Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: collection; short stories
Description: While fossicking around the Web looking for Guy Thorne material I found a cluster of short stories in Australian newspapers. The author was immensely prolific, with around 150 novels and probably as many short stories, most of which are out of print on paper andd digitally. I couldn't find any reference to any collection of Thorne short stories, so this is probably now the only one there is. 11 stories, just 44,000 words. 1: The Painted Coin 2: The Prize of Marchants 3: Fifteen Million Candle Power 4: George Washington's Pen 5: A Dangerous Game 6: Ella the Ambitious 7: The Veiled Name 8: The C

THE PAINTED COIN
and other stories

Guy Thorne

2020

Contents

1: The Painted Coin

2: The Prize of Marchants

3: Fifteen Million Candle Power

4: George Washington's Pen

5: A Dangerous Game

6: Ella the Ambitious

7: The Veiled Name

8: The Crime of K.15

9: The Christmas Violin

10: The Fearless Lover

11: The Immense Temptation

_________________

1: The Painted Coin

The Pall Mall Magazine Apr 1911

World's News (Sydney) 21 April 1917

WE were both quite unsuccessful painters. The general public would have nothing of either of us. A few critics, writing in very "superior" papers indeed, hailed us as the most brilliant exponents of realistic painting that the world had ever seen. We enjoyed an obscure celebrity. There were houses in Chelsea and Bedford Park where we were addressed as "Dear Master." We walked and talked— and tried to look— as if we were great. But the truth was that nobody bought our pictures.

Drawing-room praise and unnoticed paragraphs were our sole reward for extraordinary labors, a real and honest love for the work we were doing, a whole-hearted devotion to the special branch of art we had made our own, and in which (I am really not exaggerating) we were supreme. Both Folliot and myself were absolutely certain that we were right in our own theories.

We hated the romantic and the idealistic in art as in life. Anything romantic or visionary we laughed to scorn. Any sort of future life we agreed to be the hysteria of ill-regulated minds, or the cowardice of those who were afraid to enjoy themselves in this. Love, we said, was merely an affair of the senses; honor, a contention which it was as well to observe for the sake of convenience; and if we had troubled to define our general atti- tude in a single sentence, it would probably have been "Let us eat, drink, and paint, for to-morrow we die."

We flattered ourselves that any pictures signed "John Folliot" or "Charles Tremayne" were literal and accurate estimates. When either of us painted a portrait, nothing in the face was hidden, idealised, or improved. We painted as we saw. Every tell-tale wrinkle, every shifty look in the eyes, each suggestion of sin or sorrow that lurked in the corners of the mouth, was set down with absolute fidelity. The result, of course, was that neither of us got many portrait commissions. I remember Mostyn, a very successful portrait-painter, and a man of great personal charm, once having an argument with us on the subject.

Folliot and I were staying down in Cornwall at the artist colony of Portalone, a lovely and beautiful fishing village on the Atlantic, not far from Land's End.

There is a quaint and very ancient little inn there, which is known as "The Brigantine." The artists have decorated the walls of one of the rooms with paintings, and they meet togather there, using the place as a sort of informal Bohemian club.

There we sat, one soft spring morning, Mostyn, Folliot, and myself, and the conversation was of extreme importance, in view of the weird and astounding story I have to tell.

I can see it all now, the scene is as fresh and vivid in my memory as if it had happened yesterday. The old-fashioned parlor of the inn was panelled in oak, black with the passing of many years. Upon the panels hung innumerable paintings in slim gold frames—all of them presented to the landlord, old Billy Trewhella, by the artists of the colony.

The sun poured In through the leaded window-panes, and outside came a cheerful noise from the little harbor as the herring-boats disgorged their catches of the night before.

Mostyn, big, blonde, distinguished, leant over, the heavy table and emphasised his remarks to Folliot with knockings of his well-worn briar upon the wood.

Folliot listened calmly enough. He was a dark, hawk-faced man, with a saturnine and rather contemptuous smile, tall, thin, and mus-cular, though restless in all his movements and with an occasional wildness in his black eyes which puzzled people.

"You and Tremayne," Mostyn said, looking at both of us, "are brilliant painters. Your technique is wonderful, no one has ever denied it, but you haven't got the vision, the artistic vision, and that's where you fail."

"We see things as they are," I answered, "that is all," and Folliot nodded in confirmation.

"No, you don't," Mostyn answered, "and that's just where you make your mistake. You only see the surface of things. You steadfastly refuse to look below. You have just finished your portrait of old Baragwanetti, the smack owner, Folliot. It's a marvellous piece of brushwork, but you have painted a picture of a devil! Old Baragwanetti is an old scamp, I admit. He was a wrecker in his youth, he is suspected of being a smuggler now; he is a picturesque, sly, greedy, foul-mouthed old beast. But there's good in him too. There is good in his face if you look for it with sympathy and the desire to And it there! There is humor, geniality, a certain generosity, no meanness. I've been studying him too. You've missed all that. You've painted the mask only."

Folliot laughed rather contemptuously. "I've painted what I saw," he said.

"Exactly," Mostyn replied rather coldly, and rising from his seat as he did so; "pray Heaven to lighten your darkness, Folliot," and with that the big man nodded and left the room.

I confess that, for my part, Mostyn's words had rather gone home to me. Folliot was a man of forty; his convictions were fixed and settled, nothing would move them. I, on the other hand, was but five and twenty. Folliot was my master. I had eagerly adopted his theories and carried them out in my work. I painted as well as he did, but it was his influence that had determined the bent of my art. And there was another fact in our relations. My friend was rich; he was the son of a well-known mechanical engineer, who had left him a considerable fortune. My own means were wretchedly small, and Folliot had been very good to me.

But as Mostyn went away—and I knew well what a fine fellow he was— I caught myself wondering if he were not right after all. Might I myself not be merely a shadow of another man? A mirror in which the opinions of a  stronger brain were reflected? A man who had unhesitatingly accepted the view of a friend because he was too mentally lazy to thresh out any of his own? All that day I wondered.

At this time I was rather at a loose end as far as work was concerned. A fit of idleness was upon me, which the soft and drowsy Cornish spring did but little to remove, and I hardly knew what to turn to next.

The morning after the talk with Mostyn, Folliot went up to London for a day or two. I saw him off at the little station—from where a single line ran to the main Penzance route— and then, with my box of paints slung over my shoulder, went down to the foreshore, intending to sketch for an hour or two. I sat on the little granite breakwater for a time, but found little to interest me. The fishermen were all at sea, and there was no one to talk to, while for some reason or other— perhaps it was too early— none of the other artists were out painting.

I strolled into "The Brigantine," ordered a glass of beer, and began to talk to old Billy Trewhella, the landlord. After a few minutes he was called away, and I was left alone in the mellow old oak room. The sun streamed into the place; and I sat back idly upon the settle thinking of nothing at all.

Then I saw that my change lay upon the table— I had paid Billy with a half-sovereign.

A sunbeam fell with special radiance upon one half-crown; an idea came to me— an idea of idleness and childishness.

I got out my palette and brushes, and, using the half-crown as a model, began to paint an exact replica of it upon the polished surface of the table. Such a thing— whether it was worth doing or not— is no trick, but requires a vast amount of technical skill. Not one painter in five hundred could do it with any approach to reality; probably no one in England just then dould have done it as well as I did— except Folliot, of course. I thought of the Hans Memling pictures at Bruges, and chuckled with sheer delight at my own skill as the thing grew.

When it was finished, although, of course, the paint was wet, there to all intents and pur-poses lay a genuine silver coin. Anybody would want to try to pick it up. I called Biliy in and showed it to him. The old fellow was lost in admiration, and promised himself many jokes later on in the day.

While he was laughing and chuckling, stops were heard in the sanded passage outside, and a voice called for the landlord— a gentleman voice, and one I did not know.

Billy hurried out, and I heard him showing some stranger the various other rooms of the quaint old inn, which really was a show place in its way and mentioned in all the guide books to Cornwall.

Finally, he ushered in a tall, elderly man with a red face and a white moustache— obviously a soldier— and showed him the landscapes upon the walls, and then, much to my amusement, pointed out my little tour de force upon the table.

"Mr. Tremayne 'e done this just now, sir!'' said old Billy, in high delight. "You'd be long to think you could pick en up and spend en, couldn't you, sir? Mr. Tremayne's one of our leading artists in Portalone."

The stranger bowed and examined my effort with considerable interest. Then he sat down and at once began to talk. "Now that, sir, he said, "is what I call real art! It is the thing represented as it is! One could almost pick it up and put it in one's pocket, by Jove! I don't pretend to be a judge of these matters— indeed, most modern pictures puzzle me— but this, sir, is first-rate!"

I could not help being rather pleased at his simple and kindly criticism. The man was obviously a gentleman, and obviously a soldier too. I have always been fond of soldiers. My father was an officer in the Rifle Brigade, and as we fell into conversation I mentioned the fact. The newcomer introduced himself at once as Colonel Decics, of the —th. I gave him my own card, and to my pleasure— though hardly to my surprise, for the military world is a small one— I found he had known my father quite well. They had been brigaded together at Aldershot and had belonged to the same club for years.

Colonel Decies, it turned out, had taken a house at Portalone for six months, and had arrived three or four days ago with his daugh-ter. He was a widower and she was his only child.

He promptly asked me to lunch that very morning, and I gladly accepted. We mounted the hill together towards the villa he had taken, which overlooked the bay.

It was a perfect morning. The sea was absolutely smooth and glowed like a vast sapphire. The sky was all blue and gold, gold upon blue! The wandering airs were soft and sweet as we came into the garden of the colonel's house.

"Come in, my dear boy," he said, "and I will introduce you to Helena and tell her that our first guest in Portalone has arrived!"

And I think those words and this episode may fitly close the introductory part of the extraordinary and sinister story I have to tell.

I had met many girls in my life. They had amused me— some of them; they had interested me— others of them. Like any other young man, I had flirted when the opportunity came. But I had always had rather a contempt for women. I was cynical about them with the cynicism of a young and cock-sure man. They were amusing creatures to meet and beautiful creatures to paint! That was my attitude, and it was fostered and encouraged in every way by my friend and master, Folliot.

And then on that bright morning I met Helena Decies.

Her hair was like ripe corn, her eyes were as brown— deep and translucent—as a forest pool shot with sunlight, her mouth was a scarlet eloquence of humor and simplicity. I knew that there was nobody like her in the who to world, there never had been, never could be!

The dreams of youth when it first meets the golden girl!...

Colonel Decies commissioned me to paint Helena's portrait. She used to come to my studio—in the free and informal fashion of Fortalone— for a couple of hours three days a week, and gradually upon the canvas there  grew a masterpiece.

I can say this now without fear of being thought conceited. That picture hangs in the Luxembourg at Paris now. All the world has seen it, but at the present time, ten years afterwards, a critic occasionally says that the "portrait of a lady which first brought fame to Tremayne has not yet been surpassed by the maturer work of the master "

I lived in a dream. Helena did also—she has told me so—and a fortnight had hardly passed before we were deeply and irrevocably in love with each other.

It was on the day the portrait was finished that I asked my dear if she would marry me. The afternoon sun was pouring into the old studio— it had been a boat-house once— and we stood together before the easel.

"It is wonderful!" she said, in a hushed voice, '"but I do not really look like that! You have made an ideal girl. The picture throbs with idealism and poetry— ah! if only I looked like that, Mr. Tremayne!"

Then I turned to her. I caught her in my arms and covered her face with kisses. "My love! My lady!" I cried. "I am only a realist and paint as I see, that is all!" I have painted you with brushes dipped in love and adoration— I love you! I love you! Dearest and best, say that you are for me. Tell me, oh, tell me!"

Hand in hand, our eyes radiant with the glorious knowledge that had come to us, we were sitting upon the old, battered studio sofa; it was growing dusk, though one last, long beam of sunlight shot down from the glass roof and bathed Helena's portrait with splendor.

Then the door opened with a sudden jerk, and a tall, dark figure swung into the room. It was Folliot, just returned from London, looking for me.

He did not see us at first. The irradiated picture caught his eye and he stopped before it with a deep breath.

I saw his face quite distinctly— wonder, astonishment froze it into rigid lines.

"Charles has done this!" he whispered to himself; "his brush cannot lie! Then who is she?—where?—where?——"

He turned and saw us, sitting hand-in-hand
upon the sofa, and as I introduced him to my darling he moved and spoke like a man but newly waked from sleep.

A month passed. Without doubt it was the happiest month of my life. My love for Helena, and hers for me, irradiated everything; the meaning of life was altered.

But the most extraordinary thing of all was that my art underwent an absolute change and revolution. It was as though a blind had rolled up from before my eyes. I saw every-
thing differently. My passion for hard, cold
realism left me. I still painted things as I saw them, but how differently I saw them! The world was full of poetry and goodness now,
the ideal was mixed with the colors of my palette, for the first time in my life I really loved, and for the first time I really saw!

It was a joy to tell my girl of the happy transformation she had wrought, to point out to her the change in my work. Her apprecia- tion was complete, she realised and understood, everything as if she had been a painter all her life. One day I took her to "The Brigantine," where I had first met her father. I showed her the landscapes of my colleagues which decorated the old room, and then I showed her the half-crown I had painted upon the table, which had first made Colonel Decies talk to me and ask me to his house. She had heard of the episode, of course.

Helena was carrying a little green purse in her hand—she had been shopping—and with a delightful blush she took a half-crown from it and gave it to me.

"Here is a real one, dear old boy," she said; "keep it always in memory. It will bring you luck!"

I took it, had a hole bored in it that evening, hung it oft a thin chain, and wore it round my neck under my clothes. When I was not with Helena I liked to feel her fantastic present, the charm she had given toe. Of the indeed "luck" is the word—it was to bring I had no prescience at all.

During these first weeks of my engagement

I saw much less of Folliot than before.

I was hard at work, painting in the new style which love seemed to have taught me.When I was not working I was with Helena and her father. I used to ride with them over the wild Cornish moors. Colonel Decies and Helena taught me to fence— my beautiful, supple darling was a mistress of the foils.

The days went by very swiftly. Always morose to most people, a man living a strange, eccentric life of his own, Folliot now began to treat me much as he treated the rest of the world. Our old, intimate friendship of the past was quite interrupted, if not broken. On the few occasions when he came to my studio and saw the work I was doing his face became positively malignant. Once, with a wild and unrestrained passion, his lips white and twitching, his eyes glittering, he poured out a stream of mad reproaches upon me. I was a traitor to my art, I had thrown away my heritage— I should suffer torture some day for what I had done! I did not take very much notice, I was too happy. Colonel Decies liked Folliot, they got on very well together, though the old gentleman more than once hinted to me that my friend and late master was "peculiar," to say the least of it. "I like him and he amuses me," said the  colonel, "but he's as mad as a hatter all the  same!"

Helena, on the other hand, disliked Folliot intensely. He had made some sketches of her, promising a portrait some day, though it never seemed likely to be finished.

"I am always civil to him." she said to me, "because he is your friend, Charlie, and, of course, he is very clever. But somehow he frightens me. He impresses me with a sense of danger!"

I thought little of this, and, shortly after she had said it, Folliot took an old deserted  farmhouse on the moor, fitted up his studio there, and came rarely into Portalone.

He was making experiments in painting by artificial light, so it was understood, and it was known that he had fitted up a complete acetylene gas installation and was carrying out extensive improvements in his new home.

He was, as I think I have said, an expert mechanical engineer.

One evening, about six o'clock, I was alone in my rooms. It was a thunderous evening. grey, warm, and menacing.

Folliot suddenly turned up. He was pale and nervous— we had not met for quite three weeks— but more kind and friendly than he had been ever since I had first become engaged.

We had the usual argument, though quite friendly and quiet this time, and then he suggested I should walk out to the moor and sup with him. "And if my arguments can't convince you and bring you back to real art, then I think a picture I have to show you may!" he said, as we strode away together through the gathering storm.

We dined alone. There seemed no servant about, and the grim old stone building, two miles from any other habitation, seemed sinister and forlorn in the gathering storm. More than once I thought of Edgar Poe's ghastly story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," and shuddered.

Folliot's manner was increasingly curious. He talked extravagantly about realism in art, always seeming to be leading up to some climax and ever breaking away from it, feverishly, unnaturally. At last we rose from the table. He placed his hand upon my shoulder, and I felt it tremble.

"Come," he cried; and there was now a note as if of impending triumph in his voice. "Come and learn once for all what real art is!"

I followed Folliot down a long, silent passage, at the end of which was a door. Opening this, he showed a flight of steps, carpeted with felt, leading downwards into darkness. He lit a candle he was carrying.

"The old farmhouse cellars," he said; "smuggled goods were hidden here in the old days. Now I have fitted them up as studios for my experiments in painting by gaslight." I followed him down many steps into the dark, and then along a narrow, vaulted passage of stone, chill and silent.

Folliot unlocked a door. "Here we are!" he said; "and now for the picture which will bring you back to your allegiance."

We entered the small room, square in shape, as far as I could see in the light of the candle. Then Folliot struck a match, and in a few minutes the place was brilliantly illuminated by acetylene. It was a strange room to find underground in this ancient and deserted Cornish mansion.

A carpet of black felt was upon the floor. The walls were entirely draped by curtains of black velvet. At one end was a curtain of brilliant scarlet running on rings, obviously concealing the picture I had come to see.

In front of this, though not more than a yard away, there stood a massive chair of wood, painted black, with long projecting arms.

"To get the full effect," Folliot said— and his voice was now suddenly quiet and satisfied— you must sit in that chair, when I will pull the curtain. The thing is like Hans Memling; it is designed for the closest inspection."

I sat down in the chair; even as I did so the face of the man before me changed.

There was a sudden whirr of machinery, three or four sharp clicks, and a collar of steel shot out from the high back of the chair and snapped round my neck. My arms, which were lying along: the chair-arms, were confined at the wrists by bands of rigid metal; a box-like arrangement rose from the floor and gripped my legs.

I was caught, trapped, absolutely powerless, and, to complete my immobility, Folliot ran an iron bar from side to side of the chair, where my legs joined the trunk.

I could not move an inch. I might have been a man of stone. I said nothing, I had seen the man's face. I was caught like a rabbit by this madman. Then he drew the curtain.

I saw the infamous masterpiece which all England has since seen, and my blood ran  cold within me.

Close in front of me, life-size, a triumph of technique almost unequalled in the whole history of painting, was a portrait of Helena. The figure was in the padded coat, short serge skirt, and black stockings of a girl's fencing costume. It was lunging straight out of the picture with marvellous reality, and the point of the rapier was directed straight at the spectator's heart.

The face was covered by the wire mask used in foil play, but with extraordinary ingenuity the painter had contrived that the features behind the mask were clearly seen. Feature for features they were those of my darling, but distorted into a mocking malignity, a smile of hate.

I gave a hollow cry. It was echoed by horrid laughter.

"A fine piece of realism, Tremayne; I see you appreciate it. You have need to, for it is the last thing on which you will look! There is your pretty darling! You will observe the position of her foil. Well, she has pierced your heart before; she will do it again now! I wish you a long good-night, Charles Tremayne— convert to the real in art!"

He laughed horribly, shaking in a paroxysm of insrfne and evil merriment. Then he went out of the room, shut the door and locked it, leaving me alone.

Rigid, motionless, like a man of marble, I stared at the dreadful wonder before me... there was a sudden, sharp, metallic sound— click!

From out the picture the sharpened point of a shining steel rapier was now projecting an inch or more. It seemed exactly as if the mocking figure of the portrait was advancing it towards my heart.

Click! Another warning note in the dreadful machinery of my doom, another inch of the shining steel, and now I knew!

So this was how I was to die, in hellish and fantastic torture, at the hands of a raging and cunning maniac. A deep groan burst from me. There was no help that I knew; I was no victim of an elaborate practical Joke. Folliot was mad, stark, staring mad; his precautions were taken with cold-blooded certainty. Click!

...There were four inches of the steel now; the cruel, mocking face of the marvellous portrait, like and yet so unlike, grinned horribly at me through the mesh of the mask.

Click!... It was to be soon then! I shouted aloud; wild, despairing cries and calls filled the black-hung chamber of death. I struggled in my gyves till every limb was wounded and torn... Click!

Peace came upon me. It was all over, revolt and struggle passed away. I was to die, thus it was God's will. I began to pray, humbly resigning myself, praying for forgiveness— praying for Helena.

Click! The long whip of steel was almost touching my waistcoat, over the heart. A few minutes now and all would be over. I called out on the name of God and resigned myself. "Helena, dearest, good-bye! I die loving you; we shall meet again!"

THE SHARP POINT had pierced cloth and flannel; one more movement... .

Click! I heard the noise, felt the deadly steel push through, and then— what was this? There was a sharp, hard pressure on my flesh, but no dreadful, agonising piercing of the skin! I held my breath, and then in an in-tant I knew what had happened.

The point of the steel had struck upon the coin I wore upon a chain— my darling's love gift!

Click! And now the pressure increased in-tolerably, and I braced myself to meet it. Once again, and the steel of the rapier bent upwards like a bow.

Click! My heart seemed enclosed in an iron band, and I saw the glittering steel projecting from the picture rise up into a half-hoop. My sight began to fail; there was a noise in my ears like sudden drums at midnight; and then, with a loud clanging jar, the foil snapped under the pressure. The end part whipped up to the ceiling, cutting my face in a deep line: my breath came back to me, and I swooned into a deep and tranquil sleep.

LATE THAT night they found me, rigid, half-conscious, a prey to shrieking terror, led by the maniac himself, raving with glee at what he had done, in a ghastly and horrified rush over the moor.

Folliot died raving three days afterwards. My wife keeps the half-crown now, and as for the one painted on the table of "The Brigantine," it is covered over with glass, and no offers for it can tempt old Billy Trewhella.

_________________

2: The Prize of Marchants

World's News (Sydney),  11 August 1923

MR. MARCHANT. proprietor of "Marchant and Miller," and thrice Mayor of Psalmster, was dead. Half the city was in mourning, as the Iong funeral procession wound its way to the cemetery, after a service in the cathedral, and the great department shop in the High Street was closed for the day.

All the male assistants attended the funeral, provided with new hats and gloves. The late Mr. Marchant was a man of strong and determined character, with a decided opinion about most things. He did not approve of Women attending funerals, but the ladies of the establishment were to "take a quiet holiday, and think as kindly as they could of their old employer and friend, who in life took an interest in their welfare and endeavored to treat them with kindness."

A month's salary was given to everyone who had been a year in the employ of the firm.

Dolly Cooper, in the gloves and ribbons department, and Ethel Baynes, from "fancy goods," left the hostel— as the assistants' living quarters behind the shop were called— early on the morning of the funeral. It was a beautiful summer day. but the girls wore black costumes, hats, and gloves, which were a gift from the management. Ddly carried a little basket with cake and sandwiches for lunch. Ethel a thermos flask full of hot tea. They were going to spend a quiet dry together in the country.

As they passed through the town towards the broad river which ran round the cathedral-crowned hill, on which the principal btaidings clustered, neither of the girls spoke n.uch and their faces were grave. But when they came out upon the tow-path by the silver water and lush green meadows, their feces relaxed, and they began to chatter.

"Poor old 'Do it now'," said Ethel. "One can't help being sorry for him. can one, Dolly? He was a good boss, as bosses go, and I've had some in my time! He was a knifer for work, but he'd always hear anything you had to say, and he'd never let you be bullied."

Ethel was an extremely pretty girl, of the showy type, with yellow hair and large grey eyes. Her manner was always eager and vivacious.

"He was a good man." said Dolly, more slowly. "They say he was sharp with the men sometimes, but he knew every bit of the business himself, from packing to wholesale buying. He was certainly always kind and gentle to the girls. He treated us all as ladies, as politely as if we were customers, and that's a thing you don't often meet with in business. He was the richest and best respected man in Psalmster, but he never put on 'frills' or pretended to be above his staff."

"Well, he sprang from nothing himself. They say he sold papers in the street when he was a kiddy, and he never forgot that. We shan't meet his like again in a hurry."

About two miles from the town the girls came to Osmington Woods, which sloped down to the river bank, and were free to the public. Here, under the shade of a mighty oak tree, they made their camp, and sat among the fern, listening to the music of the bees, the occasional splash of a fish, of breezes rustling far overhead— all the drowsy, heart-hallowing sounds of the summer hour.

"I wish the boss died every day," said Ethel, after a long silence. "No! of course I don't really mean that, dear. But how heavenly it is to get a day off like this. Think of the shop, the heat, the rattle of the cash-balls, the silly old cats matching hades, the smell of furniture polish, and calico, and serges. Ooh!"

"I don't want to think of it at all. Let's just enjoy the present. We shall have to go back to the grind to-morrow. I hate it, too. though we are better off than a lot of girls, as you've just said. All the same. It's our fate, and we have got to go through with it."

"Slaves! That's what we are. Living by rule, always at someone's beck and can. Oh, how I envy the girls from the Close or Bishop's Park that come and buy at Marchant's. Think what their lives are— the nice men they meet, openly, and not in the hole and corner way we have to. The time they have to themselves, the pretty clothes. It's a shame, a wicked shame. I'm as good-looking as any one of them, and what chance have I of meeting a man who will marry me and keep me in comfort, with pretty things, a refined house, and all that? None— and it's the same for you and all of us. Don't you ever want to meet a nice boy and be married, Dolly?"

The last words were said kindly enough; everyone liked quiet little Dolly Cooper, who listened so patiently to the troubles of others, never seemed to have any of her own, and was always willing to help. But Dolly was not pretty; at least, none of the girls at Marchant's thought so. Her figure was all right. She had nice dark hair, and there was nothing the matter with her brown eyes or clear-cut, sensitive lips. But Dolly did nothing to make the best of herself, so her companions considered, and were content to have it so. She never touched up brow or eyelash, or tinted a cheek. Men did not seem to attract her. She never flirted with the gentlemen of the staff, and had no "boy" in the town to take her to the pictures, or on the river on Sundays. So Ethel Baynes was unconsciously patronising in her tone, as she asked the all-important question.

"Of course. I should like to be married. Wouldn't every girl? But I wouldn't marry a man unless I loved him, whatever he might be able to give me."

"You dear old-fashioned thing! If you wait for Prince Charming to come along and deliver you from bondage, you'll wait long enough. Perhaps you're thinking; of Mr. Charles! Promise you'll invite me io the wedding!"

Dolly laughed. "Very well," she said, and they began to talk of old Merchant's only son and sole heir to the business. No one in the shop, with the exception of Mr. Peters, the general manager, and one or two heads of departments, knew much about the young man. His visits to Psalmster had been few and far between. It was understood that he was learning the business, first in London. and then for a time in New York, so that when he came into it he would be trained in the very latest methods. It was aaid that his father bad brought him up with great strictness. He had only arrived from the Continent the night before.

"As a matter of fact." said Ethel. "I don't for a moment suppose that Mr. Charles will have anything to do with the business at all, except attend a board meeting now and then, and draw the profits. 'Do it Now' must have left him a huge fortune as it is. You mark my words, he'll marry some girl in society, aet up for a country aquire, forget all about the shop, and never come near Paalmster unless he's forcad."'

ABOUT a quarter to ten that evening the young ladies of Marchant's Who "lived in" began to gather in the dining-room at the hostel, where a cold supper awaited them. There were nearly thirty of them all told, and the majority were in a state of pleasant fatigue, bursting with news as to the adventures of the day, but with a decorous sense that laughter and animated talk would be rather out of place to-night.

As they were whispering together; Mrs Moot, the housekeeper and house superintendent of all these girls, came in, together with Miss Carfax, the manager's shorthand-typist.

Mrs. Mont ruled her maidens with a light and easy rod. She was a Jolly old thing, who did not forget that she had once been young, and a comfortable feminine predisposition to gossip endeared her to the staff. Miss Cartax did not live in. She did not in fact, regard herself as belonging to the staff at all. Her father was the managing clerk to a good firm of solicitors in the town, and she had an irritating manner of condescension withthe shop girls, who called her  "Haughty Culture" behind her back. But she was too intimate with Mr. Peters to be snubbed in public, and was also Mrs. Mont's greatest friend.

"Girls," said the housekeeper, "I've got some news, wonderful news."

Everyone saw that the good lady was greatly excited. There was a dead silence in the room.

"It's the will," said Mrs. Mont, in a stage whisper. "Mr. Marchant's will. Miss Carfax here, owing to her connection with the law, her father being in the firm of solicitors that made out the— er— last testament of the deceased, knows all about it."

A low manner from the assembled ladies.  Why doesn't the old cat get on?

"My dears, it's this: Mr. Charles Marchant is left the shop and the money, but only on condition that he marries oue of you young ladies employed in the business within a year."

There was a loud, multiple gasp as from some gigantic pair of bellows. The color on a dozen pairs of cheeks grew pale, on a dozen others grew rosy red. Then there was a rush of girls to where the housekeeper and the secretary stood; a sudden storm of questions; high, hysterical laughter; a universal under-current of giggles; and, from a very fat ugly girl with red hair, a remark that, personally, she had far too much self-respect to sell herself for money.

Dolly Cooper and the red-haired girl were the only two who ate any supper that night.

There were six girls in Dolly's dormitory. Usually, when going to bed, they carried on a general conversation, recounting the events of the day and making plans for the future. To-night they split up into parties of two, sat on each other's beds, and whispered. As if by magic, the usual comradeship had vanished.

At eleven, when only a single light was left burning near the door, Ethel Baynes crept to Dolly's bed.

"Isn't it wonderful," she said, in an awed jwhisper, "coming after what you and I were talking about to-day? It seems like fate, doesn't it?"

Dolly was sleepy. "Oh, go to bed. Ethel," she whispered. "I can't talk now. And your hair is tickling my face."

"You poor fish," said Ethel, viciously, as she returned to her own bed. And, taking one heavy, golden lock in her hand, she kissed it. "He won't see any other hair like that in this establishment" was her last thought as she fell asleep.

The news was true. Old Marchant, prouder of his big business than anything else in life, had resolved to bind his son to it by links of steel. He did not want Charles to rise up to a class above his own. He thought that an honest English tradesman was as fine a specimen of humanity as existed. Charles must follow in his sire's footsteps, and there was nothing more cunningly calculated to keep him there than a marriage such as the shrewd old man ordained.

For a fortnight Psalmster was excited and amused. Little else was spoken of in all circles, and Charles Marchant, as he drove to and from the shop in his car, was the observed of all observers. Then, when the news was getting a little stale, a minor canon at the Cathedral aloped with the wife of a neighboring squire, and the public forgot all about Charies and his affairs.

In the little world of Marchant and Miller it was very different. The place was utterly transformed. To begin with. Marchant quietly took the rein of the business in his hands. From the first day he showed, that he meant to be supreme head, even as his father had been, and Mr. Peters, the manager, emphasised the fact, no doubt under orders.

About the question of marriage a dead silence had fallen over the establishment. None of the girls ever alluded to it in public conversation. It was considered the height of bad form to do so, and when any of the gentlemen made a bitter jest about "Turkish Sultan" or throwing the handkerchief— for the male members of the staff were having a singularly thin time of it— he wished he hadn't for very many days!

But there was peace no more in the feminine departments, or the Ladies' Hostel. All the girls were split up into groups. The old good-fellowship entirely disappeared. Nothing was left but a. kind of conference of actions and conspirators. Old friends with any pretensions to good looks or charm hated each other now, and only the hopelessly ugly girls became popular for the first time in their lives— they wore wanted as confidantes!

Three weeks went by. Never had work gone so smoothly. The sweetness and patience when serving customers were angelic. Girls hitherto inclined to be slangy became pensive and demure— Mr. Charles was a grave, reticent young man, with a somewhat ascetic face and steady, dark eyes— not for him the giggle and the glad eye. He did not seem in the least embarrassed by his strange position; quite unconscious of it, indeed. His manners were perfect. He treated all the girls as if they were duchesses, but he treated them all alike, and showed no preferences. Now and then his rather melancholy eyes dwelt for a moment or two rather longer on one lady than another, but that was all, though when it happened the hostel rocked to its foundations. In fact, they were all in love with him, or thought they were, and the shop was a vast emporium of highly-explosive matter that only needed a single spark to turn it into a conflagration. And in due time it came.

THE SPARK was Miss Step.

Mr. Charles went away to London for a week. The day after his return Miss Step made her appearance. She was a tall, dark girl, plainly, though well, dressed, and she was placed in the glove department with Dolly Cooper.

There was nothing strange in the arrival of a new assistant, but, under the circumstances, she was the subject of an intense and anxious scrutiny. Was she a possible candidate for the grand prize or not?

In two days everyone hated her. Mr. Charles had begun a systematic personal tour of every department. He held conferences with the respective salesmen and saleswomen, heard their ideas, listened to suggestions, or made them himself. It was noticed by jealous, eager eyes that Mr. Marchant spent a much longer time in "gloves" than anywhere else. Ethel Baynes, by now first favorite, professed to have discovered that the boss's manner was curiously familiar and friendly when he spoke to Miss Step. it was raid that he never passed through the shop without a glance at the glove counter and one of his enigmatic smiles.

Dolly was beseiged with inquiries. Why had Mr. Charles spent half an hour yesterday at her counter, going through stock? Did he really know anything about gloves? What did he say exactly? On what terms did he appear to be with the new girl?

They got but little change out of Dolly. She seemed perfectly indifferent to the general excitement and refused placidly to gratify those feverish questionings. Miss Step had been put into her dormitory and occupied the next bed— it was soon obvious that the two girls had become friends. Any combination of two was dangerous, especially when one of them was the mysterious Miss Step, and the hostel hummed like a hive.

It was Ethel who precipitated matters. One morning Mr. Charles' car was waiting outside the shop. It was known that he was going to catch the midday train to London.

He passed through the drapery department, and an instant thrill and shudder went through it. Would he, did he mean to― Yes!  Mr. Charles stopped at the glove counter, and, laughing, held out his hands to Dolly and Miss Step. It took nearly a quarter of an hour for him to be suited with a pair. of travelling gloves, during which time he seemed to be talking with great ease and animation. His bow, as he went away, filled twenty hearts with anger and despair.

After supper that night, when Mrs. Mont had withdrawn, a girl suddenly locked the door.

As if at a preconceived signal, Ethel Baynes rose from her chair.

Her face was very white, her eyes gleamed. "Girls!" she said, in a hoarse voice, which trembled with passion, "We all know of a certain circumstance connected with this establishment. From the first none of us have mentioned it in public, amdag to behave ourselves as perfect ladies. But circumstances have arisen which alter that rule. There is someone among us who has not the instincts of a lady, whom nobody knows anything about. She has come here in a way which I don't suppose would bear investigation if the truth were known. Let that be. We have seen what we have seen, and it is enough. I propose that a certain so-called young lady should be sent to Coventry. I propose that no one shall speak to her or associate with her. You all know whom I mean―" she looked straight at Miss Step, whose face had grown pale, but who sat perfectly motionless by the window.

An angry murmur ran through the room. "Hands up those who agree with me," cried Ethel, with cruel exultation in her voice.

A forest of hands shot up into the air.

"Carried unanimously!" the girl shouted, and then stopped.

"No. Dolly, Miss Cooper, you haven't put your hand up."

Dolly took a step towards her former friend. Her eyes blazed. She, also, was trembling with passion.

"Send me to Coventry, too," she said, "or whatever you call it. Miss Step has not done any one of you any harm. You are a lot of mean, cowardly, vulgar-minded fools; and as for you, Ethel Baynes, I haven't words to my what I think."

She went to Miss Step and took her by the arm. "Come alone, dear," she said. "I expect you and I can get on quite well without these man-hunters."

The two left the room in dead silence. She had frightened many of them. Burning cheeks and downcast eyes showed that her words had struck home.

ON THE SUNDAY afternoon the two girls slunk out together, not without bitter and ironic comments from their companions, and sought the solitude of Osmington Woods. Under the identical oak tree where she had picnicked with Ethel on the day of the funeral. Dolly threw herself upon the grass and sobbed bitterly. Her nerves were at breaking point she felt she could endure no more.

"Mary," she sobbed, "I don't know how you stand it I can't bear it any longer. They are cruel beasts to us both. I am going to give in my notice on Monday."

The other girl stroked her hair with a white, slender hand.

"Dorothy," she said, in the low, cultured voice which was an additional cause of offending at the hostel, "you have been wonderfully loyal and true to me. Why have you done it? I am a perfect stranger to you."

A tear-stained face looked up at her.

"I don't know, dear. I think it is because I love you. You are so different to all the other girls— and— and I am sure that he would he so furious if he knew."

Mary bent over her friend and whispered in her ear.

"Dolly," she said, "though you have never shown a sign of it or said a single word to me, I believe that you care for him."

Doily's arms slid round her neck. "I should love him if he were a crossing-sweeper," she said. "If he were imprisoned, I'd marry him directly he came out, if he were to ask me. But you— you love him too, don't you, Mary?"

"Not as you do, not in that way, but I am fond of him, yes."

Suddenly Dolly laughed. "What nonsense It is our talking like this," she said bitterly, "even to ourselvea Never let us mention it again, Mary. We might end by becoming like the others."

There was a silence, and then Mary got up. "Rest here, little, dear," she Mid. "You have not slept properly for three night. Try and sleep now. I will go for a little walk and come bank in half an hour or so."

DOLLY sank into the deep sleep of exhaustion. At length she began to dream.

The drapery department was full of glorious sunshine. Sotnehew die roef had been removed and the place was full of sweet, sylvan airs. And the young ladlee were out, and there were no customers.

Then, down a long vista of archways which led to "woollen goods" and "bedding" someone came swiftly towards her. The archways changed to interlacing boughs of green leaves, and the man who came, with a light in his eyes and outstretched hands, was Prince Charming. He came to her with parted lips and took her hands in his, drawing her towards him.

"Dolly! Little girl, I know everything, but it is all over now, sweetest, dearest little girl!"

She gave a great cry. The arms around her were real, the yearning voice that made music in her ears was no dream voice....

"From the very first day that I came to the shop I noticed you. I knew instinctively that you were different from all the others, but I was determined to find out. There was no way of meeting you, so I went to London and told everything to Mary."

"To Mary!" The faint whisper only just reached his ear.

"To Mary, my step-sister, who has never lived in Psalmster. No one here knew anything about her. She came to be an assistant in the shop, and— and—"

The deep voice broke with passion.

"Dolly, say, tell me yourself, that you care for me, that you will marry me."

A GREAT BUZZ of excitement in the upper room. All the young ladies were chattering together with extraordinary animation.

"It is after locking-up time. Mary Step and Dolly Cooper have not come in."

More than this, Miss Carfax is there with her friend, Mrs. Mont.

"I tell you, girls," said Miss Carfax, "that I saw it with my own eyes. Miss Cooper and Miss Step caught the 7.30 train to London, travelling first class. There's not a doubt of it."

"Thank heaven!" cried Ethel Baynes. "Girls, we have been too much for them. Three cheers for a good riddance—"

Just at that moment there was a sharp rap upon the door. It opened, and Mr. Peters, the manager, entered.

You could have heard a pin drop at this unprecedented and extraordinary occurrence.

Mr. Peters bowed, put on his pince-nez, and began to read from a paper he held in his hand.

"Ladies, I am instructed by Mr. Charles Merchant to give you all one week's notice from to-morrow, Monday, the twentieth. Double salaries will be paid on Saturday next, when you will kindly vacate the hostel. Any lady who wishes to remain for a few days will be accommodated in the hostel free of charge, but will have no duties in the shop."

He bowed, cast a quick glance round, pad withdrew.

They all knew the truth by twelve o'clock the next morning.

______________________

3: Fifteen Million Candle Power

All-Story Weekly Jan 13 1917

World's News (Sydney) 2 Jan 1915

THE WINTER'S wind was roaring over the jagged granite promontories of the Gull Bay, in far western Cornwall, as William Hacks, the coastguard, felt his way carefully over the moor. It was almost pitch-clack, and only an occasional boulder among the heather, which had been whitewashed as a guiding stone, showed the solitary patrol his way.

The air was full of the mighty thunder and reverberation of tbe Atlantic, where the moor descended in precipice after precipice to the sea. Clots of spume came flying inland on the singing winds. The village of Polcarrick was two miles away, and Hicks was walking towards the great Gull Lighthouse, which stood, with its attendant group of whitewashed houses, half a mile away, upon the very edge of the cliff.

Every now and again, at fixed intervals, there
came the regular beating of a great light against the dark background of sky. The moving pencil of light which streamed through the heavens in a monstrous are, and vanished only to begin its journey once again, seemed almost dreadful in the swing of its strength, its silent inevitable passing.

Once Hicks stopped still, as the light streamed overhead, and his eyes shone with sombre excitement. "The sword of the Lord!" he muttered to himself, in a deep, vibrating voice. "Aye, it's like the sword of the Lord! I would it were the sword of Vengeance, too." A deep sob throbbed out into the night, and once more he battled with the storm and stumbled onwards. At length the great round tower which held the pulsing light silhouetted itself with a deeper black against the sable sky. Hicks opened the gate which surrounded the gardens of the staff, walked down a gravel path, and knocked at the door of his brother-in-law, John Casley, the chief keeper, captain and guardian of the famous Gull Light. He entered a warm and comfortable room.

A bright fire burned upon the hearth, and a lamp stood upon a massive oak table, throwing its reflections upon models of ships in glass cases, which hung upon the walls, upon Casley's medals set against a background of black velvet, two large framed photographs of King Edward and Queen Alexandra, and a photograph of the battleship Orion, on which Casley had served when in the Royal Navy. Casley himself sat in a wooden chair by one side of the fire." He was dark, swarthy even to blackness, with a hooked nose, curling blue-black hair and beard. And in his eyes also was the same sombre smouldering flame as in those of his visitor. Both men were Cornish, members of that strange Celtic race, so alien from the rest of England. Both were deeply religious, with the stern fanaticism engendered, in lonely granite chapels on the moors, where the remote worshippers "strive and wrestle with the Lord," and seem to hear the going of God in the wind.

Upon the table by, Casley's side there was a little box from a stationer's shop at Helston. The box was opened, and contained mourning cards, deeply edged with black, and with a silver urn printed at the top. Below was printed "IN MEMORY of SARAH ANN, Beloved wife of JOHN CASLEY, of the Gull Light, Who was drowned at sea, off the Polcarrick Point, the third day of January, 19—."

Beneath was a verse from the 94th Psalm, "Oh, Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; oh, God, to whom "vengeance belongeth, show Thyself." Hicks closed the door of the living room, drew up a chair opposite his brother-in-law, and sat down. He looked round the room with a sigh. It was neat and tidy as ever, but it seemed empty to the coastguard, nevertheless. Something was gone, a presence had departed, which would never irradilate that simple home again.

Casley saw the look, interpreted it, and, bowing his head in his gnarled and power-ful hands, he groaned aloud.

"Never again, Bill!" he said; "we shall never see her sitting there any more, with her knitting and her sweet face, or making us a cup of tea and bringing out the saffron cake."

Hicks nodded sadly. "Sarah could make better saffron cake than any woman in Corn-wall. Mother learned her when she was a girl."

"Just cast your eye over this, Bill," Casley said, pushing one of the mourning cards over to his brother-in-law. "They came from Helston by this afternoon's post. Read what I've put on it."

The thick-set coastguard picked up the card, and read it through carefully. When he read the verse from the 94th Psalm, the dull fire in his eyes leaped up into flame. A curious sound came from him, half snarl, half whimper— the sound a dog makes when hunting and close upon his quarry.

"Aye," he said, "my dear sister and your dear wife, and murdered as surely as if 'twere done by a knife. But I've news for you, lad, I've news for you."

The lighthouse keeper sat up in his chair, his face was tense with fierce anxiety and hate.

"Evidence! Evidence! Have you got it, Bill? There's many a man in Polcarrick village who does a bit of wrecking if he can in a small way. But there's never been such a big thing, such an organised thing, as the wreck of the Mary Jane since the old days before they built this light. It brings back to me fifteen years ago, and many a dark deed done by old Joseph Trehair. Joe's dead, but his son Walter is alive" — he brought his fist down on the table with a thud that made the lamp rock and rattle where it stood— "and it's Walter Trehair who wrecked the Mary Jane off Polcarrick Reef. On that I'll lay my life. What have you found  out?"

"It was him, right enough," the coastguard answered. "It was him and the two Penrose lads that he's got hold of this year past, teaching them to drink and swear, and all that's ungodly."

"You're sure?"

"Sure enough. And it was as crafty, devilish a thing, as was ever done. You remember that night, John— none of us is likely to forget it— with the big north-easter blowing and the combers coming in over the reef?"

The other nodded. He couldn't speak for emotion, but he sat back now, in his chair, listening intently, and letting the coastguard tell his tale his own way.

"Well," Hicks continued,"there have been one or two small coasting vessels, going down from Bristol to St. Ives and Penzance, wrecked in a curious way during the past year. We have had to make special reports upon them to the Divisional Officer. All these wrecks have taken place between the headland on the other side of the village, where Polcarrick Reef runs half a mile out into the sea from Nan Carrow Cove. Now, for two miles ships sailing south can't see your light here. The headland is in the way, and I know that Trinity House have been thinking of establishing a small light there of late. It's just those two miles that's the danger and no more, because ships open out the Gull Light directly afterwards."

"I've heard tell of it, I've heard tell of it," said the lighthouse keeper.

"Well, a strong light on the top of Nan Carrow Cove would seem to any ship like the Gull Light itself, if it was worked properly. Then, with a north-easterly wind and a flowing tide like there was that night, nothing could save a ship from going on the reef, John, that was how it was done. Oh, I've been working secret and quiet like, without saying a word to anyone. I've heard things in the Polcarrick Arms. I've listened at night to men talking on the moor path, or down among the boats in the porth— lay and listened where no one couldn't see me, and now I know. One of those young Penroses, he broke into parson's stable one night, where he keeps that new motor-car. Anyone could get in. They takes one of the big lamps that burns acetylene. Trehair and the Penroses understand it, because their cycle lamps are all worked the same way. The rest was easy, as I've pieced it together. They were down to the Cove at midnight, when everyone was asleep, and none of our chaps were about, and halt an hour or so did the trick. They kept smothering the lamp with a coat, and pulling it away again, so that the light showed fixed for two seconds, was eclipsed for five, and showed again for five, and so on, exactly like your big lantern up above. That's how it was done, John, and that's what cost us Sarah, and cost four poor women their lads, too— there was only three of the crew escaped, as you know. Of course, Trehair couldn't know that Sarah met Captain Edwards in Bristol, and was sailing home with him, but he's murdered our lass none the less for that, and he shall pay the penalty of it, for a black-hearted rogue and villain."

"Have you told anyone yet, Bill?"

The coastguard shook his head. "Not a soul," he answered, "but I've got all me proofs together, and they're all written down, and I'm going to send 'em to the Lieutenant to-morrow morning. And I'm going to be there in the village when the police come for Walter Trehair. He'll hang, my lad, he'll hang!"

The face of the other man blazed up into a dark fury of exultation. "Aye," he cried, "he's caught in the toils of the law. Vengeance! Vengeance! And we to be the instruments of it, as is right and proper"— his voice had risen almost to a scream, and then it suddenly dropped once more. He shook his bead slowly from side to side.

"Aye, he'll hang, sure 'nough," he said in a curious musing voice. "When I was in the Navy, Bill, I mind well enough I saw two men hanged. The Mediterranean Fleet lay off Tunis, and two stokers from the flagship had gone ashore and run amok, and had killed three French Arabs. They were hung outside the palace of the Bey. But it was nothing, Bill. They fixed up a platform and dropped 'em through a trap door, and they was dead in a second." He bent forward with flaming eyes. "And what will that be to Wal Trehair, what has lived a rough and come-as-you-may life and takes chances for this or that. Why! He'll laugh at 'em as they kill him. He won't suffer no pain!"

Hicks nodded. "You're right," he said, "he won't suffer no pain. He won't know all that you and I've come through. He'll only lose his life— and a dog's life it is. He won't lose what is dearer to'n than life, a woman he did dearly love."

There was silence for a minute or two in the quiet room. Then, with a swift, panther-like movement, Casley rose from his seat, and went over to his brother-in-law, putting his bands upon his shoulders, and whispering in his ears.

"What of that?" he said at length in a hoarse, rasping voice. "What of that, Bill, my dear?"

The coastguard shook himself free, and stood up facing Casley, the tan of his face turned to a dusky, mottled grey. "Lad," he said, and half choked as he said it, "but it's awful."

"It is the voice of the Lord speaking in me," the lighthouse keeper answered, "and it's just retribution, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and— a true light for a false one!"

Both men were trembling now, and looking at each other with wild eyes. The furious winds of heaven shrieked and shouted above their heads, the great gongs of the sea boomed up to them from the boiling surf below, and their voices seemed little, dwarfed, and muffled things—voices heard under a blanket—in the wild elemental fury outside the screened, quiet room with a fire upon the hearth and com- fortable yellow light.

"You see"— it was Casley's voice speaking now, hissing rapidly, "I am the guardian of the True Light, the light that saves mariners on the wide seas from cold and cruel death. The True Light! The True Light!— Lad, I am the pastor and minister of the True Light. And he, that black-souled man that killed Sarah with his wicked devices— he came up against the light of the Lord, as the Amalekites of old. He made himself a priest of the false light, the false light of the pit!"

He stopped for a moment, trembling with excitement, his right hand raised as one who prophesies.

And the thick-set coastguard was no less powerfully affected and caught up in spirit by the weird vibrating voice which throbbed through the noises of the storm. Hardly knowing what he did, he caught Casley by the arm in a grip of iron.

"You'm right," he cried, "you be right, John Casley, you be! The True Light shall triumph over the false— the sword of the Lord shall speak— I mind coming over the moor just now, I thought as the Gull Light flashed through the sky, it seemed like the sword of God. But it's a fearful thing to do, Johnny, it's a fearful thing to do!"

"It's justice," Casley answered sternly. "It's truer Justice on him than could be done up to the Assizes at Bodmin. Life is the Lord's and the Law's. We don't want to take away Walter's life— but what'll his life be after? 'Cording as to whether his black-souled body is cleansed by the True Light, the White Light, or not.... Now, not a word, Bill Hicks, of what you know. Tear up the report you've written to the Lieutenant. Keep all dark within your breast. And on the third night from now, bring that wicked murderer here, if so be you can do it. I'll send Trewhalla and Boase away. To one I'll give leave and the other shall go to Plymouth on business of repairs. I'll take all their duty myself from nine o'clock at night, till the light is switched off. There'll be no one here, 'cept the staff in the engineroom looking after the engine and the dyna-mos. You must get him here, Bill, and bring'n in through the men's quarters. But can ye do it! 'Twill be a rare oneasy job."

"I'll do it, I'll do it, sure 'nough. I'll think out some rare cunning plan between now and then. We be friendly 'nough. P'raps I can drop something in his beer and get him out along. But I'll bring'n, John, old dear, I'll bring'n if I have to carry'n oal the way from Polcarrick to Gull Rock."

He rose as he said it, pulled out a short clay pipe from his breast, lit it with tremb-ling fingers, and, with a wave of the hand, passed out to the Remainder of hia solitary vigil in the storm.

It was about half-past nine, of a clear but very cold night, when the chief lighthouse keeper, in his dark uniform, strolled into the engine-room.

One big dynamo was purring and spitting as the leather band from the relentless oil engine sucked round the bright steel fly-wheel, appearing to be almost motionless, except for a glitter upon its oiled surface from the arc-lamp hanging above. To the right an iron door was open leading into the brick walled room, where the great zinc tanks of oil showed like some Gargantuan wine-cellar. Upon the left was an elaborate switchboard of black vulcanite, with gleaming copper switches and connections and long lever handles to be moved this way or that. By the switchboard was the newly-installed apparatus for sounding a bell two miles out under the sea, the warning of which ships would pick up by their system of telephony. And at the end of this concrete-floored, glass-roofed hall, was the long cylinder of compressed air and the complicated apparatus which, on foggy nights, sent out the long mournful ululation of the siren.

The chief engineer, very black and oily about the face, hands, and half bare arms, was shuffling round the oil engine in list slippers. The electrician was smoking a cigarette and gazing down at the armature and brushes of the dynamo with an almost fascinated gaze, "All well?" John Casley asked,

The chief engineer nodded and spat. He was a Scotsman.

"Ay," he said, "it's all verra well. The sea's like a loch, the navies of the world are kicking up and down the Channel like cradles, there's no sea on, forbye round Land's End there may be a bit of a swell, and you and I, and the whole boiling of us, man Casley, might as well shut up shop, dowse the light, and go to bed."

"Are you sleepy?" Casley asked.

"Not I, but there's a sort of drowsy business over this establishment to-night. Your two officers are awa'. I followed suit, and my second and greaser are off somewhere on their jollifications"— he turned his hard, wrinkled, and good-humored face upon his chief. "Well," he said, "there's work to be done, and you up in the lantern, and I down here with these"— he patted the green-painted cylinder nearest to him as he spoke, "well, we'll watch and warn over the Channel this frosty night!"

Casley's face was pleased and quiet. He seemed a man at ease with himself and all the world, and as he left the engine-room, with its low insistent hum, M'Pherson turned to the electrician. "He's bearing it well," said the engineer. "I am glad to see the kindness and resignation in the man's face, for he loved his gude wife very dearly, and her loss has been to him a sair blow."

Casley, with the same pleased and quiet as- pect of face, walked briskly along the white-washed corridor which led from the engine-room to the lower chamber of the light-tower. A narrow staircase of open ironwork with indiarubber treads, wound upwards, though the foot of the staircase could be reached by another door which communicated directly with it from Casley's own private quarters.

Casley ran up the circular stairway as a sailor runs up the ratlines. For some reason or other he seemed younger, happier than he had been for years. As the engineer had noticed, all the marks of his recent sorrow seemed to be smoothed from his face, but in addition to that, there was a bright expectancy upon it, which was oddly at variance with his usual fanatic sternness. The man was actually humming a little tune as he came into the lantern-room.

He found himself in a place so strange and wonderful that the ordinary man or woman can hardly conceive it. There are, perhaps, less than fifty of such places— the lantern rooms of first class lights, set round the stormy coasts of England. The Gull Light was twin to the Lizard Light, and each of the two great sisters generated a beam of fifteen million candle power. Fifteen million!— the brain reels at such immensity. Sixty miles away the ships that went up and down the waters in the darkness of the night could see the message of the Gull Light.

The first thing that Casley did when he entered the chamber was to put on a pair of blue glasses— not unlike the "goggles" that motorists wear— for he who tends the dreadful, splendid, Spirit of the Light, must veil his eyes from its glory. Once when Casley had been preaching in a little chapel on the moors, he had spoken of this— "As the prophet Moses was commanded by the Lord to put off his shoes when he came to holy ground and saw the bush flaming in the desert, so do I veil my eyes with colored glass. And every time I do so, I do think of Moses, and my heart is up lifted at the glory of the Lord!"

The cupola of the lighthouse was perhaps some 24 feet high. The place was circular, of course, and there was room for two people to walk abreast—over the polished steel grating which formed the floor—between the outer wall and the light itself, with its complicated mechanism, which formed the centre of the round glass lantern-room.

And with regular, inevitable motion, the light itself swung round and round. The two pencils of brittle carbon— each as thick as a walking stick— met at their points with a silent but frightful explosion of light. Behind them, for the half of the circular chamber in which they were confined, was a sequence of glass prisms, arranged in a pattern, odd and bewildering enough in the day-time, but now, when the light was in being, catching up, absorbing, soaking in, and throwing out a million times multiplied, the sword of the Lord.

Six feet above Casley's head as he walked round the august thing he controlled, the light flared through the glass windows and some three and a half tons weight revolved with a slight ticking motion of its animating clock- work in a bath of mercury. The huge remorse- less Spirit of the Night went steadily upon its circular course, floating in a hidden basin of that most subtle and least understood of all metals, which the ancients credited with magic powers.

Casley walked quietly round the revolving terror. He glanced at a clock placed upon that half of the circular wall above him which was brick and not glass. Then he looked up at the light, bowed his head with a little shudder, opened a glass door, and went out upon the gallery surrounding the cupola.

The fresh night air came cool to his face. He could see nothing of the vast seas beyond, save only where, above his head, the True

Light painted' the black horizon with white fire. He breathed deeply, inhaling the winter's air and listening to the still sea below, which sent up a murmur as of distant fairy drums.

As he stood there, there was a sudden flutter, crash, and impact, and something writhing and fluttering fell at his feet. It was a straying widgeon, which had lost us companions, and, like a moth against some lit lamp in a quiet room, it flung itself against the stout plate-glass. Many birds on winter nights were found dead or dying upon the gallery. Casley stooped and picked up the bird. He saw was a duck and edible, and Putting it out of its pain with a quick twist of his fingers, be brought it back into the light chamber as he closed the door.

A moment afterwards he heard a low whistle from the bottom of the circular stairway— a low, cautious whistle. He stiffened to that— as a pointer becomes rigid in a turnip field, when a covey of part-ridges is about to rise. Then, with the agility of an ape, he ran downstairs.

The door leading from the bottom of the tower into his own quarters was ajar. At the very foot of the staircase William Hicks was standing, dressed in nondescript clothes.

And lying at the coastguard's feet was the trussed form of a small, wiry, grey-haired man. A red handkerchief with white spots was bound round the lower part of Trehair's face, holding the gag in its place. His arms were tied behind his back, and a thin lanyard of hemp was wound about his ankles and tied with a running knot.

"I've got'n," Hicks whispered hoarsely, "'twas an easy job— now then!"

Without a further word Hicks and Casley took hold of the slim figure and carried it up the circular staircase, round and round with a sinister adroitness and silence. It was as though they had rehearsed some such dark action as this many times before, though it was not so. Men of strong natures, strung up to some moment of supreme good, or supreme evil, do not fail in details when that moment comes.

They had him now in the lantern-house. There was no sound at all save their hurried breathing and the slithering of their feet upon the steel grating of the floor, though every now and then there was a loud click as the weights which controlled the clockwork dropped an inch down the tower and the True Light swung round.

Hicks looked upward to where, twelve feet above his head, against one of the iron girders which spanned the glass of the cupola, and in the full path of the light, a pulley with depending ropes was set.

The man felt his breath caught back, and his teeth began to chattter. He swayed from side to side as if an electric current had passed down his spine. His very heart shuddered and his bones began to grind together in an agony.

He gazed mutely and with a dreadful appeal at Casley.

The hands of the lighthouse keeper were trembling like leaves in a wind. His temples streamed with a cold sweat which fell down his face like water. His breath came and went in sobs, as if he had been half drowned. But he dragged the helpless figure of the wrecker to where the ropes hung from the pulley, and bound them round his chest and under his tied arms.

The two men fell upon the hauling-ropes with a dreadful, tremulous eagerness.

The upper part of the limp figure rose from the floor, the heels of Trehair's sea-boots grated upon the steel, he was in an erect position now—as with their faces shining with a thousand pearls of sweat, the husband and brother of Sarah Ann Casley hauled at the hemp.

And the bound man rose swiftly upwards, as if some lug-sail upon a Cornish fishingboat was hoisted to the wind.

What could be seen of Trehair's face was of a terrible white, a horrible, unnatural white, like the underside of a sole. The wretched man had realised at last the terrible retribution in store for him. His eyes protruded. They seemed to emit sparks of sheer horror, the body twitched convulsively, actual ripples seeming to run up it from the tied ankles to the quivering neck. The stooping figures below, as the pulley gave a final creak, tied the ropes to a handrail.

At that moment the revolving mechanism of the light was still, and the frightful radiance was streaming through a point in the glass half-circle of the cupola, farthest away from where Trehair was hanging.

Casley stood up and staggered against the lantern itself, holding his hands high above his head in terrible imprecation. He stared at the dreadful figure above him as a man who saw some horrid vision.

"The True Light! The True Light!" he cried in a hoarse gutteral voice. "Murderer! Murderer of good women and brave men. Ye that raised the false, luring torch of hell to be their undoing and their doom, now know the True Light."

There was a click, a slight, delicate purring— and then the light swung slowly round.

Full upon the face of the wrecker the concentrated rays of fifteen million candle-power fell from a distance of, perhaps, three yards.

The light which was visible to mariners sixtly miles away, was focussed upon the face of a human being. This was the five seconds flash. For five seconds the sword of flame would remain motionless before it passed onwards to illuminate another part of the Horizon.

The two avengers stared upwards. They saw the face of the murderer change dreadfully in an instant of time. The eyelids fell— every feature was horribly distinct— and then seemed to wrinkle and dry up into films of transparent skin. The white face of sheer terror turned grey for an instant. It was like a shadow passing over a field of ripe wheat. But this was but for an instant. Things like soap-bubbles seemed to pass out from the grey. A blue thread of smoke rose from the handkerchief which kept the gag of the tortured man in place.

Click! Pur-r-r-r, the sword of the Lord flashed away to the opposite segment in the half-circle of its passage.

The heels of the hanging man were drumming softly and rapidly against the thick plate-glass.

The men below were rigid and motionless. The horror of what they had done, and what they were seeing, paralysed every nerve. They had not known, they had not guessed that it, would be like this. Casley stretched out a hand towards the ropes upon the hand-rail, but his arms stopped after an inch or two of movement with a jerk. He was in- capable of further action. The dumb appeal in his eyes to the coastguard was unan- swered, for Hicks lay in a crumpled heap upon the grating.

Click!— How quiet the mechanism which actuated the light was! Click! Purr, purr, and in a bath of mercury the light began to move.

The hanging man above knew it, and through the thickness of the gag and the charred calico which held it in its place, came a low and dreadful moan.

The streaming pencil of light moved softly, suavely, onwards.

Then, there was a sudden blinding flash of blue and amethyst, which seemed to shake the cupola and almost dissolve, glass, steel, and granite, in one dreadful moment, a loud hiss and clatter as the springs of the two carbons in the lamp made them recoil, meet, and meet again; black, utter darkness fell over everything.

The distant hum of the dynamos in the engine-room below ceased. There was a fled shout from far away, and an electric gong began ringing loudly.

A cable had fused; the current was cut off from the lantern, and in an instant the True Light was darkened and of no avail.

Such an event is rare in the lighthouses of England that use electricity, but it occasionally happens, for men have tamed, but not entirely conquered, the mysterious fluid that some hold is the very basis of life itself.

In the event of the light being suddenly extinguished, there was a definite course of action laid down for the keepers. In a room below the lantern-chamber powerful oil-lamps were ready to be hoisted up through a trapdoor in the grid, and fixed in place without any loss of time. Casley knew exactly what to do, and he did it now as if in a dream, sensation coming back to his paralysed limbs, the engrained habit of discipline coming to his aid. He felt his way round the wall to a speaking telephone connecting with the engine-room, and in a moment was communicating with the engineer.

"It's one of the main leads," came up to him in a hoarse, anxious voice, "but Dolby says he can get it right in an hour. Can you manage up there with the lamps single-handed, or shall I come up and give a hand?"

"I can manage right enough," Casley answered, in a dull and muffled voice. And then, clicking the receiver back into its place, he whispered hoarsely to Hicks in the dark, giving him directions as to what to do.

For six minutes the tall column of the lighthouse stretched up in the dark a dead and melancholy thing. Then, once again the light flashed out over the ocean, powerful and beneficent still, but with a softer and more yellow radiance than before. They laid Trehair upon the grating below, and cut the bonds that bound him. Withshaking hands Hicks unwound the handkerchief and removed the gag.

The man lay perfectly still upon the floor for a minute or two; his face was horrible to look at, but beneath the painful flickering of the scorched eyelids, there was sight still. He looked slowly from one to the other of his captors, both of whom were kneeling on either side of him. At last he spoke, "For God's sake," he said, "kill me right out, John Casley and Bill Hicks. I can't bear that"— his eyes gave a glance upward, and he shuddered violently from head to toe—  "anything but that!" he whimpered. "For the love of God, Casley!"

Neither the coastguard nor the keeper of the light spoke.

The moaning voice went on, more tremulous and terrified than before. "Anything but that! I know it is just and right, in a manner of speaking, for what I did— that I should die by the True Light, that did lure others to death by the false flare. Not that I meant to kill anyone, John, but kill me quickly or send me up along to Bodmin Gaol, where I belong, to be hung in peace."

John Casley burst out sobbing. The tears ran like rain down his round, wrinkled face. His hands were joined together in the fashion of one who prays.

"Lord, Thou hast spoken," he said. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Thou hast spoken in time, and saved me and my mate here, and Walter Trehair, that has done so much wickedness."

He bent down, and put his arms round the wrecker, lifting him into a sitting posture.

"Walter," he said, in a choking voice, "the True Light has spoken. I forgive you, my dear, for all you have done to me. And neither I nor William will set the law on ye. Go in peace, brother, and wash in the fires of repentance."

"Aye," Hicks said in antiphon, "in the True Light!"

________________

4: George Washington's Pen

World's News (Sydney) 3 April 1920

OLD Mr. Temperley, one afternoon in early spring, walked inro the large private museum which he had built out at the side of his luxurious mansion at Hampstead.

His simple countenance radiated benevolence and content as he regarded the antique treasures he had amassed during the last twenty years of ostentatious and undeviating honesty. He was indeed a happy man. Early in life, when poor, unknown, and of an intellect which his employers regarded as practically nonexistent, he had made a great discovery. Always a lover of that excellent dish, tripe and onions, he accidentally fell upon a method of drying the succulent dainty and retailing it in boxes bearing the well-known legend. "Four Hearty, Blood-forming meals for Eightpence." From that moment he never looked back, and in a few years found that an immense fortune was loving steadily In his direction. To-day, known and honored on all sides as the Tripe Emperor, he was a millionaire with an excellent digestion and not a care in the world.

And bis success, he was wont to say― loudly and often― was entirely due to his passion for Truth.

Samuel Temperley was a Truth-maniac. He had taken up Truth as a hobby when a boy, just as other lads take up fretwork or photography, and had remained faithful to that severe and uncompromising lady all his life.

It was not too much to say that Mr. Temperley was at least as famous for his love of Truth as for his desiccated paunch of the ewe, and his addresses to Associations of Earnest Young Men (who had tried to be as truthful and hoped to be as rich) were in request all over England.

Mr. Temperley was now a widower with one child― a son. There had been nothing remarkable about his deceased wife, except her somewhat irritating habit of uttering what she would call "a few home truths." As an acknowledged and public expert, her husband naturally resented the efforts of an amateur, and on more than one occasion was heard to remark that "what Mrs. T. calls Truth, I call Temper."

Yet if the Tripe Emperor had met with a disappointment In his spouse, he was doubly pleased in his son, G. W. Temperley, who was the very apple of his eye. The happy father was wont to say that in all England there was not such another son as George Washington Temperley, and, like all the old gentleman's statements, this was strictly true.

G.W.T., like his illustrious namesake, could not tell a lie. No tiny fibkin had ever passed his lips, and yet, strange to say, he was far from popular. Inability to deviate a hair's breadth from strict accuracy prevented his success in society, especially with women. He was forced to tell them the truth about themselves, until, by a long and arduous course of training, he had cultivated an abnormal power of silence. To a disposition naturally voluble this was a great trial, and his prospects of marriage seemed hopeless until he met the charming and beautiful Vera Robb, who had been stone deaf from birth.

Mr. Temperley strolled round his museum, deep in thought, it wss the eve of his son's marriage, aad the millionaire was considering what form his wedding present should take.

The question was a difficult one. George Washington was already in  possession of almost everything that the heart of man could desire. Motors, a yacht, excellent shooting in Scotland―  G.W.T. enjoyed them all. His father allowed him ten thousand pounds income a year, and this was to be doubled on his marriage: what was there left to bestow upon so fortunate a youth?

It must obviously be an article of extreme rarity, aad Mr. Temperley's thoughts began to be colored by the objects around him. The museum was his great hobby, and he had spent many thwi pounds in acquiring the treasures It contained, mostly antiques of historical interest, though with here and there a modern piece.

Upon the wall, facing you as you entered, was Mr. Temperley's portrait by a celebrated painter, the picture― as most people know― depicting an incident early in the Tripe Emperor's career. He is, in fact, represented in his first shop, nailing a lie to the counter.

To the right was a large working model of the well at the bottom of which Truth was originally discovered, and what made the exhibit particularly interesting and valuable was that the actual bucket of the famous well was used in the model. Mr. Temperley had purchased this through Mr. Moses, his confidential agent and a well-known dealer in antiques, for five hundred pounds― together with a certificate of its genuineness signed by Mr. Moses.

This certificate, framed and glazed, hung upon the wall, and as his eyes fell upon it Mr. Temperley thought that he saw a way out of his difficulty. Mr. Moses, of course! Mr. Moses would know of some unique treasure fitted for the occasion, and Mr. Temperley determined to consult him at once.

In a few minutes a magnificent Rolls-Royce car was conveying the millionaire to his agent's office in a quiet street of the West End.

Mr. Moses was a dark-skinned gentleman, with curly black hair, and eyes bright as the huge diamond he wore in a ring upon his finger. An expression of extreme joy pervaded his countenance as Mr. Temperley was shown into his private room.

"Well, this is a pleasure!" said Mr. Moses through his nose― it appeared to be his principal organ of speech― "And how's my kind friend and patron today? Sit down, and have a cigar― do!"

Mr. Temperley sat. "I came to see you, Moses," he said, "because I find myself in somewhat of a quandary. I think that you know my only son, George Washington, is about to be married?"

"All England knows it, Mr. Temperley. Not an hour ago a client was in here, occupying your very chair. It was the Duke of― I must not mention names, of course, but a nobleman who is always at Buckingham Palace. He practically lives there! His Lordship tells mo that a certain illustrious lady and gentleman― again I mention no names― are greatly interested in the coming event!"

"You don't say so," answered Mr. Temperley, much pleased, and reflecting what a valuable friend and agent be had in Mr. Moses. "Well, the fact is that I'm rather troubled In my mind about the wedding present. It is difficult to know what to do. In the case of my future daughter it was easy. The diamond tiara I purchased with your kind help has pleased her greatly. But my son is different. I can think of no ordinary thing he has not got, and yet I desire to present him with something which will be to him a precious possession, and which, at the same time, will make a stir in England."

"Quite so, Mr. Temperley. Generosity combined with advertisement! You are a great man, sir! No one is more worthy to be Custodian of the Keys of Truth!"

The Tripe Emperor blushed with pleasure. No one appreciated him quite so well as Mr Moses did.

"I do my best in my humble fashion," he replied. '"And in the semi-official position that has been thrust upon me I endeavor not to neglect the claims of business. And now, Mr. Moses, can you help me?"

Mr. Moses, who had been thinking very hard, rose from his chair. He put his cigar carefully upon an ash-tray. Hs walked on tip-toe to the door, opened it suddenly, and closed it again. Then he went very close to his client »nd spoke in a whisper.

"Now that we are quite alone," he said hoarsely. "I have some startling news to impart, sir. I have recently become possessed of a unique treasure! I am only speaking solid truth when I say that not a soul in London knows about it as yet."

He was― for once.

"Dear me, dear me! You interest me extremely. What is it?"

'"A marvel, almost priceless! I have been tempted to approach one or two of the great American collectors, but I refrained. Mr. Temperley shall have the first offer,' I said to myself, 'especially as the article in question will have a tremendous appeal to him.' I had not thought of it as a wedding present for Mr. Temperley, junior, but nothing could be more appropriate!"

"What is it, man?" almost seres is ed the millionaire.

Mr. Moses saw that his fish was safely hooked. When he spoke his voice trembled no doubt with emotion.

"Nothing less than the actual pen used for years by the great George Washington himself, first President of the United States of America, the man who could not lie, whose name your son bears!"

Mr. Temperley sank back in his chair with his month open and staring eyes― like a cod. The shock of joy almost deprived him of speech. Here, indeed, was a worthy gift tor his beloved son, unique in itself and almost magically appropriate to the occasion.

He grasped Mr. Moses by the hand, and with tears in his eyes managed to articulate four words― "Name your own price."

"I'll show It to you first." the dealer answered, and left the room, carefully closing the door after him.

He went upstairs into a lumber-room crammed with various objects, where he remembered noticing an old quill pen some days before. Ah! there It was. lying on the floor behind the bronze statue of Venus! And he picked it up with a grin.

"Truth!" said Mr. Mosss to himself. "Bah!"

"A thousand pounds, Mr. Temperley? No. I won't take it."

"Two thousand, then. Name your own price."

"No, nor yet two thousand. Mr. Temperley, honored sir, you and I have had many dealings together and I hope we shall have many more. I'm a-going to make a present of this pen to the most consistent follower of Truth of our day. Take it, Mr. Temperley, with old Moses' blessing!"

And the generous dealer turned aside his face, no doubt to hide a tear.

IT WAS a fortnight after the wedding, which had been celebrated with every circumstance of luxury and pomp. Mr. Temperley was ones more alone, sitting by the fire in his museum, and once again his benevolent countenance wore an expression of perplexity, though now it was mingled with grave distress.

All had gone well. When the Truth Worshipper had presented George Washington's pen to his son, his speech had drawn tears from all eyes, and been subsequently reported verbatim (at advertisement rates) in the public  press. The happy bridegroom had received the precious relic with a joy and veneration befitting its importance. It would, he said, remain his most valued possession throughout life, and every letter that he sent to his father during the honeymoon should he written with the sacred quill.

It was what had happened since the wedding and what was happening at the moment that troubled the millionaire. George Washington was spending his honeymoon in Paris, attending an International Conference of Truth, and inaugurating a mission on the subjects to American journalists.

Hs wrote home to say that he was having the time of his life, that his reception had been more than cordial, and that the sweet and sympathetic presence of his wife had made life a new thing for him...

"On Thursday last I was present at the conversion of a well-known proprietor of patent medicines, who admitted with tears of contrition that, despite his advertisements, his Universal Remedy, while efficacious enough in typhoid, confumption, cancer, rheumatism, and spinal disease, was absolutely useless in a severe case of housemaid's knee. He has long kept this fact from the public, but has decided to do so no longer and make a frank statement upon the wrapper of the bottle. Darling Vera was greatly touched. She says that she never understood Truth so well before."

And again...

"Writing to you with the sacred pen, which― next to Vera― is my greatest earthly treasure, reminds me to tell you, dear father. that our good friend Mr. Moses has been passing through Paris and called upon us at our hotel. He has introduced me to a French colleague of his, M. Vieux Sournois, a dealer in genuine antiques, from whom, by special favor, have been able to purchase a unique relic for the museum. It is a celebrated picture of the Emperor Napoleon telling the truth to his physician― and the only recorded instance in the life of this great but misguided man."

Now, all this was very well, and would have delighted the Tripe Emperor beyond measure had it not been for one awful, almost unthinkable fact.

Mr. Temperley, senior, had received evidence that appeared indisputable that George Washington had not only never been near the Truth Conference in Paris, but was spending the whole of his honeymoon at Monte Carlo, nay, had even broken the bank at that city of pleasure and scandal.

He had been seen there with his wife, and his every action noted, by an acquaintance , whose word could not be doubted, and who, out of pure kindness, had immediately come to Mr. Temperley with the news.

Confirmation was not lacking. With business promptitude the millionaire despatched one trusty private detective to Paris and another to Monte Carlo. The first succeeded in discovering the actual hotel servant who forwarded the Riviera letters from Paris so that they would bear an authentic post-mark. The second returned with an excellent series of snapshot photographs depicting George Washington Temperley and his wife raking in thousand-franc notes at roulette in the Casino, and lunching in luxury on the terrace at Ciro's famous restaurant― where even one hearty blood-forming meal cannot be obtained for eighteen-pence, and Temperley's Dried Tripe is unknown.

The great Truth Expert was stricken to the very heart. No words could do justice to his mental agony as he realised that his whole life work was undone, his fondest hopes crashed into the dust.

Far from being unable to tell even a lie or be guilty of a mere terminological inexactitude, George Washington could― and did― manufacture a whole seriea of easy, brilliant, polished lies, super-untruths equal to a Cabinet Minister's election address or the reminiscences of a German General.

It was not Monte Carls and its dissipation that hurt the millionaire, it was the utter downfall of all his hopes and belief about his son. The revelation of his true― or rather untrue― nature. And when he thought of the desecration of the great George Washington's own familiar pen and the horrid uses to which it had been lately put, the strickea father groaned aloud.

Days of pain and indecision followed, but is the end of the honeymoon drew near and the young couple were expected home, Mr. Temperley made up his mind. He must be faithful to the principles of a lifetime and cast his erring son from him for ever.

NEARLY a month had passed. Mr. Temperley stood in the dining-room, giving final directions to his butler, for Mr. and Mrs. Temperley, junior, were expected back from Paris in half an hour.

All the household knew that there were grave matters afoot. From Lurby, the confidential butler, to the meanest kitchen maid, everyone was aware of acoming tempest, and trembled.

"You quite understand, Lurby?"

"I think so, sir, thank you, sir."

"When Mr. and Mrs. George Washington"― the poor old gentleman choked at his son's name― "when they arrive, they are to be shown at once into the small drawing-room, and yon are to tell them that it is by my orders. All the household will be ready downstairs, and will proceed here, to the dining-room, at once. When all are assembled, you will request Mr. and Mrs. Temperley to step this way."

"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir. Oh, by the way, sir, Mr. Moses called half an hour ago, but I told him that you were much engaged."

"I trust you did not say, 'Not at home,' Lurby?" asked the millionaire, with sudden sternness.

"Of course not, sir," Lurby answered in a voice that showed he was deeply wounded. Had he been ten years with his beloved master to go and commit an outrage upon Truth like that?

"Forgive me, I am not myself, Lurby," his master rejoined. "I should not have said that to you. But somehow I begin to suspect everyone! Did Mr. Moses leave any message?"

"He said his business was important, sir, and that he would call again in half an hour."

Mr. Temperley reflected for a moment. Mr. Moses was an old and valued friend, almost one of the family by now. His presence would add to the solemnity of the occasion.

"When he comes again show him into the dining-room."

Lurby bowed and withdrew.

The Tripe Emperor sank into a chair and for many minutes remained motionless. His heart felt like a lump of lead. His blood flowed slowly like iced water through his veins. All hope was dead, and only justice remained to be done. The task was horrible, and by nature he was the kindest of men, but his lofty sense of duty never failed, and when the servants filed slowly into the room and ranged themselves like mutes about the walls their master stood upon the hearth-rug, steady as a rock.

"Mr. and Mrs. George Washington Temperley," boomed the faithful Lurby, and slowly the young man and his wife entered the room, amid an awful silence.

The lady was heavily veiled and little could be seen cf her face. But George Washington. how altered and broken was he!

The candid glance was gone. The infantile and innocent mouth, that had never fibbed, drooped in dejection. The horrid vice of lying had left its impress everywhere, and Mr. Temperley's son was the picture of remorse and guilt.

"My son, all is known!" said Mr. Temperley, in a trembling voice. "You have deceived me in a way which can only have been the result of long and assiduous practice. Using the sacred pen of your great namesake itself you have written me a tissue of lies, and been false to your lifelong training and all the traditions of this house. You have shamed me in the eyes of all men and besmirched my name as a Custodian of the Keys of Truth. I have tried to be a loving father to you, but this― this is too much to bear. Speak, wretched young man, have I spoken truly?"

A low groan burst from the culprit's lips and sobs agitated his frame.

"Father!" he wailed. "What you any is true in every way except one. My lies to you were not the result of long practice. Until I went away upon my honeymoon I had never spoken anythinr but the most literal truth. That I swear to you. But somehow a terrible influence eeised me, to strong and irresistible that I took a delight in lying. I was utterly powerless in its hands."

Mr. Tamperley mistook his son's meaning, and anger flared up in him like a torch.

"Cur!" he shouted. "Coward and cur as well a liar? Do you mean to insinuate that your young wife changed your nature in a week, and to throw the blame for your infamy upon an innocent girl you have promised to cherish aad protect?"

He stopped short. George Washington's face was flaming red in an instant. His wail went, he shouted load in answer, "Whatever I have done, you should not dare to accuse me of that, father!" he cried. "My darling Vera's influence has been nothing but good. Liar some hideous influence has made me, and I must abide the consequences. Coward, sir, I am not!"

There was a deep murmur of appreciation from the walls, and Mr. Temperley recognised the voice of Truth in his son's ringing accents, when the door of the dining-room burst open with a loud explosive noise. Hatless, and showing every sign of deep agitation, Mr. Moses plunged into the room.

"Stay! Pause!" he bellowed. "Mister Temperley, dear old friend and patron, pause before you say the irrevocable words! It is all right. Our dear young George Washington is guiltless. I can explain all!"

"Moses! If only you could!"

"I can. It is all my fault. My wicked carelessness is responsible for everything. The boy couldn't help himself. You know that pen you gave him as a wedding present?"

"George Washington's own pen," said Mr. Temperley, trembling violently.

"I thought so. I handed it to you under that impression, for George Washington's pen was certainly in my possession. But I was careless. I mixed it un with the pen of another celebrated historical personage― as a matter of fact, an ancestor of my own. It's that pen which George used to write his letters with."

"Whose pen?" shouted son and father, simultaneously.

"Ananias!" said Mr. Moses.

___________________

5: A Dangerous Game

World's News (Sydney) 10 June 1916

IT WAS half-past nine. Dinner was just over. The great Cricket dance, to which all the county were invited, would not begin till ten-thirty.

Walter Tremayne had stayed behind when the men left the dining-room. He had had a short conversation with his host, Lord Albcourt. Now he had passed through the blue drawing-room, and was standing by a long, open window which led on to the terrace.

The famous amateur batsman waited; there was a flush upon his face, his eyes were very bright. Then he turned swiftly, hearing what he had been expecting.

Lady Edith Groome came into the drawing room. She was dressed for the ball. In her hair, the color of ripe corn, was a star of sapphires. Her dress was of old-ivory satin, and she wore a cloak of sapphire-colored velvet lined with white brocade, on which here and there meandered a thread of gold.

"Come, Edith!" he said in a low voice.

Together they passed out upon the terrace into the moonlight, the girl's little shoes of gold and ivory making a soft sound upon the marble as Tremayne led her to a broad stairway leading down into the garden.

They went down a path of white, powdered gravel to where, in a little amphitheatre of turf, was a pillared dome of marble— one of those Italian summer-houses dedicated to Venus. Before it a fountain laughed, like a young girl at her own sweet thoughts. By the side of the fountain was a rustic bench.

"Dearest," he said, with quick, passionate utterance, "I have spoken to your father."

She did not answer him. The lids drooped over her eyes— he saw the long, black lashes resting on cheeks that were pale.

"You know why, Edith— why I have spoken to your father?"

She answered him, and her voice was like a sob. "Because―"

"Because, dearest, I have dared"— his foot ground into the gravel with a crumbling sound— "yes, I have dared to hope that"— his voice died away tor a moment and then he made an immense effort— "that you will marry me."

She never said a word, but stood there like some lovely statue, till he took her in his arms and knew that the prize was his at last,

The ball was held at the end of the famous "Cricket "Week" at the Cathedral city of Cottaford, a summer fixture second in import- ance to Canterbury alone. Lord Albcourt in youth and middle-age had been one of England's greatest bats. He was the Grand Old Man of cricket, and his eleven, comprising some of the most celebrated living players, had this day defeated Sir John St. Just's team by three wickets and 110 runs.

It was all owing to the batting of Walter Tremayne, and a question which had been agitating the whole of England seemed on the way towards settlement.

At the moment, the country was divided in its opinion as to whether supreme batting excellence was of more avail in the winning of a match than supreme bowling excellence. The sporting columns of the newspapers talked of nothing else.

And now, at the end of the Cottaford week, with all England in suspense, the batsmen faction, headed by Tremayne, had won!

It was an hour or triumph for Lord Albcourt and his following, and Walter Tremayne was the hero of it.

The fact of the engagement became known about midnight

It was while Edith and Walter were dancing Strauss's perfect waltz, Das treues liebes Herz that, people began to look at them with dawning comprehension in their eyes. Lord and Lady Albcourt were radiant. The news had been whispered to a few friends—the word had echoed throughout the great ballroom. Rumor had grown into certainty, until everyone there knew that Walter Tremayne and Lady Edith Groome were pledged.

By one o'clock men were pressing up to Tremayne and shaking him quietly by the hand. "I say, double triumph, what?"—"What price the bowling faction now, Walter?"

All the enthusiastic young men of the day, whom Tremayne had led to victory after victory, swarmed round him with whole-hearted loyalty.

It was just at a quarter-past one that Sir John St. Just came into the ballroom. He had not dined with the other men; he had not been seen till now. A set of lancers was just over, and people were flocking to the supper rooms.

At first he gave an impression of extreme fragility, though he was obviously of great height. His hair was of a dead, lustreless black, and cropped closely to his head. His face was the color of old ivory, yet it was a natural complexion, and not the sallowness of ill-health. A tiny black moustache was half hidden by a narrow, beak-like nose which seemed to start out from the long, melancholy face. Under straight black brows eyes of a Spanish darkness burned with a steady intensity which never varied and was always disconcerting to those at whom Sir John St. Just looked.

Celebrated figure as he was in English cricket, St. Just was in no sense popular. He stood for bowling— he was the most perfect exponent of bowling cricket had ever knwn, but he was a symbol, nothing more. A man of forty, he never went into society of any sort, and was quite indifferent to popular applause. He had recently been captain of England— it was said the most disliked captain that the country had ever known. When he was not actually playing cricket, he lived a secluded life in his country house in Kent, seeing no one. Mystery always seemed associated with him, and really all that people knew was the fact that he had made cricket his absolute god.

As St. Just came into the ballroom, Lady Edith was crossing it with her mother.

"Ah, Lady Edith," he said, "I am afraid that I have lost my chance!"

"And what was your chance, Sir John?" the countess said— she rather liked St. Just.

"Oh, Lady Albcourt, simply that Lady Edith promised me one dance to-night, and I am afraid I am too late."

"A promise is a promise, mother," Edith said happily; "no one is dancing how, Sir John— shall we have a turn all by ourselves?"

"I will leave you to settle it together," Lady Albcourt said, with a tap of her fan upon Sir John's shoulder.

She went away. The girl looked towards the band. "Shall we make them play for us?" she said, her eyes sparkling, the happiness of her whole being ringing out in the words.

"No, no," he said; "let us sit it out, shall we?"

The burning black eyes ranged round the empty ballroom.

"There, if you will, Lady Edith," he said. "Oh yes, quite; there is a lovely view of the park from the conservatory. And the moon's up, too!"

When they were upon a Settee among the palms and orchids of the conservatory, Edith suddenly felt a little embarrassed. She realised that Sir John had come down to the dance so late that he could hardly know what all the other guests knew.

"Sir John," she said, after a little hesitation, "I want you to congratulate me. I want to tell you something."

The reply startled her. "I want to tell you something! This is my chance! This is my hour!"

"Your hour? I don't understand!" The girl was not frightened, but offended, by the intensity of the man's voice. The long, capable hands, which could make the cricket ball swerve, dance, shoot as if it was a live thing, were clasping and unclasping. His eyes burnt like fire.

"Yes, my hour. This week I have been beaten."

Edith rose to the occasion. "Dear me, Sir John!" she said, "I hope not. By whom?"

The man almost growled. Edith became a little frightened.

"Don't play with me," he said. "You know perfectly well that the batsmen have triumphed over the bowlers for the moment."

''Was it to tell me that very obvious fact that you brought me here?"

"No," The voice dropped a full tone. "I brought you here to tell you that I adore you. You must marry me, Lady Edith. With you, I can prove to all the world that cricket—"

The girl rose from the settee. "Must, Sir John?" she said coldly.

He leapt up and caught her by the wrists. "Yes, he said, "must. You are free, you are..."

"My dear Sir John, when you have done holding my wrists I should like to tell you something."

St. Just straightened himself. "Lady Edith," he said, "I beg your pardon, indeed I beg your pardon. I was carried out of myself."

"I suppose you were, whatever that may mean. Never mind, I forgive you. I very nearly said 'Unhand me, Villain!' but I won't now. You see, Sir John, the point is that I am engaged to Walter Tremayne."

Four days after the end of the Cricket Week and the dance at Albcourt Towers, Walter Tremayne entered the Willow Club in Piccadilly, and was given a letter by the hall porter

It was from Sir John St. Just, and made a curious proposal.

"Let us put the question between us to a decisive test. I hardly think the conditions at Albcourt were fair to either of us. Come down to my place in Kent; I have got my own private practising grounds in the park, there is no better wicket in England. I'll bet you a hundred pounds that I will prove my bowling superior to your batting, and the whole controversy shall be decided upon the issue. What do you say?"

There could only be one answer to such a challenge. Tremayne accepted instantly, and two days afterwards went down to St. Just's house, Haggart Park, some four miles from Albcourt Towers.

Arriving about six, he found a gloomy house in the middle of a vast park surrounded by walls. He dined with St. Just, and it was not a pleasant feast. There were few servants in the great barrack of a house, and it seemed to the young man that they were all melancholy, furtive, and unduly silent. The conversation was strained; the dinner was bad, the service perfunctory.

Afterwards, in the smoking-room, St. Just's private professional cricketer was shown in— a bullet-headed, sly-looking fellow.

Tremayne was surprised to find in this man— Driscoll by name— a former north country professional, who was dismissed from his county for deliberately accepting bribes and selling a match, and who had subsequently served a term of penal servitude for an abominable fraud quite unconnected with cricket.

He said nothing as St. Just gave directions about the morrow, but when the man had gone he turned to his host.

"That is Driscoll!" he said, without any preamble— "that's Driscoll, who used to play for Northumbrian remember the scandal very well. He's a ruffian, St. Just. What do you have him here for?"

"I saw you recognised him, Tremayhe. He used to be the best all-round professional of his day. Now I use him as a ground man. I took him out of charity— the fellow would have starved else— and, after all, cricket is cricket."

"Yes, when it's played," Tremayne replied drily as he said good-night and sought his room.

Tremayne looked round him.

"By Jove," he said, "what a perfect place!"

He stood in the centre of five acres of greensward, flat as a billiard table and shaved like a tennis lawn. On every side of this private ground huge elms and oaks in full foliage barred the outer world.

St. Just nodded. He, like his guest, was in a sweater, white trousers, and cricket boots. "I spent a lot of money on this ground," he remarked, "but I think I am going to get full value for it now!"

Right in the centre of the private ground was the pitch upon which the supremacy of bat and ball was to be decided. The wicket was already prepared, the balls on the three stumps. At the howling end was a single stump with the two creases plainly marked in white.

"Let us have a look at the pitch," Tremayne said.

"No, wait a minute till Driscoll comes— ah, here he is!"

Both men turned and saw the professional coming through the belt of trees which surrounded the house. He was leading a donkey, which drew a little cart.

"Well, here he comes," Tremayne said, "but what on earth is the cart for?"

"Your bag is in it for one thing," said St. Just, "and the balls."

"The balls?"

"Yes, I am going to bowl you twenty-four balls."

"I know, St. Just, but..."

Tremayne suddenly stood quite still. The sunlight which poured upon this retired place glinted on something which was pointed straight at him.

It was the barrel of an automatic pistol.

The face behind it was terrible. Tremayne was a brave man, but he knew fear now.

"What do you mean by this, St. Just?" he cried hoarsely.

"Just our match. Tremayne; that is all. Only we are going to play it under conditions which I did not specify."

"Get on, can't you?" came in a rough voice from the left, and there was a resounding thwack as Driscoll brought up the donkey cart.

In the cart was Tremayne's leather bag, and a large wicker waste-paper basket filled with cricket balls. Driscoll was carrying something in the curve of his arm... Tremayne saw what it was at once— a repeating rifle.

He became calm. "I see," he said shortly; "assassination?"

"Don't be a fool, Tremayne," St. Just answered petulantly, and like a child. "Get out his bat, Driscoll. Now then, Tremayne, you see the wicket?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, we will inspect it together." The automatic pistol was levelled at his head by an unshaking hand, as Walter walked up to within two yards of the stumps.

"Queer color," he said, his brain working like a machine, alert for any chance.

St. Just gave him no chance at all. He stood three yards away and laughed. The laughter echoed horribly from the remote trees.

"Exactly, Tremayne; those three stumps are not wood at all; they are dynamite!"

Walter remained rigid where he stood. "Yes, dynamite! It one of my twenty-four balls hits your wicket— you vanish, my boy!"

Turning like lightning, Tremayne was about to leap upon the maniac, when a croaking voice came from the right. Driscoll, the ex-convict, held the rifle to his shoulder. "I am a crack shot. Mr. Tremayne," he said.

There was a horrible, tense silence. Sir John broke it.

"Shall we begin?" he said. Then Walter nodded. "Fair play?" he asked.

"Absolutely fair," was the reply. "If you can keep your wicket up for twenty-four balls, then you will be as safe as if you never came here."

St. Just turned on his heel, and ran lightly to the other end of the pitch. Driscoll moved out to cover point, his rifle on his arm. The waste-paper basket containing twenty-four balls was at the bowling end.

Sir John St. Just selected one, tossed it up into the air, and laughed as he did so.

"You will call 'Play' when you are ready, Tremayne," he said. Walter Tremayne had captained England; he had been the last hope of many a famous match. Yet never had he felt so absolutely confident of himself as now. There was a swift revulsion of feeling; the blood ran red in his veins. He was gambling his own skill against death! He looked at the sinister stumps close to him. And then he laughed. Death, sudden, dreadful, irremediable, stood there, glistening yellow-purple in the sun. He did not care a scrap!

Power, the god-like sense of power, that comes to all men who do, was with him now as he called "Play!"

He had faced St. Just's bowling many times before, but he knew that every nerve had to be awake, his brain must work with lightning speed.

The first ball was a "googley"— slow and high in flight. St. Just suggested by his action that it would break from the off. As every cricketer knows, the difficulty of playing a googley consists in the fact that it generally breaks in a different direction from that which is suggested by the bowler's action.

Tremayne thought with lightning speed. Hand and brain worked together as he countered his insane adversary's manoeuvre. The ball did break from the off, and he easily cut it far down the field.

"One!" St. Just shouted as he took up another ball, and his voice was as hoarse and inhuman as the cawing of some rook in the great elm trees which bounded the park.

The next ball was worthy of an ex-captain of England. It was an incredibly swift half volley, pitched at the right spot and coming to the bat like a bullet from a pistol.

There was a sharp click as the best batsman in England stepped forward, and met it on the upper part of the willow, blocking it with confident ease.

Then came the third ball. It was a deadly fast "yorker." The break was infinitesimal, but the "spin" was marvellous. The ball torched the ground, and at the touch seemed enormously accelerated. It skimmed the bails by the breadth of a sheet of paper, and went rolling far away to the end of the ground.

Tremayne's whole body suddenly became wet. The sweat poured from his skin, both hands trembled as he walked round the wicket— it had been so near, so deadly near!

A mighty rage came over him; he saw red. He grasped his bat in his hands and rushed down the pitch, carrying it over his shoulder like a club, rearing as he went, resolved to kill the sneering fiend who was putting him to such shameful agony.

But within five yards of St. Just, Tremayne stopped with a jerk. There was a loud explosion. The bat he brandished was twisted from his hands; and as he stooped to recover it he heard something like a singing wasp go past his ear.

He stood up to see the little shining circle of the pistol barrel.

"Please don't interrupt our match, Tremayne," came in a horrible chuckle from the bowling stump. "You have got your chance, either take it or—"

Walter was beaten. He walked slowly back to his wicket.

"Play!" he said again.

Never before in his life, never afterwards, did the best batsman England has yet known experience six balls like those which assailed him now. Well had St. Just been called the "Demon Bowler." There was an almost devilish ingenuity in the methods of attack.

It was not a mere contest of skill; it was a mental duel in which brain met brain—a supreme fight of the batsman against the bowler, when the stakes were death. Walter was fighting for his life, for his life and Edith! The glove upon his left hand was wringing wet; he saw nothing of the lovely summer day. He heard nothing but the monotonous croak from the other end of the pitch, the mad chuckling "Play!"

It was at the end of the third over. He was leaning on his bat when he heard a strange, thundering noise. Languidly he raised his head, and saw two people galloping on horseback towards the pitch.

One of them— it was a girl in a long, dark green habit— waved a handkerchief, and he heard a cheery hail.

In fifteen seconds more, Lady Edith Groome had pulled up her cob.

"I have only just heard that you and Sir John were fighting out the great question," she cried merrily. "Sir John, how are you?  Walter, how dare you not tell me! I should never have known if it was not for father." Her voice suddenly rose to a warning shout. "Father, be careful, you will spoil the pitch!"

The unfortunate Lord Albcourt, no good horseman at any time, had mounted a rather fresh young mare from the stables. Plunging after Lady Edith, the mare had taken the bit in her teeth, and the veteran of cricket was lying forward on the saddle with his arms round her neck.

Walter saw the imminent catastrophe as the mare reared at the sight of the wicket, and plunged down upon it with a crash.

As the pawing hoofs came down, everything flashed away. He knew that this was death— extinction.

"OH, MY DEAR BOY, that maniac, that horrible maniac!"

Walter slowly opened his eyes. The dreadful cricket ground had disappeared; he was lying back in a deck chair upon the terrace of Sir John's house. Standing by him were Lady Edith Groome and Lord Albcourt.

"I don't understand," Walter said faintly. "I— the horse came down upon the stumps of dynamite, I thought—"

A thick and deferential voice interrupted. Driscoll was standing by, touching the cap upon his bullet head.

'"Adn't a chance to tip you the wink, Mr. Tremayne, sir, but that there wicket was not dynamite at all. Sir John, "e did 'ave some dynamite stumps made, but I looked after 'em. They're in the hay-loft now, where I put 'em from the first. You wouldn't 'ave come to no 'arm, Mr. Tremayne, sir, even if you 'adn't turned Sir John's bowling so brilliant."

At that, life, and anger too, returned to Walter.

"You infernal scoundrel!" he shouted, "you watched me there, undergoing agony...."

"No, sir," said the ex-professional, "batting magnificent, if I may say so, sir."

"And you knew all the time—"

"That Sir John was certain to go off his chump in a day or two, and meanwhile he'd given me an 'undred pounds! And, after all, Mr. Tremayne, sir, I hid them real dynamites—"

"Well, give me your hand," said Lord Albcourt, holding out his, "for, after all, you are not such a bad fellow at heart, and for a hundred pounds many a poor beggar has done worse. Anyway, come round to-morrow, and I will see what we can do by way of encouragement," he concluded, as Driscoll, his face bathed in smiles, moved away from the terrace.

"Let's forget all about it now, Walter darling!" said Lady Edith. "St. Just is half way to the county asylum by now, in one of his own motors. Bats have won!"

________________

6: Ella the Ambitious

World's News (Sydney) 16 August 1924

BREAKFAST was ready in the sitting room at the back of Mr. Barrett and Son's, drapery, millinery, and modes establishment, High Street, Morseton.

There were present Mrs. Barrett, a massive, placid woman, rather like an over-ripe pear; Mr. Barrett, an eager, ferret-faced, hand-rubbing little man, dressed in a frock coat too long for him; "Reg" Barrett, representing the "Son" of the concern, an affected young gentleman of twenty-three, more like a tailor's dummy— including the waxen face— than one would have thought it possible for any human to be; and John Barrett, a sturdy, silent schoolboy of fourteen, giving to hacking anyone's shins on the slightest provocation.

Little Mr. Barrett— Who was known as "one eleven three" in Morseton— prodded his bacon.

"Gotter take stock s'morning," he said fretfully, "and Miss Knocks away with noorulger, though I sh'd call it swelled 'ed. Who is to take the underclothing, the Lord only knows, for I don't. Yah!"

"Ella will help you, my dear," said Mrs. Barrett quietly.

Mr. Barrett snorted.

"Ella! She don't know a best natural wool Shetland singlet from a pair o' cheap cotton pants. Ella!"

Here he spluttered over his tea, and as he did so his daughter entered. She was a pretty girl of twenty or so, with dark hair and eyes, a good figure, and a manner of quiet reticence. You could see that she was a girl who thought, someone a little out of the ordinary, and, certainly, a strange flower to be blooming there.

"Here I am, father," she said, "and here's the post."

"Late, as usual," said Mr. Barrett, grabbing at his letters and becoming immersed in them.

"Ella," said Reginald, "father wants you to take charge of the woollens to-day. Miss Knocks is away ill."

Ella gave a quick look of annoyance. "I can't. I can't possibly," she said.

"May your brother be permitted to ask why?" said Reginald, with what he meant to be elaborate irony.

"Yes, there's a special chemistry lecture at the high school which I wouldn't miss for anything. A London Doctor of Science is giving it. I haven't had such a chance for a long time, and Miss Butcher, the headmistress, has specially invited me."

Mr. Barrett looked up quickly. The word science to him was like a red rag to a bull.

"There you go!" he cried, "spendin' yer days in useless pottering about. 'Lectricity! Chemistry! Yah! D'yer think things like that will ever make you able to earn a living or get a husband?"

"There are hundreds of women, father," the girl replied, "who are earning their living at science as teachers, demonstrators, experimentalists. I know I have the aptitude myself if only I had the chance of proper teaching. And as for husbands―"

She made a grimace, and shrugged her pretty shoulders in disdain.

"Well see about that," said Mr. Barrett, with the futile menace of a weak man.

His wife sighed heavily.

"And a foreman printer, who hardly ever soils his hands himself and will be a partner some day, very likely, drawing his ten pound a week regular, and putting seven of them by, absolutely dying for the girl!"

Ella flushed a deep red.

"Mother, how can you!" she cried.

"There, let the girl alone," said Mr. Barrett, who was secretly very proud of his daughter. "I can't think why you are all so down on her. Hullo, here's a letter for you," and he threw it over the table to his daughter.

Ella opened it slowly. Her heart was sick within her, and, though a letter was a rare occurrence in her life, she felt no interest. But as she read, her fare changed. The color went from it entirely, her eyes blazed, her lips trembled.

"Oh, mother, Uncle Reginald ... he writes to say that I can go to the Science College at Midchester. He will pay a hundred a year for three years, so that I can take my diploma as a qualified instructress. Oh, isn't it wonderful! Isn't tt glorious!"

"Well, I'm jiggered!" said Mr. Barrett, "three 'undred pound, and I bin wanting ta set up a French lace department for years and could never find the capital to do it!"

The placid Mrs. Barrett now asserted herself.

"Uncle Reginald," she said, "is at liberty to provide for any one of my three children. As he has chosen Ella, so much the better; and if Reginald thinks it right to spend all this money on science, then you may depend upon it, there is something in science after all. My brother is not a man to be easily deceived."

Mr. Barrett departed into the shop flapping his coat tails and still audibly being jiggered. Ella went to her mother and held her tight in her arms for a few moments. Then she went up to her own little sanctum, where, among her text books and test tubes, she burst into a flood of happy tears.

IT WAS the end of Ella Barrett's second year at the Technical College, Midchester.

She was sitting in an alcove of the popular and cosy little tea shop known as "The Mikado." Couples occupied every alcove; light-footed waitresses brought fragrant pots of tea and gleaming piles of cakes. In the distance a ladies' orchestra discoursed sweet music. Ella, in a very simple but very smart coat and skirt, was changed from the girl of twenty who had received her uncle's letter two years ago. She was young still, but she carried herself with a confidence and grace born of association with a wider and more cultured world than that of Morseton. Her prettiness had blazed out into something akin to beauty, and men looked at her as she passed by.

Her companion was a young man of six and twenty, clean-shaved, and with a strong, square face. He was decently dressed in a suit of dark blue, but it was not of a fashionable cut, nor did his necktie even remotely resemble those of the smart young men of the great Midland city. Indeed, though he was perfectly at ease, he seemed a little out of place in the fashionable cafe and with this self-possessed and fashionable girl.

"But, Ella, dear," he said, in a low voice; "you tell me you have only just scraped through this second, intermediate examination."

"Yes, Charlie, but I did get through."

"I know, but doesn't it mean— heaven knows I don't want to discourage you— doesn't it mean that you are not really fitted for the scientific life, after all? Dear, I am really quite well off now. I am head of all the executive at Burt and Bascombe's. There is a prospect of a junior partnership. In the years to come, and you know they are one of the best and oldest established printing firms in the kingdom..."

"I congratulate you with all my heart, Charlie."

"Nay, do not take it like that, lass," he said, relapsing for a moment into the speech of his and her youth, as men are apt to do in moments of great emotion. "That's not what I meant at all. Ella, sweetheart, I have loved you since you were sixteen, and I had thought by now we should have been married long since, but this wish of yours tt> strike out an independent course has spoilt it all.

"But, dear, since you are not so successful as you hoped, isn't it true that you are getting somewhat tired of the whole thing? Give it up. I know in my heart that you were made for something very, different. Something tells me that, something has always told me."

She shook her head.

"Charlie," she said, with a little quiver in her voice, "you are mistaken. I may not have been a great success yet, but I shall be in the future. You must remember that, coming from that wretched shop at home, with all the petty interests involved, to get into this new, spacious, intellectual air was like an escape from prison. It took me a long time to adjust myself to it. It was all so delightful that I couldn't settle down to regular hard work. Now I have got my footing. I have a year before me. You will see that I shall triumph!"

Her eyes shone, her lips curved proudly, as she said this, for Ella Barrett was one of those imaginative people who can make themselves "believe whatever they choose for the moment, and taste success in advance without ever reckoning the steepness of the hill that they must climb before they really gain it.

Charles Manscroft sipped his tea. His strong, rugged face was knotted in thought and pain. But he was no sentimentalist; his love was so real a thing that it was centred entirely upon this girl. He would have suffered the pains of the damned to make her happy.

"I have just grasped this, Ella," he said, lighting a cigarette, and speaking brusquely through his puffs, "Is there anyone else that you like better than me?"

She shook her head vehemently.

"No one, Charles, though there is— has been— someone else."

"Aye?" he answered, pretending an Indifference which he was far from feeling.

This piqued her.

"It's a professor, the Professor of Physics at the College," she said.

Charles laughed grimly.

"I know the sort," he said, "drooping moustache, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and so much the gentleman that his own mother wouldn't know him if he'd own her!"

Now, this incisive portrait was just sufficiently true of Professor Ambrose Ward to make Ella wince. It was a caricature, and a bitter one, but there were resemblances.

"Mr. Ward," she said, "is one of the rising scientists of the day."

Charles shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, he said, "each man to his taste, but I am a man who prefers to court his girl out of business hours. I suppose he gets nudging you over the microscope, and comparing the electric current to that of love?"

She flushed.

"Charlie, don't you say such ridiculous things. Please don't. As a matter of fact, Mr. Ward and I don't meet on those grounds at all. Of course, he is my professor, and I attend his lectures, but only yesterday he urged me to do exactly what you have done."

"Did he, by Jove!"

"Yes, he wanted me to give up science entirely."

"And marry him?"

"Well, that was the idea," she replied glancing shyly at her companion.

He looked at his watch.

"I must be catching the train back to Morseton," he said. "Now, the situation, as it appears to me, is just this. Two men have advised you to give up your science. I have advised it because, though I know nothing of the subject, I believe you were made to be a wife, and carry on a home— with me. T'other man, who, I reckon, knows something about it, wants you for the same reason. You have refused us both, and mean to go on your own way. Well, lass, that being so, all I have got to say is that if I can't have you for my wife, I will live to sympathise with you and help you in your work, and be at your back whenever you want me. That's all. You will see how the other man goes on."

And these were the last words of Charles Manscroft that Ella heard for more' than twelve months.

Three days before her final diploma examination, Ella sat alone In her comfortable bed-sitting room at the College. She had locked the door. Her face was pale, her eyes red from weeping.

Three days more! And she knew well that there was no human possibility of her passing the examination! The three years would be almost, entirely wasted, to say nothing of her uncle's money; the prospect before her, the blow to her pride, would be terrible.

She could hear in advance the "I told you so," of her relatives, the malicious pleasure the news of her failure would give to many people at Morseton.

"Either I have not worked hard enough," she thought, "or I have over-estimated my own powers. I am sure I am not a fool, and yet there is nothing more certain than that I shall not even scrape through this diploma examination."

Only that morning the young and handsome Professor Ward had renewed his offer of marriage. He did not think that Ella had any chance of doing more than just manage to pass her examination, though he imagined that she would do that, for she had kept the real state of things from him as far as she could. But he did realise that here was a girl who had been attracted by the outer and more fascinating side of science, but who quite lacked the real scientific temperament. Nothing would ever give her that, and, though he feared to wound her by too much plain speaking, he had hinted at it pretty plainly as he poured out his love for her in the library that morning.

She had not accepted him, neither was he definitely rejected, and now, torn by half a dozen conflicting impulses, Ella was trying to plan a course of action.

There came a knock at the door. Hastily drying her eyes, she opened it, to find the under porter of the College with a registered envelope. Thanking him, she took it mechanically and re-locked the door. Then her eyes fell upon the handwriting. It was from Charles Manscroft. and, with a faint tinge of color in her face, she tore it open.

What' was this? A few lines of writing on a card and a bundle of printed papers.

She took up the card. These were the words upon it:—

"I said I would do anything and everything to help you. Here's a proof of it. I understand that it is not a competitive examination, merely for the teaching diploma."

With a gasp, Ella dropped the card and snatched up the other papers.

They were the complete examination papers for the three days' diploma examination!

She saw it all in a flash. The old established firm of which Charles Manscroft was now manager did all the printing for the Midehester University. Without exciting any suspicion, Charles could easily obtain these copies of the papers set.

Her first thought, to the exclusion of all others, was to scrutinise the questions. She sat down in her basket armchair, her hands trembling with excitement, and read the papers through from first to. last. When she had finished, she leant back in the chair and closed her eyes.

It was perfectly true, she could never have gained her diploma on those papers. They hit her in every weak point of her knowledge. as if deliberately designed to search out her deficiencies. And now?— ah, now the horse was of another color. Three, four hours, in looking up references, and she would have everything at her fingers' ends; to pass the examination, and to pass it brilliantly, was easily within her power.

So much for the first half-hour after the receipt of the letter. Now a certain personage who is reputed to make cowards of us all uncoiled himself from sleep and jumped into her mind. Conscience began to have his say.

"You could not possibly do this, Ella; you have never stooped to dishonesty yet."

"That is all very well, my dear Conscience, but is it dishonest? Technically, I admit that it is. but I am not going to be frightened by mere words. The examination is not, as Charlie pointed out, a competitive one. If I pass I shall be injuring nobody in the world. I am perfectly qualified to teach science to children, and I should get a well-paid post at once. There is not the least necessity, really, for any science teacher to know all that is implied by these papers, and I have already passed the two preliminary exams. It will mean simply that I can earn my own living in a useful and honorable way, and that my uncle and my relatives will not be disappointed."

"But you will be a pretence and a sham. One person will know, at least."

Ella had an excellent answer to this.

"He has sacrificed something, Conscience. He will be sacrificing more than I. because, out of his great love for me, he is betraying the confidence of his employers. Nothing can alter the fact that he has already done so, and were I not to accept his sacrifice I should make matters even worse. And. moreover, in his sending me these papers, Charlie knows quite well that he is definitely giving me up. It is noble of him," and then, as Ella suddenly began to cry bitterly. Conscience shrugged his shoulders, and departed, not, however, without plans tor the future.

A week after the diploma examination, Professor Ward, who was not one of the examiners. came into the hall of the College just in time to see the secretary fixing the results to the notice board. The young professor. with an elaborate assumption of unconcern, strolled across the hall, and then, as he put on his gold-rimmed pince-nez, he started with surprise.

The name of Ella Barrett was at the top of the whole list. This would not mean any advantage in the subsequent apportioning of posts, but-it was a College honor, and the professor coulid hardly believe his eyes.

He had been mistaken all along, then, and for the first time in his career.

"Love blinded me," he thought sadly, as he turned away. "In my hope of winning her, I minimised her attainments. It is obvious that she is eminently suited for the teaching career, and will never be mine or any other man's,"

Then, for he was a generous-minded, and warm-hearted fellow, Professor Ward decided he would take the train to Morseton and be the first to bear Ella the news of her success.

"It will be hail and farewell," he thought, "for I shall never see her again."

After ringing the bell of the private door at the side of the shop, the Barretts' little servant maid announced that Miss Ella had gone for a walk along the river side.

The professor thanked her, and proceeded through the little town towards this favorite promenade of the inhabitants.

It was a summer's afternoon, but the leavy walk was almost deserted, until, at last, in turning round a bend of the river, he saw the girl of his heart.

She was not alone. With her was a sturdy man of thirty in a grey flannel suit, a man with a clean-shaved, powerful face and a steady eye.

Her brother perhaps?

Lifting his hat, Ward went up to the couple.

"Miss Barrett, he said. "I could not help giving myself the pleasure of hastening to you with some good news. Some very good news. You have passed the diploma examination, and stand first on the whole list!"

How odd her manner was. Her face showed not the slightest pleasure.

"Thank you very much indeed for coming to tell me," she said, "but I am not going to take up science teaching after all. May I introduce you to my fiance? Professor Ward, Mr. Manscroft."

________________

7: The Veiled Name

World's News (Sydney) 26 Jan 1918

THE Bishop of Barcoo was finishing his long day's ride through the great Queensland sheep plains. Melville, the station for which he was bound, showed clear in a hollow not more than a mile away, the long low buildings striking a friendly note as they nestled among groves of eucalyptus and jarrah trees. Dr. Gofton rode many thousands of miles year in, year out, attending to his vast diocese, and it was always with a sense of pleasure greater than usual that once every season he approached the great farm of his friend, John Jackson.

Melville was an ideal station. The lads and shepherds were orderly and well-behaved. The master of the house, a widower from England, was a good, upright man, and as the Bishop's tired horse burst into a canter, hailed by corn and water, the man who rode him wished with a sigh that there were many more Melvilles scattered over that part of the great lone continent to which he ministered.

A loud barking of dogs heralded his arrival and a native servant opened the big gates for him with a grin of welcome, just as John Jackson himself came out on to the verandah with outstretched hands.

He was a tall, well-made man, clean-shaved, his hair iron grey, and his face deeply seamed with experience of life. It was a fine face, albeit a sad one, and it was a face upon which the past had etched and moulded as with a tool.

"My dear Lord," the man said in a deep and cultured voice, "this is a sight for sore eyes. We were expecting you yesterday."

"I was detained at Barra a day longer than I expected," said the Bishop, getting down from his horse, and giving the reins to theservant who rode behind him with his valise.

"Ben Armitage has married Ingleby's daughter, and they pressed me to stay for the wedding. Well, how are you, my friend?"

"As fit and well in health, Bishop, as a man can well be. Come in, come in."'

Taking the other by the arm, Jackson led him into a large cool hall, panelled with some at the rarer Australian woods and adorned with many trophies of arms.

"Your old room," he said. "You will want to wash the dust off, and then you would like a cup of tea before dinner?''

The Bishop disappeared for a few minutes, and a girl help brought in tea things, setting them by a long window which opened on to the verandah. John Jackson walked up and down the hall, his hands behind his back, his head sunk forward, thinking deeply.

When Dr. Gofton returned they sat down to tea, and then sitting opposite each other in comfortable padded chairs― the Bishop sinking into his with a sigh of relief― they lit their pipes.

"All the outlying men that can be spared are coming in to-morrow for the service, Bishop. I've had the big barn cleared out and everything is arranged."

"Good," said the other, emitting a blue cloud of smoke. "This is jolly, Jackson. The hot wind to-day has been almost unbearable. I've never tasted anything better than that cup of tea in my life."

"It s a wonderful thing, tea," the man answered, "though I didn't always use to think so. I've got some news to tell you."

"Yes, what is it?"

"In a week's time I'm off to England where I'm going to spend quite a time. I haven't seen the old country for sixteen years. I can afford to go now, and leave everything in charge of my head man. Everything has prospered wonderfully with me of late, Bishop, I am a rich man now."

And here Jackson sighed heavily.

"Well, that's nothing to be dispirited about," said the Bishop laughing, but with some curiosity in his voice.

Jackson shook his head. "It's come too late, that's all," he said. "I don't read much poetry, but the truest words ever penned are these:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back, to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

"It's a wise saying." the Bishop answered, "but it's only half true. There's a Power that can wash out the past, which you and I know well, Jackson."

The big man nodded.

"I can't help thinking of old times." he said, "now that I have determined on a voyage to England, How long is it that you've known me, now, Bishop?"

"Nearly five years, my friend, during which your life here has been a constant example to me and to everyone I know."

Again Jackson shook his head. "I have tried to make up for the past as well as I could," he said, "but I meant to tell you the next time you came― if you had known me fifteen years ago you would have shrunk from me in horror."

"I am quite certain I shouldn't have done that," answered the Bishop with a smile.

"Well, perhaps you wouldn't, but I should have richly deserved it. I don't suppose there was a more infernal blackguard in existence than I was twenty years ago― ten years ago even."

"Then thank God who has changed you," said the clergyman gravely.

"You don't mind my telling you these things?"

"If it does you any good, my friend," said the Bishop gently, "tell me anything you like."

"Well, I don't want to unburden myself, Bishop, when I left England to come to Australia, I had been in prison for three years. I forged a cheque."

"That was bad," was the reply, "but people do worse things than that every day, and often don't suffer for them in this world."

"That's about the least of my iniquities," the big man went on with a sort of dogged resolution. "I lived with the fastest and most dissipated scoundrels in London. I drank, I gambled, I did everything that was foul."

"And you have been rescued from it all, never forget that."

"I never do, day or night I never forget it. Let me go on. I married one of the sweetest and most gentle creatures who ever lived. I spent her money as well as my own. I was unfaithful to her. I treated her cruelly when I was drunk. Day by day she declined and faded away. When I came out of prison I heard that she was dead."

The man's voice was almost breaking. The Bishop heard him grip his teeth upon the stem of his pipe, and then the vulcanite mouthpiece snapped.

He leant forward and put his hand upon his host's. "She knows everything now. She has forgiven you, Jackson. No doubt it was her influence, allowed by God, which finally touched your heart and brought you to be what you are― one of the best men I know, and my dear and honored friend."

"At any rate it makes me happy to hear you say so, Bishop, though I don't deserve it. But you are wrong about the influence of my poor wife bringing me to realise my own wickedness. It wasn't her, it was a book!"

"A book, Jackson?"

"Yes, a book in the first instance, though, of course, perhaps I may have been led to read it. Have you ever heard of an author called Michael Rollstone?"

"Indeed, yes, the author of These be Thy Gods,  and other splendid novels. I know the man's work very well."

"It was that book you mentioned that brought me to myself. I was recovering from a debauch in a low-down hotel in Sydney. The last tenant of my bedroom had left the book behind. I picked it up and began to turn over the leaves as I lay in bed. The first pages interested me, and I read on. I read on throughout the whole day until evening, and as it grew dark I fell upon my knees sobbing in agony. I had a supreme loathing and disgust for myself, for I saw myself as I really was. All the veils were stripped away and I shuddered as I beheld a fiend."

"A wonderful book," said the Bishop softly.

"The author was inspired by God if ever an author was. From that very day I put my past behind me. I started out upon a new course. Many and many a time I stumbled upon the way, but I never drifted back into my old habits entirely. Little by little I grew stronger in will― that heaven-sent book sustaining me always. I read it over and over again. It seemed to have a special message straight for my soul, as if Michael Rollstone was speaking to me and no one else. He has written six books in all― there they are."

He made a dramatic gesture with his hand, and the Bishop saw a carved oak book-shelf hanging on the wall, in which were six volumes richly bound in calf and tooled with gold.

"I had them sent to me from England. I had them bound in such a way as would do honor to their contents. In that bookshelf there is the history of my salvation. Each volume as it appeared only strengthened me in my endeavors, and each seemed curiously speaking directly to me as you are speaking to me now, Bishop. I have tried to find out about the author, but all that I have been able to discover is that he lives a very secluded life somewhere in the country, and does not go into society at all. But when I go to England I am going to see him and tell him what I owe to him. He shall hear the whole history of my soul and what he has done for it. I am alone in the world; I have no relatives. If that man will accept part of my fortune either for his own use or to do good to others, then I shall offer it to him ungrudgingly. And the day I shake him by the hand and look into his eyes will be one of the supreme days of my life."

His deep voice trembled into silence. The soft, cool, evening air stole into the room fragrant with the scent of eucalyptus. The distant lowing of cattle was heard from the stockyard, and in the wood at the back of the house the shrill cry of a laughing kingfisher was softened by the distance.

IN TEN DAYS MORE John Jackson was on board a great ship of the Orient Line, and on his way to England. He took little or no part in the gaieties of the voyage, and after various attempts, the rest of the passengers left him more or less to himself as a man of unsociable nature or one suffering under a great sorrow. When he arrived in London and went to an hotel he was absolutely alone.

In a couple of days he called upon Messrs. Fowler and Newman, the celebrated publishers, and after some persistence was admitted to the presence of the junior partner. Here he met with his first rebuff. Mr. Newman would tell him nothing.

"It is absolutely against etiquette to give the address of an author to anyone whatever," he said. "I am very sorry, sir, but, however urgent the matter, it is impossible for us to break our rule."

"But I must get into communication with Mr. Michael Rollstone. It is on a matter of the very highest importance."

"Nothing more easy," said the publisher, with a smile. "You have only got to write to Mr. Michael Rollstone, care of us, and your letter will be forwarded the same day."

And with this Jackson was forced to be content.

All that afternoon he walked about London noticing the myriad changes since his exile. He felt depressed and forlorn. He began to wonder if his visit to England was not a mistake, after all, and his thoughts went back to Melville, and he sighed for a vision of the vast plains studded with sheep, the long, low house with its brilliant flowers and its background of dark forest trees.

After dinner he went to a theatre. He was bored, and came out after the second act. Returning to his hotel, he ordered coffee to be brought, to his private sitting-room, and when he had smoked a pipe or two he sat down to write a letter.

Dear Sir, (he said).

I have recently arrived in England from Australia, where I have lived for many years. Your books have helped me in a way in which you can hardly dream. I am most anxious, if you will permit me, to grasp you by the hand and tell you how much I owe to you. I beg that you will let me hear from you, and give me an appointment so that I may come and see you, wherever you may be.

With great gratitude,

Believe me,

Yours sincerely,

John Jackson.

He read it through once or twice, and it did not seem to him very convincing. But he was not very nimble with his pen, and with a sigh he called an attendant and consigned the letter to the post.

Four days passed, and then he had a reply. It was type-written and signed by a secretary,
it ran as follows:

Dear Sir,

I thank you very much for your kind letter. It is always an author's great reward when he hears that his works have pleased and helped anyone. So few people ever say so!

I live a very retired life down here in Essex, and see no one, so I write and thank you instead of giving myself the pleasure of meeting you in person.

With very many thanks,

Believe me,

Yours truly

And then came the type-written signature, initialled by the secretary.

During the four days of waiting John Jack-son had lounged about London. Once or twice he saw faces that he knew, and turned away from them in fear. He was entirely altered now, he called himself "John Jackson," though that was not his real name. But at the sight of familiar faces grown older and more wicked than in the past, he fled with shame.

The reply from Michael Rollstone was brought up to his room in the Savoy Hotel at six o'clock that night. He was sitting there, longing more than ever for Australia and filled with hopeless depression.

He read the letter through two or three times, the cold formal typescript seeming to create another barrier between the man who had saved him and himself. And then something happened. He pushed the letter away, drew paper to him, plunged his pen into the ink and wrote as he had never written before.

Winged Words came to him. In the throes of a great emotion, remembering everything in flashes of white-hot memory, he poured his very soul upon the page.

"You, you of all men will understand," he said― and in fierce detail, in terse, strong words which were more literary than he knew, he laid bare the past. He showed how, little by little, the books of the man to whom he wrote had saved him, and he ended with a great cry for meeting and recognition.

The letter took him three hours. When it was finished he stumbled into his bedroom, and fell asleep in his clothes.

"He must see me now," he murmured to himself, before oblivion came.

And it was so. In two days he received a telegram.

"Can you come and see me this afternoon?" And then followed the address of a village on the Blackwater.

All the morning Jackson fidgetted about, and made himself a nuisance to all the attendants of the hotel. At one o'clock the Rolls Royce that he had ordered arrived, and with a sigh of relief he climbed into it, and it set off through London.

HE STOOD in a long low drawing-room. The walls were papered white, and here and there were a few pictures in frames of dark oak. There was a couch of blue linen, a carpet of plain terracotta felt, an oak chair here and there, and upon a couple of tables stood silver bowls of sulphur-colored roses. Long windows opened upon a lawn surrounded by hollyhocks and other autumn flowers.

The man who called himself "John Jackson" stood by the windows and tried to subdue his rising emotions. He was going to meet a great writer― a great writer to whom he owed almost everything― but he had never expected it would be like this.

He was afraid, absolutely afraid. For some reason or other he was trembling. He felt as if his blood had turned to water. His hands were wet and clammy. He stared towards the door at the farther end of the room with an ecstasy of apprehension.

It opened. A tall, beautiful woman with grey hair and in a gown of grey muslin, came into the drawing-room.

He took a step to meet her, wondering.

Then he heard her voice and a flash of fire came before his eyes, and he stood rigid like a statue.

"You must forgive me, Mr. Jackson, and you must keep my secret. Only a few people know that 'Michael Rollstone' is a woman. But your letter was one I could not disregard."

Her voice dropped upon the last word. Her face grew deathly pale. She flung up her arms like a man signalling on a ship.

"You!" came from her in a burst of deep contralto sound.

"Beatrice!" he said and seemed about to fall.

In three swift steps she was upon him. The wide arms came round and clasped him by the neck.

"My love, my love, it is you then!"

"Bee! Oh, my darling, have you come back from the dead?"

"I did not die― my people, the solicitors... love of my heart, you have come home at last."

He knelt, the whole six feet of him, and kissed his saving lady's hands.

"You," he said brokenly, "have brought me home, and to-day is very heaven!"

_____________________

8: The Crime of K.15

World's News (Sydney) 27 Nov 1915

IN the past there had been a young man at Oxford called Paul Arnold. He was the son of a country rector, and if there is any truth, in the familiar saying "Parsons' sons are the worst," he was certainly a striking illustration of it.

He had gambled, drunk, got into debt, and been "sent down" from the University with every circumstance of disgrace. He had been given a second chance, a situation had been found for him in the City, where, by hard work, he might have risen to a responsible post. Within six months he had been discovered to have embarked upon a skilful and elaborate scheme of embezzlement, with the inevitable result of a year's hard labor. Upon his release, Paul Arnold, who was clever, passably good-looking, and extremely versatile, changed his name and became an actor. He had no histrionic talent, though his genius for "make up" was immense. At any rate, for a year or two he earned a sufficient living on tour in provincial towns. The sort of company he met with was not conducive to any moral reformation, and finally a small London engagement fixed him in the Metropolis, where he rapidly became intimate with that gang of well-dressed scoundrels who infest the West End, and are known as "the boys." It was an artistic little piece of forgery that next sent the man who was once Paul Arnold to a convict prison for three years.

His father had died during his first conviction, broken-hearted. Towards the end of his second term information came to him that his mother, who still  lived in the little country village where her husband had been rector, was dangerously ill.

During his first and second terms of imprisonment old Mrs. Arnold, the one person in the world who still loved him, had, punctually paid him such visits as the prison regulations allowed. The man's father had never attracted his son's love. But Arnold's mother, broken down, irremediably saddened as her life was, had steadfastly refused to give up all hope. The old lady's visits, her letters, full of sorrow, tenderness, and love, were the only bright spots in the tomb-like gloom of the prison, the only gentle influence that Arnold's evil and crime-sodden heart ever knew.

In France, even the worst of criminals would be allowed—of course, under proper escort— to visit the bedside of a dying mother. In England the laws are not so humane, and day by day, as the moments of Arnold's imprisonment expired, so the sands of his mother's life were running out.

Eventually, when he was released, he hurried to the remote Cornish village as fast as the express train could take him. But he was half a day too late, and the eyes which had never looked upon him without love and gentleness, were closed for ever.

Paul Arnold, who was a linguist, ceased to cumber the shores of England for some considerable time after his mother's death. The thousand pounds which she had left him kept him in quiet luxury for nearly a year in the South of France and under the skies of Italy, where he passed, with such English folk as met him, as a reserved, cultivated man of early middle-age, who had obviously seen much trouble.

During this quiet year, mingled with his remorse was a fierce smouldering hatred for the iron laws which had kept him from his dying mother, for the stern regulations which would not grant him even that remission of the final week of his sentence, which would have enabled him to be present at the death-bed. When his money was spent, hardly with out protest, easily and comfortably, Arnold drifted back into crime.

We find him in London again some two years after his foreign experiences. His name appears in a celebrated criminal trial as an active agent in an affair of blackmail so heartless, so cruel, and dangerous that the reputations of those who were ruined by the criminals. concerned almost immediately acquired an air of martyrdom.

The sentences upon the engineers of this infamous conspiracy were severe, and Paul Arnold, alias this, alias that, was given twenty years' penal servitude.

SO MUCH for the history of Paul Arnold. Now there is no "Paul Arnold." There law not been any Paul Arnold for five years. There is only "K.15."

K.15 is a model prisoner in the great convict establishment of Princemoor— the ultimate organised hell in the west where those who must dwell for long periods in pain are sent.

When visitors came to the huge prison upon the moor, K.15 was always shown to them. He had never broken any prison regulations. The warders and the Governor pointed to him with pride; he was a gentleman once. Something— the warders and the Governor were not particularly interested in this— had made him a criminal. But what a man has done "outside" interests those who govern prisons very little. What interests them is whether this or that man makes a good prisoner.

In another ten years his sentence would be "revised" at the Home Office in Whitehall. That is to say that if his conduct had been uniformly good, a slight remission of the terrible twenty years might be possible.

"A good man that Snell," said the DeputyGovernor to the Chief Warder one morning after inspection.

"Never gives the slightest trouble, sir," the Chief Warder replied. "The best prisoner in the place. He is a man we can thoroughly trust. It really seems a shame he ever came here."

Donovan, the warder in charge of B. Gallery, Hall H., saluted. "Chief Warder hasn't said too much, sir," he volunteered. "K.15 is a real good man. I look to him, in a way, to preserve discipline in the hall."

"A very good thing," the Deputy-Governor answered. "I wish we had more prisoners like him. Wasn't he given the chance of being librarian to the prison?"

The Chief Warder nodded. "Yes, sir," he said; "he well deserved it and he had the chance. But somehow or other he didn't take to it. It would have meant a much easier time for him, but K.15 seems to be a man that likes something a bit more active. He is an extraordinarily clever carpenter, sir. His mind seems set on that, and we employ him in all our jobs that want real intelligence. Of course, by the Governor's orders, we give him a bit of latitude, so to speak. He is one of the few men in prison we can thoroughly depend upon."

The Deputy-Governor expressed his satisfaction rather nervously.

"The Governor is quite right, of course," he said, "and meanwhile, as Major Carter will be away for a month, you may give this good conduct prisoner any little indulgences that seem good to you."

"Thank you, sir," said the warder. "I do believe; when I am allowed, in encouraging well-behaved men. You hear that, Donovan?"

"Yes, sir," said the warder of B. Gallery.

"It is what I thought myself. I shall pass it on to Turner."

By this time the Deputy-Governor and the Chief Warder had come to the end of the gallery, and were about to descend the circular steps of open iron-work to a lower one. Warder Donovan saluted and resumed his march.

"What did he mean, Shell," said the De- puty-Governor, "by 'passing It on'?"

"Well, sir," the Chief Warder replied, "Officer Donovan is certified for leave. He comes off duty at five o'clock this evening, and he is going straight away by the six o'clock train. His old mother is dying, and if what I hear is true, he will have a bit of a rush to get to her in time."

"Poor fellow," said the Deputy-Governor, "I thought he looked a bit piqued. Let us hope he will be in time."

K.15 SAT IN his cell, awaiting the summons to work.

The servile look that he had worn for years existed no longer. The face of the prisoner was now haggard and terrible. It shone with an enormous purpose, and there was hatred in it, a deadly hatred.

For five long years K.15 bad been distilling hatred. It was quite on the cards, he well knew, that he might die in the prison before his long sentence had expired. It was certain that he would go out into the world an elderly, broken, and useless man. Even the vile pleasure which his cunning and adroitness had purchased for him in the past would no longer be possible.

There would be no place for him in the ranks of "the boys." New "boys" would have come upon the scene, with, new methods of swindling, adapted to changed conditions of life.

There would be absolutely nothing for K.15 when he was released upon the world— if, indeed, that ever came to pass. Yet for all his quiet manner and excellent behaviour, the prison life was torture. It was a greater torture than it had been during his previous sentences, for now the memory of his mother's death, and the fact that he bad never heard her dying words, become the obsession of his leaden hours.

He hated prison and prison-rulers with a hatred so intense that it lay lava-hot, unquenchable, within him. He had weighed every possible chance. He had summed up his hopeless situation with bitter deliberation. He had come to a final conclusion. He would escape, if possible, from Princemoor.

He had thought it all out— this model pris- oner, who was a pattern and example to all the violent and turbulent spirits in the House of Pain— and his decision was irrevocably taken.

He had waited months for a good opportunity— one could afford to take one's time during twenty years— end now it had come.

It was now November, and the month was unusually dull and heavy. The sky seemed to have come very close to the earth, and though there were no actual fogs upon the western moors which surrounded the prison, each day went by in a sort of spectral twilight.

Three days before this very morning, K.15 had been employed in a carpentering Job in the officers' quarters. They were about to give a concert in aid of a fund which provided pensions for the widows and orphans of prison warders. K.15— the clever carpenter, to whom such considerable latitude was allowed— had been, employed in erecting the temporary stage in the warders' recreation room, where the concert was to be held. For form's sake, and in accordance with the regulations, a warder on duty had superintended the convict at his work. But most of the time the man had been reading a newspaper, and K.15 had been left almost entirely to himself.

In a small room at the back of the improvised stage, K.15 had seen upon a shelf a box, of black japanned tin, which he recognised at once. It brought back memories of the past. It was a theatrical, make-up box. He had seized his opportunity as a monkey seizes a nut. It was an easy matter to cut off a ength of dark-brown crepe hair, and to abtract a stick of grease-paint of a dark complexion tint.

After his morning's work he had been marched back to his cell for dinner. During the dinner hour he had concealed his thefts in the mat- tress of his bed. Like all other prisoners, he had to undergo a search twice a day. But this only took place in the morning and even- ing, while his cell was not searched at all.

The day following he had been employed in fixing up some shelves in the prison office. While doing his work there, unobtrusively in a corner, the ordinary routine of the office had been continued. K.15 had learnt that leave had been granted to Warder Donovan to date from five o'clock upon the evening of the following day. Donovan himself, off duty for the moment, had entered the office, and been informed by the Chief Warder that his application for leave was granted, while one of those buff-colored forms which allow prison warders to travel upon the railway systems of England at a reduction of fare had been signed and handed to the officer. It seemed to K.15 that the fates were playing into his hand at last. The chance of revenge also, for during the evening of that second day Donovan had entered K.15's cell.

"You're to come out with me to-morrow, K.15," he said, "to the new outpost farm on the edge of the moor. The building is all finished, but there are one or two carpentering jobs to be done in the house. It's principally shelves and cupboards you've got to finish off. Make your tool requisition now, and I will see that you get what you want to-morrow morning when we start. You will come with me directly after breakfast, and are excused chapel."

"Thank you, sir," said the model prisoner, writing down upon the form from the stores the tools he thought he would want, and returning the pencil to the warder. Donovan looked over the list.

"Very well, K.15," he said. "I see you have mentioned a glue-pot. You have not wanted one before in any of the work you have done?"

"No, sir," K.15 replied, "but if I might have one it would save a lot of time in nailing and dove-tailing."

The eyes of the ex-Oxford man and clergyman's son gave one cunning flicker at the face of his immediate lord and master— the son of a small Cornish farmer.

K.15 saw that he was successful. The warder knew little about carpentering. He also did not know that K.15 was aware of his approaching leave. Moreover, though a moderately astute man, he was not looking for— and so did not see— the tigerish glare of hatred in the convict's glance.

At nine-thirty K.15 was paraded with, the quarry company in the prison yard. In the hollow of his right arm-pit was the inch or two of crepe hair he had stolen two days before, kept in its place by a thread drawn from his mattress. Under his other arm was the thin pencil of grease-paint in its covering of tin-foil. When he raised his arms above his head the threads kept the stolen articles in place, and, as he had expected, Donovan's quick passing of the hands over his clothes was the merest perfunctory ceremony. The quarry party, some hundred and fifty strong, tramped out of the prison gates, escorted by warders with loaded carbines.

K.15 marched with the rest along the road to the quarries, which were a mile away. Over his shoulders a bass containing his carpenter's tools was slung.

At the quarry, in obedience to a sharp order, he left the ranks and trudged forward with Donovan a mile and a half, into the trackless moor. Here a space of several acres had been
recently reclaimed and a small farmhouse erected.

So trusted and safe was K.15 considered that he was to spend the whole day at work in the farmhouse. In his bass of tools he carried the bread and cheese which was to form his dinner. It was not thought worth while to march him back again to the prison at mid-day. And Donovan also had a packet of sandwiches in his pocket.

The two men tramped along under the low and sullen sky, the prisoner a little in front, When they were well out of sight of the quarry Donovan gave the order to halt.

"I think I'll have a smoke," he said in a friendly voice. He felt quite certain that his charge would not give him away.

"I wish I could, sir," said K.15.

"Well, you've brought yourself so's you can't," said Donovan sententiously, "and that's none of my fault, K.15. Still, I don't say that when we get out there, and after you've eaten your dinner, I mayn't let you have e whiff or two. I have never been hard on you, K.15, and you're a well-behaved man— we'll see."

K.15 touched his prison cap in servile gra- titude, and the pair tramped onwards.

The warder puffed at his old briar pipe, but his dark-complexioned face was hard and anxious. There was a look of pain and yearning in his eyes.

The quick-minded convict saw at once that there was something wrong with his gaoler. The look in Donovan's eyes had not escaped him. But he imagined that simply an impatience at the last few hours of duty which remained before his leave began. And as the thought came to him, K.15 allowed himself an evil mental chuckle. He had a very shrewd idea that the man in the dark-blue uniform with the silver buttons would not by any means enjoy the holiday he hoped for. That would depend upon circumstances and the moment. For his own part, he was absolutely reckless. If, by a miracle, his plans succeeded, he might win to safety. Nevertheless, he had no illusions upon the subject. All that he had really thought possible was that he might enjoy a brief time of freedom; a few hours, a few days, even a week or two with luck.

It was worth it. He had nothing whatever to hope for in life.

Freedom, for however short a space of time, would be unutterably sweet. Revenge would be sweeter still. His whole life had been spent in the pursuit of base pleasures, in the satisfaction of evil passions. He would end without deviation from the standard he had set up for himself in youth. He would be consistent.

The consequences of escape and recapture would inevitably mean that he would pass the remainder of his life within the sombre walls and towers of the House of Pain. The attack upon the warder, and the vengeance he meant to take upon the unfortunate individual, who represented the system that had made it impossible for him to be with his old mother in her dying hours, would mean the terrible penalty of a prison flogging, if it did not result in the gallows.

The day was as dark as at late afternoon; on each side of the road the heather was brown and lifeless; an utter desolation surrounded them, only broken by the cry of a curlew as it flitted over the moor.

And in secret and ominous contrast to the outward vision of the two figures— the one erect and soldierly in its dark-blue uniform, the other, of the same height and build, erect and soldierly too— were the thoughts of these men's minds, the difference of their natures. One, the warder, was honest, simple, and kind. Of humble birth and of few advantages, he had always done his duty. His heart was wrung with anxiety and filial love.

The other complex, subtle, a child of evil, had been born a gentleman, with many advantages. His life had been a life of shame. Murder and hatred filled his heart!

A strange couple, upon a desolate road, each man marching to his appointed doom!

At last the farmhouse loomed up before them, a low range of buildings which stood up against the leaden sky like a silhouette of black.

They came to it, Donovan opened the door with a key, the two men entered.

Their feet rang with a melancholy sound in the empty dwelling as K.15 dumped his basket of tools upon the stone floor.

"It's those cupboards you've got to do, K.15," said the warder, pointing to a couple of re-cesses on either side of the kitchen fireplace. "You ought to be able to fit in all the shelves before I march you back. The wood is stacked against the wall, and there's a trestle bench to saw on. Now get to work."

K.15 saluted, emptied his tools upon the bench, and began to measure the cupboards with his two-foot rule. Then he marked the thin planks of wood with a joiner's pencil, and began to saw them off into the requisite lengths.

It was now nearing eleven o'clock.

Folr half an hour the convict worked steadily. As he sawed he whistled a little tune, and Donovan did not reprove him. The warder had his loaded carbine slung upon his shoulder, and walked up and down the kitchen and the passage beyond. Now and then. he strode to the door, looking out into the gloom for minutes at a time.

And all the while the sawing went on and the brisk movements of the model prisoner were heard about his bench.

The warder never saw that K.15 had fumbled in his jacket, taken an inch or two of dark crepe hair and a stick of theatrical greasepaint from it, and hidden them under a pile of shavings.

The warder looked at his watch.

"Stop work," he ordered, "and you can eat your dinner. You've got an hour allowed you."

K.15 saluted. "Thank you, sir," he said, "but while I am eating my dinner, wouldn't it be as well if the glue-pot were heated? 'There's a litte coal in the grate and plenty of wood and shavings."

"All right," said Donovan, "make up the fire, and I'll set light to it. And what's more, K.15, I've got a spare pipe on me, and you Shall have a smoke."

He smiled kindly at the convict as he said it, and began to fumble in his pockets with both hands, as K.15 turned to his bench for chips of wood.

His chance had come.

He wheeled round, swift as an arrow, with a heavy wooden mallet in his hand.

He saw the anxious, kindly look in the warder's eyes flash into a momentary stare of horrified surprise, and then the mallet descended heavily upon his forehead with a soft and sickening crunch.

The warder fell like a log.

K.15 was upon him in an instant. It took hardly any time to see that the man was absolutely stunned, killed it might be. With swift, nervous fingers, the figure in the yellow and fantastic clothes starred with the broad arrow crouched over the fallen man like a panther.

The boots are off; the socks too. The yellow figure turns over the dark one— the trousers, the tunic, and shirt also— the undervest— a still, naked form with blood upon its face lies there now.

Quickly, but without haste, K.15 dressed himself in the warder's clothes. They fitted him exactly. Then, with the warder's matches he lit the fire, and the water in the glue-pot began to hiss.

There was a coil of wire for fencing in the yard. The convict fetched it, severed two lengths with blows of his chisel and mallet, and bound the wrists and ankles of the unconscious man with cruel joy. Then, walking up and down the kitchen, watching the glue melt, he ate his own bread and cheese and Donovan's sandwiches; tearing the food like a beast of prey, bolting it like a dog.

In five minutes, when he had finished the food, K-15 saw that the glue was liquid. With practised fingers he fashioned a moustache from the crepe hair and rubbed grease from the stick into the skin of his face until it resembled the complexion of the warder and hid the prison pallor of his own.

The moustache was difficult. The thin and sticky film of the glue upon, his upper lip would not hold the hair like the usual spirit gum that is used. But he was very skilful in makeup, his hands placed behind the glass of a half-opened window provided an excellent mirror, and at length he was satisfied.

He had plenty of time. His plans were laid.

He would make a detour over the moor and strike the station previous to Princemoor— a tiny wayside place. The actual alarm, owing to the exceptional circumstances of his day's work, would hardly be given before he was already in the Plymouth train.

He pulled the peak cap far over his brow. He adjusted the steel chain which fell from the belt of black leather. Then, a thought striking, him, he took up the warder's carbine, and slung it on his back. That would give the finishing touch. He could represent himself— if needs be— as pursuing an escaped prisoner,

Also, he had a weapon of defiance, or a means of speedy death.

His spirits rose. He examined the pockets of the stolen clothes he wore.

A silver watch and chain. A leather purse with money in it— three, four, five pounds in gold, and some silver! the warder's holiday money! Well! Donovan would not want it, now!

A horrid cackle of laughter rang out in the gloomy room. This was better, far better than K.15 had dared to hope. And yes!— here was the railway order to Plymouth— some private letters also that there was not time to read.

All was going well, and K.15 laughed again. He bent down to the man upon the stone floor, No, he was not killed. His heart and pulse, as he felt them, were irregular, his breathing not quite normal. But he would come to him- self in an hour or so. He was only stunned.

The transformed K.15 took a chisel from the bench. Should he, or should he not— the keen edge pressed into the shining brown neck— avenge himself at last?

The flung chisel rang upon the stone floor. Something, a mysterious restraining hand, seemed to forbid this last infamy.

As K.15 strode away upon the moor be was astonished at himself, annoyed also in a vague way. Why hadn't he killed the brute?

He could not say.

An hour after mid-day a cold fog rose and covered the moorlands. The stars in their courses were fighting for K.15.

By two he found that his knowledge of the moor had served him so well that he was only a quarter of a mile away from the little station which was his gate of salvation. He actually met the simple porter of the place, walking home to his dinner a mile away.

" 'Nother of thim got away?" said the porter in the mist, "Well, he'll be caught again, they always are. Plymouth train? yes, there's one at three. It don't come from Princemoor. It starts from our station. It's mostly goods, and there's only one passenger coach. So long, mate, and good luck."

Upon a granite boulder, hidden in a clump of trees just above the station, K.15 sat and waited. He looked at his watch— it was years since he had handled one.

Half an hour at the very least before it would be safe to venture down to the train! Even in a fog, it would be unwise to linger on the platform. His disguise, facially at any rate, was but a flimsy one after all.

He smoked, and idly began to read the letters in the pocket of his tunic.

There were two them, and, with a start of surprise, he realised that they both came from a Cornish village he had known well in the past— a village only eight miles from that in which his father had been rector, and where his mother had died.

This was the first:—

Dear Bob,

The doctor says as mother will live till you come, now as you have got leave. Mother knows you are coming, and is waiting to say good-bye. Dear Bob, she says as now she knows you are coming to morrow she will die happy. If you catch the 7.30 from Plymouth you will be here at —— station by 9, and a trap will be waiting. Dear Bob, come at once.

Your loving sister,

Susan Donovan.

The other letter was headed "The Vicarage," and was brief:—

"Dear Donovan, (it ran)

don't delay an hour in your journey from Plymouth to-morrow evening. Your mother may, I pray God, last till your arrival.

As from your boyhood,

Your sincere friend,

Harold Davidson.

The mist eddied round the pine trees, and cold drops fell from the dark branches upon the sodden turf.

The figure in uniform, hidden in the recesses of the wood, remained absolutely motionless for quite half an hour.

For all that time there was no sound from the encircling moor— no sound of battle. And yet the legions of evil, in sable regiments strong, were waging a furious battle in their own country, their known and accustomed country, against one single angel of tight. But now a sound came.

It was the noise of shunting down below in the station, the whistle of an engine about to start; then the groaning movement as the train moved out into the mists towards Plymouth.

And, above the station, was the sound of sobbing, the sobbing of a broken and contrite heart to which old memories had come, to which— perhaps— the voice of a Mother had spoken from another and happier world than this.

Through the mist!— could he find his way back to the lonely farmhouse upon the moor?

For the first time for many years K.15 prayed. He prayed that he might be able to discover the path through this chilly grey blanket which had descended over the western moors— the path back to the house where Warder Donovan lay.

What he prayed for— he had no illusions upon the subject— was that he might get back to the empty farmhouse in time to release the bound man— if indeed the blow of the heavy mallet had not done work at which he shuddered to think.

To release the bound man! To give him a chance of being present at the deathbed of the mother he loved!

In his hurried progress back towards the farm he came suddenly to a mark he recognised—a huge table-shaped boulder. It told him that he was but five minutes' walk from the place he sought.

And then he stopped.

He knew what this would mean. It would mean a flogging for the assault. It would mean parti-colored clothes and chains for the escape. It would mean that the horror of his life was to deepen into horrors more terrible still. With his quick, facile imagination he saw it all, he heard the whistle of the cat, he felt the dreadful blow of many thongs upon his squirming back. He could feel the very leathern straps which bound him to the steel triangle.

Then he went on.

It was done! He had untwisted the cruel bonds of wire. He had chafed the wrists and ankles, he had brought water from the well, and poured it over Donovan's head and the great bump which had risen there from the blow of the mallet.

Then he stood trembling and cringing before the prison offcer. With nervous fingers he began to unbutton the black leather belt and the tunic that he wore— speaking incoherently the while, trembling very much. As well as he was able, he explained, and then, as the other looked at him with dazed eyes, power came into his voice, and he spoke. He spoke of his own mother. He told of the letters be had read.

Then he stood humbly waiting for the harsh response he expected.

The response was that a rough, uncultured man, With tears streaming from his eyes, fell upon his neck.

Immediately afterwards Warder Donovan marched his prisoner back to Princemoor gaol.

The warder accounted for the swelling on his temples and the discoloration of his face by saying that he had fallen over a granite boulder, was stunned for a time, and had been assisted to recovery by K.15.

By this means the Model Prisoner was even more kindly treated by those in charge of him than before. And during the next day, when he was employed in carpentering at the farm— now under charge of another warder— he seemed to hear, during his dinner hour, the blessing of the two Mothers.

__________________

9: The Christmas Violin

World's News (Sydney) 21 Decr 1918

HIS housekeeper and her husband had gone out to shop, and Charles Maxon was left alone on Christmas Eve.

The old walled house by the river at Chiswick was absolutely silent as the famous violinist sat by the fire. He was surrounded by every comfort. The fire burnt upon an open hearth of bricks and was of logs. The room was beautifully proportioned, with good modern pictures upon the walls of dark green, and heavy velvet curtains veiled the sombre picture of the snow-covered garden, for towards nightfall the cold had increased and outside it was freezing hard.

Maxon, a tall, clean-shaved man of two-and-thirty, reclined in a saddle-back chair of green leather, and at his elbow was a small table on which stood a decanter of port. On another and larger table, some distance away, lay a violin and a bow.

The musician's face was set and stern. The mouth drooped, and there was a dull longing in the eyes.

For a long time Maxon sat motionless and full of bitter memories. At last he rose and, unlocking a drawer in a fine old Sheraton bureau, took out a letter. It was headed with the name and address of a firm of solicitors and ran as follows:

We regret to say that the agents we have employed have entirely failed in their search. The man. Maberley, died in prison nearly a year ago. At the time his wife was earning a precarious living by giving piano lessons in Clapham. She was in great financial straits, and apparently quite friendless. She was forced to leave her lodgings because she was unable to pay the rent, and since that tinu has been, lost sight of. Advertisement and all other methods employed have been fruitless. We regret, etc., etc.

Maxon threw the letter back into the drawer with a groan. Four years ago at Christmas time he had parted from Muriel Greene in a fit of passion― how clearly he saw it now― provoked entirely by his own arrogance of temper. He loved the young girl, just then entering upon the life of a professional pianist, loved her dearly. But he was a masterful man, already famous, and took things far too much for granted. A month afterwards Muriel, in a fit of pique and temporary madness, had thrown herself away upon the handsome scoundrel, Maberley, and gone abroad with him directly after their marriage. What that married life had been, what an unmitigated bell the poor girl had endured with her husband, came out at the criminal trial when the man was sentenced to five years' penal servitude for fraud.

"They call me hard and bitter!" Maxon said aloud― talking to himself, as lonely and unhappy men will― "well, let them talk. Life has not used me so well that I should show it a smiling face! I am one of the first musicians in Europe, they call me a master of the violin, and my heart is hollow and bitter as a dried lemon."

He thought of the happy smile upon the laces of his housekeeper and her husband as they had left the house to do their Christmas shopping. Their son was to arrive from the north to spend the feast with them.... Pah! The man laughed savagely. "Peace on Earth; Goodwill, pah!"

But as his eye fell upon the centre table the bitter laugh died away and his face changed.

On the table lay the third most famous violin in the world, the Amati, for which Maxon had paid two thousand guineas, and which had once belonged to the famous Italian player, Giovanni Battista Viotti.

"You at least remain!" Maxon cried, taking up the beautiful instrument and watching

He staggered where he stood in the snow, and then stiffened all over, bending forward in an ecstasy of agonised attention.

Ihe light play upon the mellow, brown-gold varnish, the secret of which is lost for ever. "I can pour out my soul to you, and you answer in a voice that is sweeter than that of any woman. With you in my hand I am an emperor, a wizard, and can sway the hearts of men!"

His finger unconsciously touched and pulled at the "G" string covered with spun silver wire, and from the belly of the violin there vibrated a hollow, sighing sound, a ghostly groan it seemed, instinct with sick despair. Maxon put down the instrument with a sudden movement. At that moment, vibrating clear and close at hand, there came a sudden note of a violin.

The tortured man spun round upon his heels, for the sound seemed to fill the room. For a moment he trembled, as if at something supernatural. His nerves were tense and strung up to breaking point. For a second he almost lost his self-control.

Then he gave a sigh, which was almost a sob of relief, as the familiar music of a well-known carol shivered out into the night.

"Good King Wenceslas went out..."

A wandering: musician had found his way into the garden. Mrs. Parkinson had forgotten to lock the gate, as she had been told to do, so that waits and carol singers might find no entry.

A frown came upon Maxon's face. This was intolerable. That, by the carelessness of his servant, his peace should be disturbed on this night of all nights, this hour of sad, remorseful memory― filled him with anger.  Should he go out and order the man away? It was hardly worth while. He would probably go by himself when he found that no notice was taken of him.

Considered technically, the melody of that old carol was excellent. Simple as it was, it satisfied a musician's ears, as so many of those old tunes did. The carol ended and the unseen minstrel began to play a Christmas hymn, the "Adeste Fideles," and as the grand and ancient harmony rang out into the night, Maxon started.

"That fellow can play!" he thought, "There is an attack and a certainty of touch quite unusual in a street fiddler."

The tune came to an end. Maxon heard the man coughing, and then the crunching sound of footsteps on the snow. Finally the electric bell of the front door sounded thin and shrill in the far-off kitchen. Maxon scowled. Then he laughed roughly. Since fate had sent him a visitor, he would welcome him. The obscure wandering player should share the bitter humor of the great musician! He went out of the study, strode through the hall, and opened the front door. A thin, wretched-looking man stood there, plainly revealed by the lights of the hall. He wore no overcoat, and his face was blue and pinched by the cold. He stood without a word, a gaunt spectre of a man, and extended a hand for alms.

"Come in out of the cold," Maxon said, touched in spite of himself by this incarnate misery. The man bowed, "I am not fit to enter a gentleman's house," he said humbly, but with a certain refinement in his voice.

"Come in out of the cold, Maxon repeated impatiently. "Never mind what you are or what you look like. In my present mood I would welcome the devil himself to-night!"

The man bowed and entered. Maxon led him into the study, where he stood blinking in the glow of the electric lights and staring at the great log fire as if he could hardly believe it to be real. He trembled all over. Maxon poured some port into a tumbler.

"Drink this," he said, for the man appeared to be starving, "but sip it slowly. My servants are out. I'll go and get you something to eat."

When he returned with some cold chicken and bread upon a tray, the stranger had moved to the fire and was bending over it.

"Who are you sir?" the man said, and it was immediately obvious that he had been a gentleman once―"who are you who leaves a stranger like me alone in a roomful of rich and costly things?"

"A unhappy man like yourself. Here is food. Don't talk till you've eaten."

Again the man bowed, and with a grave courtesy in the gesture, and as he sat down Maxon saw that despite his rags and pitiable state, there was a certain nobility of carriage about him very far removed from the ordinary. He ate in silence, while Maxon stood by the fire, lost in reverie. After a time he caught sight of the man's fiddle and took it up, idly turning it over. It was a cheap and common instrument, and the famous musician was surprised that it could produce so full and resonant a tone as that which he had lately heard.

Hardly knowing what he did, Maxon took up the bow and began to play. A curious thing happened. At the touch of the cheap wood beneath his chin and the bow between his fingers, his bitterness and dull, remorseful heartache, that bad been his companions for so many hours, fell from him like a cloak. He was sad, but softened; in a magic moment something of the awe and expectation of the Eve of Christ's Nativity flowed over him.

Old memories crowded thick and fast into his mind, started perhaps by the Christmas carol and the hymn. He found himself playing snatches of long-forgotten melodies, simple tunes of childhood and far-off days, and the music that came from the thirty-shilling violin was more beautiful than any that this man had made for emperors and kings. More beautiful, because the ice congealed around his heart was melting, the stubborn, rebellious soul opening itself to the holy influences of the time.

He did not see that the stranger had risen and was standing by the table in an attitude of fixed and strained attention, and that joy and wonder were upon his face.

Five years before, when he had just become engaged to Muriel Greene, Maxon had written a prelude for piano and violin, which they used to play together. He had never published the thing, a tender, haunting melody, which Muriel had called "The Prelude of Grey and Silver." The composer's fingers glided into that melody now, but when he became conscious of what he was playing he stopped short suddenly, and put down the fiddle with a sigh.. Then the poor musician spoke.

"Sir," he said, with his curious dignity and in his measured voice, "I know now to whom I am speaking. You have done me a great honor In playing to me."

Maxon experienced a strange sense of unreality, as if he were in a dream. He answered his strange guest like an equal.

"I am glad if my playing has given you any, pleasure. You yourself are a musician. If you like, now that you are rested, I will play to you upon my Amati over there. By the way, this instrument of yours has a finer tone than I Should have thought possible."

"It is you who gave it tone."

"No, no. It really is a good instrumentI noticed that when you were playing that old carol― Good King Wenceslas."

"It is a beautiful legend, sir," said the poor musician. "How the king took a poor man in on just such a night as this."

"And entertained an angel unawares!" said Maxon, laughing.

"Few people believe in Christmas angels nowadays," the stranger answered, looking to wards the Amati violin.

Muxon took up his treasure, remembering how it had seemed to groan at him half an hour before, and began to play. After a minute he stopped. "You must excuse me," he said, "but I am not in the mood for my Amati to-night. I was not now playing like I was a few minutes ago, though your instrument is so inferior."

"Yes, sir, if I may say so, I noticed that. A musican cannot control his inspiration. Is it not so?"

"It is. And now. since you are my guest, and we are both artists, you must let me help you. I am rich, and I can at least give you a new start in life. And if there is anything else I can do, please command me."

"You are very generous. You have not even asked to hear my story. I may not be a worthy recipient of your charity."

"You are unhappy, and that is enough for me."

"I am not unhappy now, sir. Your playing has done that. God has given you a supreme gift, and by its means you have given one person great joy to-night. Come with me, sir, into some of the unlovely streets around. Bring with you your priceless violin, and play to the people."

The stranger's voice had grown resonant and full. There was almost a command in it, but Maxon felt no resentment. He was still in a curious dream-state. The events of this Christmas Eve seemed fantastic and unreal.

"So be it!" he cried. "We will go out together into the highways, and make music! And then you must come back' with me here. Do you,'' he hesitated for a moment, "do you live in the neighborhood?"

The other smiled, "No, my home is very far away," he said, taking up his fiddle.

Maxon dressed himself in a long ulster, and pulled a soft hat over his eyes. He offered his guest a warm coat to cover his threadbare garments, but the man said that he had no need of it, and they passed out into the raw night without further speech.

The stranger was obviously acquainted with the neighborhood. He assumed command of their direction, walking quickly and with purpose, and Maxon followed him, carrying the precious Amati; conscious of an entire absence of embarrassment at this masquerade.

The first stop was made outside a small public-house in a side street, and, lifting his bow, the stranger began to play again the ancient carol of. the king. Maxon accompanying him with a marvellous flood of grace-notes, a brilliant improvisation such as it is safe to fay no London street had ever heard before.

There were many people in the street, but no one stopped to listen. Once a half-drunken man, lurching from the pot-house door, cursed them vigorously, and then; relenting, threw a penny at Maxons feet.  .

For nearly ten minutes they played outside a small house with a light in an upper room.

"There is an old woman up there," the stranger said, apologetically, "who cannot leave her bed. I sometimes visit her. She will be pleased to hear one Christmas hymn, and it will help her to forget her pain."

The hour grew late; some of the flaring shops were closing.  The crowds in the High Street were beginning to thin, but still the great musician and his humble friend played on.

"It is quite wonderful!" Maxon said to him. "I am not in the least weary; I could go on all night, and I am really enioying the experience. It tranquilises me in a strange fashion. I have got rid of the weight that was oppressing me."

Then he had an afterthought. "If this is a specimen evening as far as money goes," he said, "then I am indeed glad that we have met and I can help you. Why, with all our toil we have hardly been given anything!" He sighed as be thought of the hundreds of pounds he made each time he gave a concert.

"But we have given pleasure, sir. If you are not weary, we will go that way." He pointed to an avenue of large houses which opened opposite into the High Street.

These houses all stood back from the road, and were surrounded by trees, gaunt and spectral beneath their weight of snow.

From many of them came sounds of music , and revelry, but they passed three places by until they came to another with heavily shuttered windows.

"Let us go in here," said the poor musician, and opened the gate.

"But there is no one at home, or they are all out," Maxon answered.

"It is a school for girls, but the pupils have all gone home, and the ladies who keep it are away. There are only a caretaker and a servant maid. The caretaker is out; I saw her entering that huge gin-palace before which we played, so the poor girl who has no friends is alone."

He led the way round the house, their feet making hardly any sound upon the thick snow, and Maxon reflected that his guest knew many details of this district, though he had said his home was far away.

They took up their position on a lawn at the back of the house, where a vertical strip of orange-colored light showed in the centre of tall French windows where the curtains had not been quite drawn.

"What shall we play?" Maxon asked in a low voice, but before the other had time to answer, a deep and sudden chord of music came out to them from the house.

Maxon started violently― the sound was utterly unexpected. Again came a full, dominant chord, and an easy ripple up and down the keyboard-this was no amateur's touch.

And then, without further prelude, the violinist heard the arresting, unforgettable opening of music that he knew well. ...

"The Nocturne in Grey and Silver!"

His heart gave one great leap and then seemed almost to stop. He staggered where he stood in the snow, and then stiffened all over, bending forward in an ecstasy of agonised attention.

No! Oh, joy of all earthly joys, there was no mistake! It was the music of the first days of his love, hauntingly sweet, and known only to her!

Just as the full thought and realisation of what this meant came to him, the opening movement ended, and the moment when the violin should join in arrived.

Maxon lifted the Amati and began to play.

Hope and joy answered sadness and sick despair. The yearning of the piano prelude was caught up and merged in the triumph of the calling violin, high, jubilant, and clear.

Suddenly the piano accompaniment ceased. The narrow strip of light widened, the French windows were flung violently open, and a tall, dark-haired girl in the dress of a housemaid stood there, trembling terribly. With a great shout of joy and wonder, Maxon rushed up the steps and caught her in his arms.

FIVE MINUTES afterwards the reunited lovers came to the window and stared out over the silent lawn. Maxon called aloud. There was no one there.

"He must have slipped away, poor fellow," said, Maxon. "But I will move heaven and earth to find him."

"But, dearest, look!" said the girl in a puzzled voice, pointing downwards. Maxon looked. A flood of light poured out from the open window, and there, clear and distinct, were the tracks of his own feet in the snow. And there were no other tracks at all.

___________________

10: The Fearless Lover

Freeman's Journal (Sydney) 2 Dec 1926

IT was about half past ten on a bright autumn morning as Molly Millar, the Champion Trick Rifle Shot of the Universe, descended the steps of her caravan. Some two hundred yards away, the great canvas dome of the circus tent shone like silver. To its right was the great turtle-back of canvas which housed the menagerie of Strangwell's Mammoth Circus and Travelling Zoo. There was a whole fleet of caravans, in which the performers lived and travelled, all brilliantly painted and gilded. Behind them, in the vast field which had been hired for the show, were dozens of horses, picketed to stakes, or running loose in hurdled enclosures. Four or five great traction engines, covered with tarpaulins, hardly seemed to dwarf three huge elephants, which, in charge of a couple of Indians, were disporting themselves in the river which ran at the side of the enclosure. Dogs barked, negroes and horsey-looking men hurried about upon their business. There was a clank of anvils from the blacksmith's forge, and now and then the harsh roar of some great animal from the menagerie.

It was an unusual scene enough in England, though perfectly familiar to Molly Millar, who had lived in the circus world from her youth up. She was a slim, pretty girl of three and twenty, with large black eyes and a face as brown as a berry. On her head she wore a white felt sombrero, and round her neck was a silk handkerchief of brilliant colors. Her short skirt of corduroy allowed a neat foot and ankle to be seen, cased in long laced boots fitting perfectly to the calf. As she stood there, breathing in the cool fresh air, she was sweet, as an autumn rose. A tall, clean-shaved man in riding breeches came up to her and touched his cap.

'Mornin', Missy,' he said, with a strong American accent. 'Howdy-do! Full of pep, I can see.' The girl smiled in answer. She liked the big New Yorker who acted as veterinary surgeon for the whole establishment, and knew more about wild beasts in captivity than any other man in Europe.

'I am fit and well, thanks, Doc,' she said, with a flashing smile. 'What's the news?'

'Well, what'll interest you most, I guess, is that the noo lion came last night after the show, and your boy's going to set to work on the taming job this morning.'

'My boy?' she said. 'I haven't got any boy, Doc.'

'Nope. Well, don't look at me as if I were something that had just hopped out from behind a wet stone. I was referring to Bill Barlow— Captain Starlight, I beg his pardon. The toughest and handsomest boy in Strangwell's.'

'Then refer to someone else.'

'Aren't you the fresh thing this morning, Molly?' said the American, with a grin. 'Don't you give the frosty mitten to a pal. Everyone knows as you and Bill are kinder nancy. You've been keeping company with him this three months — and I don't blame you, nuther, for Bill's a straight sport.'

Molly sighed.

'Doc,' she said, with a complete change of manner, catching hold of the man's arm, 'Doc, Bill's all right; but there are times when I hate him.'

'But he'd go into the fire in a paper suit for you!'

'So he says. I've no fault to find with Bill in many ways; but he's cruel, he's dead cruel.'

The doctor shrugged his shoulders as he patted his little friend's arm with a paternal gesture.

'Bill,' he said, 'has his own methods with animals. There's two ways of training wild beasts, Molly— by kindness, and the other way. Kindness takes years, and it ain't always successful at the end. The. other way's short and sharp. Bill only does what most trainers do, only he's more successful than most. He rules by fear, as the saying is, and he's the first lion tamer in the universe, just as you're the finest trick shot with a rifle— biggest toad in the puddle!'

'It makes me sick,' the girl said, with a snap, of the teeth, 'to know the things he does. I hate cruelty of any sort, and cruelty to animals is worse'n all, for they can't help themselves.'

'Can't they? When Bill gets into a wild lion's cage for the first time, I guess it's even betting. Still, I don't know but what you haven't got some right on your side. I'm afraid I've been in the business so long that it's hardened my arteries some. Don't you go getting rough with poor Bill. He don't know what fear is. Guess Bill's' a man.'

'Bill's a cruel brute,' the girl rejoined, 'and I don't care the waggle of a mule's ear for him. At any rate, I'll never have anything to do with him until he mends his ways. Doesn't know what fear is? Doc, he lives by fear. He lives by putting fear into poor animals, and a man that does that is no man for me.'

She looked a little fury as she broke away and began to stride over the turf towards the tents.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

'Sure case,' he said to himself. 'She's mad in love with the boy; but I allow she'll be as good as her word, and never have him if he don't change. He's sure more cruel than most of 'em, and that's saying something.'

Pushing aside the heavy flap, Molly entered a large-sized tent. At one end of it were a few animals which were sick and had been removed from the menagerie; and in an immense cage, stoutly barred with steel and standing on a four-wheeled lorry, was the new lion, a magnificent beast, with a great shaggy head and black-tipped ears, who stood over three feet high. It now lay in a corner of its cage, its tail twitching while its eyes stared out through the bars with sullen anger.

A little group of men were standing there— old white-whiskered Mr. Strangwell, proprietor of the circus; Mr. Heath, the ring-master; several menagerie grooms and attendants; and Bill Barlow, 'Captain Starlight' of the programmes, the Celebrated Wild Beast Tamer.

Bill was a splendid-looking man, just six feet in height. He had the limbs of Hercules, curly hair, and a strong young face which could be good-humored enough, but which wore an unconscious expression of arrogance. He was popular enough in the circus, admired for his skill and absolute daring, feared for his readiness to quarrel and his entire disregard of consequences.

Molly stood in the background, leaning against one of the pillars which supported the tent. Two men went up to the cage with a brazier full of glowing coke. Pressed into the coals were several long iron bars. Molly guessed what these were for and shuddered inwardly.

'Well, get to work,' Mr. Strangwell shouted, and instantly there was a little bustle of movement.

Bill stood on some low steps just outside the door of the cage. Molly noticed that he had something in his hand. It was a stout wooden club with a bludgeon end. This end was bound round with stout tin, through which twenty or thirty nails, about an inch and a half long, had been driven, so that the spikes projected all round the head of the club in a cheval de frise.

'Now, Bill,' Mr. Strangwell said, and with a swift movement the trainer opened the door of steel bars, slipped in, and closed it again with a click.

Mr. Heath, the ring-master, strolled up to Molly.

'Morning, Miss Millar,' he said, with the pompous, ceremonial manner which he used both in the ring and in private life. Molly nodded at him, and they both turned to watch the proceedings.

There was dead silence, in the tent, only broken by a low, ominous growl from the huge tawny beast. Bill Barlow straightened himself and then began to whistle a lively little tune. The lion raised his head, and in one single movement, extraordinarily lithe and graceful, rose from his recumbent position and crouched. His mouth opened wide, with the two terrible fangs in the top jaw gleaming ivory white in a red cavern. Molly could see his tongue, which was rough as the largest-size file. Then Bill was on the beast with a leap before it could spring. He tapped it upon the nose with his spiked club— Mr. Heath explained to Molly that the nose of a lion is its most sensitive point— and then withdrew it like lightning, to plunge it into the mouth. There was an awful roar of pain as the club was rammed in.

'I've seen their teeth fall on the floor like dominoes,' said Mr. Heath, in a cool, professional manner.

The lion opened its jaws in agony, and the club, dripping with blood, was' snatched away. Bill retreated to the middle of the stage again and began to whistle, never taking his eyes from his victim. The lion was frightened, but it was not cowed, and with its fear was mingled a great fury. The tail, with its tuft of hair at the end, lashed the sides of the cage. The eyes narrowed, and the whole noble mask lost its dignity and grinned with hatred. The sinuous body bent; a spring was imminent.

Barlow had the club ready in his right hand, but in this case it was to be a last resource, and could not defend him from the chisel-like talons once the beast had hurled himself upon him. Quick as lightning, his hand went to his hip. There was a gleam of steel, and then six deafening reports, as the revolver discharged half a dozen blank cartridges full in the lion's face.

'See, Miss!' said the ring-master. 'He fired those blank cartridges right into the beast's ears. See now! He's stunning him and making him stupid.'

The lion had turned swiftly, its tail lashing like a flail, exposing its hindquarters to the trainer, who snatched another revolver from his pocket and fired all the chambers in quick succession.

'That's to scorch the skin, so's he don't know where he is.'

Bill slipped out of the cage with a grin. He wiped his face with his handkerchief and drank out of a great pot of beer that one of the attendants handed him. He did not see Molly even yet, but lit a cigarette and talked for a few minutes with the proprietor. Then, at a nod from the old man, he once more entered the cage, going through very much the same performance as before, though with less activity on the part of the animal. But the circus people knew very well what they were about. The critical moment had yet to come. The lion lay huddled up, snarling horribly, in the corner of the cage— as far away from the trainer as he could get. Bill backed towards the door very slowly, facing the animal. As he did so one of the men at the brazier pulled out a long rod glowing white with heat, and, approaching the bars of the cage, held it in readiness to thrust through.

'Now's the time!' whispered Mr. Heath, and had hardly done so when the lion hurled himself across the cage with appalling suddenness and speed. But he was not quite, quick enough. The white-hot iron slid into the cage at the exact moment. The lion came up against it with his fore paws and chest just as Bill Barlow nipped neatly out of the cage, his face radiant with gratified vanity.

There was an appalling howl, a smell of burnt hair, and Molly rushed from the tent, her heart beating like a drum, her hands clenched in impotent anger, and her dark eyes full of bitter tears.

At the end of that evening's performance there was a furious quarrel between the Iovers, in the artistes' room, just off the great circus arena.  Captain Starlight had given his performance with his lions. After him upon the programme came Molly Millar's exhibition of trick shooting. The girl went through her performance mechanically. She broke fifty glass balls in the air without a miss and with single bullets. She shot the apple off a man's head with her usual iron nerves. She greeted the prolonged applause which always attended her marvellous exhibition with the usual flashing smile of thanks. But as she came through the curtains of the arena and entered the artistes' room her face was set and stern.

At the moment there was no one there but Bill Barlow, in his tight-fitting blue uniform laced with gold. He sat at a little wooden table, smoking a cigar.

'Well?' he said, rising. 'You told me to meet you, Molly, my lass, hn'd here I am. What is it, little sweetheart?'

The girl's face was- white.

'I have come,' she said, 'I have come to tell you that I don't want to have anything more to do with you.'

The man gave a long, low whistle, smiled good-temperedly, and looked down upon her.

'Little spitfire! And what have I done now?'

'You're a cruel, inhuman beast. I saw you with that lion this morning. I wish I could put a spiked club into your mouth.'

'Now look here, Molly,' he said, 'You don't know what you're talking about; you really don't. I never interfere with your show. Don't you come and interfere with mine. Business is business, and I know what I am doing. Would you rather have seen that lion chew me up this' morning?'

She shook off the hand that tried to draw her near.

'It's not that,' she cried. 'You know that you are crueller than amost anyone. You boast that you train your beasts in quickest time. You boast that they go in deady fear of you. Animals can be trained with kindness; everyone knows that. And, anyhow, they can be trained without such brutal, horrible barbarity as you employ. Bill Barlow, you're nothing but a wretched coward!'

That stung the man's simple, savage nature. He grew dark red in the face, as if someone had struck him there. Then he began to stammer in mingled fury and amazement.

'I a coward!' he managed to get out. 'How do you make that out? Are you mad ? Why, I've never known what it is to be afraid of anything in this world yet.'

'All the same,' Molly ''continued relentlessly, 'you're a coward. The mere fact that you have never known fear, as you say, proves it. How can a man be brave who even doesn't understand what fear is? I tell you my heart bled as I saw that poor beast lying there in deadly dread of you.'

'Now, Molly,' he was beginning, when she interrupted him with an imperious sweep of her hand.

'It's no use,' she said. 'Things are finished between us. I'll never marry you. I'll never have anything to do with you until you've felt something like what that lion felt this morning, and, having felt it, reform your ways and have some kindness and tenderness in your heart.'

'Me in fear!' he said, with an ugly sneer. 'That'll be when there's skating in the lower regions!'

She gave him one keen, contemptuous look, and swept out of the place like a whirlwind.

The big man once more sat down at the table. The band was blaring outside, and there were roars upon roars of applause at the antics of Pimple, the clown. But the wild, untamed heart of the man was heavy as lead within him, for, with all his ruthlessness and pride, he loved this slip of a girl better than anything else in the world. Bill Barlow sat at supper in the caravan which he inhabited alone. A fortnight had pasped since the furious interview with Molly, and the great show had packed up and trekked to the far north of England.

There had been a fortnight of bitter cold, trying both to human and animal performers, and during the whole of that time the lion tamer had found it impossible to get an interview alone with the girl he loved. He became moody and savage, a terror, worse than before, to his beasts; and more than once had resource to the bottle to try and revive his low and brooding spirits. The stove was hot in the caravan as he ate his cold meat and drank his beer. The red-shaded lamp, the bright enamel varnish, make the place as snug and comfortable a refuge as a man could want; but a heavy scowl lay over the man's face, and once or twice a muttered oath escaped him. Never had his love been stronger. It fed and grew upon, Molly's marked aversion.

There were times when he could hardly endure his pain, and yet no thought ever entered his mind of altering his ways with the wild beasts of whom he was so emphatically the master. On that point he was as stubborn as a rock. Indeed, being without pity or fear, he was simply at a loss to understand Molly's attitude. It was beyond him, and mingled with his love was a fierce resentment at his inability to understand, to get to the bottom of what he now felt had been her hate for him. For the girl made no secret of her dislike. Everyone knew it; it was common property, and, worse, she had been behaving very strangely of late.

Bill had seen one or two things for himself, and many stories had been told him. Once she had burst into shrill laughter in the very middle of her performance, had fired a whole, magazine-full of cartridges straight at the roof of the tent, and had fallen down in a dead faint, to the consternation of the vast north-country audience. She would go about singing little songs which meant nothing, and had no tune. He had seen her in the morning with her hair hanging down her back and wandering among the caravans. She had put out her tongue at Doc. Wilstack, the Vet., who used to be her great friend and almost a father to her. She had been seen strolling about with 'Mutt and Jeff,' two negro wrestlers— good fellows enough in their way, but too primitive and akin to the inhabitants of the menagerie to be regarded as proper companions for other artistes.

'She's going off her chump, poor little dear,' said Bill, with a mighty groan, 'and I can't do anything,' when there came a knock at the carayan door. He opened it; a lad handed him a note and vanished in the darkness.

'Come at once' into the arena, Bill. I want to meet you alone. There's no one about. I must see you. — Molly.'

With a shout of glad surprise, the big man jerked on his coat, took a lantern, and threaded his way through the intricate maze of temporary buildings until the huge rotunda of the circus tent rose up before him. He entered by a side door, passed through the artistes' room, and thrust aside the heavy velvet curtains which led to the arena. A single electric bulb was kept burning all night, as he knew; but as he stepped out upon the tan, his lantern spilling a pool of yellow light around, he found that all else was dark.

'Molly!' he said in a hoarse voice, when suddenly something whipped round his throat and pulled him backwards. With a shout of alarm, he fell heavily, and immediately some powerful person was upon him gagging him, while another shacked his ankles. With no more ceremony than If he had been a log, he was turned over and his wrists fastened behind his back. Not a word was said. He was dragged to his feet and half propelled, half carried through the blackness. Then there was a sudden bump. He felt wood at his back, and then a rope coiling round and round him until he was fastened in a standing position, without power of moving a limb. The gag was removed from his mouth. He heard the soft pad of retreating footsteps. He gave a shout of anger and alarm, which echoed away and was lost.

Click! Someone had turned on a switch. The ring was flooded with light.

Twenty yards away stood Molly Millar. The light glinted on the blue-black barrel of the rifle she carried. He saw madness in her eyes.

'What's this, Molly?' he called out, in a sharp, authoritative voice. 'What game are you trying to play upon me?'

The girl laughed; the sound came horribly to him.

'You're finished, Bill Barlow,' she said. 'You'll never be cruel to animals any more! And before you die you're going to know what fear is.'

The man was desperate in an instant. He was tied up to the movable target which Molly used in her show— a man stood against it and had an apple shot from off his head. Bill writhed in his bonds and put forth the utmost power of his mighty muscles. It was in vain. He shouted at the top of his voice, but in that vast empty space the sound was muffled and lost.

'I'm going to fire twenty shots,' she said, 'all round your head, Bill Barlow. The twentieth will go iTu.uo i..-ua n your forhead, and the world will be well rid of a cruel monster.'

Even as she finished speaking, there was a shap crack! Simultaneously something passed by the man's neck, so close as almost to graze it, and buried itsef in the thick wood. He gave one deep gasp like a drowning man.

Crack! The extreme tip of his ear-lobe just moved. The sweat began to pour down his face.

Crack! There was a hot wind between the top of his ear and the short-cut hair at the side of his head. He felt as if a red-hot wire had glowed out there for a moment. Then he spoke, with a great effort, for his mouth was dry. 'Molly, Molly darling, you can't be going to―'

Crack! The little messenger of death shaved the side of his head so closely, so it seemed, that a sheet of paper could not have been between it and the skull. He kept his head absolutey rigid. A single movement by so much as a hair's breadth, and it meant death.

Crack! A venomous buzz like that of a passing wasp, and the sickening impact of a bullet behind. Death? Why, death was coming, sure enough. What had she said? Twenty shots! He began to count in an agony.

Eight! Nine! Ten!

His eyes were glaring, but at the tenth shot he saw the figure twenty yards away lower the rifle and quietly insert a new clip of cartridges in the magazine.

'Molly!' he cried, and his voice was now a thin whine. For answer the rifle rose, and low down on the neck upon the other side the eleventh bullet spat its way. His heart felt as though it were squeezed in iron fingers. His blood turned to ice. His throat throbbed horribly; the whole arena revolved like a great wheel.

Fifteen! Sixteen!

He shrieked aloud:

'Molly, Molly, have mercy! I can't bear it. Molly!'

Eighten! Nineteen! A pause, and one last despairing howl for mercy— a howl as elemental and compact of sheer physical terror as any of those he had produced in his victims during his career. The rifle lowered, lifted again, and as if did so something within Bill Barlow seemed to snap and everything flashed away into darkness. Warm kisses on his cheeks, soft arms around him, the wetness of tears and a voice whispering in his ear: 'Bill! Bill darling, forgive me! I had to do it; it was the only way. The doctor put me up to it, and he helped. Bill, say you'll never be cruel any more now you've known what fear is.'

A long silence, and then a husky voice.

'Sweetheart, I guess you've tamed me. Little girl, you've put me wise to something I never knew before and I don't ever want to know again. You made me feel what I'd been making them beasts feel, and— I'm darned sorry.'

'Don't be sorry, Bill. You'll never do it again, I know. Don't be sorry! It means — me.'

'Then I'll, be shot if I'm sorry!' said Captain Starlight in rapture— he had but little sense of humor.

______________________

11: The Immense Temptation

World's News (Sydney) 9 June 1917

DR. AUSTIN, pale and wearing a harassed look, entered the chambers of the Earl, the celebrated K.C. in the Middle Temple.

"I will only keep you a minute or two," he said to the big, florid-looking barrister, who greeted him warmly. "You know everything about everybody. Who and what is Sir Julius Berge?"

"A man I should advise you to steer clear of," said the Earl. "How on earth did you come in contact with him?"

"I have not come in contact with him, but there is a reason why I want to know all about him."

"Well, my dear fellow, I can tell you in a very few words. Sir Julius Berge is a man rather over fifty. He made a large fortune as a South African merchant— at least that's what's given out. Those in the know hint at illicit diamond buying. Of course, they say that of many men who have got suddenly rich in South Africa, but it's odds on that in this case it is true. However that may be, there are a good many other things I can tell you about him. Berge's reputation is extremely bad. He finances musical comedies, and we know what that means when an elderly millionaire goes in for it. The man is a regular scamp, and it is common property. It you want any further details, I have no doubt I could get them for you."

Dr. Austin took up his hat. "Thanks very much," he said, and his face seemed more worn than ever; "that's all I wanted to know."

"You don't look well, old chap," said the other; "you have been working too hard at the hospital. Everything all right?"

The younger man shrugged his shoulders and beat a tattoo upon the table with his long, nervous fingers.

"Oh, a surgeon's life is pretty strenuous if he hopes to get on," he said. He vouchsafed no further confidences, and then he said good-bye and hurried away.

It was a dull day, and fog threatened to fall over London as he made his way on foot to the great Bloomsbury Hospital, of which he was the principal surgeon, and already marked as a rising man in his profession. After a visit to the office he went to his own private room, as he had no case to attend to for nearly an hour. He sat down by the fire, half filled a pipe, and then pushed it away with a sigh, And, rising, began to walk up and down the room. Once he took a letter from his pocket, glanced at it with a spasm of pain. He had continued this uneasy prowl for some five minutes when there was a rap on the door, and a tall, grey-haired woman of about fifty, in nurse's uniform, entered the room.

It was Miss Sanctuary, the matron of the hospital and a well-known figure in London life. She was a great friend of the handsome young doctor, almost a mother to him, in fact, and she came with friendly intentions now.

"Have you got a few minutes to spare?" she asked, smiling. "Then I will sit down if I may. Now, you must, not think me impertinent or interfering; we are old friends. You tell me most of your affairs, you know, and it is a privilege I prize very highly.'"

The doctor smiled faintly. "Ah!" he said, "you are going to ask me what's the matter. I saw it in your eyes yesterday!"

"Precisely. Is it anything you can tell me? I might be able to help."

"I would rather tell you than anyone else in the world; indeed, you are the only friend to whom I could tell my trouble, now that my own mother is gone. It is about Marjory."

"Ah'" said the kind-faced woman, quietly, and soothing and healing were in the single word.

"Yes!" the young man cried, "I can tell you. You know how happy I have been in my engagement. When Marjory accepted me three months ago it made a new man of me in every way. I told you about it."

"You did, and, of course, I have met Miss Arbuthnot. She is a noble girl and in every way worthy of a man's love."

"Well, my friend, it is all over. Marjory is not going to marry me after all."

He tried to speak lightly and cynically, but the effort was useless, and he finished the sentence with a half groan which made the matron wince with sympathy.

"Is it some misunderstanding, something which can be put right?"

"No, it is hard, miserable fact. Have I ever told you about Major Arbuthnot, Marjory's father?"

"I think you once said he was a retired Indian officer, and far from being well off."

"Yes, that's true, but in addition he is a querulous, selfish, semi-invalid, who drinks too much at his club, and makes life almost unbearable for Marjory. She has borne with him with unexampled patience. Her ideal of filial duty is very high. She loves the horrible old beast!" Miss Sanctuary laughed. "You must not speak of that as if it were a crime! But how does Major Arbuthnot come into this  matter?"

"Well, he has overeaten or drunk himself — I am sure I don't know which— into a state bordering upon collapse, I warned him myself of what was coming, but he would not listen to me. There is only way to save his life. He must take a long sea voyage in company with a medical man who will administer certain treatment. Well, that's out of the question for him owing to financial reasons. I, myself, have nothing but my salary, as you know. Two or three years hence, when I am in private practice, I have a reasonable chance of making large sums, but at present I have nothing, and can't help Major Arbuthnot. Marjory has been in despair, of course."

"Still, I don't see " Miss Sanctuary was beginning, when the doctor interrupted. "I am coming to that," he said. "The major belongs to a celebrated club, where he seems to have made the acquaintance of an elderly rake with an enormous fortune, called Sir Julius Berge."

Miss Sanctuary nodded. "A deplorable person," she said. "I have heard of him."

"I have also been acquiring information about him this morning. It is horrible— horrible. Marjory is going to marry this man!"

The matron started.

"That sweet girl," she said in a horrorstruck voice. "Oh! it is Infamous; it can't be!"

"It is a hideous crime. I should say the same if it did not mean the whole ruining of my life's happiness. But there it is, and there is no way out. This loathsome creature has made a bargain with that selfish old scoun-drel, Arbuthnot. Marjory is to be the price of the major's sea voyage and private doctor. He is to be restored to health and kept in luxury for the rest of his life. If he had the least spark of manhood in him he would die decently, rather than sell his daughter into such a hopeless slavery."

"Such a person is not worthy of the name of a man," she answered, her eyes flashing and her mouth becoming very stern. "But Miss Arbuthnot— Marjory— how can she do such a thing?"

"It is what I ask myself a thousand times a day. I have appealed to her over and over again, but she is adamant. She shrinks with loathing from the marriage, but she is determined to go through with it for her father's sake. She knows that her whole life's happiness will be ruined. She knows that I shall be a broken and despairing man, but she says that her duty is clear; she must sacrifice herself for her father's life."

"It is monstrous," said Miss Sanctuary; "can nothing be done?"

"Nothing, I am afraid. I received a letter only last night saying it would be better for both of us if we did not meet again, as the agony of seeing we was too great. It was a beautiful letter, overflowing with love and kindness, but I could read an unalterable determination in every line."

"It is bad, as bad as possible, but there is just one chance."

Austin looked up eagerly. "A chance?" he said. "Oh, what is it?"

"I know Miss Arbuthnot fairly well. I will go and see her this very afternoon and talk to her. She will not refuse to listen to me, I think. I do not know, of course, if I shall be able to do any good, but she lives a secluded life and has no woman friends. A woman's view may have some influence with her."

"Oh, my friend, how kind you are to me.  If you will do this great thing I shall be indebted to you all my life."

"Do not build too great hopes on my mission," the matron said, rising and placing her hand upon the young man's shoulder. "I will do my best and at once, so that you shall not be kept in suspense. Supposing you come to my room at seven o'clock this evening. I shall  be back then."

She went away, and in a few minutes more Austin had resolutely banished all personal matters from his mind, and was hard at his daily work.

The hours seemed to go by with leaden feet. Would this kind woman be able to show Marjory that she had no right to sacrifice herself in this appalling fashion— to say nothing of ruining a lover's life? There might be a chance, certainly. If anyone in the world could do it, Miss Sanctuary could. And yet Justin knew the nature of the girl he loved only too well. Her ideal of duty was extremely high.

"If it had not been a question of father's life," she had said to him, "nothing would have induced me to do this. No ordinary poverty would drive me into it. Frank, I know how bitter it is for both of us, and I know that
you have rights in the matter. But if I let my father die, I should never know another happy moment. I have tried every possible way, but everything has failed but this." As he recalled those words, the young man's spirit sank again, and when at last the hour of seven struck, and a few minutes after he was knocking at the matron's sitting-room, his hand trembled like a leaf.

One glance at Miss Sanctuary's face was enough. It was very grave and sad, and she shook her head gently as he sat down.

"You need not tell me," he said, in a dull, toneless voice; "I can see you have been unsuccessful."

"Yes," she answers slowly; "I pleaded with her; I put the whole case before her in a calm and sensible way. I did my best. I hope I was right to play upon her love for you. It was a terrible and bitter scene; I have never before witnessed one like it, and there has been much trouble in my life. The poor girl is in a dreadful state, almost at breaking point, but her mind is fully made up. She sent you—" and here Miss Sanctuary's voice nearly broke—"she sent you the tenderest message of love, and then she asked me to give you this— she thought, perhaps, coming by my hand, the pain would not be so keen."

She held out a little half-hoop ring of sapphires and diamonds which Austin took from her in dead silence.

"I can't thank you now for what you have done," he said; "some other time," and turning, he left the room without another word.

ABOUT NINE O'CLOCK that night a junior doctor came hurriedly to Austin, who was in his room preparing reports of some of his cases.

"There is a big accident case brought in," said the young doctor. "It is a man, awfully knocked about in a motor smash. Jenner-Cox is with him. There seems to be a chance of saving a life if you operate—at least, Jenner-Cox thinks so."

Austin rose from his papers, to which he had not been able to give much attention. He was glad of the prospect of immediate work, for his thoughts were almost unbearable. He hastened down to the accident ward, where two doctors and a sister were standing by the bedside of the case. Horribly mangled, and seeming almost at his last gasp, lay a tall, elderly man, grossly flabby and corpulent. They had just finished cutting away his "aload- stained evening clothes as Dr. Austin entered. "It is a bad case, Austin," said the physician. "I made a most careful examination, and there is very little hope, but in my opinion there is a chance. Will you examine him and tell me what you think?"

Austin went carefully over the body, noticing as he did so that on one of the hands was an immense diamond ring. After about five minutes he looked up.

"It will be touch and go," he said. "There is complete coma, and from the Cheyne-Stokes breathing I should say that there is great compression. The local ecchymoses are very severe. We must trephine at once. I will do my best with a semilunar incision and a large trephine."

"Very well, then, in half an hour. Meanwhile, I will administer morphia to reduce this cerebral congestion."

"In half an hour," answered Dr. Austin, and made his way towards the operating theatre to prepare.

The brilliant electric light shone upon the spotless white purity of the scene. The walls were of white and shining tiles, and the great copper cylinders, in which all the instruments and bandages were sterilised, gleamed like red gold. The doctor changed into linen overalls, and began to wash his hands with carbolic soap. For nearly a quarter of an hour, according to regulations, he went on with this process, so that no germ could possibly live upon his hands. Then the anaesthetist came in and began to do the same, while the deft nurses arrived and commenced to take out the clips, sponges, and dressings required.

"I am afraid you will fail this time, from what I have seen of the case," said Foster, the anaesthetist.

"I am afraid so, too; still, I can do my best. There is just a chance. Fortunately I am not nervous— I got over that long ago; although cranial operations when the fracture is uncer tain are ticklish things. Great, big, beefy man. Who is he, by the way? He is in a rotten state of health, anyhow."

Just then the physician, Jenner-Cox, came in- to the theatre. "I say," he; called out, "you will have to do your best, Austin. It is a case of some importance— at least, a man well known. He is one of those South African millionaires, Sir Julius Berge! He is coming down now in the lift."

Austin felt as if someone had given him a
violent blow over the heart. The walls of the theatre seemed to reel and totter, he grew deadly white, and then flushed darkly. There was a sound like drums in his ears. Jenner-Cox had hurried away after giving this information. The anaesthetist was employed at his little table. No one noticed Austin.

Sir Julius Berge! The scoundrel who was about to wreck two lives to gratify his own selfish passions!

Austin, like all great surgeons, was accustomed to think with extreme rapidity. The habit of mind and training of years did not desert him now. Could he perform this operation?

The sudden shock had passed. His heart was beating normally; he held out his hand and it was as steady as a rock. Yes! Physically he was as capable as at any time in his career. Brain and muscle were in perfect co-ordination. What human skill could do, he could do.

He went over the names of his colleagues actually in the building at the present moment. No, there was no one there who could rer- form this particular operation with any chance of success. There? were complications, and it was his own special branch of surgery. He could not at this last moment withdraw.

Then, perfectly clear and distinct, the surgeon heard a quiet voice in his ear. "You fool, you ought to. be shouting, with joy. Does it not occur to you that this man is delivered into your hands?"

THE SISTERS and the anaesthetist only saw Dr.  Austin quietly completing his arrangements. The bell was heard, showing that the lift had  reached this floor. In a moment more the long operating couch with its silent rubbered wheels would be pushed into the theatre. It was an ordinary, commonplace scene, perfectly familiar to every person there, and no one guessed that among them was a man lighting for his soul.

"No one will be the least surprised," said the small voice, "if the man dies during the operation. In fact, everyone expects it. In all probability you will not be able to save him, however hard you try. This man is a monster; he does not deserve to live. Providence has decreed that you are to be its avenger."

The couch was wheeled into the room, and the little well-drilled army arranged itself in the accustomed positions. The great, gross body of Sir Julius Berge, looking as if it were already dead, lay stark and hideous under the brilliant light.

Dr. Austin fastened a gauze mask over his face. The anaethetist was standing lose by the side of the patient. He lifted one of Sir Julius' eyelids and nodded.

"Quite ready," he said, and Austin took up the trephine instrument and applied it to a space upon the battered head where the hair had been cut away.

"Think what this means. Marjory will be saved. The shameful bargain will never he concluded. Happiness is coming back into your life."

THE LITTLE circular machine cut through the bone swiftly and with faultless precision in the hands of a master of his work.

And then came another voice. "You are a medical man. You belong to the noblest profession that exists. You hold a high command in the army of those whose business it is to save life. It is your absolute duty to save this man's life if you can. Your private affairs have nothing whatever to do with it. Unless you exercise your greatest skill you will be false to your trust—throw away your life's work in an hour. And you will be a murderer, too."

Dr. Austin stretched his hand out for a certain probe; he would know now within ten seconds. The decisive moment was at hand. A few deft movements of those marvellous fingers and he knew.

He knew with certainty that he could save this man's life, and as certainly he could destroy without the least suspicion or accusation of negligence.

"Now is the time. You know what to do— do it quickly and ensure your happiness for ever."

"You are a gentleman, a man of honor. Your profession must come before everything else. Heal."

After about a quarter of an hour Austin looked up from his work.

"It was touch and go," he said calmly. "He will live now. I have relieved the pressure of the broken bone."

In another half-hour the operation was over, and the patient was wheeled away to bed.

"It was a pretty near thing, Austin," said Jenner-Cox, who had come in just at the end.

"The nearest thing I have ever had," Austin answered, and Jenner-Cox wondered why he smiled.

"Then he will live now?"

"Oh, yes, that's certain."

"The other chap was killed instantly; I have just heard the news," said Jenner-Cox.

"What other chap?"

"The man who was with Sir Julius Berge; they were driving in the same taxi-cab. He was a soldier, a Major Arbuthnot."

"Thank God!" said Dr, Austin, in such a voice that the other stared at him in amazement.

_________________

Table of Contents

- 1: The Painted Coin
- 2: The Prize of Marchants
- 3: Fifteen Million Candle Power
- 4: George Washington's Pen
- 5: A Dangerous Game
- 6: Ella the Ambitious
- 7: The Veiled Name
- 8: The Crime of K.15
- 9: The Christmas Violin
- 10: The Fearless Lover
- 11: The Immense Temptation