was rather for his sake than for her own. Now that she was cleared of her burden -- at least, technically -- would not his own weigh too heavily upon him? If she should cling to him, would not the difference forever silently mar and corrode their happiness? Thus she reasoned; but there were a thousand little voices calling to her that she could feel rather than hear, like the hum of distant, powerful machinery -- the little voices of the world, that, when raised in unison, can send their insistent call through the thickest door. Once while packing, a brief shadow of the lotus dream came back to her. She held Merriam's picture to her heart with one hand, while she threw a pair of shoes into the trunk with her other. At six o'clock Mateo returned and reported the sloop ready. He and his brother lifted the trunk into the cart, covered it with straw and conveyed it to the point of embarkation. From there they transferred it on board in the sloop's dory. Then Mateo returned for additional orders. Mrs. Conant was ready. She had settled all business matters with Angela, and was impatiently waiting. She wore a long, loose black-silk duster that she often walked about in when the evenino's were chilly. On her head was a small round hat, and over it the apricot-coloured lace mantilla. Dusk had quickly followed the short twilight. Mateo led her by dark and grass-grown streets toward the point behind which the sloop was anchored. On turning a corner they beheld the Hotel Orilla del Mar three streets away, nebulously aglow with its array of kerosene lamps. Mrs. Conant paused, with streamin eyes. "I must, I must see him once before I go," she murmured in anguish. But even then she did not falter in her decision. Quickly she invented a plan by which she might speak to him, and yet make her departure without his knowing. She would walk past the hotel, ask some one to call him out and talk a few moments on some trivial excuse, leaving him expecting to see her at her home at seven. She unpinned her hat and gave it to Mateo. "Keep this, and wait here till I come," she ordered. Then she draped the mantilla over her head as she usually did when walking after sunset, and went straight to the Orilla del Mar. She was glad to see the bulky, white-clad figure of Tio Pancho standing alone on the gallery. "Tio Pancho," she said, with a charming smile, "may I trouble you to ask Mr. Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak with him?" Tio Pancho bowed as an elephant bows. "Buenas tardes, Se?ora Conant," he said, as a cavalier talks. And then he went on, less at his ease: "But does not the se?ora know that Se?or Merriam sailed on the Pajaro for Panama at three o'clock of this afternoon?" The Caballero's Way   The Cisco Kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages, had murdered twice as many (mostly Mexicans), and had winged a larger number whom he modestly forbore to count. Therefore a woman loved him.   The Kid was twenty-five, looked twenty; and a careful insurance company would have estimated the probable time of his demise at, say, twenty-six. His habitat was anywhere between the Frio and the Rio Grande. He killed for the love of it--because he was quick-tempered-- to avoid arrest--for his own amusement--any reason that came to his mind would suffice. He had escaped capture because he could shoot five-sixths of a second sooner than any sheriff or ranger in the service, and because he rode a speckled roan horse that knew every cow-path in the mesquite and pear thickets from San Antonio to Matamoras.   Tonia Perez, the girl who loved the Cisco Kid, was half Carmen, half Madonna, and the rest--oh, yes, a woman who is half Carmen and half Madonna can always be something more--the rest, let us say, was humming-bird. She lived in a grass-roofed jacal near a little Mexican settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. With her lived a father or grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a thousand years old, who herded a hundred goats and lived in a continuous drunken dream from drinking mescal. Back of the jacal a tremendous forest of bristling pear, twenty feet high at its worst, crowded almost to its door. It was along the bewildering maze of this spinous thicket that the speckled roan would bring the Kid to see his girl. And once, clinging like a lizard to the ridge-pole, high up under the peaked grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her Madonna face and Carmen beauty and humming-bird soul, parley with the sheriff's posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft melange of Spanish and English.   One day the adjutant-general of the State, who is, ex offico, commander of the ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain Duval of Company X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and undisturbed existence led by murderers and desperadoes in the said captain's territory.   The captain turned the colour of brick dust under his tan, and forwarded the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger Private Bill Adamson, to ranger Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a water hole on the Nueces with a squad of five men in preservation of law and order.   Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful couleur de rose through his ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked the letter in his hip pocket, and chewed off the ends of his gamboge moustache.   The next morning he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, twenty miles away.   Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a machine gun, Sandridge moved among the Jacales, patiently seeking news of the Cisco Kid.   Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of the Kid's pastimes to shoot Mexicans "to see them kick": if he demanded from them moribund Terpsichorean feats, simply that he might be entertained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain to follow should they anger him! One and all they lounged with upturned palms and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with "quien sabes" and denials of the Kid's acquaintance.   But there was a man named Fink who kept a store at the Crossing--a man of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking.   "No use to ask them Mexicans," he said to Sandridge. "They're afraid to tell. This hombre they call the Kid--Goodall is his name, ain't it?--he's been in my store once or twice. I have an idea you might run across him at--but I guess I don't keer to say, myself. I'm two seconds later in pulling a gun than I used to be, and the difference is worth thinking about. But this Kid's got a half-Mexican girl at the Crossing that he comes to see. She lives in that jacal a hundred yards down the arroyo at the edge of the pear. Maybe she--no, I don't suppose she would, but that jacal would be a good place to watch, anyway."   Sandridge rode down to the jacal of Perez. The sun was low, and the broad shade of the great pear thicket already covered the grass- thatched hut. The goats were enclosed for the night in a brush corral near by. A few kids walked the top of it, nibbling the chaparral leaves. The old Mexican lay upon a blanket on the grass, already in a stupor from his mescal, and dreaming, perhaps, of the nights when he and Pizarro touched glasses to their New World fortunes--so old his wrinkled face seemed to proclaim him to be. And in the door of the jacal stood Tonia. And Lieutenant Sandridge sat in his saddle staring at her like a gannet agape at a sailorman.   The Cisco Kid was a vain person, as all eminent and successful assassins are, and his bosom would have been ruffled had he known that at a simple exchange of glances two persons, in whose minds he had been looming large, suddenly abandoned (at least for the time) all thought of him.   Never before had Tonia seen such a man as this. He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather. He seemed to illuminate the shadow of the pear when he smiled, as though the sun were rising again. The men she had known had been small and dark. Even the Kid, in spite of his achievements, was a stripling no larger than herself, with black, straight hair and a cold, marble face that chilled the noonday.   As for Tonia, though she sends description to the poorhouse, let her make a millionaire of your fancy. Her blue-black hair, smoothly divided in the middle and bound close to her head, and her large eyes full of the Latin melancholy, gave her the Madonna touch. Her motions and air spoke of the concealed fire and the desire to charm that she had inherited from the gitanas of the Basque province. As for the humming-bird part of her, that dwelt in her heart; you could not perceive it unless her bright red skirt and dark blue blouse gave you a symbolic hint of the vagarious bird.   The newly lighted sun-god asked for a drink of water. Tonia brought it from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter. Sandridge considered it necessary to dismount so as to lessen the trouble of her ministrations.   I play no spy; nor do I assume to master the thoughts of any human heart; but I assert, by the chronicler's right, that before a quarter of an hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plaint a six-strand rawhide stake-rope, and Tonia had explained to him that were it not for her little English book that the peripatetic padre had given her and the little crippled chivo, that she fed from a bottle, she would be very, very lonely indeed.   Which leads to a suspicion that the Kid's fences needed repairing, and that the adjutant-general's sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive soil.   In his camp by the water hole Lieutenant Sandridge announced and reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco Kid to nibble the black loam of the Frio country prairies or of haling him before a judge and jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week he rode over to the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, and directed Tonia's slim, slightly lemon-tinted fingers among the intricacies of the slowly growing lariata. A six-strand plait is hard to learn and easy to teach.   The ranger knew that he might find the Kid there at any visit. He kept his armament ready, and had a frequent eye for the pear thicket at the rear of the jacal. Thus he might bring down the kite and the humming-bird with one stone.   While the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies the Cisco Kid was also attending to his professional duties. He moodily shot up a saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek, killed the town marshal (plugging him neatly in the centre of his tin badge), and then rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted by shooting an aged man carrying an old-style .38 bulldog.   On his way the Kid suddenly experienced the yearning that all men feel when wrong-doing loses its keen edge of delight. He yearned for the woman he loved to reassure him that she was his in spite of it. He wanted her to call his bloodthirstiness bravery and his cruelty devotion. He wanted Tonia to bring him water from the red jar under the brush shelter, and tell him how the chivo was thriving on the bottle.   The Kid turned the speckled roan's head up the ten-mile pear flat that stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. The roan whickered; for he had a sense of locality and direction equal to that of a belt-line street-car horse; and he knew he would soon be nibbling the rich mesquite grass at the end of a forty-foot stake-rope while Ulysses rested his head in Circe's straw-roofed hut.   More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer is the ride of one through a Texas pear flat. With dismal monotony and startling variety the uncanny and multiform shapes of the cacti lift their twisted trunks, and fat, bristly hands to encumber the way. The demon plant, appearing to live without soil or rain, seems to taunt the parched traveller with its lush grey greenness. It warps itself a thousand times about what look to be open and inviting paths, only to lure the rider into blind and impassable spine-defended "bottoms of the bag," leaving him to retreat, if he can, with the points of the compass whirling in his head.   To be lost in the pear is to die almost the death of the thief on the cross, pierced by nails and with grotesque shapes of all the fiends hovering about.   But it was not so with the Kid and his mount. Winding, twisting, circling, tracing the most fantastic and bewildering trail ever picked out, the good roan lessened the distance to the Lone Wolf Crossing with every coil and turn that he made.   While they fared the Kid sang. He knew but one tune and sang it, as he knew but one code and lived it, and but one girl and loved her. He was a single-minded man of conventional ideas. He had a voice like a coyote with bronchitis, but whenever he chose to sing his song he sang it. It was a conventional song of the camps and trail, running at its beginning as near as may be to these words:   Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl   Or I'll tell you what I'll do--   and so on. The roan was inured to it, and did not mind.   But even the poorest singer will, after a certain time, gain his own consent to refrain from contributing to the world's noises. So the Kid, by the time he was within a mile or two of Tonia's jacal, had reluctantly allowed his song to die away--not because his vocal performance had become less charming to his own ears, but because his laryngeal muscles were aweary.   As though he were in a circus ring the speckled roan wheeled and danced through the labyrinth of pear until at length his rider knew by certain landmarks that the Lone Wolf Crossing was close at hand. Then, where the pear was thinner, he caught sight of the grass roof of the jacal and the hackberry tree on the edge of the arroyo. A few yards farther the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the prickly openings. Then he dismounted, dropped the roan's reins, and proceeded on foot, stooping and silent, like an Indian. The roan, knowing his part, stood still, making no sound.   The Kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pear thicket and reconnoitred between the leaves of a clump of cactus.   Ten yards from his hiding-place, in the shade of the jacal, sat his Tonia calmly plaiting a rawhide lariat. So far she might surely escape condemnation; women have been known, from time to time, to engage in more mischievous occupations. But if all must be told, there is to be added that her head reposed against the broad and comfortable chest of a tall red-and-yellow man, and that his arm was about her, guiding her nimble fingers that required so many lessons at the intricate six- strand plait.   Sandridge glanced quickly at the dark mass of pear when he heard a slight squeaking sound that was not altogether unfamiliar. A gun- scabbard will make that sound when one grasps the handle of a six- shooter suddenly. But the sound was not repeated; and Tonia's fingers needed close attention.   And then, in the shadow of death, they began to talk of their love; and in the still July afternoon every word they uttered reached the ears of the Kid.   "Remember, then," said Tonia, "you must not come again until I send for you. Soon he will be here. A vaquero at the tienda said to-day he saw him on the Guadalupe three days ago. When he is that near he always comes. If he comes and finds you here he will kill you. So, for my sake, you must come no more until I send you the word."   "All right," said the stranger. "And then what?"   "And then," said the girl, "you must bring your men here and kill him. If not, he will kill you."   "He ain't a man to surrender, that's sure," said Sandridge. "It's kill or be killed for the officer that goes up against Mr. Cisco Kid."   "He must die," said the girl. "Otherwise there will not be any peace in the world for thee and me. He has killed many. Let him so die. Bring your men, and give him no chance to escape."   "You used to think right much of him," said Sandridge.   Tonia dropped the lariat, twisted herself around, and curved a lemon- tinted arm over the ranger's shoulder.   "But then," she murmured in liquid Spanish, "I had not beheld thee, thou great, red mountain of a man! And thou art kind and good, as well as strong. Could one choose him, knowing thee? Let him die; for then I will not be filled with fear by day and night lest he hurt thee or me."   "How can I know when he comes?" asked Sandridge.   "When he comes," said Tonia, "he remains two days, sometimes three. Gregorio, the small son of old Luisa, the lavendera, has a swift pony. I will write a letter to thee and send it by him, saying how it will be best to come upon him. By Gregorio will the letter come. And bring many men with thee, and have much care, oh, dear red one, for the rattlesnake is not quicker to strike than is 'El Chivato,' as they call him, to send a ball from his pistola."   "The Kid's handy with his gun, sure enough," admitted Sandridge, "but when I come for him I shall come alone. I'll get him by myself or not at all. The Cap wrote one or two things to me that make me want to do the trick without any help. You let me know when Mr. Kid arrives, and I'll do the rest."   "I will send you the message by the boy Gregorio," said the girl. "I knew you were braver than that small slayer of men who never smiles. How could I ever have thought I cared for him?"   It was time for the ranger to ride back to his camp on the water hole. Before he mounted his horse he raised the slight form of Tonia with one arm high from the earth for a parting salute. The drowsy stillness of the torpid summer air still lay thick upon the dreaming afternoon. The smoke from the fire in the jacal, where the frijoles blubbered in the iron pot, rose straight as a plumb-line above the clay-daubed chimney. No sound or movement disturbed the serenity of the dense pear thicket ten yards away.   When the form of Sandridge had disappeared, loping his big dun down the steep banks of the Frio crossing, the Kid crept back to his own horse, mounted him, and rode back along the tortuous trail he had come.   But not far. He stopped and waited in the silent depths of the pear until half an hour had passed. And then Tonia heard the high, untrue notes of his unmusical singing coming nearer and nearer; and she ran to the edge of the pear to meet him.   The Kid seldom smiled; but he smiled and waved his hat when he saw her. He dismounted, and his girl sprang into his arms. The Kid looked at her fondly. His thick, black hair clung to his head like a wrinkled mat. The meeting brought a slight ripple of some undercurrent of feeling to his smooth, dark face that was usually as motionless as a clay mask.   "How's my girl?" he asked, holding her close.   "Sick of waiting so long for you, dear one," she answered. "My eyes are dim with always gazing into that devil's pincushion through which you come. And I can see into it such a little way, too. But you are here, beloved one, and I will not scold. Que mal muchacho! not to come to see your alma more often. Go in and rest, and let me water your horse and stake him with the long rope. There is cool water in the jar for you."   The Kid kissed her affectionately.   "Not if the court knows itself do I let a lady stake my horse for me," said he. "But if you'll run in, chica, and throw a pot of coffee together while I attend to the caballo, I'll be a good deal obliged."   Besides his marksmanship the Kid had another attribute for which he admired himself greatly. He was muy caballero, as the Mexicans express it, where the ladies were concerned. For them he had always gentle words and consideration. He could not have spoken a harsh word to a woman. He might ruthlessly slay their husbands and brothers, but he could not have laid the weight of a finger in anger upon a woman. Wherefore many of that interesting division of humanity who had come under the spell of his politeness declared their disbelief in the stories circulated about Mr. Kid. One shouldn't believe everything one heard, they said. When confronted by their indignant men folk with proof of the caballero's deeds of infamy, they said maybe he had been driven to it, and that he knew how to treat a lady, anyhow.   Considering this extremely courteous idiosyncrasy of the Kid and the pride he took in it, one can perceive that the solution of the problem that was presented to him by what he saw and heard from his hiding- place in the pear that afternoon (at least as to one of the actors) must have been obscured by difficulties. And yet one could not think of the Kid overlooking little matters of that kind.   At the end of the short twilight they gathered around a supper of frijoles, goat steaks, canned peaches, and coffee, by the light of a lantern in the jacal. Afterward, the ancestor, his flock corralled, smoked a cigarette and became a mummy in a grey blanket. Tonia washed the few dishes while the Kid dried them with the flour-sacking towel. Her eyes shone; she chatted volubly of the inconsequent happenings of her small world since the Kid's last visit; it was as all his other home-comings had been.   Then outside Tonia swung in a grass hammock with her guitar and sang sad canciones de amor.   "Do you love me just the same, old girl?" asked the Kid, hunting for his cigarette papers.   "Always the same, little one," said Tonia, her dark eyes lingering upon him.   "I must go over to Fink's," said the Kid, rising, "for some tobacco. I thought I had another sack in my coat. I'll be back in a quarter of an hour."   "Hasten," said Tonia, "and tell me--how long shall I call you my own this time? Will you be gone again to-morrow, leaving me to grieve, or will you be longer with your Tonia?"   "Oh, I might stay two or three days this trip," said the Kid, yawning. "I've been on the dodge for a month, and I'd like to rest up."   He was gone half an hour for his tobacco. When he returned Tonia was still lying in the hammock.   "It's funny," said the Kid, "how I feel. I feel like there was somebody lying behind every bush and tree waiting to shoot me. I never had mullygrubs like them before. Maybe it's one of them presumptions. I've got half a notion to light out in the morning before day. The Guadalupe country is burning up about that old Dutchman I plugged down there."   "You are not afraid--no one could make my brave little one fear."   "Well, I haven't been usually regarded as a jack-rabbit when it comes to scrapping; but I don't want a posse smoking me out when I'm in your jacal. Somebody might get hurt that oughtn't to."   "Remain with your Tonia; no one will find you here."   The Kid looked keenly into the shadows up and down the arroyo and toward the dim lights of the Mexican village.   "I'll see how it looks later on," was his decision.   At midnight a horseman rode into the rangers' camp, blazing his way by noisy "halloes" to indicate a pacific mission. Sandridge and one or two others turned out to investigate the row. The rider announced himself to be Domingo Sales, from the Lone Wolf Crossing. he bore a letter for Senor Sandridge. Old Luisa, the lavendera, had persuaded him to bring it, he said, her son Gregorio being too ill of a fever to ride.   Sandridge lighted the camp lantern and read the letter. These were its words:   Dear One: He has come. Hardly had you ridden away when he came out of the pear. When he first talked he said he would stay three days or more. Then as it grew later he was like a wolf or a fox, and walked about without rest, looking and listening. Soon he said he must leave before daylight when it is dark and stillest. And then he seemed to suspect that I be not true to him. He looked at me so strange that I am frightened. I swear to him that I love him, his own Tonia. Last of all he said I must prove to him I am true. He thinks that even now men are waiting to kill him as he rides from my house. To escape he says he will dress in my clothes, my red skirt and the blue waist I wear and the brown mantilla over the head, and thus ride away. But before that he says that I must put on his clothes, his pantalones and camisa and hat, and ride away on his horse from the jacal as far as the big road beyond the crossing and back again. This before he goes, so he can tell if I am true and if men are hidden to shoot him. It is a terrible thing. An hour before daybreak this is to be. Come, my dear one, and kill this man and take me for your Tonia. Do not try to take hold of him alive, but kill him quickly. Knowing all, you should do that. You must come long before the time and hide yourself in the little shed near the jacal where the wagon and saddles are kept. It is dark in there. He will wear my red skirt and blue waist and brown mantilla. I send you a hundred kisses. Come surely and shoot quickly and straight.   Thine Own Tonia.   Sandridge quickly explained to his men the official part of the missive. The rangers protested against his going alone.   "I'll get him easy enough," said the lieutenant. "The girl's got him trapped. And don't even think he'll get the drop on me."   Sandridge saddled his horse and rode to the Lone Wolf Crossing. He tied his big dun in a clump of brush on the arroyo, took his Winchester from its scabbard, and carefully approached the Perez jacal. There was only the half of a high moon drifted over by ragged, milk-white gulf clouds.   The wagon-shed was an excellent place for ambush; and the ranger got inside it safely. In the black shadow of the brush shelter in front of the jacal he could see a horse tied and hear him impatiently pawing the hard-trodden earth.   He waited almost an hour before two figures came out of the jacal. One, in man's clothes, quickly mounted the horse and galloped past the wagon-shed toward the crossing and village. And then the other figure, in skirt, waist, and mantilla over its head, stepped out into the faint moonlight, gazing after the rider. Sandridge thought he would take his chance then before Tonia rode back. He fancied she might not care to see it.   "Throw up your hands," he ordered loudly, stepping out of the wagon- shed with his Winchester at his shoulder.   There was a quick turn of the figure, but no movement to obey, so the ranger pumped in the bullets--one--two--three--and then twice more; for you never could be too sure of bringing down the Cisco Kid. There was no danger of missing at ten paces, even in that half moonlight.   The old ancestor, asleep on his blanket, was awakened by the shots. Listening further, he heard a great cry from some man in mortal distress or anguish, and rose up grumbling at the disturbing ways of moderns.   The tall, red ghost of a man burst into the jacal, reaching one hand, shaking like a tule reed, for the lantern hanging on its nail. The other spread a letter on the table.   "Look at this letter, Perez," cried the man. "Who wrote it?"   "Ah, Dios! it is Senor Sandridge," mumbled the old man, approaching. "Pues, senor, that letter was written by 'El Chivato,' as he is called--by the man of Tonia. They say he is a bad man; I do not know. While Tonia slept he wrote the letter and sent it by this old hand of mine to Domingo Sales to be brought to you. Is there anything wrong in the letter? I am very old; and I did not know. Valgame Dios! it is a very foolish world; and there is nothing in the house to drink-- nothing to drink."   Just then all that Sandridge could think of to do was to go outside and throw himself face downward in the dust by the side of his humming-bird, of whom not a feather fluttered. He was not a caballero by instinct, and he could not understand the niceties of revenge.   A mile away the rider who had ridden past the wagon-shed struck up a harsh, untuneful song, the words of which began:   Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl   Or I'll tell you what I'll do-- Calloway's Code   The New York Enterprise sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war.   For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokio, shaking dice with the other correspondents for drinks of 'rickshaws -- oh, no, that's something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn't earning the salary that his paper was paying him. But that was not Calloway's fault. The little brown men who held the strings of Fate between their fingers were not ready for the readers of the Enterprise to season their breakfast bacon and eggs with the battles of the descendants of the gods.   But soon the column of correspondents that were to go out with the First Army tightened their field-glass belts and went down to the Yalu with Kuroki. Calloway was one of these.   Now, this is no history of the battle of the Yalu River. That has been told in detail by the correspondents who gazed at the shrapnel smoke rings from a distance of three miles. But, for justice's sake, let it be understood that the Japanese commander prohibited a nearer view.   Calloway's feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was to furnish the Enterprise with the biggest beat of the war. That paper published exclu- sively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines of the Russian General on the same day that it was made. No other paper printed a word about it for two days afterward, except a London paper, whose account was absolutely incorrect and untrue.   Calloway did this in face of the fact that General Kuroki was making, his moves and living his plans with the pro- foundest secrecy, as far as the world outside his camps was concerned. The correspondents were forbidden to send out any news whatever of his plans; and every message that was allowed on the wires was censored -- with rigid severity.   The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram describing, Kuroki's plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end the censor grinned and let it go through.   So, there they were -- Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and twenty-four guns. On the other side, Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to guard. And Calloway had got hold of some important inside information that he knew would bring the Enterprise staff around a cablegram as thick as flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get that message past the censor -- the new censor who had arrived and taken his post that day!   Calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down on a gun carriage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter on the Enterprise.   Calloway's cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four o'clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket mirror from a pigeon-hole in his desk, and looked at his reflection carefully. Then he went over to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he usually called Boyd when he wanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.   "It's from Calloway," he said. "See what you make of it."   The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:   Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumour mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible.   Boyd read it twice.   "It's either a cipher or a sunstroke," said he.   "Ever hear of anything like a code in the office -- a secret code?" asked the m. e., who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.   "None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in," said Boyd. "Couldn't be an acrostic, could it?"   "I thought of that," said the m. e., "but the beginning letters contain only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort."   "Try em in groups," suggested Boyd. "Let's see -- 'Rash witching goes' -- not with me it doesn't. 'Muf- fled rumour mine' -- must have an underground wire. 'Dark silent unfortunate richmond' -- no reason why he should knock that town so hard. 'Existing great hotly' -- no it doesn't pan out I'll call Scott."   The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about cipher-writing.   "It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher," said he. "I'll try that. 'R' seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the exception of 'm.' Assuming 'r' to mean 'e', the most frequently used vowel, we transpose the letters -- so."   Scott worked rapidly with his pencil for two minutes; and then showed the first word according to his reading -- the word "Scejtzez."   "Great!" cried Boyd. "It's a charade. My first is a Russian general. Go on, Scott."   "No, that won't work," said the city editor. "It's undoubtedly a code. It's impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a cipher code?"   "Just what I was asking," said the m.e. "Hustle everybody up that ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of some- thing big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn't have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this."   Throughout the office of the Enterprise a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the m. e. in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investi- gator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow -- that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code -- an abbreviation, rather -- but --   The m. e. knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an Enterprise envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years. "Try old Heffelbauer," said the m. e. "He was here when Park Row was a potato patch."   Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handy-man about the office, and half watchman -- thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-half tailors.   Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality. "Heffelbauer," said the m. e., "did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago - a private code? You know what a code is, don't you?"   "Yah," said Heffelbauer. "Sure I know vat a code is. Yah, apout dwelf or fifteen year ago der office had a code. Der reborters in der city-room haf it here."   "Ah!" said the m. e. "We're getting on the trail now. Where was it kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?"   "Somedimes," said the retainer, "dey keep it in der little room behind der library room."   "Can you find it asked the m. e. eagerly. "Do you know where it is?"   "Mein Gott!" said Heffelbauer. "How long you dink a code live? Der reborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der editor, und -- "   "Oh, he's talking about a goat," said Boyd. "Get out, Heffelbauer."   Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the Enterprise huddled around Calloway's puzzle, con- sidering its mysterious words in vain.   Then Vesey came in.   Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty- two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and con- ferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hard-wood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the per- sonal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.   Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer's "code" would have done, and asked what was up. Some one explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the m. e.'s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming, off unscathed.   "It's a code," said Vesey. "Anybody got the key?"   "The office has no code," said Boyd, reaching for the message. Vesey held to it.   "Then old Callowav expects us to read it, anyhow," said he. "He's up a tree, or something, and he's made this up so as to get it by, the censor. It's up to us. Gee! I wish they had sell, me, too. Say -- we can't afford to fall down on our end of it. 'Foregone, preconcerted rash, witching' -- h'm."   Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning at the cablegram.   "Let's have it, please," said the m. e. "We've got to get to work on it."   "I believe I've got a line on it," said Vesey. "Give me ten minutes."   He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a waste-basket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the Enterprise remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.   It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the m. e. a pad with the code-key written on it.   "I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it," said Vesey. "Hurrah for old Calloway! He's done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead of news. Take a look at that."   Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:   Foregone - conclusion Preconcerted - arrangement Rash - act Witching - hour of midnight Goes - without saying Muffled - report Rumour - hath it Mine - host Dark - horse Silent - majority Unfortunate - pedestrians Richmond - in the field Existing - conditions Great-White Way Hotly - contested Brute - force Select - few Mooted - question Parlous - times Beggars - description Ye - correspondent Angel - unawares Incontrovertible - fact   --------   *Mr. Vesey afterward explained that the logical journalistic complement of the word "unfortunate" was once the word "victim." But, since the automobile be- came so popular, the correct following word is now pedestrians. Of course, in Calloway's code it meant infantry.   "It's simply newspaper English," explained Vesey. "I've been reporting on the Enterprise long enough to know it by heart. Old Calloway gives us the cue word, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as we em in the paper. Read it over, and you'll see how pat they drop into their places. Now, here's the message he intended us to get."   Vesey handed out another sheet of paper.   Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying. Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way con- tested by only a small force. Question the Times descrip- tion. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.   "Great stuff!" cried Boyd excitedly. "Kuroki crosses the Yalu to-night and attacks. Oh, we won't do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison's essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!"   "Mr. Vesey," said the m. e., with his jollying - which - you - should - regard - as - a - favour manner, "you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest 'beat' of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me."   Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top- spinning urchin, an uprising of the down-trodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.   Ames and the "war editor" shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway's brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki's flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Stuikauchen, across which the Mikado's legions were hurled upon the surprised Zas- sulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle! -- well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of the same date.   Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word "great" in his code should have been "gage," and its complemental words "of battle." But it went to Ames "conditions white," and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army strum, struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling, flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, "conditions white" excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the Enterprise, anyway.   It was wonderful. And Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.   On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey's desk where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling into a coal-hole -- Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it.   "The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week," said Scott.   "All right," said Vesey. "Every little helps. Say -- Mr. Scott, which would you say -- 'We can state without fear of successful contradiction,' or, 'On the whole it can be safely asserted'?" A Chaparral Prince   Nine o'clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen's Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water in that turbulent and depressing hostelry.   The din of the day's quarrying was over--the blasting and drilling, the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the house.   Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair. She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs were sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest trouble. The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired she might be, she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time had Grimm whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come and deliver her out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken fresh courage and strength from Grimm.   To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition. The woodcutter's lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted stepdaughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch's hut--all these were but transparent disguises for Lena, the overworked kitchenmaid in the Quarrymen's Hotel. And always when the extremity was direst came the good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue.   So, here in the ogre's castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do for servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work briskly the next day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from one's mamma, and never having any time to play, live entirely deprived of Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it is.   Lena's home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the Pedernales River, in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at little tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and scat. They are very thrifty people.   Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena's father. And that is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty miles away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added her wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become as rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum pipe three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for dinner every day in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to work and assist in the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you can, what it means to be sentenced at eleven years of age from a home in the pleasant little Rhine village to hard labour in the ogre's castle, where you must fly to serve the ogres, while they devour cattle and sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp white limestone dust from their great shoes for you to sweep and scour with your weak, aching fingers. And then--to have Grimm taken away from you!   Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained canned corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She was going to write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post it for her at Ballinger's. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the quarries, went home to Ballinger's every night, and was now waiting in the shadows under Lena's window for her to throw the letter out to him. That was the only way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg. Mrs. Maloney did not like for her to write letters.   The stump of the candle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she wrote:   Dearest Mamma:--I want so much to see you. And Gretel and Claus and Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so tired. I want to see you. To-day I was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had no supper. I could not bring in enough wood, for my hand hurt. She took my book yesterday. I mean "Grimm's Fairy Tales," which Uncle Leo gave me. It did not hurt any one for me to read the book. I try to work as well as I can, but there is so much to do. I read only a little bit every night. Dear mamma, I shall tell you what I am going to do. Unless you send for me to-morrow to bring me home I shall go to a deep place I know in the river and drown. It is wicked to drown, I suppose, but I wanted to see you, and there is no one else. I am very tired, and Tommy is waiting for the letter. You will excuse me, mamma, if I do it.   Your respectful and loving daughter,   Lena.   Tommy was still waiting faithfully when the letter was concluded, and when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the steep hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled herself upon the mattress on the floor.   At 10:30 o'clock old man Ballinger came out of his house in his stocking feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked down the big road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with the toe of his other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to come pattering up the road.   Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard the lively hoofbeats of Fritz's team of little black mules, and very soon afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz's big spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice shouted a greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger's. The mail-carrier jumped out and took the bridles from the mules, for he always fed them oats at Ballinger's.   While the mules were eating from their feed bags old man Ballinger brought out the mail sack and threw it into the wagon.   Fritz Bergmann was a man of three sentiments--or to be more accurate-- four, the pair of mules deserving to be reckoned individually. Those mules were the chief interest and joy of his existence. Next came the Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller.   "Tell me," said Fritz, when he was ready to start, "contains the sack a letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries? One came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already. Her mamma is very anxious to hear again."   "Yes," said old man Ballinger, "thar's a letter for Mrs. Helterskelter, or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he come. Her little gal workin' over thar, you say?"   "In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven years old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter Hildesmuller!--some day I shall with a big club pound that man's dummkopf--all in and out the town. Perhaps in this letter Lena will say that she is yet feeling better. So, her mamma will be glad. Auf wiedersehen, Herr Ballinger--your feets will take cold out in the night air."   "So long, Fritzy," said old man Ballinger. "You got a nice cool night for your drive."   Up the road went the little black mules at their steady trot, while Fritz thundered at them occasional words of endearment and cheer.   These fancies occupied the mind of the mail-carrier until he reached the big post oak forest, eight miles from Ballinger's. Here his ruminations were scattered by the sudden flash and report of pistols and a whooping as if from a whole tribe of Indians. A band of galloping centaurs closed in around the mail wagon. One of them leaned over the front wheel, covered the driver with his revolver, and ordered him to stop. Others caught at the bridles of Donder and Blitzen.   "Donnerwetter!" shouted Fritz, with all his tremendous voice--"wass ist? Release your hands from dose mules. Ve vas der United States mail!"   "Hurry up, Dutch!" drawled a melancholy voice. "Don't you know when you're in a stick-up? Reverse your mules and climb out of the cart."   It is due to the breadth of Hondo Bill's demerit and the largeness of his achievements to state that the holding up of the Fredericksburg mail was not perpetrated by way of an exploit. As the lion while in the pursuit of prey commensurate to his prowess might set a frivolous foot upon a casual rabbit in his path, so Hondo Bill and his gang had swooped sportively upon the pacific transport of Meinherr Fritz.   The real work of their sinister night ride was over. Fritz and his mail bag and his mules came as gentle relaxation, grateful after the arduous duties of their profession. Twenty miles to the southeast stood a train with a killed engine, hysterical passengers and a looted express and mail car. That represented the serious occupation of Hondo Bill and his gang. With a fairly rich prize of currency and silver the robbers were making a wide detour to the west through the less populous country, intending to seek safety in Mexico by means of some fordable spot on the Rio Grande. The booty from the train had melted the desperate bushrangers to jovial and happy skylarkers.   Trembling with outraged dignity and no little personal apprehension, Fritz climbed out to the road after replacing his suddenly removed spectacles. The band had dismounted and were singing, capering, and whooping, thus expressing their satisfied delight in the life of a jolly outlaw. Rattlesnake Rogers, who stood at the heads of the mules, jerked a little too vigorously at the rein of the tender-mouthed Donder, who reared and emitted a loud, protesting snort of pain. Instantly Fritz, with a scream of anger, flew at the bulky Rogers and began to assiduously pummel that surprised freebooter with his fists.   "Villain!" shouted Fritz, "dog, bigstiff! Dot mule he has a soreness by his mouth. I vill knock off your shoulders mit your head-- robbermans!"   "Yi-yi!" howled Rattlesnake, roaring with laughter and ducking his head, "somebody git this here sour-krout off'n me!"   One of the band yanked Fritz back by the coat-tail, and the woods rang with Rattlesnake's vociferous comments.   "The dog-goned little wienerwurst," he yelled, amiably. "He's not so much of a skunk, for a Dutchman. Took up for his animile plum quick, didn't he? I like to see a man like his hoss, even if it is a mule. The dad-blamed little Limburger he went for me, didn't he! Whoa, now, muley--I ain't a-goin' to hurt your mouth agin any more."   Perhaps the mail would not have been tampered with had not Ben Moody, the lieutenant, possessed certain wisdom that seemed to promise more spoils.   "Say, Cap," he said, addressing Hondo Bill, "there's likely to be good pickings in these mail sacks. I've done some hoss tradin' with these Dutchmen around Fredericksburg, and I know the style of the varmints. There's big money goes through the mails to that town. Them Dutch risk a thousand dollars sent wrapped in a piece of paper before they'd pay the banks to handle the money."   Hondo Bill, six feet two, gentle of voice and impulsive in action, was dragging the sacks from the rear of the wagon before Moody had finished his speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the ripping sound as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded around and began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their labours by swearing affably at the writers, who seemed to have conspired to confute the prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was found in the Fredericksburg mail.   "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hondo Bill to the mail- carrier in solemn tones, "to be packing around such a lot of old, trashy paper as this. What d'you mean by it, anyhow? Where do you Dutchers keep your money at?"   The Ballinger mail sack opened like a cocoon under Hondo's knife. It contained but a handful of mail. Fritz had been fuming with terror and excitement until this sack was reached. He now remembered Lena's letter. He addressed the leader of the band, asking that that particular missive be spared.   "Much obliged, Dutch," he said to the disturbed carrier. "I guess that's the letter we want. Got spondulicks in it, ain't it? Here she is. Make a light, boys."   Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the angular German script.   "Whatever is this you've humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this here a valuable letter? That's a mighty low-down trick to play on your friends what come along to help you distribute your mail."   "That's Chiny writin'," said Sandy Grundy, peering over Hondo's shoulder.   "You're off your kazip," declared another of the gang, an effective youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. "That's shorthand. I see 'em do it once in court."   "Ach, no, no, no--dot is German," said Fritz. "It is no more as a little girl writing a letter to her mamma. One poor little girl, sick and vorking hard avay from home. Ach! it is a shame. Good Mr. Robberman, you vill please let me have dot letter?"   "What the devil do you take us for, old Pretzels?" said Hondo with sudden and surprising severity. "You ain't presumin' to insinuate that we gents ain't possessed of sufficient politeness for to take an interest in the miss's health, are you? Now, you go on, and you read that scratchin' out loud and in plain United States language to this here company of educated society."   Hondo twirled his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering above the little German, who at once began to read the letter, translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in absolute silence, listening intently.   "How old is that kid?" asked Hondo when the letter was done.   "Eleven," said Fritz.   "And where is she at?"   "At dose rock quarries--working. Ach, mein Gott--little Lena, she speak of drowning. I do not know if she vill do it, but if she shall I schwear I vill dot Peter Hildesmuller shoot mit a gun."   "You Dutchers," said Hondo Bill, his voice swelling with fine contempt, "make me plenty tired. Hirin' out your kids to work when they ought to be playin' dolls in the sand. You're a hell of a sect of people. I reckon we'll fix your clock for a while just to show what we think of your old cheesy nation. Here, boys!"   Hondo Bill parleyed aside briefly with his band, and then they seized Fritz and conveyed him off the road to one side. Here they bound him fast to a tree with a couple of lariats. His team they tied to another tree near by.   "We ain't going to hurt you bad," said Hondo reassuringly. "'Twon't hurt you to be tied up for a while. We will now pass you the time of day, as it is up to us to depart. Ausgespielt--nixcumrous, Dutchy. Don't get any more impatience."   Fritz heard a great squeaking of saddles as the men mounted their horses. Then a loud yell and a great clatter of hoofs as they galloped pell-mell back along the Fredericksburg road.   For more than two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure he sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at last awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was lifted to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body. Rubbing his eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst of the same band of terrible bandits. They shoved him up to the seat of his wagon and placed the lines in his hands.   "Hit it out for home, Dutch," said Hondo Bill's voice commandingly. "You've given us lots of trouble and we're pleased to see the back of your neck. Spiel! Zwei bier! Vamoose!"   Hondo reached out and gave Blitzen a smart cut with his quirt.   The little mules sprang ahead, glad to be moving again. Fritz urged them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure.   According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg at daylight. As it was, he drove down the long street of the town at eleven o'clock A.M. He had to pass Peter Hildesmuller's house on his way to the post-office. He stopped his team at the gate and called. But Frau Hildesmuller was watching for him. Out rushed the whole family of Hildesmullers.   Frau Hildesmuller, fat and flushed, inquired if he had a letter from Lena, and then Fritz raised his voice and told the tale of his adventure. He told the contents of that letter that the robber had made him read, and then Frau Hildesmuller broke into wild weeping. Her little Lena drown herself! Why had they sent her from home? What could be done? Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for her now. Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it shivered into pieces.   "Woman!" he roared at his wife, "why did you let that child go away? It is your fault if she comes home to us no more."   Every one knew that it was Peter Hildesmuller's fault, so they paid no attention to his words.   A moment afterward a strange, faint voice was heard to call: "Mamma!" Frau Hildesmuller at first thought it was Lena's spirit calling, and then she rushed to the rear of Fritz's covered wagon, and, with a loud shriek of joy, caught up Lena herself, covering her pale little face with kisses and smothering her with hugs. Lena's eyes were heavy with the deep slumber of exhaustion, but she smiled and lay close to the one she had longed to see. There among the mail sacks, covered in a nest of strange blankets and comforters, she had lain asleep until wakened by the voices around her.   Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles.   "Gott in Himmel!" he shouted. "How did you get in that wagon? Am I going crazy as well as to be murdered and hanged by robbers this day?"   "You brought her to us, Fritz," cried Frau Hildesmuller. "How can we ever thank you enough?"   "Tell mamma how you came in Fritz's wagon," said Frau Hildesmuller.   "I don't know," said Lena. "But I know how I got away from the hotel. The Prince brought me."   "By the Emperor's crown!" shouted Fritz, "we are all going crazy."   "I always knew he would come," said Lena, sitting down on her bundle of bedclothes on the sidewalk. "Last night he came with his armed knights and captured the ogre's castle. They broke the dishes and kicked down the doors. They pitched Mr. Maloney into a barrel of rain water and threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel jumped out of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights began firing their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the stair. And then the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes and carried me out. He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was as rough as a scrubbing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled of schnapps. He took me on his horse before him and we rode away among the knights. He held me close and I went to sleep that way, and didn't wake up till I got home."   "Rubbish!" cried Fritz Bergmann. "Fairy tales! How did you come from the quarries to my wagon?"   "The Prince brought me," said Lena, confidently.   And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven't been able to make her give any other explanation. From the Cabby's Seat   The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles, of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, and you are goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, to cabby you are only a Fare, he takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your vertebrae and sets you down.   When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal rates you come to know what contempt is; if you find that you have left your pocketbook behind you are made to realise the mildness of Dante's imagination.   It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap--you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land--and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make your feeble wishes known.   Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant; you are contents. You are a cargo at sea, and the "cherub that sits up aloft" has Davy Jones's street and number by heart.   One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement- house next door but one to McGary's Family Cafe. The sounds seemed to emanate from the apartments of the Walsh family. The sidewalk was obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbours, who opened a lane from time to time for a hurrying messenger bearing from McGary's goods pertinent to festivity and diversion. The sidewalk contingent was engaged in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to eliminate the news that Norah Walsh was being married.   In the fulness of time there was an eruption of the merry-makers to the sidewalk. The uninvited guests enveloped and permeated them, and upon the night air rose joyous cries, congratulations, laughter and unclassified noises born of McGary's oblations to the hymeneal scene.   Close to the curb stood Jerry O'Donovan's cab. Night-hawk was Jerry called; but no more lustrous or cleaner hansom than his ever closed its doors upon point lace and November violets. And Jerry's horse! I am within bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats until one of those old ladies who leave their dishes unwashed at home and go about having expressmen arrested, would have smiled--yes, smiled--to have seen him.   Among the shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny of millionaires and by contumacious fares; of his brass-buttoned green coat, admired in the vicinity of McGary's. It was plain that Jerry had usurped the functions of his cab, and was carrying a "load." Indeed, the figure may be extended and he be likened to a bread-waggon if we admit the testimony of a youthful spectator, who was heard to remark "Jerry has got a bun."   From somewhere among the throng in the street or else out of the thin stream of pedestrians a young woman tripped and stood by the cab. The professional hawk's eye of Jerry caught the movement. He made a lurch for the cab, overturning three or four onlookers and himself-- no! he caught the cap of a water-plug and kept his feet. Like a sailor shinning up the ratlins during a squall Jerry mounted to his professional seat. Once he was there McGary's liquids were baffled. He seesawed on the mizzenmast of his craft as safe as a Steeple Jack rigged to the flagpole of a skyscraper.   "Step in, lady," said Jerry, gathering his lines. The young woman stepped into the cab; the doors shut with a bang; Jerry's whip cracked in the air; the crowd in the gutter scattered, and the fine hansom dashed away 'crosstown.   When the oat-spry horse had hedged a little his first spurt of speed Jerry broke the lid of his cab and called down through the aperture in the voice of a cracked megaphone, trying to please:   "Where, now, will ye be drivin' to?"   "Anywhere you please," came up the answer, musical and contented.   "'Tis drivin' for pleasure she is," thought Jerry. And then he suggested as a matter of course:   "Take a thrip around in the park, lady. 'Twill be ilegant cool and fine."   "Just as you like," answered the fare, pleasantly.   The cab headed for Fifth avenue and sped up that perfect street. Jerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGary were disquieted and they sent new fumes to his head. He sang an ancient song of Killisnook and brandished his whip like a baton.   Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to right and left at the lights and houses. Even in the shadowed hansom her eyes shone like stars at twilight.   When they reached Fifty-ninth street Jerry's head was bobbing and his reins were slack. But his horse turned in through the park gate and began the old familiar nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned back, entranced, and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odours of grass and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts, knowing his ground, struck into his by-the-hour gait and kept to the right of the road.   Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry's increasing torpor. He raised the hatch of his storm-tossed vessel and made the inquiry that cabbies do make in the park.   "Like shtop at the Cas-sino, lady? Gezzer r'freshm's, 'n lish'n the music. Ev'body shtops."   "I think that would be nice," said the fare.   They reined up with a plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab doors flew open. The fare stepped directly upon the floor. At once she was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights and colours. Some one slipped a little square card into her hand on which was printed a number--34. She looked around and saw her cab twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting mass of carriages, cabs and motor cars. And then a man who seemed to be all shirt-front danced backward before her; and next she was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a jessamine vine.   There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted a collection of small coins in a thin purse, and received from them license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing it all--the new-coloured, new-shaped life in a fairy palace in an enchanted wood.   At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and gems of the world. And now and then one of them would look curiously at Jerry's fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind that is tempered by the word "foulard," and a plain face that wore a look of love of life that the queens envied.   Twice the long hands of the clocks went round, Royalties thinned from their al fresco thrones, and buzzed or clattered away in their vehicles of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of leather and baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the plain figure sitting almost alone.   Jerry's fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply:   "Is there anything coming on the ticket?" she asked. A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it to the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number. Only three hansoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and routed out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the captain's bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, and the cab whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the shortest homeward cuts.   At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to him. He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic voice, like a lead plummet, through the aperture:   "I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip. Have ye got th' dough?"   "Four dollars!" laughed the fare, softly, "dear me, no. I've only got a few pennies and a dime or two."   Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity. He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew his recourse, and made for it at a gallop.   At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. He flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground.   "Come on, you," he said, roughly.   His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station. A gray-moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the cabby were no strangers.   "Sargeant," began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tones of complaint. "I've got a fare here that--"   Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.   "A fare, sargeant," he continued, with a grin, "that I want to inthroduce to ye. It's me wife that I married at ould man Walsh's this avening. And a divil of a time we had, ‘tis thrue. Shake hands wid th' sargeant, Norah, and we'll be off to home."   Before stepping into the cab Norah sighed profoundly.   "I've had such a nice time, Jerry," said she. Georgia's Ruling   If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the draughtsmen's room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County. A leisurely German -- pos- sibly old Kampfer himself -- will bring it to you. It will be four feet square, on heavy drawing-cloth. The lettering and the figures will be beautifully clear and distinct. The title will be in splendid, undecipherable German text, ornamented with classic Teutonic designs -- very likely Ceres or Pomona leaning against the initial letters with cornucopias venting grapes and wieners. You must tell him that this is not the map you wish to see; that he will kindly bring you its official predecessor. He will then say, "Ach, so!" and bring out a map half the size of the first, dim, old, tattered, and faded.   By looking carefully near its northwest corner you will presently come upon the worn contours of Chiquito River, and, maybe, if your eyes are good, discern the silent witness to this story.   The Commissioner of the Land Office was of the old style; his antique courtesy was too formal for his day. He dressed in fine black, and there was a suggestion of Roman drapery in his long coat-skirts. His collars were "undetached" (blame haberdashery for the word); his tie was a narrow, funereal strip, tied in the same knot as were his shoe-strings. His gray hair was a trifle too long behind, but he kept it smooth and orderly. His face was clean-shaven, like the old statesmen's. Most people thought it a stern face, but when its official expression was off, a few had seen altogether a different countenance. Especially tender and gentle it had appeared to those who were about him during the last illness of his only child.   The Commissioner had been a widower for years, and his life, outside his official duties, had been so devoted to little Georgia that people spoke of it as a touching and admirable thing. He was a reserved man, and dignified almost to austerity, but the child had come below it all and rested upon his very heart, so that she scarcely missed the mother's love that had been taken away. There was a wonderful companionship between them, for she had many of his own ways, being thoughtful and serious beyond her years.   One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her checks, she said suddenly:   "Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children!"   "What would you like to do, dear?" asked the Com- Missioner. "Give them a party?"   "Oh, I don't mean those kind. I mean poor children who haven't homes, and aren't loved and cared for as I am. I tell you what, papa!"   "What, my own child?"   "If I shouldn't get well, I'll leave them you -- not give you, but just lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you can find time, wouldn't you do something to help them, if I ask you, papa?"   "Hush, hush dear, dear child," said the Commissioner, holding her hot little hand against his cheek; "you'll get well real soon, and you and I will see what we can do for them together."   But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated, the Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to struggle further, and Georgia's exit was made from the great stage when she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights. But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the cue to the one who was to speak after her.   A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the office, a little more courteous, a little paler and sterner, with the black frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.   His desk was piled with work that had accumulated during the four heartbreaking weeks of his absence. His chief clerk had done what he could, but there were ques- tions of law, of fine judicial decisions to be made concern- ing the issue of patents, the marketing and leasing of school lands, the classification into grazing, agricultural, watered, and timbered, of new tracts to be opened to settlers.   The Commissioner went to work silently and ob- stinately, putting back his grief as far as possible, forcing his mind to attack the complicated and important busi- ness of his office. On the second day after his return he called the porter, pointed to a leather-covered chair that stood near his own, and ordered it removed to a lumber- room at the top of the building. In that chair Georgia would always sit when she came to the office for him of afternoons.   As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary, and reserved. A new phase of mind developed in him. He could not endure the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belonging to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room adjoining his little apartment, the Com- missioner would steal softly and close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the school- children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.   It was nearly three months after the rains had washed the last dead flower-petals from the mound above little Georgia when the "land-shark" firm of Hamlin and Avery filed papers upon what they considered the "fattest" vacancy of the year.   It should not be supposed that all who were termed "land-sharks" deserved the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the State and say: "Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and matters go thus." But, next to a three years' drought and the boll-worm, the Actual Settler hated the Land-shark. The land-shark haunted the Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and hunted "vacancies" -- that is, tracts of unappro- priated public domain, generally invisible upon the official maps, but actually existing "upon the ground." The law entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to file by virtue of same upon any land not previously legally appropriated. Most of the scrip was now in the hands of the land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few hundred dollars, they often secured lands worth as many thousands. Naturally, the search for "vacancies" was lively.   But often -- very often -- the land they thus secured, though legally "unappropriated," would be occupied by happy and contented settlers, who had laboured for years to build up their homes, only to discover that their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators who so often turned them forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labours. The history of the state teems with their antagonism. Mr. Land-shark seldom showed his face on "locations" from which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his emis- saxies do the work. There was lead in every cabin, moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all lay far back.   When the state was young, she felt the need of attract- ing newcomers, and of rewarding those pioneers already within her borders. Year after year she issued land scrip -- Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations, Confeder- ates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies, and tillers of the soil galore. All required of the grantee was that he or it should have the scrip properly surveyed upon the public domain by the county or district surveyor, and the land thus appropriated became the property of him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.   In those days -- and here is where the trouble began - the state's domain was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with princely -- yea, even Western American -- liberality, gave good measure and over- flowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense altogether with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could cover something near a "vara" at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat of his pony's hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his field notes with the complacency produced by an act of duty well performed. Sometimes -- and who could blame the surveyor? -- when the pony was "feeling his oats," he might step a little higher and farther, and in that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for. But look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare! However, no one ever had to complain of the pony under- stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state con- tained an excess of land.   In later years, when the state became more populous, and land values increased, this careless work entailed incalculable trouble, endless litigation, a period of riotous land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed. The land- sharks voraciously attacked these excesses in the old surveys, and filed upon such portions with new scrip as unappropriated public domain. Wherever the identi- fications of the old tracts were vague, and the corners were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would recognize the newer locations as valid, and issue title to the locators. Here was the greatest hardship to be found. These old surveys, taken from the pick of the land, were already nearly all occupied by unsuspecting and peaceful settlers, and thus their titles were demolished, and the choice was placed before them either to buy their land over at a double price or to vacate it, with their families and personal belongings, immediately. Land locators sprang up by hundreds. The country was held up and searched for "vacancies" at the point of a compass. Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of splendid acres were wrested from their innocent purchasers and holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers in tattered wagons; going nowhere, cursing injustice, stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless. Their children began to look up to them for bread, and cry.   It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamil- ton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile wide and three miles long, comprising about two thou- sand acres, it being the excess over complement of the Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand- acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land, and improperly considered a part of the Denny survey. They based this assertion and their claim upon the land upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner of the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field notes called to run west 5,760 varas, and then called for Chiquito River; thence it ran south, with the meanders -- and so on -- and that the Chiquito River was, on the ground, fully a mile farther west from the point reached by course and distance. To sum up: there were two thousand acres of vacant land between the Denny survey proper and Chiquito River.   One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called for the papers in connection with this new location. They were brought, and heaped, a foot deep, upon his desk -- field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits, connecting lines-documents of every description that shrewdness and money could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.   The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a patent upon their location. They possesed inside infor- mation concerning a new railroad that would probably pass somewhere near this land.   The General Land Office was very still while the Com- missioner was delving into the heart of the mass of evi- dence. The pigeons could be heard on the roof of the old, castle-like building, cooing and fretting. The clerks were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to earn their salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud from the bare, stone-flagged floors, the plastered walls, and the iron-joisted ceiling. The impalpable, perpetual lime- stone dust that never settled, whitened a long streamer of sunlight that pierced the tattered window-awning.   It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well. The Denny survey was carelessly made, even for a care- less period. Its beginning corner was identical with that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other calls were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no other object that survived -- no tree, no natural object save Chiquito River, and it was a mile wrong there. According to precedent, the Office would be justified in giving it its complement by course and distance, and considering the remainder vacant instead of a mere excess.   The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests in re. Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-shark, he had observed his myrmi- dons running the lines upon his ground. Making inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and he left the plough in the furrow and took his pen in hand.   One of the protests the Commissioner read twice. It was from a woman, a widow, the granddaughter of Elias Denny himself. She told how her grandfather had sold most of the survey years before at a trivial price -- land that was now a principality in extent and value. Her mother had also sold a part, and she herself had suc- ceeded to this western portion, along Chiquito River. Much of it she had been forced to part with in order to live, and now she owned only about three hundred acres, on which she had her home. Her letter wound up rather pathetically:   "I've got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and half the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes and books. I teach my children too. My neighbours is all poor and has big families. The drought kills the crops every two or three years and then we has hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on this land what the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them got titles from me. I sold to them cheap, and they aint paid out yet, but part of them is, and if their land should be took from them I would die. My grandfather was an honest man, and he helped to build up this state, and he taught his children to be honest, and how could I make it up to them who bought me? Mr. Commissioner, if you let them land-sharks take the roof from over my children and the little from them as they has to live on, whoever again calls this state great or its government just will have a lie in their mouths"   The Commissioner laid this letter aside with a sigh. Many, many such letters he had received. He had never been hurt by them, nor had he ever felt that they appealed to him personally. He was but the state's servant, and must follow its laws. And yet, somehow, this reflection did not always eliminate a certain responsible feeling that hung upon him. Of all the state's officers he was supremest in his department, not even excepting the Governor. Broad, general land laws he followed, it was true, but he had a wide latitude in particular ramifica- tions. Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and precedents. In the complicated and new questions that were being engendered by the state's development the Commissioner's ruling was rarely appealed from. Even the courts sustained it when its equity was apparent.   The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other room -- spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of the blood:   "Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as convenient?"   Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his reports.   "Mr. Ashe," said the Commissioner, "you worked along the Chiquito River, in Salado Colinty, during your last trip, I believe. Do you remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?"   "Yes, sir, I do," the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. "I crossed it on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles on the Chiquito."   "It is claimed," continued the commissioner, "that it fails to reach the river by as much as a mile."   The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an Actual Settler, and the natural foe of the land-shark.   "It has always been considered to extend to the river," he said, dryly.   "But that is not the point I desired to discuss," said the Commissioner. "What kind of country is this valley portion of (let us say, then) the Denny tract?"   The spirit of the Actual Settler beamed in Ashe's face.   "Beautiful," he said, with enthusiasm. "Valley as level as this floor, with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just enough brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six feet, and then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it, with windmills and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess -- too far from market -- but comfortable. Never saw so many kids in my life."   "They raise flocks?" inquired the Commissioner.   "Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids," lauched the surveyor; "two-legged, and bare-legged, and tow-headed."   "Children! oh, children!" mused the Commissioner, as though a new view had opened to him; "they raise children!   "It's a lonesome country, Commissioner," said the surveyor. "Can you blame 'em?"   "I suppose," continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, "not all of them are tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair."   "Brown and black, sure," said Ashe; "also red."   "No doubt," said the Commissioner. "Well, I thank you for your courtesy in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your duties."   Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial, sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed among the clerks and left a wake of abbreviated given names and fat brown cigars.   These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big things. Full of serene confidence in them- selves, there was no corporation, no syndicate, no rail- road company or attorney general too big for them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown cigars was to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state, in every committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlour and every private caucus-room in the state Capital. Always pleasant, never in a hurry, in seeming to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered when they gave their attention to the many audacious enterprises in which they were knnown to be engaged.   By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Com- missioner's room and reclined lazily in the big, leather- upholstered arm-chairs. They drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the Com- missioner an excellent story he had amassed that morn- ing from the Secretary of State.   But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half promised to render a decision that day upon their location.   The chief clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, "Hollis Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office," on each one, the chief clerk stood, deftly removing them and applying the blotter.   "I notice," said the chief clerk, "you've been going through that Salado County location. Kampfer is mak- ing a new map of Salado, and I believe is platting in that section of the county now."   "I will see it," said the Comissioner. A few moments later he went to the draughtsmen's room.   As he entered he saw five or six of the draughtsmen grouped about Kampfer's desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and gazing at something there- upon. At the Commissioner's approach they scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little Ger- man, with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth some sort of an apology, the Commis- sioner thought, for the congregation of his fellows about his desk.   "Never mind,' said the Commissioner, "I wish to see the map you are making"; and, passing around the old German, seated himself upon the high draughtsman's stool. Kampfer continued to break English in trving to explain.   "Herr Gommissioner, I assure you blenty sat I haf not it bremeditated -- sat it wass -- sat it itself make. Look you! from se field notes wass it blatted -- blease to observe se calls: South, 10 degrees west 050 varas; south, 10 degrees east 300 varas; south, 100; south, 9 west, 200; south, 40 degrees west 400 -- and so on. Herr Gommissioner, nefer would I have -- "   The Commissioner raised one white hand, silently, Kampfer dropped his pipe and fled.   With a hand at each side of his face, and his elbows resting upon the desk, the Commissioner sat staring at the map which was spread and fastened there -- staring at the sweet and living profile of little Georgia drawn thereupon -- at her face, pensive, delicate, and infantile, outlined in a perfect likeness.   When his mind at length came to inquire into the rea- son of it, he saw that it must have been, as Kampfer had said, unpremeditated. The old draughtsman had been platting in the Elias Denny survey, and Georgia's likeness, striking though it was, was formed by nothing more than the meanders of Chiquito River. Indeed, Kampfer's blotter, whereon his preliminary work was done, showed the laborious tracings of the calls and the countless pricks of the compasses. Then, over his faint pencilling, Kampfer had drawn in India ink with a full, firm pen the similitude of Chiquito River, and forth had blossomed mysteriously the dainty, pathetic profile of the child.   The Commissioner sat for half an hour with his face in his hands, gazing downward, and none dared approach him. Then he arose and walked out. In the business office he paused long enough to ask that the Denny file be brought to his desk.   He found Hamlin and Avery still reclining in their chairs, apparently oblivious of business. They were lazily discussing summer opera, it being, their habit -- perhaps their pride also -- to appear supernaturally indifferent whenever they stood with large interests imperilled. And they stood to win more on this stake than most people knew. They possessed inside infor- mation to the effect that a new railroad would, within a year, split this very Chiquito River valley and send land values ballooning all along its route. A dollar under thirty thousand profit on this location, if it should hold good, would be a loss to their expectations. So, while they chatted lightly and waited for the Commissioner to open the subject, there was a quick, sidelong sparkle in their eyes, evincing a desire to read their title clear to those fair acres on the Chiquito.   A clerk brought in the file. The Commissioner seated himself and wrote upon it in red ink. Then he rose to his feet and stood for a while looking straight out of the window. The Land Office capped the summit of a bold hill. The eyes of the Commissioner passed over the roofs of many houses set in a packing of deep green, the whole checkered by strips of blinding white streets. The horizon, where his gaze was focussed, swelled to a fair wooded eminence flecked with faint dots of shining white. There was the cemetery, where lay many who were forgot- ten, and a few who had not lived in vain. And one lay there, occupying very small space, whose childish heart had been large enough to desire, while near its last beats, good to others. The Commissioner's lips moved slightly as he whispered to himself: "It was her last will and testament, and I have neglected it so long!"   The big brown cigars of Hamlin and Avery were fireless, but they still gripped them between their teeth and waited, while they marvelled at the absent expression upon the Commissioner's face.   By and by he spoke suddenly and promptly.   "Gentlemen, I have just indorsed the Elias Denny survey for patenting. This office will not regard your location upon a part of it as legal." He paused a moment, and then, extending his hand as those dear old-time ones used to do in debate, he enunciated the spirit of that Ruling that subsequently drove the land-sharks to the wall, and placed the seal of peace and security over the doors of ten thousand homes.   "And, furthermore," he continued, with a clear, soft light upon his face, "it may interest you to know that from this time on this office will consider that when a survey of land made by virtue of a certificate granted by this state to the men who wrested it from the wilderness and the savage -- made in good faith, settled in good faith, and left in good faith to their children or innocent pur- chasers -- when such a survey, although overrunning its complement, shall call for any natural object visible to the eye of man, to that object it shall hold, and be good and valid. And the children of this state shall lie down to sleep at night, and rumours of disturbers of title shall not disquiet them. For," concluded the Commissioner, "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."   In the silence that followed, a laugh floated up from the patent-room below. The man who carried down the Denny file was exhibiting it among the clerks.   "Look here," he said, delightedly, "the old man has forgotten his name. He's written 'Patent to original grantee,' and signed it 'Georgia Summerfield, Comr."'   The speech of the Commissioner rebounded lightly from the impregnable Hamlin and Avery. They smiled, rose gracefully, spoke of the baseball team, and argued feelingly that quite a perceptible breeze had Arisen from the east. They lit fresh fat brown cigars, and drifted courteously away. But later they made another tiger- spring for their quarry in the courts. But the courts, according to reports in the papers, "coolly roasted them" (a remarkable performance, suggestive of liquid-air didoes), and sustained the Commissioner's Ruling.   And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was sound sleep o' nights from the pines to the sage-brush, and from the chaparral to the great brown river of the north.   But I think, and I am sure the Commissioner never thought otherwise, that whether Kampfer was a snuffy old instrument of destiny, or whether the meanders of the Chiquito accidentally platted themselves into that memo- rable sweet profile or not, there was brought about "some- thing good for a whole lot of children," and the result ought to be called "Georgia's Ruling." Lost on Dress Parade 华而不实   Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom. One iron was heating on a small gas stove; the other was being pushed vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be seen later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler's patent leather shoes to the edge of his low-cut vest. So much of the hero's toilet may be intrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed by those whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next view of him shall be as he descends the steps of his lodging-house immaculately and correctly clothed; calm, assured, handsome--in appearance the typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly bored, to inaugurate the pleasures of the evening.   Chandler's honorarium was $18 per week. He was employed in the office of an architect. He was twenty-two years old; he considered architecture to be truly an art; and he honestly believed--though he would not have dared to admit it in New York--that the Flatiron Building was inferior to design to the great cathedral in Milan.   Out of each week's earnings Chandler set aside $1. At the end of each ten weeks with the extra capital thus accumulated, he purchased one gentleman's evening from the bargain counter of stingy old Father Time. He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he took himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showiest, and there dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a few hours, play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a well-considered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label, commensurate tips, a smoke, cab fare and the ordinary etceteras.   This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the society bud comes but one debut; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened; but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among bon vivants under palms in the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the habitues of such a paradise and to be looked upon by them--what is a girl's first dance and short-sleeved tulle compared with this?   Up Broadway Chandler moved with the vespertine dress parade. For this evening he was an exhibit as well as a gazer. For the next sixty-nine evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious table d'hotes, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hall-bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great city of razzle-dazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight made up for many dark ones.   Chandler protracted his walk until the Forties began to intersect the great and glittering primrose way, for the evening was yet young, and when one is of the beau monde only one day in seventy, one loves to protract the pleasure. Eyes bright, sinister, curious, admiring, provocative, alluring were bent upon him, for his garb and air proclaimed him a devotee to the hour of solace and pleasure.   At a certain corner he came to a standstill, proposing to himself the question of turning back toward the showy and fashionable restaurant in which he usually dined on the evenings of his especial luxury. Just then a girl scuddled lightly around the corner, slipped on a patch of icy snow and fell plump upon the sidewalk.   Chandler assisted her to her feet with instant and solicitous courtesy. The girl hobbled to the wall of the building, leaned against it, and thanked him demurely.   "I think my ankle is strained," she said. "It twisted when I fell."   "Does it pain you much?" inquired Chandler.   "Only when I rest my weight upon it. I think I will be able to walk in a minute or two."   "If I can be of any further service," suggested the young man, "I will call a cab, or--"   "Thank you," said the girl, softly but heartily. "I am sure you need not trouble yourself any further. It was so awkward of me. And my shoe heels are horridly common-sense; I can't blame them at all."   Chandler looked at the girl and found her swiftly drawing his interest. She was pretty in a refined way; and her eye was both merry and kind. She was inexpensively clothed in a plain black dress that suggested a sort of uniform such as shop girls wear. Her glossy dark-brown hair showed its coils beneath a cheap hat of black straw whose only ornament was a velvet ribbon and bow. She could have posed as a model for the self-respecting working girl of the best type.   A sudden idea came into the head of the young architect. He would ask this girl to dine with him. Here was the element that his splendid but solitary periodic feasts had lacked. His brief season of elegant luxury would be doubly enjoyable if he could add to it a lady's society. This girl was a lady, he was sure--her manner and speech settled that. And in spite of her extremely plain attire he felt that he would be pleased to sit at table with her.   These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind, and he decided to ask her. It was a breach of etiquette, of course, but oftentimes wage- earning girls waived formalities in matters of this kind. They were generally shrewd judges of men; and thought better of their own judgment than they did of useless conventions. His ten dollars, discreetly expended, would enable the two to dine very well indeed. The dinner would no doubt be a wonderful experience thrown into the dull routine of the girl's life; and her lively appreciation of it would add to his own triumph and pleasure.   "I think," he said to her, with frank gravity, "that your foot needs a longer rest than you suppose. Now, I am going to suggest a way in which you can give it that and at the same time do me a favour. I was on my way to dine all by my lonely self when you came tumbling around the corner. You come with me and we'll have a cozy dinner and a pleasant talk together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very nicely, I am sure."   The girl looked quickly up into Chandler's clear, pleasant countenance. Her eyes twinkled once very brightly, and then she smiled ingenuously.   "But we don't know each other--it wouldn't be right, would it?" she said, doubtfully.   "There is nothing wrong about it," said the young man, candidly. "I'll introduce myself--permit me--Mr. Towers Chandler. After our dinner, which I will try to make as pleasant as possible, I will bid you good-evening, or attend you safely to your door, whichever you prefer."   "But, dear me!" said the girl, with a glance at Chandler's faultless attire. "In this old dress and hat!"   "Never mind that," said Chandler, cheerfully. "I'm sure you look more charming in them than any one we shall see in the most elaborate dinner toilette."   "My ankle does hurt yet," admitted the girl, attempting a limping step. "I think I will accept your invitation, Mr. Chandler. You may call me--Miss Marian."   "Come then, Miss Marian," said the young architect, gaily, but with perfect courtesy; "you will not have far to walk. There is a very respectable and good restaurant in the next block. You will have to lean on my arm--so--and walk slowly. It is lonely dining all by one's self. I'm just a little bit glad that you slipped on the ice."   When the two were established at a well-appointed table, with a promising waiter hovering in attendance, Chandler began to experience the real joy that his regular outing always brought to him.   The restaurant was not so showy or pretentious as the one further down Broadway, which he always preferred, but it was nearly so. The tables were well filled with Prosperous-looking diners, there was a good orchestra, playing softly enough to make conversation a possible pleasure, and the cuisine and service were beyond criticism. His companion, even in her cheap hat and dress, held herself with an air that added distinction to the natural beauty of her face and figure. And it is certain that she looked at Chandler, with his animated but self-possessed manner and his kindling and frank blue eyes, with something not far from admiration in her own charming face.   Then it was that the Madness of Manhattan, the frenzy of Fuss and Feathers, the Bacillus of Brag, the Provincial Plague of Pose seized upon Towers Chandler. He was on Broadway, surrounded by pomp and style, and there were eyes to look at him. On the stage of that comedy he had assumed to play the one-night part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler of means and taste. He was dressed for the part, and all his good angels had not the power to prevent him from acting it.   So he began to prate to Miss Marian of clubs, of teas, of golf and riding and kennels and cotillions and tours abroad and threw out hints of a yacht lying at Larchmont. He could see that she was vastly impressed by this vague talk, so he endorsed his pose by random insinuations concerning great wealth, and mentioned familiarly a few names that are handled reverently by the proletariat. It was Chandler's short little day, and he was wringing from it the best that could be had, as he saw it. And yet once or twice he saw the pure gold of this girl shine through the mist that his egotism had raised between him and all objects.   "This way of living that you speak of," she said, "sounds so futile and purposeless. Haven't you any work to do in the world that might interest you more?"   "My dear Miss Marian," he exclaimed--"work! Think of dressing every day for dinner, of making half a dozen calls in an afternoon--with a policeman at every corner ready to jump into your auto and take you to the station, if you get up any greater speed than a donkey cart's gait. We do-nothings are the hardest workers in the land."   The dinner was concluded, the waiter generously fed, and the two walked out to the corner where they had met. Miss Marian walked very well now; her limp was scarcely noticeable.   "Thank you for a nice time," she said, frankly. "I must run home now. I liked the dinner very much, Mr. Chandler."   He shook hands with her, smiling cordially, and said something about a game of bridge at his club. He watched her for a moment, walking rather rapidly eastward, and then he found a cab to drive him slowly homeward.   In his chilly bedroom Chandler laid away his evening clothes for a sixty-nine days' rest. He went about it thoughtfully.   "That was a stunning girl," he said to himself. "She's all right, too, I'd be sworn, even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I'd told her the truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might--but, confound it! I had to play up to my clothes."   Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams of the tribe of the Manhattans.   The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously out the window.   "Oh, you madcap!" exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered. "When will you quit frightening us this way? It is two hours since you ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie's hat. Mamma has been so alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad, thoughtless Puss."   The elder girl touched a button, and a maid came in a moment.   "Marie, tell mamma that Miss Marian has returned."   "Don't scold, sister. I only ran down to Mme. Theo's to tell her to use mauve insertion instead of pink. My costume and Marie's hat were just what I needed. Every one thought I was a shopgirl, I am sure."   "Dinner is over, dear; you stayed so late."   "I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and sat there until I was better. That is why I was so long."   The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the stream of hurrying vehicles in the avenue. The younger one cuddled down with her head in her sister's lap.   "We will have to marry some day," she said dreamily--" both of us. We have so much money that we will not be allowed to disappoint the public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love, Sis?"   "Go on, you scatterbrain," smiled the other.   "I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and respectful to poor girls, who is handsome and good and does not try to flirt. But I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some work to do in the world. I would not care how poor he was if I could help him build his way up. But, sister dear, the kind of man we always meet--the man who lives an idle life between society and his clubs--I could not love a man like that, even if his eyes were blue and he were ever so kind to poor girls whom he met in the street." 华而不实 托尔斯•钱德勒先生在他那间在过道上隔成的卧室里熨晚礼服。一只熨斗烧在小煤气炉上,另一只熨斗拿在手里,使劲地来回推动,以便压出一道合意的褶子,待会儿从钱德勒先生的漆皮鞋到低领坎肩的下摆就可以看到两条笔挺的裤线了。关于这位主角的修饰,我们所能了解的只以此为限。其余的事情让那些既落魄又讲究气派,不得不想些寒酸的变通办法的人去猜测吧。我们再看到他的时候,他已经打扮得整整齐齐,一丝不苟,安详,大方,潇洒地走下寄宿舍的台阶——正如典型的纽约公子哥儿那样,略带厌烦的神情,出去寻求晚间的消遣。 钱德勒的酬劳是每周十八块钱。他在一位建筑师的事务所里工作。他只有二十二岁;他认为建筑是一门真正的艺术;并且确实相信——虽然不敢在纽约说这句话——钢筋水泥的弗拉特艾荣大厦的设计要比米兰大教堂①的差劲。 『①米兰是意大利北部伦巴第区的首府,十四世纪时建立的哥特式大教堂闻名于世。』钱德勒从每星期的收入中留出一块钱。凑满十星期以后,他用这笔累积起来的额外资金在吝啬的时间老人的廉价物品部购买一个绅士排场的夜晚。他把自己打扮成百万富翁或总经理的样子,到生活十分绚丽辉煌的场所去一次,在那儿吃一顿精致豪华的晚饭。一个人有了十块钱,就可以周周全全地充当几小时富裕的有闲阶级。这笔钱足够应付一顿经过仔细斟酌的饭菜,一瓶象样的酒,适当的小帐,一支雪茄,车费,以及一般杂费。 从每七十个沉闷的夜晚撷取一个愉快的晚上,对钱德勒来说,是终古常新的幸福的源泉。名门闺秀首次进入社交界,一辈子中只有刚成年时的那一次;即使到了白发苍苍的年岁,她们仍旧把第一次的旖旎风光当作唯一值得回忆的往事。可是对于钱德勒来说,每十星期带来的欢乐仍旧同第一次那样强烈、激动和新鲜。同讲究饮食的人一起,坐在棕榈掩映、乐声悠扬的环境里,望着这样一个人间天堂的老主顾们,同时让自己成为他们观看的对象,相比之下,一个少女的初次跳舞和短袖的薄纱衣服又算得上什么呢? 钱德勒走在百老汇路上,仿佛加入了晚间穿正式礼服的阅兵式。今晚,他不仅是旁观者,还是供人观看的人物。在以后的六十九个晚上,他将穿着粗呢裤和毛线衫,在蹩脚饭馆里吃吃客饭,或是在小饭摊上来一客快餐,或是在自己的卧室里啃三明治,喝啤酒。他愿意这样做,因为他是这个夜夜元宵的大城市的真正的儿子。对于他,出一夜风头就足以弥补许多暗淡的日子。 钱德勒放慢了脚步,一直走到第四十几号街开始同那条灯光辉耀的欢乐大街①相衔接的地方。时间还早呢,每七十天只在时髦社会里待上一天的人,总爱延长他的欢乐。各种眼光,明亮的,阴险的,好奇的,欣羡的,挑逗的和迷人的,纷纷向他投来,因为他的衣著和气派说明他是拥护及时行乐的信徒。 『①指百老汇路。』 他在一个拐角上站住,心里盘算着,是不是要折回到他在特别挥霍的夜晚往往要照顾的豪华时髦的饭馆去。那当儿,一个姑娘轻快地跑过拐角,在一块冻硬的雪上滑了一下,咕咚一声摔倒在人行道上。 钱德勒连忙关切而彬彬有礼地扶她起来。姑娘一瘸一拐地向一幢房屋走去,靠在墙上,端庄地向他道了谢。 “我的脚踝大概扭伤了。”她说。“摔倒时蹩了一下。” “疼得厉害吗?”钱德勒问道。 “只在着力的时候才疼。我想过一小会儿就能走路的。” “假如还有什么地方要我帮忙,”年轻人建议道,“比如说,雇一辆车子,或者——” “谢谢你。”姑娘恳切地轻声说。“你千万别再费心啦。只怪我自己不小心。我的鞋子再实用也没有了,不能怪我的鞋跟。” 钱德勒打量了那姑娘一下,发觉自己很快就对她有了好感。她有一种娴雅的美;她的眼光又愉快又和善。她穿一身朴素的黑衣服,象是一般女店员的打扮。她那顶便宜的黑草帽底下露出了光泽的深褐色发鬈,草帽上没有别的装饰,只有一条丝绒带打成的蝴蝶结。她很可以成为自食其力的职业妇女中最优秀的典型。 年轻的建筑师突然起了一个念头。他要请这个姑娘同他一起去吃饭。他的周期性的壮举固然痛快,但缺少一个因素,总令人感到枯寂;如今这个因素就在眼前。倘若能有一位有教养的小姐做伴,他那短暂的豪兴就加倍有劲了。他敢肯定这个姑娘是有教养的——她的态度和谈吐已经说明了这一点。尽管她打扮得十分朴素,钱德勒觉得能跟她一起吃饭还是愉快的。 这些想法飞快地掠过脑际,他决定邀请她。不错,这种做法不很礼貌,但是职业妇女在这类事情上往往不拘泥于形式。在判断男人方面,她们一般都很精明;并且把自己的判断能力看得比那些无聊的习俗更重。他的十块钱,如果用得恰当,也够他们两人美美地吃一顿。毫无疑问,在这个姑娘沉闷刻板的生活中,这顿饭准能成为一个意想不到的经历;她因这顿饭而产生的深切感激也准能增加他的得意和快乐。 “我认为,”他坦率而庄重地对她说,“你的脚需要休息的时间,比你想象的要长些。现在我提出一个两全其美的办法,你既可以让它休息一下,又可以赏我一个脸。你刚才跑过拐角摔跤的时候,我独自一个人正要去吃饭。你同我一起去吧,让我们舒舒服服地吃顿饭,愉快地聊聊。吃完饭后,我想你那扭伤的脚踝就能胜任愉快地带你回家了。” 姑娘飞快地抬起头,对钱德勒清秀和蔼的面孔瞅了一眼。她的眼睛非常明亮地闪了一下,天真地笑了起来。 “可是我们互相并不认识呀——这样不太好吧,是吗?”她迟疑地说。 “没有什么不好。”年轻人直率地说。“请允许我介绍一下自己——托尔斯•钱德勒。我一定尽可能使我们这顿饭吃得满意,之后我就跟你分手告别,或者伴送你回家,你爱怎么办就怎么办。” “哎呀!”姑娘朝钱德勒那一丝不苟的衣服瞟了一眼,说道,“我穿着这套旧衣服,戴着这顶旧帽子去吃饭吗!” “那有什么关系。”钱德勒爽快地说。“我敢说,你就这样打扮,要比我们将看到的任何一个穿最讲究的宴会服的人更有风度。” “我的脚踝确实还疼。”姑娘试了一步,承认说。“我想我愿意接受你的邀请,钱德勒先生。你不妨称呼我——玛丽安小姐。” “那么来吧,玛丽安小姐,”年轻的建筑师兴致勃勃然而非常有礼貌地说,“你不用走很多路。再过一个街口就有一家很不错的饭馆。你恐怕要扶着我的胳臂——对啦——慢慢地走。独自一个人吃饭实在太无聊了。你在冰上滑了一跤,倒有点成全我呢。” 他们两人在一张摆设齐全的桌子旁就座,一个能干的侍者在附近殷勤伺候。这时,钱德勒开始感到了他的定期外出一向会带给他的真正的快乐。 这家饭馆的华丽阔气不及他一向喜欢的,在百老汇路上再过去一点的那一家,但是也相差无几。饭馆里满是衣冠楚楚的顾客,还有一个很好的乐队,演奏着轻柔的音乐,足以使谈话成为乐事;此外,烹调和招待也都是无可指摘的。他的同伴,尽管穿戴得并不讲究,但自有一种风韵,把她容貌和身段的天然妩媚衬托得格外出色。可以肯定地说,在她望着钱德勒那生气勃勃而又沉着的态度,灼热而又坦率的蓝眼睛时,她自己秀丽的脸上也流露出一种近似爱慕的神情。 接着,曼哈顿的疯狂,庸人自扰和沾沾自喜的骚乱,吹牛夸口的杆菌,装模作样的疫病感染了托尔斯•钱德勒。此时此刻,他在百老汇路上,周围一派繁华,何况还有许多眼睛在注视着他。在那个喜剧舞台上,他假想自己当晚的角色是一个时髦的纨袴子弟和家拥巨资,趣味高雅的有闲阶级。他已经穿上这个角色的服装,非演出不可了;所有守护天使都拦不住他了。 于是,他开始向玛丽安小姐夸说俱乐部,茶会,高尔夫球,骑马,狩猎,交谊舞,国外旅游等等,同时还隐隐约约地提起停泊在拉奇蒙特港口的私人游艇。他发现这种没边没际的谈话深深地打动了她,所以又信口诌了一些暗示巨富的话,亲昵地提出几个无产阶级听了就头痛的姓名,来加强演出效果。这是钱德勒的短暂而难得的机会,他抓紧时机,尽量榨取最大限度的乐趣。他的自我陶醉在他与一切事物之间撒下了一张雾网,然而有一两次,他还是看到了这位姑娘的纯真从雾网中透射出来。 “你讲的这种生活方式,”她说,“听来是多么空虚,多么没有意义啊。难道你在世上就没有别的工作可做,使你更感到兴趣吗?” “我亲爱的玛丽安小姐,”他嚷了起来,“工作!你想想看,每天吃饭都要换礼服,一个下午走五、六家串门——每个街角上都有警察注意着你,只要你的汽车开得比驴车快一点儿,他就跳上车来,把你带到警察局去。我们这种闲人是世界上工作得最辛苦的人了。” 晚饭结束,慷慨地打发了侍者,他们两人来到刚才见面的拐角上。这会儿,玛丽安小姐已经走得很好了,简直看不出步履有什么不便。 “谢谢你的款待,”她真诚地说,“现在我得赶快回家了。我非常欣赏这顿饭,钱德勒先生。” 他亲切地微笑着,跟她握手道别,提到他在俱乐部里还有一场桥牌戏。他朝她的背影望了一会儿,飞快地向东走去,然后雇了一辆马车,慢慢回家。 在他那寒冷的卧室里,钱德勒收藏好晚礼服,让它休息六十九天。他沉思地做着这件事。 “一位了不起的姑娘。”他自言自语地说。“即使她为了生活非干活不可,我敢赌咒说,她远是够格的。假如我不那样胡吹乱扯,把真话告诉她,我们也许——可是,去它的!我讲的话总得跟我的衣服相称呀。” 这是在曼哈顿部落的小屋里成长起来的勇士所说的一番话。 那位姑娘同请她吃饭的人分手后,迅疾地穿过市区,来到一座漂亮而宁静的邸宅前面。那座邸宅离东区有两个广场,面临那条财神和其余副神时常出没的马路①。她急急忙忙地进去,跑到楼上的一间屋子里,有一个穿着雅致的便服的年轻妍丽的女人正焦急地望着窗外。 『①指五马路。』 “唷,你这个疯丫头,”她进去时,那个年纪比她稍大的女人嚷道。“你老是这样叫我们担惊受吓,什么时候才能改呀?你穿了那身又破又旧的衣服,戴了玛丽的帽子,到处乱跑,已经有两个小时啦。妈妈吓坏了。她吩咐路易斯坐了汽车去找你。你真是个没有头脑的坏姑娘。” 那个年纪比较大的姑娘按按电钮,立刻来了一个使女。 “玛丽,告诉太太,玛丽安小姐已经回来了。” “别派我的不是了,姊姊。我只不过到西奥夫人的店里去了一次,通知她不要粉红色的嵌饰,要用紫红色的。我那套旧衣服和玛丽的帽子很合式。我相信谁都以为我是个女店员呢。” “亲爱的,晚饭已经开过了,你在外面待得太久啦。” “我知道,我在人行道上滑了一下,扭伤了脚踝。我不能走了,便到一家饭馆坐坐,等到好一些才回来,所以耽搁了那么久。” 两个姑娘坐在窗口前,望着外面灯火辉煌和车水马龙的大街。年轻的那个把头偎在她姊姊的膝上。 “我们两人总有一天都得结婚,”她浮想联翩地说,“我们这样有钱,社会上的人都在看着我们,我们可不能让大家失望。要我告诉你,我会爱上哪一种人吗,姊姊?” “说吧,你这傻丫头。”另一个微笑着说。 “我会爱上一个有着和善的深蓝色眼睛的人,他体贴和尊重穷苦的姑娘,人又漂亮,又和气,又不卖弄风情。但他活在世上总得有志向,有目标,有工作可做,我才能爱他。只要我能帮助他建立一个事业,我不在乎他多么穷。可是,亲爱的姊姊,我们老是碰到那种人——那种在交际界和俱乐部里庸庸碌碌地混日子的人——我可不能爱上那种人,即使他的眼睛是蓝的,即使他对在街上碰到的穷姑娘是那么和气。” One Dollar's Worth   The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail:   JUDGE:   When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other hard things, you called me a rattlesnake. Maybe I am one -- anyhow, you hear me rattling now. One year after I got to the pen, my daughter died of -- well, they said it was poverty and the disgrace together. You've got a daughter, Judge, and I'm going to make you know how it feels to lose one. And I'm going to bite that district attorney that spoke against me. I'm free now, and I guess I've turned to rattlesnake all right. I feel like one. I don't say much, but this is my rattle. Look out when I strike.   Yours respectfully,   RATTLESNAKE.   Judge Derwent threw the letter carelessly aside. It was nothing new to receive such epistles from desperate men whom he had been called upon to judge. He felt no alarm. Later on he showed the letter to Littlefield, the young district attorney, for Littlefield's name was included in the threat, and the judge was punctilious in matters between himself and his fellow men.   Littlefield honoured the rattle of the writer, as far as it concerned himself, with a smile of contempt; but he frowned a little over the reference to the Judge's daughter, for he and Nancy Derwent were to be married in the fall.   Littlefield went to the clerk of the court and looked over the records with him. They decided that the letter might have been sent by Mexico Sam, a half-breed border desperado who had been imprisoned for manslaughter four years before. Then official duties crowded the mat- ter from his mind, and the rattle of the revengeful serpent was forgotten.   Court was in session at Brownsville. Most of the cases to be tried were charges of smuggling, counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office in the court-house. The deputy and a reputable druggist were prepared to swear that Ortiz paid for a bottle of medicine with it. The coin was a poor counterfeit, soft, dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the day before the morning on which the docket would reach the case of Ortiz, and the district attorney was preparing himself for trial.   "Not much need of having in high-priced experts to prove the coin's queer, is there, Kil?" smiled Littlefield, as he thumped the dollar down upon the table, where it fell with no more ring than would have come from a lump of putty.   "I guess the Greaser's as good as behind the bars," said the deputy, easing up his holsters. "You've got him dead. If it had been just one time, these Mexicans can't tell good money from bad; but this little yaller rascal belongs to a gang of counterfeiters, I know. This is the first time I've been able to catch him doing the trick. He's got a girl down there in them Mexican jacals on the river bank. I seen her one day when I was watching him. She's as pretty as a red heifer in a flower bed."   Littlefield shoved the counterfeit dollar into his pocket, and slipped his memoranda of the case into an envelope. Just then a bright, winsome face, as frank and jolly as a boy's, appeared in the doorway, and in walked Nancy Derwent.   "Oh, Bob, didn't court adjourn at twelve to-day until to-morrow?" she asked of Littlefield.   "It did," said the district attorney, "and I'm very glad of it. I've got a lot of rulings to look up, and -- "   "Now, that's just like you. I wonder you and father don't turn to law books or rulings or something! I want you to take me out plover-shooting this afternoon. Long Prairie is just alive with them. Don't say no, please! I want to try my new twelve-bore hammerless. I've sent to the livery stable to engage Fly and Bess for the buckboard; they stand fire so nicely. I was sure you would go."   They were to be married in the fall. The glamour was at its height. The plovers won the day -- or, rather, the afternoon -- over the calf-bound authorities. Littlefield began to put his papers away.   There was a knock at the door. Kilpatrick answered it. A beautiful, dark-eyed girl with a skin tinged with the faintest lemon colour walked into the room. A black shawl was thrown over her head and wound once around her neck.   She began to talk in Spanish, a voluble, mournful stream of melancholy music. Littlefield did not under- stand Spanish. The deputy did, and he translated her talk by portions, at intervals holding up his hand to check the flow of her words.   "She came to see you, Mr. Littlefield. Her name's Joya Trevi?as. She wants to see you about -- well, she's mixed up with that Rafael Ortiz. She's his -- she's his girl. She says he's innocent. She says she made the money and got him to pass it. Don't you believe her, Mr. Little-field. That's the way with these Mexi- can girls; they'll lie, steal, or kill for a fellow when they get stuck on him. Never trust a woman that's in love!"   "Mr. Kilpatrick!"   Nancy Derwent's indignant exclamation caused the deputy to flounder for a moment in attempting to explain that he had misquoted his own sentiments, and then he event on with the translation:   "She says she's willing to take his place in the jail if you'll let him out. She says she was down sick with the fever, and the doctor said she'd die if she didn't have medicine. That's why he passed the lead dollar on the drug store. She says it saved her life. This Rafal. seems to be her honey, all right; there's a lot of stuff in her talk about love and such things that you don't want to hear."   It was an old story to the district attorney.   "Tell her," said he, "that I can do nothing. The case comes up in the morning, and he will have to make his fight before the court."   Nancy Derwent was not so hardened. She was look- ing with sympathetic interest at Joya Trevi?as and at Littlefield alternately. The deputy repeated the dis- trict attorney's words to the girl. She spoke a sentence or two in a low voice, pulled her shawl closely about her face, and left the room.   "What did she say then?" asked the district attorney.   "Nothing special," said the deputy. "She said: 'If the life of the one' -- let's see how it went -- 'Si la vida de ella a quien tu amas -- if the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.'"   Kilpatrick strolled out through the corridor in the direction of the marshal's office.   "Can't you do anything for them, Bob?" asked Nancy. "It's such a little thing -- just one counterfeit dollar -- to ruin the happiness of two lives! She was in danger of death, and he did it to save her. Doesn't the law know the feeling of pity?"   "It hasn't a place in jurisprudence, Nan," said Little- field, "especially in re the district attorney's duty. I'll promise you that the prosecution will not be vindictive; but the man is as good as convicted when the case is called. Witnesses will swear to his passing the bad dollar which I have in my pocket at this moment as 'Exhibit A.' There are no Mexicans on the jury, and it will vote Mr. Greaser guilty without leaving the box."   The plover-shooting was fine that afternoon, and in the excitement of the sport the case of Rafael and the grief of Joya Trevi?as was forgotten. The district attor- ney and Nancy Derwent drove out from the town three miles along a smooth, grassy road, and then struck across a rolling prairie toward a heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond this creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent, as if he had come up behind them.   "I've seen that fellow somewhere," said Littlefield, who had a memory for faces, "but I can't exactly place him. Some ranchman, I suppose, taking a short cut home."   They spent an hour on Long Prairie, shooting from the buckboard. Nancy Derwent, an active, outdoor Western girl, was pleased with her twelve-bore. She had bagged within two brace of her companion's score.   They started homeward at a gentle trot. When within a hundred yards of Piedra Creek a man rode out of the timber directly toward them.   "It looks like the man we saw coming over," remarked Miss Derwent.   As the distance between them lessened, the district attorney suddenly pulled up his team sharply, with his eyes fixed upon the advancing horseman. That individ- ual had drawn a Winchester from its scabbard on his saddle and thrown it over his arm.   "Now I know you, Mexico Sam!" muttered Littlefield to himself. "It was you who shook your rattles in that gentle epistle."   Mexico Sam did not leave things long in doubt. He had a nice eye in all matters relating to firearms, so when he was within good rifle range, but outside of danger from No. 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.   The first shot cracked the back of the seat within the two-inch space between the shoulders of Littlefield and Miss Derwent. The next went through the dashboard and Littlefield's trouser leg.   The district attorney hustled Nancy out of the buck- board to the ground. She was a little pale, but asked no questions. She had the frontier instinct that accepts conditions in an emergency without superfluous argument. They kept their guns in hand, and Littlefield hastily gathered some handfuls of cartridges from the pasteboard box on the seat and crowded them into his pockets   "Keep behind the horses, Nan," he commanded. "That fellow is a ruffian I sent to prison once. He's trying to get even. He knows our shot won't hurt him at that distance."   "All right, Bob," said Nancy steadily. "I'm not afraid. But you come close, too. Whoa, Bess; stand still, now!"   She stroked Bess's mane. Littlefield stood with his gun ready, praying that the desperado would come within range.   But Mexico Sam was playing his vendetta along safe lines. He was a bird of different feather from the plover. His accurate eye drew an imaginary line of circumference around the area of danger from bird-shot, and upon this line lie rode. His horse wheeled to the right, and as his victims rounded to the safe side of their equine breast- work he sent a ball through the district attorney's hat. Once he miscalculated in making a détour, and over- stepped Ms margin. Littlefield's gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked his head to the harmless patter of the shot. A few of them stung his horse, which pranced promptly back to the safety line.   The desperado fired again. A little cry came from Nancy Derwent. Littlefield whirled, with blazing eyes, and saw the blood trickling down her cheek.   "I'm not hurt, Bob -- only a splinter struck me. I think he hit one of the wheel-spokes."   "Lord!" groaned Littlefield. "If I only had a charge of buckshot!"   The ruffian got his horse still, and took careful aim. Fly gave a snort and fell in the harness, struck in the neck. Bess, now disabused of the idea that plover were being fired at, broke her traces and galloped wildly away -- Mexican Sam sent a ball neatly through the fulness of Nancy Derwent's shooting jacket.   "Lie down -- lie down!" snapped Littlefield. "close to the horse -- flat on the ground -- so." He almost threw her upon the grass against the back of the recum- bent Fly. Oddly enough, at that moment the words of the Mexican girl returned to his mind:   "If the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remem- ber Rafael Ortiz."   Littlefield uttered an exclamation.   "Open fire on him, Nan, across the horse's back. Fire as fast as you can! You can't hurt him, but keep him dodging shot for one minute while I try to work a little scheme."   Nancy gave a quick glance at Littlefield, and saw him take out his pocket-knife and open it. Then she turned her face to obey orders, keeping up a rapid fire at the enemy.   Mexico Sam waited patiently until this innocuous fusillade ceased. He had plenty of time, and he did not care to risk the chance of a bird-shot in his eye when could be avoided by a little caution. He pulled his heavy Stetson low down over his face until the shots ceased.   Then he drew a little nearer, and fired with careful aim at what he could see of his victims above the fallen horse. Neither of them moved. He urged his horse a few steps nearer. He saw the district attorney rise to one knee and deliberately level his shotgun. He pulled his hat down and awaited the harmless rattle of the tiny pellets.   The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned limp all over, and slowly fell from his horse -- a dead rattlesnake.   At ten o'clock the next morning court opened, and the case of the United States versus Rafael Ortiz was called. The district attorney, with his arm in a sling, rose and addressed the court.   "May it please your honour," he said, "I desire to enter a nolle pros. in this case. Even though the defend- ant should be guilty, there is not sufficient evidence in the hands of the government to secure a conviction. The piece of counterfeit coin upon the identity of which the case was built is not now available as evidence. I ask, therefore, that the case be stricken off."   At the noon recess Kilpatrick strolled into the district attorney's office.   "I've just been down to take a squint at old Mexico Sam," said the deputy. "They've got him laid out. Old Mexico was a tough outfit, I reckon. The boys was wonderin' down there what you shot him with. Some said it must have been nails. I never see a gun carry anything to make holes like he had."   "I shot him," said the district attorney, "with Exhibit A of your counterfeiting case. Lucky thing for me -- and somebody else -- that it was as bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil, can't you go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives? Miss Derwent wants to know." Past One At Rodney's   Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet and Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you may drag your man along a dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch; but in the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutios you must observe the niceties of deportment to the wink of any eyelash and to an inch of elbow room at the bar when its patrons include foes of your house and kin.   So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted into Dutch Mike's for a stein of beer, and came upon a bunch of Montagus making merry with the suds, he began to observe the strictest parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with his thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the mirror supplied the cognizance of the enemy's movements that his indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; experience whispered to him that the finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering steins at Dutch Mike's that night. Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio, companion of his perambulations. Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry Hill Gang and two fo the Dry Dock Gang, minding their P's and Q's so solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek safety whenever the ominous politeness of the rival associations congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel.   But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry Docks. We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom.   Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of gunfire alone. Dutch Mike crawled from his haven and ran into the street crying for the watch instead of for a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy.   The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Montagu supported by three distrait and reticent followers of the House. Faithful to the ethics of the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came. There was no Capulet to be seen.   "Raus mit der interrogatories," said Buck Malone to the officer. "Sure I know who done it. I always manages to get a bird's eye view of any guy that comes up an' makes a show case for a hardware store out of me. No. I'm not telling you his name. I'll settle with um meself. Wow - ouch! Easy, boys! Yes, I'll attend to his case meself. I'm not making any complaint."   At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East Side dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. "He'll maybe not croak," said Brick; "and he won't tell, of course. But Dutch Mike did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It's unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan's in Europe for a week's end with Kings. He'll be back on the Kaiser Williams next Friday. You'll have to duck out of sight till then. Tim'll fix it up all right for us when he comes back."   This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney's one night and there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance for the first time in his precarious career.   Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and Princes and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was unsafe for Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the slow paddle wheels of the Kaiser Wilhelm.   It was on Thursday evening that Cork's seclusion became intolerable to him. Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the cool touch of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-rail in the hollow of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges of friendship and repartee along and across the shining bars. But he must avoid the district where he was known. The cops were looking for him everywhere, for news was scarce, and the newspapers were harping again on the failure of the police to suppress the gangs. If they got him before Corrigan came back, the big white finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then. But Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would be small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass pleasures that represented life to him.   At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street looking up at the name "Rooney's," picked out by incandescent lights against a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a tough "hang-out"; with its frequenters and its locality he was unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the caf'e.   Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled with Rooney's guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a song - songs full of "Mr. Jonsons" and "babes" and "coons" - historical word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.   For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives, seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He has Wellington's nose, Dante's chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois, the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett's foot work, and the pose of an eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now, what is there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother? It is more respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are melancholy i' the mouth - drink and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the waiter swabs the suds from under your sticky glass. There is an answer. Transmigration! The soul of Sir Walter Raleigh has traveled from beneath his slashed doublet to a kindred home under Rooney's visible plaid waistcoat. Rooney's is twenty years ahead of the times. Rooney has removed the embargo. Rooney has spread his cloak upon the soggy crossing of public opinion, and any Elizabeth who treads upon it is as much a queen as another. Attend to the revelation of the secret. In Rooney's ladies may smoke!   McManus sat down at a vacant table. He paid for the glass of beer that he ordered, tilted his narrow-brimmed derby to the back of his brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his taste. The sham gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious, joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding silence, the presence of well-clothed and frank-eyed beneficiaries of Rooney's removal of the restrictions laid upon the weed, the familiar blended odors of soaked lemon peel, flat beer, and peau d'Espagne - all these were manna to Cork McManus, hungry for his week in the desert of the Capulet's high rear room.   A girl, alone, entered Rooney's, glanced around with leisurely swiftness, and sat opposite McManus at his table. Her eyes rested upon him for two seconds in the look with which woman reconnoitres all men whom she for the first time confronts. In that space of time she will decide upon one of two things - either to scream for the police, or that she may marry him later on.   Her brief inspection concluded, the girl laid on the table a worn red morocco shopping bag with the inevitable top-gallant sail of frayed lace handkerchief flying from a corner of it. After she had ordered a small beer from the immediate waiter she took from her bag a box of cigarettes and lighted one with slightly exaggerated ease of manner. Then she looked again in the eyes of Cork McManus and smiled.   Instantly the doom of each was sealed.   The unqualified desire of a man to buy clothes and build fires for a woman for a whole lifetime at first sight of her is not uncommon among that humble portion of humanity that does not care for Bradstreet or coats-of-arms or Shaw's plays. Love at first sight has occurred a time or two in high life; but, as a rule, the extempore mania is to be found among unsophisticated cratures such as the dove, the blue-tailed dingbat, and the ten-dollar-a-week clerk. Poets, subscribers to all fiction magazines, and schatchens, take notice.   With the exchange of the mysterious magnetic current came to each of them the instant desire to lie, pretend, dazzle and deceive, which is the worst thing about the hypocritical disorder known as love.   "Have another beer?" suggested Cork. In his circle the phrase was considered to be a card, accompanied by a letter of introduction and references.   "No, thanks," said the girl, raising her eyebrows and choosing her conventional words carefully. "I - merely dropped in for - a slight refreshment." The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require explanation. "My aunt is a Russian lady," she concluded, "and we often have a post perannual cigarette after dinner at home."   "Cheese it!" said Cork, whom society airs oppressed. "Your fingers are as yellow as mine."   "Say," said the girl, blazing upon him with low-voiced indignation, "what do you think I am? Say, who do you think you are talking to? What?"   She was pretty to look at. Her eyes were big, brown, intrepid and bright. Uner her flat sailor hat, planted jauntily on one side, her crinkly, tawny hair parted and was drawn back. low and massy, in a thick, pendant knot behind. The roundness of girlhood still lingered in her chin and neck, but her cheeks and fingers were thinning slightly. She looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion, and sullen wonder. Her smart, short tan coat was soiled and expensive. Two inches below her black dress dropped the lowest flounce of a heliotrope silk underskirt.   "Beg your pardon," said Cork, looking at her admiringly. "I didn't mean anything. Sure, it's no harm to smoke, Maudy."   "Rooney's," said the girl, softened at once by his amends, "is the only place I know where a lady can smoke. Maybe it ain't a nice habit, but aunty lets us at home. And my name ain't Maudy, if you please; it's Ruby Delamere."   "That's a swell handle," said Cork approvingly. "Mine's McManus - Cor - er - Eddie McManus."   "Oh, you can't help that," laughed Ruby. "Don't apologize."   Cork looked seriously at the big clock on Rooney's wall. The girl's ubiquitous eyes took in the movement.   "I know it's late," she said, reaching for her bag; "but you know how you want a smoke when you want one. Ain't Rooney's all right? I never saw anything wrong here. This is twice I've been in. I work in a bookbindery on Third Avenue. A lot of us girls have been working overtime three nights a week. They won't let you smoke there, of course. I just dropped in here on my way home for a puff. Ain't it all right in here? If it ain't, I won't come any more."   "It's a little bit late for you to be out alone anywhere," said Cork. "I'm not wise to this particular joint; but anyhow you don't want to have your picture taken in it for a present to your Sunday School teacher. Have one more beer, and then say I take you home."   "But I don't know you," said the girl, with fine scrupulosity. "I don't accept the company of gentlemen I ain't acquainted with. My aunt never would allow that."   "Why," said Cork McManus, pulling his ear, "I'm the latest thing in suitings with side vents and bell skirt when it comes to escortin' a lady. You bet you'll find me all right, Ruby. And I'll give you a tip as to who I am. My governor is one of the hottest cross-buns of the Wall Street push. Morgan's cab horse casts a shoe every time the old man sticks his head out the window. Me! Well, I'm in trainin' down the Street. The old man's goin' to put a seat on the Stock Exchange in my stockin' my next birthday. But it all sounds like a lemon to me. What I like is golf and yachtin' and - er - well, say a corkin' fast ten-round bout between welter-weights with walkin' gloves."   "I guess you can walk to the door with me," said the girl hesitatingly, but with a certain pleased flutter. "Still I never heard anything extra good about Wall Street brokers, or sport who go to prize fights, either. Ain't you got any other recommendations?"   "I think you're the swellest looker I've had my lamps on in little old New York," said Cork impressively.   "That'll be about enough of that, now. Ain't you the kidder!" She modified her chiding words by a deep, long, beaming, smile-embellished look at her cavalier. "We'll drink our beer before we go, ha?"   A waiter sang. The tobacco smoke grew denser, drifting and rising in spirals, waves, tilted layers, cumulus clouds, cataracts and suspended fogs like some fifth element created from the ribs of the ancient four. Laughter and chat grew louder, stimulated by Rooney's liquids and Rooney's gallant hospitality to Lady Nicotine.   One o'clock struck. Down-stairs there was a sound of closing and locking doors. Frank pulled down the green shades of the front windows carefully. Rooney went below in the dark hall and stood at the front door, his cigarette cached in the hollow of his hand. Thenceforth whoever might seek admittance must present a countenance familiar to Rooney's hawk's eye - the countenance of a true sport.   Cork McManus and the bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret punch struck a knockout blow at law and order; the harmless and genial company became outlaws, defying authority and rule. For after the stroke of one in such places as Rooney's, where neither bed nor board is to be had, drink may not be set before the thirsty of the city of the four million. It is the law.   "Say," said Cork McManus, almost covering the table with his eloquent chest and elbows, "was that dead straight about you workin' in the bookbindery and livin' at home - and just happenin' in here - and - and all that spiel you gave me?"   "Sure it was," answered the girl with spirit. "Why, what do you think? Do you suppose I'd lie to you? Go down to the shop and ask 'em. I handed it to you on the level."   "On the dead level?" said Cork. "That's the way I want it; because -"   "Because what?"   "I throw up my hands," said Cork. "You've got me goin'. You're the girl I've been lookin' for. Will you keep company with me, Ruby?"   "Would you like me to - Eddie?"   "Surest thing. But I wanted a straight story about - about yourself, you know. When a fellow had a girl - a steady girl - she's got to be all right, you know. She's got to be straight goods."   "You'll find I'll be straight goods, Eddie."   "Of course you will. I believe what you told me. But you can't blame me for wantin' to find out. You don't see many girls smokin' cigarettes in places like Rooney's after midnight that are like you."   The girl flushed a little and lowered her eyes. "I see that now," she said meekly. "I didn't know how bad it looked. But I won't do it any more. And I'll go straight home every night and stay there. And I'll give up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie - I'll cut 'em out from this minute on."   Cork's air became judicial, proprietary, condemnatory, yet sympathetic. "A lady can smoke," he decided, slowly, "at times and places . Why? Because it's bein' a lady that helps her pull it off."   "I'm going to quit. There's nothing to it," said the girl. She flicked the stub of her cigarette to the floor.   "At times and places," repeated Cork. "When I call round for you of evenin's we'll hunt out a dark bench in Stuyvesant Square and have a puff or two. But no more Rooney's at one o'clock - see?"   "Eddie, do you really like me?" The girl searchd his hard but frank features eagerly with anxious eyes.   "On the dead level."   "When are you coming to see me - where I live?"   "Thursday - day after to-morrow evenin'. That suit you?"   "Fine. I'll be ready for you. Come about seven. Walk to the door with me to-night and I'll show you where I live. Don't forget, now. And don't you go to see any other girls before then, mister! I bet you will, though."   "On the dead level," said Cork, "you make 'em all look like rag-dolls to me. Honest, you do. I know when I'm suited. On the dead level, I do."   Against the front door down-stairs repeated heavy blows were delivered. The loud crashes resounded in the room above. Only a trip-hammer or a policeman's foot could have been the author of those sounds. Rooney jumped like a bullfrog to a corner of the room, turned off the electric lights and hurried swiftly below. The room was left utterly dark except for the winking red glow of cigars and cigarettes. A second volley of crashes came up from the assaulted door. A little, rustling, murmuring panic moved among the besieged guests. Frank, cool, smooth, reassuring, could be seen in the rosy glow of the burning tobacco, going from table to table.   "All keep still!" was his caution. "Don't talk or make any noise! Everything will be all right. Now, don't feel the slightest alarm. We'll take care of you all."   Ruby felt across the table until Cork's firm hand closed upon hers. "Are you afraid, Eddie?" she whispered. "Are you afraid you'll get a free ride?"   "Nothin' doin' in the teeth-chatterin' line," said Cork. "I guess Rooney's been slow with his envelope. Don't you worry, girly; I'll look out for you all right."   Yet Mr. McManus's ease was only skin-and muscle-deep. With the police looking everywhere for Buck Malone's assailant, and with Corrigan still on the ocean wave, he felt that to be caught in a police raid would mean an ended career for him. He wished he had remained in the high rear room of the true Capulet reading the pink extras.   Rooney seemed to have opened the front door below and engaged the police in conference in the dark hall. The wordless low growl of their voices came up the stairway. Frank made a wireless news station of himself at the upper door. Suddenly he closed the door, hurried to the extreme rear of the room and lighted a dim gas jet.   "This way, everybody!" he called sharply. "In a hurry; but no noise, please!"   The guests crowded in confusion to the rear. Rooney's lieutenant swung open a panel in the wall, overlooking the back yard, revealing a ladder already placed for the escape.   "Down and out, everybody!" he commanded. "Ladies first! Less talking, please! Don't crowd! There's no danger."   Among the last, Cork and Ruby waited their turn at the open panel. Suddenly she swept him aside and clung to his arm fiercely.   "Before we go out," she whispered in his ear - "before anything happens, tell me again, Eddie, do you l - do you really like me?"   "On the dead level," said Cork, holding her close with one arm, "when it comes to you, I'm all in."   When they turned they found they were lost and in darkness. The last of the fleeing customers had descended. Half way across the yard they bore the ladder, stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place it against adjoining low building over the roof of which their only route to safety.   "We may as well sit down," said Cork grimly. "Maybe Rooney will stand the cops off, anyhow."   They sat at a table; and their hands came together again.   A number of men then entered the dark room, feeling their way about. One of them, Rooney himself, found the switch and turned on the electric light. The other man was a cop of the old regime - a big cop, a thick cop, a fuming, abrupt cop - not a pretty cop. He went up to the pair at the table and sneered familiarly at the girl.   "What are youse doin' in here?" he asked.   "Dropped in for a smoke," said Cork mildly.   "Had any drinks?"   "Not later than one o'clock."   "Get out - quick!" ordered the cop. Then, "Sit down!" he countermanded.   He took off Cork's hat roughly and scrutinized him shrewdly. "Your name's McManus."   "Bad guess," said Cork. "It's Peterson."   "Cork McManus, or something like that," said the cop. "You put a knife into a man in Dutch Mike's saloon a week ago."   "Aw, forget it!" said Cork, who perceived a shade of doubt in the officer's tones. "You've got my mug mixed with somebody else's."   "Have I? Well, you'll come to the station with me, anyhow, and be looked over. The description fits you all right." The cop twisted his fingers under Cork's collar. "Come on!" he ordered roughly.   Cork glanced at Ruby. She was pale, and her thin nostrils quivered. Her quick eye danced from one man's face to the other as they spoke or moved. What hard luck! Cork was thinking - Corrigan on the briny; and Ruby met and lost almost within an hour! Somebody at the police station would recognize him, without a doubt. Hard luck!   But suddenly the girl sprang up and hurled herself with both arms extended against the cop. His hold on Cork's collar was loosened and he stumbled back two or three paces.   "Don't go so fast, Maguire!" she cried in shrill fury. "Keep your hands off my man! You know me, and you know I'm givin' you good advice. Don't you touch him again! He's not the guy you are lookin' for - I'll stand for that."   "See here, Fanny," said the Cop, red and angry, "I'll take you, too, if you don't look out! How do you know this ain't the man I want? What are you doing in here with him?"   "How do I know?" said the girl, flaming red and white by turns. "Because I've known him a year. He's mine. Oughtn't I to know? And what am I doin' here with him? That's easy."   She stooped low and reached down somewhere into a swirl of flirted draperies, heliotrope and black. An elastic snapped, she threw on the table toward Cork a folded wad of bills. The money slowly straightened itself with little leisurely jerks.   "Take that, Jimmy, and let's go," said the girl. "I'm declarin' the usual dividends, Maguire," she said to the officer. "You had your usual five-dollar graft at the usual corner at ten."   "A lie!" said the cop, turning purple. "You go on my beat again and I'll arrest you every time I see you."   "No, you won't," said the girl. "And I'll tell you why. Witnesses saw me give you the money to-night, and last week, too. I've been getting fixed for you."   Cork put the wad of money carefuly into his pocket, and said: "Come on, Fanny; let's have some chop suey before we go home."   "Clear out, quick, both of you, or I'll -"   The cop's bluster trailed away into inconsequentiality.   At the corner of the street the two halted. Cork handed back the money without a word. The girl took it and slipped it slowly into her hand-bag. Her expression was the same she had worn when she entered Rooney's that night - she looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion and sullen wonder.   "I guess I might as well say good-bye here," she said dully. "You won't want to see me again, of course. Will you - shake hands - Mr. McManus."   "I mightn't have got wise if you hadn't give the snap away," said Cork. "Why did you do it?"   "You'd have been pinched if I hadn't. That's why. Ain't that reason enough?" Then she began to cry. "Honest, Eddie, I was goin' to be the best girl in the world. I hated to be what I am; I hated men; I was ready almost to die when I saw you. And you seemed different from everybody else. And when I found you liked me, too, why, I thought I'd make you believe I was good, and I was goin' to be good. When you asked to come to my house and see me, why, I'd have died rather than do anything wrong after that. But what's the use of talking about it? I'll say good-by, if you will, Mr. McManus."   Cork was pulling at his ear. "I knifed Malone," said he. "I was the one the cop wanted."   "Oh, that's all right," said the girl listlessly. "It didn't make any difference about that."   "That was all hot air about Wall Street. I don't do nothin' but hang out with a tough gang on the East Side."   "That was all right, too," repeated the girl. "It didn't make any difference."   Cork straightened himself, and pulled his hat down low. "I could get a job at O'Brien's," he said aloud, but to himself.   "Good-by," said the girl.   "Come on," said Cork, taking her arm. "I know a place."   Two blocks away he turned with her up the steps of a red brick house facing a little park.   "What house is this?" she asked, drawing back. "Why are you going in there?"   A street lamp shone brightly in front. There was a brass nameplate at one side of the closed front doors. Cork drew her firmly up the steps. "Read that," said he.   She looked at the name on the plate, and gave a cry between a moan and a scream. "No, no, no, Eddie! Oh, my God, no! I won't let you do that - not now! Let me go! You shan't do that! You can't - you mus'n't! Not after you know! No, no! Come away quick! Oh, my God! Please, Eddie, come!"   Half fainting, she reeled, and was caught in the bend of his arm. Cork's right hand felt for the electric button and pressed it long.   Another cop - how quickly they scent trouble when trouble is on the wing! - came along, saw them, and ran up the steps. "Here! What are you doing with that girl?" he called gruffly.   "She'll be all right in a minute," said Cork. "It's a straight deal."   "Reverend Jeremiah Jones," read the cop from the door-plate with true detective cunning.   "Correct," said Cork. "On the dead level, we're goin' to get married." The Rubber Plant's Story   We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable kingdom and the decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third Avenue theatre. I haven't looked up our family tree, but I believe we were raised by grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d'hote stalk of asparagus. You take a white bulldog with a Bourke Cockran air of independence about him and a rubber plant and there you have the fauna and flora of a flat. What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber plant is to the dweller in flats and furnished rooms. We get moved from one place to another so quickly that the only way we can get our picture taken is with a kinetoscope. We are the vagrant vine and the flitting fig tree. You know the proverb: "Where the rubber plant sits in the window the moving van draws up to the door."   We are the city equivalent to the woodbine and the honeysuckle. No other vegetable except the Pittsburg stogie can withstand as much handling as we can. When the family to which we belong moves into a flat they set us in the front window and we become lares and penates, fly-paper and the peripatetic emblem of "Home Sweet Home." We aren't as green as we look. I guess we are about what you would call the soubrettes of the conservatory. You try sitting in the front window of a $40 flat in Manhattan and looking out into the street all day, and back into the flat at night, and see whether you get wise or not--hey? Talk about the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden--say! suppose there had been a rubber plant there when Eve--but I was going to tell you a story.   The first thing I can remember I had only three leaves and belonged to a member of the pony ballet. I was kept in a sunny window, and was generally watered with seltzer and lemon. I had plenty of fun in those days. I got cross-eyed trying to watch the numbers of the automobiles in the street and the dates on the labels inside at the same time.   Well, then the angel that was molting for the musical comedy lost his last feather and the company broke up. The ponies trotted away and I was left in the window ownerless. The janitor gave me to a refined comedy team on the eighth floor, and in six weeks I had been set in the window of five different flats I took on experience and put out two more leaves.   Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy team--did you ever see her cross both feet back of her neck?--gave me to a friend of hers who had made an unfortunate marriage with a man in a store. Consequently I was placed in the window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two flights up, gas extra after ten o'clock at night. Two of my leaves withered off here. Also, I was moved from one room to another so many times that I got to liking the odor of the pipes the expressmen smoked.   I don't think I ever had so dull a time as I did with this lady. There was never anything amusing going on inside--she was devoted to her husband, and, besides leaning out the window and flirting with the iceman, she never did a thing toward breaking the monotony.   When the couple broke up they left me with the rest of their goods at a second-hand store. I was put out in front for sale along with the jobbiest lot you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain. Think of this little cornucopia of wonders, all for $1.89: Henry James's works, six talking machine records, one pair of tennis shoes, two bottles of horse radish, and a rubber plant--that was me!   One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to look at me. She had dark hair and eyes, and she looked slim, and sad around the mouth.   "Oh, oh!" she says to herself. "I never thought to see one up here."   She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one of my leaves and fingers over some small silver in it. Old Koen, always on the lockout, is ready, rubbing his hands. This girl proceeds to turn down Mr. James and the other commodities. Rubber plants or nothing is the burden of her song. And at last Koen and she come together at 39 cents, and away she goes with me in her arms.   She was a nice girl, but not my style. Too quiet and sober looking. Thinks I to myself: "I'll just about land on the fire-escape of a tenement, six stories up. And I'll spend the next six months looking at clothes on the line."   But she carried me to a nice little room only three flights up in quite a decent street. And she put me in the window, of course. And then she went to work and cooked dinner for herself. And what do you suppose she had? Bread and tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else. Not a single lobster, nor so much as one bottle of champagne. The Carruthers comedy team had both every evening, except now and then when they took a notion for pig's knuckle and kraut.   After she had finished her dinner my new owner came to the window and leaned down close to my leaves and cried softly to herself for a while. It made me feel funny. I never knew anybody to cry that way over a rubber plant before. Of course, I've seen a few of 'em turn on the tears for what they could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying just for the pure enjoyment of it. She touched my leaves like she loved 'em, and she bent down her head and kissed each one of 'em. I guess I'm about the toughest specimen of a peripatetic orchid on earth, but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer. Home never was like that to me before. Generally I used to get chewed by poodles and have shirt-waists hung on me to dry, and get watered with coffee grounds and peroxide of hydrogen.   This girl had a piano in the room, and she used to disturb it with both hands while she made noises with her mouth for hours at a time. I suppose she was practising vocal music.   One day she seemed very much excited and kept looking at the clock. At eleven somebody knocked and she let in a stout, dark man with towsled black hair. He sat down at once at the piano and played while she sang for him. When she finished she laid one hand on her bosom and looked at him. He shook his head, and she leaned against the piano. "Two years already," she said, speaking slowly--"do you think in two more--or even longer?"   The man shook his head again. "You waste your time," he said, roughly I thought. "The voice is not there." And then he looked at her in a peculiar way. "But the voice is not everything," he went on. "You have looks. I can place you, as I told you if--"   The girl pointed to the door without saying anything, and the dark man left the room. And then she came over and cried around me again. It's a good thing I had enough rubber in me to be water-proof.   About that time somebody else knocked at the door. "Thank goodness," I said to myself. "Here's a chance to get the water-works turned off. I hope it's somebody that's game enough to stand a bird and a bottle to liven things up a little." Tell you the truth, this little girl made me tired. A rubber plant likes to see a little sport now and then. I don't suppose there's another green thing in New York that sees as much of gay life unless it's the chartreuse or the sprigs of parsley around the dish.   When the girl opens the door in steps a young chap in a traveling cap and picks her up in his arms, and she sings out "Oh, Dick!" and stays there long enough to--well, you've been a rubber plant too, sometimes, I suppose.   "Good thing!" says I to myself. "This is livelier than scales and weeping. Now there'll be something doing."   "You've got to go back with me," says the young man. "I've come two thousand miles for you. Aren't you tired of it yet. Bess? You've kept all of us waiting so long. Haven't you found out yet what is best?"   "The bubble burst only to-day," says the girl. "Come here, Dick, and see what I found the other day on the sidewalk for sale." She brings him by the hand and exhibits yours truly. "How one ever got away up here who can tell? I bought it with almost the last money I had."   He looked at me, but he couldn't keep his eyes off her for more than a second. "Do you remember the night, Bess," he said, "when we stood under one of those on the bank of the bayou and what you told me then?"   "Geewillikins!" I said to myself. "Both of them stand under a rubber plant! Seems to me they are stretching matters somewhat!"   "Do I not," says she, looking up at him and sneaking close to his vest, "and now I say it again, and it is to last forever. Look, Dick, at its leaves, how wet they are. Those are my tears, and it was thinking of you that made them fall."   "The dear old magnolias!" says the young man, pinching one of my leaves. "I love them all."   Magnolia! Well, wouldn't that--say! those innocents thought I was a magnolia! What the--well, wasn't that tough on a genuine little old New York rubber plant? Tobin's Palm   Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her own savings, and one hundred dollars from the sale of Tobin's inherited estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh. And since the letter that Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner. Tobin advertised in the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen.   So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes and the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom. But Tobin was a hardheaded man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He ground his teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures; and, though he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy, and was for licking the tintype men as they came.   So I gets him down a side way on a board walk where the attractions were some less violent. At a little six by eight stall Tobin halts, with a more human look in his eye.   "'Tis here," says he, "I will be diverted. I'll have the palm of me hand investigated by the wonderful palmist of the Nile, and see if what is to be will be."   Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature. He possessed illegal convictions in his mind along the subjects of black cats, lucky numbers, and the weather predictions in the papers.   We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed mysterious with red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing 'em like a railroad centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian Palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and beasties embroidered upon it. Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one of his hands. She lifts Tohin's hand, which is own brother to the hoof of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether 'tis a stone in the frog or a cast shoe he has come for.   "Man," says this Madame Zozo, "the line of your fate shows--"   "Tis not me foot at all," says Tobin, interrupting. "Sure, 'tis no beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand."   "The line shows," says the Madame, "that ye've not arrived at your time of life without bad luck. And there's more to come. The mound of Venus--or is that a stone bruise?--shows that ye've been in love. There's been trouble in your life on account of your sweetheart."   "'Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with," whispers Tobin to me in a loud voice to one side.   "I see," says the palmist, "a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with one whom ye cannot forget. I see the lines of designation point to the letter K and the letter M in her name."   "Whist!" says Tobin to me, "do ye hear that?"   "Look out," goes on the palmist, "for a dark man and a light woman; for they'll both bring ye trouble. Ye'll make a voyage upon the water very soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck. There's a man coming into your life who will fetch ye good fortune. Ye'll know him when ye see him by his crooked nose."   "Is his name set down?" asks Tobin. "'Twill be convenient in the way of greeting when he backs up to dump off the good luck."   "His name," says the palmist, thoughtful looking, "is not spelled out by the lines, but they indicate 'tis a long one, and the letter 'o' should be in it. There's no more to tell. Good-evening. Don't block up the door."   "'Tis wonderful how she knows," says Tobin as we walk to the pier.   As we squeezed through the gates a nigger man sticks his lighted segar against Tobin's ear, and there is trouble. Tobin hammers his neck, and the women squeal, and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of the way before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when enjoying himself.   On the boat going back, when the man calls "Who wants the good- looking waiter?" Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and less congenial with his misfortunes than when we started.   On a seat against the railing was a young woman dressed suitable for red automobiles, with hair the colour of an unsmoked meerschaum. In passing by, Tobin kicks her foot without intentions, and, being polite to ladies when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologising. But he knocks it off, and the wind carries it overboard.   Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for the man's adversities were becoming frequent. He was apt, when pushed so close by hard luck, to kick the best dressed man he could see, and try to take command of the boat.   Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says, excited: "Jawn," says he, "do ye know what we're doing? We're taking a voyage upon the water."   "There now," says I; "subdue yeself. The boat'l1 land in ten minutes more."   "Look," says he, "at the light lady upon the bench. And have ye forgotten the nigger man that burned me ear? And isn't the money I had gone--a dollar sixty-five it was?"   I thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to get violent with good excuse, as men will do, and I tried to make him understand such things was trifles.   "Listen," says Tobin. "Ye've no ear for the gift of prophecy or the miracles of the inspired. What did the palmist lady tell ye out of me hand? 'Tis coming true before your eyes. 'Look out,' says she, 'for a dark man and a light woman; they'll bring ye trouble.' Have ye forgot the nigger man, though be got some of it back from me fist? Can ye show me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling in the water? And where's the dollar sixty- five I had in me vest when we left the shooting gallery?"   The way Tobin put it,it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction, though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to any one at Coney without the implication of palmistry.   Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers out of his little red eyes. I asked him the interpretation of his movements. Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to carry it out.   "Ye should know," says he, "I'm working out the salvation promised by the lines in me palm. I'm looking for the crooked-nose man that's to bring the good luck. 'Tis all that will save us. Jawn, did ye ever see a straighter-nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life?"   'Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat.   On a street corner, standing under a gas-light and looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.   "Good-night to ye," Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his segar and passes the compliments, sociable.   "Would ye hand us your name," asks Tobin, "and let us look at the size of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye."   "My name" says the man, polite, "is Friedenhausman--Maximus G. Friedenhausman."   "'Tis the right length," says Tobin. "Do you spell it with an 'o' anywhere down the stretch of it?"   "I do not," says the man.   "Can ye spell it with an 'o'?" inquires Tobin, turning anxious.   "If your conscience," says the man with the nose, "is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable."   "'Tis well," says Tobin. "Ye're in the presence of Jawn Malone and Daniel Tobin."   "Tis highly appreciated," says the man, with a bow. "And now since I cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?"   "By the two signs," answers Tobin, trying to explain, "which ye display according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the sole of me hand, ye've been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far fulfilled according to Hoyle."   The man stopped smoking and looked at me.   "Have ye any amendments," he asks, "to offer to that statement, or are ye one too? I thought by the looks of ye ye might have him in charge."   "None," says I to him, "except that as one horseshoe resembles another so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me friend. If not, then the lines of Danny's hand may have been crossed, I don't know."   "There's two of ye," says the man with the nose, looking up and down for the sight of a policeman. "I've enjoyed your company immense. Good-night."   With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street, stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close to one side of him and me at the other.   "What!" says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back his hat; "do ye follow me? I tell ye," he says, very loud, "I'm proud to have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home."   "Do," says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. "Do be off to your home. And I will sit at the door of it till ye come out in the morning. For the dependence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the blonde lady and the financial loss of the one-sixty-five."   "'Tis a strange hallucination," says the man, turning to me as a more reasonable lunatic. "Hadn't ye better get him home?"   "Listen, man," says I to him. "Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever was. Maybe he is a bit deranged on account of having drink enough to disturb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than following out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments, which I will explain to you." With that I relates the facts about the palmist lady and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an instrument of good fortune. "Now, understand," I concludes, "my position in this riot. I am the friend of me friend Tobin, according to me interpretations. 'Tis easy to be a friend to the prosperous, for it pays; 'tis not hard to be a friend to the poor, for ye get puffed up by gratitude and have your picture printed standing in front of a tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the art of friendship to be true friend to a born fool. And that's what I'm doing," says I, "for, in my opinion, there's no fortune to be read from the palm of me hand that wasn't printed there with the handle of a pick. And, though ye've got the crookedest nose in New York City, I misdoubt that all the fortune-tellers doing business could milk good luck from ye. But the lines of Danny's hand pointed to ye fair, and I'll assist him to experiment with ye until he's convinced ye're dry."   After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing. He leans against a corner and laughs considerable. Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs of us and takes us by an arm apiece.   "'Tis my mistake," says he. "How could I be expecting anything so fine and wonderful to be turning the corner upon me? I came near being found unworthy. Hard by," says he, "is a cafe, snug and suitable for the entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have drink while we discuss the unavailability of the categorical."   So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars.   "Ye must know," says the man of destiny, "that me walk in life is one that is called the literary. I wander abroad be night seeking idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art: the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for, in the business of literature, the conditions are reversed. 'Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange things I have discovered in life."   "Ye will put me in a book," says Tobin, disgusted; "will ye put me in a book?"   "I will not," says the man, "for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet. The best I can do is to enjoy ye meself, for the time is not ripe for destroying the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type. All alone by meself must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye, boys; I am truly grateful."   "The talk of ye," says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and pounding the table with his fist, "is an eyesore to me patience. There was good luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like the bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I would be thinking the palm of me hand lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady and--"   "Whist!" says the long man; "would ye be led astray by physiognomy? Me nose will do what it can within bounds. Let us have these glasses filled again, for 'tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well moistened, they being subject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere."   So, the man of literature makes good, to my notion, for he pays, cheerful, for everything, the capital of me and Tobin being exhausted by prediction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red showing in his eye.   By and by we moved out, for 'twas eleven o'clock, and stands a bit upon the sidewalk. And then the man says he must be going home, and invites me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron fences. The man stops at one of them and looks up at the top windows which he finds dark.   "'Tis me humble dwelling," says he, "and I begin to perceive by the signs that me wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a bit in the way of hospitality. 'Tis me wish that ye enter the basement room, where we dine, and partake of a reasonable refreshment. There will be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale. Ye will be welcome to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for diversions."   The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the proposition, though 'twas sticking hard in Danny's superstitions to think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good fortune promised by the palm of his hand.   "Step down the steps," says the man with the crooked nose, "and I will enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have in the kitchen," says he, "to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before ye go. 'Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just landed three months. Step in," says the man, "and I'll send her down to ye." Tommy's Burglar   AT TEN o'clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the police- man and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over one of St. George Rathbone's novels on the third floor, but she was overruled. Rasp- berries and cops were not created for nothing.   The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must have action and not too much descrip- tion in a 2,000-word story.   In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the silver-closet.   Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light. The dark velvet portières parted to admit a fair-haired boy of eight in pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.   "Are you a burglar?" he asked, in a sweet, childish voice.   "Listen to that," exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. "Am I a burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three- days' growth of bristly bread on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and let me grease the bit, so I won't wake up your mamma, who is lying down with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia. who has been faithless to her trust."   "Oh, dear," said Tommy, with a sigh. "I thought you would be more up-to-date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the pantry for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to hear De Reszke. But that isn't my fault. It only shows how long the story has been knocking around among the editors. If the author had been wise he'd have changed it to Caruso in the proofs."   "Be quiet," hissed the burglar, under his breath. "If you raise an alarm I'll wring your neck like a rabbit's."   "Like a chicken's," corrected Tommy. "You had that wrong. You don't wring rabbits' necks."   "Aren't you afraid of me?" asked the burglar.   "You know I'm not," answered Tommy. "Don't you suppose I know fact from fiction. If this wasn't a story I'd yell like an Indian when I saw you; and you'd probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk."   "I see," said the burglar, "that you're on to your job. Go on with the performance."   Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him.   "Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burg- lar? Have you no friends?"   "I see what you're driving at," said the burglar, with a dark frown. "It's the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is going to lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib where there's a kid around, it happens."   "Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef that the butler has left on the dining table?" said Tommy. "I'm afraid it's growing late."   The burglar accommodated.   "Poor man," said Tommy. "You must be hungry. If you will please stand in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat."   The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly.   "It's only been an hour," he grumbled, "since I had a lobster and a pint of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let a fellow have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds."   "My papa writes books," remarked Tommy.   The burglar jumped to his feet quickly.   "You said he had gone to the opera," he hissed, hoarsely and with immediate suspicion.   "I ought to have explained," said Tommy. "He didn't buy the tickets." The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone.   "Why do you burgle houses?" asked the boy, wonderingly.   "Because," replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. "God bless my little brown-baired boy Bessie at home."   "Ah," said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, "you got that answer in the wrong place. You want to tell your hard- luck story before you pull out the child stop."   "Oh, yes," said the burglar, "I forgot. Well, once I lived in Milwaukee, and -- "   "Take the silver," said Tommy, rising from his chair.   "Hold on," said the burglar. "But I moved away." I could find no other employment. For a while I man- aged to support my wife and child by passing confederate money; but, alas! I was forced to give that up because it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a burglar."   "Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?" asked Tommy.   "I said 'burglar,' not 'beggar,'" answered the cracksman.   "After you finish your lunch," said Tommy, "and experience the usual change Of heart, how shall we wind up the story?"   "Suppose," said the burglar, thoughtfully, "that Tony Pastor turns out earlier than usual to-night, and your father gets in from 'Parsifal' at 10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own little boy Bessie, and -- "   "Say," said Tommy, "haven't you got that wrong?"   "Not on your coloured crayon drawings by B. Cory Kilvert," said the burglar. "It's always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling to the pale-checked burglar's bride. As I was saying, your father opens the front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches that you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard classmate he starts back in -- "   "Not in surprise?" interrupted Tommy, with wide, open eyes.   "He starts back in the doorway," continued the burglar. And then he rose to his feet and began to shout "Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah!"   "Well," said Tommy, wonderingly, "that's, the first time I ever knew a burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even in a story."   "That's one on you," said the burglar, with a laugh. "I was practising the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is about the only thing that will make it go."   Tommy looked his admiration.   "You're on, all right," he said.   "And there's another mistalze you've made," said the burglar. "You should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie."   "But she didn't give it to me to take to Bessie," said Tommy, pouting.   "Come, come!" said the burglar, sternly. "It's not nice of you to take advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know what I mean. It's mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I'm allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too. I've a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into the silver-closet."   "Oh, no, you haven't," said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you've got to preserve the unities."   "So've you," said the burglar, rather glumly. "Instead of sitting here talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man's mouth, what you'd like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top of your voice."   "You're right, old man," said Tommy, heartily. "I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I'm sure it's neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You'd think editors would know -- but what's the use?"   The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.   "Well, let's get through with it," he said. "God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house -- at least not until the June magazines are out. It'll be your little sister's turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss."   "You haven't got all the kicks coming to you," sighed Tommy, crawling out of his chair. "Think of the sleep I'm losing. But it's tough on both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob somebody. Maybe you'll have the chance if they dramatize us."   "Never!" said the burglar, gloomily. "Between the box office and my better impulses that your leading juven- iles are supposed to awaken and the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I'll always be broke."   "I'm sorry," said Tommy, sympathetically. "But I can't help myself any more than you can. It's one of the canons of household fiction that no burglar shall be suc- cessful. The burglar must be foiled by a kid like me, or- by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal, Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story."   "Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now," said the burglar, taking up his lantern and bracebit.   "You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle of wine with you for Bessie and her mother," said Tommy, calmly.   "But confound it," exclaimed the burglar, in an annoyed tone, "they don't want it. I've got five cases of Chateau de Beychsvelle at home that was bottled in 1853. That claret of yours is corked. And you couldn't get either of them to look at a chicken unless it was stewed in champagne. You know, after I get out of the story I don't have so many limitations. I make a turn now and then."   "Yes, but you must take them," said Tommy, loading his arms with the bundles.   "Bless you, young master!" recited the burglar, obedient. "Second-Story Saul will never forget you. And now hurry and let me out, kid. Our 2,000 words must be nearly up."   Tommy led the way through the hall toward the front door. Suddenly the burglar stopped and called to him softly: "Ain't there a cop out there in front somewhere sparking the girl?"   "Yes," said Tommy, "but what -- "   "I'm afraid he'll catch me," said the burglar. "You mustn't forget that this is fiction."   "Great head!" said Tommy, turning. "Come out by the back door." Blind Man's Holiday   Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.   Generations before, the name had been "Larsen." His race had bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of thrift and industry.   From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society, forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a denizen des trois-quartz de monde, that pathetic spheroid lying between the haut and the demi, whose inhabitants envy each of their neigh- bours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, know- ing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, and his story begins.   The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of gold and grants and ladies' gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of gallant promise and slow decay.   By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of Moorish iron balconies. Ths old houses of monsieur stand yet, indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.   A faint heartbeat of the street's ancient glory still sur- vives in a corner occupied by the Café Carabine d'Or. Once men gathered there to plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun's relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot.   The place is known as "Antonio's," as the name, white upon the red-lit transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise in "Antonio"; a justifiable expectancy of savoury things in oil and pepper and wine, and perhaps an angel's whisper of garlic. But the rest of the name is "O'Riley." Antonio O'Riley!   The Carabine d'Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The café where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread, is become a "family ristaurant."   Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit. Occasionally you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres, and men who follow avocations sub- ject to quick vicissitudes; but at Antonio's -- name rich in Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment -- manners debonair and gay are toned down to the "family" stand- ard. Should you light a cigarette, mine host will touch you on the "arrum" and remind you that the proprieties are menaced. "Antonio" entices and beguiles from fiery legend without, but "O'Riley" teaches decorum within.   It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew, and how for two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not meeting by appointment, but as if by a series of fortuitous and happy accidents. After dining, they would take a walk together in one of the little city parks, or among the panoramic markets where exhibits a con- tinuous vaudeville of sights and sounds. Always at eight o'clock their steps led them to a certain street corner, where she prettily but firmly bade him good night and left him. "I do not live far from here," she frequently said, "and you must let me go the rest of the way alone."   But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the way with her, or happiness would depart, leaving, him on a very lonely corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its finger in his face and told him it must not be.   Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.   On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d'Or, he strolled with his companion down the dim old street toward the river   The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d'Armes. The ancient Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the Cathedral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a little, iron-railed park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks, where citizens take the air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it, the general sits his cavorting steed, with his face turned stonily down the river toward English Turn, whence come no more Britons to bombard his cotton bales.   Often the two sat in this square, but to-night Lorison guided her past the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled to himself to think that all he knew of her -- except that be loved her -- was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother. They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her reticence had been caused by his.   They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.   The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest. She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch, serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden. Lorison poked the rotting boards with his cane.   He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom he durst not speak of it. "And why not?" she asked, accepting swiftly his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. "My place in the world," he answered, "is none to ask a woman to share. I am an outcast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am, I believe, guilty of another."   Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler's declension. During one night's sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain amount of his employer's money, which, by accident, he carried with him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain, leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night his employer's safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister devoirs of a dis- agreeing jury."It is not in the unjust accusation," he said to the girl, "that my burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the first dollar of the firm's money I was a criminal -- no matter whether I lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to her."   "It is a sad thing," said Norah, after a little pause. "to think what very good people there are in the world."   "Good?" said Lorison.   "I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She must be a very poor sort of creature."   "I do not understand."   "Nearly," she continued, "as poor a sort of creature as yourself."   "You do not understand," said Lorison, removing his hat and sweeping back his fine, light hair. "Suppose she loved me in return, and were willing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never a day Would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would read a condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that would madden me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only equals should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower plane."   An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison's face. An illumination from within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was the face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.   "Quite starlike," she said, "is this unapproachable angel. Really too high to be grasped."   "By me, yes."   She faced him suddenly. "My dear friend, would you prefer your star fallen?" Lorison made a wide gesture.   "You push me to the bald fact," he declared; "you are not in sympathy with my argument. But I will answer you so. If I could reach my particular star, to drag it down, I would not do it; but if it were fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the privilege."   They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a remorseful exclamation.   "I'm not cold," she said. "I was just thinking. I ought to tell you something. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot expect a chance acquain- ance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to be an angel."   "Norah!" cried Lorison.   "Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such good friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know. I am -- worse than you are. I was on the stage . . . I sang in the chorus . . . I was pretty bad, I guess . . . I stole diamonds from the prima donna . . . they arrested me . . . I gave most of them up, and they let me go . . . I drank wine every night . . . a great deal . . . I was very wicked, but -- "   Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.   "Dear Norah!" he said, exultantly. "It is you, it is you I love! You never guessed it, did you? 'Tis you I meant all the time. Now I can speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered; let us shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you hear me say I love you?"   "In spite of -- "   "Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and good. Your heart is an angel's, Give it to me."   "A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak."   "But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?"   She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.   "Better than life -- than truth itself -- than every- thing."   "And my own past," said Lorison, with a note of solicitude -- "can you forgive and -- "   "I answered you that," she whispered, "when I told you I loved you." She leaned away, and looked thought- fully at him. "If I had not told you about myself, would you have -- would you -- "   "No," he interrupted; "I would never have let you know I loved you. I would never have asked you this -- Norah, will you be my wife?"   She wept again.   "Oh, believe me; I am good now -- I am no longer wicked! I will be the best wife in the world. Don't think I am -- bad any more. If you do I shall die, I shall die!"   While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous. "Will vou marry me to-night?" she said. "Will you prove it that way. I have a reason for wishing it to be to-night. Will you?"   Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome: either of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover's perspective contained only the one.   "The sooner," said Lorison, "the happier I shall be."   "What is there to do?" she asked. "What do you have to get? Come! You should know."   Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.   "A city directory first," he cried, gayly, "to find where the man lives who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out. Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid us."   "Father Rogan shall marry us," said the girl, with ardour. "I will take you to him."   An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight in Norah's hand.   "Wait here a moment," she said, "till I find Father Rogan."   She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing, as it were, on one leg, outside. His impa- tience was not greatly taxed. Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness, far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward, like the moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except books, which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots of territory had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a superlatively calm, remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his hand, his finger still marking a page. His dress was sombre and appertained to a religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with the perspective.   "Father Rogan," said Norah, "this is he."   "The two of ye," said Father Rogan, "want to get married?"   They did not deny it. He married them. The cere- mony was quickly done. One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its endless chain of results.   Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time, cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan's book popped open again where his finger marked it.   In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her com- panion, tearful.   "Will you never, never be sorry?"   At last she was reassured.   At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time, just as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half-past eight.   Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward the corner where they always parted. But, arrived there, she hesitated, and then released his arm. A drug store stood on the corner; its bright, soft light shone upon them.   "Please leave me here as usual to-night," said Norah, sweetly. "I must -- I would rather you would. You will not object? At six to-morrow evening I will meet you at Antonio's. I want to sit with vou there once more. And then -- I will go where you say." She gave him a bewildering, bright smile, and walked swiftly away.   Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this astounding behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison's strength of mind that his head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled vacuously over to the druggist's windows, and began assiduously to spell over the names of the patent medicines therein displayed.   As soon as be had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he flowed into a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much frequented by him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of slops devoted to traffic in goods of the widest range of choice -- handiworks of art, skill and fancy, products of nature and labour from every zone.   Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was set, emphasized bv congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel -- at right angles, and upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which- when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord.   Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular, supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual a activity of brain. Reflecting upon recent affairs, be assured himself of his happiness in having won for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he wondered mildly at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange behaviour in abandoning him without valid excuse on his bridal eve aroused in him only a vague and curious speculation. Again, he found himself contemplating, with complaisant serenity, the incidents of her somewhat lively career. His perspective seemed to have been queerly shifted.   As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by a waxing clamour and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow passage to the cause of the hubbub -- a procession of human beings, which rounded the corner aid headed in his direction. He perceived a salient hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of dazzling white and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing figures.   Two ponderous policemen Were conducting between them a woman dressed as if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched, at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be instantly recognized as one of those amazing con- ceptions to which competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of the officers bore a long cloak upon his axm, which, doubtless, had been intended to veil the I candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner, but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to the vociferous delight of the tail of the procession.   Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny. Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the contours of youth survived, were the finger- marks of old age's credentialed courier, Late Hours.   The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:   "Say! You look like a good fellow; come and put up the bail, won't you? I've done nothing to get pinched for. It's all a mistake. See how they're treating me! You won't be sorry, if you'll help me out of this. Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the streets this way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow."   It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the woman's side, and went over to him.   "It's all right, Sir," he said, in a husky, confidential tone; "she's the right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light Theatre, on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It's only a square or two to the station. Her rig's pretty bad, but she refused to change clothes -- or, rather," added the officer, with a smile, "to put on some. I thought I'd explain matters to you so you wouldn't think she was being imposed upon."   "What is the charge?" asked Lorison.   "Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweller in Chicago. She cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic-opera troupe."   The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison -- their conference being regarded as a possible new com- plication -- was fain to prolong the situation -- which reflected his own importance -- by a little afterpiece of philosophical comment.   "A gentleman like you, Sir," he went on affably, "would never notice it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of trouble is made by that com- bination -- I mean the stage, diamonds and light-headed women who aren't satisfied with good homes. I tell you, Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to."   The policeman smiled a good night, and returned to the side of his charge, who had been intently watching Lorison's face during the conversation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render succour. Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to continue the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed him thus, pointedly:   "You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a hand, but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. You're a dandy to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, she'll have a picnic. Won't she work you to the queen's taste! Oh, my!" She concluded with a taunting, shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen urged her forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up the rear; and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the scope of her maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be slighted.   Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his perspective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the abnormal condition of mind in which he had for so long existed was already about to revert to its balance; however, it is certain that the events of the last few minutes had furnished the channel, if not the impetus, for the change.   The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the fact and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace might agreeably exchange the compliments.   This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a resurrected longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of the virtuous. To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this fanciful self-accusation, this empty renunciation, this moral squeamishness through which he had been led to abandon what was his heritage in life, and not beyond his deserts? Technically, he was uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was in thought rather than deed, and cognizance of it unshared by others. For what good, moral or sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the picturesque?   But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding belligerent -- identical at least, in the way of experience -- to one, by her own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief number two yet burned in his ears: "If you ever get a cirl, she'll have a picnic. What did that that this women instinc- tively knew him for one they could hoodwink? Still again, there reverberated the policeman's sapient contribution to his agony: "A man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are up to." Oh, yes, he had been a fool; he had looked at things from the wrong standpoint.   But the wildest note in all the clamour was struck by pain's forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting -- a mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her; he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his pre- dicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to battle with his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms together triumphantly. His wife was -- where? But there was a tangible link; an outlet more or less navigable, through which his derelict ship of matrimony might yet be safely towed -- the priest!   Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempest- uous. With a high and stubborn indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the intersecting street by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had parted with -- an astringent grimace tinctured the thought -- his wife. Thence still back he harked, follow- ing through an unfamiliar district his stimulated recollec- tions of the way they had come from that preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back to, the trail, furious.   At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down it, perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing loudly; reckless of everything but that he should find the old mischief- maker with the eyes that looked too far awav to see the disaster he had wrought. The door opened, and in the stream of light Father Rogan stood, his book in hand, with his finger marking the place.   "Ah!" cried Lorison. "You are the man I want. I had a wife of you a few hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how it was done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the business is beyond remedy?"   "Come inside," said the priest; "there are other lodgers in the house, who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity."   Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest's eyes looked a courteous interrogation.   "I must apologize again," said the young man, "for so soon intruding upon you with my marital infelicities, but, as my wife has neglected to furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate recourse of a family row."   "I am quite a plain man," said Father Rogan, pleas- antly; "but I do not see how I am to ask you questions."   "Pardon my indirectness," said Lorison; "I will ask one. In this room to-night you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of additional rites or performances that either should or could be effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all help?"   "You are as legally and as firmly bound," said the priest, "as though it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The additional observances I referred to are not necessary to the strictest legality of the act, but were advised as a precaution for the future -- for convenience of proof in such contingencies as wills, inheritances and the like."   Lorison laughed harshly.   "Many thanks," he said. "Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and when my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up."   Father Rogan regarded him calmly.   "My son," he said, "when a man and woman come to me to be married I always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom they might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you see, I do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one not altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to my notice have brought such well- expressed regret within so short a time. I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression that you loved the lady you married, at the time you did so;"   "Loved her!" cried Lorison, wildly. "Never so well as now, though she told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now, when, perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with scarcely a word, to return to God only knows what particular line of her former folly."   Father Rooan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.   "If you would listen -- " began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.   "As I hoped," he said. "I thought you would trust me. Wait but a moment." He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.   "Now, my son," he said.   Lorison poured a twelve month's accumulated con- fidence into Father Rogan's ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts of his past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures and fears.   "The main point," said the priest, when he had con- cluded, "seems to me to be this -- are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom you have married?"   "Why," exclaimed Lorisoii, rising impulsively to his feet - "why should I deny it? But look at me -- am fish, flesh or fowl? That is the main point to me, assure you."   "I understand you," said the priest, also risino,, and laying down his pipe. "The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much older men than you -- in fact, especially much older men than you. I will try to relieve you from it, and this night. You shall see for yourself into exactly what predicament you have fallen, and how you shall, possibly, be extricated. There is no evidence so credible as that of the eyesight."   Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat. Buttoning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob. "Let us walk," he said.   The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it, and Lorison walked with him through a squalid district, where the houses loomed, awry and desoiate-looking, high above them. Presently they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were smaller, and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the concentrated wretchedness of the more populous byways.   At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted the steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp. Almost immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irish- woman protruded her head.   "Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan," said the priest, unconsciously, it seemed, falling into a delicately flavoured brogue. "And is it yourself can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?"   "Oh, it's yer blissid reverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same. The purty darlin' wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says: 'Mother Geehan,' says she, 'it's me last noight out, praise the saints, this noight is!' And, oh, yer reverence, the swate, beautiful drame of a dress she had this toime! White satin and silk and ribbons, and lace about the neck and arrums -- 'twas a sin, yer reverence, the gold was spint upon it."   The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully, and a faint smile flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.   "Well, then, Mistress Geehan," said he, "I'll just step upstairs and see the bit boy for a minute, and I'll take this Gentleman up with me."   "He's awake, thin," said the woman. 'I've just come down from sitting wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County Tyrone. 'Tis a greedy gos- soon, it is, yer riverence, for me shtories."   "Small the doubt," said Father Rogan. "There's no rocking would put him to slape the quicker, I'm thinking."   Amid the woman's shrill protest against the retort, the two men ascended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a room near its top.   "Is that you already, sister?" drawled a sweet, childish voice from the darkness.   "It's only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin'; and a foine gentleman I've brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us fast aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!"   "Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I'm glad. And will you light the lamp, please? It's on the table by the door. And quit talking like Mother Geehan, Father Denny."   The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, towsled- haired boy, with a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner. Quickly, also, his rapid glance con- sidered the room and its contents. It was furnished with more than comfort, and its adornments plainly indicated a woman's discerning taste. An open door beyond revealed the blackness of an adjoining room's interior.   The boy clutched both of Father Rogan's hands. "I'm so glad you came," he said; "but why did you come in the night? Did sister send you?"   "Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence McShane, of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility."   Lorison had also advanced to the boy's bedside. He was fond of children; and the wee fellow, laving himself down to sleep alone ill that dark room, stirred-his heart.   "Aren't you afraid, little man?" he asked, stooping down beside him.   "Sometimes," answered the boy, with a shy smile, "when the rats make too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Molt-her Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. I'm not often afraid, sir."   "This brave little gentleman," said Father Rogan, "is a scholar of mine. Every day from half-past six to half- past eight -- when sister comes for him -- he stops in my study, and we find out what's in the inside of books. He knows multiplication, division and fractions; and he's troubling me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of Clonmaciioise, Corurac McCullenan and Cuan O'Loc- hain, the gr-r-reat Irish histhorians." The boy was evidently accustomed to the priest's Celtic pleasantries. A little, appreciative grin was all the attention the insin- nation of pedantry received.   Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one of those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered, in his own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the same shining hair and candid eyes.   "Oh, Father Denny," cried the boy, suddenly, "I forgot to tell you! Sister is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she kissed me good night as she was leaving. And she said she was so happy, and then she cried. Wasn't that queer? But I'm glad; aren't you?"   "Yes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good night; we must be going."   "Which shall I do first, Father Denny?"   "Faith, he's caught me again! Wait till I get the sassenach into the annals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I'll give him enough of the Irish idiom to make him more respectful."   The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good night from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the garrulity of Mother Geehan.   Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison followed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he could not be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast. The following of this blind, menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not what humiliating revelation to be delivered at its end.   They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be surmised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time before a lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest floor were carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were dark, save in the third story, the windows of which were bril- liantly lighted. Lorison's ear caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming, as of music above. They stood at an angle of the building. Up, along the side nearest them, mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an upright, illuminated parallelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and stood, musing.   "I will say this much," he remarked, thoughtfully: "I believe you to be a better man than you think yourself to be, and a better man than I thought some hours ago. But do not take this," he added, with a smile, "as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an unhappy perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only remove the mystery that enhanced that per- plexity. Your deliverance depends upon yourself. Come."   He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught him by the sleeve. "Remember," he gasped, "I love that woman."   "You desired to know.   "I -- Go on."   The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison, behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.   Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of the door.   His eye, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blind- ing glare, and then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an extravagant display of splendid robings -- billowy laces, brilliant-hued finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then he caught the mean. ing of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of his wife, bending, as were a score of others, over her sewing machine -- toiling, toiling. Here was the folly she pursued, and the end of his quest.   But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of the satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure of the bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories it by the glare of footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him who only sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this time his love over- came his scruples. He took a quick step, and reached out his hand for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to arrest it and draw him back.   "You use my trust in you queerly," said the priest sternly. "What are you about to do?"   "I am going to my wife," said Lorison. "Let me pass."   "Listen," said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. "I am about to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far, you have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but I will not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you married, working for a frugal living for herself, and a generous comfort for an idolized brother. This building belongs to the chief costumer of the city. For months the advance orders for the coming Mardi Gras festivals have kept the work going day and night. I myself secured employment here for Norah. She toils here each night from nine o'clock until daylight, and, besides, carries home with her some of the finer costumes, requiring more delicate needlework, and works there part of the day. Somehow, you two have remained strangely ignorant of each other's lives. Are you convinced now that your wife is not walking the streets?"   "Let me go to her," cried Lorison, again struggling, "and beg her forgiveness!'   "Sir," said the priest, "do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not comprom- ise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye spalpeen!" continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. "What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin' her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!"   "Sir," said Lorison, trembling, "say what you please of me. Doubt it as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one moment at her feet, and -- "   "Tut, tut!" said the priest. "How many acts of a love drama do you think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery! Go to meet your wife to-morrow, as she ordered you, and obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgive- ness for the part I have played in this night's work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now! 'Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin'his rest."